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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN HSSSC 2022/11/15 2020-2022 Committee on Human Services and Social Services 23`'d Session West Hawaii Civic Center 75-5044 Ane Keohokalole Highway, Building A Kailua-Kona, Hawaii November 15, 2022 CALL TO The regular meeting of the Committee on Human Services and Social Services ORDER: was called to order at 1:01 p.m. in the Council Chambers, Kailua-Kona, by Ms. Ashley L. Kierkiewicz, Acting Chair. ROLL CALL: Present: Ms. Ashley L. Kierkiewicz, Vice Chair Mr. Aaron Chung, Member Ms. Maile Medeiros David, Member Mr. Matt Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, Member Ms. Heather L. Kimball, Member Absent& Excused: Mr. Holeka Goro Inaba, Member Ms. Susan L. K. Lee Loy, Chair Ms. Rebecca Villegas, Member STATEMENTS The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business, FROM THE Statements from the Public on Agenda Items. PUBLIC ON AGENDA ITEMS: The following individuals registered to provide comment regarding Comm. 1091, and came forward when called by the Chair: Dwight Vicente. Cory Harden. ACTING CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Mr. Clerk, if we could please go to the top of the agenda, Communications. COMMUNI- The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business, CATIONS: Communications. Comm. 1091: REQUESTS AN UPDATE FROM THE ADMINISTRATION REGARDING HOMELESSNESS IN COUNTY PARKS From Council Member Aaron S. Y. Chung, dated October 24, 2022. HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 Motion to Close File: Mr. Chung moved to close file on Comm. 1091. Seconded by Ms. David. ACTING CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Mr. Chung, you have the floor. MR. CHUNG: Yeah, very briefly. In response to one of the speakers, public testifier, we're not intending to criminalize homelessness in any way, shape, or form. This is merely an effort to allow the Department of Parks and Recreation to give us their view of the impacts of the homeless population and other people who are vandalizing our various parks on our facilities, and what efforts had been made and what efforts might possibly be made in the future. I think it's very important. You know, the district that I represent, it's Downtown Hilo. We have Lincoln Park, Kalakaua Park, and Lincoln Tennis Courts. You know, all of these facilities are there for the enjoyment of the public, and a lot of them are for children. We want to make sure these facilities and they're safe, and people feel comfortable going, I mean again, for their enjoyment. I asked Maurice if he would please give us a presentation, and he said he would love to have the opportunity. So Maurice, please? (Note: At this time, Parks and Recreation Director Maurice Messina came forward to address the members of the Committee.) MR. MESSINA: Thanks, Aaron. Maurice Messina, Director of Parks and Recreation. So I'd like to start off with just a quick brief statement, and that is that being homeless in a park is not a crime. When we came in a couple of years ago, our first priority we've been dealing with the homeless, dealing with issues of that nature, was to always call the police. What we ended up doing is moving people from one park to another park; moving people from out of our parks into vestibules; alleyways, or whatever of business; creating more abandoned vehicles, people living in vehicles, and things of that nature. So what we started to do is work with the Mayor's Office, Housing, our Community Policing Officers, other members of HPD (Hawai`i Police Department), the Fire Department, Hope Services, basically anybody we could to where if we get some reports of like a homeless encampment or something like that, the first thing we do is we go out, and a lot of times it's either myself or my deputy, Michelle Hiraishi, going out and making personal contact with these folks, tell them, "You can't be here. What you're doing, you're illegal camping," or whatever, and "Do you need help? How can I help you out? Can we get some services for you?" There are a lot of times when people are actually they're stepping up for services. For instance, if you remember what it was like in Hilo a couple of years ago, if a ship came in, say it came in to port, and if that ship----if somebody gets off that ship and they walk from the port all the way to Downtown Hilo, they're passing Page 2 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 numerous abandon cars, they're passing all these tents all along the parks, some sidewalks had been blocked, things of that nature. Right now, as of today, you can walk all the way from the Hilo port all the way down to Downtown Hilo, and you're not going to come across a homeless encampment. That was a big step for us. That was a goal. By the time the ships came in, can we present our island in a good light? It was the same thing in Kona. There were times to where you couldn't go out to Kailua Park, you couldn't go to the beach, you couldn't go to the tennis court. You couldn't go to the playground equipment. If you try to go into the dugouts in the heat of the day, it smelled like urine or feces, or there's vomit, there's everything. We've kind of turned that around as well, but it didn't get turned around without a cost. We have increased our security right now at 13 of our