HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN COUNCIL 2025-01-31 2024-2026 Special Hawaii County Council
51h Session
Special Session
Hawaii County Building
25 Aupuni Street
Hilo, Hawaii
January 31, 2025
INVOCATION: Reverend Sam Masilamoney of First United Protestant Church of Hilo gave the
morning's invocation.
CALL TO The special meeting of the Hawaii County Council was called to order at
ORDER: 9:03 a.m., in the Council Chambers, Hilo, by Mr. Holeka Goro Inaba, Chair.
ROLL CALL:
Present: Mr. Holeka Goro Inaba, Chair
Ms. Michelle M. Galimba, Member(came in later)
Mr. James E. Hustace, Member
Ms. Jenn Kagiwada, Member
Mr. Matt Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, Member
Ms. Ashley L. Kierkiewicz, Member
Ms. Heather L. Kimball, Member
Mr. Dennis "Fresh" Onishi, Member
Ms. Rebecca Villegas, Member (via videoconference from Kona; came in later)
PLEDGE OF The Chair directed the Council to the next order of business, Pledge of
ALLEGIANCE: Allegiance.
(At this time, County Clerk Jon Henricks led the Council in
the Pledge of Allegiance.)
PETITIONS, The Chair directed the Council to proceed to the next order of business, Petitions,
MEMORIALS, Memorials, Certificates of Merit, and Expressions of Condolence.
CERTIFICATES
OF MERIT, AND (There were none.)
EXPRESSIONS OF
CONDOLENCE:
STATEMENTS The Chair directed the Council to proceed to the next order of business,
FROM THE Statements from the Public on Agenda Items.
PUBLIC ON
AGENDA ITEMS:
Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
The following individuals registered to speak and came forward when called by
the Chair:
Keala Hill: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in opposition.
(representing Humanity Hale)
Point of Order: MS. KIMBALL: Chair, point of order.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Kimball.
MS. KIMBALL: I'd like to just make a note that it's really important that we
speak in testimony to the merits of the resolution before us and caution folks not
to make accusations where there are no opportunities for rebuttal. Thank you.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Council Member Kimball.
Mona Trenae: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in opposition.
Jan Genara Genovia: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), comment.
Hugh Ono: GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46), in support.
Iopa Maunakea: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Men of Pa`a)
Clare Loprinzi: GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46), comment; and
Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
Spencer Kelly: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Humanity Hale)
Erin Samura: GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46), in support.
(See Comm. 46.71)
Joshua Franklin: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Hawaii Family (See Comm. 67.26)
Advocacy Group)
Echo Wyche: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Project Vision
Hawaii)
Andi Pawasarat-Losalio: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), comment.
Les Estrella: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Going Home Hawaii)
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
David DeCleene: GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46), in opposition.
Gideon Ramos: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Hope Services (See Comm. 67.41)
Hawaii)
Lori Ferrin: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
Hannah Preston-Pita: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Big Island Substance
Abuse Council)
Kim Lin: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Big Island Substance
Abuse Council)
Misha Kassel GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46), comment; and
Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
Charis Higginson: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Humanity Hale) (See Comm. 67.29)
Lane Miyake-Kamahele: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Big Island Substance
Abuse Council)
Bosilka Nash: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Big Island Substance
Abuse Council)
CHR. INABA: I just want to remind everyone in attendance here please refrain
from making any type of remarks, claps, boos. We want to make sure everyone
feels safe in this space. Thank you.
Regina Weller: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in opposition.
(representing 808 Homeless Task
Force)
Debra Lewis: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), comment.
(representing Humanity Hale)
Emma Lowrey: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
Roxanne Costa: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing The Salvation Army)
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
Cindy Freitas: GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46), in opposition.
(See Comm. 46.38)
Patti Cook: GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46); and
Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(See Comm. 46.34)
Riley Smith: GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46), in support.
(representing Lanihau Properties) (See Comm. 46.75)
Bill Moore: GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46), in support.
(See Comm. 46.65)
Kristin Francis: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in opposition.
(representing Humanity Hale)
Kristen Alice: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Hope Services
Hawaii)
Kali French: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Hope Services (See Comm. 67.30)
Hawaii)
Paul Normann: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Neighborhood Place
of Puna)
Anashe Brooks: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Neighborhood Place
of Puna)
Billi-Jo Pike: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Neighborhood Place
of Puna)
Philomena Scherling: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Neighborhood Place
of Puna)
Chi Ashley Davis: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Neighborhood Place (See Comm. 67.21)
of Puna)
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
Brittany Racz: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Neighborhood Place
of Puna)
Kalani Spain: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(See Comm. 67.43)
Stephen Chiodo: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
Katlin McCallister: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
(representing Episcopal Church of
the Holy Apostles)
Neil Azevedo: GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46), in support.
Austin Martin: GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46), in opposition; and
(representing Libertarian Party Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), comment.
of Hawaii)
Megan Isaac: GOEAC-2 (Comm. 46); and
Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in opposition.
Valerie Poindexter: Res. 46-25 (Comm. 67), in support.
Recess: At 11:23 a.m., the Chair called for a recess.
Reconvene: The meeting reconvened at 11:34 a.m.
REPORTS: The Chair directed the Council to proceed to the next order of business, Reports.
GOEAC-2 APPOINTMENT OF WESLEY SEGAWA AS DIRECTOR OF
(Comm. 46): ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
Requires Council
Confirmation by: January 31, 2025 (Section 13-8,
Hawaii County Charter)
Postponed: January 22, 2025
(Note: There is a motion by Council Member Onishi, seconded by Council
Member Hustace, to confirm the appointment of Wesley Segawa as Director of
Environmental Management.)
CHR. INABA: Thank you. I will first give the opportunity to Mayor Alameda to
make any statement, followed by Director Segawa and then opening it up to the
body after that. Mayor Alameda.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
(Note: At this time, Mayor C. Kimo Alameda and Environmental
Management Director Wesley Segawa came forward to address the
members of the Council.)
MR. ALAMEDA: Mayor Alameda. Aloha and mahalo. Council Chair, Vice
Chair Onishi, thank you so much, and fellow County Council Members. First, I
want to take this time to mahalo our residents. I've been sitting here hearing them
share testimony, and I think that's what make an awesome government, is people
willing to share their perspectives. So that's really good. Mahalo. Also, I want
to mahalo our nonprofits. Let me tell you, without them, the County cannot do
what they do. And so mahalo, nonprofits.
But there are many things that the County can do, and we should do, and one of
the things we should do is we should ensure that everybody's kept safe. So public
safety is huge. And when I turn to Wes Segawa, that was prominent. And that
was on my mind. This wastewater situation is an unsafe situation.
And, you know, I mean, anybody over here who does not have a past
shortcoming, please raise your hand. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I figure. So
we have past shortcomings. It's evident. I mean, we all get, right? But this is
way in the past, okay, and he learned from it. But that's not what I hired him for.
I hired him because of his knowledge and because of his compassion and passion
for our island.
The first thing he noticed was that—and I had a feeling in the campaign that we
didn't have a plan for our wastewater situation in Keaukaha, and I brought it up
many times. I said, "What is the plan? Like, what if that thing breaks?"
Because, the prior Administration said that's what keep them up at night, but yet I
didn't see a plan.
So the first thing Mr. Segawa shared with me is that it could break three places
could break. So we talked about it. We looked at those places. He assembled a
team. We brought them together; we talked about those three places. We brought
Civil Defense together and, sure enough, now we have a plan, an emergency
proclamation that's going to be sent to the Governor because that's how serious
this situation is. We went through four years of this County Council and prior
Administration without that acknowledgement. It took this man to raise it to the
attention of an emergency proclamation. So thank you.
Not just that; we're already talking about all kinds of projects that he has good
insight on, as reflected by the number of engineers who came up to support
Mr. Segawa. So he has my full support without any reservations. I yield for
questions at this time. Thank you.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Mayor Alameda. Director Segawa, go ahead.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. SEGAWA: Thank you, Chairman Inaba. Council Chairman Inaba, Council
Members, and residents of the County of Hawaii, I come to you today willing
and able to serve the County of Hawaii as your Director of the Department of
Environmental Management. I'd like to begin, once again, by thanking our DEM
(Department of Environmental Management) staff for their hard work, dedication,
and personal sacrifices.
I also want to thank those who submitted letters of support, and those who
appeared today at today's Council meeting to present supporting testimony on my
behalf. Thank you for coming, taking the time to be here.
During last Friday's Council meeting, questions arose about potential conflicts of
interest that may exist between my businesses and me serving as Director of the
Department of Environmental Management. Let me begin by apologizing to the
Council for not understanding the context of the questions. Since then, I have
learned that your questions were in reference to the County's Code of Ethics
wherein there are prescribed standards of conduct required of all County officers
and employees.
I want to assure the Council that I have taken steps to comply with those
standards of conduct by removing myself from day-to-day operations of my
businesses. I removed my companies from DEM's project eligibility list. I've
prepared a petition to the Board of Ethics for appropriate action on two projects
awarded to my businesses, and I believe they were before the General Election in
2024. If I am confirmed today, I will submit this petition. One, naturally, is with
the Department of Public Works and the other with the Office of Housing and
Community Development. They are both contracts to oversee construction
projects. Above all, I will comply with the standards of conduct expected of all
officers and employees employed by the County of Hawaii. You have my word
on that.
On the second matter regarding testimonies about my involvement with campaign
spending violations. All I have to say today is I made a foolish and painful
mistake over 20 years ago. I took full responsibility for my actions and have held
myself accountable ever since. The court granted me my plea of no contest, and I
received a deferred acceptance of no contest. I fulfilled all my legal and financial
obligations with the court order, and my record has been expunged. I want to
make that clear. I want you to know that in retrospect my actions were foolish,
and I followed the campaign spending laws ever since, and I hold myself
accountable for my actions.
I wish to take this opportunity again to apologize to my friends, relatives, and
family for the shame, the embarrassment, and the betrayal of trust I brought upon
them over 20 years ago.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
For the record, I did not contribute to former Mayor Roth's or Mayor Alameda's
campaigns, nor did I reach out for this or any County position. Mayor Alameda
and Managing Director Bill Brilhante sought me out and asked me to serve in this
capacity, knowing he would be facing a myriad of mismanagement ills in the
Department of Environmental Management, including delivery of the promises
related to the EPA's (Environmental Protection Agency's) Administrative Order
on Consent that has a price tag of over $700 million, and filling staffing vacancies
that are approaching 50 percent in the department.
After the Thanksgiving weekend and with the full support of my family, I
accepted Mayor Alameda's invitation. And if confirmed today, I will do my best
to serve the County of Hawaii, including your children, your grandchildren, and
future generations to come, to the best of my ability. I wish I could share more
about what I've experienced in life and in leadership roles and my wastewater
experience, if you'd like. But thank you, Chair.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Director Segawa. We'll open it up at this time to
members' questions and discussion. Council Member Hustace.
MR. HUSTACE: Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the time here. Mahalo, Mayor,
Director. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for letting me start this off.
I'm sure my fellow Council Members and colleagues will kind of dive into some
other topics. So I really just wanted to speak about the functions of
environmental management, of the department, and the work that we collectively
need to do as a community on this endeavor to protect our `aina, our island, and
the promises we have for our communities and future generations. So thank you
for allowing me this here.
In a time when civility and compassion and kindness are rare, where, as the most
fresh on the Council here and political newcomer, I saw a lot of mud being slung
in my political campaign, and where now I'm honored to sit on this Council to
represent my communities of North and South Kohala and receive threatening
emails from community members about this appointment and about this work is
astonishing to me for the work that we can do for these communities and the work
we need to do.
So my first question to you is, through literally and figuratively, through all the
muck and the filth and the refuse that we leave behind, why do you want to take
on this job? Why do you want to step forward and lead the department in this
endeavor?
MR. SEGAWA: I think, to some degree—well, naturally I want to serve our
community; being born and raised here, grew up with many of you in this room as
well as in our communities on this island. I think I have received leadership
experiences through life. If I can share that, I'd like to.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
Let me just begin—it's simple stuff—but I currently serve as an officer or a
director to some capacity, in the past or presently,with the Aloha Council Boy
Scouts of America's Executive Board. I've been a national rep (representative) as
well, serving as officer and director of National Society of Professional Engineers
on the Mainland as well as here in Hawaii. I've been past president and director
and all kinds of positions with the Structural Engineers Association of Hawaii.
And I've been a Kiwanis member; also been president. I've been a member for
over 40 years.
The one thing I want to point out is, not only engineering, but I've also chaired
the advisory committee for the Malama Na Wahine Hapai. If you've ever heard
of it, in English it means "caring for the pregnant woman"—as chair. It was a
grant from the National Institutes of Health, and I've been there a couple of times
to speak before that audience. The aim of that program was to deliver prenatal
care to Native Hawaiians, Filipinos, and Japanese women because their risk for
delivering low-weight infants was so high in South Hilo and the Puna Districts.
As a result of that program, I was able to develop public-private partnerships with
businesses, physicians, public health nurses in the State, and we reached out to
that community. The results were astounding, to the point that the CEO (Chief
Executive Officer) of Queen's Medical Center reached out and said, "Hey, I want
to replicate this program in the State." It's also become a model for rural
America. I just want you to know that; something I'm very proud of doing.
Okay.
Moving on. I've been in practice in engineering, running an engineering
construction management business. It's been successful for over 40 years. I've
served as a commissioner on the Hawaii Housing Authority. Some of you may
remember the Hawaii Housing Authority. I served five years as chair of the
quasi-government board, on the board, of the Housing and Community
Development Corporation of Hawaii. The portfolio of that corporation was over
$2 billion, okay. We were responsible for the homeless program throughout the
State, public housing—Section 8, some of you know about that—affordable
housing, financing,purchasing, rental subsistence for constituents people that
needed it in our State. We were responsible for building the Villegas of Leiali`i,
the one on Kauai alsoLeiali`i is on Maui—and the Villages of La`i`opua.
MR. HUSTACE: Thank you, Director. I think that's wonderful to have you
share that. I'm just wondering if you could delve a little further into—we have
this future potential investment from Queen's Medical Center on the west side of
the island. So if you could really dive into how we can strengthen these public
partnerships and what we need to set up the County for to receive and work with
these investments, kind of at the large scale but also kind of looking at some of
our smaller communities as well.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. SEGAWA: Yeah. Reach out. Reach out to these people that we hear about.
Hear what their story is, what they want to accomplish for our County. See how
we can work together. We've got issues that never got completed. We made
promises that never got completed. But this is now the time to make it right. You
talk about Queen's Medical Center, hey, was Riley Smith's company, right? I
mean, these guys are out there wanting to connect to our sewer system. We have
a 5 million-gallon-per-day treatment plant. We're only getting one out there. We
can use their poop, right. That's what I want to work towards. I need to have
these partnerships with them, and we need to move forward quickly.
There's some gaps in our sewer system, and I'm learning what's in there now.
There are dry lines that can potentially become more opportunities for businesses
and our communities on that side of the island alone. That's an example of how I
see we can reach out to our community and meet our objectives.
MR. HUSTACE: Thank you, Director. And so, kind of exploring a little bit on
that a little bit more. At our Kohala coastline, we have our resort communities.
They have their private facilities. Do you see a potential there of working with
those entities to support our local residents?
MR. SEGAWA: I sure do.
MR. HUSTACE: How can we do that?
MR. SEGAWA: Hey, I sure do. At this moment,the Mayor's office is setting up
a meeting with the people at Puako. I think we've received a letter. They
explained briefly what their plan is. We want to learn more. We want to find out
what it is that they want, and I see opportunities with them. They got a plan.
They've done a lot of work on their own. They spent their own money, and all
they want to do is come: "Hey, listen to us. This is what we've done. We've
spent time, money. Help us." And they weren't able to have a meeting. The
Mayor has said, "We'll schedule a meeting. Let's go hear what they have to say."
So that's one example of what we're doing to reach out, wastewater.
MR. HUSTACE: Thank you, Director. Thank you. I appreciate that and I look
forward to working with you and the Mayor on those smaller communities.
Because, some of those communities there, not all of them have the means and the
capacity to connect. So we are going to have to find a way to support the families
that have had long-term housing and projects there that need public support.
MR. SEGAWA: That's right.
MR. HUSTACE: If we could switch to solid waste for a moment. As we've
discussed in this conversation before, West Hawaii is the home to the island's
solid waste and our sludge from the east side of the island, of course. So I'd love
to hear your thoughts on how do we prepare our communities for an eventuality
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
of the end of life for the Pu`uanahulu Landfill, and what sort of programs can we
implement or support or stand up so that we can find a solution. I'd love for you
to expand on that.
MR. SEGAWA: Okay. Landfill. In fact, that's in your district.
MR. HUSTACE: Yes, sir.
MR. SEGAWA: Okay. We've set some goals for ourselves. Three goals. I'm
just going over it. Focus on sustainable solutions, No. 1. No. 2, promoting
education and outreach to our communities, and fostering strategic partnerships,
whether it's here or on the Mainland. Whatever resources we can go to for
support, that's what I'm looking at. I can elaborate further if you like, but as far
as our landfill, diversion. We've got to do front-end diversion. We can't have
everything that comes into this island going into our landfill.
Already, we've started some programs with the landfill. We dump our garbage
and then we've been filling rock over it, right, to keep it down, because that's
what—well, now we're using liners. We can put a liner down instead of two feet
or whatever of rock, which takes up space. We go with maybe three to six inches
of rock just as ballast to keep that fabric down. Just those inches that we're
fighting for is going to increase the capacity of that landfill. That's just one
example.
I'm going to talk to the Mayor about forming another task force: "Hey, let's go
look at what we can do for diversion. There's a lot of smart people out there.
Let's pull them together, find out what their ideas are, whether we can work and
get things done that way." But that's what I see in your district. We just got that
one landfill, and we talked about how long it takes to go through the process of
building another one. The only way we can do it right now is diversion: reuse,
recycling.
MR. HUSTACE: Thank you, Director.
MR. SEGAWA: You're welcome.
MR. HUSTACE: Just for clarification, it's not my district. I represent the district
of North and South Kohala. So thank you.
MR. SEGAWA: Oh, okay.
MR. HUSTACE: Thank you, for the record.
MR. SEGAWA: Yeah. Sorry.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. HUSTACE: No, no, that's fair. We spoke a little bit about transparency and
working with community members. That's a valiant effort to work with
community members that have that expertise and that knowledge in the
community. Whether it's about diversion on the recycling side or organic side, I
think we have a lot of resources in the community. So it's kind of a two-part
question here. The first is, what would be your work with the Environmental
Management Commission? And working with them during advisory committee,
commission, and board, what would be your process and procedure? Working
with those individuals, I kind of have some of that knowledge, that they can
support your efforts.
MR. SEGAWA: Well, unfortunately, I have not had an opportunity to meet with
environmental, you know, advisory people, but I'm thinking the first thing I need
to do is reach out to them, build a relationship with them, get an understanding of
what their concerns are, where they're coming from. I've heard in the past there's
been a lot of disruption or whatever. But I see advisory groups as helping us
come up with innovative ideas and pathways to accomplishing these goals and
objectives that they may come up with. In other words,just don't get angry and
say this is that, but come up with solutions. Let's go figure out how we can get it
done, how can we get it funded, how we can gather community support and input
to all work together to solve issues.
