MINUTES for 08-28-2018 FINAL - Laserfiche WebLink

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Veterans Advisory Committee Minutes August 28, 2018 Page 3 lives. This is why he wants the committee to discuss the purpose. Make Veterans issues the primary purpose and enumerate them and one of them being cemeteries. Would much rather than have us concerned about living veterans' issues than veterans that are in the ground, that we may honor all the time. We want to make our cemeteries a place of memorial but the living veterans are the ones he is really concerned about. He also thinks the committee, next year, should have remote town hall meetings to get veterans to come in and talk about what should be advocated for. We represent all Veterans in the County. Minoru Hanato stated this committee was previously called the Mayor's Veteran Cemetery Advisory Committee, that's why records show it concerns a lot with Veterans Cemeteries, both Hilo and Kona. He also stated in Kona there is discussion to build another facility to house clinic and VA and should be able to have bathrooms, kitchen, meeting rooms Chair Doolittle asked Emile if he can confirm that, as Emile was a part of the committee for a while. Emile Wery said the Governor's Veterans Advisory Committee just dealt with cemeteries so initially when the County committee was formed it was a mirror of the Governor's committee. The focus was always on the cemeteries, the part of "other related issues" was sort of ignored, unless someone specifically brought something up. When cemetery #3 was being built, it was pushed by Senator Inouye. The thing with these cemeteries, these are State Cemeteries, not County Cemeteries, State cut a verbal deal with the Counties that the State would give counties the money to maintain the cemeteries. When we had the recession, the State started cutting back the money they were giving to the counties for the cemeteries, when the issue came up the response was that there was nothing in writing. It got to the point where the cemetery in Kauai was a disaster. Back in February he went to a meeting at cemetery #2 and the VA gives money to the State for cemeteries and the State is supposed to allocate to the different cemeteries. A lot of the money stays in Oahu because of Kaneohe Cemetery. He continued, $800,000 was allocated to Veterans Cemetery #2 to enlarge, maintenance building, repaint all the roofs so that they were all the same color, fix the fence, although nothing wrong with the fence and put up two more flag poles. It was supposed to be done in March and it's still not done. Someone came back and said we're supposed to have a fire hydrant. Without being cynical, he imagines the $800,000 would drift off to another cemetery. Chair Doolittle asked was there any groups on this island that were consulted with? Roddy Sueoka said the money that was allocated is because in 2016 we had an inspection of the cemeteries and in order for us to get the monies, we needed to clean up things at the cemeteries. Although the fence is fine, we need to make these changes to comply with the inspection. The fire hydrant was an issue because when the contractor came in, they said they needed the fire hydrant according to regulations and be compliant. The Corps of Engineers said we couldn't start the project until we satisfy their requirements.