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

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -6 December 14, 2018 learning the job for the first year and then they turn around and have to feel that they have to start campaigning for the whole second term or not just campaigning, but sort of placating and doing things for special interests, I gotta do this for this, I can't bring up the ag, close the ag loop tax hole because that would... how am I losing votes. I think that it would make for more independent Council members. At the same time, I think that we do have to have provisions so that we are not having Council members that should be removed. Okay, I am now moving to Communication No. 19, which was on the auditor, that is section 3-18. Of course I agree with that change. I also believe that there should be a provision, a change in that same section that says the audit plan shall not disclose which specific agencies, funds, programs, etc. would be selected for an audit in the coming year. That just does not make sense to me. So that we announce to each place and this, this is the year you will be audited. If you do an audit, you are supposed to go in. I mean we want to have the people trust that we are doing things fairly and not somethings been done wrong, there is plenty of ways that money is misused and easily done and is just a matter of common sense. And let me just say, in general, I did bring up a number of amendments while I was on the Council and there was a general sense among the other Council members, Margaret, unless it is an emergency, you really ought to wait until it gets to the regular meeting, so I saved some of the things that I was, that I had worked on back then, or was interested in, so these are a number of these are things that I have had on my mind for a long time. Then on Communication 17, CA -3, revising 6-8.3 with a focus on climate change and resiliency. I certainly support that. I felt that the Commission really should be a part of the Research and Development Department as a separate division. I don't think one needs to have a whole other department head, but I think that including doing, I added some different provisions in here and how that person would be helpful. I don't think that you can depend on the department heads to really be spearheading such a critical issue as what climate change things go on. I think that you really need people with expertise to be assisting them. I added in here just on that same provision a division of grant writing. We do a very poor job of grant writing and getting funds and I think right now there are a lot of money available in areas such as climate change and addressing this that could be done. And, I just, you can say okay, they are already working that in Research and Development but it is weak and I am just going to give one quick example. At one point I went in there with a proposal that was for $900,000 and this was before I was on Council and I said this is for resiliency in the event of rural disasters and I said we sort of satisfy all of these criteria and I think we would do a really great job. Would you help me on this and I will help put this in and they said how long do we have to answer it, and I said three months, and they said that is not enough time. We don't have time to do it. And, so, while I was in Council I did spend time on putting together grant options and getting it out to people in my community that they used a lot of, and we actually got some kind of award that we were getting the most grants and putting things out so I just bring that up Page 20