HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010-10-22 Cost of Government Commission Minutes
COST OF GOVERNMENT COMMISSION
c/o Office of the Corporation Counsel, 101 Aupuni Street,
Suite 325, Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720
MINUTES – AS AMENDED
Friday, October 22, 2010 – 10:00 a.m.
Department of Liquor Control Conference Room
101 Aupuni Street, Suite 230
Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720
CALL TO ORDER
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay, everyone’s here. I would like to call the meeting to order
(I0:05).
Present:Also present:
Kenneth Armour Julie Mecklenburg
Glen Matsuda Emarie Carvalho
Marilyn NicholsonSandy Arriola
Eileen O’Hara
Patricia Provalenko Deanne Sako
Gloria Wong Jan Pakele
William Takaba, ex-officio
Guests:
Nancy Crawford
Gilbert Benevides
Jodie Yanagihara
Craig Masuda
STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC
MS. NICHOLSON:
I’d like to start of with Statements from the public, but you are
probably not public, you are probably our speakers so, is there any public present who
would like to make any statements?
APPROVAL OF MINUTES (October 8, 2010)
MS. NICHOLSON:
If not, I would like to move to Approval of the minutes for October 8,
2010.
MOTION:MS. WONG:
So moved.
Hawai‘i County is an Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer
MS. PROVALENKO:
Second.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any discussion?
MS. WONG:
Yes.
MS. O’HARA:
Yes.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Gloria, you first.
MS. WONG:
She can go first as I look up my page.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay, Eileen.
MS. O’HARA:
It is a reference to, page 24 – something I said, getting out the RPS and
IPS. That needs to be corrected to RFP’S and IFB’S. Invitation for Bids and Request
for Proposals.
MS. NICHOLSON:
RFPs and IFBs. Okay, anything else that you have?
MR. MATSUDA:
I’ll make a correction. On page 6, a typo on the second line where it
says from the jest of it. Gist instead of jest. That’s all.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any other corrections?
MS. WONG:
On page 26 and 27, under Ms. Wong, so you can make sure or stay for
questions and answers. Oh no, I don’t know why I marked that one. Page 27, at the
bottom, it says, and the other thing is if they that they know someone. I’m not sure if
that was, it seems like – if they know someone.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Where are you on page 27? Okay, you are looking at Kathy
Garson’s comment?
MS. WONG:
Yes. I think they that is typed twice.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So we’re deleting the first they that, so if they know someone. Are
there any other corrections to the minutes? Do I have a motion to accept the minutes
as amended. Well first I think we have to accept the minutes.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
You only accept the minutes as amended.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So we already have a motion and a second on the floor to accept
the minutes. And then we’ll do a motion to accept those amended?
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Move to amend first.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay.
MOTION:MS. WONG:
I move to amend.
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MS. O’HARA:
Second.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay. Any other discussion on amendments? We have a call for a
vote. All in favor?
ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any opposed? None
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Now go back to the motion.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Now we move to accept the original motion which we have on the
table already to accept the minutes. Any other discussion? Okay I call for a vote. All
those in favor?
ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any opposed? None.
DISCUSSION, AND QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION WITH FINANCE,
PURCHASING DIVISION, PUBLIC WORKS AND CORPORATION COUNSEL
REGARDING CURRENT PROCESSING OF CONTRACTS AND CONTRACT
ADMINISTRATION
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay we have moved through the minutes and now we’re actually,
if you all agree, we will skip agenda item 4, Correspondence so we can go right into the
discussion section so that we don’t waste these folks time. And because I missed the
last meeting, I’m not sure what it is we’re doing. We’ve got Discussion and Question
and Answer Session With Finance, Purchasing Division, Public Works and Corporation
Counsel Regarding Current Processing of Contracts and Contract Administration. So,
what was the intent for how we want to handle this? Do we want everyone at the table
at once? Or do we want them to each give an individual presentation?
MS. MECKLENBURG:
I think the intent was to allow them to give a presentation and
then you’ll have the opportunity for discussion and question and answer.
MS. WONG:
I think it was a 10-15 minute presentation and then question and answers.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Not each individual was my understanding. One presentation.
MS. CRAWFORD:
Our understanding was we were going to come together and do a
presentation.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Together or individual?
MS. CRAWFORD:
Together. We are a team.
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MS. NICHOLSON:
So if you could all kind of squeeze into the table at once. So if you
would that and then introduce yourselves.
MS. CRAWFORD:
First, good morning and thank you for having us here. I’m Nancy
Crawford. I’m the Director of Finance. On my left is Gilbert Benevides. He is our
Purchasing Agent, and Purchasing falls under the Finance Department. On my right is
Jodie Yanagihara from Public Works, and she’s in their contract section, managing the
construction type contracts. They have other contracts but what differentiates her from
our other goods and services would be construction contracts. And Craig Masuda from
Corporation Counsel, and he is Finance Department’s attorney and therefore
specializes among other things, procurement.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Thank you for coming.
MS. PROVALENKO:
Thank you.
MS. CRAWFORD:
We are pleased to be here, and I just want to tell you I really
appreciate the difficult job that you all have volunteered to do and take on and trying to
help find some cost reductions. So we appreciate this opportunity to talk a little about
procurement and sort of based on our understanding of what you we thought you
wanted to hear. And I hope this will cover our intentions to do a brief like 15 minutes
covering from legal to specific aspects of procurement and some of our processes, and
then just be available for questions. So, to start that off, we start with what the legal
basis is. Craig is going to do the first section.
MR. MASUDA:
Good morning. What I’ll be going through is this handout you have in
front of you, but we’ll be doing that a little bit later on. Let’s start of with what
procurement is and what procurement is not. This is the procurement code, the
different sections of the procurement code. What procurement code is, is the purchase
or obtaining of goods and services. What it does not include though is purchases of
land, any kind of land acquisition, any kind of land code, be it lease of foul feed
purchase or a license or any type of land acquisitions. That’s not covered by the
procurement code. The procurement code is 103D of Hawai‘i Revised Statutes. It’s a
state law. The primary chapters like I said is 103D, there’s also 103F which has to do
with procurement of health services. That is usually only done by Office of Aging, so I’m
not going to go into that. The main purchasing activity for the county is always under
103D. Under 103D, there’s also a provision where they have a state procurement
policy board. That’s the creating, or the enabling statute for that organization. That
organization is charged with getting statutory law of 103D and creating Hawai‘i
Administrative Rules. So just like when we have county laws then we have
departmental rules, you have the state law and then you have the Hawai‘i
Administrative Rules. The Hawai‘i Administrative Rules gives detail of what the state
law is. The state law will give you general policies and Hawai‘i Administrative Rules will
tell you exactly how to accomplish those policies and what to do. That being said then,
when you look at the progression, and I’m sure Kathy already went through it with you
folks, supremacy of laws. The county has no authority to change the procurement code
or the Hawai‘i Administrative Rules. We have to follow their rules. Also within that,
Hawai‘i Administrative Rules is under Title 3. So if you folks want to look it up, look up
Title 3, and there’s a whole bunch of different sections in there.The procurement code
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and Hawai‘i Administrative Rules covers which really is just going to be straight
purchase. You want a truck, this is how you go to procure a truck. Within that, the
legislators through their infinite wisdom can also use the purchasing power just like
other people use the taxing power of the government to accomplish social goals or
social engineering. So, you’re going to see their preferences for small businesses.
Something’s say you have to give preferences for Hawai‘i built products. Something
say, for example, you have to show that people who the government is giving its funds
to, also are paying their taxes. They’re paying their insurance. They’re paying their
work comp. payments. These are all compliance issues, are the responsibility section
of the code that the county has to follow because the county is an entity of the state.
Therefore a lot of times when you do something, it’s not necessarily purchasing the
cheapest thing from the cheapest vendor, cause that’s where they put in the social
engineering part is where they can have the power of their purchasing dollars saying all
you vendors, we want you to do X. We want you to do Y. And the way we make you
comply and do that is through our purchasing power much like power the government
does with its taxing power. Another thing it’s important to remember is that knowing
violations of the procurement code is a misdemeanor. It’s a criminal offense. And of
course if somebody knowingly violates the law, they are outside of the scope of
authority and my office and the county does not represent them because that would be
a law violation onto that person who did that illegal thing. If you go to the handout like I
said, this is the whole thing. The main types of procurement is Competitive Sealed
Bids. When you see Competitive Sealed Bids, this is under 103D-302 Hawai‘i Revised
Statutes. This is the one everybody calls shorthand as IFBs – Invitation For Bids.
Gilbert will go into that more in detail on the process of those. The next would be
Competitive Sealed Proposals under 103D-303. This is what everybody refers to as
RFPs or Request for Proposals. So, just like you folks had the amended today for your
record, IFBs are bids, or people just talk about it as bids. And RFPs or request for
proposals, people just say it’s proposals. The other main source of procurement is
Professional Services. So, Professional Services is like an animal unto itself where
you’re not sending out for bids but people are sending you. Annually we send out
request for professional services and what people do in that sense is they send you a
resume. And from there you pick whatever profession you want to hire for that service.
Of course you can’t just pick anybody, but there is a whole government qualifications
handbook that’s put out by the federal government and it has a list of 200 to 300 kind of
specialties where you can hire off of as in a professional service. And of course there is
Small Purchases too, which we’ll get into a little later. From here you go to your second
page. This will tell you really briefly the processes there to the different kind of bid
programs. And as the Finance Director said, Purchasing handles almost everything
except for construction bids and construction RFP. Those are handled by Jodie.
MS. YANAGIHARA:
Good morning. I’ll be giving you a brief overview of the DPW
construction bidding process. These are our construction contracts of over $25,000 and
above. As Craig mentioned earlier, all construction parties are procured through the
Hawai‘i Revised Statutes and Hawai‘i Administrative Rules and the General
Requirements of the Covenants. So the steps are first we, All Notice to Bids for
Projects and, also addendums or changes to the plans and specs are posted on the
State and County of Hawai‘i procurement notices website. And the notification of
posting is sent to all contractors by email. Then the sealed bids are opened publicly
and awarded to the lowest qualified bidder. The contract is in, we shoot it to the
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contractor, and to streamline the work process we’re issuing the contract documents
electronically. And this is to cut back the delivery time and save postage. Then the
contractor executes the contract and is required to submit the required performance
bonds which is 100% of the contract amount. And that’s to protect the county. Labor
and material payment bonds is 100% also, and that is to insure the payment for
suppliers and subcontractors. Other required forms are insurance certificates, tax
clearance and other forms. And then the contract is then routed through the county
execution process and ultimately approved by the Mayor. And Gilbert will cover the
contract routing process in a little bit. But the next step is Notice to Proceed. It is then
issued to the contractor and this becomes the start of the project. So after the project is
started, the contractor then submits invoices and certified payrolls throughout the
duration of the project, until the project completion. So that’s the kind of in a nutshell of
what construction bidding process is.