facilities, and that comes at about$2.2 million right now, which is what we're spending in our department just on security. That doesn't include Isaac Hale Beach Park, which we got out of another fund. That's only 13 of our facilities So what we did is we said, "Okay, where are the facilities that we noticed the most vandalism, the most theft, the most issues?" Maybe you all can remember a few months ago we had a bunch of our vehicles got burned up at our senior center, Kamana, so that's a place we've also put security; and since we have security there, I'm not getting as many vandalism and theft reports. With all of our facilities island-wide, I spend every single day going through accident reports, vandalism reports, theft reports, police reports, that's every single day island-wide. We have cut down on that quite a bit because of the added security. When preparing for this, coming to talk with you folks, I asked our park caretakers island-wide if they could send me some of the photos and some of the things that they've been noticing because they feel that—like you come into a bathroom, the bathroom is clean, but you may not know what that man or woman had to do to get that bathroom clean that day. The amount of needles, the amount of feces, urine at all of our facilities, when we close the bathroom at night, because we can't keep them all night because our toilets get broken things like that, then we have defecating all on the outside of our buildings. So if it's okay, I would like to just go through a real quick presentation of just some of the things that were noticed in our parks, that our park caretakers and our Park's Maintenance Division is dealing with on a daily basis. So I'll have to start off with a bit of a warning, if you've had just your lunch,you know, some of these are some graphic pictures here that we're dealing with. Page 3 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 (Note: At this time, Mr. Messina provided a PowerPoint presentation to the members of the Committee. For viewing of the subject presentation, please see the DVD copy of the meeting proceedings on file in the Clerk's Office, or the video archives online from the County's homepage at www.hawaiicounty.gov. A hard copy of the presentation is made a part of the record, see Comm.1091.1.) MR. MESSINA: So those are just some of the things that our folks are seeing in our facilities. When we came in and we had $425,000 in our entire Maintenance and Repair budget, and now we're over $1 million on that, and you'll see like in our upcoming, we're making a request to bring that up even more. It's not just repairing facilities, it's actually taking care of the vandalism and everything else we see. We did a complete survey of all of our park caretakers island-wide, about how much time they spend cleaning up,just strictly after homeless, like from the excessive waste, the excessive waste that you all saw on this PowerPoint, and it's about 25 to 30 percent of our park caretaker's time is spent on homeless issues. Some of the things that get brought up the most are the amount of needles we find. We've had requests before to do needle exchange in our parks, I've denied every one of those requests, that's not for us. People come and ask if they can do the feeding of the homeless in our park facilities, I'll find out who they are, and then I'll try to get them in touch either with the Salvation Army or a church or something like that, because when we first came in and this was being allowed when they leave there is too much rubbish for us to handle. Without the Community Policing Officers and HPD, I don't know where we would be. Behind me is Sergeant Mike Hardie, from the Kona Police Department, our Community Policing Officers. We do not do homeless sweeps. When we notice that there is an encampment, Hardie and his crew,just speaking specifically Kona side, will come in, the Community Policing Officers will make contact with these guys. We'll give them a reasonable request to leave. For instance, if we got Ka`u, I'm sorry, the Kona Coffee Festival coming up, and we go to Hale Halewai, and there is just rubbish all around, you know, homeless everywhere. We go in and make contact with them, asking them if they need help; if they don't, we tell them, "Look, you've got to go. If you're here tomorrow, we're going to actually have to call the police on you guys." You remember how, right in front at one time right in front of the Kona Aquatics Pool, we had homeless just all along the sidewalk, and I think that was in May, and at that time we had the Reggae on the Runway, which meant everybody was parking outside. Everybody had walked through the homeless encampment to get to Old A's (Old Airport). We got that resolved. Hardie and his team were out there. I was out there helping our park caretakers. But even Page 4 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 when we do that, what we're doing is we're pulling all of our staff off of other areas to come and help with that. Okay, pretty dire, what we're talking about. But, I can say that we have made progress. You don't see what you saw when, you know, maybe two, three years ago, it's not as bad, but we mostly helped all the people who are asking for help and who want help. Very disgusting things that we come across. You know, Council Member Chung mentioned Lincoln Park Tennis