MIN CHARTER 2018-12-14 (2018-2020)

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -6 December 14, 2018 CHR. ADAMS: Thank you very much. If I could ask Mr. Warshauer to come up and be prepared for testimony. Ms. Wille. MARGARET Communication No. 24 -Proposal No. CA -7, Proposal No. CA -9, Communication WILLE: No. 20 -Proposal No. CA -6, Communication No. 19 -Proposal No. CA -5, Communication No. 17 -Proposal No. CA -3, and Communication No. 15 in support, opposition, and commenting. MS. WILLE: Yes, good afternoon and I made quite a few suggestions so I am going to move quite quickly through them if anyone has questions, I am always available to answer. And let me just say that I did work on amendments back in 2010 including drafting the preliminary, the conservation of natural and cultural resources which I see as promoting what we are trying to preserve in terms of the natural environment. And that is basically looking at our island in terms of a public trust for both the environment, natural beauty, and cultural resources. Okay, I am going to start with Communication No. 20, CA -6, which has to do with the authority of the Police and Fire Commission. I agree with the proposal that was made to, for the commission to be able to discipline the police chief and the same would be in the fire chief, fire commission, I do think that there should be a provision also to that section 7-2 that would provide that no new members of the commission shall be former police officers. I think that it should be more independent group and not where there is a crew of retired police officers. With respect to Communication No. 14, that's CA -2, Section 3-7, about meetings of the Council, the main thing there was having regularly scheduled meetings on both sides of the island. I actually felt that an exception should be made when the meetings have to do with where their presentation by the department heads during the budget periods when they are pulled from their offices. If they are brought over to Kona, that means a lot of lost work time and sitting there and we go through very long meetings during that time. I don't think that those should be necessarily matched in Kona. 1 also am not sure that the second meeting in December, I think only one meeting in December is required. I didn't find that really worth the amount of time for that meeting. I ain not sure I listed Communication No. 23, CA -8 but I would say that I am not opposed to the four- year terns. I found—I think there are pros and cons. I totally understand where Ms. Ford is corning to. I feel that one could streamline and relax the recall procedures better and address that if you have got lame Council members. At the same time I found with the two-year terms, if you were to look back while I was on the Council, you would see that in the second year of the term, I would say a large majority of the bills, substantive bills that came up were mine. I did not take a lot of time out for campaigning, and as a lot of all of those other Council members said well, see what the result was, but I think, so you know, you do have choices but I think we are trying to put our money where it is best used and I am not sure that that makes a difference. Again, I think there should be provisions, ways to remove people that are not doing their job, and at the same time, I think that we have to be more cost efficient and not have people where they are just Page 19