MR. BENEVIDES:
Well goods and services basically follow the same process except
for goods and services, the bonding is not required. It’s optional depending on what it is
you’re buying, whether or not you determine a bond is required to protect the county at
that stage. If you look at this handout, this is the single page contract routing form. I’ll
briefly touch on once the bidding process basically as Jodie went through, is done and
you have a contract. What happens then? First, after the bid award is made, the
contract is put together as you can see Route to: The contractor will get the package
first. The contractor will then sign and notarize it, get all the Act 52 documentation
which includes tax clearances, ELIR compliances and DCCA compliances along with
bonding if it’s construction, along with insurance if it’s construction or services, and they
then send that back to us for review. Then after that, when it comes back, it goes to the
department heads for review. The department head will review it, and after the
department head reviews it, it goes to Human Resources only if the services that are
being performed customarily and historically get performed by civil service. But if we’re
going outside of the civil service for a personal or professional contract because we
don’t have the wherewithal with them to do it at that time. If it’s not a service, it would
skip Human Resources. After that it comes to the Purchasing Agent. I review it to
make sure that everything is there. All the documents required for it to be a proper
procurement and the steps leading up to that award, have been accomplished. When
I’m done with it, it goes to the controller upstairs and the Finance Director for review and
certification of the funding for that project or procurement. After that step it goes to
Corporation Counsel for review as to form and legality. Again a check to make sure that
everything that needed to be done relative to putting together a legal contract has been
completed. And from there, once that is done, Corporation Counsel signs of as to form
and legality directly on the contract itself, and it goes the mayor’s office for final review
and signature. When the mayor is finished with it, it gets returned to the Purchasing
Division and we do a Notice To Proceed and send full copies of the executed contract to
the vendor so they can proceed with either sending the goods or performing the service.
We also gave you the basic procurement handout. And that basically gives you a
breakdown, a very quick breakdown of what the process includes step by step for Small
Purchases, and for Competitive Sealed Bid which is the IFB, and the Competitive
Sealed Proposal which are the RFPs, and then Professional Services. And it gives you
a breakdown of what the steps basically are to get from start to finish on each of those
procurement methods.
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MS. CRAWFORD:
We are happy to spend as much time as you want on any of this,
but we didn’t want to take up too long a time just with presentation, and so we tried to
move through some pretty complex material very quickly. One last thing, I just wanted
to mention is some of the things that we’ve already implemented to try and improve
efficiency or save on costs within say the last couple of years, and that is like the
construction bids and plans. So that’s like large plan documents and everything is now
placed on cd’s and goes to the contractors in that form. So that replaced a lot of paper
and the need even for deposits. So we’ve simplified that process. Under Procurement
for Goods and Services, we’ve taken about 98% of the documents that used to be
mailed out are now all sent electronically through email. Included in that is the Small
Purchase quotes which are basically 100% emailed out and the responses come back
in, it would an email or fax. And it’s just the small purchase under $25,000 that we’re
still getting written quotations and it’s all being emailed out. All of the Notices for Goods
and Services or construction contracts are posted on the state’s procurement notice site
as opposed to newspaper advertising which we used to have. Long ago it was always
in the Sunday paper, and then to cut costs we went to non-Sundays and now with the
exception of some grant funded, Housing. And if they fall under certain federal
regulations, they may still require posting in newspapers of general circulation. But the
majority of what the county does, does not require that and so it’s done strictly on the
website. That’s saving a lot of advertising costs. Beyond that I guess I would just say
that we, I mean one thing, I’ll just mention it’s not a direct cost cutting effort, but we put
effort in up front in the form of what Gilbert and Craig have talked about and the review
of contracts through the process and requirements for documentation that ultimately we
feel have resulted in this county in having very few procurement protests which are
costly in time and energy for everyone. It can hold up a project or purchase of
something, and we feel that investment in carefully getting information out to everybody,
being very clear about what we need and want, and documenting what we’ve done
helps protect the county in that way from those additional costs. And finally there are
some other electronic procurement type activities that are under consideration but we’ve
not taken much steps. So, with that I thank you and if there’s anything to add or we
skipped over, we would welcome questions.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I’m sure we have some questions from some of our commission
members, so anyone want to jump in and go first?
MS. WONG:
I’d just like a clarification of one of the terms that you used. I’m not clear
of what that means. Procurement protest? Do you get protest for procurements?
MR. MASUDA:
What happens is for every procurement that’s sent out, any bidder,
who is any person who submitted a bid and didn’t get selected, can file a protest. What
the protest says is the way the specs came out wasn’t fair. It was geared too much
towards my competitor, not toward me. Or the way you did the evaluation and you
picked somebody else over me was somehow not fair or whatever. As soon as they file
a protest, what’s built into the law is what’s called an automatic stay. So once he filed a
protest, once Nancy receives, as a chief procurement officer, once she receives the
protest, everything stops until the issue is resolved, or until there is a determination
made that in the best interest of the government that the purchasing go through. But
even that can, even in itself whether you try to do the override so to speak of the
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automatic stay, that within itself can generate another protest. And then it would be
frozen again. Some protests have resulted in lack of services being held up because
you can protest, you go to the hearing’s officer, decision making level in Honolulu. Then
it goes to Circuit Court, then it goes to Supreme Court. So, a protest, a simple protest
of a purchase like tires, $15 tire, or whatever, can be held up and end up costing
several thousand dollars in litigation fees. Not really though. Attorney’s get paid the
same so it doesn’t cost the county that much but, as far as time wise, it costs a lot. It
costs a lot for discovery and for flying to Honolulu and such. But what the main thing it
does is it holds up any procurement of the item or of the service. So, in some cases like
we had one for cleaning storm drains, because that thing was held up, county storm
drains were not cleaned for about a year and a half. And of course, as things build up, it
doesn’t stop the debris from building up so the next year your costs are even higher.
So, that’s a procurement protest, but it can go all the way up to Supreme Court. And it’s
an automatic stay. That’s the hard part about it. It really doesn’t concern you folks so
much but because there is so much protest, a lot of them are really unfounded and
when times get hard, people start using it as a tactic. Small guys can’t last that long,
but big guys can fight out, survive on their research for a long time. Now what they built
into the law as of a year and a half ago was that if somebody wants to file a protest,
they have to put a bond. So, if they lose, then they lose their bond. So they can’t just
willy-nilly file a protest just to try to stump the other competitor. Hope that answered
your question.
MS. WONG:
Yes, a lot. Thank you.
MS. O’HARA:
Just following up on that, is there a dollar amount for that bonding
requirement?
MR. MASUDA:
Yes. It’s based upon the value of the protest itself. The value of the
contract.
MS. O’HARA:
So in the last five years, how many protests have we had to deal with?
MS. CRAWFORD:
I’m not so sure about construction because actually authority for
handling procurement protests on construction has been delegated to the director of
Public Works.
MR. MASUDA:
No, but I get them.
MS. CRAWFORD:
Oh you do?
MR. MASUDA:
We’ve had about five or six, but we’ve knocked them out before the
hearing. And that’s what we always try to do, is do an early knock out before it starts
accumulating a lot of costs. That’s what our office does too. Part of their focus is,
what’s the catch phrase he uses? Preventive lawyering. So now we do classes and
stuff like that. Compared to other jurisdictions and the state, we have significantly less
then they do. Significantly. Why? I don’t know.
MS. CRAWFORD:
Cause we have good tight specifications.
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MS. O’HARA:
I have a question for Jodie. How is it that DPW came to be the
oversight for construction contracts? And do you do construction contracts for other
departments?
MS. YANAGIHARA:
It’s delegated actually from Finance, the chief procurement officer
and it’s delegated to the Director of Public Works for all construction
MS. O’HARA:
Including construction done by other departments?
MS. YANAGIHARA:
Yes. So we handle construction contracts for Department of
Environmental Management, Parks and Recreation, Housing and all of our Public
Works.
MS. CRAWFORD:
One thing I would say is that I have, because as Director of
Finance, and not that it started with me because the authority to handle the construction
contracts has been delegated to the Public Works Director, or chief engineer, for a long
time. But it’s because it’s kind of a specialized area. The other thing is that quite
recently we, I included in my delegation authorization to the Director of Public Works the
authority to further delegate to the Director of Environmental Management so they can
do their own contracts. That was like I said very recently, that delegation.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So, you’ll have someone like Jodie in the Department of
Environmental Management?
MS. CRAWFORD:
They do have a contract clerk.
MS. YANAGIHARA:
They have a contract clerk.
MS. NICHOLSON:
This is a question that will sort of demonstrate my ignorance of how
this all works. So, if I am a department head and I want to buy 25 cases of copy paper,
whatever. What do I do? Who do I talk through how a department determines what
their needs are through their budgeting process. Then their budget is approved so
okay, we have the money, now what happens? How do I acquire or how do I acquire a
vehicle? Whatever it is I need to acquire for my department. What would happen?
MR. BENEVIDES:
Paper we carry downstairs in the Storeroom, so that wouldn’t be
one that you’d put in a request for. (Just as an aside.) But on a vehicle for instance, we
have a time schedule, three times per year, which all the departments are aware of
where you can send in your requisitions for vehicles, and like time buying, desks,
computers, whatever it is. And then in our office we take that requisition. We prioritize
it with everything else that we have to do. We put together the like type items so we’re
not putting out one bid for one computer in other words. By that due date, all the
vehicles come in. We put out one passenger car vehicle bid. We put out a heavy
equipment bid. And then we go through the process as indicated in this basic
procurement process which is, if the intended or cumulative amount is over $25,000
then we would do an IFB, which is Invitation for Bid. And we would send it out to people
who have participated in the past. Anybody who requests it. And of course once we
post it we get a lot of request for it as well. So, to answer your question, the requisition
comes in, we prioritize then we put out the bids based on a prioritized time schedule.
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MS. NICHOLSON:
And you do that three times a year, or you accept the request three
times a year?
MR. BENEVIDES:
We accept bulk of requests three times a year specifically. But all
through the course of the year, we still handle the every day purchases that come in as
well.