I think we're all concerned about the same things. It's just putting people
together and come up with, you know, collaborating more. I hope I'm answering
your question.
MR. HUSTACE: Thank you, Director.
MR. SEGAWA: I'm going to try and work harder in that direction.
MR. HUSTACE: Mayor.
MR. ALAMEDA: Thank you. Can I add? We are looking for there's a lot of
openings, and so we're working with our boards and commissions,
Micah Alameda, to help fill some of those positions before we go and have a
meeting with Wesley Segawa. So, to the public, anybody interested in being on
the Environmental Management Commission, please apply. Thank you.
MR. HUSTACE: Thank you. The last question and then I'll yield for now is,just
the large dollars that we're investing into our facilities here and the pressure that
puts on you and your department, of course on the Mayor as well, what would be
your approach to providing more transparency about the process and the
procedure? As we identify these hurdles, as you make the investments, what sort
of commitment can you have to showcase not just to this body, but really to our
populace here, about the work we're doing and this is how we're going about it?
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. SEGAWA: Good question. That's where we get into communicating with
the public, through our website. We already have our website up, but we can be
more transparent. We can share more information with the public on what we're
doing, the challenges we face, not only the good stuff but the challenges.
And I think we can use social media. The Mayor has a team of social media
experts who can help us with that. Getting the word out. Helping people maybe
better understand what the challenges are, you know, understanding their
challenges and responding appropriately by giving them our expertise that we can
offer. It's that outreach that we need to do more of. And there are different
media means to accomplish that.
MR. HUSTACE: Thank you, Director. Chair, I'll yield for now. Thank you.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Council Member Hustace. Checking over in Kona.
Council Member Villegas, anything at this time?
MS. VILLEGAS: Not at this time, thank you.
CHR. INABA: All right. Back here in Hilo, further questions? Council Member
Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, then Council Member Kimball.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here
today, Director, appointee, nomination. (Inaudible) on your experience.
MR. SEGAWA: My experience?
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Yeah, your experience in the field of
engineering goes back far. Speak to your experience in engineering, wastewater,
and not just here but everywhere that you've worked in the State, please, and just
summarize.
MR. SEGAWA: Summary?
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Yeah.
MR. SEGAWA: Yeah, don't go into details, okay. I'll just gloss over it, but
thank you for your question. I have an engineering—we do business. We do
construction oversight also. So just for your information, sewer pump stations, I
was taught years ago. I worked with the County that time I was sewer
division—on rehabbing, extending the life of pump stations, like at Downtown
Hilo, Pauka`a, and Wailoa. So I've done that, figured out how we can extend the
life of those pump stations.
I've been involved in sewer conveyance projects. Ali`i Drive sewer line that goes
from, what is that, Palani Street all the way out south of that. Putting in the force
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
mains, the sewer lines, the laterals that go into the communities. Helping the
property owners connect to it. Helping them understand what's required of them,
addressing their issues on their properties. Waiakea Houselots right down here,
putting in the sewer line,putting in the laterals, rebuilding that road.
Treatment plant. I was on the original design team that designed the Hilo
Wastewater Treatment Plant. And I was asked to stay on to oversee construction
of the Hilo Wastewater Treatment Plant when it was built. So, basically, that kind
of experience.
I was also on the first cesspool conversion advisory committee in this County.
When we started looking at how is this new EPA rules going to affect our people
herein, we had to be sensitive to the situation at the time. Now, we've got a
deadline of 2050, our conversion. So I just want youI mean, I have that
background. I've seen the different ways we can do treatment plants on private
property. I've done a lot of designs on individual wastewater treatment plants.
Putting a lot of packaged plans, stuff, kind of.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Did you or your company install?
MR. SEGAWA: No, I'm not into the actual construction where we install a
treatment plant. I mean, it's like
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: You design.
MR. SEGAWA: You have licensed contractors, licensed by the Contractors
Licensing Board, who do that kind of work. I'm not doing the actual
construction, but I have enough knowledge to oversee the construction to know
whether it's done properly or not.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: And then in your past, you've also done
projects. And I think you've done work too, like actual labor in your early years.
Is that right?
MR. SEGAWA: Oh, yeah. I wanted to dig cesspools for the rest of my life. I
began digging cesspools as a young boy and I really enjoyed it. It was macho-
type work, digging with back then, it was 120 pound busters, using boom trucks
and we dug through solid rock using dynamite. This was before backhoes came
about. But I've had that kind of experience firsthand.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you. Where are you with the current
EPA consent decree for the County of Hawaii?
MR. SEGAWA: Where we are? Okay, as some of you may know, the project is
at a point where there isn't much we can do to, at this point, reverse much of what
has been done because of the deadlines, so we put out Phase 1 of the Hilo
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
Wastewater Treatment Plant. The bids came in. I think it was $367 million. That
was the low bidder. The next low bidder was over $400 million. So we awarded
the contract to the low bidder, Nan Inc., and right now we are waiting for
confirmation on financing. Just so you know, this project, we may give them a
notice to proceed, but with any wastewater treatment plant project, it's going to
take close to a year to get the equipment fabricated, made, and shipped to us here,
okay. We're not going to tell them to start today, and they start digging dirt and
moving stuff around,just so you know. Just be prepared for that. It's going to
take close to a year for anything really to start moving.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay. So the EPA consent decree, your
office is moving already on.
MR. SEGAWA: We're moving. We're on top of it. We've met our deadlines so
far, okay.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: This is branching over both the previous
Administration and the current Administration because some of these projects
were landed previously, and you have taken over the reins.
MR. SEGAWA: We're implementing, yes.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Are you really an Eagle Scout?
MR. SEGAWA: Yeah.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Good. Okay. It was said but it's also in
your resume, but it says "Boy Scouts,"but it doesn't say "Eagle Scout." But then
you said you're an Eagle Scout, so I had to check. Okay, so you are an Eagle
Scout.
MR. SEGAWA: Yes, I am.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay, interesting. You know what I like
about you, Wes? I like that you have physical experience in the field because it
matches my point of view. I did electrical work and now I'm sitting in a
legislative position. That gives me a different perspective. I like that you are a
business owner. It means you understand what it takes to cut paychecks and what
you expect out of people and what you want to get done. That's a different
perspective than people who have never written a paycheck before. Your
conflicts of interest that have been pointed out, and I'm not saying you have a
conflict of interest. I want to make that very clear. The ones that have been
pointed out so far, from what I understand, you didn't enter into office and get
awarded a contract with the County. These are preexisting to your nomination.
Correct?
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. SEGAWA: Yeah. I think you're right.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: I hope I'm right. Okay. I have a feeling I'm
right. So that, to me, takes care of the conflict of interest. Because if you came in
and you awarded yourself a contract, that's a problem. If your nomination for
Mayor Alameda supposed that you need to get the contract to become Director,
that's a conflict of interest. But from what I understand, that didn't happen.
These contracts were already in place before you were appointed. These are
projects or contracts you were awarded, or your company was awarded prior to
you stepping in to being a nominee for the Director position.
MR. SEGAWA: That is correct.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Then that is not a conflict of interest in my
opinion. I appreciate that you are submitting a petition to the Board of Ethics. I
think that is helpful, and that will help alleviate any concerns that there are that
you are a conflict of interest or walk in it. If I can point to Mr. Zendo Kern, our
ex-Planning Director, he was a walking conflict of interest, and he had to submit
about a ten-page document of all of his previous projects and personnel he had
worked with so that we could tell when he was a conflict of interest and what he
could and could not work on as a Director of Planning. I don't see that problem
here today.
MR. SEGAWA: Thank you.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: I find it interestingI missed the last
meeting but you're the only one who started off on the 9 vote "yes," ended up
with a 4-4 split at Council for your second and final nomination hearing. From
what I can gather from what I've heard in the meetings that I've had with
everybody, I think you're a good fit. Yeah, you had some problems in your past,
but a lot of us have, as Mr. Alameda pointed out.
I do caution that if there is anything that has been done recently, it can taint the
upcoming Administration and what they plan to do. I'm just putting that out
there. I'm not asking for information. I looked over your campaign spending
contributions from your company, from your wife, and from yourself. There was
none to Mr. Alameda that are registered with the Campaign Spending
Commission. That, to me, clears up anyI mean, it's not that you can't
contribute to his campaign and then still take a director position. This clears up
anything that it was a pay-to-play for this portion of your life.
So, from my point of view right now, I'll be supporting your nomination. I am
going to be looking to you because you have a lot of projects that are landing right
now that are not small projects. These are major projects as required by the EPA
for us to get done. We have financed about half-a-billion dollars for these things
to get done, and your agency is in charge of it. As well as just being a large
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
department in the County of Hawaii with a number of different departments,
from our solid waste to our wastewater, this is your kuleana as far as I'm
concerned. And it is a major kuleana and it is one that will affect our keiki going
forward, as you've stated. So I will be leaning on you to make some impressive
decisions and do some impressive work. I think we all will.
MR. SEGAWA: Thank you, Councilman. I will do my best.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay. And when I do call you to bug you, I
hope you answer.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Mr. Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you, Chair.
CHR. INABA: Buzzer went off. Council Member Kimball.
MS. KIMBALL: Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here again. Before I
start, I'll say I didn't chime in before the vote last time. One more time to make
clear that with respect to the conflict of interest, that was not the basis of my "no"
vote last time. Right? We talked about that when we talked personally. As I
said, there are controls in place within Finance, Corporation Counsel, Board of
Ethics that take care of that aspect of things.
To go back there, the basis of my "no"vote was a feeling, having worked pretty
significantly across the last four years around the wastewater question is that we
need perhaps a unicorn in this position, somebody that is innovative, that is
willing to try new solutions, that is willing to deal with complicated financing
structures, things like that. And I did not see, first of all, in the very first hearing
that understanding and enthusiasm. Again, in the second hearing, I failed to see
that understanding and enthusiasm. We spoke on the—we had a Zoom meeting,
and I will acknowledge that you have an impressive resume.
I'm going to do some more questioning today with the hopes of kind of clearing
this even further. And where I want to start is with some potential contradictions
so that you can clarify for the record where you are. Particularly with respect to
solid waste, the response that you gave in the last hearing was bury, burn, barge,
and then we come to today and the response to that question is diversion. Okay,
so, I appreciate perhaps the learning that has happened in the intervening period,
but can you explain the contradiction in your previous response to the current
response today?
MR. SEGAWA: The burn, bury, barge, sometimes it's just a Freudian slip. As
time goes on, I interact with my staff, my experts: "Wes, you don't do that,
yeah." Our plan now, our policy is how do we extend the life of this landfill.
They said, "Wes, it's not going to work, burn, bury, barge. We've got to find
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
ways, and the way we're going to do it is diversion." And I totally agree with that
strategy. They convinced me why we need to do it. My own ignorance probably
made me say what I shouldn't probably have said,but I apologize for that.
MS. KIMBALL: So, with respect to diversion, we've not been very successful. I
mean the reuse, recycle, reduce program has been around since forever, '70s now.
What are some of your thoughts, creative solutions, around how to increase
diversion and limit the disposal to our landfill?
MR. SEGAWA: Well, like I said, I was going to talk to the Mayor, forming a
group of people that know something about this subject, to contribute so we can
collaborate, come up with solutions. For Zero Waste, landfill diversion, building
partnerships with people out there in the community and businesses. Teaming up
with our R&D (Research and Development)people, OSCER(Office of
Sustainability, Climate, Equity, and Resilience), investigate waste-to-energy
technologies, look at different opportunities that are out there. That's basically
what I see of reaching out for more ideas. I mean I think we've done this for so
long and nothing has come about, that I'm kind of reaching out to the community
and saying, "Help me; help us," and listen to what they have to say.
MS. KIMBALL: I know I come across as, I don't know. I don't know how I
come across, but I'm going to tell you there are documents already that identifies
Zero Waste, that identify diversion strategies
MR. SEGAWA: Yeah, and I do
MS. KIMBALL: That have to do with extended producer responsibility. I hate to
see us form another task force, yet another task force, to address things that we
already have answers to.
MR. SEGAWA: Thank you for saying that, and I actually have a Deputy who's
very knowledgeable, has years of experience in that area. I'm going to rely a lot
on his advice.
MS. KIMBALL: Let's move to wastewater. Are you familiar with the cost that
has been estimated for developing wastewater in the Puna region?
MR. SEGAWA: In what region?
MS. KIMBALL: In the Puna District.
MR. SEGAWA: Oh, my gosh. I think we had studies. Wastewater, the most
expensive, I think it was 700 billion—was that right? $700 billion to—it'll
bankrupt us if we did something like that. We have to look at different
alternatives. I think you're speaking about that study that was done by some
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
consultant. I haven't gone through the complete document, but some of these
numbers stood out, and it looked like a recommendation was more to individual
wastewater systems at this point.
MS. KIMBALL: Thank you. That's not the correct number, but I won't hold you
to that. What is your recommendation, then, with respect to addressing the
wastewater issue in the Puna region, or individual wastewater systems across the
County? You spoke before about being on the advisory group for the cesspool
conversions.
MR. SEGAWA: What is my?
MS. KIMBALL: Recommendations for the Puna region and other areas where
we have a distributed population and needing to address the conversion from
cesspools.
MR. SEGAWA: Okay, so, I mean I hate to sound like a broken record, but I need
toI'm waiting for that Integrated Wastewater Management Plan. That report is
going to help us create a model for decision-making on how we proceed with
treatment plants, IWS's (individual wastewater systems) or other alternatives.
MS. KIMBALL: Are you familiar with the recent study that came out in
Nature 2023 with respect to land-based pollution and the impacts on water quality
and the nearshore reefs and the recommendations in that report?
MR. SEGAWA: No.
MS. KIMBALL: Okay. I'd suggest that that's something that you review. Are
you familiar with the Cesspool Conversion Wastewater Group's recommendation
to prioritize and advance the timeline on Priority 1 and 2 cesspool conversions
from 2045?
MR. SEGAWA: No.
MS. KIMBALL: Okay. Another thing that needs (inaudible). What is your
thoughts with respect to the contractsactually, I'm not even going to go there. I
still have my concerns about the—one more opportunity to kind of reflect upon
the contradictions, which is today and in our private meeting you reflected upon
your extensive experience, which I will willingly acknowledge. And then in the
earlier hearing when we were talking about the contracts that existed with the
County, "I don't have day-to-day oversight of the activities of my business." And
so what I'm where is it? Is it"I am actively involved in all of these things," or
"I don't have day-to-day oversight of the activities in my business"? There are
two contradictory statements that I can't resolve.
MR. SEGAWA: I do not have day-to-day involvement in any of my businesses.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. KIMBALL: All right. One final question. You've been Director—and just
to clarify for the folks that testified to such, Mayor Alameda is perfectly able to
have them appointed immediately upon taking office. So that's the change that
we had in the Charter. So there's nothing there. You've been on the job since
that date. Have you performed a risk assessment with respect to the program to
redo the Hilo wastewater in terms of where we may have unexpected
contingencies that are going to take us beyond that$367 million?
MR. SEGAWA: I have not—you're talking about the Hilo wastewater treatment
plant and the new contract that's been awarded? I have not myself performed a
peer review to identify potential, I guess, claims that could arise during
construction. I have put my faith in the engineers that have been involved on the
project, that they are competent enough to have studied and understand the design
and corrected any errors that may exist. So that's—at this point, I have not
personally performed a peer review, and I don't know if it's my yeah.
MS. KIMBALL: Thank you, Chair.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Council Member Kimball. Council Member
Galimba.
MS. GALIMBA: Thank you. I wanted to ask about a couple of things. We do
have the wastewater contracts and renovations that need to happen in Hilo and
Kona, but also very important are the projects that will be happening in District 6,
the Pahala and Na`alehu projects. Could you talk a little bit about those and
where your understanding of them is at this time.
MR. SEGAWA: At this time, my understanding is the first phase of the Pahala
project is underwayI mean, it should be. They are working on the second
phase, which is the treatment plant itself. Na`alehu, that's still in the design phase
at this point in time. As far as I know, I was told that both projects are on
schedule. They have not encountered any design concerns at this point that
they're aware of. So I expect it to move relatively quickly unless something
unforeseen comes up.
MS. GALIMBA: Have you spoke with the project manager, I'm forgetting his
last nameMarkanyway, the project engineer for those projects about it?
MR. SEGAWA: With the design project engineer or the construction ?
MS. GALIMBA: Yeah, the construction.
MR. SEGAWA: Construction?
MS. GALIMBA: Yeah.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. SEGAWA: No, I have not. I don't know if we're in the—I think we're still
in the pre-construction phase of that project. I think it's the conveyance part. I
probably won't be involved until they've got things squared away on the pre-
construction part to make sure the contractor is really onboard, and they can
accept the schedule and, you know, stuff that you do upfront on a construction
project. So I have not.
MS. GALIMBA: Okay, yeah, thanks. I guess moving to a slightly different—
still the same subject but a little bit different aspect of it is just going over the
appendix to the AOC (Administrative Order on Consent), which has Appendix 1,
which has an amazing number of deadlines in it. I'm just wondering if—kind of
in line with what Council Member Hustace was talking about. It would be great
to have more information about that available to the Council and to the public
about progress on timelines. So have you started developing some kind of like
(inaudible) chart or some kind of chart or just a spreadsheet where you can
visualize all of this?
MR. SEGAWA: I surely haven't but thank you. That's a wonderful suggestion.
Wonderful. If it's not up, I'm going to go ask where is it.
MS. GALIMBA: That would be a good thing to have for everyone, yes. We
have a lot of deadlines coming up from all different directions; from risk
management, financial plans, the cesspool conversions, integrated waste. So
there's a lot in there that needs to get worked on simultaneously.
MR. SEGAWA: Right. Put it out there for people to know what's going on,
yeah. Thank you.
MS. GALIMBA: Okay, I'll yield for now.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. Council Member Villegas in Kona.
MS. VILLEGAS: Thank you. Thank you for being here again, Mr. Segawa. It's
a really interesting time in government as a whole. As at the Federal level, we
have nominations to serve who are enduring similar scrutiny as yourself. So
thank you for being willing to do that. My first question is, can you tell me where
we're at with the Kealakehe wastewater treatment facility, the transition to R-1
and what the timing is on that?
MR. SEGAWA: Sure. At this point in time, we did submit an NPDES (National
Pollutant Discharge Elimination System)permit, and what happened is
somehowI think it is submitted but I don't think it's been rejected. There was
some questions about our application that our legal team is currently looking at.
So I would say it's in the process but that
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. VILLEGAS: I'm sorry, I'm a little confused. You said you don't think it
was rejected, or it was rejected?
MR. SEGAWA: I don't think it was rejected, and I'm waiting for Corp.
(Corporation) Counsel to let me know where we stand on that response. I think it
was an inquiry.
MS. VILLEGAS: Okay. All very top of the mind for District 7 and West
Hawaii. I also am asking if you are committed, if confirmed, to pursue the
transition to R-1 and make sure that this happens during this Administration at the
Kealakehe wastewater treatment facility.
