HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN CHARTER 2018-09-14 (2018-2020)Hawaii County Charter Commission
3rd Session
West Hawai i Civic Center
74-5044 Ane Keohokalole Highway, Building A
Kailua-Kona, Hawai`i
September 14, 2018
CALL TO The regular meeting of the Hawai`i County Charter Commission was called to
ORDER: order at 1:40 p.m., in the Council Chambers, Kailua-Kona, by Mr. Douglass
Shipman Adams, Chair.
ROLL CALL:
Present:
Absent:
Also Present:
Mr. Douglass Shipman Adams, Chair
Ms. Jennifer Zelko-Schlueter, Vice Chair
Ms. Michelle Galimba, Commissioner
Mr. Paul K. Haman, Commissioner
Mr. Kevin D. Hopkins, Commissioner
Ms. Sarah H. Rice, Commissioner
Ms. Bobby Jean Leithead Todd, Commissioner (came in later)
Ms. Marcia A. K. Saquing, Commissioner
Mr. William Carthage Bergin, Commissioner
Mr. Christopher John Imiloa Roehrig, Commissioner
Ms. Donna Mae Springer, Commissioner
Mr. J Yoshimoto, Commission Attorney
Mr. Jon Henricks, Commission Analyst
Ms. Shannon Magnuson, Commission Secretary
Mr. Scott Ruedy, Dep. Executive Assistant to Council Chair
Mr. Steward Maeda, County Clerk (Hilo Courtesy Site)
Ms. Tiffany Bader, Administrative Assistant (Hilo Courtesy Site)
CHR. ADAMS: 1 really am very happy that all of you could be here. Appreciate
those that had to make the trip over here from the other side of the island. I do
say that when I am on the other side of the island as well. I would note that we
have some members, commissioners that are absent, but I will ask Mr. Henricks
to call the roll please.
MR. HENRICKS: Chair Adams, you have eight members present.
CHR. ADAMS: Great. Thank you very much and excused we have
Commissioner Bergin, Commissioner Roehrig, and Commissioner Springer.
Great. I would ask that any communication devices that you may have, please
Hawai`i County Charter Comtnission-3 September 14, 2018
STATEMENTS
FROM THE
PUBLIC ON
AGENDA ITEMS:
APPROVAL
OF MINUTES:
silence them or turn them off for the purposes of the meeting. Thank you. Again,
thanks everyone for being here. If I could ask our Commissioners to introduce
themselves briefly and I'll start on this end of course with Commissioner Galimba
who naturally has got something in her mouth.
MS. GALIMBA: Red light on, okay, yeah, so, I am Michelle Galimba and I am
from Ka'0, cattle rancher.
MR. HAMANO: I am Paul Hamano from Hilo, local attorney.
MR. HOPKINS: I am Kevin Hopkins from Hilo, university professor and part-
time farmer.
MS. RICE: My name is Sally Rice from Kona, and I am (inaudible).
MS. SAQUING: Aloha, I am Marcie Saquing, I am from Hilo. I am the
executive director for Hawai`i Island Adult Care.
MS. TODD: Aloha, I am Bobby Leithead Todd, a retired County employee and
full-time grandma.
MS. ZELKO-SCHULETER: I am Jen Zelko with Hawai`i Electric Light.
CHR. ADAMS: And, I am Doug Adams from Hilo. Thanks everyone.
The Chair directed the Commission to proceed to the next order of business,
Statements from the Public on Agenda Items.
CHR. ADAMS: Do we have any Statements from the Public?
MS. MAGNUSON: No
CHR. ADAMS: And that includes Hilo as well?
MS. BADER: Good afternoon Chair, there are zero testifiers in Hilo today.
The Chair directed the Commission to proceed to the next order of business,
Approval of Minutes.
CHR. ADAMS: Then I would move on in our order of business to approval of
the August 10, regular meeting minutes. I would entertain a motion to approve
those minutes.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
Motion to Approve: Ms. Zelko-Schlueter moved to approve the minutes of
August 10, 2018. Seconded by Ms. Galimba.
CHR. ADAMS: It's been moved by Commissioner Zelko and seconded by
Commissioner Galimba. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor of approving
the August 10, regular meeting minutes of the Charter Commission please signify
by saying "aye".
Vote on Minutes: The motion to approve the minutes of August 10, 2018,
(Approved) was carried by the following voice vote:
Ayes: Commissioners Bergin, Galimba, Hamano, Hopkins,
Rice, Saquing, Zelko-Schlueter, and Chair Adams —
8.
Noes: None.
Absent: Commissioners Bergin, Roehrig, and Springer -3
Excused: None.
NEW BUSINESS: The Chair directed the Commission to proceed to the next order of business, New
Business.
Comm. No. 4: Department and Agency Heads — Overview of operations; Impact of County
Charter on Operations; Any Proposals to Amend Charter; Discussion
a. Department of Research and Development --- Director; Diane Ley
b. Hawai`i County Council -- Council Chair; Valerie T. Poindexter
c. Office of Aging -County Executive on Aging; C. Kimo Alameda, Ph.D.
d. Office of Housing and Community Development -Housing Administrator Neil
Gyotoku
e. Office of the Legislative Auditor -Legislative Auditor; Bonnie Nims
f. Office of Management — Executive Assistant to the Mayor; Roy Takemoto
g. Office of the Prosecuting Attorney -Prosecuting Attorney; Mitch Roth
CHR. ADAMS: At this point 1 would like to take the Chair's prerogative and
move our Order of Business and take it out of sequence and move from our
approval of minutes into New Business. New Business has, we start with our
Department and Agency heads, Communication No. 4, where we have asked them
to come, provide an overview of operations and the impact of the County Charter
on operations, as well as the opportunity to provide any proposals to amend the
Charter, and then also engage in discussion and conversation with our presenters.
On our sequence here, our first presenter is the Director of Research and
Development for the County, Director, Diane Ley, and I would ask the Director to
please move forward.
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Hawaii County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
a. Department of Research and Development- Director; Diane Ley
(Note: At this time, Research and Development Director; Diane Ley and
Deputy Director; Ron Whitmore came forward to address the members of
the Commission. Ms. Ley and Mr. Whitmore presented a PowerPoint
presentation to the Commission. See Charter Communication No. 4.4)
CHR. ADAMS: As Director Ley comes forward I would remind you as we did
last time, if you could please hold your questions until after her presentation, after
all of the presentations of our presenters today, as you know they may actually
answer your questions during their presentations. Okay?, alright.
Okay, so Director Ley if you could introduce yourself and of course your guest as
well.
MS. LEY: Aloha. Good afternoon Chair and Commissioners. I am Diane Ley. 1
am the Director for the County of Hawai`i Department of Research and
Development and with me is the Deputy Director, Ron.
MR. WHITMORE: Good Afternoon. Good to see some familiar faces. Thank
you all very much for your service to the County in this critical role. Ron
Whitmore, Deputy Director, Department of Research and Development.
MS. LEY: So, we are pleased to be able to present a short slide presentation and
then we are available for questions and answers. Excuse me, so, I think many of
you may be familiar with the department. We've worked with many of you from
various organizations and initiatives throughout the island. We are a pretty
diverse department with a diverse mission and that is to advance knowledge and
innovation, really to make Hawai`i County a great place to live, work, and visit.
We work hard to inform both planning and policy and programmatic decision
making by providing data driven research and we collaborate in the development
and funding of initiatives. Really seeking to balance the environment,
community, and the economy throughout the island.
Our goals- our goals are really focused on what is derived out of the community
voices through the general plan and community development plans, and they
really drive that vision of where we are going and so for us, much of that focus is
on economic development. We want a diverse, strong, stable economy, and that
includes households, a household's self-sufficiency is critical.
Some of our major program areas obviously are the tourism sector, that's our
largest sector. But, it is important for that to be in balance with both our
communities, our history, and our natural resources.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
And then on the agricultural side, I see there are a lot of Commissioners with
agricultural linkages, you know, we continue to strive for supporting a diverse
sector that supports a diverse range of businesses.
For the energy sector, we really strive to focus on innovation to drive forward a
dependable energy supply, one that is also resilient, efficient, renewable and low
cost for consumers and that includes the County of Hawaii as the largest
consumer of energy.
Then on the sustainable development side, the focus is on balancing the natural
environment, obviously the culture, and the economy, and a large degree of our
efforts moving forward are focused on how do we mitigate and adapt to climate
change. It is coming to our neighborhoods and so we need to be ready and
progressive with that. I am feeling like maybe Ron should—you want to talk to
some of these slides as we move forward? I don't want it to just be my voice.
MR. WHITMORE: Sure, so we think both in terms of the programmatic areas we
focus on, but also on kind of the approach we take to our work and generally talk
about it in terms of three main areas. The first is that research side of Research
and Development, you know, the advancing and sharing knowledge and so, you
may have seen that historically in the data book that we published. We have now
turned to digital version of that where people can not only find all of the data
they'd like whether it's a state or federal source, but also easily see it in a
graphical format or exported as a table, all with the intent of providing residents,
businesses, other government agencies, with the information they need to, as
Diane mentioned earlier, make informed decision making, whether it is at the
policy level or programmatic level.
Everything we do is collaborative in nature. We are a very small department so
we collaborate significantly across County departments, cause as you saw in our
programmatic focus, nearly everything we do can't be done or achieved by a
single agency. So we work with both public and private partners to grow a range
of initiatives that help make the island a better place to live, work, and visit. And
then in the same note, we also collaborate on the funding side. We try to leverage
a small budget of some grant dollars from the County with a variety of other
public and private sources to support those same initiatives.
And that's just a nice graphical snapshot of kind of the diversity of initiatives that
our work ends up touching everything from agriculture to information, to energy.
We haven't mentioned it yet, but we also have the, we house the immigration
office for the County, and try to support sectors through a variety of mechanisms
and funding. Do you want to speak to staff?
MS. LEY: Sure. So, as Ron mentioned, we are a small department. We have a
total of 15 staff members and probably the most visible for most folks are our
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
economic development specialists and technicians, focused on our primary
subject areas, and there's a lot of overlap and a lot of blending that goes into
meeting the needs of the community, about our community, but those primary
areas are agriculture, tourism, business, industry development, film—and we've
expanded to focus on the creative economy as well as the film sector. Energy,
and then, our resource center which is primarily focused on collecting data,
analyzing that, and doing specific research initiatives, and as Ron mentioned, we
do have an immigration specialist who serves out of the Hilo office but gets out
once a week out into our rural areas as well as Kona, and so, we try to assist the
federal government in delivering information and assisting immigrants and
immigrant families with filling out documentation. We don't do any of the
enforcement side.
And then on program development- some of our initiatives, we are, we have
launched this year, bringing in a team of AmeriCorps volunteers and they are
going to be supporting us in really some cross programmatic work and cross
departmental and broad subjects, big broad subjects to advance initiatives that the
County should and is involved with, and then we also have some other grant
funded temporary folks, interns, so and then on the administrative side we have
two administrative support staff, myself and Ron, and so, that's our huge staff.
One of our primary initiatives throughout the year is our innovation grants.
That's probably what most of the non-profit community know us for, and they are
really targeted to strengthen our communities, grow industries, help. market,
promote, educate, and build our workforce, and do some research. And, again,
it's in our primary programmatic areas and we provide awards up to $25,000 and
that comes with a— it's a one to one match, so it's, while the initiatives may seem
small, they become broader by providing that match and we primarily work with
non-profit organizations either recognized by the State or the federal government
so...
Our budget, again, it's small 2.6 million, our salaries are about 38% of that, and
then about 50% is for grants. A couple of those are earmarks. We have pretty
substantial long-term grants that we've made to the soil and water conservation
districts to support clean streams and shoreline areas and keep the soil on the land,
and then obviously our tourism promotion that's extremely important. And then
we have flexibility in administrative grants of up to of about, and initiatives up to
about $200,000.
So our Charter, our Charter is pretty simple and focused on really again the
missions we have talked about earlier, collecting and developing data that will
support managerial and legislative decision making, programmatic and policy
making, and then we talked to the fact that our program specialist provide
leadership both in public and private development programs, enterprises, and
plans, and that runs the gamut from social, economic, cultural, proposals and it's
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Hawaii County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
all focused on enhancing and improving our community as a whole. And, I am
going to ask Ron to speak to the last one because he's done a little bit of thinking
about this.
MR. WHITMORE: So we worked with staff this past year to do some strategic
planning, and so we looked hard at the Charter and you get to the third item c and
kind of scratch your head a little bit. We did some research. We actually had a
staff member look back at some original, I forget which body it was at the time. I
think it was back in the 60's when some of this language was being developed
and ..
MS. LEY: Board of Supervisors
MR. WHITMORE: Yeah, Board of Supervisors probably at the time. So, the
best we could tell is those are a function of at the time you may recall, was when
you know at the federal level there were significant programs coming down
through the war on poverty, great society, so the best we can tell, these are a
function of that. The department at the time must have played a role in
coordinating how those dollars came down and were leveraged at the local level
and helping agencies across the County be strategic about how to best use those
investments.
But as you all know, those days have come and gone. The days of large federal
non-competitive grant mechanisms are for the most part gone, limited at this point
to some HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) dollars and so
we just, we look at that and wonder whether its time has come and gone. So, I
guess in terms of considerations for the Commission, we would suggest maybe
that's something worth looking at in terns of whether it still has meaning and
purpose in the twenty-first century for the County. Anything else you'd add?
MS. LEY: No. I think that's it. There we go and there's our contact information.
Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Great. Thanks. Thank you very much for that presentation. Do
any of the Commissioners have any questions or dialog for Research and
Development?
MS. RICE: Mr. Chair
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Rice
MS. RICE: Could you elaborate a little bit on C, the one that you say (inaudible)
MR. WHITMORE: So it speaks specifically to, oh yeah, thanks—yeah, so
coordinating informational regulatory knowledge of all federal and state grant -in-
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
aid participation programs which affect the County. We all know there are still
grant-in-aid programs at the state level, but those are, I don't believe the County is
eligible for those. Those are for non-profit organizations for the most part and
again, in terms of informational and regulatory knowledge, the way we interpret
that and the best we could glean from the record, is the intent was to be informed
and very knowledgeable about the federal funding sources that are available to
local jurisdictions and then help agencies who are eligible for some of those funds
make best use of them. Bring as many to those federal dollars down to the local
level and make informed strategic use of those dollars.
MS. RICE: So you don't do that anymore or you never did it?
MR. WHITMORE: Ah, we, the department in the past has had, has played a role
in helping, we'll share information about funding sources and we still do. We
wrap that now into kind of our information and research role, but the way to
access information about grants and funding resources has evolved significantly
to the point where there is such a diversity of funding sources and those of us with
experience trying to capture dollars through grants or other means know that itis
often a very project specific endeavor to identify the best funding sources and
secure them. So really the best way to go about that today is using online search
tools and so the best way at the federal level is grants.gov and it's become quite
user friendly even incorporating now a grants management component and on the
private side, we have and continue to provide free access to local non -profits to
foundation grant search. programs. And so, that's the way we currently interpret
our role in helping not just the government agencies but local non -profits identify
the best funding sources for the initiatives they'd like to lead on locally.
MS. RICE: Are you suggesting that we delete that or that we modify it based on
the way that you assist for funding in today's world?
MR. WHITMORE: I guess we didn't come with a specific proposal per say. I
guess our understanding was that the purpose of these initial meetings was to raise
areas that the Commission might want to take a look at. So I guess we share this
in that spirit. Is that it might merit a closer look and consider whether it's
something that you might remove or maybe it's adapted for more modern times.
We kind of wanted to leave that to your discretion.
MS. RICE: Thanks.
MS. TODD: Mr. Chair
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Todd
MS. TODD: Just for historic references, the Counties used to get a percentage of
• GET (General Excise Tax) once upon a time. Then the State changed it to a
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
grants-in-aid program and then the County said that the difficulty with grants-in-
aid is you didn't know until the end of the legislative session how much money
you were going to get from the State. So that then switched from grants-in-aid to
a share of the TAT (Transient Accommodations Tax) which is set in the HRS
(Hawai`i Revised Statutes) Statutes, so you can try and calculate it. It made it
easier for the Counties to calculate what their revenue is. There are still some
State programs and State monies that people go after but it is not like it was in the
past, where that was the sole source of revenue sharing essentially and just like
the federal revenue sharing, but that's what that emphasis on the State's grants-in-
aid would have been. Is at one time that was a significant portion of the County's
budget. Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner. Commissioner Hopkins.
MR. HOPKINS: Would you feel that Powers and Duties A, what is in C right
now, that a much more broader thing could just be included just under A? It
seems like the information, you know A is so broad that you could provide all the
information in C. It's just sort of out of date, like you had said.
MS. LEY: That would do it. I think.
CHR. ADAMS: I do have a couple seeing no other Commissioners, I do have
another question, two questions I guess, maybe. One is in 6-8.2, in the director
paragraph, it identifies the director, in the qualifications portion- "shall have a
minimum of five years of related experience." That seems pretty undetailed
compared to some of the other, I am sorry I am just, I guess what I am doing is
I'm asking is that enough qualification information from your perspective?