MS. NICHOLSON:
And so how much control would a department have over the
specifications of the kind of printer they want? How do you try to sort of package those
kinds of requests to get the biggest bang for your buck versus saying I want an HP
printer and I want this kind and I want that kind, and I want those features. How do you
MR. BENEVIDES:
Oh we deal with that all the time. But over the years we have,
because you know this is not something, like printers for instance, every year we buy
printers. So over the course of the last 29 years that I’ve been there, we put together
specs on printers and such and multi function machines that meet a general standard
that is not restricted in the marketplace so that everybody can bid on it, while still giving
our people what they need to perform the functions. For a printer for instance, I think
we have about nine different types of printers, because of the speed the output and so
on and so forth. So the using agency knowing what is available in the market place and
looking at prior bids, we’ll start their request out with that specific specification and
reference that specification. So when we get it we know what we’re looking at to begin
with. Now we tell them that if you need any changes to this, just mark it up in red, tell us
where the changes are. And then we review it at that point to make sure that those
requests are again not restricted to competition, and we put out the bids accordingly
after that.
MS. NICHOLSON:
And then just one more question on that. So, if you see that a
department is requesting six new printers or let’s don’t do printers. Let’s do a copy
machine. Six like individual copy machines. Do you look at that and go, well why can’t
they get one really multi function copy machine and all network to it? How do those
kinds of decisions get made? Is that within the department?
MR. BENEVIDES:
That decision is made by the department based on their budget.
And once it comes to us it’s already been decided that that’s what they want. Our
function is then to go procure it under the procurement law.Now if we see something is
way out of bounds, somebody putting in a vehicle, for a Cadillac for instance or
something. Of course we’re going to question something like that. If they’re buying
more than usual in quantity, we would call and ask. But it’s not really, we don’t really
police that. When it comes to us, the requisition basically says that the department
head is authorizing that procurement based on their budget for their department. We
proceed in buying it under the procurement law unless something looks, unless there’s
a red flag if something looks way out of line. We don’t police per se.
MS. CRAWFORD:
If I can just add in. I would say the control you’re talking about
really happens more in the budgeting process. During our fairly extensive budget
hearings that we go through, not the council hearings, but in advance of that when we’re
working with the departments. They have for one thing, for equipment type purchases,
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we have another form that they have to fill out justifying that. Telling us whether it’s a
replacement or it’s new, who is going to use it and the justification. And depending on
the dollar amount either the budget administrator can approve it or if it’s a high dollar
amount, it would go to the mayor’s office. And so for instance if they are asking for
multiple copiers or printers or something like that, we will be talking with them absolutely
about the possibility of sharing within their department or even some cases with another
department if it makes sense. The only thing is if you lose such efficiency through
sharing wouldn’t pay for it than we would go forward with that.
MR. MATSUDA:
In regards to the printers, and I’m just curious to see, because
printers are very well used daily, the question I have has to do with, apparently the
department heads will decide whether they can have or someone can request for a new
printer according to what I’m hearing, according to the budget. But would the individual
himself say okay, well, I need a new printer and say, maybe tomorrow or two years, how
long a frame, taking into consideration that the printer is not broken, is there a time
period that a person, say okay, well we just got you a printer last year or 2008. You still
have to use that printer. Or can one just say, okay, I want a new printer now because
the old printer, I don’t like that one. I just want this one here. There has to be some sort
of control or at least some kind of criteria that you use to determine okay, yes, let’s allow
or yes, it’s affordable, or it’s usable like same thing as combine the printers as was
mentioned here. What is your insight on that? Because I’m familiar whereby we’ve
requested printers before. This is at a different level. And we were not able to get that.
And I just want to know what is your criteria’s on something like that. Because
everybody wants a new printer. Everybody wants to pass the printers and all that kind
of stuff. Is there any rule of thumb that you use?
MS. CRAWFORD:
The Finance’s role would be in the budget process, when this
department is being required to identify what they expect to be purchasing in the future
year. And so, they have to have some justification there or we’re probably going to
question it. The other thing is that there are very limited budgeting dollars and they’re
very careful. That department head is going to be very careful about how they decide
they’re going to spend that. What is their highest priority equipment? Sometimes
they’ve been required to prioritize their equipment because we’re going to be cutting,
and we’ll cut from the bottom. What we probably don’t do, it is not my role as the
Finance Director to override the director of Public Works and say that what he has said
is his highest priority piece of equipment. I don’t take on the responsibility unless it’s
something very bizarre, I would not question him on that. That’s his budgetary decision.
Once the budget is in place and you’re in the real life situation of day to day, and a
clerical person would like a new printer, the controls there are, that will have to be
approved up the line. So they don’t have the freedom to just submit a requisition and go
straight over to Purchasing.
MR. MATSUDA:
Okay, everything rests with the department head?
MS. CRAWFORD:
Yes.
MR. TAKABA:
You may want to touch on zero discovery concept.
11
MS. CRAWFORD:
Yes. This year, well our budgeting for a number of years has been
status quo and for a while it was status quo and then plus a little because maybe we
thought we had enough. And then it’s been status quo and then we start cutting. This
year we are doing a zero base budgeting, which means departments are not starting
with whatever they had in the current year budget and saying keep it the same. Or they
line by line it. It’s a lot more work for everybody. It will be a lot more work for our
budget because we’re centralized. Everything comes into our very small budget
division. But every line needs to have justification. And so, if you’re talking about, most
of us have very little equipment purchases anyway. But say contract services or
something like that, every service would be there and the justification for it so that when
we sit with that department and have that discussion, it’s forcing everyone to take a
really close look at what they need, starting from scratch. They are in that process right
now. The departments are working hard at developing those budgets to get them in by
the deadline at the end of this month.
MR. MATSUDA:
Another question. On the contract services, I think Gilbert mentioned
something about going through various approval process which is one of tax office, one
of DLIR, and so forth. Is it up to the contractor to follow through and make sure that
they have the appropriate approval or is there someone within your department that
would follow up to make sure that they have
MR. BENEVIDES:
The responsibility is on the contractor.
MR. MATSUDA:
It is.
MR. BENEVIDES:
We tell them in the cover letter that goes along with the contract
package exactly what it is that they have to provide. But the responsibility for then
obtaining those certificates and compliances lies with the contractor.
MR. MATSUDA:
Is there a limit or a period of time?
MR. BENEVIDES:
We say up to 10 days, but in the real world 10 days doesn’t usually
work out. So we just give them a reasonable amount of time based on the
circumstance. Did we have other bidders that we can go rely on as a second lowest
bidder? So, I think the average I would say ends up being about three to four weeks.
From the time we send it out they usually get it back to us is a fully executed package
for us to, of course some of them come in a lot quicker. Some go beyond that. But an
average about three weeks.
MR. MATSUDA:
Thank you.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I have another question. We’ve gotten a lot of comments back from
department heads about the departments using more video conferencing. And so it
may come from this department and this department, so to say various departments are
requesting equipment to do video conferencing, how does the county look at this overall
for all the departments as a policy that we’re going to do it, versus having this having
this very departmentalize way at looking at things? I’m also thinking of say you get a
request for a couple of different servers but there’s been some talk about going to virtual
servers, how does the county look at those sort of larger issues and not get out of the
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department, but the more operational? Okay, the whole county is, we’re going to move
to video conferencing so we’re not doing it piece meal. How does that happen within
the county? Obviously it would impact the procurement and contracts.
MS. CRAWFORD:
I would say that in your example of video conferencing, we have not
formally established a county-wide policy or a sort of a mass purchasing. While there
might be some savings in going with a large scale video conferencing procurement and
establishment, we did not go that direction. It really has been the departments, I think in
their capacity, to take advantage of it. For instance, the Fire Department has stations all
around the island and they found that it would greatly enhance their efficiency and save
staffers time to video conference trainings and meetings, and they managed to set their
priorities for equipment purchases so that they could do that. In general, the policy I
could say, at the county, is that we support, that for increasing video conferencing as a
way to reduce the cost in mobile traveling to meetings, but have not tried to formalize a
certain type of procurement around that.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Would it make sense to you because that would maybe decrease
the number of vehicle requests. I don’t know. You’re the experts on this, but it just
seems to me to work more holistically, might make more sense. And I don’t know who
would do it if it’s not sort of the folks that are working on procurement who would have
these sort of larger issues unless it’s coming from the mayor’s office.
MR. TAKABA:
There are sights, county sights scattered throughout the island that has
a video conferencing set up. So for instance the council room has a video conference
facility. The mayor’s office has one. The mayor’s office in Kona, the council office in
Kona. I’m not sure about other districts, but slowly I think we should be working up
towards getting like regional areas that different departments can use. The example
that Nancy gave on Fire Department is an unusual request. I don’t think departments
request their own video conferencing facility. It’s more like we should be encouraging
them to use what is currently available.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So what is the correct method for doing that when Gilbert sees
these requests coming in for this equipment, and so he knows that this department is
looking at it, and this department is looking at it? But if departments already vetted it
you sort of act on it. Where is that intersection between the request from the various
departments and going like maybe as a county we should embrace this a little bit more?
How does that happen?
MS. CRAWFORD:
I think that’s back in the budgeting process. Because at budgeting
they’re putting in that request. And we’re probably more aware of where there are
already systems, the questions that we would ask. For instance if somebody who works
in the county building comes in and wants to get some video conferencing equipment,
we’re going to be asking about, we have video conferencing equipment. Is there some
compelling reason that you can’t take advantage of what already exists? Because we
actually, as Bill said, we’ve got very extensive video conferencing available now. Like in
the Finance office we don’t have our own video conferencing but we don’t have reason
to use it often enough to warrant having our own, so we would go down to the council
room and use that. Or others who have it, Prosecutor’s Office has video conferencing
13
and is always made it known that that’s available for the departments to use their
conferencing room and their conferencing equipment.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Well, I guess then my question would be why did we get so many
comments from so many different department heads saying we should use video
conferencing more. There’s obviously a barrier there in the perception that we should
do this more so that we would reduce staff travel time and mileage, and that there’s a
inaudible there, and I’m trying to get at it. How do those things get resolved?
MR. TAKABA:
I read those comments too. I took it to mean – well there were some
that came from the employees and there were some that may have been generated by
the departments. But the ones that came from the employees, I think what they were
trying to do was reach out to us, like if we could make a recommendation, the county
gets more proactive in getting of department heads, maybe division heads, to
encourage the use of video rather than generate from the line level. I think it was more
like, well it came from both the departments and the employees that it was like getting
the county to make a concerted effort to hold more video conferencing meetings, as
opposed to buying equipment. I don’t know if there were any requests for actual buying
more video conferencing equipment. Oh there was?