Court. We had a gentleman who is a homeless man in there. He had his legs all wrapped up, and when we went to make contact with him, he actually had maggots coming out of his legs, and he stay and home those bleachers. As soon as we get him help, we called Susan (Kunz), Susan sent—and Sharon (Hirota) got us all the help we needed. They sent down street medicine, made contact with the man; and then afterwards, now we needed to spend a few hours pressuring washing, disinfecting, and everything, right? So, it is a bit of a struggle. I mean, we have over 500 employees. We have hundreds and hundreds of facilities that we're dealing with, yet every single day this is an issue that our park caretakers, our recreation folks, are dealing with. Our recreation folks go to open up Carvalho Park. They got—maybe they got elderly activities in the gym that morning. Everybody, all of our staff, must first make a walk-around. Now, it's good. When I went to Oahu a few months ago, visited some of their parks. Like I remember Balboa Park, when I was in the Navy. We used to go to Balboa Park, my family and L I went to Balboa Park. I would not take my family back to that park again. That's how bad it's gotten. So we're not there, but we're making strides. I appreciate, Aaron, you're bringing us in to have this conversation because behind the scenes the general public doesn't see everything that our park caretakers go through on a daily basis. A Park Caretaker 1 is our lowest level, entry-level position. We have a lot of young men and women coming into the County, and that is their first taste of the County, so we're constantly trying to motivate them, constantly trying to keep them up. We have our staff make contact with the homeless. You know, you're out there trying to mow, and you've gotten or fifteen people just lying in the grassy areas. We make contact with them, "Hey uncle, hey aunty, you know what, we've got to mow here." Trying not to be confrontational, because being confrontational put one of our park caretakers in the hospital, with a collapsed lung and broken ribs, so we can't be confrontational. We count on HPD. We count on Hope Services. We count on these other organizations to help us out every bit that they can, and we're very grateful for that. Parks and Recreation is not a service-oriented park. We're service-oriented, Page 5 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 but we're not a service provider for homeless. That is not who we are. Our guys, our men and women, are not certified counselors. They want to get in, they want to get their job done, and they want to go to the next thing. The last thing I want to finish up is there's a lot of questions and a lot of complaints that come in to us about the closing of our facilities, and how come, like our beach parks, when they close—so we have about 32 beach parks on the island. Every beach park closes at 8:00 (p.m.), but they're saying, "You know what, this beach park isn't closed until midnight or 12:30 (p.m.), why is that?" That is because when I park caretakers go in to take out the trash, the final trash, if they notice that they have been feces and they're all over the wall, there's blood, there's hair, there's, you know, you name it, they are not going to leave that work for our counterparts in the morning. They're going to stop everything. They're going to go back to the baseyard, get everything they can to clean that up before they move on to the next facility. So that is so that when—especially if it's like a Friday night, when our parks open up on Saturday morning and tens of thousands of people are coming to our facilities, they're coming to a clean and sanitized facility. So, that's just some of the things that we're dealing with. It has gotten better, a lot to do with our partners; and with the Finance Director and the Mayor's help giving us more money to actually tackle these problems, instead of just closing a facility because we're broke. That's about it. ACTING CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you, Director Messina. Council Member Chung, you still have the floor. Okay, you yield? All right. Thank you, Director, for that presentation. Sergeant Hardie, did you want to come up and kind of share some insight, experiences, from members of the Police Department? (Note: At this time, Police Sergeant Michael Hardie came forward to address the members of the Committee.) MR. HARDIE: Good afternoon, Council Members. Moe pretty much covered it. I just want to ditto a few things. We have a really good working relationship with Parks and Rec, probably the best one out of any County agency. That word "sweep,"these park sweeps gets thrown around a lot. The public kind of made that their own. We do outreach is what we're trying to say. We never go in and just tell people, "Hey, you have to go," and we can't. I mean, they have rights. We can't violate people's rights. We're very empathetic to everybody. What a lot of the people who complained about it or don't have my job or Parks and Rec, it's not a crime to be homeless. Not everybody wants help, and the people who do want help, it's not always available for them. Like you said,—and the different—and our side, we don't have a homeless task force. We have like Community Policing. There's me and eight other officers Page 6 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 