MS. LEY: I believe so, in terms of being able to manage the diversity of the
department, the mission, while it's somewhat focused it becomes very broad very
quickly, and so I think having experience that is broad and has—if you're able to
think on your feet when you need to and be responsive, be innovative, to me that
serves the purpose and I think some of the skills that you need to be able to
respond to this diversity and the need to stand up leadership and initiatives, only
comes with time. It doesn't come necessarily with a degree because much of our
work is engaging the cornrnunity and interacting and that community may be
other departments and it may be other government entities, state and federal, but
also the comrnunity, so.
CHR. ADAMS: As a follow up to that, what is related experience in your mind?
What's the definition here?
MS. LEY: Related experience...
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
CHR. ADAMS: "Director shall have had a minimum of five years of related
experience." Related to what?
MR. WHITMORE: Well, to continue what Diane was saying, you know, you
could describe the department in a number of different ways. You could call it
you know, Community and Economic Development, you could call is Sustainable
Development, the bottom line is, you know any Director that comes in is not
going to have likely you know, super deep level of experience across the range of
issues that we face on a daily, weekly basis.
CHR. ADAMS: Sure.
MR. WHITMORE: You know, Diane's got tremendous experience in agriculture,
I have experience in other areas, you know, you've got to work together as a team
and figure things out. So as Diane said, it's fundamentally, it has to be somebody
who has worked in areas of complexity and where you are dealing with looking
at things in a comprehensive systemic way. Cause fundamentally a lot of what
we do is search for solutions and try to innovate because we are dealing with
largely complex, thorny issues that touch many different aspects of community
and economic life.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. Is five years enough?
MS. LEY: Is five years enough? Most likely. You know I think that the first
number, or letter A managerial legislative decision making programmatic and
policy and I would throw in budgeting, you know really gives you the basics for
what areas you are going to be tracking in and then as Ron indicated, and then
you are going to end up diving into different programmatic areas. Buts() much of
it whether you're focused on energy or tourism, there's overlap in all of these
initiatives and there is overlap in all of the skills that you bring to it and so, but, I
think if you... five years is probably ample.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. The other thing I had a question about had to do with
your department at least from my perspective, your department is the department
that allows the County executive at least to look forward. Everybody else is
doing stuff by and large and you are, you're helping with some of that as well, but
part of your responsibility is to be the strategic, to have the strategic perspective at
least to try and bring that, doing the future looking. Does that need to be included
anywhere? You feel that's covered in what we are talking about when we talk
about the powers, duties, and functions?
One of the things that I get on my high horse about when we look at what we are
doing here is to try and take a look at what the Charter is designed for in not just
10 years but in 20 years and so, I want to make sure that knowing that you're
supposed to be the tip of the spear when it comes to looking at what are we doing
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
that's going to get our County where it needs to be to be that place to live, work,
and visit in 20 years, making sure that we don't just get there because we got
there, but we got there because we wanted to be there.
MS. LEY: Excellent question. I would say the title of the department speaks to
that to some degree and then I think it is a function of from there, you know, how
far do you take it and that is driven by the Mayor and obviously the Director and
leadership in the department, but ...
MR. WHITMORE: I think that's something worth considering. I mean, we
actually, we wrote that into our strategic plan and under the advance and share
knowledge element of actually having, we ask all of our specialists to track and
communicate trends as it relates to their programmatic area of focus so we
consider it part of our work and there are other agencies that do that as well.
Planning has to be very forward looking, often the planning horizon for their
projects is 20-25 years, but we support that work in part in our research function.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. Alright. Well thank you so much for being here today
and making the trip over. We really appreciate that and I imagine we will be back
in touch. Thanks.
b. Hawaii County Council --- Council Chair – Valerie T. Poindexter
(Note: At this time, Council Chair Valerie T. Poindexter came forward to
address the members of the Commission.)
CHR ADAMS: I understand that we have our Council Chair here, Chair
Poindexter. I would also point out that we did have, I know that we have Council
Member David here, and then we did have Council Member Eoff here, but she
may have grown tired of my talking. I don't know, so—
MS. POINDEXTER: I am on the other end so I know I need to turn my mic on.
Sony about that. Valerie Poindexter, Council Chair, Hawaii County Council.
Thank you for having this opportunity for us to come before you and present.
Really appreciate that.
From discussions during our committee meetings and our council meetings,
things have come up you know and possibly a thing for, some things for the
Charter Commission to look at. One item was of council terms, you know the
possibility of should we have staggered terms, should it be four year terms, you
know, what should it be? A lot of that discussion was about the continuity, you
know, you could have all new council members you know, coming on board at
one time. I know at one year, I think it was when I first got on and J was our
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
Council Chair at that time and we had I don't know how many new members.
Was it like five or six? It was a large amount, so I don't know if that made it any
more difficult you know to continue a legislative process or policies that were still
coming before the Council. The other item that they talked about was the two
year appointments of department heads and them coming to either be reappointed
in two years because since Council terms are at two years, then say if you get six
new Council Members they had not had the opportunity to have questions or
concerns be raised to department heads. So that was something that was talked
about.
Most recently and I think most importantly, is the Salary Commission to raise our
salaries because we know that did not sit well with the community in the big
jump. You know I sat in an H.R. (Human Resources) position and it's never
heard of the percentage jump at one time, you know I—we used to do two to three
percent jumps, sometimes even just 1.5% jumps. But this was, they felt they
needed to catch up and again, that did not sit well with the communities but the,
so, our constituents now are raising the bar on us at the level of our commitment
to serve. But there is no consequence to it right? So you don't serve, you don't
have a commitment, there's no consequence to it. So we got a raise in the salary,
we don't have a consequence of "hey, let's work less", so our Council Rule 2,
Item 9 and I brought that with me and I can read that to you on attendance
because when we talk about getting that salary and people being unhappy, if we
look at that rule, the Council Rule says "If a council member is unable to attend a
meeting prior to written notice", uh, prior, um, let me go back. "if a council
member is unable to attend a meeting prior written notice shall be given to the
Council or Committee Chair Person with the reason for the absence clearly
explained. Repeated absences from in person attendance by any Council Member
may be cause for censure."
So basically, it just sits there in the rules. There's nothing in the Charter. So
basically we can give a tongue lashing or write it and have it on public record that
we are not happy that the person is not participating or you know, in the
policymaking on what they were voted in to do by their constituents, so after
meeting with our Coip Counsel and looking at different Charters, I know Maui
County I couldn't find anything about censure but in Honolulu on the Honolulu
City and County, they have it in their Charter and it says "the Council may
suspend without pay for not more than one month any member for disorderly or
contemptuous behavior in its presence upon an affirmative vote of at least two-
thirds of its entire membership." So they have a consequence to it, and I think
that we were granted that salary. There should be a consequence if we are not
being able to meet up to our commitment as our constituents believe we should
be. So all I am asking is for the Charter Commission to look into a possible
amendment for a censure rule and that's all 1 have for now and I am sure that
other Council Members will reach out to you, and I think during some of your,
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
when your confirmation hearings, that people made their, some of their issues or
concerns known. So thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you very much Chair Poindexter. Any comments or
questions anyone have?
MS. POINDEXTER: Great. Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: I am sorry.
MS. POINDEXTER: Oh you have, okay.
CHR. ADAMS: I usually ask, yeah, you know how that works. In the Charter,
just I guess more for, to get your opinion on it in Section 3-7, we noted that it
talks about when the Council will meet. So it says "The county council will meet
regularly at least twice in every month at such times and places as shall be
established by rule of Council and meet at least quarterly in the judicial district of
North Kona or South Kona." Clearly you are doing that more often.
MS. POINDEXTER: Yes. We're rotating.
CHR. ADAMS: Right and so I guess the question was is it, it seems that that has
been bypassed by actual activity. Does it matter to you whether or not that gets
kind of fixed a little bit?
MS. POINDEXTER: Yeah. I would love to see that where the quarterly piece is
taken out because I really believe that Kona should be equally served as Hilo is.
CHR. ADAMS: Should it be, should anything be included in here? In other
words should we say "at least monthly" or should we say...would you just
identify...
MS. POINDEXTER: I would say at least monthly because when you say
quarterly it will give maybe a new Council to say "hey, let's not do meetings as
often in Kona now. Let's you know..." I see J pulling up his mic so let's hear
from Corp Counsel.
J YOSHIMOTO: Just a suggestion. As I recall the Council Rules talked about
an equal number of meetings and that allowed the Council to have some
flexibility in times when we could not or would not want to meet monthly but
make it up in other areas, so, the suggestion is maybe equal would be better
because there would be times when..
MS. POINDEXTER: Yeah.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
J YOSHIMOTO: there will be a lot of budget meetings or other things. Things
may come up whereas if it's in the Charter and it's set in stone then it is a little
hard to be flexible.
MS. POINDEXTER: Right. Instead of using monthly or anything and I like that.
The equal amounts. Thanks.
CHR. ADAMS: I do have one other question. It has to do with some items that I
have seen in other portions of the Charter. Ordinances refer to legislative acts.
Resolutions refer to non -legislative acts, yet we see some points where resolutions
are used to, it appears, to accomplish legislative acts. Any comments on that?
MS. POINDEXTER: When you're talking about accomplishing legislative acts
you mean at the State level, legislative acts? Because a lot of times we have
resolutions that strongly encourage them to pass certain legislation up at the State
level. However, I understand, I think I understand what you are saying because a
lot of times some resolutions come in and strongly encourages a department to do
something. A lot of times the department will try to massage that and
compromise and come up with something to please the Council with their
resolution. I have seen that happen with roads in limbo, with a resolution coming
forward and saying hey, DPW (Department of Public Works) should provide the
materials and the residents will provide the labor and enter into an agreement...
and it has happened. That is in place. But that was a resolution. So the
resolution is just a strong encouragement and a lot of times the resolutions that
come through I think are good decisions for the departments to consider so they
may consider that, but I don't think it is a way of us undermining our own
legislative process.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. In particular, and thank you for that. In particular in the
adoption of the pay plan, Section 3-13 of the Charter, the last sentence of that
particular Charter says "interim amendments to the ordinance which establishes
the pay plan for the County may be by resolution of the County provided revised
salary ordinances enacted at least once annually." So you have an ordinance and
then you have amendments that are being made by resolution and that seemed to
me to be out of character for the use of the resolution process.
MS. POINDEXTER: Right. And so, I would refer back to our Corporation
Counsel and see if that in the Charter should be re -worded because it does, I don't
know if it brings ambiguity to it, or you know misinterpretation to it, so I would
definitely seek the legal counsel for you to see.
CHAIR ADAMS: Thank you Chair Poindexter.
MS. POINDEXTER: Thank you.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MS. RICE: Mr. Chairman
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Rice
MS. RICE: On that subject, didn't we receive some information that the State in
the HRS (Hawai`i Revised Statutes) somewhere there was a ... which allowed a
resolution when it came to salaries? I remember reading something.
MR. YOSHIMOTO: Right. That's correct. That's my understanding as to what
the Hawai`i Revised Statutes, that language would require that. That's correct.
But more to the point, we can look at that because there clearly seems to be well,
there clearly is some grey area here as far as what we mean by resolutions and
ordinances and what the
MS. RICE: When it comes to money
MR. YOSHIMOTO: Yeah.
MS. POINDEXTER: And can I say if it refers back to, if you refer back to an
HRS (Hawai`i Revised Statutes) then maybe that would help to make more
clarification.
MR. YOSHIMOTO: Right. That's what we understand as to be the basis for this
language here but in terms of what the Charter authorizes the Council in order to
enact every legislative act shall be by ordinance. The Chair is correct that there is
some clearing up that could be done.
MS. POINDEXTER: Yeah. Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: I understand there is a timing issue typically in these things.
You have two readings that you have to go through when you do the ordinances.
Resolutions not so much.
MS. POINDEXTER: Mmm hmm. Right.
CHR. ADAMS: So that may be part of the concern. And then finally, one of the
things that during our confirmation and then we've had some conversation about
it during our meetings here, Section 3-11 talks about emergency ordinances and
we have just gone through a very interesting period of time and there have been
some concern and we haven't got to details I would say yet, but there has been
some concern about whether or not the authority is present to necessarily make
those, to implement or execute those ordinances that perhaps, that need to be done
as quickly as they need to be given you know, situations that may be happening.
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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
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
the other side of the island. I don't know whether that is a Charter thing that
needs to be amended or whether that is something that is internal to the Council,
but I think it is important that unless you have some conflict that you can't, like
you are an attorney and the Judge has set that hearing that day, that other than
something like that, when you run for office, I think you sign up for the service
which entails going back and forth. Not participating and routinely sitting on
your butt on one side of the island and not going and having the courtesy of being
in front of the populace on the other side of the island. So that's.one issue and I
am not sure where to go with that.
Two, on resolutions and this has bugged me, I loved it when I was on the Council,
but once I was in the cabinet, I looked at it a little differently. In Section 3-8,
when we refer to actions of the Council, it says "non -legislative acts may be by
resolution" which is not a problem. It's non -legislative so it doesn't need to go to
the Mayor to approve it, but when a resolution has the force and effect of law, to
me there should be some checks and balances between the Mayor's office and the
Council, and one of the areas I thought about is the fact that things like when you
set the real property tax rates, the Council sets it. The Mayor has no opportunity
to veto if he doesn't agree with the rates that have been set by the Council. And,
that has bothered me because the whole premise of the Charter is to have this
balancing of power and checks and balances, and that's one of the most important
areas that should have a check and balance and it's not set up in the Charter for
the Mayor to have an opportunity. So I just want to put that out there as
something that we should take a look at and the same thing with any other
resolutions that have the force and effect of law. If it has the force and effect of
law there should be some kind of checks and balances set up within the Charter.
Thank you.
MS. POINDEXTER: Yeah, and I agree with that and yet the Charter says no
resolution shall have the force and effect of law, so that is where I think your job
starts to look at those statements. Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Galimba.
MS. GALIMBA: So yeah, following up on this discussion, is it possibly just a
case of practice rather than anything we need to change in the Charter. Just
people say "this is going to be a resolution and this is what we always do." Where
there's a resolutions, and it is law, when it really maybe shouldn't be a resolution.
It should be something else.
MS. POINDEXTER: Yeah, and that you would have to take up—I would leave
that up to Corp Counsel to advise you on that, but I know that no resolution
should have you know, the force and effect of Jaw.
MS. TODD: Mr. Chairman, if Commissioner Galimba
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MS. GALIMBA: Oh, well I mean, perhaps if, perhaps we need another kind of
law, something in between a resolution and an ordinance because I can see why
perhaps you wouldn't want something that is really temporary to be an ordinance.
You know if it is only going to last for one year, so perhaps there just needs to be
a third kind of thing that you do and that's all.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Todd.
MS. TODD: Well my specific concern is that there is the potential that you could
have a budget that does not square with the real property tax rates. You could
either have a situation in which the real property tax rates generate more income
than is set in the budget that's approved or the opposite where you could end up
with a budget and this has to do with the dynamics on the Council and how many
votes and also language that if the Council can't get it together then the Mayors
budget ends up you know being in effect. Where you could have a budget that
has many more expenditures in it then are raised by the real property taxes. So
then you go in to an unbalanced situation and then it just becomes up to the
Mayor what he cuts you know and then he just tells "oh I didn't fund this, I didn't
fund this" you know and so I am just trying to envision a scenario in which you
have a combative Council and a combative Mayor and then you end up with a
situation in which you are failing or you end up leaving too much power in the
hands of one body or the other. That's all. Thank you.
MS. POINDEXTER: Thanks.
CHR. ADAMS: Thanks Commissioner Todd and Commissioner Galimba.
Seeing no other comments, Chair Poindexter, thanks again for being here and
sharing with us some of your discussion on the Charter.
MS. POINDEXTER: Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity. Aloha.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you.
c. Office of Aging — County Executive on Aging; C. Kimo Alameda, Ph.D.
(Note: At this time, Office of Aging County Executive on Aging; C.
Kimo Alameda, Ph.D. came forward to address the members of the
Commission. Mr. Alameda provided a handout to the Commission. See
Charter Communication No 4.1)
CHR. ADAMS: Welcome and please introduce yourself and we look forward to
your presentation.
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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
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
agencies. We partner with the interfaith folks. We have a bunch of volunteers,
we have the most vibrant RSVP (Retired and Senior Volunteer Program) program
in the nation. I mean we have over a thousand volunteers. You know, per capita
we are the most robust volunteering island, County anywhere and I am very proud
of that.
So, you know and our relationship with the State is pretty positive, our
relationship with the Feds is good. The County Council loves us when they ask
me "oh, so how much your budget?" I said "our budget is .001% of the entire
County budget so please no take nothing from us okay?" No, so, so far so good.
So I am here to answer questions you might have or comments.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you for Dr. Alameda. Do we have any comments or
questions for Dr. Alameda? So naturally I always have a question right?
I appreciate you going through the process of talking about some of the reasons
why it would not make sense necessarily for you to be included in the Charter. Of
course your organization has been around for a long time so there is the traditional
aspect of that.