MR. SEGAWA: We are in the process of meeting our obligations, and I believe
we are heading toward R-1.
MS. VILLEGAS: Okay. I also have a question about the project to sewer, the
area by Kahalu`u, the one mile of coastline there that is not sewered, and the prior
Administration Director has hired a consultant to move forward with that, and we
had put money in the budget. And I wonder what you can tell me about the status
of that and what your intentions are moving forward.
MR. SEGAWA: Kahalu`u, is that close to the Hale Halawai area?
MS. VILLEGAS: No, Kahalu`u is down south, more Keauhou area.
MR. SEGAWA: I'm sorry, I don't have information but I can get it to you.
MS. VILLEGAS: Okay. Do you know what—can you—sorry. Acronyms.
What is NPDES? What does that stand for?
MR. SEGAWA: Okay, I'll try my best. National nonpoint source pollution
discharge, yeah.
MS. VILLEGAS: Okay. I just pulled it up. It stands for National Pollution
Discharge Elimination System. Yeah, okay. Yeah, acronyms are a tricky one.
So here's the thing, is that if you get the NPDES permit, does that require you
what happens to the transition to R-1?
MR. SEGAWA: Well, that, I'm pretty sure, will tell us what we need to do or we
agree to do to get to R-1.
MS. VILLEGAS: I just humbly might want you to look into that if confirmed
because getting the NPDES
MR. SEGAWA: I will. Thank you. It's been a while, yeah.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. VILLEGAS: Yeah. NPDES is actually an avenue to then not have to go
R-1.
MR. SEGAWA: Oh, really? Okay. Thanks for educating me.
MS. VILLEGAS: Yeah. Mr. Segawa, you're a kind man and numerous people
have come here today and testified. Unfortunately, some of those testimonies had
me falling back in my chair. I cannot stomach an excuse for illegal behavior
being "That's the way everybody was doing it, and it was the only way to get
business back in the day." Being born and raised here on the Big Island, born in
Hilo, raised in Kona, and having seen for decades the disparity, having watched
for decades the demise of our infrastructure and lack of taking initiative and
constantly kicking the bucket down the road for future generations, and here we
sit at a tipping point. And to look at politics, state-wise and nationally, and the
number of illegal occurrences and the people's absolute mistrust, frustration, and
disdain for the pay-to-play mentality.
I appreciate and I am a firm believer in apologies and forgiveness, but it doesn't
change the need for us to eliminate any and all business and going-ons, especially
in government where putting people in positions or paying money in order to get
contracts is perceived as any kind of a norm. He `ike `ana is i ka pono. See the
right thing to do and do it. This job would be so much easier.
People look to us to fix all these problems, and I find myself consistently
flabbergasted with people's inability to actually then make good decisions
themselves. I have to hold myself to this high standard, and I get in trouble
because, mind you, I am human and I live in a glass house, and the stupid things I
say sometimes, I get myself in trouble. Eat a lot of, you know, my foot in my
mouth. But these are big issues. At times when the public is just being kind of
told, "Ah, that's the way it was done before," heck, it's the way it's being done
now.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Villegas, I just want to let you know that the
buzzer went off here in Hilo, but if you want to summarize.
MS. VILLEGAS: Thank you. I cannot support your confirmation today, but I
can see where the votes are going to go. But for the sake of truth and integrity
and accountability for the severity of what happened 20 years ago, and the
message that sends to the public, I have to, today, not approve of your nomination
for this position. And it's all heartbreaking, all of it, to me right now. So I yield.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. Council Member Kierkiewicz.
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you, Chair. Aloha, Director Segawa. Great to see
you. Thank you, Mayor. There's been a lot of talk about your past. Folks are
calling you a criminal. But my understanding is that there was no conviction, and
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
in fact, there was a deferral for a no contest plea. It's legal speak. I'm not a
lawyer. I wondered if Corporation Counsel could maybe clarify what all of that
means because Mr. Segawa's record was expunged, and I just hate to keep
rehashing the past. But I also want to clear up what that actually means so the
public can understand.
MR. SEGAWA: Thank you.
(Note: At this time, Corporation Counsel Renee Schoen came forward to
address the members of the Council.)
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Corporation Counsel Schoen, thank you.
MS. SCHOEN: Good morning. Renee Schoen, Corporation Counsel. It's my
understanding that Mr. Segawa entered into a deferred acceptance of no contest
plea. It's a mechanism that you can find in the HRS (Hawai`i Revised Statutes).
I think it's Chapter 853, which basically a defendant, when they have been
charged, asks for it. It is not granted to everyone.
The court looks at criteria as to whether or not they will grant the deferral. And
what it does is it allows the person an opportunity to show that they can abide by
the terms and conditions that the court sets out. And if they do that successfully,
then there is no conviction on their record, okay. And so, upon completion of all
of the terms, there is no judgement of conviction and no conviction at all. And so
their record is expunged. So, basically, that's what(inaudible). It's an
opportunity to give a person who the court finds in its discretion can fulfill the
terms and conditions, can lead a law-abiding life after this incident. And they
have not been charged with anything else, no other conviction. So it's not granted
to everyone.
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you for that. And so it's very clear that Mr. Segawa
has met all of the criteria that was in that petition to the court. Thank you,
Mr. Segawa. You have shown incredible remorse today and have talked about the
mistake that you made, the shame that you feel, the shame that you brought upon
your family. And I think the fact that in spite of that mistake, you have built a
very successful, respectful business where there are people in the community that
testified today and at the original committee hearing: Sidney Fuke, Bill Moore,
Riley Smith, Patti Cook. These are people I respect. I have tremendous respect
for these good solid people,people that operate with integrity, and they're
vouching for you. That means a lot to me.
MR. SEGAWA: Thank you.
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: You've paid your debt to society. I'm not going to ask for
you to pay it again. You've already done that. And you have succeeded in my
opinion in giving back to community.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
I really appreciated you taking the time to kind of walk through how you would
handle potential conflicts of interest. You're petitioning to the Board of Ethics.
There are a number of members of this Council that have business interest whose
spouses get contracts from the County. And so there are ways in which people
are going to be making sure that that's very clear for the record that there is no
pay to play here. So thank you.
Ideas. Anyone can have ideas, right? Execution is everything. And I think that
you are somebody that is going to take all of the information and come up with a
clear plan of action. And I think that Mayor Alameda has made an excellent
choice in someone like you, someone that has years of experience of managing
projects and getting things done. Please see me and other members of this
Council as a resource. We want you to be successful. The problems that we are
facing we have faced for decades. I told you that at last Council meeting. When I
was an intern at DEM, many of the problems that we're facing today folks
couldn't solve them. So we're really counting on you, and I do hope that we can
all pull together, put in all of our brain power,pull in all of the resources and find
innovative pathways forward.
I think you've really demonstrated your commitment to collaboration, to
partnership, and transparency. And through all of this, and it's been I think very
tensious and maybe hard on yourself and your family, you have displayed real
professionalism. And so I thank you for that, and I mahalo you for continuing to
be here and still wanting to do the job. You still can count on me to be supporting
your nomination to this position. Thank you. Chair, I yield.
MR. SEGAWA: Thank you, Councilwoman.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Kagiwada.
MS. KAGIWADA: Thank you. Thank you, Director, for being here again.
We've met. I've come to your office two times, and this is the third hearing that
you've come to. So this is the fifth time I've had the chance to hear from you. I
know the Mayor has a tough job. This position is not easy to fill. You have to be
a certified engineer, and there are many parts to this job. There's the engineering
piece, the project management piece. There's the connecting with your
employees and inspiring them. But two really big parts that I just keep wanting to
hear a little bit more from you on, you know, in these five times we've had
these been able to connect are around the solid waste and the wastewater. I
know we've heard this a couple times now: Anyone can have ideas, or ideas are
not what's important here. It's true. We need follow-through and action.
But we also need someone who can inspire your department and new employees
that hopefully you'll attract to work on these really important, hard projects to
tackle. And so I just want to give you an opportunity one more time. Can you
just share one innovative idea around wastewater or one innovative idea around
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
solid waste management that you think the County should go in this direction and
explore. Is there anything you can share with us from your, as a leader, as an
innovator, as somebody that's leading a department on these two really important
issues? Can you share just like an actual innovative idea that you have or that you
have picked up?
MR. SEGAWA: Number 1, I think I need to get my staffing level up. I've barely
got 50 percent people at work. I've got to get that up, get these qualified,
experienced people onboard so we can come up with the innovative ideas; toss it
around internally. I didn't say I was an expert in wastewater or solid waste. I'm
going to rely on these experts on my staff, our consultants, the people in the
community to give me feedback. You're asking for me to give you something
that I don't have at this point. I will get it, and we will move forward.
MS. KAGIWADA: All right. I hear you and I agree with the people this
MR. SEGAWA: If we had it, we'd be all doing it.
MS. KAGIWADA: Yeah. There are a lot of great ideas out there, and I hope
you've had a couple months on the job, and I guess you haven't had time to look
into those yet. I really hope you do spend some time doing that because the work
has been done. The people that are currently on the Environmental Management
Commission have done enormous amounts of work. There's a solid waste
working group that came out of the sustainability work that we've been doing
over the last couple of years. They've been meeting on a regular basis.
And you said you were on the first cesspool conversion. So I was kind of hoping
out of that you would have something, some idea, that could be, like I said,
inspiring and also just like leading for this County of over 200,000 people on this
island that are looking to you for the leadership on these issues. So even though
it's not maybe the strength that you were brought in for, I think it's really
important that quickly you get up to speed on some of these things.
I have to think about—my two things when I make these decisions, right, I have
to think about my constituents and the people I'm representing and what they're
saying. But I also have to think about my best judgement based on the
information I have. And, like I said, this is the fifth time I've been able to have
some kind of interaction with you. And it's just I did ask you I think very
straightforward, do you have any kind of vision around either wastewater or solid
waste that you could share, and I'm still not really hearing that. And I realize that
people have different ideas about what's important here. But what I'm hearing
from my constituents is that these two things are very important to them. So I'm
feeling right on the edge here because you do have that engineering experience, it
seems like, to possibly do the oversight on some of these projects. But to drive
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
this County and to lead this County on the really important solid waste issues and
wastewater issues, I'm just not feeling like I'm hearing that. So, if you are
confirmed, I just really hope you are able to dive right in there and get that.
MR. SEGAWA: Thanks for that advice. I'll tell you, if I see something
innovative, I'll jump at it.
MS. KAGIWADA: Okay. Well, thank you and thank you for all the time that
you've taken to meet with me one on one. You are a very wonderful person to
interact with, I have to say that. So thank you, yeah. I yield.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. Council Member Kimball.
MS. KIMBALL: Just wanted to correct one comment from Council Member
Kagiwada with respect to the requirements for the position. As per the Charter,
the Director of Environmental Management shall have five years of
administrative experience in a related field and an engineering degree, or a degree
in a related field. So just wanted to make clear that this position does not require
actually an engineering degree.
Just to revisit something that came up from Council Member Villegas. One of the
challenges with Kealakehe and the production of R-1 water is that, in order to
sustain that conversion of that site and to actually do the ongoing
repair/maintenance operations of that site, you need basically $60 million. And in
order to fund that, you need to have people that are willing to buy that R-1 water.
So, again providing an opportunity for you to express a mechanism, an
opportunity to how we can inevitably address these situations. What would be
your solution towards trying to find that market for the R-1 water that would be
produced at Kealakehe?
MR. SEGAWA: That's something I'm going to have to talk to staff about. Right
now, we've got a 5 million-gallon-per-day treatment plant. I was told we've got
barely 1 million per day. We've got to increase that volume to where it makes it
worthwhile to pump that water someplace. So that's No. 1. We can look for
opportunities. We see opportunities with growing kalo, turning it into a greenbelt
or something. But, right now, it is what it is. I'll be talking to staff to see what
we can do, and you can be part of that.
MS. KIMBALL: There were two comments made. One is that we are not the
only municipality that is having to deal with this issue. Florida Keys, Tampa,
Oregon coast; all of these areas have actually been actively working on innovative
solutions, things like adding denitrification to individual wastewater systems,
using, you did mention, natural systems for mitigation. It's all about the cost,
right. And we have had opportunities in the recent future to actually utilize some
different financing structures to bring in funding beyond just the regular revolving
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
funds from the State, Federal funds, or bond measures. Are you aware of or have
you ever utilized any of these novel funding mechanisms for resourcing large
projects?
MR. SEGAWA: No.
MS. KIMBALL: No, okay.
MR. SEGAWA: Not me,personally.
MS. KIMBALL: I think I can count the votes here today as well. Just to Council
Member Kierkiewicz, I'm not going to be able to support it because I'm just not
hearing what I need, which is some creativity and innovation and thought and
some knowledge about all of the alternatives that are out there. I tried to give you
every opportunity to provide those. But that said, if you are confirmed today, I
have a lot of knowledge in this area, and I'm happy to work with you and will do
so in the spirit of doing what's best for our community, which is a value that I
know that we share beyond all of this. So thank you.
MR. SEGAWA: Thank you.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. We'll wrap this up. Last comments from Kona.
MS. VILLEGAS: Just a quick question. Mr. Segawa, what are your plans as far
as where you'll have your primary office and be working out of?
MR. SEGAWA: Right now, my primary office is here in Hilo. So I will be
working out of there.
MS. VILLEGAS: You'll be working out of there. Have you considered
scheduling any time during your week to consistently work out of Kona?
MR. SEGAWA: I think I'd love to. Your weather is nicer there sometimes.
MS. VILLEGAS: So is that something you'll commit to on the record?
MR. SEGAWA: I can commit to that.
MS. VILLEGAS: Great. Thank you. I think it would be
MR. SEGAWA: It depends on where my presence is needed to get the work
done. That's what's going to dictate where I am.
MS. VILLEGAS: Okay. Well, I'm going to go ahead and petition for your
presence to be here because, at least one day a week, because the issues at
Kealakehe wastewater treatment facility and at Kahalu`u and getting that part of
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
our coastline sewered are of the utmost importance to our community. The area
of Kahalu`u has been designated Priority 1, along with Puako and Hilo Bay, to
start resolving the cesspool conversion issues.
I'm a little disappointed at the amount of information you don't know about
what's been going on here. I am hopeful. I can read the votes already of what's
going to happen on your confirmation today, but I am we have a lot of work to
do. A lot of work has been done. We do not need to hire new consultants. I hope
that you'll take a look at the document that was left by the prior Director of the
Department of Environmental Management, which contains a lot of information
that could be essentially a cheat sheet to help you catch up and see where we're at
with all these things.
One of the challenges and one of the tragedies of changes in administrative
leadership is too often then we go back to zero, or we hire another consultant
when the information is there, and we need to move forward. And so, whether or
not you're an expert in these cutting edge technologies and ways to move us
forward, that information is there. So I would encourage you to do the deep dive
into what's there so we can keep moving that forward. Yeah, I still won't be able
to, in good conscience, support your nomination today, but I do ask that you—and
if you have some questions, I have probably spent more time talking about poop
and wastewater in the last six years, other than homelessness, and that's about one
of the highest priorities. So I'm here and glad to share with you those things
because we must move forward with these projects for the health and safety of our
community. I yield.
MR. SEGAWA: Thank you for your(inaudible).
CHR. INABA: Thank you. Council Member Galimba.
MS. GALIMBA: Thank you. Briefly. I'm, like some of my other colleagues,
very much on the fence. You are a lovely person, and you have a lot of
experience around engineering. I will be supporting your nomination out of
deference to the Mayor and to that overall experience, but I do want to say a
couple of things around that. One of them is that whichever way I voted, I would
hope that you would understand that we, on the Council,just take this so
seriously, so that is why we're voting one way or the other. We've been through
the ringer however long we've been here, if it's two years like me or much longer
for the others. And so this is something that we've had to wrestle with intensely
throughout our period. So that's why we're being very intense about this and
cautious. So, yes, that's basically what I wanted to say.
I just want this Administration to take this very seriously and be sure that it's
moving forward always for all the different parts that need to go forward. And I
think you will bring some new skills and capabilities to this position. You need to
catch up on a lot, so catch up faster please. Thank you.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. SEGAWA: I will. Thank you.
CHR. INABA: All right, with that, Director, I'll just finish up here. I would like
to just support all of the sentiments that were expressed by my colleagues, both
the hope and also the concern, and I hope that you can take to heart everything
that has been shared in the last three hearings regarding your confirmation.
MR. SEGAWA: Thank you.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. Roll call vote,please, Mr. Clerk.
Vote on GOEAC-2: The motion to adopt Governmental Operations and
(Adopted) External Affairs Committee Report No. 2 was carried by
the following roll call vote:
Ayes: Council Members Galimba, Hustace,
Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, Kierkiewicz, Onishi,
and Chair Inaba—6.
Noes: Council Members Kagiwada, Kimball,
and Villegas —3.
Absent: None.
Excused: None.
CHR. INABA: Congratulations, Director Segawa. We're taking a 15-minute
recess. We'll be back in session at 1:10 p.m. Mahalo.
Recess: At 12:54 p.m., the Chair called for a recess.
Reconvene: The meeting reconvened at 1:11 p.m.
ORDER OF The Chair directed the Council to proceed to the next order of business, Order of
RESOLUTIONS: Resolutions.
STATEMENTS The Chair directed the Council to proceed to the next order of business,
FROM THE Statements from the Public.
PUBLIC ON
RES. 46-25 The following individual registered to speak and came forward when called by
(COMM. 67): the Chair:
Rosella DeAlva-Guerrero: In support.
(representing Humanity Hale)
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
Res. 46-25: APPROVES THE AWARD OF FUNDS TO VARIOUS NONPROFIT
ORGANIZATIONS FOR PROGRAMS ADDRESSING HOUSING AND
HOMELESSNESS BY THE OFFICE OF HOUSING AND COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT
Proposes 15 grant awards to 9 different nonprofit organizations for a total of
$10,500,000 in funding that was derived from Residential Tier Two property tax
revenues.
Reference: Comm. 67
Intr. by: Council Member Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder (B/R)
Approve: FC-5
(Note: There is a motion by Council Member Villegas, seconded by Council
Member Kagiwada, to adopt Res. 46-25.)
(Note: The following communications were circulated regarding Res. 46-25:
1. Comm. 67.8 from Housing Administrator Kehaulani Costa dated January 30,
2025, transmitting an overview of the process and outcomes of the Year 3
Homelessness and Housing Fund Request for Proposals;
2. Comm. 67.9 from Council Member Holeka Goro Inaba dated January 31,
2025, transmitting proposed amendments;
3. Comm. 67.10 from Council Member Holeka Goro Inaba dated January 31,
2025, transmitting a document outlining the proposed changes to the original
awards as shown in Comm. 67; and
4. Comms. 67.11-67.17 from Council Member Rebecca Villegas dated
January 31, 2025, transmitting proposed amendments.)
CHR. INABA: To get started, we'll call up Housing Administrator Kehau Costa
and Assistant Administrator Keiko Mercado to come forward. Pointing Council
Members to Communication 67.8, this is a set of documents and exhibits that the
Administrator will cover at this time. There's also an amendment in relation too.