that spread our time in an area, which is very big, and we're covering every community event. If we dedicate all our time to it, we will still have the challenge of where we're going to put them. You know, there's substance abuse, there's mental abuse. There are a lot of issues, which you're all aware of. We contact every person in the park and ask them, "What kind of help do you need?" We try to bring outreach people with us, whether it's Hope Services, or it's Regina Weller, who is a solo operator, or Linda Vander. They have people that are on board with them that want to work with them. But the truth is, there's nowhere for them to really go, and everyone's aware of it. So me,personally, I—you know, they pull on your heart strings. When you go there, you're empathetic towards them, but we still have to conduct enforcement when it's criminal. A lot of times—most times it's not criminal. So we have to go in there and ask them politely, "Hey, can you clean this up?" It's a challenge, and we're working on it. I had seen a betterment of incidents. We don't get called as many times, and that's a direct reflection of the security. The airport especially, that has taken up a lot of our time. We don't get as many calls. When we do our outreach in there, there are a lot less people we encounter, and a lot of that is from the changes that Parks and Rec made with the dugouts and the security personnel. Currently, we're working with the Prosecutors on our side if we have to do enforcement. We have to trespass people. The proper signage has to be in those parks. So there are a lot of things in the works like you said that the public's not aware of, but on a daily basis, I probably answer five phone calls a day, with different locations involving different people. MR. MESSINA: You know, if you look at what we did in front of Kona Aquatic Pool, a few years ago, was about 16 people or so? MR. HARDIE: Yeah, 16. MR. MESSINA: A few years ago, 16 people would have been trespassed, and kicked off there. We would have bagged up whatever personal belongings they have and thrown away the trash. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that day only one person wasn't housed, right? MR. HARDIE: Correct. MR. MESSINA: Yeah, only one person wasn't housed. They called their family members to come pick them up. We've moved them to different places. So, that is a big drastic change. We didn't just send 16 people to another park, 16 people to another area. Only one person completely refused service. Everyone else took those service opportunities whenever made available to them. Page 7 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 ACTING CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you, Director. Thank you, Sergeant. I just want to note on this communication that in addition to inviting Parks and Recreation, I see that our Housing Administrator and our Community Outreach Coordinator were invited. Relley (Araceley), do we have anybody from Housing on Zoom or in chambers? Just want to make sure I'm giving them an opportunity to weigh in. MR. MESSINA: I believe Sharon Hirota was going to chime in. ACTING CHR KIERKIEWICZ: All right. I'll go ahead and shoot her a text to see if anybody is going to join the call, and I'll check in with my colleagues if there are any questions or comments. Council Member Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, you have the floor. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you, Chair. Thank you for that presentation, Moe. It helps us understand what your staff, and as well as HPD, you know, you guys deal with on an everyday basis. A lot of us don't see it. Or we see it, and we call somebody, then it's your staff who's coming to clean it up and make it presentable for us, the County. I really do admire everyone who is part of that team. I know as part of our budget-round, I think Ashley introduced a measure to increase the security funding. How isis that making a dent in the problem or are we still seeing the issues? Is there certainty areas that we should be focusing on as a Council? MR. MESSINA: Security. I don't know what we do if we didn't—if we weren't able to have the funds to hire the security that we have. Imagine every day that you're going you sit down at your desk, you look at your inbox and there's a stack like about maybe a half an inch thick of all the vandalism they have in police reports from just the night before, that has been drastically reduced. The security is a big help,just their presence alone. Every time we hire security for whatever facility it is, we bring them in, we let them know this is your charge, these are your areas, these are exactly what we want you to do, these are your reporting procedures, and every single day this is the report that you must send us. If there are any questions about that, we say, "Well, maybe you're not the person for this one, do you want to decline it and go to the next one?" But for the most part, everybody has stepped up, you know, but you're only as good as the security guard that's there. So yeah, we have good communication. They know they can call police, they know they can call us. Our cell numbers are available to them, so that we can be Johnny on the spot when an issue happens. So, it's made a drastic improvement in our facilities. Page 8 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay. Does