One of the things that your colleagues have is that their departments being in the
Charter, it's a lot more difficult to change the fact of either their existence or you
know their powers, duties and functions, all those kinds of things, where as yours
of course is two readings and an ordinance right?
MR. ALAMEDA: Right.
CHR. ADAMS: Any comments about that? Hasn't been an issue?
MR. ALAMEDA: Yeah. It hasn't been an issue. As I think J said once "if it's
not broke, don't fix it", so it's been working and I think we're good.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. I appreciate you making the trip over and thank you for
your presentation. Alright. Thanks.
MR. ALAMEDA: And thank you. Aloha.
d. Office of Housing and Community Development — Housing Administrator;
Neil Gyotoku
CHR. ADAMS: At this time I would like to move on to Item D under Item one in
New Business and this would be Administrator Gyotoku from the Office of
Housing and Community Development. The Office of Housing and Community
Development is another organization that is not included in the Charter and much
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
as we talked about with the Office of Aging and we did with Civil Defense as
well, I asked that they be included because they are major organizations, do major
things within the County, and I wanted us to have the opportunity to hear from
their leaders about their views of the Charter and where they may or may not fit in
the Charter. So, welcome. Thanks for the trip over and the floor is yours.
(Note: At this time, Office of Housing and Community Development
Housing Administrator Neil Gyotoku came forward to address the
members of the Commission. Mr. Gyotoku presented a PowerPoint
presentation to the Commission. See Charter Communication No. 4.2)
MR. GYOTOKU: My name is Neil Gyotoku. I am the Housing Administrator.
As Dr. Alameda said, we are not in the Charter. I believe we were created in
1976 under Megumi Kon in Mayor Matayoshi's Administration.
Although we are not in the Charter, we do handle quite a substantial amount of
federal funds each year. This year we bringing in 30 million dollars of federal
funds. I had a presentation but I don't know where it is.
We are located in three different locations, 50 Wailuku Drive in Hilo, 1990
Kinoole Street in Hilo, and of course, West Hawaii Civic Center here. I have 51
full-time funded positions.
CHR. ADAMS: Here we go. So in your green folders you all have a copy of the
presentation if that's something that you'd like to be able to take notes on of any
kind. Please continue. Thank you.
MR. GYOTOKU: Okay. Yeah, on page four it shows that we have 51 full-time
positions and none of those positions are civil service. They all are exempt
positions. What that means is that they do not enjoy the security of civil service.
And, a lot of times in the past and in present, we are not really following a lot of
the procedures that is outlined in the County, especially like Human Resources
and recruiting for filling vacancies and such like that. We do have a policy but it
doesn't follow what the Human Services policies are. Yeah. On page five, it
shows a breakdown of the federal grant programs and housing project revenues.
Housing Choice Vouchers is what they used to call Section 8 Rental Assistance.
We have 20 million dollars of housing assistance coming into the County each
year. We assist about 2,005 families throughout the island.
We also have the Ulu Wini Housing Project here on Hina Lani. It's 92 low-
income affordable housing units. We also handle the Hale Kikaha Housing
Project which is your homeless shelter complex down here in the industrial area
in Kailua-Kona. We also manage and own Kulaimano Elderly Housing in
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
Pepeekea and the Ouli Ekahi Housing Project which is off of Kawaihae Road in
Waimea.
This year we were able to secure in addition to the block grant of 2.5 million
dollars, a home and housing trust funds home 2.55 million dollars and housing
trust fund 1.4 million dollars from department of HUD (Housing and Urban
Development) through Hawai`i Finance Development Corporation to build
projects and it is going to be designated to Kaloko Heights Housing Project here
up on Hina Lani.
We also administer the Workforce Innovation Opportunities Act which is an
Economic Development Program where we provide economic activities such as
job training to people who have been laid off or in this case a lot of people were
affected in the lava flow. We are trying to get a grant to help them find jobs and
secure income.
If you look at slide six, this graph shows that we rely entirely on mostly 93.3,4%
on the federal funds, grants, and revenue, administrative revenues. The County
provides us with two million dollars or 6.6% of our administrative budget. So it
basically relies on federal funds to run our program. In addition to the
administrative division, there's a grant management division they provide federal
grants to primarily low-income, moderate -income persons in the form of block
grants, and if you look at page 9 it shows the list of the right now, the open block
grants and I have noticed this Commissioner Saquin from Hilo Adult. We have
1.3 million dollars to really almost complete it, the facility in Hilo.
We also have different things like the Boys and Girls Club, we have Kula 'Milano
Elderly renovations, we have Pahala Fire Station where we provide pumper
trucks. We also administer the Workforce Innovation Act like I said that provides
you know, economic development activities like that. The rest is just some
information about the existing housing programs and the different projects that we
are involved with throughout the island.
Right now we are currently doing a lot of projects here in Kona for the West
Hawai`i certified kitchen for the shelter. We are also doing things like the
Kula`imano where we are doing some landscaping, fencing, and roof renovation,
things like that yeah. Those are community development block grant projects like
that and as I said before, we are not in the County Charter and I don't know the
reason why not, but I really don't know this, if there's any advantage or
disadvantage to that. That's it, if you have any questions.
CHR. ADAMS: Do we have any questions or dialog? Commissioner Hopkins.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MR. HOPKINS: Of your, what was it, you had, out of all of your positions that
you have there, how much does the County pay for or are most of your positions
paid for through the Federal.
MR. GYOTOKU: Like I said, it is about two million dollars from County funds
we receive out of the 30 million and I would say about 80% is for salaries and
fringe benefits. See whatever we can charge to the federal grants like CDBG
(Community Development Block Grant) or existing housing,we can charge, we
will do it. But whatever activities like for example, like for a housing project
which doesn't have any federal revenue, then we would charge it to the County
and you know the County would pay for this out of what they subsidize us for —
two million dollars a year.
MR. HOPKINS: So, with your employees, they are not civil servants, it means
flexibility. Does that mean that there's flexibility that if the federal grant allows
you to charge against them, you can charge that against them?
MR. GYOTOKU: It wouldn't really matter. You know whether they are civil
service or not because it depends on the work that you are doing. If they are
working on that federal grant we can charge their time to that federal grant if it
has administrative revenues which most of the projects or grants that we have and
programs we get.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Saquing.
MS. SAQUING: Thank you. I just needed a little clarification and maybe history
if you know. How does Workforce Innovation get under the umbrella of housing?
MR. GYOTOKU: That's a really unique situation. Mayor Kim in his previous
first administration, there was a Workforce Investment Act program and he was
the one who was instrumental in getting those monies and for some strange reason
they put it into housing because he felt that I guess we handle so many federal
grants that it is easier for us to maintain and monitor.
MS. SAQUING: Ah, okay.
MR. GYOTOKU: And I gotta tell you that where our department is one of the
most scrutinized accounting you know, audited programs because we have all
these different auditors from different agencies coming in and auditing each and
every program. If you look at my timex, there's about 26 different pockets of
monies that we could allocate so unless you charge the time, you would charge
those pockets of revenue.
MS. SAQUING: I see. Thank you very much.
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Hawaii County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
CHR. ADAMS: Thanks. Commissioner Todd.
MS. TODD: Neil nice to see you. Appreciate the fact that you have a broad
knowledge in the housing agency and just for the Commissioners' information, at
one time the federal government used to give enough money that 1 think almost
all the salaries and wages were covered with federal money and in fact you folks
had excess funds once upon a time. They were also very generous with grants for
computers and other office equipment. Over time the federal government kept
cutting back on the amount of money that flowed to the County. And then the
County had to make a decision. In order to have the staff to secure that 30 million
dollars in federal money, then the County had to start paying the salaries and
wages out of the general fund. And so, basically you know do you get rid of this
department, this agency that is bringing 30 million in to the County because you
don't want to spend the money, or do you start allocating other monies, and that's
basically why they are still here. It's because the resource, just the CDBG
Program which is a couple million dollars, if you look at what they have been able
to do in terms of County infrastructure, helping things like the fire equipment for
Pahala... very, very critical. And, it's one of the 1 am hoping that the federal
government doesn't dry up those funds and am I correct that Hawai`i is a little bit
different in the way those funds get allocated? Within the State that they actually
rather than having to go and beg for funding on the State level, that they actually
get allocated directly to the Counties?
MR. GYOTOKU: It's broken down in to two different municipal and outside
Counties, so like ah, Kauai, Maui and Hawai`i County, we kind of compete and
they allocate the monies to regional office here and Honolulu does the allocations.
Going back to your statement that a lot of times the, our employees although they
are exempt, they are tied to the union contract raises and over time the salary has
substantially increased because of union bargaining unit raises like that yeah.
MS. TODD: Mm-hmm
MR. GYOTOKU: And in order to get more monies when we apply for it, you
had to get more positions to handle, especially like existing housing, so we had to
have more and then we got so we're so involved with a lot of these housing
developments because now the big push is to develop affordable housing. And, in
order to get affordable housing, you have to have some type of federal funding to
tie it in to. It's not the—the numbers don't work.
MS. TODD: Well historically did the department also work with private
developers to do like Ouli, and I think there's something in Waikaloa and in Kona
there are affordable housing units that were instrumental that the department did it
and the old plantation camp out past...
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MR. GYOTOKU: Kapehu
MS. TODD: Kapehu camp. You were very instrumental in working with private
sector as well as federal funding to get those projects done. And so a huge
component of the affordable housing inventory on the island is directly a result of
the work of the agency.
MR. GYOTOKU: And we continue to do that. We have continuous meetings
and rapport with private developers wanting to do affordable housing. I have
three or four projects in Waikaloa Village that we are trying to get cleared out
because of the unexploded ordinances and we are really close to getting that
cleared and as soon as we do, they will be able to receive federal funds from
Department of Housing and Urban Development to help build the projects over
there. That's about, roughly about 600 units, affordable housing units.
MS. TODD: Thank you for your work.
MR. GYOTOKU: Yeah. You're welcome and your brother, thank you. Her
brother was my boss in the past.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Rice.
MS. RICE: I just have one quick question. Are you comfortable as far as your
position and not being in the Charter?
MR. GYOTOKU: I am really not sure one way or the other. Because I guess we
never was in so I don't know what really is the advantage or any disadvantage. I
only know that my staff, which is a very good staff, they continue to look for
sources in the federal government for funding, especially to build affordable
housing which is not very easy. You cannot build affordable housing without any
type of federal assistance right now days.
The thing about our problem right here, especially in Kona is the infrastructure,
especially sewer and water is a real limiting factor of how much housing we can
build like that. It's easy for Waikaloa because they have their own private sewer
and water system which we can tap in to, but other areas, it is very difficult.
MS. RICE: So you right now, you have the flexibility and the capability given
the funding constraints, to do -what you need to do?
MR. GYOTOKU: There's no, I think there's a lot of constraints placed upon us
by the federal government who issues those funds and it is a real complex, I
wouldn't say...
MS. RICE: But being in the Charter wouldn't help you with that.
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Hawai`i County Chaster Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MR. GYOTOKU: I don't think it has any effect on that because it comes from
the federal government and we have to account to them. Whether we are in the
Charter with the County or not. We will still have to be accountable to them for
the sources of the funds.
MS. RICE: Thanks.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Hopkins.
MR. HOPKINS: So based on what you said, it is fair to say that if we don't have
the federal funding, the department doesn't operate because it doesn't have any
money, so you could be written into the Charter but if we don't have the federal
government money for the programs, you would have very few—you may have a
few projects, but you would have very few projects.
MR. GYOTOKU: Well, when I started it was like only five million dollars and
when I came back 20 months ago, it has grown to about 27 million dollars and
they said one of the reasons they wanted, they didn't want to make our employees
civil service was because the due to availability of funds in case the federal
government says "no monies" then the County would not have to be able to pay
for those positions like that, yeah, but that was one of the reasons, but it hasn't
happened over the last 30 or 40 years. In fact it has grown by maybe five or ten
times.
CHR. ADAMS: One last question which is for me, which is relatively naive,
where as an organization in the County where you fit right now.
MR. GYOTOKU: We come under the Mayor's office.
CHR. ADAMS: So directly.
MR. GYOTOKU: Yeah. I take my orders from Mayor Kim. However, the
County Council also acts as our County Housing Agency, which is like a policy
making body. So we go and process our actions through the County Council, I
mean the Housing Agency.
CHR. ADAMS: Yeah. I understand. Seeing no other questions, thank you so
much for being here Administrator and we really appreciate it.
MR. GYOTOKU: You're welcome.
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Uawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
e. Office of the Legislative Auditor --- Legislative Auditor; Bonnie Nims
CHR, ADAMS: At this point, let's move on to 1 e, I know that everybody would
like to take a recess, but we are going to power through alright? These folks
made the trek over here so. Let's move on to Item e, Office of the Legislative
Auditor.
(Note: At this time, Legislative Auditor Bonnie Nims came forward to
address the members of the Commission. Ms. Nims presented a handout
to the Commission. See Charter Communication No. 4.5)
CHR. ADAMS: Auditor Nims thank you so much for being here and making the
trip and we look forward to your presentation.
MS. NIMS: Thank you Chair and Commission Members, and thank you for
having me out to talk. Nobody ever wants to talk to the Auditor, so this is a
pleasant surprise to actually be requested.
Section 3-18 of the County Charter establishes and defines the Office of the
Legislative Auditor. We are a small staff. We only have four auditors including
myself and one administrative assistant. Our Office was established to conduct
both performance and financial audits. We also follow up or perform follow up
audits on the recommendations that we have made. In addition we also manage
and establish the contract with the CPA (Certified Public Accountant) firm to do
the financial statement and single audits.
As the U.S. Government Accountability Office says or (GAO) "Audits provide --
essential accountability and transparency over government programs. So
basically, our audits examine the use of public funds, evaluate the effectiveness
economy and efficiency of programs and departments within the County. And
then we provide hopefully value added feedback in audit recommendations and
findings for management to improve the accountability and public transparency
and fiscal integrity for the County.
The County Charter basically defines our operations in that it gives us free and
open access to all County employees, all County facilities, and all records. It also
provides that the office is independent, which is a critical function of the office,
otherwise you never know if the results are skewed to somebody's political view.
The office is scheduled to be headed by a six-year term appointed proficient and
experienced auditor, which I believe is three years. And, finally, the Charter
requires us to follow what we call the yellow book, or it's Government Auditing
Standards, and that's kind of best standards out there or we think it is, for keeping
a high quality, high competent integrity driven audit.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
So we like our Charter. It helps us do our job. The only thing that I would
recommend changing is to, a minor name change from "Office of the Legislative
Auditor" to Audit of the, ah, excuse me, "Office of the County Auditor", and also
to change the Auditor's title from "legislative auditor" to "County auditor". The
reason that we are suggesting that change is, we have been an independent office
since 2008 and we are responsible for auditing all County agencies, not just the
legislative side.
As I said, you know, we audit the County as a whole. There may be a
miscommunication that we only audit the legislative side and GAO (Government
Accountability Office) recommends that all matters related to audits, auditors, and
the audit organization be independent.
So, and then finally, is the other two County audit offices, both Kauai and Maui
are "Office of the County Auditor", while Honolulu City and County Auditor is
"The Office of the City Auditor". So in summary, the reason we are requesting
the name change is to better define who we are, clarify the independence of our
office so our results are not questioned, and bring us in line with the other County
offices in the State.
So that's all I have. If anybody has any questions.
CHR. ADAMS: Thanks Auditor Nims. Any questions or comments? Yes,
Commissioner Todd.
MS. TODD: Good afternoon. I served as the Auditor at one time and one
provision which bothered me back then and which bothered me when I was on the
Council is Section 3-16, which is the mandatory program review. Which says
"once every four years the Council shall critically review every program
supported wholly or partially by County funds and unless the Council shall
favorably authorize its continuation, program shall be terminated."
Anyway, essentially that has always been a question of whether that has actually
occurred. The Council through its rules has basically said that the budget review
is in fact the mandatory program review, and part of the problem is, is that if you
were to actually try and critically do essentially what this calls for, which is
basically a program audit of every program supported by County funds, one there
is no definition of what is or is not a program, and two, you don't have the staff to
do that.
MS. NIMS: Correct.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MS. TODD: So the question I have is whether the Section 3-16 should be either
deleted or amended to reflect that instead it should be pursuant to Section 3-18
and the audit schedule that you set out because on the State side, the State Auditor
which is, this is modeled after what used to be called "The State Legislative
Auditor". She has that independence, or he, actually it's Les Kondo now, so he
has that independence but basically the legislature had the right to every year ask
for specific audits of programs that they were concerned about and then the
Auditor had the flexibility to set up their own program of what they would go and
audit.
So I was thinking that following that State model might more accurately reflect
what is actually going on as opposed to paying lip service to this section and
saying that the Council is actually critically reviewing or doing a program review,
cause according to them they are doing it every year and we both know that that is
not what a real program review would be -what occurs during the budget.
So just, I wondered about your thoughts.