So, Administrator, you can let us know when or if we should be taking up the
amendment before you cover what you want to cover.
(Note: At this time, Housing Administrator Kehaulani Costa and
Assistant Housing Administrator Keiko Mercado came forward to address
the members of the Council.)
MS. COSTA: If we could take up the amendment, I believe that we've
incorporated much of the communication in 67.8 into 67.9.
CHR. INABA: Sure. Vice Chair Onishi.
Motion to Amend: Mr. Onishi moved to amend Res. 46-25 with the contents
of Comm. 67.9. Seconded by Ms. Kierkiewicz.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
CHR. INABA: At this time, we'll hand it over to the Administrator to cover the
changes being proposed by OHCD (Office of Housing and Community
Development) in this communication. Administrator Costa.
MS. COSTA: So, primarily, the amendments to this resolution are around
Exhibit A, the Year 3 award list. And I just want to clarify that the revisions to
the award list are not revisions of the selected awardees but just the overall award
amount. These revisions reflect OHCD's work to present final budgets in line
with the County grant-making requirements with regards to administrative
expenses and program expenses. So we've done a considerable amount of work
with our organizations since our last convening at the last Council meeting around
some of those questions. So you'll see the reflected changes in those award
amounts in Exhibit A.
Also in the communication, we've provided pretty detailed budgets for each of
the organizations, and I understand there will still be questions around the budget
and the award amounts. We're here to answer those questions but hoping for
approval of this resolution of these amendments in their entirety.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Administrator, and I want to point Council Members
also to Communication 67.10. This communication shows the changes being
proposed between the resolution, current draft, and if we approve the amendment
via 67.9. Are there any questions? Council Member Kierkiewicz.
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you, Chair. Administrator, Deputy, great to see you
both. Thank you for being here. At a very high level, you explained that there
were some administrative discrepancies for one of the grant applicants. There
was a change of about almost$300,000 in what they were going to receive and
are now receiving. So I wondered if you could provide a bit more detail around, I
don't know if deficiency is the right word, but what sort of activities did you find
that could not be funded through the grant application, and what are opportunities
to further educate our nonprofit partners so we're not making these mistakes
going forward.
MS. COSTA: Do you want to mention who the award is that you're referring to,
and I think I know, but I just want to be clear.
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Yes, that's Men of Pa`a, but I'm also curiousI mean,
there were discrepancies, changes here, for some of Hope Services' contracts,
Neighborhood Place of Puna, Salvation Army. Just trying to get a better sense of
what the administrative errors are.
MS. COSTA: So, for Men of Pa`a's original proposal, they were looking to
acquire housing; so, purchase. And that is not an eligible expense, so their award
was addressed to lease housing, which many of our organizations do. Master
lease over a residential facility to provide housing for their programs. So that's
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
the considerable expense in that particular budget. It doesn't change the scope of
their programming. Actually, may be able to expand some of the beneficiaries
that they will have in their program. But that was a deficiency on our part in not
addressing that right in the beginning as part of the prescreening. And so we were
able to address it as we were moving along. We were in conversation with them
about this right from the start, after the awards, after the program selection. So
that's what you're seeing in that particular one.
Otherwise, we worked with Finance and Corp. Counsel to really look at what
some of the real clear administrative expenses are that were definitely not
program expenses, like some training that involve travel for staff to attend
trainings not on this island, some insurance costs, some audit expenses that were
included in the program budget or the program expenses. It was a lot of
conversation though that's challenging with the particular intention of this
funding is to provide housing, direct housing, as much as possible. So a lot of
discussion around utilities, rents because many of our organizations are providing
direct housing to otherwise homeless individuals.
I'm going to point out Bridge House, for example. It's six clean and sober living
housing residences. Utilities, if that is considered an administrative overhead
cost, they could not run the programs that we're awarding without insurance,
utilities, and the lease for the facility. So a lot of discussion about how some of
those—what would look like overhead and administrative expenses for some of
the programs that are providing direct housing, those are actual program expenses
to the best of our interpretation. And we worked really hard to differentiate out
program leases, program utilities, program facility expenses with the
administrative office expense. So, running of the organization. It was a lot of
work.
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: I can imagine. Thank you for going through all of this
with a fine-tooth comb. I'm just going to express my support for wanting to have
administrative rules related to HHF (Homelessness and Housing Fund). I know
that we have it for the Affordable Housing Production Program. But I think it's
really important for there to be clarity in community so they can write the best
possible application, and we're not having to deal with this again. So thank you.
I'm going to be supporting the amendment. And then there is a balance of about
$361,000. Are you looking to go down your list of applicants to see if that money
can go back out into the community and support more nonprofit work?
MS. COSTA: Not at this time only because I also don't know the mechanism of
doing that at this point here with the awards that we have. And in fairness to the
organization that would receive the funding, we haven't had that discussion
because that would depend on today's outcome.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Okay. Thank you for your honesty. I know we're at the
I Ph hour trying to get this money out the door so folks can continue their critical
services. Thank you for being here. I yield.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Hustace.
MR. HUSTACE: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Administrator, Deputy
Administrator. I appreciate your time here today. I echo the thoughts of my
colleague Council Member Kierkiewicz on those numbers. So thank you for
clarifying that.
The changes, though, could have potentially funded another program, right? I
mean, that's a concern I have. Looking at Exhibit H, there were a couple
programs that potentially could have received that funding instead. So that
change is concerning to me in that sort of scale, that it could have been applied to
something else in particular. So I'm interested in knowing, do those dollars go
back into the fund itself, because I don't think they can be applied. The RFPs
(request for proposals) have already gone out. We've already gone through the
process, as you've stated. So it may have to be applied to the next cycle. Or can
it?
MS. COSTA: It cannot be applied to the next cycle. This is General Funds. Just
to clarify that the next organization that would be able to receive these funds
was because this was ranked and rated by the selection panel, and the award list
that you're seeing is not by rank order. You're listing them in alpha order.
MR. HUSTACE: Right. It's alphabetical. Sure.
MS. COSTA: So one of these organizations was partially funded because we ran
out of funding. So the next organization down would be an existing organization
that's on this list that is being partially awarded at this time.
MR. HUSTACE: Okay. It's just that the last minute change is kind of
astonishing to me, to be like, okay, this could have funded the other half or
another program entirely. Yeah.
MS. COSTA: Absolutely. Moving forward, we're between two processes. Our
RFP was put out also just right before the Code changed with the 10 percent
administrative cap. So our RFP actually said 15 percent administrative cap. And
we worked with the organizations that were selected to meet the 10 percent
administrative cap, and then we met with them additionally to really clarify after
having better definitions of what administrative expenses are. There really isn't a
real easy resource for these organizations to go to. And that is the work of OHCD
in the next cycle to make sure it is absolutely clear what is a program expense and
what is an administrative expense, because this has been painful for the
organizations and for our staff as well. And I do not want to see it repeated.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. HUSTACE: Okay. I appreciate the work you've done, and I appreciate all
the work that our community partners do. So I'm in full support of this. And the
only thing I'll end on is, I stated it before, this is an in-ordinance. It's a five-year
plan. It's a five-year budgeted sort of cycle. Either we need to help prepare our
community organizations for the next phase if this terms out, if this body wants to
see an end of it or wants to extend it, whatever. I don't know what's going to
happen, but that's a conversation we're going to have to have. So we need to help
prepare them to take that leap and work with them, because they're taking a lot
off the County's shoulders in the work that they do in the community. So I really
value the work that they're doing. So thank you for your leadership here.
Mahalo. Thanks, Chair.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. And then just reminding everyone we're on the
amendment right now. Council Member Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you for your work on the
amendment. Appreciate it.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Kagiwada and then we'll check in with Kona.
MS. KAGIWADA: I just want to go back to the, because I want to understand
this a little more, the question of Men of Pa`a and the master leases. So they had
in there originally that they wanted to do a master lease? Is that what it was?
MS. COSTA: The original proposal was to acquire housing. So purchase of
housing, which is not an eligible expense.
MS. KAGIWADA: I see. And then now they changed it to master lease.
MS. COSTA: But master leasing is, and that was our advisement for them to
continue their program.
MS. KAGIWADA: I see. Okay. And when they went to master leases,
obviously it's less expensive than building a building.
MS. COSTA: Yes.
MS. KAGIWADA: Okay, got it. Thank you so much. But master leases are
allowed, so yes, because that seems like it's a very critical component for
(inaudible).
MS. COSTA: It is a critical component. And actually in our budget detail that
we provided for you, it's color-coded. So the programs that are providing direct
residential housing through master lease programsoh, yours is black and white.
Our is in color. But it's on the top. We did try to highlight for you,just as you're
looking through those budgets, that some of these are providing direct housing.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. KAGIWADA: Okay, great. I also appreciated, it wasn't in this packet, it
was the other packet I think, where you had shown when they're bringing in other
money, especially like Federal, State, private money, for the program. I think
that's really helpful to look at. And I think we want to—for the smaller programs,
it makes sense if they don't have a lot there. But for some of the larger programs,
I think we want to see if we can encourage them toI think Council Member
Onishi mentioned this before, to not just be a hundred percent reliant upon County
funds, but to be looking at what are some other potential funding sources to kind
of braid together to make this a really strong program. So I do appreciate having
that additional information. Thank you.
I don't have any other questions, but I support this amendment, given everything
we had to go through, everything you had to go through. I didn't have to go
through anything except for this extra meeting. But, yes, thank you and to your
staff and everybody, and all the organizations who I know it was really painful. I
could feel it coming from the community and appreciate some understanding
there that it's kind of a necessary, painful process we had to go through in looking
forward to discussing what the potential changes are going forward. All right,
thank you. I yield.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. Checking over in Kona. Council Member Villegas,
anything at this time on the amendment?
MS. VILLEGAS: Yes,please.
CHR. INABA: All right, go ahead.
MS. VILLEGAS: I want to thank Administrator Costa and your team for digging
in, leaning in. You guys really stepped up, thank you, at a time when we needed
to really look at each of the I's and the T's and each of the numbers. I will be
supporting this amendment. Going back to one of the questions from Council
Member Hustace related to working with Men of Pa`a to transition their request
from a purchase to a leasing agreement, I suppose I'm wondering why and how or
was that kind of assistance provided for the other applicants who weren't selected.
MS. COSTA: So, you're asking about the program selection.
MS. VILLEGAS: Yeah, and my brain immediately goes to, okay, this is what
you inherited as your list. Right? So, working with them when you're digging
down and identifying issues, which I'm very, very grateful for. I've just heard
from some of the members in the community.
MS. COSTA: If I understand your question correctly, the program evaluation and
the scoring rubric for program evaluations were based on metrics and outcomes.
And so, whether this particular program leases a property or outright owns a
property, that was not what weighted the program evaluation for this particular
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
program. It was really their metrics and outcomes and their program proposal.
So, it would not change the outcomes, and it was just a different mechanism by
which they could fulfill that. Their scoring was indicative of the program and not
whether the housing was owned or leased.
MS. VILLEGAS: Gotcha. So then I'm curious. What are the requirements or
expectations as far as funding and then actual outcomes? Is there ?
CHR. INABA: Council Member Villegas, I want to make sure that we're able to
take up the amendment and then we can have general discussion. If you are pau
with the amendment then we can take that vote and at least clear that and we'll be
discussing the new amounts. Are you okay with that?
MS. VILLEGAS: Yeah. And I have a number of amendments that are currently
in process as well. So, thank you, Administrator Costa and your team, for all the
heavy lifting that it took to bring this and to make these amendments and I will be
supporting it.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Council Member Villegas. Vice Chair Onishi and
then Council Member Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder.
MR. ONISHL Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon. I have just maybe three
questions. First one is, each nonprofit is charging this administrative cost, right,
but also they're including like their salaries. So basically, the administrative cost
is within that organization, right? I mean, they're not outsourcing someone else
to take care of the administrative costs, correct?
MS. COSTA: The administrative costs are within the organization.
MR. ONISHL Yeah. And so, if we're providing the salaries, why would we need
to give them for the administrative costs, because they're going to be doing in-
house anyway, using the same staff. Correct?
MS. COSTA: So, administrative costs are the costs to run the organization, the
overall operations, and not the particular program.
MR. ONISHL Yeah. Because, you know, like in the first one that you folks gave
us for Lokahi, they had no administrative costs and then now they have $18,000.
So, what happened?
MS. COSTA: So, that was moving costs that they had under program operations;
program operational costs that, under advisement from our Finance Department,
those are actually administrative costs. So for example, bookkeeping; an
organization may say the bookkeeping is a direct program cost because they need
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
to do bookkeeping to keep the program running. That's actually administrative
cost, so we moved it to the administrative line. So they moved it to the line that it
should be appropriately under, but it did not change the total award amount.
MR. ONISHL Well, what I don't get is that if we're paying for staffing already to
do the work, then why are we giving them extra money?
MS. COSTA: It's allowed in the Code.
MR. ONISHL I know. Okay.
MS. COSTA: So, it's allowed in the Code.
MR. ONISHL Okay. So, we might have to change that. And then back to Men
of Pa`a. Okay, so the salary now with this amendment is $138,000-plus. Prior,
when we had the first printout, it was $174,000. So why is it less now? Because,
you're talking about the rental purchasing of the space, right, which was like, the
original was $480,000 I think it was, and then it went down to $120,000. Okay so
that's part of why there was a difference in balance, right. But then also in the
salaries, it went down. Are they reducing their staff?
MS. COSTA: That would be a good question or a better question for Men of Pa`a
to be able to answer about their salaries. I don't want to speak about their
program because I don't have that kind of direct knowledge of their program. So,
it would be a better question for them to answer.
MR. ONISHL Okay. Then my next question is, okay, as Housing, you folks
which monitor all this money, you don't have like an audit kind of a system where
you folks are going to evaluate each application, making sure where all the money
is going, right? You guys do? So then you would be able to answer that question
then.
MS. COSTA: So, this is a new program. They have not been awarded prior.
This would be a Year 3 program. Another aspect of this isin the past, not this
year but in the past, we have finalized budgets after coming to Council when we
sit with contracts. So, this is a new program, so I can't speak to their program.
They're new awardees. Moving forward, we do audit monthly reimbursement.
It's a reimbursement program so we audit monthly, quarterly, and final reports.
MR. ONISHL Okay. Well, I would think that ought to have been done prior. So
like when they first applied for these grants, they would kind of list all their
expenses, right. So, for example, I was talking to one of the nonprofits recently;
their salaries was at$300,000-something for 11 employees, and now it went down
to 7 employees. So I kind of questioned that like, okay, you know, at the time of
the request you had 11 employees and then now it went down to 7 but then the
salaries are still the same, the amount. So, that's where, you know, I think if
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
Housing can be much more, what they call that, like fine-tuning things or, like
they said, combing your hair like every strand and stuff. So, you can monitor it,
then that way you folks can maybe award more nonprofits, right, because of, I
guess, the over-requesting, right. You have a comment on that?
MS. COSTA: Absolutely agree. And I thank you for your comments and just
holding us accountable and just looking towards advisement in the future as we're
all, through the County grant-making process with Waiwai and the other grants,
trying to standardize some of the ways that we communicate out to our nonprofits,
have the proposals come in, define and report.
MR. ONISHL Right. Okay. Thank you. Right now I'll yield, Chair.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Vice Chair Onishi. Council Member Kaneali`i-
Kleinfelder.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you. I'm just going to make a
general statement for the amendment. I know you put work into it. In reviewing
the different applications, I don't think you went far enough, honestly. So, when
we get into the next portion of the hearing, I'm going to dig in a little, but I just
wanted to say that for you folks so you're ready. Thank you.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. Further discussion on the amendment? All right,
seeing none, all those in favor of amending Resolution 46-25 with the contents of
Communication 67.9,please say "aye."
Vote on Motion to The motion to amend Res. 46-25 with the contents of
Amend: Comm. 67.9 was carried by the following voice vote:
(Approved)
Ayes: Council Members Galimba, Hustace, Kagiwada,
Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, Kierkiewicz, Kimball,
Onishi, Villegas, and Chair Inaba—9.
Noes: None.
Absent: None.
Excused: None.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
Vote on Motion to Ms. Kierkiewicz moved to suspend Council Rule 23 to
Suspend Council waive the holdover for the substantive amendment of
Rules: Res. 46-25. Seconded by Mr. Onishi and carried by the
(Approved) following voice vote:
Ayes: Council Members Galimba, Hustace, Kagiwada,
Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, Kierkiewicz, Kimball,
Onishi, Villegas, and Chair Inaba—9.
Noes: None.
Absent: None.
Excused: None.
CHR. INABA: Vice Chair Onishi and then we'll head over to Kona.
MR. ONISHL Okay. I had one question. So that leftover money that we have
now, I remember the first time we met at Committee, you mentioned about
families that are living in their cars, and I mentioned about how if we could get a
percentage of this money that's being allocated to help Housing in getting those
people into rental assistance and so forth. So, my question to you guys, and this
might be to Corporation Counsel, this leftover funding, is it possible to have
Housing use this as rental assistance for those that are in these situations?
Corporation Counsel.
(Note: At this time, Corporation Counsel Renee Schoen came forward to
address the members of the Council.)
MS. SCHOEN: Good afternoon. Renee Schoen, Corporation Counsel. It's my
understanding that there is no limitation as long as the funding is used for the
purposes of that particular
MR. ONISHL Housing or homelessness.
MS. SCHOEN: Homelessness. Yes.
MR. ONISHL Okay. So by having this rental assistance being run by County
Housing, it could be done to help subsidize rental assistance to those that are
living in their cars?
MS. SCHOEN: I would say so, yes, if it meets that definition.
MR. ONISHL So, now to Housing, are you folks willing to do that with this
balance?
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. COSTA: I think I'd have to take that into consideration and understand a
little bit more about what can and can't be done with the RPF that has been put
out and where we allocate the funds. But I know that is important to you and
you've brought it up before.
MR. ONISHL Right.
MS. COSTA: I know that's important to you.
MR. ONISHL Yeah, and like I mentioned before,back when I was on the
Council, this was an issue. And I mentioned that I tried to see where we could
have a safe place for them to park and have some, you know, those entities to help
them, right. But it was never done. So, something to look at, I mean, if can
because we all know that there are families out there, especially with children,
and they're living in their cars day to day, and then they have to go to school. It's
really hard. It's a burden. So now, to me, since we have this extra money, this
leftover money, maybe that's what we should be looking at because we know,
guarantee coming from you folks, it's going to go directly for services and it's
going to be part of this plan that you folks have to help curb housing and
homelessness, right. So, that would be great. Thank you. I yield.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Vice Chair Onishi. Further discussion here in Hilo?
Council Member Kimball.
MS. KIMBALL: Yeah, thank you. Thank you guys for being here. Actually, I'd
like to ask our Finance Director to come up and maybe expand upon a couple of
questions that have been asked about now that this amendment has been adopted,
we have roughly $361,000 that was previously allocated that is not. From what
Administrator said, this is going to just go back to General Fund. Are there
opportunities for us before the end of this fiscal year to actually identify another
program? I understand the legal requirements, procurement requirements, of
having issued an RFP, but now we're in this unusual situation of having this
money that this body intended to help with the houelessness program. Is there a
mechanism that's going to meet the procurement requirements? Thank you,
Director.