the security work with our Police force? MR. HARDIE: Yeah, I think just the fact that they're there, Old Airport especially, because patrol is short, we all know it; and for them to go down and make physical checks after the gates are closed, which is where the violations are normally happening, it's going to require two or three of them just for safety. The contact with security, they do a really good job because they're kind of eyes and ears for patrol They'll contact the people and let them know that they're in violation. If the people aren't complying then they'll, in turn, they'll contact our dispatch, and then officers can go down when they're available. Because everything is based on priority in the Police Department, not that it's not a priority. But if you have a preservation of life or property that's imminent, that's going to take priority over everything. In our unit, I know it helps because when we make our checks, when we alter our schedule to do it, to go in the early morning and to do what we can as a unit, there are a lot less people in the parks. The problem is the people who are refusing to leave. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay. I like the teamwork aspect. That's nice. MR. HARDIE: Yeah. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Is this real specific to certain facilities in your guys' eyes or is this just across the board, from Mountain View to Kohala, I mean, everywhere and between? MR. MESSINA: So, we're discussing every one of our facilities island-wide, every district. Some districts aren't as bad as others. Like I can tell you the two homeless people that we deal with mostly at Kamehameha Park in Kohala, I couldn't even remember the people that we contacted yesterday in South Hilo. So, there's a turnover. In Ka`u district, Na`alehu, we do have some people who have been homeless for quite a few years, that our park caretakers and other staff have gotten to know, and were actually, you know, make good relationships with our folks. They actually help pick up the trash. We're going to be working with the Mayor's Office right now to install recyclable containers at every one of our beach parks, and then we're going to move that out to all of our inland parks. Maybe by doing that, it will stop the rummaging through the rubbish to get to the cans and the bottles, so we're actually going to put them there and make it readily available. After the last reggae at Old Airport's runway, the promoter actually gathered up a lot of the homeless that were there, had them help do a beach cleanup. and fed Page 9 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 them afterwards and then gave them all the HI-5 containers right afterwards. Because they want to develop a relationship, right? We got that coming up again this weekend, so they already have a relationship built. The hard part is when we push them out, and then they go into businesses. It's a lot easier for us to make the contact with Housing and HPD while they're in our facility. So that's our goal right now, and remain safe while we're doing it. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Seems like it is more specific to our main city areas then, Hilo, Kona, and then some of the bigger facilities like you mentioned, the Mo`oheau bus stand, Old A's. MR. MESSINA: And all the beach parks, basically. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: And all beach parks? I mean, are these facilities—as far as I know, they're not open 24 hours a day, right? They're closed and gated at some point, so they can't go in there and destroy things after hours. MR. MESSINA: So let's—maybe let's talk about Coconut Island, okay? Coconut Island, there's one bridge, right? We close the gates at night. It finally got to the point to where we no longer keep any supplies at Coconut Island because almost every single night, I was getting reports the next day. They're busting off the hinges. They're breaking in. They're using Sawyer saws to cut in to steal the toilet paper and cleaning supplies. So now, our park caretakers that take care of Coconut Island, must now load everything up and take everything over every single day to do their full cleaning. I've had to take out the picnic tables at Coconut Island and at the Lighthouse at Hilo because the picnic tables were mostly being used to crack pills and smoke pills off of, and I didn't want people coming in, who is renting that pavilion. It was turning out anyway, that people would come into some of our areas and they're bringing their own tables because they didn't want to use the Parks and Recreation's picnic tables. Our guys do their best that they can to go and clean up beforehand, so this was just one of those things where I was like, "Well, let's just take them out," and that was actually from Detective Matt Lewis now, that was his suggestion. He was like, "This is what we found last night. You do not want anybody using that table because of possible opioids or whatever." MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Coconut Island is open—even though it's closed, the bathroom facilities are open or are they all closed up and gated, but people are opening them anyway? MR. MESSINA: They're closed. We do try to provide some portable toilets in areas where we know we've got everything closed, and maybe the hope that there will be less vandalism. I was with Lloyd Aranaydo, our park caretaker for Puna Page 10 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 at one of the parks, and there was a pile of feces right next to one of the portable toilets, on a rock, and it's like you try to figure out why in the heck would somebody do that? I don't know. But for the most part, where we can, we close our facilities up every single night, but it's just the gate that's being closed, so you still walk in, you can still have access to the beach at night, and stuff like that. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Just in my time as being a business owner, having a business right above Hilo Bayfront soccer fields, we've had everything walk away, from dollies, umbrellas,people taking things apart and unscrewing them, plugging things in and melting plugs, I couldn't explain why. Also, I understand how much time it takes to take apart by hand, screwdrivers, it's like they had all the time in the world. I really just I really—it bothers me because of the good people of the County, and not having to pay for what a handful of bad people decide to do in their spare time. Now, that's what bugs me. MR. MESSINA: And you know, they're not all homeless that are doing that. Hardie will tell you this, that a lot of people we contact were like, "Look, we'll help you get help,"well, trying—"Well, I'll get a house. I can go stay with my uncle, I can go stay with my aunty,"but they would rather be out there. So all of this vandalism and every—all this vandalism, it's not necessarily just homeless, it's just people with too much time on their hands and they look at government is just, "Well, they're going to come in and fix it. They're just a bottomless money pit anyway. We're just going to tag this." We're creating a new we're in the middle of making a new skate park, Ola`a Skate Park in Kurtistown. The guys who are working on that, the volunteers, they said we're going to put up a tagwall, and maybe everyone can just tag this wall instead of tagging everything else. I can't count how many times we've had to repaint Waikoloa Skate Park because it's just very, very offensive, right? The skate parks have some graffiti, right? You know, tag it. You know, make it look nice. You know, do stuff like that. But when we come in, there was really terrible stuff. We're painting it so much, that now becomes an unsafe skate surface. I mean, right,just like Pahoa, you say, "Look at that graffiti, it's nice, right? There was a pole behind it, it's almost like murals, but it's the people who don't care about it. I guarantee you, it's not the skaters coming in and doing that because that's the facility that they skate on. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: I agree. Well, thank you for the presentation. You know, good food for thought for the Council. I think by Aaron bringing this forward, I think he's really sending a message toI mean, I'm going to say it, I don't know if he's going to say it, the Administration, and making sure that the funding mechanism that he put in place gets utilized correctly. Page 11 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 MR. MESSINA: Yeah, and like I said, when we came in we had $425,000 to deal with all this, and with our budget being passed last year, I mean, we basically tripled that, and that means that we can go out and fix this stuff now without having to close it down. The money for security, like Mike said, I mean, less calls now. So we're getting there, but by no means where we were going to be. MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: I yield, Chair. Thank you. ACTING CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you. I just want to note that we have Sharon Hirota from the Office of Housing and Community Development joining us. Ms. Hirota, if you're on, could you just introduce yourself for the record, and remind us again the name of your position in the newly created division with OHCD (Office of Housing and Community Development), thank you. I wanted to just provide you an opportunity to just kind of share about the collaboration OHCD has with our Police and Parks and Recreation departments. (Note: At this time, Community Engagement Division Manager Sharon Hirota came forward to address the members of the Committee.) MS. HIROTA: Thank you. I first have to apologize, I lost my voice. No other symptoms, except I lost my voice. Sharon Hirota, County of Hawaii, Office of Housing and Community Development. I'm the Division Manager for the newly created Community Engagement Division which,you know, working with our partners to address and find solutions. To end homelessness here in Hawaii Island is part of the work that we do here. So thank you very much for giving me the space, but I also want to say thank you to Director Messina and the Police Department and their hardworking staff for all of the work that you do in our community to make our island a safe place to live. While there has been much work in addressing the needs of the people who are homeless, there's much more work that needs to be done. As I sit here and I listen to the testimony, I think one important part is ensuring, especially for my family, my `ohana, is that they have a safe place to go on the weekends, you know, the open ballpark or the beaches. But I think it's worthy to note that while