MS. NIMS: Sure. A couple of thoughts. First off, to maintain our independence,
the Council can suggest that we do audits. We can accept or not. So to have the
Council, I guess it would depend on the wording of 3-16 and if it was a mandated
"you will look at the departments or the programs that we are requesting" that
could impair our independence.
If it is a "you shall consider", that could be a possibility. As far as doing you
know a program, a full Yellow Book Program Audit for every program, I would
have to have hundreds of employees. It is just not going to happen. You know,
we can do spot checks like cash counts, looking at travel expenditures, looking at
p card expenditures, things like that, but to really get in the nit and gritty, you
know, even to do one department, it would take probably three or four staff at
least a year. You know, it is not a feasible thing to require all departments to be
audited every year. Now, we do a risk assessment every year when we do our
Annual Audit Plan, where we can take Council requests under consideration,
constituent requests, you know things we hear in Council meetings, things that we
read in the paper, as well as discussions I have had with department employees,
administrators, etc. So we take a wide variety for our risk assessment and that
could be an element of it. I wouldn't want it—to see it drive our audit plan.
Does that answer your question?
MS. TODD: Sort of. (inaudible).
MS. NIMS: Okay.
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Hawaii County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MS. TODD: I am still troubled by the language and so I still would like to either
get rid of Section 3-16 because we now have, this was language from before when
we did not have an independent Office of the Auditor.
MS. NIMS: Right.
MS. TODD: So to me, we no longer need it. I was thinking about either deleting
it or just saying that program reviews shall be conducted pursuant to 3-18 or
something along those lines.
MS. NIMS: Yeah, I mean...
MS. TODD: To reflect the independence.
MS. NIMS: Right. Right. As long as it's not a statutorily required thing, I think
that would be appropriate since we do talk to the Council on any request that they
have.
MS. TODD: Okay. Thank you.
MS. NIMS: Mm-hmm.
CHR. ADAMS: Thanks, Commissioner Todd. Any comments or questions for
Ms.—quickly, or briefly, hopefully briefly, in Section a of 3-18, you are, the
Charter identifies you as an independent office of the legislative branch. Right.
MS. NIMS: Correct.
CHR. ADAMS: And you are appointed by the County Council therein of course
the Council may remove the Auditor at any time for cause. There is no
connection with the executive branch in that process. And so, your identification
of a County Auditor perhaps you can tell me and I am sure I can take a look, but
you have probably already looked, in the other Charters, that hasn't mattered?
They don't have a connection?
MS. NIMS: No. This is, it was modeled after, my understanding was the City and
County of Honolulu.
CHR. ADAMS: Right and they, do they have an executive check on that as
well?
MS. NIMS: Yes.
CHR. ADAMS: So in other words the Council...
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MS. NIMS: This is pretty standard operating procedures for most internal audit
shops.
CHR. ADAMS: So all done by the Council, the Mayor is not involved.
MS. NIMS: Right.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. Thanks.
MS. NIMS: Yeah, it goes back to the independence issue. So basically if you
have somebody running the day-to-day activities, you don't want them
influencing the results of your audit report.
CHR. ADAMS: Right. I am not talking about having the Mayor, you report to
the Mayor, I am not saying that.
MS. NIMS: Oh, Okay.
CHR. ADAMS: What I am saying is that in the process of the selection, currently
the appointment's all within the legislative branch, executive branch has nothing
to do with it whatsoever. That's why it is Legislative Auditor maybe? If you are
the County Auditor does it seem to make sense that you now include both
branches in that appointment process... Okay, thanks.
Any other questions? Yes, Commissioner Hopkins.
MR. HOPKINS: Just a quick question. Is the County Council included in
Section e ?, meaning can you audit County Council?
MS. NIMS: Yes and we do.
MR. HOPKINS: Okay. Thank you.
MS. NIMS: Mm-hmm
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you so much for being here today and we really
appreciate your presentation and answering our questions.
MS. NIMS: Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you again.
f. Office of Management — Executive Assistant to the Mayor; Roy Takemoto
CHR. ADAMS: At this point I would like to move on to Item f, the Office of
Management and I would invite Mr. Takemoto to the podium.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
(Note: At this time, Executive Assistant to the Mayor, Roy Takemoto
came forward to address the members of the Commission. Mr. Takemoto
presented a PowerPoint presentation to the Commission. See Charter
Communication No. 4.6)
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you for being here. I will ask you to introduce yourself
and to give your presentation.
If I may just briefly and perhaps you are going to do this, and I am stealing your
thunder, we have asked, I would just point out that in our Charter there is a
specific portion that is Office of Management and that is what we are asking for
the conversation to be about although Commissioners can ask anything they dam
well please. So Mr. Takemoto.
MR. TAKEMOTO: Thank you for having me. Okay, so if we confine this
discussion to the Office of Management, it's basically in the Charter discussing
the Managing Director. And the Managing Director basically carries out the
directives of the Mayor, and in the Charter the Mayor's powers and duties are
intentionally justifiably quite broad. So what I have today is in the Mayor's
powers, his initiatives are carried out through the departments. So it comes back
to is the organization of the County through its departments adequate to carryout
whatever Mayor is in power, their initiatives.
So for our Mayor, let's see, so for the powers and duties that's in the Charter.
This is just discussing what I just summarized as where the Managing Director's
powers originally derive from, which is from the Mayor, executive branch. So the
organization, this chart is hard to see but basically there's like three tiers of
departments. The first tier is the departments under the Managing Director, the
second tier is the departments under Boards and Commissions, the third tier is the
agencies like Office of Aging, Office of Housing, that are not in the Charter but
still carry out the directives of the Mayor.
So for this Mayor, these are the missions and the kinds of initiatives that our
Mayor has, as a test to see if the departments has organized now under the
Charter, can carry out broad initiatives of any Mayor. So for our Mayor, his
initiatives are affordable housing and homelessness, connectedness which means,
which goes to the transportation system, but not just roads, but including Mass
Transit. A broad health and wellness kind of initiative, where there is a move to
try and promote preventative medicine, you know getting active lifestyles and
how do we do that. Safety and resilience, that goes to the Public Safety functions,
an inclusive and fiscally responsible governance that goes to different initiatives
like financing. Environment and culture, which is DEM (Department of
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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.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
CHR. ADAMS: Thanks very much Mr. Takemoto. Do we have any questions,
or, yes, Commissioner Rice.
MS. RICE: On the PONC funds general maintenance, are you talking
landscaping?
MR. TAKEMOTO: No. Just for our County parks, so it doesn't have to be all
County facilities but particularly our County parks.
MS. RICE: So the ballparks and those other kinds of parks.
MR. TAKEMOTO: Yeah and the beach parks especially the beach parks.
MS. RICE: Oh the beach, okay.
MR. TAKEMOTO: Yeah, yeah.
CHR. ADAMS: Thanks Commissioner Rice. Commissioner Hopkins.
MR. HOPKINS: Is a Charter amendment required to do these things? Can you
just do, you know, can't the Mayor just say "Public Works you will do this, or
Parks you will do this", is that not already, doesn't he already have that authority
to do that?
MR. TAKEMOTO: You mean in terms of like landscape maintenance?
MR. HOPKINS: Yeah, landscaping using the funds and the other things there.
MR. TAKEMOTO: It's a hot potato. Yeah, it goes, if you do it that way, then
every Administration change you have to figure that out again. And, who absorbs
the budget for that, yeah, it was a hot potato, but even for the existing public open
space funds, that definitely we cannot authorize money for that because the
PONC funds don't have any money that can be used for other than the open space
funded by that fund.
MR. HOPKINS: Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Thanks Commissioner Hopkins. A couple of questions I have
that actually have to do with the Charter. So in 6-1-, so in Chapter 1, under
Article 6, refers to the Office of Management specifically, and this is a
conversation as you point out about the Managing Director primarily and then the
powers, duties and functions that are a part of 6-1.3.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
So this is a theoretical conversation that you and I are about to have okay? One of
the things that we in this, what we have in our State, is we have a strong Council,
strong Mayor form of govermnent. That is not the majority of city governments
in the country. It is typically a Council, Manager form of government. Do you
any comments on that, the fact that as we take a look at the future is our current,
the way we are currently organized you know the structure of that, does that seem
to be the right way for us moving forward, should we be taking a look of what the
rest of the country, what a majority of the jurisdictions and the rest of the country
are doing? What are your thoughts about that?
MR. TAKEMOTO: Interesting, okay, it is going to be very theoretical and
subjective. Okay, so I see both sides good and bad of managerial type of running
our County government. One is that the good thing is that there would be
continuity, there would be more of an assurance of qualifications and competence.
I guess maybe possibly a more professional way to manage our County
government.
On the other hand, an elected official of course being elected has accountability
through the people. There is a sense of... I am not sure of a better word, but
inspiration, that can come, that goes beyond professionalism by an elected
official. Yeah, I think that one would really have to have a lot of thought and to
research the models out there.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you. Additionally, currently the qualifications list
The Managing Director shall have five years of experience in an administrative
capacity and shall possess demonstrable education and or professional experience
as required of the office. Is that enough, is that detailed enough? Is that it's
certainly flexible. Does it need to be more detailed? Again, I am putting you on
the spot but you are the one here, so I am asking for your thoughts on this.
MR. TAKEMOTO: I think managerial skills are transferrable. So you can be a
great hotel manager and step into this position and possibly do just as good of a
job with your management and leadership skills. I think it really depends. The
experience and familiarity with County functions is very key, so I don't know if
that somehow needs to be part of the qualifications, but on the other hand, a good
manager can tap into the knowledge, experience, of those around him, particularly
the cabinet, to fill any kind of gap that the manager himself or herself may have in
terms of familiarity of County functions.
CHR. ADAMS: Five years is enough experience by Charter?
MR. TAKEMOTO: Yeah. I think.
CHR: ADAMS: I mean typically you are going to see more, but five years is
enough? I notice that there's no residency requirement. Is that okay?
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MR. TAKEMOTO: Yeah I think that's—there's great people out there. We
should be able to tap wherever that experience we can get it from.
CHR. ADAMS: Are there other questions? Then I will move forward. In 6-1.3
the powers, duties, and functions, as I read this, this gets a little, it's not that
everything I have said so far has been black and white, but this gets even a little
more muddy. Clearly the Managing Director is, it's clear here the principal
management aide to the Mayor, yet the Managing Director also has responsibility
for supervising and management responsibilities. Are you comfortable that one of
the things that has been an issue for me is whether or not the Charter is integrated
enough, connected enough in teens of what the Mayor has responsibility for and
what the Managing Director has responsibility for. There are pieces in here that
can be at least on paper, problematic.
I am imagining that in the work you know, when folks on the ground, when the
rubber meets the road, there's no question. You've got the elected official and
then you have the Managing Director and that is how it rolls. Any comments on
that?
MR. TAKEMOTO: I am not sure I am following that line of question.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. That's fine. Let me go to something more specific. Item
(c) under 6-1.3 indicates recommends to the Mayor the Annual Operating Capital
Improvement Budgets. When I go into a couple of the other articles, it
specifically indicates that it, the budgets will be recommended, they will be
provided to the Mayor. It says nothing about the Managing Director necessarily.
Is that something that needs to be cleaned up? Is it typically run through the
Managing Director?
MR. TAKEMOTO: Ah, you know maybe we should check on that, the
consistency, because like the CIP (Capital Improvement Projects) budget, I know
the Planning Director, Planning Department makes the recommendation and I am
not sure of what the reference is. Whether the recommendation for the CIP is
made through the Managing Director or to the Mayor.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay.
MR. TAKEMOTO: And the Operating Budget probably Finance Director makes
a recommendation and I am not sure if it is directly to the Managing Director or to
the Mayor.
CHR. ADAMS: Or to the Mayor. Right. Okay. Thanks. Those are just some
things that caught my eye as I was walking through this. Are there any other
questions or comments for Mr. Takemoto? Okay.
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Hawaii County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
Thanks again for being here and listening to us, and answering our questions.
Really appreciate. I guess the one question I have is do we have a copy of the
presentation? It would be great. Can we get a copy of your presentation?
MR. TAKEMOTO: Yes.
MR. HENRICKS: It's being provided to us and we'll enter it into the record and
get it out to you folks.
CHR. ADAMS: Great. Thanks so much. Again, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
g. Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Prosecuting Attorney; Mitch Roth
CHR. ADAMS: I am sorry. Who are you? The other elected official who is
elected across the entire island. I am so happy that you are here Mr. Prosecuting
Attorney, and I will interrupt you as many times as I possibly can.
(Note: At this time, Prosecuting Attorney Mitch Roth came forward to
address the members of the Commission. Mr. Roth presented an
Amendment Proposal to the Commission. See Charter Communication
No. 4.3)
MR. ROTH: Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Alright. So please
MR. ROTH: Well good afternoon and thank you very much for having us. And I
am here with my first deputy Dale Ross who I may bring up here because she is
the brains of the operation.
The Prosecutor's Office of course handles all of the criminal charges everything
from parking tickets to murder cases. We have about 18-20,000 cases that come
in a year, but we also by the statute, by our Charter actually, are allowed to do
some proactive approaches, so we have taken a lot of proactive approaches to
reduce crime and keep our community safe and healthy.
Our mission statement is that we pursue justice with integrity and commitment.
The Prosecutor's Office has about 120 positions, three offices with positions
composed of attorneys, clerical, victim witness counselors, investigators, fiscal
officers, IT (Information Technology) division, and administrative units. We did
put in a recommendation for a Charter change, but I, you know, I have had the
opportunity to sit and listen to all of the different groups coming up and I just
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
wanted to throw some things about the Charter that made me think a little bit
more as I was sitting in this room, so Chair Adams asked some questions about
the qualifications and I know that you asked that for a few different people and I
looked at our qualifications under Section 9-2, which says "The prosecuting
attorney shall be an attorney licensed to practice and in good standing before the
United States, ah, the Supreme Court of the United States and the State of
Hawai`i. She... should be a citizen of the United States and shall have been
qualified elector of the county for at least one year preceding the election."
As I listen to your questions and I start thinking about the qualifications, I think
one of the important qualifications for the elected prosecutor is that person
actually have experience in criminal law and I would think about five years
experience because a new attorney coming in whether they are doing defense,
whether they are doing prosecution work, really doesn't, really wouldn't
understand all the roles of the Prosecutor that go beyond going to meetings, but
go in to plea agreements, looking at laws, looking at changing the laws, going to
the legislature, advocating for changes, so I think that may be something that we
may ask you to look at- the qualifications over there.
Another question that just came up in talking to the Managing Director about the
budget. We are an independent agency. I am an elected official so I am
independent of the Mayor, however when our budget gets put in, it gets put in
with everybody's budget. We put in request for supplementals, we are basically
told by Finance which comes under the Mayor, which supplementals will get in
and so a lot of times the Council won't even know what supplementals we have. I
know that Honolulu in their Charter they changed a couple of years ago to have
even their budget independent of the County's.
I haven't really given too much thought on that but I know sometimes its
frustrating cause we are always fighting for everything as well. And I think that
in the last six years that I have been here, I think it has worked out okay that we
have done those things. Of course, like any other agency we would have hoped to
get more money, but we understand what the financial constraints are, so I'll just
you know, as you ask those questions I kind of thought about that and just wanted
to key on this the Managing Director's presentation- they had the Prosecutors, we
are independent but we work very closely with the Police, and we work very
closely with the Administration and Council because that's the way we believe
things need to get done here and if you aren't working together as a team, we are
working against each other, so even though we are independent, we do work very
closely together.
So those are pretty much the things I wanted to talk about. Oh, I did want to, we
did submit a change, a recommended change for the Charter and it is actually not
in our section. It is in the section that Department of Information Technology
(DIT) will be putting in under 6-4.4, the Powers and Duties and Functions of
another department and that is 6-4.4 (a) and what we are asking is that this section
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
be changed to make sure that our IT (Information Technology) is looked at as a
separately managed, so as I said earlier, one of the divisions in our office is an
Information Technology. The DIT when they come in here I think they will be
making some other changes, so when we are making changes it will probably go
in there, but I think the Board should understand that the Police Department has
some of their own things. They call it RMS (Records Management System) that
DIT has no control over to my understanding.
Our office has a Records Management System that we are using called Legal
Edge that, actually we are using HITS and we are moving to Legal Edge which is
the new system that the DIT has no information on at this point. We are changing
it ourselves. This system that we are using to arrange our management of files it's
also HITS. They have nothing to do with that. We have our own employees
hired which is different from Maui and Honolulu. In Maui and in Honolulu they
have a DIT person in their office but they are managed by the Department. In
ours it is managed by the Prosecutor's Office and in the Police Department I
understand that their DIT is also managed by the Police Department.
At the current time because Water Department has their own people that they
manage, it's excluded, so we are just saying this should be fixed because in reality
this is how it really, it works. So those are the changes that we had and I am
happy to answer any questions that you have.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you Mr. Roth. Any questions or comments for the
Prosecuting Attorney? I am sorry? Commissioner Todd.