(Note: At this time, Finance Director Diane Nakagawa came forward to
address the members of the Council.)
MS. NAKAGAWA: Of course. Good afternoon, Council Members.
Diane Nakagawa, Finance. One thing that I do want to clarify before we move
forward is that this is a grant process that utilized an RFP structure, but this is not
a procurement method in which this is 103D exempt as a grant. So, you know,
the department chose to do an RFP application structure, which is great. It
provides for transparency and competition in process. But I just want us to be
clear that this is a little different than normal RFP procurement. So when we talk
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
about process that needs to be followed, this process is different. This is a grant
process that we follow. That's why we're here today before Council, following
the rules in Code under granting an award. So,just wanted to make that
clarification.
But these funds, of course, can be used this fiscal year; as Corporation Counsel
mentioned, as long as it's within the purpose established in Code for these funds.
So, they can be repurposed as Housing sees fit to do that.
MS. KIMBALL: Okay. So,just verifying in very simple terms; can be
repurposed without an additional RFP process.
MS. NAKAGAWA: Correct.
MS. KIMBALL: Okay. Very good. I wanted to just askI see we have Auditor
Benner here. Thank you, Director. I wanted to ask there were some pretty
broad-ranging allegations made earlier today. I'm wondering, have you had any
verified complaints through our fraud, waste, and abuse hotline with respect to
any of the housing on homeless funds programs?
(Note: At this time, County Auditor Tyler Benner came forward to
address the members of the Council.)
MR. BENNER: Good afternoon, Council Members. Tyler Benner, Office of the
County Auditor. Just the complaint that was put forward and there were several
testifiers today. But that complaint was put forth to our office. There have been
concerns by employees in the County without tangible evidence to support it, but
regarding more the structure and also related to the issue.
MS. KIMBALL: Without going into details or specifics, is your office currently
undergoing any investigations with respect to these funds?
MR. BENNER: We've reached out to the Director to have an initial meeting.
MS. KIMBALL: Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you, Auditor Benner. My
other colleagues may have additional questions so don't go too far. But
Administrator, do you have awareness of the resolution that was passed I want to
say two years ago, something Council Member Lee Loy introduced along with me
about some metrics that we wanted reported on an annual basis in terms of these
funds to kind of determine return on investment on this program?
MS. COSTA: I'm not familiar.
MS. KIMBALL: Okay.
MS. COSTA: But I am now.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. KIMBALL: We will get that to you. It was actually something that I think
we all agreed we want to make sure we're maximizing return on investment,
although this is not just dollars and cents, right. So, there was a list of metrics that
I want to actually mahalo Shelly (Ogata) from Sue's office because she was
largely instrumental in putting those together. So, it's not just how many housed,
but how many mental health issues were addressed, how many drug abuse issues
were addressed. And many of them are contained within the online report that is
available through the State. But there are other metrics that weren't included.
And so, it's all in a resolution, the intended metrics. It was supposed to be
presented to us annually around April. So basically, a year within a cycle.
MS. COSTA: So, I just want to double check because I am new in my position,
and I don't want to put our Assistant Administrator on the spot. But I just want to
check if those were—are they incorporated into the RFP as the metrics and—well,
we can double check. But I just want to be sure that I'm not saying, "No, we're
not aware." I'm not aware as the new Administrator, but I want to make sure that
I'm not saying that we aren't aware as an office and that they may have been
incorporated into the RFP and the reporting that's in the communication. So, let's
just continue that I don't want to put the department in a bad light just because
I'm not aware.
MS. KIMBALL: Yeah. Thank you. I can appreciate that you guys are
transitioning as well, and there probably are folks on your staff that are aware, and
I didn't necessarily see it. But I wanted to just follow up and make sure that, you
know, that's something we're going to be reconsidering this funding in a couple
of years. Understanding what the actual success rate is in terms of the programs
that we're supporting I think is really critical for us to be able to make that
decision effectively. And I will say, you know, I don't have the same level of
concerns perhaps as some of the testifiers, but I do have concerns about empire
building, if you will, you know, entity building around these funds as opposed to
it being directed to services. Because once we're building these entities, then you
have to continually feed the entity, right? And I'm not sure that we are set up in
the long term to provide that.
MS. COSTA: I really appreciate that, and I share that sentiment, not in the
empire building but in equity in helping small nonprofits and grassroot nonprofits
build capacity. Many years ago, I worked in a small nonprofit, and Hawaii
Community Foundation had planning and implementation grants. And so they set
aside money for organizations to really come forward with an idea and plan. So,
there was a cap, $50,000, $25,000, or $15,000, to allow that organization to really
come up with a solid plan. And if they had gone through the planning process,
then they were invited to apply for an implementation grant. And I personally
benefitted from a planning and implementation grant when I was a nonprofit
executive. I think that's something that could be looked at for the future because I
really hear the testimony of some of our small grassroots organizations that have
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
great ideas, and they're doing great work in the community. They want an
opportunity, and we need to help them build that capacity. So, I just wanted to
speak to that.
MS. KIMBALL: That's a brilliant idea and I'm glad you're bringing that up.
Breaking out this grant into supporting innovation or new development,planning,
supporting actual institutional action and supporting institutional growth maybe is
three, maybe there's more, but breaking it up so we're not comparing apples to
oranges. To some extent, I think that's what we're doing right now.
MS. COSTA: Yes.
MS. KIMBALL: And I will say in response to like some of the smaller, newer
organizations that the Council is—we're not venture capitalists either. It
behooves us to support organizations and agencies that have a track record and
history, but at the same time there are Waiwai grant programs, CRFs
(Contingency Relief Funds) through the office, other places, innovation grants
through R&D that could be utilized for these newer programs. But I think I really
like this idea. Look forward to maybe talking with you about it further, maybe
breaking up these housing grants into specific types, then we're not—it's kind of
muddy right now. But yeah, good suggestion. Thank you. I yield, Chair.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. Further discussion?
MS. VILLEGAS: I have a few questions in Kona.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Villegas.
MS. VILLEGAS: Yes. First off, I want to thank you for this
Communication 67.8 and providing us more detailed information about each of
the awardees and the contracts. From an industry standard, which unfortunately,
serving the unhoused has become kind of an industry, is there an industry norm
for the amount of money that is allocated to a program that would go to things
related to, whether or not that's administrative costs, salaries, payroll taxes, fringe
benefits, I see those as being kind of the finances in a program that go to the
people running the program. Is there an industry norm?
MS. COSTA: I don't feel that I can answer that question. I don't have enough
information. There may be an industry norm, but it's not something that I'm
prepared to answer to today.
MS. VILLEGAS: Gotcha. No worries.
MS. COSTA: Sorry.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. VILLEGAS: No, no, no. No worries. That's okay. Because I spent some
time going through each and every one of these programs and I see everything,
when I included in the numbers I ran administrative cost, which is at a 10 percent
cap, then the salaries, and then payroll taxes and assessments, and fringe benefits.
And when I did the percentages on all of that, I mean, I'm looking at one
program, the Hale Maluhia Shelter, and 71 percent of the program funds are being
allocated to pay the people running the program. I did it for every single
program. And the least amount of money allocated, according to these
percentages, to pay the people running the program is with Men of Pa`a at
33 percent. The highest percentage is Neighborhood Place of Puna, their Ohana
Homelessness Prevention and Support Program; 90 percent of$685,449 is to pay
the people running the program.
The next is Neighborhood Place of Puna Coordination Center; 87.8 percent of the
$794,289 goes to pay the people running the programs. The homeless
engagement team, also 90 percent of the $1.215 million goes to pay the people
running these programs. Anchor Point Youth Program, based on what they put
together, 82 percent of the $387,455 is budgeted to pay the people running the
program. I find this incredibly concerning. While I do agree, I mean, this is hard
work. I have worked in social services. It is hard work; it is gut wrenching. It
takes a toll. But to create programs to pay yourself, this money is to put roofs
over people's heads. This money is to help get people off our streets. I tend to be
very value-driven; I speak about a lot. But sitting here running through these
numbers—mind you, Housing Administrator Costa, this is not directed at you and
your recent taking over of the department. This is pointing out a systemic issue in
how much money is being spent without effective results.
On my drive here this morning, there was a gentlemen sitting in the bus stop in
the pouring rain with his dog and a shopping cart, huddled over. It's cold and
he's covered in a garbage bad, and it broke my heart because we're putting out
millions of dollars, millions, for outreach. But instead, people are driving around
in 4-Runners, and salaries are going up and new programs are being created. And
those that are actually serving don't have the funding, don't have the capacity. I
just ask my Council Members to take a moment to let those numbers resonate
with you; the percentages that go to salaries and benefits. It's inappropriate.
And I have a number of amendments that there have been—can I call Jon
forward? Can you clarify they're beingI'm at a disadvantage being in Kona
today and I apologize. But due to the weather and some other circumstances,
being in Hilo today was not possible for me. But I have some questions on the
current status of those amendments and some conflicting opinions about whether
or not they could move forward in the form that they were in, because the
numbers changed based on our prior passage of an amendment. Is that a question
you can answer for me, Jon?
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. HENRICKS: Sure. I'll do my best. So, I'm seeing your amendments and
they're simple in the sense that they just essentially eliminate there's six
different ones that eliminate awards entirely. But that being said, the Draft 2 right
now includes a total of—it doesn't matter what the total is, but it has a total figure
that is based upon 15 awards. So, each of these amendments, it doesn't align now
with what's on the floor. I think that's somewhat problematic. It's not my
decision to make. It's up to the Council if it—it just doesn't add up.
For instance, we have a total now of$10,138,509.48 as the total grant award
based upon what was just approved by the Council as an amendment. Your first
proposal would eliminate a program and then take out that entire amount. And
that new total that's included, that would be included in the body of the resolution
and the enacting clause, it's not accurate for what that number would be if you
folded it into what was just amended by the Council. So the numbers don't add
up.
MS. VILLEGAS: I get that. Right. When we go through budget amendments
and whatnot, because things are moving that has been the norm—and in
working with LRB (Legislative Research Branch), we were told that it would be
okay because if all six amendments would pass, all those numbers would continue
to change, right. So, it's after the passage of the amendments, or not passage of
amendments, that official documents come together and the totals then get
corrected or that the numbers match perfectly.
MR. HENRICKS: If that is the will of the Council to accept that the figures will
not be accurate and that there will have to be math done afterwards, that's the will
of the Council. But these numbers will not be accurate after each amendment.
MS. VILLEGAS: It wouldn't be possible for the numbers to be accurate.
MR. HENRICKS: It's not entirely analogous to the budget amendment situation.
It's a little bit different because you have a resolution that includes the total dollar
figure in the body that is also being changed, updated, based upon the change in
the award amounts. But that's up for the Council to decide if it will entertain
those amendments.
MS. VILLEGAS: Then I have a quick question, Jon. Would it even be possible
to make those dollar amounts correct?
MR. HENRICKS: Yes. You would have to just basically propose your
amendments one after the other based upon if one passed, now you have your new
numbers; you draft another amendment based upon those new numbers and if that
one passes, then you continue to go down that process to be entirely accurate.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. VILLEGAS: But if one didn't pass and one did passso, essentially, LRB
would have to sit there and, based on the vote of each amendment, amend the next
amendment to reflect the numbers of whether or not the prior amendment passed
or didn't pass. Am I understanding that?
MR. HENRICKS: If we were doing things entirely according to, yes, proper
procedure for these circumstances, yes. It's time-consuming but that's the proper
way to do it.
CHR. INABA: So, Council Member Villegas, I think if you do intend to
introduce all of those amendments, it might be best to look at our current numbers
and then group all of those amendments together as one, and we could get the
accurate numbers one time. And it would be based on what we have before us
right now, which is the amended numbers.
MS. VILLEGAS: It is based on that. It was based on that. The numbers in each
amendment is based on that.
CHR. INABA: They're based on the original number, not the amended number.
MS. VILLEGAS: Okay. I would like to ask for a recess here because I'm being
told too many different things. And I would like, without putting undue burden
on LRB, to take a moment and pause because we had them ready to go. They've
been worked on all morning and now being told it needs to go in a different
direction and, you know, for the sake of everybody that's here, if we could
CHR. INABA: Understood. How much time do you need?
MS. VILLEGAS: I'd like to ask for a half hour.
MS. KAGIWADA: Could we please finish the discussion on the table and then
do the break?
CHR. INABA: We're going to just continue discussion for now because we have
more thoughts on the main motion. Council Member Villegas, feel free to go and
make your calls as we discuss further.
MS. VILLEGAS: Okay. Thank you.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Kagiwada.
MS. KAGIWADA: Thank you, Chair. So, I just want to be really clear because I
come out of education, nonprofits, and service-oriented work. And when we look
at things like childcare programs or something, which are—if I see a 90 percent
going to salaries, I consider that a good program. If I see 60 percent going to
salaries and 40 percent going to something else, that's not a good program in my
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
mind. You would have to work very hard to convince me because it's a service-
oriented program and it needs to have people. That's the core of the program.
So, you know,putting money towards the people that are doing the work every
day on the streets, working with people, that is actually really good to have a high
number.
I realize we have different kinds of programs within this group, like some are
providing housing; some are providing—and in the past we've had things like
providing a ticket to somewhere. You know, these are very different programs,
and to compare them by looking at the budgets and saying how much is towards
staff salaries I think is really not comparing apples to apples. Service
organizations, service work should be a very high percentage of their budget for
salaries. I have other things to say but I'm going to just leave that there in case
anybody else wants to jump in.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. Vice Chair Onishi.
MR. ONISHL Thank you, Chair. I get what you're saying, but I'm the opposite.
Okay. Because if we look at what the plan was, it was to help. And I did talk to
former Council Member Aaron Chung, who was the author of this ordinance. He
told me that I guess back then he had either heard from Administration or from
the nonprofits saying that if they get the funding, they can end homelessness.
Okay. And so that's why he did what he did and tried to get that money to give to
the nonprofits and say, okay, we'll give you the money, you can do the work and
end it then. Okay. But then as it went on, you know, things happen.
But I guess in these documents, it states about what the priorities are, and one of
them is about providing housing. So, I don't think no matter how much
employees you have and the amount of salaries you're paying, the bottom line is
how many families or individuals are you putting into homes. That's what we
need to see. That's the kind of numbers we need to see the percentage. Like, out
of maybe a million dollars, 75 percent of the money is going towards housing to
keep these people in homes and not on the street. So, that's where I've got to
disagree sometimes about the funding, about the percentage of salaries and
services.
I had a meeting the other day with Dr. Hannah. And as Ms. Kagiwada had
mentioned before, I talked about having this money to start up to get them to
being sustainable. So, she mentioned to me, with their detox program, they're
going through a process where they need to have to show two to three years of
operations. And from there, they can qualify for Federal funds through the
insurance companies. Then they won't have to come back to us to use this money
already. But as I look at other nonprofits, it looks like we're going to be funding
them for the next couple more years. And then, we might get pressured to extend
this program, right. And so, I cannot support that.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
We need to reevaluate. And if we can have more programs like BISAC (Big
Island Substance Abuse Council) and having them looking out at where they can
get that steady income or getting to these programs with the Federal government
and the insurance companies to get reimbursed, right, and we start—and, Chair,
give me some leeway. It's like when I started the fire ant crew with Parks and
Rec (Recreation). I went to the Hawaii Invasive Species Council, and I told them
we need funding for one year, right. We needed staffing. We needed equipment.
We needed supplies and so forth. And I told them "You're not going to see me
back again because I got the guarantee from the Mayor that we're going to get
this money from now on." And we did it. So, we had the startup money. We
created the crew. And then from now till today, the County is paying for that, and
they're servicing island-wide of the fire ants, right.
But it's just that that's how I look at it. And that's how I think these funds,
talking to former Council Member Aaron Chung, was to be like that, and not
something ongoing. And that's where I hope, Housing, you folks can be the ones
that can remind the nonprofits or evaluate each program and make sure that they
have an end, right. Because then, if not, we're going to see the same
organizations over and over. But thank you, Mr. Chair.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Vice Chair Onishi. Council Member Kaneali`i-
Kleinfelder.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you, Chair. Okay, I have questions.
So, I look at this as government subsidization of services. We're taxing, we're
taking taxes, and we're applying it to service providers for a result. A while
backI'm going to put you on the spot, Mr. Benner. You don't have to come up.
But Mr. Benner said you guys hear a lot of stuff all the time about all the
problems we have, but rarely ever does anyone ever come in and say, "We have a
solution." That's a problem. We hear problem, problem, problem, throw money,
throw money, throw money. But the solution is the real key to the victory.
So, if I drove around Hilo or Kona right now, or Puna, and I said we've thrown
how many years of funding at homelessness—how many years now? Two years.
Twenty million? Less? How much? Okay, $16 million that's no small
amount$16 million of homeless-, housing-based services, and I drove around
Hilo today and I said, what have we accomplished, what is the solution, and what
is the effect? I don't know that I can spot the difference. I look at Safeway; I've
got somebody standing there every day, day in, day out: Homeless, need help,
need money. At the corner of Walmart, same thing.
The other day I drove around Hilo, and I was blowing my mind because
everybody had Little Ceasars boxes in their hands. And I was trying to figure out,
"Maybe Little Ceasars is having a sale." They weren't. It was coming from a
service provider who was handing out pizza to everybody who was coming to
collect a pizza that day. And I was surprised because we all need a little bit of
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
help in our lives, but if we're handing out pizzas to every single person who
comes to the front door, there's obviously a lot of money to expend because this
isn't a basic service now. This is like we're going almost luxury, in my mind.
So, back to subsidization of services by the County. Are we getting the bang for
our buck? Are we getting the results that we want? And I really do question that,
just given my more common sense approach to looking around at what we still
have, and what we started. Have we gone to the Police Department and Fire
Department and asked if we've seen a reduction in calls for services for homeless-
related incidents since we've started and implemented this funding? Do we
know? Yeah. I asked them earlier; I didn't get a response yet. I'm going to think
it's a no, but I don't know. These are the kinds of things we need to be looking at
to see if we're actually effecting a change that we want to see. What I remember
this bill starting as was "put money towards homelessness to let providers help
fix the problem." It changed to housing and homelessness, and I hear from a lot
of folks that was key to enabling both services in housing for those coming out of
bad situations or experiencing homelessness. Great. It's got to be a healthy
balance.
In review of these applications in front of me today, I am really questioning the
usage of administrative costs versus programmatic costs. I see 401K plans. I'm a
businessperson. So when I see FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act),
FUTA (Federal Unemployment Tact Act), medical, work comp (workers'
compensation), unemployment, TDI (Temporary Disability Insurance), salaries
taken out of administrative costs and put in programmatic costs, and I hear the
concerns of other Council Members, but I do wonder if we've begun to blend
administrative function and programmatic function.