MS. O’HARA:
Yes. There were. This is question, I mean we’re calling the video
conferencing thing, but part of the issue I think has been until recently the county was
split into all these many offices in Hilo, so there might have been a video conferencing
at the mayor’s office but that’s across town for the Department of Environment
Management. And I don’t know with moving into the new building there are still
departments that are still scattered around town, if that’s going to resolve the
centralization shield. And perhaps it does need to be looked at as an overall county
plan to bring those departments that are in different locations to have the satellite offices
for Planning and others that are over in Kona. And do they have the video conferencing
at their offices to be able to join in to meetings? Are those things available currently?
Another question is, are services like SKIPE allowed for use? Are there legal issues?
Is it okay to use things like SKIPE?
MR. MASUDA:
SKIPE is not a secured network.
MS. O’HARA:
Yes. It’s not a secured network, so that’s why I’m asking. Are there
legal issues for holding Council meetings across anything like that?
MR. MASUDA:
Council meetings, it’s open to the public anyway. But I can tell you one
thing for sure. I would never interview or have a confidential meeting over SKIPE.
MS. O’HARA:
Well not confidential. But sometimes it’s just connecting with your
employee or something that needs to have happen in face to face.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
I’m sorry, if I could just interrupt and caution the commission
that the agenda item is intended to cover the processing of contracts and contract
administration, so before it gets to far off the topic. Sorry. Sunshine Law.
14
MS. O’HARA:
Well, the question again, the overall chain of purchasing that based on
saving cost for the county, when you do the IFBs for the automobiles, we purchase it as
a county. We purchase the printers and we purchase the computers. Have we looked
at the idea of doing a county-wide leasing program?
MR. BENEVIDES:
We have some leasing for printers and copiers and such, and the
life cycle on that, going back to your question is about five years for a printer. But other
than that no, we haven’t leased really vehicles. It’s been discussed but just recently we
were discussing it. But we have not to date leased any vehicles. We have purchased
heavy equipment based on a lease from a third party financer so we can spread out the
payments over 16 months. But other than that we really haven’t leased per se. We
either purchase or in the case of multi-function machines where there is a life cycle
issue, we have leased, but very limitedly. On vehicles, not to date.
MS. O’HARA:
It might be something to look at, zero line inaudible.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Ken, you have a question?
MR. ARMOUR:
How is things like travel handled? Do you set up contracts with Aloha
or go!, or hotels in Oahu so that everybody gets a good price or is each department just
go out and when they travel, just go out and get an airline ticket?
MR. BENEVIDES:
They get quotes. The get multiple quotes each time they need a
travel arrangement made. They call different hotels to see who has the best rate
because that fluctuates so much in the marketplace that it really doesn’t make sense to
tie yourself to a particular price in an effort to put together like a price term agreement
for the year. So we handle it through our department. The departments call us, ask us
for who is next in line for a travel agent. And we have a list of about 11 travel agents on
the island who want to participate. So we call them. And another option is for the
departments to get direct quotes from online with the various different online ticketing
agencies that are now available. They check with us. They tell us what the minimum
three quotes were and then we give them the approval to go ahead and go with the low
quote. So right now that’s the basic process.
MR. MASUDA:
You folks understand what price term agreements are?
MS. NICHOLSON:
No we don’t know.
MR. MASUDA:
Basically a price term agreement is like the beginning of the year, say
for airline tickets, we’ll set up this request saying we want a price term agreement with
the various airlines to submit their quotes for travel to Honolulu, interisland travel,
whatever. And then from there you pick the lowest quote. Say if it’s $59 with Hawaiian
Air. Probably it ain’t going to happen in a million years from now, but that’s okay. $59
with Hawaiian Air. Every purchase you purchase for that term of that agreement, which
is usually one year, you have to purchase from Hawaiian Air. Even if Hawaiian Air goes
down to $38, you know sometimes they have the $38 special, you’re paying $59. go!
goes for a two for one, or whatever, you’re locked into that contract, so you have to pay
that amount. So things that fluctuate greatly is kind of spooky from a financial position
15
to get locked in to certain kind of things, unless you know that the market is going to go
up during that year, or you have a good idea of what the market is going to do.
MR. BENEVIDES:
And just to interject, because there is such a fluctuation in the
market sometimes the market won’t respond to price term agreement. Cause they don’t
want to over price for the whole year or they can’t.
MR. MATSUDA:
Under the procurement process, you mentioned that you can use
three quotes from online?
MR. BENEVIDES:
Yes. That’s one method.
MR. MATSUDA:
That’s one method. But say if I wanted to travel to Honolulu, I have a
meeting in Honolulu. So I have to get three quotes online and I can do that as opposed
to get it straight directly from the hotel or the airline?
MR. BENEVIDES:
You could do that. You have to then, the information that you get
from those sights, you would have to document so that we can then review it and
compare and make sure that the purchase was made based on competitive issue. But
that’s one method that can be used. We put that in place to kind of stream line the
process because some times people today find out they have to go tomorrow. So to get
the requisitions to us and for us to prioritize doesn’t quite work out sometimes.
MR. MATSUDA:
Thank you.
MR. ARMOUR:
I want to ask a question on that. How is the fuel for all the county
vehicles done?
MR. BENEVIDES:
Price term agreement at the beginning of the fiscal year.
MR. ARMOUR:
So at certain gas stations?
MR. BENEVIDES:
No, no. We have deliveries to tanks at various facilities throughout
the island.
MR. ARMOUR:
All right, so we fill our own?
MR. BENEVIDES:
We fill our own once the tanks get topped off by the contractor.
MR. MASUDA:
It’s all bulk sale.
MS. WONG:
First I wanted to ask if Deanna wanted to join the table.
MS. SAKO:
I’m fine. But I’ll stay.
MS. CRAWFORD:
Deanna is our Deputy Director of Finance.
16
MS. WONG:
I’ve got sort of like a fragment to a long complex question, but it’s all in
one end thought of contracting process problems potentially. Let me ask you in
fragment, do all Finance Department staff get trained in the procurement process?
MS. CRAWFORD:
Most times.
MS. WONG:
Do secretaries, do
MS. CRAWFORD:
No.
MS. WONG:
Just particular people. Do the County Council because they’re voted in
every so many years every time there’s a new one, do they get trained in any of the
procurement processes at all?
MS. CRAWFORD:
We’ve increased the amount of training we do for the council
members.More recently we had new council members who came who actually
requested that and came and had a more in depth training from several of our sections
of budgeting and procurement and accounting.
MS. WONG:
Do they recognize the complexities of procurement would you say or they
sort of have a feel?
MS. CRAWFORD:
Right. They’re not directly involved in procurement and for that
reason they’re not.
MS. WONG:
And every time a new administration comes in and their new department
heads potentially, do they get trained on the procurement process, all the procurement
processes?
MR. MASUDA:
Our office does training on that.
MS. WONG:
In-house then.
MR. MASUDA:
For department heads, yes.
MS. WONG:
Cause I know they do a lot of training up at the UH mixing county people
and state people for procurement processing.
MR. MASUDA:
Are you talking about the procurement institute?
MS. WONG:
I don’t know if, it’s held at the conference room up above UH.
MS. SAKO:
Mostly for the vendors.
MR. MASUDA:
That’s not the institute one.
MS. WONG:
Cause I know I attended these classes up there. I thought, oops, I’ve
been here, done that. And so the department heads are all trained when they start.
And what I’m curious about is, I’m trying to figure out are there glitches or problems in
17
the contracting process based on operations or understanding of not only in the finance,
but outside, do they understand the process? Cause I know when I started, it took six
months before I knew there was any training on the state program. There was any
training on procurement. So, I didn’t want to ask for anything because I didn’t know how
to ask for it. So, I’m wondering if because the county is transitional upon elections, and
I know that your Finance is loosing eight people, is there problems in transition that
could be addressed to prevent any problems in the contracting process or do you think
that it sort of that’s the way it is? And it’s okay.
MS. CRAWFORD:
As Craig said, we have at the department head level, there is
training. For the most part the departmental level when there is turn over like, I know an
accountant comes in to work at Public Works, they do training. They’re doing their
hands on training there although people sometimes whether it’s for procurement issues
or processing invoices and some other accounting processes, our staff will meet with
individuals. It’s not like we’re putting on formal classes but we’re meeting with
individuals from different departments like new people who have been hired and need to
learn the process. It’s done more the one-on-one kind of training.
MR. BENEVIDES:
And we get calls almost daily. We’ve told everybody throughout the
county system that if you don’t understand what your next step is with procurement, call
us. We’re always there. So we field many calls each day. I shouldn’t say many, maybe
five or six a day where somebody is asking, hey what do I do next? So in that regard,
we provide some guidance as well on a daily basis.
MS. CRAWFORD:
There’s a procurement handbook for county procurement that
departments all have and is also available on our intranet website that people have
access to. And similarly I think we have some documents where some of our
accounting processing rules that are maintained. Each department has that as a form
of guidance to someone who’s coming in cold. It’s not quite the same as having
someone sit with you and work through it, but there’s some pretty good documentation
on the steps to follow for procurement or what the rules are.
MR. MASUDA:
Our office does a Procurement 101 class, two times a year. And we do
an advance class on Procurement Protest next week.
MS. WONG:
Okay. Good. Thank you.
MS. PROVALENKO:
Question, on professional services, is there, now I can imagine
that some of the professional services are over the $25,000 amount. Is there bonding in
place for that?
MR. BENEVIDES:
No. I mean again, you can ask for bonding on anything but it is not
required.
MR. MASUDA:
It depends on the service. It’s really going to depend on what you’re
really doing and whether they’re going to be consultants or they’re going to actually do
the contract.
18
MS. PROVALENKO:
Well, I’m thinking say something that actually does the contract.
Let’s say they can’t fulfill their contract. Then what takes place?
MR. MASUDA:
Say for example, take for example like a securities attorney that we
hire for bonding. Those people by their profession have to be bonded. So if there is
malpractice we can call on the bond. Does that answer your question?
MS. PROVALENKO:
I’m not going in that direction. I’m talking some other type of
service that maybe the county pays for that service
MS. NICHOLSON:
Videotaping the council.
MS. PROVALENKO:
Yeah, something like that. Or something that goes over the
$25,000 limit, that maybe this person all of a sudden doesn’t perform. And you’ve given
them notice to perform already.