MS. TODD: Thank you for bringing up that issue of experience both in criminal
law and as an attorney because I am looking not just at Prosecuting Attorney but
Corporation Counsel. Cause in theory Corporation Counsel —there's no
requirement that you have been practicing for any number of years. Which for
me is a real issue you know having, I've been out of law school more than 30
years and I know that in the first five years it is just not enough experience. We
have requirements before you can apply to be a District Court Judge, before you
can apply to be a Circuit Court Judge, you have to have a demonstrated number of
years and then there is a process. And I looked at other departments and we talk
about five years of experience in a related field and then I am looking at some of
this and then I am going mmm nothing... and I don't know whether the thought
was that they would let the voters sort that out in terms of you know people
running, but I do like the idea that before you could run you had to have some
minimum number of years of experience. Particularly because it is a large office
and you are administering and having to deal with both State, County, and Federal
laws and the range, I don't think people know the range of stuff that you have to
cover from civil commitments to...
MR. ROTH: Right.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MS. TODD: To child abuse. You have to operate in Family Court, you have to
operate at Circuit Court, and so, and the difficulty sometimes you have in
recruitment and retention too.
MR. ROTH: Absolutely.
MS. TODD: So I appreciate the comments and I seriously would be interested in
having some type of minimum number of years as an attorney in the State of
Hawai`i because I don't think that you should be able to, if you have not practiced
law in the State of Hawai`i, one year of experience here is not going to do it. You
just, you need to know the system, you need to know the courts, you need to
know, you have to go to the legislature every year to beg, borrow, and plead for
funding.
MR. ROTH: And I am really glad that you brought that up because I was going
to mention this earlier. We have attorneys that, and we have staff not just
attorneys that we get partially funded by State funds versus County funds. And
that is, you have to know the lay of the land really.
MS. TODD: So I really appreciate that suggestion and I think it's something that
the Commission should seriously take a look at beefing up the requirements cause
you know we don't have any requirements to be the Mayor but that's cause we
just, that's a political thing, but when we are talking about somebody that needs to
have knowledge of a particular field, and really run that office, and also since I
am very familiar with your data management personnel and the complexity, Mr.
Ono is my neighbor and Eric who retired you know, I have known him for years
and I, they.. the one message I have heard is that what they do is very different
from what IT does and that it is a different skill set. So I hear you loud and clear.
Thank you very much.
MR. ROTH: Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Any other Commissioners, Commissioner Hopkins.
MR. HOPKINS: I am following up on the IT question. Maybe I am going to be
corning from a different way. Taking, following that logic, that you have
explained there, is that any department, are you saying that any department that
has specialized computer needs, the people should not be under IT, they should be
in that department?
MR. ROTH: No.
MR. HOPKINS: Which then brings me to the other part, is do the prosecuting
and I am not beating on prosecuting attorneys, but do the attorneys really know
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
anything about IT or should we let the IT people know that they have very
specific needs for you and people who know computers should be making that
decision. It's—you know we have that question all of the time.
MR. ROTH: Fair enough. And I think when you look at the systems that are
used throughout the County, most of the County is on like an Eden or a Fresh
system where they are using it for accounting, they are using it for whatever the
County is doing. For the Police and Prosecutors, we are using a whole different
IT case management system. We are not looking at funds, we are looking at
cases, so it is interesting that, well wouldn't the Police and the Prosecutors use the
same system, we are actually using different systems and our IT and Police's IT
are working together to get those systems to communicate, but DIT is nowhere in
the mix. So the way it works is you know, our IT people—the problems that they
are fixing are specific to basically the case management system that we are
running. The rest of the County is using pretty much the same kind of database
systems. They're communicating to each department with you know their
Outlook or they are using the same accounting stuff, and we actually do use the
accounting, but when that comes in to play then DIT works on that but the stuff
that we need to work on which has to be actually separate because of FBI (Federal
Bureau of Investigations, CNS (Criminal Justice in the United States), Criminal
Justice Institute, there's a whole bunch of licenses that we have to have. That's
why we keep them, you know, they are pretty separate.
MR. HOPKINS: Excuse me. It just brings me back to my question that I ask all
the time.
MR. ROTH: Go ahead.
MR. HOPKINS: Does that need to be in the Charter?
MR. ROTH: Well, I would have said no except it is in the Charter and the way
it's in the Charter is incorrectly stated. And when my IT people bring this up, the
fear is that you know, not this Administration, not this IT Director, we have no
problems, but there could be a grab to say you know what, we are taking these
positions away even though I am an elected official, and supposedly I have a
separate whole department, the Mayor and the County still has control of my
hiring for you know, they have a say on the hiring, they have a say on my budget,
and so, it is possible to have those positions ripped away. And I don't see that
happening any time now, but the way it's written, it makes that a possibility.
And you know, the other part of that is it has to be an independent department.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Rice.
MS. RICE: On your IT, you have your own IT people there.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MR. ROTH: Yes.
MS. RICE: Manage your system and the Police have...
MR. ROTH: their own
MS. RICE: their own. So the budget issues where the County's overall IT people
help you is, that's a separate system right? So it could be kept separate?
MR. ROTH: Right. So when a problem, when there's a problem in let's say
Planning or Public Works, Department of IT people go help them with their
systems. When there is a problem in the Prosecutor's Office, our IT people are
helping us in those, the IT, the County IT people have nothing to do with our
computers whatsoever.
MS. RICE: At all?
MR. ROTH: At all. Yeah.
MS. RICE: That answers my question.
MR. ROTH: And you know, another part of this, this is frustrating because we
are under them but we have to buy our own computers from our own budget.
When the County goes and they buy their computers, IT is buying all the
computers, so.
MS. RICE: So you're independent anyway.
MR. ROTH: We're independent, yes.
MS. RICE: It's just not on paper.
MR. ROTH: Yes. Yes, and so are the Police.
MS. RICE: Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Are there any other questions or comments? I do. Just briefly,
as I was going through Article IX, your article in the Charter, I appreciate you
mentioning the qualifications piece. I was looking at the Powers, Duties, and
Functions. It occurred to me that in (a) and (b), there wasn't anything about
where you actually run the office. Would it be, there is an item where you
appoint your Deputy. 9-4 is the staff, and you appoint your deputies and other
necessary staff...
MR. ROTH: Right.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
CHR. ADAMS: And you identify a First Deputy. There's nothing in here that
talks about actually running the Prosecutor's Office. Would that be...
MR. ROTH: I, I guess you can say at the direction of the Prosecutor, because that
is really what happens, is that we appoint our staff and you know whatever staff
the deputies and staff and they, so they are directed by technically me. There's
actually a team of people that work there.
CHR. ADAMS: Right. Okay. I appreciate that. I would ask if First Deputy
Ross has anything that she would like to add. Any comments on the Charter?
(Note: At this time, First Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Dale Ross came
forward to address the members of the Commission.)
MS. ROSS: I think in answer to that last question, I would say that Mr. Roth as
Prosecutor has appointing authority over the deputies under his administration and
our function as deputy is not just defined, not just under his direction, but also
defined by what is legally required under the law as Prosecutors. So we are a
professional staff that has specific duties and ethical obligations that we have to
abide by and Mr. Roth by having a hiring and firing authority can control who is
on his staff that actually implements the duties under the law. I don't know. I
hope I answered your question.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you. I appreciate it. Any other comments or questions?
Okay. Alright. Thank you so much for being here and I appreciate your being
last.
MR. ROTH: Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: At this time, we are at two hours in to this essentially, I would
like to take a brief recess and let's get back together again at 4:00 p.m.
Recess: At 3:48 p.m., the Chair called for a recess.
Reconvene: The meeting reconvened at 4:O1p.m.
Comm. No. 5: Review ofHawai`i County Charter (2016 Edition)
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Hawai`i County Charier Commission -3 September 14, 2018
a. Article VI — Executive Branch- The Managing Director and Agencies Under
the Managing Director
b. Article VII — Executive Branch -Departments or Agencies Under Commissions
c. Article VIII Department of Water Supply
d. Article IX — Prosecuting Attorney
e. Article X Financial Procedures
CHR. ADAMS: So we will be starting back up with, in New Business Item 2
which is Communication Number 5, the review of the Charter. Just as a brief
reminder, we are on a two pronged approach looking at our Charter. The first
prong we just had some of that where we asked for the senior officials in the
County to talk to us about their specific areas of responsibility and organizations
and then the second prong is where we actually go through and are looking at the
Articles themselves. Make sure that we are not missing anything that may not be
covered by the individuals and as we will note, up till this point it is largely been
organizationally based until we get to Article X which actually is more process
based.
a. Article VI — Executive Branch -The Managing Director and Agencies Under the
Managing Director
CHR. ADAMS: We will start with Article VI. For those that weren't here last
month, essentially what we did is that I open up the opportunity for
Commissioners to identify any items that they may have comments on regarding
the Article and then we can have a conversation about it. We are not looking
necessarily for any motions. So this is a potential discussion or dialog but we will
try and keep it structured so if you are making a comment please identify
yourself. It makes it easier for understanding who is making the comments as we
move into making the minutes etc.
Alright, Item 2, Article (a) or Item A is Article VI- Executive Branch- The
Managing Director and Agencies Under the Managing Director. Does anyone
have any comments having to do with Article VI?
MS. RICE: Mr. Chairman, Commissioner Rice.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Rice.
MS. RICE: Could I go backwards just one Article cause I wasn't here?
CHR. ADAMS: You mean on to Article V?
MS. RICE: Yeah.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
CHR, ADAMS: If it is okay, why don't we do that after we have gone through
this, please.
MS. RICE: Afterward. Okay.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay, great. Thank you. Article VI? I would just point out I
actually had the opportunity to identify my questions with Mr. Takemoto of the
Mayor's Office. Again, I would just point out that in Section 6-L3 it identifies
Powers, Duties, and Functions as the title of that particular section, pretty
standard stuff. I am not aware that there is really any powers listed here. It is
mostly duties and functions. And then there's not necessarily any timelines
associated with this as well. So I would just make that comment. This particular
Article does have a number of Chapters. So I just want to make sure. We will
run through briefly the Chapter. Chapter I was Office of Management, no
questions. Chapter 2 was Department of Public Works. Any comments having to
do with Chapter 2? The only comment I would make is that in the qualification,
the director shall be a registered professional engineer, I know that that makes
sense, it is just that I know people that are really good engineers that are not
necessarily PE's (Professional Engineers), Urn, I am married to one who was a
Commander in the Corps of Engineers, three different districts, you know seven
years of administrative supervision capability and she wouldn't even make it past
this particular door, so it is interesting what we choose as qualifications.
And then again a minimum of five years of experience in administrative capacity.
I wonder about the five years when it comes to some of these department head
responsibilities. Okay.
Chapter 3? Chapter 4? —Department of Information Technology? This will be as
we pointed out before, this is the area that the Prosecuting Attorney asked that we
take a look at. That would be in subsection (a) the addition of the Police
Department and the Prosecuting Attorney's Office as well as Department of
Water Supply.
MS. RICE: I have sort of...
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Rice.
MS. RICE: Going backwards a little bit again, when they spoke to us, they talked
about clarification of some of the terms and I didn't see that we sent them a letter
asking them to make a recommendation or suggestion to us on some of the, on the
issue that they had brought up at our meeting.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you. We will take care of that.
MS. TODD: Mr. Chair
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Todd.
MS. TODD: In terms of Chapter 4 under 6-4.4, subsection (a), (inaudible), it did
it again. Okay, there we go. Section 6-4.4 Powers, Duties, and Functions -
subsection (a), I agree with the comments by the Prosecuting Attorney and I
would ask that the Commission consider in subsection (a), adding for those
systems maintained by the Department of Water Supply, Prosecuting Attorney,
and Police. That would still mean that those systems, when he was refen-ing to
Eden and Fresh, those are kind of the accounting systems that every department
runs and that's managed by IT regardless of where you are, but those systems that
would be managed by Prosecuting Attorney are specific to their functions and
very different from the system wide software that is utilized elsewhere in the
County. So I just want to express some support for his position.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you Commissioner Todd. Anyone else? Again, I
would— and this will be part of the clarification that Commissioner Rice just
talked about. Subsection (c), it talks about assist in the development of
management information. Understanding what that actually means, what that
definition is, would be helpful for me as well.
Chapter 5 has to do with Corporation Counsel.
MS. TODD: Mr. Chair
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Todd.
MS. TODD: As I look at the different Chapters, this is the only one that doesn't
seem to have any requirement for years of experience. You are going to run an
office, I don't expect you to necessarily have more experience than the people you
are supervising, but I think there should be at least a minimum of five years as a
practicing attorney before you are asked to run a department and supervise other
attorneys. So I would like to put that out for consideration as you look at this
because every other department. There's a requirement of years of experience
and I think that this is one where it is very important to have years of experience
and so it should at least be commensurate with what we ask the other departments
to have. Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you Commissioner Todd. I would only point out that my
comment on the side of reading this is "that's it?" So, alrighty. Chapter 6 -
Department of Finance, any comments or questions? Or actually comments
regarding this? Okay I would just point out a couple of things. In the
qualifications piece, Section 6-6.2, I just wonder. The Finance Director shall have
a minimum of five years of training experience in budgeting or related fields, at
least three years of which shall be in a responsible supervisory capacity. That is
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
pretty good. It is just that I know the Finance Directors, I mean you just have to
look at Article X and you have to have a PhD essentially in this stuff. So it is
pretty amazing.
And then in the Powers, Duties, and Functions subsection (a), assist the Mayor in
the preparation and execution of the Operating Budget, Operating Program,
Capital Budget, I don't have a problem with that except that the Managing
Director is responsible for in Managing Director's, is recommending to Mayor the
Annual Operating Capital Improvement Budgets, so I would just like to see a,
maybe try and square that up as we go through this.
(Inaudible input from Commissioner)
CHR. ADAMS: That's one way to do it. Certainly. Any other comments having
to do with the Chapter 6? Moving on to Chapter 7 -the Planning Department.
(Inaudible input from Commissioner).
I am son -y let's go back to Chapter 6, sure.
MR. HENRICKS: Microphone please. Sony. We need it for the minutes.
MR. HOPKINS: Sony. On 6-6.4 there is no, I don't see any qualifications for
anybody on that, who is put on that board. Pensions are pretty important. Do we
want to look at qualifications?
CHR. ADAMS: Okay.
MR. MAEDA: Hello. This is from Hilo, we have Deanna Sako here who wanted
to interject.
(Note: At this time, Finance Director Deanna Sako came forward to
address the members of the Commission via teleconference from Hilo
Council Chambers.)
CHR. ADAMS: Please. Director Sako.
MS. SAKO: Hi, I just wanted to add that on the Pension Board, I just wanted to
clarify I guess. That this is not the Employees Retirement System (ERS) that is
run by the State, but this is the remainder of the County Pension System which is
laid out in law as to what we are allowed to give in pensions and there, I think we
only have 19 or 20 pensioners left in this system. So while pensions are
important, most of it is spelled out in the HRS (Hawai`i Revised Statutes) as to
what they qualify for and they are allowed to be given, and I didn't want us to get
too detailed in that as this is probably going to be a dying board in the next few
years.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
To clarify that, there is very few people who still qualify for this pension because
most of our employees qualify for ERS. So that is what I mean, like in a few
years, there will be no one left in this system.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you. Understand. And so, what you are saying is that the
2020 Charter Commission may be looking to delete this particular portion.
MS. SAKO: Twenty...
CHR. ADAMS: Oh right we are 2020, would be 2030.
MS. SAKO: 2030 yeah. Yes. Right.
CHR. ADAMS: Listen, I still think it is 2000 so there you go.
MS. SAKO: Yeah. I know what you mean, yes.
CHR. ADAMS: Chapter 7?
MS. TODD: Mr. Chair?
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Todd.
MS. TODD: I don't know exactly where it would go, but I would like that the
Planning Director have some familiarity with Hawai`i land use law which is not
mentioned here. And it is because we have a very unique system between the
State Land Use Commission which governs State land designations and the
County General Plan, and the County Subdivision Ordinances and Zoning, and it
can be very different from what experience is elsewhere. So I just want to put
that out. I don't know what the appropriate language is but I would like to put
that out there. You know I think if you engineer a bridge, that engineering is
pretty consistent wherever you are you know in terms of how much weight you
are going to carry and what not. But if you are doing the land use stuff, you really
do need some familiarity with Hawai`i law and Hawai`i ordinances, so I just
wanted to throw that out there. Maybe it's unimportant to other people, but I
think there should be some demonstrable knowledge with Hawai`i's unique
system and the Hawai`i Constitution for that matter which has environmental and
land use concerns in it.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. Thank you Commissioner Todd. Any other comments?
Alright, Chapter 8- Department of Research and Development, we did have some
commentary about that earlier on, any other comments? Alright. I would just
point out that in Section 6-8.3, item (c) was brought to our attention that perhaps
that can either be integrated into one of the other subsections or modified or
deleted. So we will take that under advisement.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
Chapter 9 has to do with Miscellaneous. Any comments on Chapter 9? I would
just point out in Section 6-9.3 Game Management Advisory Commission, this is
the second sentence "one member shall be a resident of each council district".