I see other ones come in with administrative costs completely separate and then
lump in other costs for administrative fees. There's a problem there because these
are all the same applications all being reviewed by the same team, all putting
forward different information. But the administrative costs, to me, are very
muddled, and that bugs me because we have rules. And if we're not allowing
more than 10 percent administratively to be used by the different agencies to
effect a program but they're blending, then we're not getting the programmatic
bang that we want in our community. I would love to fund my business with
County dollars. That would be amazing. I could pay for my employees, for their
costs, for their salaries, for all the taxes I have to pay. That would be absolutely
amazing. But we're not part of this group.
So, I am going to yield because it's the end of my buzzer. I really want to make
sure, by the end of this hearing, that the programmatic service side is what we are
funding and that the administrative costs are being detailed and is clean in our
review, because it has to be if we want the bang we want in our community. It's
what the community's asking for, and I really do have a lot of concerns. Do you
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
have any comments about that just from your—and I appreciate you're stepping
in off a new Administration, but do you have any comments just before I yield?
MS. MERCADO: Sorry, I just have one comment. Just in thinking about the
data that we're collecting, we've been talking about in-house for a while now,
right, understanding this inflow into homelessness. So, we hear comments all the
time that we're not seeing a difference. And we're measuring outcomes relative
to the grantees of this fund, but what we don't have a clear picture of is inflow,
right. So, we can be housing 50 people a day, but if 75 are coming into
homelessness, we're not going to see a difference. So, that's something that
we've been talking about in-house, right, is how do we track both sides of the data
so we have a clear, accurate picture of what's happening.
MS. COSTA: And then in regard to just having real clarity around breaking out
what is an administrative cost and a programmatic cost, I am looking to
Department of Finance to help with that. I'm looking to you folks in our County
Code grant making. Our nonprofits are looking to that. They want to report
appropriately also. They want to put forward the best budget based on what we're
asking them to put forward, and we've been talking with them all week about this.
They want to do what's right. We need to give them the right guidance.
So payroll, if you're hiring one full-time equivalent staff person to run a program,
there's going to be fringe in there. If you want that broken out and the fringe is
not included, we need to know that. And we have not given our nonprofits that
real clear line of what to put in their program budget and what is administrative
cost. There's interpretation and there is some—we need that clarity also. And
we've been in discussion with Finance and Corp. Counsel about it, and we're
trying our best also. So, moving forward, yes, I'd like to see that. Today, we're
giving you the best budgets that we can with as much clarity around the budgets
as we can for your decision-making.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay, thank you. I yield, Chair. And come
back to me.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Hustace.
MR. HUSTACE: Thank you, Chair. I just want to push back a little bit. I don't
see it as a return on investment. I think there's measures we're looking for but
personally I don't see it as a return on investment. I'm looking for, you know,
effectiveness and efficiency, but I don't see them as businesses. These are
community nonprofits that—we have a unique relationship between the public
sector and nonprofits. They can tackle the challenges quicker than we can. So,
supporting them to really get the job done is really how I see it. I mean, we can't
do what they're doing right now at the rate we're kind of discussing these things
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
and trying to figure this out. So, it is a mechanism that we have to support
community efforts to find some solutions, and we have to work and build our
relationships. At least that's how I see it. So, thank you, Chair.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Council Member Hustace. Further discussion?
Council Member Villegas, are you in the Chambers? Okay. Council Member
Kagiwada.
MS. KAGIWADA: Just a quick—homelessness is a national problem across the
country. It's a problem that's taken decades in the making, and to think that in
two, three, or even five years we're going to solve this for our entire County is
naive at best. We are investing in this because we know it's what our community
needs. Yes, we need to keep making tweaks; yes, we need to keep doing better
with our rules and being clear and getting the best information we can and being
as fair as we can in making opportunities for all the kinds of programs that we
want to see succeed and help with this issue in our community. But I just don't
think we can look at this in the same way we would say, you know, something
with a very discreet problem that started a few years ago and we can fix it. I
mean, this is something that everybody's dealing with. I think we have some very
good innovative programs that are working well. Does it mean that we've gotten
everybody that's homeless into housing? No. It does not.
And we've made this a homelessness services fund for a reason. If it was strictly
about just putting people in homes without the support services that people really
need, a majority of the people that are helped by these services need, we could do
that. But it's not what we planned, and those people are unlikely to have success
staying there. Many of them would be unlikely to have success staying there
without the services portion of this work that's being done in our community. So,
I am definitely for us continuing to work and make things better. It sounds like
the OHCD has some great ideas and that the public has some great ideas that
they've added in, and we can go forward. But I want to be clear on my position,
which is I don't see the need for this ending in two years. I yield.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you. Okay. I'm not bashing you
guys because you've walked into this, and you've taken over. And to our
nonprofit providers, I'm not bashing you either. There is an expectation in the
community that we need to uphold as both government and nonprofit service
providers in effecting the changes that people want to see. Not me, but everyone
in the community.
Ms. Nakagawa, can you come up to the front? Hi, Director Nakagawa. Thank
you, Chair. Administrative costs. For this grant funding in particular, how do we
define; is there really no guidance for the different entities coming in to apply?
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. NAKAGAWA: Diane Nakagawa, Finance. Thank you, Council Member,
for the question. It is an area that we spent a significant amount of time on for
this application process. Admittedly, it is an area that we can do better. So,
there's a lot of lessons learned. And this is also an area—it's not new we've
talked about it I think in grants-in-aid as well on needing better definitions that
can help this process. The RFP document that was sent out provides some
information on definitions of what is an administrative cost and breaks that down
a little bit in the RFP.
So, in looking at best practice and how it's defined, it is similar to what we have
in our applications for the different grants that we administer. But these
administrative costs are those costs that are not directly programmatic cost. So
when we talk about salaries, and there is sometimes confusion, but these are areas
that we just need to dive deeper into and do our due diligence, which is what
OHCD has done in this process to find out really what these costs that the
applicants have identified mean.
So for example, in salaries under administrative cost, you can have some
overhead cost that there's a presidency or they touch many programs in the
organization, so a portion of the cost is administrative. And then there are those
salaries and wages that are for those individuals and employees who directly
provide the service, 100 percent service to the program itself. So, in various
places you'll look, there are some typical costs that are associated with
administrative cost where we talked about some of them today: utilities, auditing,
things like that. That's just the first step. We still have to have the information
on how those specific things apply to these programs because rent is normally an
administrative cost, rent of the space, right, it's a portion of the organization's
cost for their overhead. But when you're talking about the rent that is used for
these houses that the whole program is to have these houses that house people,
that's a little different. That's a programmatic cost. I think we all wish it was a
little easier, and that's something we'll get better at. But there is some standard
costs, and then the second step is really diving into these programs and
understanding how the organization is using the particular line item.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: I would like to see much clearer guidelines
for admin costs and programmatic costs going forward, and the reason being most
of these applications use about half of the funding that they're requesting, if not
more, for administrative fees in my opinion. And while that may be crucial to the
program, I believe the program itself should be the focus. And I know that may
sound confusing or even contradictory, but if the idea is to address something,
then address it. And paying for staff, medical, 4011 plans, that starts to edge out
of the way of what I think the County should be subsidizing to an area that that
entity. And for my information, a nonprofit has to register as a what first?
MS. NAKAGAWA: Sorry, I wasn't sure what you're asking. 501(c)(3).
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Do they have to be an LLC? You don't
have to start an LLC to become a 501(c)(3)? You just become a 501(c)(3);
there's no business association? Interesting. Okay. Either way. 501(c)(3)
corporation, correct? Corporation.
MS. NAKAGAWA: So we have to differentiate between sometimes definitions
of allowable cost and criteria for which we are asking the applicants to apply for,
and the criteria in which the County is looking for to score these applications,
right. So, sometimes the policy or the direction of what we want is guided by that
criteria that we put into these types of applications that they get scored on. So, I
just wanted to mention that's also an important area. It's just not on the
definitions of these allowable expenses, but clearly indicating what the programs
and services we are looking for and maybe more defined on what criteria that
comes with.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay. Going forward without seeing this
really broken down and really laid out, it gets harder and harder for me to say yes
to putting out$10 million a year. Because, $10 million can do some immense
project work in our County that we can apply in other areas. So, in asking us to
reup this program to extend it for further years, I need to know that we're getting
the impact that we want. And it's going to get harder and harder for me to say yes
if I don't start seeing the results. Understanding we're in two years;
understanding this is our third, but I want to see the results and I really need the
data to be able to drive that decision.
And my last point I want to make is we're not the only source of funding. There's
Federal, there's State, there's private money, there's County money. When I see
folks coming in for a contingency relief fund request from my office, they'll ask
for $15,000 from my office, not knowing they're asking for $15,000 from every
single Council Member. So, when I look at these programs, I'm wondering if this
is the wish-list ask or if this is the bare-bones ask. If we're granting full, then we
got the absolute full amount of funding that they're requesting. But they're also
getting funding from different sources. And I'm very cognizant of that, after six
years of sitting here, that the ask that I'm getting may be the same ask being given
across the board. And that's where I start to see doubling up of funding and
unnecessary funding, and that's where the questions start to arise. So,just
throwing that out there for you guys.
Director Nakagawa, can we please work, because as far as I can tell, your Finance
Director can enact rules within this section of the Code as far as how these funds
are spent, administrative costs. Can you really work to nail down some guidance
for administrative costs going forward?
MS. NAKAGAWA: Absolutely, Council Member. We are already actively
working on changing our rules to provide more guidance in the area of nonprofit
grants.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: And perhaps even sitting down in the review
process with OHCD and incorporating your body into their body.
MS. NAKAGAWA: We are always happy to provide and sit in with the
departments and provide guidance and support.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay. I yield, Chair.
CHR. INABA: Thank you.. Before I go to Vice Chair Onishi, I'm going to be
asking budget questions specific after this. So, for providers, if you're here please
be prepared. Vice Chair Onishi.
MR. ONISHL Okay. Thanks, Chair. This is towards Housing. So, we have the
list of 15 nonprofits that got awarded. Out of the 15, how many of them were
doing the same thing prior to this funding being created?
MS. COSTA: I'd have to get back to you and find that out. I'm not prepared to
know what programs were in existence in the capacity that they are now prior to
2022, but we can provide that information to you.
MR. ONISHL You know why, okay, so I think we know at least one started
because of this funding, correct, was the detox. Is that correct? No? It was
already happening? Oh, okay. But with this—can I bring up ?
CHR. INABA: Who would you like to bring up? Sorry.
MR. ONISHL Dr. Hannah. You can introduce yourself.
(Note: At this time, Hannah Preston-Pita with the Big Island Substance
Abuse Council came forward to address the members of the Council.)
MS. PRESTON-PITA: Hannah Preston-Pita with the Big Island Substance Abuse
Council. And I think the question that you are asking is about the Hulihia Ke Ola
Program, the detox program.
MR. ONISHL Yeah. Because once this grant was created in March of 2022, in
September of 2022 then they came out with the list of priorities, right?
MS. PRESTON-PITA: That's correct.
MR. ONISHL And so, No. 2 on the list, ranked two, was the detoxification, right.
And so, your program, you guys were already doing this?
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MS. PRESTON-PITA: To clarify, so it was something that was strategically
proposed leading up to it. We started to see our first clientele for that program
specifically in February of this year. So, there are things that require us to start it
up and that started in February.
MR. ONISHL Yeah. So, my question was, okay, so this program wasn't
something prior to 2022, right?
MS. PRESTON-PITA: The idea, yes.
MR. ONISHL Yeah, the idea was there but the program
MS. PRESTON-PITA: Yes, for the last 10 years.
MR. ONISHL If I may, the program
MS. PRESTON-PITA: Yes, that's correct. Yeah, so that didn't drive our
decision to make this program.
MR. ONISHL Right. And that's all I wanted because then, like I said, my earlier
question was about how many of the 15 was already doing the same program,
right,prior to 2022. That's what I was, you know, hopefully that you had that
information because then, for me, because the way it seems like this report was
like for moving forward and having, I guess, new ideas or new programs to help
with the housing and homelessness, right. To help.
MS. PRESTON-PITA: And I think just to clarify, I was a part of the sort of
working group with maybe 90 other individuals, but it was bringing in community
members and doing a needs assessment and identifying what they felt were
priorities in the community. And detox and substance use, it was
MR. ONISHL Right, correct. Like on this too, the third ranked was about
housing, supporting, and serving families with minor children. Okay. And so, I
mean, that's where we talked about like when you mentioned the first time when
we met about families in cars and that's why I said, okay, we've got to try find
more money. But then I found out it's ranked No. 3, right, as a priority. And so, I
don't know how many of the nonprofits that are awarded are servicing them. And
so, that's where I guess you need to I guess help us, or help me.
MS. COSTA: I can provide you with that information. Yeah.
MR. ONISHL But see, the only problem is we're going to have to make a
decision today, right. And so, I'm just hoping that we are hitting these top
priorities to fund them, right, because that's what the group came up with.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. COSTA: That's definitely a requirement of the proposal process and RFP
process.
MR. ONISHL But, you know, there's like 12 different priorities, right, so they
could fall within any of this, right. But what I'm saying is if we can hit like the
top five maybe, right, on this list and we can focus on that. You might have
something? Oh, okay. But thank you, Doc. Okay. Thank you. I yield.
MS. PRESTON-PITA: Thank you.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. We're waiting on some amendments coming in. But
just to kind of shed light on where we've been this last week, we want to thank
the Administrator, Finance Director, Corporation Counsel. I was a part of a
quarter probably of the hours that they had put in with our service providers to
bring us something today. Previous grant agreements before would have the
10 percent admin as part of the agreement. Back in August of last year, this
Council passed the bill to amend the section that specifically put in the 10 percent
admin cap into our County Code. And I said this before, this funding has kind of
gotten away from us. It quickly grew with the assessments growing. And for
where we are right now, with all the work that has already been put in, I still have
some concerns about the budgets proposed.
So, I'll ask you, Administrator, or if you want to defer to the recommended
organizations to answer. But starting, using Communication 67.8 that was
provided by your office today, looking at two proposed awards for Big Island
Substance Abuse Council. I'm seeing staff training for both awards. One for
$25,000 and one for $5,000, and they're both for ongoing training on best
practice, CPI(Crisis Prevention Institute), first aid, MAT (Medicated-Assisted
Treatment) and ART (Accelerated Resolution Therapy), trying to understand how
they're distinctly different because I'm concerned that it's for the same purpose
across two different awards.
And ultimately, I'm going to say this, I think there's more work to be done here. I
understand the press for time being that we've already extended a one-month no-
cost extension to these service providers. But I don't feel, based on my review of
these budgets, that we're in compliance with the Code yet. We're light years
ahead of where we were last week, but we're not there, in my opinion. So, would
you like to answer that, or would you like to have BISAC come forward to
answer? And I will add, there's also the same concern for telecommunication,
$21,600 for internet, cloud storage, connectivity, and also the same for the next
award for $3,700. So, two manini things but, you know, those are the small
adjustments that I think can bring us into compliance. And I don't think there's
intention to double dip, but I need to know more. And Dr. Hannah, if you would
like to come forward and answer? Okay. Yeah, I'll jump to the next one for now.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
Jumping over to Going Home Hawaii. There's software there for $10,000 and
trying to—I know that there's general tracking software that I believe we're
supposed to be using, but wondering if the software is only for this program or if
the software is used in any other parts of the organization. We have Going Home
Hawai`i's president, Mr. (Les) Estrella, if you'd like to answer that? And I just
want to note we're doing our job trying to get these funds out. We got these
actual budgets this morning after our meeting started, so we're trying our best.
Everyone has been trying their best. But these are the questions we need to ask
before we can be confident.
(Note: At this time, Going Home Hawaii President Les Estrella came
forward to address the members of the Council.)
MR. ESTRELLA: Yes. Thank you for the question. Regarding this reporting
software, it is used across our program.
CHR. INABA: So, not specific to this program?
MR. ESTRELLA: The only program that we have actually is the housing
program now. We don't have the other ones that we had prior. The last funding
award has ended, yeah.
CHR. INABA: Okay. So, this program that's before us right now is the only
program that Going Home Hawaii is engaged in?
MR. ESTRELLA: We utilize it also for our Windows of Hope, case
management.
CHR. INABA: Which is another program under your organization?
MR. ESTRELLA: It's funded separately but it has the same—we provide that for
homeless moms also.
CHR. INABA: Okay. So, that is an area that's gray. I'm hoping and there is, I
think, a lot of gray around this, but there's a concern there. And then when we
looked at other for-rental assistance, we have been advised in the last few years
regarding outright financial assistance to individuals. Can you explain a little bit
about that rental assistance, $57,000? It's to provide assistance for 60 participants
upon admission; 30 in east and 30 in West Hawaii, first month's program fee and
security deposit.
MR. ESTRELLA: So,program fees are different from rental assistance because
we work with justice-involved. And so we don't have leases for these
individuals. It's program fees. They come out of jail or homelessness with
literally absolutely nothing, not even clothes. So, this actually, because of the
program fees, it's necessary for us to maintain because we rent every place. We
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
lease from owners, landlords. This helps the participant who pay program fees
after they get employment. The first-month assistance is really critical to helping
them stay ahead, to helping them get on their feet so they can get their job, other
needs that they have met and not be owing the program and actually putting them
more in debt with zero to begin with.
CHR. INABA: So, that is going towards your program fee. Is that right?
MR. ESTRELLA: That is going towards, yes.
CHR. INABA: Okay. Good. Okay. So, we've had this discussion prior, where
if there's an established financial aid system that is based on need, it's okay. It's
not handing money out for them to go and use potentially at a landlord for a rental
or potentially for something else. So, all good there. That's it for Going Home
Hawaii. Thank you, Mr. Estrella.
MR. ESTRELLA: Thank you.
CHR. INABA: Moving on to Hale Maluhia Shelter. Concern here is that there
are under insurance lines across all of these awards for HOPE Services, it
includes a portion of property insurance and auto insurance coverage for vehicles
associated with all of these program awards as well as staff training, CPR
(cardiopulmonary resuscitation), CPI, and utilities. We're seeing essentially the
same thing listed across multiple awards, and I'm trying to understand how
they're different. So, if someone from HOPE Services is available to provide a
response there. Sorry. If you can activate your mic and please introduce yourself
for the record.
(Note: At this time, HOPE Services Chief Financial Officer(CFO) Shelly
Toledo came forward to address the members of the Council.)
MS. TOLEDO: Hi. Okay. So, each site
CHR. INABA: Sorry. Can you please introduce yourself for the record?
MS. TOLEDO: My name is Shelly Toledo. I'm CFO. Each site requires
property insurance, so the allocation here is for each site. Each site also has
vehicles, so there's also a vehicle insurance charge to the contract.
Moving on to utilities. These are all emergency shelters, and each emergency
shelter has utilities: electricity, water, trash. So, they're all specific to the site.
MS. COSTA: Chair, if I could just add that for the HOPE Services sites, all the
leases are with the County of Hawaii. These are all County-owned facilities, and
in order to have the lease, it requires the insurance.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
CHR. INABA: Okay. And so they're paying lease to the County for these
spaces?
MS. COSTA: Ten dollars a year.
CHR. INABA: Okay. So, how is that making sense in terms of$116,000 for one
award?
MS. COSTA: What line are you looking at?
CHR. INABA: We are looking at—sorry, $85,000 for Hale Maluhia Shelter.
