HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0054.006 2000-2002 '
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January 22, 2001
To The Hawaii County Council Finance Comnuttee ~ ~1 ] ~~I~~ ~ G r~i'I 9 17
From Chnstina Heliker, President, Board of Directors, Hawaii Island Humane Society
Re Testimony on Comm 54 A Resolution to Authorize a Performance >;valuation of
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the Hawaii Island Humane Society
The Hawai i Island Humane Society is in favor of having a performance evaluation by a
creditable animal welfare organuzation, such as the two mentioned in this Resolution the
Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) or the National Animal Control
Association
Just two weeks ago, eight members of our board attended a meeting on Oahu that
included the boards and executive directors of the humane societies on Oahu, Maui, and
Kauai One of the [lungs we discussed was the possibility of scheduling performance
evaluations of all four organizations for this coming spnng, thus splitting the cost of
bringing an evaluating team from the mainland
Aside from reducing the cost for each organization, having all four humane societies
evaluated at the same time by the same organization will make it much easier to compare
apples with apples and see exactly how our humane society compares with others in the
state The consensus was that Humane Society of the United States had the best
evaluation program
The request for proposal attached to this resolution is quite comprehensive, and while we
welcome an evaluation of the services that are contracted by the County of Hawai i, we
find that in a few places, the RFP goes beyond the scope of those contracted services In
particular, Specification (i) Effectiveness of Community Relations and Volunteer
Programs, is an area that does not fall under the county contract, and it would be
inappropriate to spend taxpayers' money to evaluate programs that are funded by private
donations We would like the RFP to be revised accordingly
We are also concerned about one item listed under Specification (a), the Organizational
Structure and I-Lerarchy, namely "Personnel performance evaluations" If the intent is to
see if we have the policies in place to perform regular personnel performance evaluations,
that is fine But we want to make it clear that we believe in protecting the privacy of our
employees, and we will not release any confidential information from our personnel files
I'm proud of how far the Hawaii Island Humane Society has come in the last ten years
And, I'm well aware that we still have a long way to go A performance evaluation of
our contracted services by an organization such as HSUS should be a useful and
educational experience, both for us and the County of Hawaii--particularly if all of our
sister organizations in the state are being evaluated at the same [line
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