This will be my particular pan to paddle throughout the rest of this. You know,
we will figure out and see if this is a technical change that we can make. It just
needs to be correct and right now it just reads very awkwardly, well it doesn't
even read correctly, so... Commissioner Hopkins?
MR. HOPKINS: Why is this in the Charter? Other than somebody put it in
there? Why are we keeping it in the Charter? This is a minor, you know, I mean
sorry, you look at the importance of all of these other things and suddenly we
have this little blurb in there about Game Management. Sorry.
MR. HENRICKS: No, I can just historically, not philosophically answer your
question, but it was a recent amendment I believe made by the Council that put
out there I think in 2014 if I am not mistaken.
CHR. ADAMS: 2012
MR. HENRICKS: Twelve? Yeah, so we of course you know what, that's an
assignment for us. We will go ahead and get the minutes for you of those
meetings and then we will transmit that to you digitally so that you'll understand
the rationale behind the Council.
MR. HOPKINS: Yeah. I vaguely remember voting against it.
CHR. ADAMS: Alright. Thanks very much Mr. Henricks. Alright, moving on to
Chapter 10. Anything in Chapter 10? Commissioner Todd you are not allowed to
speak. Okay. For the record, obviously that is not correct and obviously
Commissioner could say whatever she would like to say having to do with this.
MS. TODD: Mr. Chair?
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Todd.
MS. TODD: I can live with the existing language. I won at the Supreme Court.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. So that is all the Chapters in Article VI. Let's move on
to Article VII.
b. Article VII -- Executive Branch- Departments or Agencies Under Commissions
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Hawai`i County Charter Commis'; = September 14, 2018
CHR. ADAMS: Start with Chapter 1- Department of Human Resources. Any
comments having to do with this particular Chapter? Commissioner Saquing.
MS. SAQUING: I have in my notes, thank you. I have in my notes on Section 7-
1.4 I believe Mr. Brilhante wanted us to edit that word "statute". It's about the
second to the last sentence to HRS.
CHR. ADAMS: Got it. So yeah, in 7-1.4, the sentence, the second to the last, or
the next to last sentence, "merit appeals board shall function according to statute",
according to HRS. I understand. In, I would only, I understand that this is where
it's at because of the, that this is a State board, and so I just point out Section 7-
1.2 Merit Appeals Board subsection (b), that was an interesting phrase. I really
didn't see this in anything else that I have seen so far where we identified that the
members shall all be in sympathy with and believe in the merit system public
employment. I do, I would point out that there is something similar although not
exact, in the HRS having to do with the responsibilities of board and making sure
that the principles of the merit system are implemented, so.
MS. TODD: Mr. Chair.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Todd.
MS. TODD: We have a provision in in the Hawaii State Constitution protecting
civil service.
CHR. ADAMS: Well there you go.
Chapter 2- Police Department. In Section 7-2.3 Chief of Police and Deputy, we
will have an opportunity to speak with a representative of the Police Department
next month so we will have an opportunity to talk about the qualifications and
how they feel about this. Five years to be the Chief of Police to me is ridiculous.
But I understand that this is a minimum qualification so.
I would also point out in Section 7-2.6 Administrative Supervision, you will
notice in many of these, this particular phrase where whatever the department is
shall come under the general supervision and control of the Mayor through the
Managing Director. I only point out this one in the Police Department because
the Fire Department does not have this particular phrasing, which I found
interesting that we would separate the Fire Department and the Police Department
in that way.
Chapter 3- Department of Liquor Control. Comments. I am sorry Commissioner
Rice?
MS. RICE: Excuse me.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
CHR. ADAMS: I am sony Commissioner Rice, you wanted to, you had
something else to speak about?
MS. RICE: Well, on that, on that very subject. Which I really hadn't realized
until We, until you pointed it out. I am just wondering how much control the
Mayor actually has over the Police Department at this point. There seems to be
some dichotomy with the Mayor and, on other islands, I think Kauai had quite a
difficult time. And I think that was one of the things that I recall in some of my
notes that needed to be discussed at a later time. As to exactly who could hire and
fire the Police Chief.
CHR. ADAMS: Well, here I am pretty sure it's Police Commission.
MS. RICE: But then there was, here it says "will come under the general
supervision and control of the Mayor." So that immediately sets up, could set up
a conflict and maybe we should address that.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. Thank you very much Commissioner Rice. Any other
comments? Alright.
MS. TODD: Mr. Chair.
CHR. ADAMS: Yes, Commissioner Todd.
MS. TODD: I notice that that language appears in multiple Chapters.
CHR. ADAMS: It does.
MS. TODD: But it does not, and I think it was probably an oversight in terms of
the Fire Commission and that's because generally the day-to-day operations and
the budgetary issues generally do come under supervision of the Mayor's Office.
It is just the hiring and firing of certain heads that's through the Commissions and
also the complaints. And so, I think one area that I want to double check on is
what happens with you know, I know that with the Police Commission, if you
have a complaint about a police officer you complain to the Commission and I am
wondering what happens if you have a complaint about the Fire Department.
Well, it says that you hear complaints and make recommendations but that sounds
like maybe you need to look into civil service in terms of what happens with some
of those complaints and what authority the Commissions have. Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. Thank you Commissioner Todd. Chapter 3- Department
of Liquor Control. Any comments? Yes. Commissioner Hopkins.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MR. HOPKINS: Sort of facetiously, but given where everything is going, should
we change the name of it to the Department of Mind Altering Substances?
Because right now, where's our control for all the marijuana dispensaries that are
coming up and everything else? Where does the County, where's the County's
authority to deal with that?
CHR. ADAMS: I don't have a good answer for that. To be honest, I don't have
an answer.
MR. HOPKINS: Thank you. It is just a question.
CHR. ADAMS: Mr. Henricks.
MR. HENRICKS: Mr. Takase, our Liquor Control Administrator, I'm sorry, I
don't know what his title is. He's the head of, the Director of Liquor Control --
will be at October 12 meeting, so good to keep these questions for October 12.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. Thank you. Mind altering huh? Got it. Anything else
having to do with Chapter 3? Chapter 4 again Fire Department? Again, I would
go back to and we did have some conversation with Chief Rosario when he was
here about the training requirement, the level of experience and training, so that
will be something that we may want to consider later on. Anything else having to
do with this particular... I am not sure why, I have to go back and think about
why I wrote this down, but I, we have the Powers and Duties and Functions in
Section 7-4.6 of the Fire Commission and, oh, I know what this was. I know what
this was about. This had to do with subsection (d) of that particular Section.
Evaluate at least annually the performance of the Fire Chief and submit a report to
the Mayor or the Managing Director and the Council. Clearly the evaluate at least
annually the performance of the Fire Chief I get. The why was, why are we
submitting the report to the Mayor, the Managing Director, and the Council. The
Commission obviously can do that and by Charter must do that. And then (g) is
submit an annual report to the Mayor, Managing Director, and the Council on the
Fire Commission's activities. So I am sure that when I was reading this the
reason I wrote, I had questions about that, had to do more with where's the Mayor
and the Managing Director involved in the supervision because it is not listed in
here as Commissioner Todd pointed out as well.
So it may be that that is an oversight. I wonder. So we will, we can always go
back and ask these questions. We will have the Mayor with us, but we will also
have, we have the ability to go back to the Fire Chief and we may receive some
information from the Fire Commission as well if we need to.
MS. RICE: Mr. Chairman
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Rice.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MS. RICE: I am wondering if it would be helpful if we had the rules of how the
Commissions for the Fire Department and the Police Department work because
we are a little bit, at least I am a little blind as we are looking at the Charter which
has some coordination with the Commission but we don't know what the
Commission's rules are. So I would, it might be helpful if we had those if they
are not too extensive.
MR. HENRICKS: I take that as an assignment. The Administrative Rules for
both Commissions will be emailed to you folks.
MS. RICE: Okay. Thank you.
MR. HENRICKS: Absolutely.
CHR. ADAMS: Alright. Anything else having to do with that particular Article?
c. Article VIII — Department of Water Supply
CHR. ADAMS: Alright, Article VIII- Department of Water Supply. Again,
Department of Water Supply is a semi -autonomous department, and we will be
having Mr. Okamoto coming to talk to us next, or his representative coming to
talk to us next week, uh, next month.
Any comments or questions having to do with Department of Water Supply here?
Commissioner Galimba.
MS. GALIMBA: Right. So I am just kind of wondering the background and why
it is a semi -autonomous versus the other that are like Fire and Police which are
also sort of autonomous. Why these guys are so special, these semi -autonomous.
Would it be possible to get some background on that?
MR. HENRICKS: Yeah. We can look into that. The history of that and then of
course a good question for Manager Chief Engineer Okamoto but we will dig
around and see if we can find something that would help with that.
MS. GALIMBA: Great.
MS. TODD: Mr. Chair.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Todd.
MS. TODD: I notice that despite being semi -autonomous, they are under the
general supervision and control of the Mayor.
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CHR. ADAMS: I notice that too.
MS. TODD: And that language is missing under the Fire Department. That
language is also there for the Liquor Department which sets its own budget and
sets its own rates. Just as Water Supply does. That's one of the semi -autonomous
features that you have two departments that don't have to go to the County
Council, they don't have to go to the Mayor, their Boards set what rates they
charge. And they have their own budget that fully funds them and yet you have
that language and then it's missing so I think that has got to be one of the ones
that we do, is amend the Fire so that it is consistent with all the other departments.
CHR. ADAMS: I'll be interested to understand the reason why. I am not sure
that it is an oversight and I would be interested to know why it's not an oversight.
So that will be an interesting conversation. Thank you.
Anything else having to do with the Department of Water Supply Article?
d. Article IX — Prosecuting Attorney
CHR. ADAMS: Alright. Article IX Prosecuting Attorney. We had the
opportunity to speak with the Prosecuting Attorney. Any other than the
qualifications, we did hear about the qualifications so that is an opportunity to
have that, to review that as we move forward. Anything else that anyone has on
Article IX?
Okay, thank you.
e. Article X Financial Procedures
CHR. ADAMS: Article X. Article X is composed of a variety of Sections. Let
me just, if I may, we will just kind of run through the Sections alright?, that way
we can address anything that anybody has specific to Article X.
Section 10-1, Section 10-2, Preparation and Submission of Budget and Capital
Program, we are, we have had, we have made a question to Department of
Finance asking about whether it would make sense, what the pros and cons of
going to a biennial budget is, we are awaiting a response to that. We did receive
an initial response when the Finance Director was before us last month, which we
appreciated.
Section 10-3, Scope of Operating Budget, Operating Program; Mayor's Message,
1-4, Operating Budget and Capital Budget: Notice and Hearing, 1-5 Operating
Budget: Council Action. So I just would, I just want to ask the question. I didn't
actually make a note on it but I am just going to ask the question. This is one of
those things. The last paragraph of Section 10-5, well actually it is not the last
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
paragraph. It's the second paragraph "The council shall adopt the operating
budget on or before June 30. If it fails to do so, the operating budget as submitted
and as amended by the mayor shall be deemed adopted by the council as the
operating budget for the ensuing fiscal year." We are all okay with that default
situation? In other words, Council doesn't get their act together, that's the way it
goes. Okay.
I would identify one and perhaps, I think Director Sako is there. If I could ask
Director Sako a brief question.
MS. SAKO: Yes I am here.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you. In Section 10-5 in the, I guess it is the third
paragraph, it states "If the mayor disapproves of the bill adopting the operating
budget or of any part thereof, the mayor shall return the bill or the portions vetoed
with a return statement of objections to the clerk for further council action within
ten calendar.days of receipt of the bill."
When I went back to Section 3-12 of the Charter, it... let me make sure I have got
that here, it identifies a more of a, maybe it's in the second paragraph there it talks
about "if any appropriation bill is presented to the mayor, the mayor may veto any
item or portion thereof by striking it out." And then "append any objections and
reasons thereto to the bill" and "the item or portion thereof so vetoed shall not
take effect unless the council shall reconsider it by two-thirds."
Are we talking about two different things here? Are we talking about
appropriations in Section 3-12 and we are talking about budget in 10-5? Is that •
why that's different?
MS. SAKO: It could be. We are definitely about budget and I know we stick
strictly to the ten calendar days. That's one of the few bills that has that language.
But I thought it also takes two-thirds to override. Corporation Counsel has an
opinion on that I believe, and we can look that up and get back to you before your
next meeting.
CHR. ADAMS: Alright. Thank you very much. I just, maybe I am trying --it
just was different and they are both in the Charter. So I appreciate your response
to that. Thank you.
MS. SAKO: Yup.
CHR. ADAMS: Anything with Section 10-6 Capital Budget and Capital
Program: Scope: Council Action.
Section 10-7 Budgets: Public Records. Commissioner Hopkins.
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MR. HOPKINS: I think you know, its saying how, it is basically talking about
just filing it in the office here. I think it, I think in today's age, it should be put on
the web. It should be freely accessible to anybody via, on the web. Not just that
you gotta go down and...
MR. HENRICKS: Sure. Because the budgets are both ordinances, they are
treated like all other ordinances and are available on our website.
MR. HOPKINS: Okay, thank you.
MR. HENRICKS: Yes. Absolutely.
CHR. ADAMS: Yes, which means that you go in and you go to our County
records and go in to that where it is in the Council records and then you go
through all the Council records to find out which area that you find it. Do we
have it available so that if you clicked on it whether it is in the Department of
Finance, I mean do we have it someplace else other than the Council records?
MS. SAKO: Yes we do. We have it on our website.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay.
MS. SAKO: Not only the official ordinance but even going through the budget
process, we have the March l' and the May 5th versions available as well at the
appropriate times.
CHR. ADAMS: Great. So if we, if we said something here that alluded to
something other than just hard copies, you wouldn't be upset with that?
MS. SAKO: No as long as it doesn't require me to do anything more than we are
doing now.
CHR. ADAMS: Thanks Director Sako. Alright. Anything else on 10-7? 10-8
Appropriations: Supplemental and Emergency. Any comments? I would, I guess
I would ask This is, I am not sure how to approach this. So the second
paragraph talks about making "to meet a public emergency affecting life, health
or property, the council, may make emergency appropriations."
Of course the appropriations may be made by ordinance and we run into this thing
again where you have got to go through the various readings associated with that
so, how quickly does that mean that you are able to address it? That's one issue.
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What is, so when I go down and I read through, about half way down it talks
about "the council may by ordinance authorize the issuance of emergency notes."
What is, what's that? What is an emergency note?
MS. SAKO: An emergency note would be an emergency loan basically. More
like a short term bond type of thing. It is not something we have ever had to do
since I have been at the County, but it is available should the need arise.
CHR. ADAMS: Are there other ways, okay so this gets to another question.
There's a larger question here. Are there other ways that this, that the Council
might be able to provide emergency funding rather than this notes kind of way
that now exists?
MS. SAKO: Yes. That do now exist, yes. So one of them is that we do have an
emergency and disaster fund that can be used in such times as like the lava, or
Hurricane Lane, or things like that, and then in addition we annually appropriate
emergency money in the general fund and the highway fund because in any given
year we are going to have you know, heavy rains or something like that, that we
know we are going to have to deal with. And then also we have—some people
call it the "rainy day fund", but it is the budget stabilization fund, so if the
emergency was more a shortage of revenue, you know something impacted us
that our revenues drop significantly, then we could access those funds as well.
CHR. ADAMS: So does this the fact that this is in the Charter, and it is laid out
that way, does that stifle those other ways of doing things?
MS. SAKO: No it doesn't.
CHR. ADAMS: So the larger question for me is that this Section is very detailed.
Is it too detailed for a Charter? I mean I am trying to understand why we have so
much of this in the Charter.
MS. SAKO: Yeah, I am not sure the history of this Section and all of its detail
but you know we did look at it when we were going through the lava coming and
you know, what would be happening with all of this, and it is a little bit detailed
but we also know we have those other funding sources and if it is a significant
disaster we also know that more than likely we would get FEMA (Federal
Emergency Management Agency) assistance with that as well.
It's very detailed and I think the amount of the emergency notes was extremely
low if I am in the right place. Yeah, the total emergency appropriations in any
fiscal year shall not exceed one-half of one percent of the total operating
appropriations and that was actually small...
CHR. ADAMS: I was going to ask you about that. So that was pretty low?
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MS. SAKO: Mm-hmrn.
CHR. ADAMS: Yeah, so, it would be interesting to know why that was, that
particular amount was, that percentage was chosen. I understand the idea of not
necessarily wanting, that you want to put some type of cap on things, I get that
part too. But at the same time, why this is even in the Charter as opposed to
something that can be done by ordinance, is a potential question for me.
MS. SAKO: Right.
CHR. ADAMS: So okay. Moving on anybody else anything on 10-8? Okay, 10-
9 Appropriations: Reduction and Transfer. I would only go back on the second
paragraph. We again have this resolution issue. So "mayor may at any time
transfer part or all of any unencumbered appropriation balance between
classifications" that's great. "and if at any time the mayor shall request in writing
the council, by resolution effective immediately upon adoption, may transfer, part
or all of any unencumbered appropriation balance from one agency or executive
agency to another." I just don't understand that. I understand how you can, now
this, this doesn't necessarily fall in Commissioner Todd's issues where you don't
have a check and balance because this is still the Mayor and the Council, and
maybe that's how that is working and they, because its, they want to do it quickly,
1 mean this doesn't say emergency, so I am not really sure why a resolution is the
appropriate means to effectively move money around.