MS. COSTA: I'm corrected. Hale Maluhia is not our shelter.
CHR. INABA: Okay. And then how much of your director of operations salary
is funded by this funding source?
MS. TOLEDO: Five percent.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Kagiwada, sorry, do you have something to
say? All right. Thank you.
MS. TOLEDO: Yeah, we put the percentages per employee.
CHR. INABA: These awards are listing different amounts, so I'm trying to
understand if you folks—if your internal math is equating out, how much of the
director of operation's salary is funded by this funding source from the County?
MS. TOLEDO: So, between the three sites, it totals 45 percent of their time. This
specific director of operations oversees all three campuses.
CHR. INABA: Okay. And you were mentioning that for your auto insurance
so there's property insurance and do you have an estimate on what the auto
insurance is for each of these programs? It's not specific here as to indicate how
many vehicles are servicing each of these projects and whether there's overlap
there or not.
MS. TOLEDO: Yeah, sorry. I didn't come with that specifics, but I'd be more
than happy to send it to you.
CHR. INABA: Okay. And then looking at Hale Maluhia. Utilities; we're seeing
$20,000 for that. I understand it covers electricity. And then we're seeing
$61,000 for Keolahou. We have an idea ofI don't know if there's overlap here
with internet charges and even some of the cellphone charges as well; $4,000 just
for Keolahou cellphone and landline. I'm not sure where the service is being
provided from, but some of these expenses seem a little inflated.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. TOLEDO: So, it would be the cellphone for the staff charged specifically to
the site on an annual basis. So they're multiple phone lines for each staff. So a
shelter may have a housing navigator and a housing facilitator and it's staffed
24/7. And each person that's on shift will have access to a phone. So it's safety,
if they have to call the police or call each other for help, or just as an access line
to the shelter.
CHR. INABA: Okay. And a total of how many employees are working in this
Keolahou shelter and Hale Kulike?
MS. TOLEDO: For Keolahou, there are two full-time housing navigators, four
full-time—
CHR. INABA: Sorry. Can you just give us a total number of employees for both
of those shelters?
MS. TOLEDO: Under 20, maybe.
CHR. INABA: Okay. Thank you. Now when we look at the Friendly Place
award, there's indication of master leasing of current and new units. I believe this
is a County facility. So can you explain the $74,000 expense for the line item for
leasing, rental, or purchase of space?
MS. TOLEDO: Yes. So, we do master lease private properties so that the
individual staying at the shelter, we can provide them access to a permanent
home. And that is in the lease of space line item.
CHR. INABA: Okay. So, how many beds at the campus versus how many units
are you renting to provide for that long-term housing that you're mentioning?
MS. TOLEDO: How many master leases are we entering into?
CHR. INABA: That and how many beds are a part of those master leases versus
what is at the Friendly Place?
MS. TOLEDO: I think we're currently entered into about ten leases for master
leases. They're homes, right. They're homes for families. So maybe three beds,
three-bedroom houses per site.
CHR. INABA: And that's specifically under this award for West Hawaii
Friendly Place or is that island-wide?
MS. TOLEDO: That's island-wide.
CHR. INABA: So, how much for this specific award?
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MS. TOLEDO: Three or four.
CHR. INABA: Okay. And how is staff training different across all of these
awards? Because, there's almost$15,000 for Friendly Place, $13,000 for
Keolahou, and $5,000 for Hale Maluhia. They're all for the same type of training
it appears but it seems steep.
MS. TOLEDO: The staff training—sorry, I do want to go back to the master
leasing real fast. Rent in Kona is really expensive. So I know that number looks
super inflated, but rent is about$3,500. So, if you're renting it on an annual basis
for three homes, it totals
CHR. INABA: And that's why I didn't ask further questions. Thank you.
MS. TOLEDO: Staff training. So, all of our staff have access to (inaudible)
training.
(Note: At this time, HOPE Services Chief Operating Officer(COO)
Kali French of HOPE Services came forward to address the members of
the Council.)
MR. FRENCH: Hi. I'm Kali French. So, for the staff training, it's based on the
capacity of our number of personnel at the sites. So obviously, Keolahou is
probably our most staffing. So, some of these training costs are based on per
person because our organization has increased to I think 141 employees. We had
to purchase more spots at some of these trainings that are required from not only
the existing programs that we have. We just also got CARF (Commission on
Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities) accredited and so these standards are
really high, and we have to have these certain amount of trainings, which is a cost
for us. We also anticipate some growth in our shelters, in our programs. So we
kind of put like a little buffer, I guess, with potential employees that will be
coming into our organizations to provide these services as we grow within these
facilities.
CHR. INABA: Okay. Thank you. I will wrap up my questioning shortly. That's
it for HOPE Services at this time.
Men of Pa`a. I know the initial award was to purchase a vehicle, which is not
allowed, and now we have lease or rental; I can't tell which it is. But$134,000
for one year. Can we get a little bit of explanation on that? That's essentially the
purchase price of those vehicles, so I'm trying to understand how a lease would
happen for one year and then the money's gone.
MS. COSTA: Vehicles. You're asking about vehicles, yeah? So, we worked
with them. Initially, they wanted to purchase vehicles for their program and that's
not allowable. We asked them to go and price out rental or lease, high mileage.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
If you know the program, they're out in the field all the time with their men. So,
they did provide pricing for rental and lease, but the lease capacity, they would be
outside of the mileage requirements for leasing the vehicle. So, that's what they
provided to us.
CHR. INABA: I think that something is wrong there; $5,583 per month per
vehicle. I'll leave it at that.
MS. COSTA: It was if they had to rent 15-passenger vans. Yeah, they provided
supporting documents for that.
CHR. INABA: Okay. I'm going to yield right now. I have concerns with the
remaining awards as well. I don't feel—we've worked together, I don't think
we're there yet. I understand the time constraints that we're in right now. I think
passing this would be against our County Code. But I'll let Council Member
Villegas take up her amendments at this time.
MS. VILLEGAS: Thank you, Chair Inaba. I'm just waiting on the copy of the
first amendment(Communication) 67.11. Were you still going to take a recess?
CHR. INABA: We have it before us right now, all of them, (Communications)
67.11, 67.12, 67.13 through 67.16.
MS. VILLEGAS: It looks like I'm getting .11 in front of me now too. Okay.
Perfect. Okay, great. No, it's not; this is .12.
MS. KIMBALL: Chair, if I may? I have a question if I can fill in some time here
with Council Member Villegas
CHR. INABA: I believe Council Member Villegas is ready. Council Member
Villegas.
MS. VILLEGAS: Actually I'm not. I'm waiting on a copy of 67.11.
CHR. INABA: All right. Do you yield?
MS. VILLEGAS: Yes, I yield.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Kimball.
MS. KIMBALL: Thank you. This may be again a question for our Finance
Director, but I'll ask it of you folks first. Can you describe the process for the
release of these funds to the nonprofits? You mentioned already the monthly or
the six-month and yearly reporting. Are they given the money in tranches as we
go forward and when are those intervals?
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. MERCADO: Sure. So, initially on the onset of the agreement after the
agreement is finalized, the orgs (organizations) can invoice for 20 percent of the
total budget. And then monthly we require them to send us a detailed spend down
of that. And then once we've reached that, we've used all of the 20 percent, then
it's monthly reimbursement. So, the orgs are asked to put up the money first and
then we reimburse them. And in that process, then we check , you know, we're
also comparing with the data reports that are submitted and the narratives.
MS. KIMBALL: Okay. So,just kind of speaking to Chair Inaba's concern, there
is another checkpoint in the disbursement where they've already put the money
forth. You're reviewing receipts and whatnot and ensuring compliance with our
Code rather than just this spot right here?
MS. MERCADO: Yes. And annually we do an internal audit. So, our
accounting staff does an internal audit of each organization.
MS. KIMBALL: Okay. Great. Is there an external audit other than the annual
financial audit that the County does? No. Okay. I'm getting a no from the
Director. All right. Okay. I just wanted to highlight that there are a few different
checks and balances on these funds and opportunities to ensure the compliance.
But thank you. I yield, Chair.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Council Member Kimball. Council Member
Villegas, are you prepared?
MS. VILLEGAS: Got it. And I just want to confirm before proceeding, from a
process standpoint, I am able to bring up amendments. They don't have to be in
numerical order per se, do they?
CHR. INABA: No.
MS. VILLEGAS: Okay. Great.
Motion to Amend: Ms. Villegas moved to amend Res. 46-25 with the contents
of Comm. 67.14. Seconded by Mr. Onishi.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Villegas, go ahead.
MS. VILLEGAS: Yeah. Through this whole process and working together with
OHCD, who I greatly appreciate, Administrator Costa, enduring this today. One
of the requests, and I believe it was made by prior Council Members in prior
meetings under the prior Administration, was the request that these allocations,
while the fund is one whole amount of money, that they be brought to us
separately so that we could approve or disapprove based on the specific program
and organization running that program, individually.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
I think we are all feeling and have felt the pinch of being put in a place that,
holding up on approval of this resolution,puts undue burden on organizations that
don't have the same amount of questions around their efficiency, effectiveness,
and the amount of funds that they are being allocated. I'm kind of doing this in a
reverse order because that wasn't possible. And this amendment is asking for
project number—it's numbered on our original thing as—well, the Neighborhood
Place of Puna Coordination Center. And it's asking that this particular project be
removed from the resolution. And when I look at this particular program and ran
the numbers for the coordination center, 87.8 percent of the funding for this
$794,289 goes to administrative costs and staffing and perks. And while I firmly
believe that I'd want to support—this is a hard part of being in this position. I
want to support people doing this good work, but I don't want inflated salaries
and undue allocation to those expenses versus actually helping the people.
I also speak for District 7, the district that I represent, who is being inundated and
overwhelmed by issues related to the unhoused. Predominately, we have a higher
percentage of those that are flying in.
And seeing organizations just in the title, Neighborhood Place of Puna. I know
that every district has issues with our unhoused and trying to find stable housing
for people. But it's counterintuitive, to me, that a coordination center would be
located in that area of the island. I also have a lot of questions about this
organization and their programs and conflicts of interest based on their being in
charge of the Community Alliance Partners and managing data for all these
programs and being an actual beneficiary of the fund. So, I'm looking to my
fellow Council Members to make a statement, take a stand, and require some
realignment to the purpose of this funding, and that the money actually goes to the
people it's meant to serve as opposed to creating more bureaucracy.
I've worked in homeless services. I've worked with foster youth. My half-
brother was schizophrenic and died homeless on the streets. I am not heartless; I
am caring. I do want for our people to be provided the services that they need.
But I am adamantly opposed to continuing to provide funding that creates a
monopoly on the organizations that get these funds. So, this is my amendment
and I'm asking for your support.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Council Member Villegas. I just want to confirm, do
you folks have a copy of the amendment? Okay. Thank you. We'll start with
Council Member Kierkiewicz.
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you, Chair. So, this particular amendment would
get rid of the coordination center, which the Neighborhood Place of Puna has
been awarded to coordinate. What would this mean, Administrator Costa, if we
were to defund this program? And I just want to make clear that I'm not in
support of getting rid of the coordination center. I think a lot of work has been
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
done for many years to get us to the point for us to actually establish something
like this. So, I just want my colleagues to be completely aware of what we would
be losing if folks decide to vote in favor of the amendment.
MS. COSTA: So, I can only speak to what I know of this program. The
coordination center—and I do have knowledge of this program particularly from
my previous position as Division Manager of Existing Housing or the County
Housing Section 8 program. This is our one-stop housing and resource center.
It's a hotline. And so, we train our staff at Existing Housing when families come
to the County office and are looking for housing resources. As many of you
know, our vouchers are maxed out, and we train our staff to direct families to the
coordination center that provides a one-stop resource navigation. So, that's what I
can speak to in my experience in working at the County and using this service.
You could ask Neighborhood Place of Puna to speak a little bit further about it.
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Okay. Mr. Normann, I see that you just walked in. Hi,
Paul; Mr. Norman. Hey. The amendment on the floor right now is to defund the
coordination center. I'm not in support of that. I asked Administrator Costa what
that would mean. Keiko, feel free to weigh in as well. But I also wanted to
provide you an opportunity to defend your program. Thank you.
MS. MERCADO: I'll just add that, real quickly, one of the ways that we utilize
the coordination center on the community engagement team when I was on that
team with Housing is they create and keep updated a very comprehensive
resource directory. They used to do it annually. I believe they do it quarterly now
because there's such a need for it. And so we are always pointing folks towards
the resource directory. We have other organizations who also use that resource
directory. So that is one way that we use that when we're not having direct client
contact.
(Note: At this time, Neighborhood Place of Puna Executive Director Paul
Normann and Community Engagement Director Billi-Jo Pike came
forward to address the members of the Council.)
MR. NORMANN: Good afternoon. Paul Normann, Executive Director of
Neighborhood Place of Puna(NPP). And before I get started I just wanted to
Council Chair Holeka, you said earlier about creating a safe space. Over the last
year a particular Council Member has specifically targeted me by name. I do not
feel particularly safe in this space, and I'm asking you to please help me feel safe.
CHR. INABA: Mr. Normann, sorry, can you clarify? Are you saying I am
making you feel unsafe?
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. NORMANN: No, not you. I'm trying not to call out the Council Member
by name. But I'm just saying there has been a history with a Council Member
here calling me out by name and making accusations against me that are baseless.
And I just want to this morning was rough. Just putting that
CHR. INABA: (Inaudible.)
MR. NORMANN: Okay.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. You can proceed to respond to Council Member
Kierkiewicz's questions.
MR. NORMANN: Thank you. So yeah, the coordination center, I'm going to
ask Billi-Jo Pike in a little bit to talk a little bit more in depth about it because she
actually is the person who is standing at the (inaudible). But the coordination
center actually started as a pilot program that we started with some funding that
came out of the ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act). During COVID
(Coronavirus Disease) there was ARPA funding. Because, what we had been
doing—as was pointed out, I am the chair of Community Alliance Partners. It
sounds much more romantic than it really is. It's just a coalition. I got elected. I
didn't step back fast enough so I'm we're chairing at the moment.
But what we consistently hear from the community is, when people are saying
when they're out in the community and they see somebody who needs help who is
homeless or they think is in distress, they want to call somebody; they want to get
help, right. And of course, most community members, they're doing their day-to-
day business, whatever it is. They don't have the whole list of resources that are
available in the community. And so we started to pilot this thing of how do we
create aon Oahu they have 211, but it doesn't work great for here. So how do
we kind of learn from that, make something a little bit better so the community
has a single point of contact to find resources, you know, "I need help with `X.
Or to get some assistance in accessing a resource or get connected,preferably
through a warm handoff, but through a handoff to a specific service that can help.
And of course, we're always looking at homeless services, right. So if you are
struggling because you're falling behind on your rent or you're homeless with
your family or whatever, how do you access assistance? Because, right, the main
thing is that we don't want people to end up in homelessness and not realize that
there are resources there to help them. So that was kind of how we started. And
over a couple of years before we actually applied for funding here, we were
building it, learning from it,just kept piloting it, right, so keep growing it. And so
then now, this particular iteration, which is a little bit more robust based on the
data we've driven. And I'm going to let Billi-Jo talk about how it's modeled this
time.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. PIKE: Hi, everybody. I'm Billi-Jo Pike, director of Community
Engagement at Neighborhood Place of Puna. I directly oversee the coordination
center. So, in addition to this call center that we created, that's an island-wide
resource for all of the residents to call and let us know what they need, especially
as it comes to housing and homeless resources. We also saw an increased need of
people calling, particularly in Hilo, expressing that case management lists are
long, and they sit on there for months waiting to be connected. So, through that
data we collected and this iteration of the coordination center, we're also opening
a drop-in center. So, a physical site in Hilo where we are going to offer same-day
assistance for people for rental applications, ordering their vital documents, and
getting the help they need to be handheld through the process rather than just on
the phone if they need that extra assistance.
We also offer housing case management. So, for households that have recently
exited homelessness and are still unstable in their situation or they're at risk of
homelessness, we have housing case managers that work with them one on one to
reduce the likelihood of them entering back into homelessness and decrease the
inflow. So, the coordination center has been pretty deeply imbedded in our
community at this point, especially the call center portion of it. I know that many
of our other agencies utilize this resource pretty often, not only for their
participants, but for their case managers to access our resource directory and our
call center to also utilize other services that are in the community. It's been going
since 2022, and we continue to collect the data to see the gaps in services and
create a data-driven designed program. So it would be very impactful in our
community to lose this service.
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Thank you. Would you be able to share with us the
number of calls or people that you help on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis?
And is data available to support that these inquiries are coming from every
community around Hawaii Island? I know you mentioned Hilo a couple times,
but because you're doing island-wide work, one could assume that you're getting
calls from West Hawaii, Ka`u, Kohala, Puna side. Do you have any of that data
that you can share with us?
MS. PIKE: So, as far as the zip codes specifically, I don't have that data on me
today. But from our last iteration of this program since June of 2024 to December
of 2024, we have received over 2,461 calls. So, those are people that are
accessing housing resources. We connect them to our emergency rental
assistance program. And it's also seniors that don't know where to turn; families
that don't know that they qualify for anything. These are community members
across the entire island. But unfortunately, I don't have the zip code data for you.
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Okay. It would be great to maybe get a follow-up email
for the entire life duration of the center, the impact you folks have had. And then
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
you mentioned creating this drop-in physical site in Hilo. Any way to maybe kind
of split time between Hilo and Kona because there is such an express need, or is
that something that you folks are working to establish going forward?
MS. PIKE: Yeah. So, the other thing that we have been considering is expanding
our presence in Kona,just because we do have the expertise as far as operating
the coordination center. But I think that is something that would be more of a
2026 operation, or finding other agencies that would be willing to step up and do
that in Kona, and we can partner with them to align our data.
MS. KIERKIEWICZ: Okay. That's very encouraging to hear. And if you ever
want to be in Pahoa, I have an office. We try to have a good hub of resources
there. So, thanks for all that you do. I won't be supporting the amendment.
Thanks for the details. I yield.
CHR. INABA: Further discussion on the amendment. Council Member
Kagiwada.
MS. KAGIWADA: Thank you. I'm just going to say I think this set of
amendments is highly inappropriate. We've tasked OHCD with this task. They
pulled together a very rigorous process. They had a team that was educated on
how to do this. They looked at all the submissions as a group. And I can only
imagine if, having been on the Waiwai subcommittee, the four of us that worked
really hard on that came back, and then there were amendments from the rest of
the body saying, "Well, you all four looked at this in detail, but we're going to
pick out individual ones we don't like and we're going to try to take them off the
list." It just seems totally like we do not have all the information that the people
who reviewed these submissions have had. And to think that we can just now go
through just based on somebody texting us and telling us that they don't like this
person or something like that I think is really ridiculous. So, I am going to take a
stand. I am going to make a statement and say I think this is very inappropriate,
and I will not be voting for any of these amendments. Thanks. I yield.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. Further discussion on the amendment?
MS. VILLEGAS: Chair?
CHR. INABA: Council Member Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you. Where'd they go? There you
are right there. Quick question for you guys. This is a new program hoping to
implement or ongoing program you wanted to continue funding?