I don't condone all of this, not all of it is done by individuals experiencing homelessness. I think Director made that point, which is, that sometimes we have people who hang out at the beach and do things they shouldn't otherwise do then pack up their things and go home to a house. So, we have to take that into consideration. But sometimes as we work on finalizing the RFP (Request for Proposals) as we get ready to disburse the funding out to address homelessness and housing, one of the priorities is to increase the outreach and engagement; but I think it's also important to note that it's also to ensure that when people, as I put it, when they Page 12 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 raise their hand and said, "I'm finally ready to exit out of homelessness,"that we have the appropriate service in place for them. So, it takes all of us working together, the County, the Office of Housing, the Administration, the Council Members, as well as our community partners who like the Park's staff, day in and day out hit the streets and connect with these individuals and encourage them to find housing opportunities that work best for them. So, mahalo. ACTING CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you, Ms. Hirota. Any other questions or comments from my colleagues? Chair David. MS. DAVID: Thank you, Chair Kierkiewicz. Just a comment or two, and not really any questions because I think you both answered a lot of our questions, especially the perception that people have when they see homeless, and it appears that we, as a County, are not doing anything about it. However, I have seen the Kailua gym situation, and that was handled so quickly, and now I can hear how you folks handled it, and that was very commendable. I think your approach to this is pretty much an equitable one and one that will have results. As you said, there has been a lot of improvement. I'm very sad that our County parks, which basically, I feel, is what grounds our family since as far as I can remember; but what has changed drastically is that what we're talking about now was never in the picture, even as short as maybe 20, 30 years ago in our lifetime. So things have really changed. Society has changed. I really thank you folks for trying to address it. The security thing, I remember that discussion, Moe, this budget session, and that has done wonders. I also see that the security people are here at the Civic Center, and they're very, very reassuring. Because I leave this place, you know, and it's almost dark and stuff. Before I was just—never thought about the dangers of homeless, but now that security is around, I feel very safe. It doesn't matter what time I leave. But no questions, except to say that I think you folks have done an excellent job. It's been my honor to have this experience, and wish you guys luck in dealing with all of this into the new term. Thank you again. I yield, Chair. ACTING CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you. Anyone else? Council Member Kimball. MS. KIMBALL: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Messina and Sergeant, for being here today, and thank you for the work that you're doing, and to all of your staff, of course, Parks, and the Community Policing. I really appreciate the empathy, what you're doing with the houselessness crisis and the County facilities Page 13 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 and, you know, not seeking to criminalize something that people don't often have a ton of control over in their lives. I'm sitting here thinking, and you kind of touched on some ideas, with murals in those skate park—and thank you for cleaning up Honoka`a Skate Park. We have some offensive graffiti up there. I appreciate that being taken care of. I know a few months back you were able to go to a conference for Parks and Rec. directors across the nation. I'm just curious if you have any further ideas about what other areas are we going to keep? I mean, are we unique in this problem? I don't think we are when you compare this to Honolulu. But are there other things that folks are finding success in terms of just getting people to respect the facilities that they're provided for by the County? MR. MESSINA: So one of the things that we did, and I forgot to mention this in my opening, is that we did create this task force, Homeless in Parks Task Force. HPD is on it. We got Planning, we got Public Works, Fire Department, Finance, and the Mayor's Office. They're all on this task force. Our goal was to have three internal quarterly meetings, which we just had our last one, and then after that, we were now going to start inviting members like the business community and the Downtown Improvement Association, to also be a part of our task force. Some of the things that have come out of that are ideas about, you know, maybe safe parking zones. Can we get our signs and our trespass notices, even our park signs, can we get them in a better spot? That collaborative effort has paid off. So, that is a big thing. That was the first goal that we set coming into this Administration, which was to figure out something like that. We're really happy that in January we're going to have our next meeting, with actual members of the public, you know, the business community can come in and have a voice, as well. You know, Heather, I'll tell you, I