Which if there is anything that needs the force and effect of law it is moving
money around.
MS. SAKO: Mm-hmm.
CHR. ADAMS: So again, I am confused by our use of resolutions to handle.
money.
MS. SAKO: So one of the things is—I totally hear what you are saying there.
This first part is you know, just that the Mayor could transfer within a department,
and then the second part is between departments, and sometimes some of those
issues do not come up till very close to year end, that we realize we may be falling
short and not have enough in the department to cover it and have to transfer
between. So therefore, you know, a resolution would take a shorter time to get
through Council.
But that is also transferring money between already, accounts that have already
been appropriated through the budget, but I will let you guys decide if you know
resolution or if an ordinance would be better.
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CHR. ADAMS: Or Commissioner Galimba's third method. Alright. Got it.
Okay. Thank you. Anything else on 10-9 from anyone?
Section 10-10? Lapse of Appropriations. Section 10-11 Payments and
Obligations Prohibited: Verifications: Penalties.
Last sentence of that particular section goes back to my bugaboo resolutions.
Section 10-12 Special Funds. Commissioner Hopkins.
MR. HOPKINS: I find it interesting here that we do not put a sunset clause or
any time period on these special funds. It is one of the things that the legislature
gets on—things there. Without that it basically becomes a way to squirrel money
away... by administrators who obviously-- they are always looking at doing that.
We may want to look at that things should be sun-setted and then they can be
continued if necessary.
And I would just like to add the other comment back, following up to what the
Chair had said here. I find so much of this Section, I am really, I don't understand
why it is in the Charter. It should be in policies and procedures. That being said,
because I don't like changing the Charter. I am not saying move it out and
change it around here, but it is really strange that we get so much detail here
within the Charter on stuff that is basically policies and procedures.
CHR. ADAMS: And I would just add on to that. Thank you Commissioner
Hopkins. It may be that there are standard ways of doing things in budgeting and
accounting in Finance activities that will never ever change because they have
been done that way forever. But when you put them in the Charter, for sure you
are not going to be able to change them very easily. So it is a... anyway... I just
had a quick question Director Sako. The use of the term in Section 10-12, "for
the proper and efficient segregation of fiscal operations of the County", what does
that mean?
MS. SAKO: I think part of it is an accounting standard and there's different types
of funds. You know our main fund is the general fund but then we also have like
proprietary funds and other funds, but most of our special funds are actually
have been established and are used to actually account for operations of certain
depai t cents such as waste water and solid waste. To kind of be able to tell what
the Council or not the Council but the County in general is helping subsidize
those funds.
So most of the funds are not like the special funds you have seen at the State
where money was squirreled away, they are actually to reflect the operations or
sometimes we even have other types of funds where the ability is to hold the
money for the State, such as the State weight tax that we collect on their behalf.
So the money goes in during the month and then at the end of the month we take
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it out and send it over to the State. So some of them are kind of holding funds for
our fiduciary obligations.
CHR. ADAMS: Great. Thank you.
10-13? Post -audit. Any comments or questions? Yes, Commissioner Galimba.
MS. GALIMBA: So I had a question about this and this might be a question for
you Ms. Sako. So this audit that happens every year, is it done by the same audit
firm or do you have a policy of like rotating auditing companies?
MS. SAKO: Actually one of the controls basically is that the audit is not, the
auditor is not selected by our department. It is actually selected by the legislative
auditor. And so, they I can't say that every contract period they change over, but
they do an RFP (Request For Proposals) and different companies you know,
submit their qualifications and what their price would be, and they have from time
to time changed them but not necessarily every contract period. Government
audits are not the funnest to do and probably not the most profitable, so I am not
sure really how many firms actually bid on our audit, but it is not a large number.
And then there is definitely efficiencies for both the auditor and us by having the
same auditor. By not having to retrain them over and over again, although they
usually send out the new staff so we end up training over and over again. So but
the legislative auditor makes that selection and they do rotate them periodically.
MS. GALIMBA: Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Any other comments or questions? Just briefly, the term
"County Administrative Officer" it is in the second paragraph, is that a, what is
that? Is that a single position? Is that all of the department heads?
MS. SAKO: It is basically all of the department heads and I think it says the term
of any County Administrative Officer, then we do go out and we basically audit
primarily the assets. That is the bulk of what each department has and so we do a
complete inventory of those assets and make sure they are all accounted for.
CHR. ADAMS: That's a, that could be a real big portion of your duties.
MS. SAKO: It is, especially when we have change over in Mayor and many
department heads change.
CHR. ADAMS: Alright. Section 10-14 Centralized Purchasing. Any comments,
questions? Again, I guess I would just ask the question, Director Sako, this really,
when I was reading this particular Section it just came to mind that this was so
detailed. Particularly I was looking at subsection (e) where by rules and
regulations the director provides for emergency purchases, petty cash funds etc.
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etc. etc. I just wonder that if, does the detail that we see in here cause the
department problems in executing its missions?
MS. SAKO: Uhm we do have those rules in place but that is not to say that it
necessarily needs to be in the Charter but it hasn't really created issues and we do
have the Director of Finance Rules in place and we do update them from time to
time.
CHR. ADAMS: So you update those but these particular provisions that are in
the Charter obviously those rules that are being updated stay within the
boundaries that the Charter provides and you are not, that's not an issue for you?
MS. SAKO: Uhm no. Not right now.
CHR. ADAMS: What about in ten years?
MS. SAKO: Yeah, uhm, you know emergency purchases we come across all the
time and State law also has rules regarding that. So some of these things you
know, it probably gets to be redundant with HRS (Hawai`i Revised Statutes), but
I don't think if this Section left the Charter, I believe we would still leave our
rules in place just so that it was very clear if and when there wasn't already
guidance in the HRS.
CHR. ADAMS: Section 10-15 Public Access, Open Space, and Natural
Preservation Fund. Now I understand that we have an ad hoc committee that is
looking at 10-15 and 10-16. I am not looking to regurgitate the work that is being
done by that particular ad hoc committee, but I would ask, does anyone have
anything that is specific, that perhaps you haven't had an opportunity to address
that is part of that particular Section?
Okay, I would ask one thing associated with subsection (d) of 10-15. It identifies
that "any balance remaining in the fund at the end of the fiscal year, of any fiscal
year shall not lapse but shall remain in the fund accumulating interest from year to
year" and then "the moneys in the fund shall not be used for any purpose", uhm, I
guess I am, we're allowed to do that? I guess we can—please, Mr. Yoshimoto.
MR. YOSHIMOTO: My concern is because this was given to the ad hoc
committee to discuss, that we shouldn't discuss it until the ad hoc committee
comes back with its recommendations because there may be members here who
are on that committee. I am not sure exactly who but, I would yeah, I would
recommend not discussing it until the committee is done with its investigation and
report and then talk about it as a body. But you are, you are...
CHR. ADAMS: I am debating in my head what to do here Mr. Yoshimoto.
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MR. YOSHIMOTO: Okay.
CHR. ADAMS: I appreciate, I hear you. I am just wondering whether my
question is in that area. We are going to talk about it anyway. That's fine.
MR. HENRICKS: Mr. Chair. Is your question a simple question of the ability of
funds being held over from year to year being technically, like you kind of just
want to ask Ms. Sako how that happens?
CHR. ADAMS: No. It is not technical, it's constitutional. So it turns out, and
so, I can, I'll ask the question when we bring the committee back. That's fine.
Thanks.
So then we will move through 10-16. We have an ad hoc committee looking at
that as well. And that is all of that. So, anything else having to do with Article X
or any particular questions having to do with Article X since we have the Director
of Finance here? Director Sako I really do appreciate you taking the time on a
Friday afternoon to be present for us. Thank you.
MS. SAKO: No problem.
CHR. ADAMS: At this time I would like to move over to, actually before we
move over, Commissioner Rice you had something that you would like to address
having to do with, is it okay for us to talk about...
MS. RICE: I just have a question.
CHR. ADAMS: Let me ask before we do it, let me just make sure it's okay. It
isn't something that we had, you would rather that we...
MR. HENRICKS: We could hear the question.
MR. YOSHIMOTO: Yeah, it needs to be on
MR. HENRICKS: I mean hearing the question would make it easier to decide
whether or not it is permissible. Answering it could be a different matter.
MS. RICE: Okay. My question is in Article V. It says, which has to do with the
executive branch and it is "no term of office for", I am saying there is no term of
office for the Mayor's appointees, except the Corporation Counsel and of course
the Prosecuting Attorney who is elected, but why is the Corporation Counsel
given a term of office and the Mayor's appointees not? I mean it says the Mayor
can hire and fire but he can hire and fire Corp Counsel also right?
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COMMUNI-
CATIONS:
MR. HENRICKS: We probably shouldn't talk about this because it isn't noticed
on our agenda. But I...
CHR. ADAMS: I'd like to make it a part of the Old Business. We will bring up
Article V. We can bring it up as Old Business?
MR. HENRICKS: Next time?
CHR. ADAMS: Next time.
MR. HENRICKS: We can. Yeah, that would probably be, .1, safer? Safer.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay.
MS. RICE: I'm sorry, I wasn't here so...
MR. HENRICKS: Yeah.
CHR. ADAMS: Part of what we are figuring out is that as we, obviously we want
to, we want the Commissioners to have the ability to identify questions and bring
their concerns up as we go through this particular prong of our attack on this
thing. We are looking at particular Articles and we, under sunshine we have
noticed that those are the ones that we are talking about. So we can identify as an
Old Business Item since we covered it last month and address the question.
Thank you.
The Chair directed the Commission to proceed to the next order of business,
Communications.
CHR. ADAMS: Alright. I would like to, in the sequence of our Order of
Business, move back to Communications. 1 would note that we have three
Communications identified. Communication No 2.1, 2.2, and Communication 6.
In Communications this provides the opportunity for Commissioners should you
desire to address anything that you have here. We have noticed that in the, it has
been noticed that we are, that this is on the agenda. We don't have to have, talk
about it. We are not looking for a motion to file. These will be filed anyway.
But if there is anything that you would like to talk about associated with these
communications, now is a good time.
I would ask us to take a look at Communication No. 6, the flowchart, for
consideration and approval of proposals. You should have a copy of that in
your—everybody has a copy of that? It's in your green folders. It is behind one
of the beautiful purple dividers. There we go.
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So we have the Communication No. 6- Flowchart Proposal Submission and
Approval Protocol. The flowchart is on the second page of this particular thing. I
would just note that this identifies some things that we have talked about but that
if there is any questions, now we know one- it is out there for the public to know
as well, and for us to know how this works. Alright, so Commissioner submits
proposal on the proposal form, there is a proposal form that is identified as a ...
MS. TODD: Where do we have proposal form?
CHR. ADAMS: Is that another Communication?
MR. HENRICKS: No it has been provided to all Commissioners, yes.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. Great. And so, that is great and then, Chair places the
amendment proposal on the next available agenda, Comrnission moves to approve
the proposal, and then motion seconded, discussion about ----so this takes us down
through the first reading, and then the idea is that we then go to our public
hearings, you have the opportunity to hear from the public at the public hearings,
and then move into the second and final reading, and then all of this... a key part
here is that if things change during, between the first and the second reading, it
does not require us to go back to a first reading. Is that correct Mr. Henricks?
MR. HENRICKS: No.
CHR. ADAMS: That's not correct?
MR. HENRICKS: That is correct. It...
CHR. ADAMS: Okay thanks.
MR. HENRICKS: It just progresses.
CHR. ADAMS: Right. Keeps on going.
MR. HENRICKS: Con•ect.
CHR. ADAMS: Alright, and then six or more Commissioners vote in favor,
right? It's not who is here. It is a minimum of six that move it forward as an item
that we would consider as a ballot measure, but of course is not we then, it then
goes to the Council and then what the Council does with it, they have 30 days, it
comes back to us, we have our amount of time and then that is it.
MR. HENRICKS: Mr. Chair, if I may.
CHR. ADAMS: Mr. Henricks.
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MR. HENRICKS: I've heard quite a few ideas today and I have heard quite a
few people say you know, for the people's consideration. That's good. I feel like
that's progress but just a reminder that this is how things will come before you as
an actual specific proposal from a Commissioner. It needs to be made for it to be
put before the Commission for actual consideration.
CHR. ADAMS: Thank you, Mr. Henricks. Any other comments or questions
having to do with the Communications? Yes, Commissioner Hopkins.
MR. HOPKINS: When, you know we have talked like just as the comment was
made, we have said well these are several things that, are we do we have a
process where we are going to decide who is going to formally make specific
proposals?
CHR. ADAMS: That's a great segue. Would you like me to move on to the next
part of the agenda?
MR. HOPKINS: Yes. I would. Yes, I would, please.
UNFINISHED The Chair directed the Commission to proceed to the next order of business,
BUSINESS: Unfinished Business.
CHR. ADAMS: Alright. We will move on to our Unfinished Business.
Communication No. 3 Formation of ad hoc committees. So, the ad hoc
committee is our primary way of taking on some of these issues, a way... Mr.
Henricks you are looking perplexed.
MR. HENRICKS: My apologies.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. I am sure it had something to do with what I was saying,
but perhaps not. The ad hoc committee formation of ad hoc committees, provides
us an opportunity to take a look at some of these areas. Additionally, but there is
no requirement for that right. Individual Commissioners have the ability to
prepare proposals based on information that we have received if individual
Commissioners, if we get more than one proposal on a particular area from
individual Commissioners that's great. There is nothing wrong with that. We
have the ability through the standard rules -Robert's Rules process, parliamentary
procedure, to handle that, right?
You can always amend with another one. All those kinds of things so, the key
here as was pointed out by Mr. Henricks is that the way any of this stuff turns into
real meat for us is through the proposal process. Right, so, we talk about it, we
think this is a great idea, the way that becomes something that we'll have a
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discussion about and turn in to something that may make it to the ballot or not, is
through the voting process on proposals.
Commissioner Hopkins.
MR. HOPKINS: I understand the formal process here, but two things can happen,
two or three things can happen. Basically we had a discussion here today, like
today, there's a number of things we see. We need to be making the changes.
Two things can happen. Oh we all agree that it was a great idea and nobody turns
in a proposal because they think somebody else is going to do it, or two, several
of us tum in the proposal and wasting a bunch of time because we have multiple
proposals on the same thing.
I am just wondering, gentlemen, you know we don't want to waste our time but
yet we don't want things to fall through the cracks because we all thought
somebody else was going to do it.
CHR. ADAMS: So what's my philosophy as your Chair? My philosophy as your
Chair is that I am not going to tell you to come up with a proposal. That's up to
you to decide to do that. We are going to have a conversation about ad hoc, the
formation of ad hoc committees, whether or not there are some things specifically
that we would like to do some work on in an ad hoc committee kind of a way.
For those that weren't here last time, you know that we already have one under
way looking at Section 10-15 and 10-16 of the Charter. Right, and 1 have some
notes here having to do with discussion about some other items as well.
The development of proposals though is incumbent upon all of us. Right? Now, I
am also, my view is that if we get several proposals on a particular topic, that is
not a bad thing. They are not all going to be exactly the same, and the idea is that
the use of those proposals to finn up what it is that we actually want to look at and
we actually want to either move forward or not, will be enhanced by the fact that
folks have taken the time and thought about what it is that they want to put in to
the proposal.
So 1 appreciate the idea that it would be more efficient perhaps to direct that, but
that is not me or my philosophy.
MS. RICE: Mr. Chairman.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Rice.
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Hawaii County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MS. RICE: I have a couple of ideas. One is there are some housekeeping that
would take a very short time just to clean up in the Charter and I am wondering if
we can have perhaps one committee I guess would be the proper way to do it, just
to go through and pick up those housekeeping changes and list them and bring
them back to the Commission for a discussion and then proceed from there.
CHR. ADAMS: Is that a motion? Is that a motion to create, to form an ad hoc
committee to do that?
MS. RICE: I'm... so moved.
CHR. ADAMS: Is there a second? It has been moved and seconded to form an
ad hoc committee to develop, or to review the Charter for the purposes of looking
at those items that are quote unquote housekeeping items.
Any discussion on that?
MR. HENRICKS: Mr. Chair, who is the second please?
CHR. ADAMS: The second was Commissioner Hopkins.
MR. HENRICKS: Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Any discussion on that? Questions?
MR. HENRICKS: May I make a statement please?
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner, or Mr. Henricks.
MR. HENRICKS: Well just remembering that the ad hoc committee is a lengthy
process. We have one under way right now under Ms. Chow's guidance and it is
progressing. We are hoping to provide the report to you for the next meeting, but
then it would sit. And then the report would become available in the November
meeting.