MR. NORMANN: We are expanding. It's a data-driven program, like Billi-Jo
explained, and we're expanding it to be more effective.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay.
MR. NORMANN: Right. So in the same way like—we talked about how do we
get into other communities, right. And really ideally, in an ideal world, right, as a
community, as a whole, there's service providers, as capacity starts to build,
because that's really what this is about. What you all are funding is capacity-
building in the community. And right now, you're right, NPPs carrying a lot of
the weight; HOPE(Services) is carrying a lot of weight. But part of that is
because we're in the process of capacity-building.
So really, quite honestly, NPP does not want to be on the Kona side. We want to
partner with someone on the Kona side, help them partner with us on like the
coordination center and be effective. We'll be in Pahoa. It's okay. But, you
know, whatever. But other parts of the island, North Kohala, Waimea; how do we
build those partnerships, take this knowledge that's data-driven and build that,
right. So, this is the next iteration.
So, is it valuable? We'll find out after this year. Is it valuable to have a location
where people can drop in? We know there are a lot of kupuna that are struggling
right now. That we know of, there are about 100 kupuna on the street right now.
They're struggling, right? So we know there is some need for some handholding.
Whether a physical drop-in center is going to be an added benefit or not, we don't
know yet. But it seems the natural next step in what we're trying to do to make
sure that we leverage all of the resources, every resource; Federal resources, State
resources, County resources, private. All the resources that are on the table to
effectively help people, keep them from falling to homelessness, end their
homelessness fast, and access the other resources that make them healthier. I
mean, that's the whole point.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay. So program exists; you're hoping to
expand your reach and capacity.
MR. NORMANN: Right.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: You act as a central hub for incoming calls?
MR. NORMANN: Yes.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: And then you disburse those back out to the
community.
MR. NORMANN: Yes. And if—sorry. You were speaking. I'm sorry. I get
kind of passionate about it. It's a good program.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: That's good. Glad you're passionate. Do
the entities in this room all use you as their data source or as their point of
information?
MR. NORMANN: Well, we would have to ask all of them. We do partner with a
lot of them. I think the potential is here, and this is part of working with the
County and all of us working together, is how do we start to make more seamless
systems. So, yes, a lot of them do use us as a referral point, and we have good
relationships with them.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Is this similar to Vibrant Hawai`i's outreach
coordinator services or service coordinator outreach person? Because, I was
doing food disbursement in the community last summer 2024, and I had to hand
out a piece of paper to everybody who came. And it was the Vibrant outreach:
Do you need help, do you need services, this is the number to call. Is this like the
same thing?
MR. NORMANN: I think it's a completely different model because we areI
mean, the strength of homeless services, right. So, I mean, we've had a lot of
different questions, but the thing that is amazing about homeless services is it's
extremely there's really good research about best practices and how to
coordinate, right. So, homeless services are all about coordinating and data
sharing. So the strength of this of what I think the County's vision is and why
they're funding this and what could happen is that then the County then has a,
whether it's NPP or whatever, but then has a central way to start actually
seamlessly connecting to all the other programs. And you start to see what's
actually going on, right, because that's what we want to know. We want to know
what's going on, right? It's a little early in the program, and I get there's a
frustration around that, but we really want to see how all of our services are being
effective and having as clean and clear a pipeline to get people connected. Did I
answer your question?
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Yeah. That's helpful. Okay. Thank you.
CHR. INABA: Vice Chair Onishi.
MR. ONISHL Thank you, Mr. Chair. For this program, how many employees do
you folks have or staff?
MS. PIKE: I believe it's six.
MR. ONISHL Six. Okay. Because your fringe benefits, you folks have
7.6 program staff.
MR. NORMANN: We could've miscount. There could be some overlap. You're
catching us on the fly. So, yes. We would have to come back to you and respond.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. ONISHL But she's the coordinator, right?
MR. NORMANN: Yes, sir.
MR. ONISHL So, she wouldn't know how many is under her, how many staff?
MR. NORMANN: She runs a couple programs, sir.
MS. PIKE: Yeah, I'm a director, so I run multiple programs. But I can pull it up
right now. So, you're correct, it was seven.
MR. ONISHI: Seven.
MS. PIKE: Yes.
MR. ONISHL And what is the .6?
MR. NORMANN: That is a person who is funded by two different funding
streams. So the County is funding part of them and the difference is being made
up by another funding source.
MR. ONISHL Okay. But we're paying for the fringe benefits?
MR. NORMANN: Part of the fringe benefits. We break them out. We're very
rigorous in our accounting.
MR. ONISHL And the last thing I just want to say. So, you're trying to get all
the different organizations to help participate, but you mentioned earlier that
you're the, I guess, the president of CAP (Community Alliance Partner)?
MR. NORMANN: Okay so, Community Alliance Partners is an organization that
is part of
MR. ONISHL No. I just want to know your position because I've attended those
meetings before.
MR. NORMANN: I know. And I've heard a lot of confusion about it, so that's
why I'm elaborating. So yes, I am the chair. And just so that everybody knows,
everybody in the room knows, Community Alliance Partners is part of the HUD
(United States Department of Housing and Urban Development)-mandated
continuum of care.
MR. ONISHL So, my question is just that like within CAP, you folks could
dialogue among everybody talking about, okay, what each organization supplies
or offers, right?
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. NORMANN: Correct.
MR. ONISHL So then, each member in that CAP would know, okay, if I need
this help I can go directly to this person, right, or this organization and so forth,
correct?
MR. NORMANN: I think that that would be the way that we have done it
previously and it doesn't work.
MR. ONISHL Why do you say that?
MR. NORMANN: Because we live there. That's where we lived before the
coordination center. The only reason the coordination center needs to exist is
because what you are proposing does not work.
MR. ONISHL No, no; within the organizations?
MR. NORMANN: It does not work to have everybody just sharing informally
because the community has no way to access that.
CHR. INABA: Mr. Normann, I'm going to ask you to watch your tone.
MR. NORMANN: Sorry. I'm passionate, not angry, but passionate.
CHR. INABA: Yeah, be passionate and mindful.
MR. NORMANN: Yeah, sorry. Thank you, sir.
MR. ONISHL So my question is just like relaying your services to the other
organizations on what you do.
MR. NORMANN: Yes, sir.
MR. ONISHL And so now, if I'm a nonprofit, I know that you do these
connections then I can come directly to you. So if I have clients, I can refer them
to you. That's what I'm trying to get at.
MR. NORMANN: And that does happen. But the programs are always, because
they're multiple funding; multiple different programs are coming online offline,
that is very hard to track.
MR. ONISHL No, I understand. But I'm just saying that—you understand what
I'm saying, right, to reaching out, yeah?
MS. PIKE: Yeah.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. ONISHL Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
MS. PIKE: And I would say, to Paul's point, I think the reason why it maybe
hasn't been as successful is because when there's staff turnover or a different
program comes in in the middle of like what would be a typical grant year for
some and not others, it's hard to keep track of the moving pieces of it and retrain
staff over and over and over.
MR. ONISHL But basically, I'm just talking about you guys. What your services
are, what you guys provide for this island, right.
MS. PIKE: Yes.
MR. ONISHL So basically, if someone calls my office I can refer them to you
folks, right?
MS. PIKE: Yes.
MR. ONISHL And you guys can provide the services for them, whatever needs
they need, correct?
MS. PIKE: Yes. We would point them in the right direction.
MR. ONISHL So that's all I'm saying is that if you guys can all work together,
right, so that way everybody knows what's going on. And then the last thing
would be, what is the phone number that people can contact you guys at?
MS. PIKE: Yeah. So the phone number for the coordination center is
(808) 501-1413.
MR. ONISHL Okay. Thank you very much.
MS. PIKE: You're welcome.
MR. ONISHL I yield.
MS. PIKE: Thank you.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. Further discussion on the amendment?
MS. VILLEGAS: Chair?
CHR. INABA: Yeah. We'll head to you, Council Member Villegas. Council
Member Villegas, go ahead.
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MS. VILLEGAS: Okay. Sorry. I thought you said you were going to go to
somebody there. What I see as a pattern is this concept of identifying data and the
need for data. And I apologize, I'm not in the room and I didn't get your first
name. When you said you got 2,300 phone calls, how many of these peopleso,
you get a phone call, and you tell them who to call or where to go?
MS. PIKE: Correct. Either I can point them into an internal program that can
meet their needs, or we go through an intake to assess other programs that they're
eligible for.
MS. VILLEGAS: Okay. How many people actually get help from that?
MS. PIKE: So, we conduct a two-week follow-up. So after we make any
referral, we contact the participant or the caller two weeks later to follow up on
the success of the referral, and about 50 percent of them are successful.
MS. VILLEGAS: I'm sorry. Did you say 15 or 50?
MS. PIKE: 50; five-zero.
MS. VILLEGAS: That doesn't align with what I hear from community. I
appreciate that there's a phone number to call, but I feel like there's other phone
numbers for people to call. I don't think that we need a clearinghouse to just
direct people over and over again. I have a situation that I was just informed
about, that a homeless client called this number then they were sent to HOPE
Services, and then HOPE Services said they couldn't help. So, this person just
gets shuffled around and around, and people with these issues don't have two
weeks. People are consistently being told in District 7 "Oh, beds are full, send
them here." I'm hearing stories same in Hilo. Salvation Army ends up with
25 people sent from HOPE Services to them—mind you, these are different
organizations but I just don't think that spending $794,000 for 2,300 phone calls
is an effective use of money. The people are on the street; they need help. I want
to see more beds. I want to see more shelters. I want to see more action, not
more data collection and numbers coordinating, monopolizing of funds so that
things can be put on the internet to make it all look good. I am really frustrated.
I also have some frustration here with Neighborhood Place of Puna and the
statements being made because they were contracted to manage data for people
who are working in other organizations who don't feel comfortable, who would
struggle with providing that data and where it gets claimed. This becomes a
numbers game.
My other question was, so this program, when it started, was funded elsewhere
through other means?
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CHR. INABA: Council Member Villegas, Administrator Costa is here and can
answer that.
MS. VILLEGAS: Okay. Was this program funded through other funding
sources, and does it continue to be funded through other funding sources? I have
serious issues with these concepts of expansion and capacity-building of an
organization that already monopolizes 30 percent of an annual fund, while other
organizations don't get a penny.
CHR. INABA: Administrator.
MS. COSTA: I'm going to ask Assistant Administrator to answer.
CHR. INABA: Yes. Assistant Administrator, go ahead.
MS. MERCADO: It's my understanding that this initiative started with ARPA
funding, and the ARPA funding is no longer available. So it is not funded
through any other source currently.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Villegas, any further questions right now?
MS. VILLEGAS: I just would ask my colleagues to really take a look. What are
the outcomes? Getting a phone call is very different than somebody ending up in
a bed, and when people just get funneled from place to place. This is too much
money for no actual solutions, and the problem just continues to compound. And
there are too many questions and not enough answers, and too much money and
not enough outcome. I yield.
CHR. INABA: Council Member Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, if you could summarize
and then we can take a vote on this.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you. Okay. This is a program we're
looking to stand up because it would expand their ability to do what they're
already doing, right?
CHR. INABA: Housing, if you'd want to clarify what's happening here.
MS. MERCADO: Yes, is the simple answer.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you.
MS. MERCADO: It started out and it's evolving over time based on the need that
is being seen.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: And we want to fund the expansion because
we see an increase of these requests coming in, which would gauge that we need
the expansion?
MS. MERCADO: I'll let Housing Administrator answer, but I would say yes.
Our office is located near the food stamp office, and so we see this need every
day. It is around us constantly. So, yes, I would say the need is there. Folks do
not—when they're in crisis, they don't know how to access resources and
services. So, having assistance to do that is valuable.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Okay.
MS. COSTA: I'm very challenged right now with the questions that you're
asking because our job is to put together a process that an evaluation panel
reviewed, ranked, and scored based on an RFP, based on the best information that
we had available to us at the time. The Code changed after we put the RFP
forward. This is also a new program. And I'm just going to also say that I'm here
to defend the process. I'm here to defend the people that put in hours reviewing
proposals. I'm here to defend my staff who worked tirelessly to review budgets
and do the best that we possibly could to move these services forward, and to be
impartial to the actual nonprofits and give all nonprofits an opportunity to come
through this process. And now I'm sitting here being asked if this particular
program should be funded, and I'm asking you to approve the work that was
already done.
And if there are concerns about the work that was already done by the evaluation
committee and that there needs to be clarifications in the work with regards to
administrative expenses, I can hear that. But what is happening right now, I am
not okay with. Going through each organization, one by one, and questioning
their programing within this process, if the process was clear that they would be
prepared today for this, and that they would come before Council with all of their
information, all of their programs, all of their data, their organizational charts,
their staffing charts, their outcomes, their zip codes. If they were prepared for this
today, I would feel better. But none of them were prepared for this right now.
And I'm sorry, I just have to say that. It's challenging.
So, you're asking me about whether or not we, right here, want to stand up this
program, but we went through a process to say these are the proposals that ranked
the highest amongst 30 applicants. And we're here to say that that's the work that
was done. And I'm not going to undo that work, I guess is what I'm saying, by
piecemealing out the different programs and saying whether I value them or not in
front of—right here. Sorry if that didn't answer your question. That's just
coming from where I am right now, and we can move forward.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: Thank you, Administrator. There is a duty
on both sides of the dais to do both ends of the work, and I think you're seeing the
two perspectives. And also we in our chairs feeling our need to do a duty as well,
to make sure that tax money is being spent correctly.
MS. COSTA: I appreciate that. I understand. I'm feeling the kuleana that I
could have done a better job to prepare the organizations behind me and to
prepare our staff, and prepare ourselves based on these individual amendments
that, prior to yesterday, I was not aware that it would be okay, or it was allowable,
to pull out the organizations one at a time for approval. So, I'm not prepared for
that.
MR. KANEALI`I-KLEINFELDER: I actually wasn't either. And I find it
interesting that this is part of our process, but it is. And I think it also shows a
level of transparency at a government level for the public on what happens and
what choices we all can make; what role we pick to play in the process in front of
us.
Sorry, Chair. To summarize, I do feel, Council Member Villegas, that I do see
some redundancy in different areas of these programs. I also see a needed level of
scrutiny I think that should've happened a while back. And I'm not here to bash
you. I said that in the beginning. I'm not. But I don't feel that eliminating the
programs completely is the best move. I'm more of an efficiency and "cut where
can" and "do what can with what you've got" kind of a person versus cut
everything and see what happens.
I'm struggling to play both sides right now, Council Member Villegas, and I'm
having a really hard time just saying we'll just cut all these programs one by one.
I think that's a very difficult place to put the people in this room as well as us in.
So I appreciate what you're doing. And I appreciate that you have really shown
what the legislative body can do right now in the process, but I'm having a hard
time wrapping my head around just cutting completely. I yield.
CHR. INABA: Thank you. With that, before we take the vote, I have a quick
question. Can you just share the difference between last year's award for this
program and this year's award?
MS. PIKE: Last year's award focused mostly on the call center portion of it with
a few case managers, I believe two or three case managers, that were involved.
Those case managers mostly helped the unsheltered population. Our homeless
engagement team will now take over that responsibility of case management for
the unsheltered. In this iteration, the coordination center will have the housing
case management for housing stability to reduce the inflow. So, more of the
prevention case management—that's an addition—as well as the physical drop-in
center.
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CHR. INABA: Okay. So the main difference is additional—how many
additional employees,just numerically, the difference?
MS. PIKE: I believe it isI want to say three but I'm not for certain. I could
follow up with that.
CHR. INABA: Okay. And then the additional programmatic expense mainly
would be the center?
MS. PIKE: The drop-in, yes.
CHR. INABA: And how many office spaces do you folks have as an
organization?
MS. PIKE: I would defer to Paul for that one.
MR. NORMANN: Today, we have three spaces and an emergency shelter.
CHR. INABA: Okay. I'll echo the sentiments of Council Member Kaneali`i-
Kleinfelder. I have concerns with most of the budgets here. I don't support
getting rid of the program. But$500,000 of an increase from last year's award to
this year's award for the drop-in center and three more staff, that's not penciling
out in my mind. And again, we got this information today, so we're here at this
place because we've been working all week, and this is when we get to ask
questions. I won't support this amendment, but I cannot support the award as it's
proposed right now. With that, Mr. Clerk, roll call on the amendment.
Vote on Motion to The motion to amend Res. 46-25 with the contents of
Amend: Comm. 67.14 failed by the following roll call vote:
Failed
Ayes: Council Member Villegas — 1.
Noes: Council Members Galimba, Hustace, Kagiwada,
Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder, Kierkiewicz, Kimball,
Onishi, and Chair Inaba—8.
Absent: None.
Excused: None.
Motion to Call for Ms. Kierkiewicz moved to call for the question. Seconded
the Question: by Mr. Onishi.
CHR. INABA: This is a nondebatable motion, right? All right, all those in favor
please say "aye" or a roll call vote.
MS. VILLEGAS: One moment please, Chair.
Point of Order: CHR. INABA: Point of order. Go ahead, Council Member Villegas.
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Hawaii County Council-5 January 31,2025
MS. VILLEGAS: I'm at a disadvantage by not being there, but I was going to
make a motion to postpone the resolution.
CHR. INABA: There's an active motion on the floor at this time.
MS. VILLEGAS: Which is to call for the vote?
CHR. INABA: Yes.
MS. VILLEGAS: Okay.
CHR. INABA: Roll call vote.
Vote on Motion to The motion to call for the question was carried by the
Call for the Question following roll call vote:
(Approved)
Ayes: Council Members Galimba, Hustace, Kagiwada,
Kierkiewicz, Kimball, and Onishi —6.
Noes: Council Members Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder,
Villegas, and Chair Inaba—3.
Absent: None.
Excused: None.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Mr. Clerk. I believe that brings us to the end of our
agenda for today.
MR. HENRICKS: We need to vote on the main motion.
CHR. INABA: Excuse me. Sorry. On the motion to adopt Resolution 46-25, as
amended.
Vote on Res. 46-25: The motion to adopt Res. 46-25, as amended to Draft 2,
Draft 2 and Finance Committee Report No. 5 was carried by the
(Adopted) following roll call vote:
Ayes: Council Members Galimba, Hustace, Kagiwada,
Kierkiewicz, Kimball, and Onishi —6.
Noes: Council Members Kaneali`i-Kleinfelder,
Villegas, and Chair Inaba—3.
Absent: None.
Excused: None.
CHR. INABA: Thank you, Mr. Clerk. OHCD, mahalo for your work and to the
Finance Department and Corporation Counsel as well. We will continue to work
closely together for our grant programs across the County. With that, we are at
the end of our agenda.
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Hawai`i County Council-5 January 31,2025
OTHER The Chair directed the Council to proceed to the next order of business, Other
BUSINESS: Business.
(There were none.)
ANNOUNCE- The Chair directed the Council to proceed to the next order of business,
MENTS: Announcements.
(There were none.)
ADJOURN- There being no further business, Chair Inaba adjourned the meeting at 3:47 p.m.
MENT:
APR 0 2 2025
Council Approval:
CO TY
JH/tk
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