was in Knoxville, Tennessee, and in the middle of Knoxville—it's beautiful. Like City Square, they have—were concerts, restaurants, bars, eateries, you name it, they're all around, and in the very center of that is a park. It was just so inviting, so I just walked into it, but I couldn't sit anywhere because all the homeless had taken up all the spots. So right in the center of this beautiful area was basically a homeless encampment. Police officers around, and basically it was like, well, until they're breaking a law, there's not really much you can do, right? So you just try to meet them where they're at. We're not Portland. We're not San Francisco, thank God on that. We're not Oahu. That is one of the biggest things that we've been trying to work on, is like, okay, how can we ensure that it never gets worst? It only gets better. Even if it's incremental stages, it gets better. How can we make sure it never gets worse? Page 14 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 MS. KIMBALL: Yeah, thank you for that. You kind of touched on one of the other questions that I was going to pose, which is about folks living in cars in our park facilities or around our County facilities. This is different from the things that are being leased, short-term vacation rentals, Airbnb, and whatnot. But is that something that we are seeing more and more? MR. MESSINA: You know, it's difficult sometimes, right? Because my charge is park facilities, I can't just drive by something that I see that's illegal happening in one of our facilities and not at least stop and try to address it. But when you stop at that car, say it's right in front of Hilo Bayfront, and you approach that van or their car and there's a lady in there with two small children, and that's where they're going to be sleeping tonight, I couldn't look my wife in the face if I made them leave that night and kicked them out of there. You know, what are they doing? Are they really being illegal or they're just trying to really find a safe place for that night? We have the most open spaces, right? We have covered areas. I mean, it's about to be wintertime on our island, and so that means every place where we got a covered facility,people are going to gather,people are going to congregate. So we go in there in the morning, "Hey, clean up yourself. Our park caretakers, they're not here to clean up your mess. Clean up after yourself." When they do that, and when they come back that night and seek shelter, it's a lot easier for us to deal with, and even the public will start understanding after that. MS. KIMBALL: Yeah, thank you. Maui passed that Safe Parking bill recently. I'm just kind of watching to see how that works over there, and if you'd like further discussion if these things are something we can do. MR. MESSINA: That's been on our agenda. We talk about that at every single one of our task force meetings so far. We even identified a few areas. But if you're going to have a safe parking area, you've got to have services and you've got to have restrooms that are open. It's got to be safe. If you start saying, "No drugs, no dogs, no cats, no alcohol, or whatever, nobody is going to come here. So it's like, what are you actually looking for? Is there a certain demographic that you're looking to help? So, that's where those conversations are going. MS. KIMBALL: Yeah, and I think we need to appreciate that it should only be a stop-gap measure anyway. I mean, ultimately we want these folks in stable, permanent housing. I just wanted to acknowledge the comment that you and my colleagues have highlighted, which is that not everything that we saw in the slides today is the result of folks that are houseless. I don't know if the paper is going to cover this or whatever, but I just want to implore folks out there, these County facilities, they belong to all of us and it's up Page 15 HSSSC-23 November 15,2022 to us to take care of them. While I appreciate the folks in the Park and Rec department is doing their job, we as citizens of this County, as neighbors, as `ohana, we need to respect and take care of our properties. So teach your kids when they're at the park, pick up after yourself, don't litter, don't draw on the walls. It's not just up to the County to do these things, it's up to all of us because these assets, these properties, these places where we take our families on the weekend, we all need to take care of them and be responsible. Thank you, Chair, I yield. ACTING CHR KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you. Council Members, we have a motion to close file on Communication 1091. All those in favor, please say Ic aye. Vote on Comm. 1091: The motion to close file on Comm. 1091 was carried Filed by the following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, Kimball, and Acting Chair Kierkiewicz—5. Noes: None. Absent: Committee Members Inaba, Villegas, and Chair Lee Loy —3. Excused: None. ACTING CHR KIERKIEWICZ: That brings to the end of our agenda. May I have a motion to adjourn? ADJOURN- There being no further business, at 1:58 p.m., Ms. Kimball moved to adjourn MENT: the meeting. Seconded by Ms. David and carried by the following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, Kimball, and Acting Chair Kierkiewicz—5. Noes: None. Absent: Committee Members Inaba, Villegas, and Chair Lee Loy —3. Excused: None. Page 16