MR. MASUDA:
Like the videotaping, that would be a contract for services, not
professional service. But that kind of case, you may have a bonding. You can call for a
bond.
MS. PROVALENKO:
So you can call for bond basically on anything over a certain
dollar amount?
MR. MASUDA:
Yes.
MS. CRAWFORD:
I think you could. But the other thing is that if you’re making those
kinds of requests, you’re also increasing the cost of the contract which is going to be
pushed to us. So I think in some cases like engineering and some of those contracting
to do design work or something like that. If they were to reach some point and there’s
progress along on that and not being paid unless they’re making progress and at some
point that’s not working out, those documents are all property of the county whatever’s
being generated up to that point. But it’s probably not the kind of thing you would have
been able to bond. I would say they could have got a performance bond for a cost to
complete the design, but it’s not something that we’ve normally done.
MS. PROVALENKO:
Okay.
MR. MASUDA:
The construction ones we do. But that’s going to be typically your
bigger dollar amount.
MS. CRAWFORD:
On construction.
MS. YANAGIHARA:
Well, anything over $25,000.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So with construction, if you got a fixed amount of money for a
construction project, do the bidders all know what the budget is in advance?
MS. YANAGIHARA:
There’s an estimated cost that we give to Notice to Bidders.
19
MS. NICHOLSON:
And if you only get one bid or no bids, what happens? I mean there
was obviously a flaw in the system somewhere to not get anybody who is interested in
bidding at that estimated cost level.
MS. CRAWFORD:
I would say they’re not locked in to that estimated cost at all. That’s
given to them. But they’re going to develop their bid. It’s not necessarily a flaw. If
we’re talking about construction, say during boom times, contractors are busy. We’re
not the easiest clients to deal with. We have a lot of regulations. So you may get one
or no bidders on a project not because there’s anything wrong. They could pick
whatever they wanted if it was unreasonably high. Because that’s the only reason they
could do it, then we wouldn’t necessarily accept that bid.
MS. NICHOLSON:
And do all contractors have to pay Davis Bacon wages? I’m getting
yeses and noes.
MR. MASUDA:
All contractors that deal with government agencies have to.
MS. NICHOLSON:
But for county, strictly a county project.
MR. MASUDA:
Yeah, we’re a government agency. So, yes. Everybody who deals
with the county, they have to. That’s how come your question of why sometimes there’s
no bids, it’s because there is more money to be made outside, not taking government
contracts and they don’t have to pay Davis Bacon wages for those other contracts.
MS. O’HARA:
My question relates to the drafting of RFPs and to some extent IFBs. In
that process it has to initiate from each department in services that they need and what
not. What is the handholding between Purchasing Division and the departments as
they try to draft these Requests for Proposals or Invitation to Bids, to help reduce the
amount of time, often the services were needed yesterday, the departments decide they
need the services, they sit down to draft this RFP, the process alone once it’s published
takes 60, 90, 120 days to end up in contract. So this process the departments go
through drafting their documents can sometimes take so long that by the time it actually
gets out on the street it’s changing.
MR. BENEVIDES:
That can occur, but with about 99% of the purchases we make for
any service or any goods, it’s been done already. So we go back, we look at one of our
older bids, to start the process off with. We’re not reinventing the wheel each time. Or
if it’s a really complex issue that we haven’t worked on before we’ll check with the other
jurisdictions to see if they have, and get a copy of their bids. This is at the beginning of
the process. We define as much information we can in whole or in part that we can
then start the process with. As far as working between Purchasing and the departments
it’s a very close relationship in that they put their, essentially they call us, they say, after
we get the requisition, they call us and say, this is what we need. So we go search the
data banks to see if there’s something that’s similar to, if not exactly the same as they’re
requesting. We’ll send it to them for them to review. They’ll start the process there.
They’ll send it back to us for us to review or a lot of the times it’s face to face. And we
patch it out. Unless there’s some other problem in determining if they want to forward
with the project at all, I don’t see it getting hanged up very often at all by putting the RFP
or the bid spec together per se precisely because we’re not usually starting from
20
scratch. We don’t reinvent the wheel every time. If we have to reinvent the wheel and
start from scratch, obviously it’s going to take a little longer.
MS. O’HARA:
On that same note, the county has in the past, cancelled RFPs and IFBs
that have been out to bid which companies have reacted to, responded to, and the
county then cancels them. Is there some way to prevent that from happening?
Because that’s not another discouragement to the planning sector to bid on.
MR. BENEVIDES:
Sure. And that’s always part of the thought process in going in. It’s
to make sure that the need is there. Most of the time the need is there or the using
agency wouldn’t be requesting it in the first place. But if there’s any reticent on that
side, we’re having meetings with them. If there seems to be any real problem about
making the award, we’ll discuss that. Hey, if you guys aren’t really thinking seriously
about making this award, let’s not put it out. I have not come across really that problem
as a major problem. And the cancellations of bids that you hear about comparatively
speaking to the overall bids that are put out, very small. But we do not like when it
happens, obviously. So we’re always trying to prevent that. And every bid that we put
out, the intention is to make the award. But for some reason or other, we may not be
able to. But them sometimes it goes back to the law, the way the specifications were
written. We don’t have enough time. Or it’s too complex to address as an addendum to
the bid. So we would cancel the bid and start all over. There are instances like that that
precipitate the cancelling of the bid every once and a while.
MS. O’HARA:
Thank you Gilbert. Another thing, we had a presentation by the Green
Team. Alex Frost came in to one of our meetings and in recognition of that, how much
work is Purchasing doing to try and include green pricing phraseology in your contracts,
be it fuel, or vehicles or whatever? Are we working to get those types of language into
our request for proposals and bids? I know the other counties are doing so.
MR. BENEVIDES:
That’s more of a policy issue. If the county decides that that’s the
policy and that’s the way they would want us to write the specs to include that, then
that’s the way we would write it. So I would just leave that answer to Nancy.
MS. CRAWFORD:
At this point we have not focused a lot of energy on making sure
that we’ve got green language in our contracts. And that’s not to say we’re not open to
that at all. It’s just that’s not something we focused a lot of attention on up to this point,
I can imagine, certainly there are in certain construction jobs that’s, I’m not speaking of
construction jobs right now, if you were talking more, I thought you were, I was thinking
of other kinds of contracts that we could certainly be looking into. In construction there
will be a number of things, and what we’re doing is energy efficiency projects.
MS. O’HARA:
That’s great to hear.
MR. BENEVIDES:
And just as an aside, all of our paper will be, we applied a
preference for recycle stuff.
MS. O’HARA:
My last question is I guess, well Jodie described the process and then
once the contract’s in place, you get the certified payrolls and invoices from the
contractors. How do we, as a county, document the work that we’ve contracted for is
21
actually the work that is going down on the ground? Who are the ears and eyes from
staff that confirms that the work is as we contracted so that we don’t pay on invoices
that perhaps we shouldn’t be paying.
MS. YANAGIHARA:
The inspectors and the project engineers. The project engineer is
the overall responsible for the project, and then they send out the inspectors. That’s
mainly seeing that the work is actually done and the way it’s supposed to be done.
MS. O’HARA:
For the contracting side?
MS. YANAGIHARA:
Yes.
MS. O’HARA:
And then on the goods and services side, how do we check those
things?
MR. BENEVIDES:
Once we make the order, there is a delivery date that is required
and of course they have to meet specifications. And if they are late in delivering or they
are off by any bid on the specifications, we hear immediately from the using agencies.
So it’s the using agencies. Once they receive it and they’ve accepted it, if we don’t hear
complaints then it went the way it was supposed to go. We don’t call per se as a
standard practice to say, did you get the copier today and is it working well? But we do
find out if it’s not.
MS. O’HARA:
And I assume we’re buying maintenance contracts too?
MR. BENEVIDES:
We are.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Are there other models for handling the fiscal issue of purchasing,
contracts or is this – the way this county does it, is that the way that most jurisdictions
do it? Or are there other ways?
MS. CRAWFORD:
Well some of our constraints as Craig said are legal requirements
that’s complex and extensive procurement law that we all live with in terms of
processing the requisitions or the contracts later. I’m sure every county agency has
something a little bit different. Gilbert speaks with his counterparts in other counties.
MR. BENEVIDES:
The model that we used is based obviously on the law. But again
the internal functions of paper going from one place to another or electronic notification
going from one place to another, I can’t see as being substantially different on other
jurisdictions because it’s just a matter of relaying information. I don’t exactly understand
what you mean by model.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Well, I guess I’m wondering if each of you, just trying to get out of
your box the way you do things, knows of a different way that it might be interesting to
look at, or is there a different way to do it?
MR. BENEVIDES:
Well, the procurement method selection is as per Craig’s handout.
Small purchasing, sole source, IFBs, RFPs, so the process is pretty much spelled out in
HAR, Hawai‘i Administrative Rules, which Craig mentioned earlier, gives you the detail.
22
It’s based on the law but it gives you the detail on how to put your processes in place to
accomplish it. So, basically following the law and the rule, and that kind of models the
process that we use to go forward.
MR. TAKABA:
The state is decentralized, and they delegate all of the purchasing to
the departments. I think maybe that’s what we’re getting at is our processing different
from other jurisdiction. The State Procurement Office does not do procurement. It’s all
decentralized to the departments like how we do it with Public Works.
MS. NICHOLSON:
But is ours then centralized? Are you saying it’s a pretty centralized
system?
MR. TAKABA:
Ours is centralized.
MR. MASUDA:
By Charter it’s centralized. Actually I know for sure some mainland
municipalities, they don’t have requirements of centralized purchasing, but our Charter
says we use centralized purchasing.
MS. O’HARA:
With the exception of DPW and now DEM.
(Bill Takaba left at 11:35)
MR. MASUDA:
No, that’s still centralized. It’s a delegation.
MS. CRAWFORD:
It’s a delegation but still centralized under Finance Director. And I
guess I would say that is by Charter, but also I would say I think that it’s efficient. It
gives us the opportunity to see what we’re saying because requests come in and we
purchase like items together to get best prices as opposed to every department just… I
know you’re not recommending that necessarily but it’s almost the only other model I
can think of. And since that one isn’t appropriate for us, what’s left for us to try to
imagine outside the box comes more to just this paper flow we’re talking about here.
And I think a lot of thought went into this and that’s not to say there might not be
something else to do, but every step we do here, we try to make it as efficient as
possible and we feel that everyone of these steps is necessary.
