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

Home

Hawai`i County Charter Commission -6 December 14, 2018 as part of really amending that provision, I also am submitting this, that I think that we should have a Department of Agriculture and Resiliency. I wrote it up here. I think that this should be the area that we as a County, we should be doing everything that we can. Again, I spoke about this at one time previously and it was well that the research and development they do it and they are on it, but it is not, and you really need in an area like agriculture, you need a leader. You need someone that is there and how do we integrate this and how do we have a mission. And you can tie that all into greenhouse emissions, but you have got to have people really focused on it whether it has to do with compost, getting compost out where that pulls out the CO2 that makes undermines drought, there's just so much that we can do on so many levels on that area. Okay so I am going to move on now to the CA -7 and CA -9, the Public Access. I take sort of a different position then cutting the funds or just adding one person. I think that we ought to, I feel that these are very undervalued assets and that this should be like using these assets, these lands, should be, we should view them as extremely valuable economically and that we ought to be looking at how, along the line of CA -9 but expanding that so that like adding in that one of the provisions is that we promote and enhance nature based outdoor recreation and education. And I don't think that it should be limited to one staff. I think that basically we should be paying for all of the ripples of the costs of this and that I think that it is really provided here and I think that person should be out, we need people to be out exploring opportunities to acquire lands and easements and getting trails. I just look at Waimea. I sought to get you know, trails up to the forest which is really provided for as far as I am concerned in our Constitution, and it was well Margaret we can't do that. We just don't have funds. And then we buy, we have easements for lands where there are trails but then because we only get an easement rather than purchasing it, we can't, you can't use that easement to get matching federal funds. People come to Waimea, there is no place to hike you know, what do we do? There is just so many opportunities if we were to put trails around protecting and preserving and ag land we could use some of these areas for Community gardens. They are just such a valuable resource. So I would focus on how one better utilizes this in terms of our economy on many levels. I would also try and streamline costs such as where it is minimum, giving it on a quarterly basis, I would make an annual basis which cuts a lot of administrative costs. And then on Communication No. 15, which is sort of, do you have anything else that you want to say. On the general plan, which is Section 3-15, I'm just trying to incorporate the whole idea of community health and environmental health in terms, and aligning it with what we worked on for the general plan up until 2006, generally the attitude is that our County has no obligation in terms of environmental health until the case of Kelly vs. Oceanside and so I think those things are important in looking at the big picture. And community health is something that we have always said that the state deals with health and it should be both. On redistricting committee, commission,1 think it would be more useful Page 21