So it's not to discourage ad hocs but if multiple ad hoes are formed, realize then
that it may be a matter of meeting more than monthly to be able to reap the fruits
of those ad hoc committees.
MS. RICE: Mr. Chairman, could we simply have a list? And go through it in our
meeting? Just to have it as one of our agenda items? Rather than have a
committee? I mean some of them are so minor. It would take us a couple of
minutes. Its requests that we have gotten from the department heads just to clear
up things. Rather than get into a committee...
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioners have the ability to develop proposals. So, if you
decided that you wanted to take on looking at the Charter, taking a look at the
items that have been presented, identifying those as housekeeping items, and
presenting them as a proposal, by all means you have the authority to do that as a
Commissioner. And then that particular proposal would be put on our agenda and
would be considered as a part of our New Business.
MR. HENRICKS: Correct and then the entire Commission could work with it,
and I would also point out that it could be expanded or reduced based upon its
the main point that it is a housekeeping proposal of sorts, so it wouldn't be
restricted to what is originally proposed. Am I, Mr. Yoshimoto, do you agree?
MR. YOSHIMOTO: Yes.
MR. HENRICKS: Thank you.
MS. RICE: Okay. That would be fine. I would prefer that.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Hopkins.
MR. HOPKINS: Just a clarification. But, that would have to be done by an
individual Commission member. It cannot be two or three members getting
together and working on that because that would make it an ad hoc committee?
CHR. ADAMS: Mr. Yoshimoto.
MR. YOSHIMOTO: Uh, preferably independence is better, so if it is a single
Commissioner to bring these forward that is always the cleanest way. Two
members can talk and discuss things but there can be no commitment to vote or
support a particular measure. Understanding that you know the implication is you
are talking, person A is talking to person B is obviously, well I shouldn't say
obviously, but there is some perception right that you are actually agreeing to
something because you are discussing it together, so my recommendation would
be to stay either in the ad hoc committee or to do it individually and this is a
problem that is facing all of our boards and commissions. Is this Sunshine law
that we have to follow.
MS. RICE: Mr. Chairman. If I may suggest that after we have heard all of the
department heads, which I think we have one more meeting, correct to hear, then
after that, perhaps you could request from us, because I have a small list, a list
from the Commission and Commissioners, of the housekeeping matters to be
presented as an agenda item and we could just go through our list at that time and
discuss them? And if they were simple enough to correct, then proceed with
going forward with them on the Charter proposal.
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Hawai`i County Chanter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
CHR. ADAMS: I am cognizant that we still have a motion on the floor just in
case anybody was wondering. Here is my concern, go ahead Commissioner
Hopkins:
MR. HOPKINS: Given that it is a little bit confusing right now, I remove, can I
take back my second so we can just kill it that way? Unless somebody else wants
to second it?
CHR. ADAMS: So we now have a motion that has no second. Is there another
second? Alright the motion dies for lack of a second.
MR. HENRICKS: Or Ms. Rice could just withdraw her motion. It seems like she
wanted to anyway.
MS. RICE: Yeah. I'll withdraw my motion.
MR. HENRICKS: Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: So we are having a discussion now without a motion.
Commissioner Galimba.
MS. GALIMBA: These housekeeping items, can they all be voted on together
when we put them, if they go through our process and get through the County
Council then when we present them to the voters, can you just have a long list
saying "these are housekeeping measures, vote yes or no."
MR. HENRICKS: Actually the previous Commission had a bunch of
housekeeping amendments. The only trick there of course is how you phrase the
question and make sure that there is no substance involved in the amendments
because then that is a different kind of amendment. But to put it quickly, it has
been done before.
CHR. ADAMS: Any other comments, questions, discussion items? Alright, let
me just say my concern is that we consider proposals, one person's housekeeping
item be another person's substantive item. So the identification of a listing of
items to be considered by the Commission just as a list in New Business creates -
1 am going to rely on our Counsel and our Analyst here, but it creates for me a
situation where we are making decisions without motions. And as a body of the
County, as a Charter Commission, the way we operate is we operate through
parliamentary procedure, which the reason we do that is because it allows for
everyone to have their say, it allows for things to be properly noticed, it allows for
it to be cut and dried whether or not we agree with the motion or not.
When you make a motion you have to be clear as to what the motion is. That is
part of the reason for doing it. It is very technical sometimes and very
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
bureaucratic sometimes and yet because of what we are doing, I find myself really
wanting to make sure that I don't push informality when formality is required in a
Charter Commission. So I would ask this of the Commissioners, the way that we
bring proposals to, the way that we talk about potential proposals in this body
when we place it on the agenda, we are placing proposals on the agenda. Now the
proposals don't have to be finished products. That's not the point right. The idea
is that we are putting on there things that we are concerned about, things that we
either we want to add, delete, or modify within the Charter.
So by all means identify what those are, it then comes in, you have identified
where the place is, we then make a motion to consider it with a second. Then we
can have the conversation, amendments, the whole nine yards associated with
doing that. I think it stays cleaner that way and then we are operating I think in a
sense of doing things at least in a way that for me makes me feel like I am not
running it. I am not railroading anybody. None of us has the possibility of
railroading anybody. Everybody has their proper say because everybody has the
ability to bring these things up. So that's kind of how, that is what I would ask.
Commissioner Hopkins.
MR. HOPKINS: Mr. Chairman, I agree with you in one way, that here within the
Commission, we can do that. I have no problem with dealing with each one
individually, but I think if we then bring forth, if we have 20 "housekeeping
measures" and you introduce each one of those as a separate Charter amendment,
that is confusing and defeats the whole, and it is unnecessary to the public. So I
think we can deal with the things individually and vote each one up and down. I
have no problem with doing that here even though it will slow us down a bit, but
when we get ready to go to the public on this, I think we need to look at what is
the substantive change and what is purely housekeeping and the housekeeping
probably should not be looked at individually because it's just going to be too
many Charter amendments. That's my opinion.
CHR. ADAMS: Again, Okay, let me just respond to that briefly. There is
nothing to prevent you from taking all of the items that you consider to be
housekeeping and putting them into a proposal that I am aware of That can be
done. That can be put on the agenda. It's identified as a housekeeping proposal
and then we consider whether or not those items indeed are housekeeping. So
you then can amend that particular proposal and say that needs to be taken out
because it's not housekeeping, it's substantive. There's nothing that prevents a
Commissioner from doing that in my opinion.
MS. TODD: Mr. Chair.
CHR. ADAMS: Commissioner Todd.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
Motion to Create
Ad Hoc Committee:
MS. TODD: I was just going to say, he could submit multiple proposals and as
long as we agree that they are housekeeping, we could consolidate them into one
proposal to actually be put on the ballot.
CHR. ADAMS: I mean—correct. Right. Okay. Alright so...
MS. RICE: That's fine. I got it.
CHR. ADAMS: So where we are is we are still in Unfinished Business,
Formation of Ad Hoc Committees. I appreciate Mr. Henricks' concerns about us
using ad hoc committees ad nauseam because of the amount of time that it takes.
I would tell you that I had some, I identified some areas that I thought it might be
helpful. I think the Prosecutor's IT is probably not one of those. I would tell you
that I had the opportunity to sit before the Board of Ethics. They invited me as
your Chair to go to the Board of Ethics' meeting this last Tuesday. And we had a
very nice conversation regarding their concerns about the Charter. Truth be told I
obviously, I had an opportunity to be on the Board of Ethics for up until the end
of last year for four and -a -half years so I have some understanding of some of the
things that they are talking about, but they also had some additional things that
they were concerned about.
So I will probably end up taking that on myself. As opposed to doing some ad
hoc committee on it. I do think it would be, well the Council and the discussion
about resolutions, that will be, that may be an area that would be helpful to do an
ad hoc committee on, but again if I don't have a motion to form an ad hoc to look
at the, review the situations where resolutions are used as opposed to ordinances.
Then I don't have a motion.
And then there was some R&D (Research and Development) things that were in
there as well but I think R&D, we all have the opportunity, we heard what
Director Ley and Deputy Director Whitmore talked about so we all have the
opportunity to talk about that as well.
So hearing no motions having to form... please Commissioner Rice.
MS. RICE: I would like to make a motion to form an ad hoc committee to look in
to the terms of the County Council members and also possibly their representation
per districts as Commissioner Todd wrote about in, that I read in the minutes of
the last meeting where other islands have changed the representation from a single
member to districts at large within larger units.
Ms. Rice moved to create and ad hoc committee for the
purpose of reviewing Charter Section 3-2, which has to do
with the composition and terms of the County Council.
Seconded by Commissioner Zelko.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
Vote on
Motion to Create
Ad Hoc Committee:
(Approved):
Membership
and Roles
of Ad Hoc
Committee:
REPORTS:
REFERRALS
FOR EXECUTIVE
SESSION:
The motion to create and ad hoc committee for the purpose
of reviewing Charter Section 3-2, which has to do with the
composition and terms of the County Council, was carried
by the following voice vote:
Ayes: Commissioners Galimba, Hamano, Hopkins,
Rice, Saquing, Todd, Zelko-Schlueter, and Chair
Adams — 8.
Noes: None.
Absent: Commissioners Bergin, Roehrig, and Springer --
3.
Excused: None.
CHR. ADAMS: Mr. Henricks, that was relatively straight forward
wasn't it? We are looking at 3-2. Okay.
CHR. ADAMS: The motion as to form said committee. How would you like to
serve as Chair? Thank you very much for agreeing. Who else would like to serve
on that particular committee? I'd like it to be probably folks that are not on the
other committee.
So Commissioner Hopkins are you interested in doing that? Okay, Commissioner
Todd?, Okay, so we have Commissioner Rice as the Chair, Commissioner
Hopkins, Commissioner Todd, anyone else? Okay.
MS. RICE: I think that Commissioner Bergin expressed an interest in this
subject. Can we ask him if he would serve on it, at the next meeting?
CHR. ADAMS: Remind me, is Commissioner Bergin on the other? Sure. He is
not at the meeting, he is the PTA (Parent Teacher Association) Chief, Right?
Okay, so Commissioner Bergin is also on that committee.
MS. RICE: If he will be so kind as to serve.
CHR. ADAMS: Any other ad hoc committees that... Okay. Back into our
moving from Unfinished Business sequence, we already did New Business, we
will move on to Reports.
The Chair directed the Commission to proceed to the next order of business,
Reports.
(There were none.)
The Chair directed the Commission to proceed to the next order of business,
Referrals for Executive Session.
(There were none.)
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
AGENDA ITEMS
FOR NEXT
REGULARLY
SCHEDULED
The Chair directed the Commission to proceed to the next order of business,
Agenda Items for Next Regularly Scheduled Meeting.
CHR. ADAMS: Agenda items for our next regularly scheduled meeting. Item
Number I was discuss a meeting date and time to meet with Mayor Kim. That
has already been carried out. We have a confirmation at this moment that Mayor
Kim will be a part of our agenda to address the item in Chapter 5 having to do
with the Mayor's Office specifically ---not Office of Management, the Mayor's
Office. We initially weren't sure that we, we thought that we didn't have a date
that worked for him and we were going to talk about what could we do, but as it
turns out we have a date. It will be our next regularly scheduled meeting. So
unless there is any other conversation about that, we are good to go with that.
And then suggestions from Commissioners on future agenda items?
Commissioner Rice.
MS. RICE: Mr. Chairman, I was wondering if we could discuss at our next
meeting, how to handle Charter recommendations that are written and sent to us.
We have received a couple and I am, we need to address them. I just am at a loss
as to how we do that.
CHR. ADAMS: You're the Commissioner. If you want to take items that you
have received from the public, as we all have, then you have the ability, you have
the capacity as a Commissioner to turn that in to a proposal.
MS. RICE: Well what if I don't want to tum it into a proposal?
CHR. ADAMS: Then you don't have to.
MS. RICE: But I think they should be addressed in our meeting. Can I put them
on, put the letters, the written ones... the public hearing...
CHR. ADAMS: Well they are already part of our, they have already been filed as
communications.
MS. RICE: Collect.
CHR. ADAMS: So they are already public record.
MS. RICE: So can we discuss them at our next meeting?
CHR. ADAMS: If it is a proposal.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MS. RICE: So I have to make, you mean I can make a proposal to discuss them?
CHR. ADAMS: You can take the salient points if you are interested in—the way
that we discuss, just as we are receiving from the department heads and others, the
way that we receive that information and then we talk about whether or not they
are worthy of being ballot measures, is we turn them in to proposals and we
address them as proposals.
So communications, they are already identified as communications, they were
communications from the public, they were made available to all of the
Commissioners, Commissioners have the ability to turn those into proposals as...
you can take that, tum that into a proposal as you like, and then you will provide
it to me, I then put it on to the agenda at my prerogative, but my prerogative is
generally to put it on to the agenda and then we will talk about it as a proposal.
As those conununications come in, we respond to them, say thank you very much
for providing them, much as we have received communications, either the ideas
here or communications from the departments in written word, and then we
decide whether or not as Commissioners we want to tum those into proposals.
MS. RICE: Okay.
CHR. ADAMS: You're asking, what you're asking me is you would like to have
those particular communications put into the agenda to talk about.
MS. RICE: To discuss. Correct. And then have Commissioners decide if they
should be put into a proposal, rather than...
CHR. ADAMS: All Commissioners have the authority, have the capacity to do
that already. They all have received those communications too.
MS. RICE: Right, but what you are asking me is to take those and put them into a
proposal and I, is that the way to discuss them? I mean, I don't have enough
information on them myself without a general discussion, to decide whether they
should be put into the Charter or not. I am I would like to discuss them with the
Commissioners to see if in fact they fill a gap in the Charter that we need to fill.
Okay, Commissioner Saquing.
MS. SAQUING: Yeah, I hear what you are trying to say Sally and maybe if I
frame it from my perspective after hearing the discussion is the proposal is a
formal way to get ideas and topics from us to bring forward to the complete
Board. Am I correct Chairman?
CHR. ADAMS: That's how we are moving forward.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MS. SAQUING: Right, so if you glean whatever you want from those letters and
you want to have a discussion amongst us, the vehicle to do that is through the
proposal.
MS. RICE: So whether I agree or not or have a lack of information on those, on
that subject, I make a proposal and, with the understanding that it really is a
vehicle to get a discussion from the Commission, is that correct?
CHR. ADAMS: Yes. Although I would tell you the following, there is also the
chance that if you have specific questions that you would like answered that
would fill out information, then we may have the ability to actually address that
by sending those questions to, we would assume it would be experts in the County
to address that. If that's, if it is factual questions that you are looking for.
And we have done that already. We have gone and asked questions already and
so if that, if what you are looking for is "hey, there's some stuff here that I don't
understand, I would like a little bit more information on, then by all means, let's
get that information and we will then make it available. The answers will be
made available to all the Commissioners.
MS. RICE: Okay. That I would prefer to do prior to making a proposal. So do I
do that...
CHR. ADAMS: You can send me...
MS. RICE: by addressing that to you?
CHR. ADAMS: Yeah, just send me an email on the questions that you have and
then we will, we will have—we will develop the questions and by we I mean our
analyst, and we will send them out.
MS. RICE: Okay. Got it. Thank you.
CHR. ADAMS: Do we have any other suggestions from Commissioners on
future agenda items?
I do have a question. It has to do with the agenda so I am going to bring it up
right now. When we currently, the last and the previous two meetings, our
minutes have been the verbatim kind. Right, it gives you an opportunity to see
everything that has been there. There is some concern that that is too much
reading, and to some degree it may be that it is too much—that it is not, it doesn't
provide the information in a way that is easily digestible, the important stuff
perhaps. Is that, I am just trying to get a sense here, is that an issue for anybody
here?
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
MS. RICE: It depends on how good a skim reader you are.
CHR. ADAMS: Okay. I got it. Thank you. That was that, that was that... well,
we have come to 5:29 p.m. which we could go one more minute, or we could
finish early.
I would move us to our next item which is announcements.
MEETING:
ANNOUNCE- The Chair directed the Commission to proceed to the next order of business,
MENTS: Announcements.
I. Next regular meeting (subject to change)
DATE: Friday, October 12, 2018
TIME: I :30 p.m.
PLACE: Council Chambers, Hawai`i County Building,
Hilo, Hawai`i
CHR. ADAMS: With the opportunity for folks to be here in Kona watching I
guess as well, right? So that's how we do that.
Do we have any other items for the good of the order from our Commission
Analyst? From our Legal Analyst? From our Secretary?
Alright, well thank you all for your willingness to continue to serve on this
Commission and for your hard work and I entertain a motion to adjourn. It has
been moved, seconded..
MS. GALIMBA: Second
CHR. ADAMS: That was loud. Moved and seconded. Meeting adjourned.
MR. HENRICKS: Who made the motion, who seconded, and the vote was... I'll
just forget about it then.
MS. GALIMBA: It happened.
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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018
ADJOURNMENT: There being no further business, at 5:30 p.m. Mr. Hopkins moved that the meeting
be adjourned and seconded by Ms. Galimba.
Commission Approval: 10/12/18
1V Do
2
lass Shipman Adams, Chair
20 Hawaii County Charter Commission.
Page 77