MS. O’HARA:
Does DPW also use the same contract? Contracts are often let for a
period of time with the ability to extend for additional periods of time. And that’s what
called an addendum to contracting. Does the department initiate addendums to
contract or is that initiated by your department?
MR. BENEVIDES:
If the contract has been let to Purchasing, out of purchasing, then
we would do all the subsequent supplemental agreements. If it’s done directly by Public
Works then they would do it for construction.
MS. CRAWFORD:
So some contracts have option year in them, so that’s one that
would, I mean unless they have a reason not to go with the option year, but that’s
beneficial rather than going out to bid every year for some kind of service that you have
several option years and if everything is going well then you would just renew those
.
23
MS. O’HARA:
So Gilbert, this is all tracked electronically, isn’t it, the contracts and the
supplemental contracts, etc.?
MR. BENEVIDES:
Well they’re in the system electronically. But we send the paper
around for signatures because it’s gotta be the original signatures.
MS. O’HARA:
Right, I understand. I’m not trying to pinpoint. I happen to work for a
company that has a small contract with the county, that had the supplemental years,
where supplemental contracts weren’t forthcoming. They appeared a year late. So, I’m
just kind of curious, is there something that could be improved in your electronic system
that might be a
MR. BENEVIDES:
Well, in place now, I see what you’re getting at, about four months
prior to the contract coming to expiration, if there are option years, we send what we call
a green sheet notification to the using agency saying this thing is coming up. You guys
tell us if you want to rebid, do the option year or if you don’t need the services any
longer. We constantly stay on top of that. We have our contracts clerk who stays on
top of that, and she gets electronic beeps everyday as to what’s coming up, what’s still
out there. We call the using agencies. We ask them, we didn’t get this back yet, so we
can’t go forward with doing an addendum or a rebid. Sometimes it’s because the using
agency is still deciding if they want it or if they need some changes. And sometimes it
leads to going out quite late, but it’s not because we haven’t sent it out. It’s because the
decision to go forward has not been made yet.
MS. O’HARA:
The key word there was the green sheet. When we’re still relying on
colored paper to track things it tells me that we could be doing things perhaps more
efficiently electronically. So, I guess something to look at because that system has
caused problems for contractor in the past and I know as a contractor we were affected
by it too.
MR. BENEVIDES:
To augment the green sheet, we do at the same time send out
emails to tell them that it is coming and to please respond as quickly as possible. And
the contract clerk then puts a three day higher suspense date one it so that she gets
prompted again in three days if it hasn’t come back to contact the using agency again
either by email or sometimes we find more effectively, a phone call.
MS. O’HARA:
Just wondering if there was some contract routing on line that
departments could directly go into and access to determine whether or not the contract
is moving, if it needs the supplemental you know, what things are, cause sometimes it’s
difficult to get that information down to the person in the department who’s actually
managing the contract cause it may not be the department head.
MR. BENEVIDES:
I go back to what I said a little earlier where we field calls all day
and a lot of those calls are finding out what the status is on contracts. And so we’ll bring
everybody up to date. Sometimes we have to track down if it’s still at the using agency
or Corp Counsel, the Mayor’s Office. So there is constant contact trying to track those.
Unfortunately sometimes some, for whatever reason, gets caught in this or that, and it
takes a while to get them completely.
24
MS. O’HARA:
Well, just something to consider that there’s a better electronic tracking
system that you can used countywide that would assist the process, that would be really
handy.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Are there any questions? I think we’re ready to let you go. Thank
you all for, oh Gloria had something.
MS. WONG:
Just an invitation, is there anything that you would like to say to us,
improvement or anything at all?
MS. CRAWFORD:
I don’t personally have anything. I appreciate that what you did do
right from the very beginning is reach out to the departments and we did have a chance
to make suggestions either as a department or as an individual and to the employees
who I think you get a wide variety of responses. I think that’s great that you’ve done
that so far.
MS. NICHOLSON:
And we’re still accepting.
MR. MASUDA:
Can I make a shameless plug? I really appreciate all of you folks
sitting on this commission, however, 5% of the community bears 95% of the burden, so
if you guys are interested after this is done to join our Tax Review Board, we’re still
looking for members.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Thank you so much. Okay we have a request for a break. Okay
let’s take a 10 minute break.
BREAK: 11:30 – 11:40.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay, we’re all here shall we reconvene? Before we go back to
agenda item 4, I’d like to just continue with our discussion of the presentations we just
heard and see what we actually do as a process for what we’ve taken in from what they
had to say about procurement. And this, in the way is also sort of item 8, but not really.
What we’re really on is still on item 5. When we have speakers in, I hate for them to just
talk and leave and we just on to something else. What would you like to do with the
kind of input we got from our four speakers this morning on procurement? Or did we
get anything from them that we find might be useful in our subcommittees or in our
overall discussion of our mission.
MS. O’HARA:
I think we’ve got an excellent overview of the different types of contracts,
problems that can arise from contracts or from the procurement process, challenges
and idea of how this works in a department for departments to identify their needs and
then go through the procurement process. I think it would be very helpful to hear from
some of the key departments that are served by procurement. I would say not DPW
since they have their own system for construction contracts, but have some of the other
departments and if there are any issues with the procurement process from their end,
how they might be resolved, and if technology could be incorporated to improve that
communication in tracking contracts.
25
MS. NICHOLSON:
So, what if, and Gloria, this sort of gets back to a question you
asked about glitches in the system. What if when we have speakers, we ask them
about procurement issues? It becomes one of our sort of question to any speaker no
matter what we’ve invited them to talk about. We also want to ask if their department
heads issues with procurement, is that
MS. O’HARA:
Whether they’re able to procure the services or materials they need in a
timely manner. If not what are the obstacles. Any problems that the departments may
have in managing the contract? The oversight for insuring that what we contracted
actually is what is delivered. What their methods are and if they have problems with
that end.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Do you think it would be a good idea when we invite the department
head to come and speak to us, that we provide the information in advance that we
would like them to address? Procurement issues?
MS. O’HARA:
Yes. That’s pretty general but just if their department is able to procure
the services they need in a timely manner and what improvements might be made to
the procurement system from their perspective to insure that they get the services they
are asking for.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any discussion on that?
MS. WONG:
I had met with Nancy before this and she was not aware of what she was
being asked to speak on. When I told her what our three committees were then she
could focus in and be ready to address our three. So I think it would be helpful if we
bring in any speakers to let them know what our topics are and that they understand
that we’d be looking for their strengths and weakness or issues in their particular
department or looking for any sense of improvement in their department.
MS. NICHOLSON:
That’s a good suggestion. I don’t want us to be restricted to just
what our subcommittees do because I think there are a whole lot of other larger issues
in the county. So I don’t want to say address these three subcommittee issues. But I
think it’s good to let them know that we have a particular emphasis on these particular
issues.
MS. WONG:
And when I told them, the people that we met with what our committees
were, I also included that the overall view is to look at policies and operations and cost
of government. That helped them I think. I think we looked at my question of whether
your procurement problems I was trying to look at, and then it came from the other side
what kind of improvements might you suggest. And I think that takes it to the broader
view. I think they got that. And this is the second time I did that to Nancy, what other
thing might you want to say? And even though she knew I was going to do it, it still
caught her off guard. You know, what else can I come up with? I just gave you my
whole spiel, what else can I come up with? But I think that if they know that they have
the opportunity, and he did, he had an opportunity to say something. The speakers can
say something to us that we’ll take seriously and may present it in our
recommendations. I think that’s important for them to know.We’re just not here to find
26
out what they do, that we want to do something with it to help them to do their work
better.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any other discussion relating to our speakers we just had about
procurement?
MS. O’HARA:
Just a point that they brought up when I asked them about whether they
were incorporating green pricing language into their contracts and they said that’s a
policy issue that the county has not pressed that policy. If we look at this in context of
working with the energy team, it’s something that maybe the county should be looking at
more. There are models from the other counties to do this, the various types of
contracts that they’re pursuing annually. So, departments could identify what green
pricing affects them specifically, whether it be in fuels or vehicles or different areas of
construction. And whether that’s a policy that the county should be pursuing.
MS. WONG
: I was very pleased to find out that it is a centralized process. I think that
really helps. I was surprised that not all the County Council people had gone through
the process of understanding this. And I think it’s an important process to understand
when you’re in a leadership position. But when you’re making policies as the County
Council people do, they make policies, this will impact through the departments
perhaps. And they don’t know how difficult it is to process it down the lines. We might
consider if it’s the flavor what we got today that we recommend or suggest that all
County Council be required to go through at least an introduction of the procurement
process. I’m not recommending that as of yet. I’m just saying we might consider that. I
don’t know if that’s really necessary.
MS. NICHOLSON:
It might be better for them after they’ve actually been sitting on the
County Council for a little bit of time so they can see how better it might liken them.
MS. WONG
: And I know what I went through with my training, when I read the
documents, not a clue. When someone was actually showing me how the paper
process went, I thought, oh my goodness, this is so long, and I kept trying to figure out
ways to cut down the process. Cannot do. There’s the state law. So you have to go by
the state law.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Anything else on that topic? If not we will go, now back up and go
to Correspondence.
CORRESPONDENCE
MS. NICHOLSON:
I have a motion to accept and file correspondence A through L,
which means we still have an opportunity to talk about those particular things when we
get to our subcommittee reports so it’s putting it off the table but just to accept and file A
through L?
MOTION:MR. MATSUDA:
So moved.
MS. O’HARA:
Second.
27
MS. NICHOLSON:
All in favor?
ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any opposed? None
MS. MECKLENBURG:
I’m sorry, point of clarification. Is the subcommittee report on
this communications?
MS. NICHOLSON:
The subcommittee reports is item 7.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Does it involve the communications?
MS. NICHOLSON:
It often does because the responses were all in response to letters
we sent out about what we’re trying to accomplish and it specifically addressed items A,
B, C under 7.
MS. WONG:
At the last commission meeting, we had to go one by one.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I know, but the one before we took them all.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Okay, I just want to clarify. I haven’t got inducted to these
communications but anything that falls outside of those specific sub items under the
subcommittee needs to actually be discussed under the correspondence rather than
that.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I do believe every one of these was in response to our inquiries.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Okay.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I don’t thing there’s anything we would need to separate. Eileen
you have something?
MS. O’HARA:
I just wanted to say that most of these later communications A through
L, if not all of them are following up on the past recommendations that the previous Cost
of Government Commission made. We asked those departments who had received
recommendations from the Cost of Government Commission in 2007 what the status of
the recommendations were, had they been implemented, what were the problems in
implementing them. And so most of these A through L communications are referencing
that communications sent out and the status of their implementation efforts on the
recommendations made by the previous commission. As such it’s kind of a different
animal in and of itself then just a initial questionnaire and surveys that we sent out. So,
maybe it’s something that we want to look at separately just to analyze whether the
recommendations from the previous commission were useful, were they undertaken,
and if not, why not. That was kind of the purpose.
MS. NICHOLSON:
What we might want to do is because we don’t have all those
responses back yet, is put that as a future agenda item, is to group together all those
28
responses unless the subcommittees want to handle them. So that’s actually part of
agenda item 8.
MS. O’HARA:
And we asked of the staff for the log on those communications.
MS. CARVALHO:
It’s in your packets.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I think under 8, we probably want to talk about what we want them
to do with those communications that were in response to our request, what did they do
with the suggestions. So, all of those communications A through L do correspond
directly to agenda item 7 or agenda item 8.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Actually when I look at agenda item 7 there is no discussion.
It’s just the report. So there’s no discussion under item 7. So I think it would be wise to,
if you don’t want to discuss the communications now, we can put that as a future
agenda item to discuss the subject matter of all of the communications.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Well, if you would like to go through them one by one, we can
certainly go back and do that.
MS. WONG:
I particularly want to ask on one.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay, so already made a motion and we already voted on the
motion so we now need to go back. How do we go back?
MS. MECKLENBURG:
I’m sorry? You voted on the motion.
MS. NICHOLSON:
We did. And the motion was to accept and file all of the
correspondence A through L.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
So if you want to discuss, you want to make a motion to
reconsider and reopen correspondence item.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Does anyone want to make a motion to reconsider so that we can
discuss specific correspondence?
MOTION:MS. O’HARA:
So moved.
MR. MATSUDA:
Second.
MS. NICHOLSON:
All in favor?
ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any opposed? None
MS. NICHOLSON:
So what particular items would you like to discuss?
29
MS. WONG:
Letter to Dominic Yagong. Actually I’d like to find out if we had a
response?
MS. CARVALHO:
No response from Mr. Yagong.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So we had requested, just to refresh everyone’s memory, we had
requested that he send us a copy of the report that he apparently, a survey he took?
Something he did with all the county employees and departments in cost saving issues.
So, we’re still waiting for a response on that.
MS. WONG:
That was the only one I was interested in.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any other items that someone wants to discuss in
Correspondence?
MS. O’HARA:
Let me just clarify with our attorney present, if at another date we want
to discuss content in one of these communications and some of the context, and we’re
able to do that correct? Just because they’re filed doesn’t mean they’re not accessible?
MS. MECKLENBURG:
As long as you have an agenda item that speaks to the subject
matter, you can discuss the content, yes.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So now we need to go back again and accept and file these all over
again?
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Yes, you’re back at the motion to file if there’s no more
discussion then you can vote.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So if there’s no more discussion on agenda item 4 which is the
Correspondence A through L, do I have a motion accept and file?
MOTION:MS. PROVALENKO:
So moved.
MR. MATSUDA:
Second.
MS. NICHOLSON:
All in favor?
ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any opposed? None
DISCUSSION OF SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT PRESENTED AT OCTOBER 8
MEETING
MS. NICHOLSON:
Now we are on to our subcommittee report that was presented at
the last meeting. Which one of you would like to talk about it?
MS. WONG:
We presented it at the last meeting but we were not allowed to discuss.
30
MS. NICHOLSON:
Do we want to
MS. WONG:
Well just to, I’m sorry.
MR. MATSUDA:
Everybody has the committee report? The recommendations A to F
are coming from committee as far as any kind of recommendations that we have. There
is another area that is added down here, points to consider but mostly, I think item A
which is to invite Scott Leonard to speak to the commission to the commission to
discuss his responses which were very specific. I think he is going to be good for the
commission to hear and that is what I would like to first of all accomplish at this
commission meeting today. As to when and where at which meeting, I do not know, but
that is what we can discuss at this point.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So when we get to talk about upcoming agenda items we can
discuss that and when it might be appropriate.
MR. MATSUDA:
Exactly.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I guess when I read this report, I guess I had a little reservation
when I saw that the report says immediate implementation and that we recommend that
these things happen immediately. And I thought well, I don’t know that we should be, I
don’t know how we do something immediately because it would have to be in our report
that goes out. But it seems to me that we should probably wait and maybe somehow
when we structure the report we have maybe section that’s immediate action or we
highlight things in some way on the report. But for us to, as they come along suddenly
say we recommend you do this immediately, I’m not sure quite the mechanism how we
would or the appropriateness of trying to
MS. WONG:
Let me address that because I was the one. And I underlined that
because I knew that it would cause lights going on. I feel that although we have a final
report, recommendations, advice to the mayor at the end, that in the planning process,
planning processes are dynamic. And I would like to, the media would be an advisory
letter to the mayor at this time. It could be a gentle letter, but to show that we are, not
only show the mayor, but show the people that we are asking to come to the meetings
and give the employees, to show that we are responding to their statements and
supporting what they’re saying. And it seems almost unquestionable that their asking
for the micro fische and the video conferencing, multi-media communication. C was not
overall, but Bill sits on
MS. NICHOLSON:
He had to leave early. It’s too bad he’s not here now.
MS. WONG:
He sits on our committee and I especially asked both of them, are you
uncomfortable with any of this? Is this okay? And I especially wanted to hear his
response. Is it okay to ask this? And he says, yes. And I think he understands my
intent of showing that we can do something that’s actually influential during the process
and not wait till the end. And we can monitor whether the response of what we’re
requesting in the next few months that we’re still in the commission. So, for B and C,
that was the intent to show a dynamic process. Let me just go through and then you
can say, I agree with this, I don’t agree with this. In G, Health and education industries
31
be reviewed by commission as possible focus within R&D’s department. From the very
beginning Bill said that if we can identify the essential functions of the county, and so we
did that research and they were these essential functions. And the two that were not
especially addressed were health and education industries. Teaching and health care
are state things. But when you look at the industries, it’s something that I felt that if
we’re going to be consistent with what the essential functions are, if that’s what we
looked at, we say that that is not covered by the county, then we should suggest a
format to fill in that vacuum. And as we looked, I thought that it would be a better option
to be coming from the Mayor’s Office, from executive assistants, but when we met with
Randy Kurohara from R&D, and talked about his different industry areas and his branch
focuses. I had met with him a couple of years ago about health care industry. And he
remembered that and he said they still were not able to address it, but they have two job
openings, budgeted opening that they need to fill. So Bill Takaba asked, could that be
filled by health and education? I think I said well, you don’t have to put one in each.
You could one in both, two in one or there’s one that’s new industries. I said you could
put health and education into new industries. I just want to make sure that there is
health and education covered consistently. And I have a special interest in those two
interest myself, but I don’t want to impose my special interest. I just want to be
consistent with what we’re trying to do. But Randy Kurohara seemed to say, yeah, we
could take that in. Throughout the meetings I’ve talked about grants
MS. NICHOLSON:
Could we just, I just want to clarify what you are saying here.
You’re saying they have two vacant positions in R&D now?
MS. WONG:
Yes.
MS. NICHOLSON:
For
MS. WONG:
No, they don’t have a title for those positions. They just are funded for
two more positions.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay, so they’re going to be hiring to fill these two specialist
positions?
MS. WONG:
Yes.
MS. NICHOLSON:
And what you are saying is that one of those positions ought to be
health and education industries? Or cover the health and education industries?
MS. WONG:
If possible, yes.
MS. NICHOLSON:
If possible. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify what that
was.
MS. WONG:
I’m just trying to find the spot for health and education. On E, just
because I know we are under an economic strain, the whole nation is, but I’m looking
for how to bring in more revenue to the county so I’m looking at grants. And with all the
people we met with, I just posed the question – What is your opinion of grants? Do you
write grants? How do you get grant money into your program? And it seemed more
32
likely that the grant process would come within R&D or Finance or the Mayor’s. We
were surprised to find out that R&D did not have a grant writer. They had someone that
would find grants and tell the other departments about the grants. But I expressed that
grant writing is a particular skill and there should be someone that oversees who is
getting the grants, and not someone who has their job, their particular function that
they’re hired for, and during their spare time they write a grant.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Now I remember asking at the last Cost of Government
Commission talking to departments about grants. And talking to R&D about grants.
The response was something, if my memory is correct, that many of the grants that the
county say coins a department to are so esoteric and specialized for that division that
they don’t feel like they can write them. That the departments have the knowledge at
their fingertips and understand the technical aspects of some of the programs that they
want funding for. But that is why it’s more appropriate for a department to be writing
their own grants. When you talked to Randy, did he say he thought it was a good idea
that R&D write grants? Is that what this
MS. WONG:
No. Randy did not feel that they could write grants, and that surprised
me. When I talked to Nancy, Nancy thought that it would be a good idea to have a
grant writer. When I talked to her about the options of R&D or Finance or the Mayor’s,
because I was told no by R&D. So I said, Nancy, how about your department? Would it
make sense to come out of your department? She was quickly trying to assess. She
said, well, it makes a lot of sense. While she was doing that, I said my preference
would be that it would come from the Mayor’s Office cause he has the overview and he
can nip it if he wants to stop it in the bud before it even takes off. And she said that
would make more sense but Finance also has their fingers on everything. So she said it
would also make sense if Finance had that. But she said we don’t have anyone with
that capacity at that time. She also said that they are loosing eight people in their
department this year, which is going to be extremely stressful to hire new people to fill
those positions and get up to speed. And she said it might be really hard to get a grant
writer on top of that before the end of, eight people are retiring before the end of the
year. So she said that there’s going to be a lot of stress on their department. And I said
let’s look at this on a long term, not necessarily this year or next year, but look at the
broader picture about grants and how that might be a revenue enhancement for the
county. And again I asked Bill how he felt about that, Bill Takaba. And he says well, if
we can bring in more grants without loosing the function of what the people are doing,
that would be good. And I said you’re loosing the function of what people or doing
because they’re distracted by having to also, in their spare time, write the grants.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I wonder if it would make more sense to, given just what I related
about the last Cost of Government Commission when we brought this up, if it would
make more sense, the person at R&D who points various departments to grants that
might be available, have some additional responsibility of sort of following up and
maybe there being support through R&D for helping the department do grants. But now
necessarily be the grant writer for the county, but be a support specialist to help
departments write grants and follow up to say, I sent you that thing last week. Are you
really looking at it? Are you going to pursue it? How can I help, or how can we support
you in writing that grant? I don’t know. I think we need to have more conversations with
people.
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MS. WONG:
Yes. And that’s why as we meet with different people, I asked how they
view it and if people are not wanting a grant writer, that’s fine with me. But I think the
county is loosing, and especially last year would have been a good year to go for grants
when all of ARRA money, and particularly I asked, are you getting ARRA money? Most
of them said we don’t have the time.
MS. NICHOLSON:
You have to leave?
MS. PROVALENKO:
Yes.
Patricia Provalenko left at 12:10.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So we don’t have a quorum?
MS. CARVALHO:
We do. It’s still five.
MS. O’HARA:
I agree with you in concept, Gloria, about the county needs to have
either contract hire or staff that does the actual grant writing. Having been in the
county, and I’ve written grants for 20 years academic and industry and all kinds of
different grants, federal, state and private foundations. It’s a very, very time consuming
process. And when I entered the department and we needed money that wasn’t
forthcoming from the county coffers, I commenced to write a quarter million dollar grant.
I did so after work and on the weekends in order to get it done. Grants always had very
intense deadlines, so when you hear about it and at most you’re going to have 60 days
to put together a mammoth package that includes all kinds of certificates that has to be
signed by the appropriate personnel. It’s a very time consuming process. If you don’t
have somebody who is familiar with this types of processes, hitting the road running as
soon as you find out about the grant opportunity, you’re not likely to get the award down
the road. And I would disagree that you need somebody that knows the specifics of the
department’s needs. I’ve written grants that are totally outside of my scope of
experience in terms of technology, etc., that have been awarded because you know
how to package it. You know the information you need to get from the scientist or the
engineer, or whoever it is, and put it together and package the application properly. So,
it’s more about the skill of packaging grants and writing grants than it is about knowing
the specifics of that particular department. So, I entirely agree with you. There needs
to be dedicated personnel or the county is never going to get the money that’s sitting
out there available. As this county entity and state entity, a lot of the federal grants give
preference of course to local governments. So, even though it is a competitive process
you rank much higher say then some poor profit business or non-profit entity that’s
come onto the table and are applying for that same piece of pie. So we could be a lot
more successful than we are in garnering money that’s out there for different projects
that we need to pursue. So, I believe that whether it be a position in R&D, and if the
R&D director is not akamai with this suggestion that may not move forward. But I think
ideally in the Mayor’s Office because it really does have to have the support the mayor
ultimately, whatever grant is pursued, has to have the support of the mayor. And if they
had a dedicated personnel who’s says, okay, R&D has identified this potential grant for
Parks & Recreation and so that person that is in the Mayor’s Office goes and makes
contact with the individuals of Parks & Rec who need to be involved in putting together
34
the story for the grant. I call it story because it’s kind of creative writing to some extent.
And then knows how to do all the budgetary items that need to be pulled together, all
the certificates that need to be pulled together. And then you get your package in and
you get it in on time. And it has the support of the administration, and it has the
department’s buy it. I see that it is a very collaborative role for either contract hire or a
permanent position. And it would bring a lot more revenue into the county. Grants,
most federal grants especially, are just a very imposing task.
MS. WONG:
And I think now that we’re entering into a new governor, the new
governor, whoever it may be, will want to be reaching out and making sure that the
different counties are partnering with the state. That might be timely to have someone
who can address that. I just wanted to make this point because I’ve been sort of
pushing health, education and grants throughout the meetings. It can be very taskful.
And I made a point of telling Bill I’m not looking for a position. And if I were to write a
grant I would do it pro bono, but I think it’s such a resource and an asset, these three
items that I’m sort of pushing for the county. And he did say that they had hired contract
grant writers. And when he told me some of the prices they pay to have the contract
grant writers, wow, let me take that job. So grant writers have particular skills and to
just to piggy back on what you said, I’ve written many grants in agriculture. I can’t even
grow the plants in my yard half the time. But I know how to write the grants. I know
where to go. And I know, key, get it in on time. And with the federal and state grants
that I’ve worked with, especially like the people down in the ground, which is the county
people at this point. And one of the things I was saying to Bill was when you work with
different industries, you know in ag, you go to DayDay. You know who in R&D you go
to for different industries. Who do you go to for help? There’s Karen Teshima, but
Karen Teshima is not an employee. So you can’t go to Karen Teshima for help. Who
do you go to for education? And I don’t know if you’ve noticed in the past few months,
College of Pharmacy, UH, they’re bringing in a lot of research money. They have been
trying to reach out to the county, to say we’d like to partner with you folks because we
need the county’s support. They have to go directly to the mayor. The mayor is busy.
So, I’m trying to encourage the linking for the industries I think that will be long lasting.
Not the tourism, is not long lasting. But it’s dependent upon cycles. Education and
health care are really a stable industry for our county.
MS. O’HARA:
I agree with you. The county could be partners on a lot of private grants
if there was somebody to contact at the mayor’s office to bring that in. I’ve recently
worked on a grant. It would have been nice to bring the county in as a collaborate
partner. It didn’t happen because you can’t get the timely response from the county
necessary to get your grants together. So, you can’t wait until the announcement and
go out and contract somebody to write a grant. It’s not going to happen.
MS. WONG:
And part of that, what you just said now is because the department heads
don’tinaudible, some people don’t see the value of grants. And sometimes they say we
don’t have the program and we don’t have the people. We’re over worked as it is so
don’t talk to us about more work. But more programs make the synergy and the
strength to whatever function more successful. So, that’s my spiel for the
recommendations.
35
MS. NICHOLSON:
I don’t know if we want to take action on those recommendations
right now, or if we want to put how we might deal with those kinds of recommendations
as part of our item 8, Discussion regarding our approach, so that when a
recommendation comes forward from any committee, and I think it might be better to
talk about it then because then we’ll be talking about it more from any committee rather
than just these recommendations.
MS. WONG:
If we pass that, then can we make a decision on whether we want to call
in - if we don’t make a decision at this point, can we make a decision on 8 whether we
want to call in Scott Leonard or whether we want to send a letter to the mayor?
MS. NICHOLSON:
I think, and correct me if I’m wrong, I think that Scott Leonard
definitely would fall under 10, Items to be placed on the next agenda. We can talk
about whether we want that on our next agenda. So, I’m talking specifically about your
recommendations. And I’m hearing actually three recommendations which would be B
and C and the third one would be recommending as part of a letter to the mayor that we
would be sending and advisory letter that the county consider having a grant specialist.
MS. WONG:
I’m not suggesting that at this time.
MS. NICHOLSON:
You’re not?
MS. WONG:
No.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay.
MS. WONG:
I’m just saying that we consider these and this is what has been
discussed. The two things that we’re recommending – one is for Scott Leonard to be
invited to speak. And the other is that, and I don’t know how you folks feel about C, but
that a letter be sent to the mayor in support of micro fische, video conferencing and
multi-media for however we want to word that. And that the commission be advised
that, the mayor be advised that we, the commission, supports that all boards and
commissions evaluate the scheduling of their meetings. And when we talked to some of
the department heads and we asked them which boards or commissions do you
oversee? And they posed, do we have to meet every month? How often do you have
to meet? And then eventually that, can you meet quarterly? They said we’d love to
meet quarterly. The time that they have to put towards these meetings are burdening
them. Although some like Planning Commission ought to be meeting every month. The
intent was to have the commissions and boards evaluate themselves, not us tell them
they have to change. That they are asked to evaluate how many times they ought to
meet, just as maybe we ought say, we meet once a month or twice a month. But we
choose and a reminder for them to choose it this time.
MS. O’HARA:
I think such recommendations would be best made in our final report
and if it needs to be made separately, through letter of communication in addition to our
final report. That we wait until we’re closer to the end of the term to identify if there’s
multiple issues we want to address to the mayor rather than just sending a
communication about this one issue. I think it would be more effective than if we start
sending out many communications through the end of the term. What I’m saying is I
36
don’t think it would be as effective if we started to send out many communications
throughout our 11 months term rather than deliberating on the recommendations that
we do make and submitting it in one communication more towards the end of our term
when we’ve considered other things as well. I just feel it would be more effective that
way.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any discussion on that topic?
MS. WONG:
Well, I said what I thought. The reason why I suggested immediate, but
stop me if I’m overstepping cause I’m going to say something about another meeting,
but meeting with Nancy Crawford, I asked her if she has gotten all the responses that
we’ve received from the departments and anonymous and whoever. She said it was
very helpful for her to start making changes in her budget and start making changes in
programs. So, she’s taking action. And I asked her, do you think that it would be read
or received by other department heads? She said, well, yes. It’s helping me. I think
the other department heads to see how things like change or improve or what another
department might be suggesting might help them. And I said do you think they should
get that information? I got my information, that was helping me. I said should the
mayor get information now? Is the mayor receiving this information? She said she
didn’t know who was receiving this, but she says the mayor should certainly be given
updated information. And I said, do you think that he would be reading that? Well. And
again the point is to show that a report or a plan is not just paper, it’s dynamics in
action.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Gentlemen, do you have any comments?
MS. MECKLENBURG:
You may want to, if you’re trying to come to a decision on
whether to act immediately or later, you may want to make a motion for one of the other
and then have the discussion and take it to a vote.
MS. WONG:
Or vote and then discussion?
MS. MECKLENBURG:
If it’s for the particular decision on whether to send a
communication immediately or to make it part of the report. Typically what you do is
make a motion then have discussion. A motion, second, discussion and then a vote.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So it would really be limited just to these two recommendations.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Just to one. One at a time.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Yeah, but we’re really going, we’re not like setting this is how we’re
going to handle it from here on out. Because we’re just talking about this one report.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Correct. So the items that you’re considering out of this one
report.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Does someone want to make a motion one way or the other?
MS. WONG:
I’ll make a motion that we invite Scott Leonard
37
MS. NICHOLSON:
No, no, no. The motion is on sending a letter to the mayor. The
Scott Leonard is still on when we’re talking about upcoming agenda items.
MS. WONG:
Okay, so you’re not allowing that motion to be made at this time?
MS. NICHOLSON:
Well, we’ve already got it as an agenda item because we’re talking
about upcoming.
MS. O’HARA:
It will go under Item 8 seems like.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Yeah. So we’re not talking about that now. We’re talking about
MR. MATSUDA:
Item 9 right?
MS. NICHOLSON:
Oh, excuse me. Item 10. We were talking about what we want to
do on the next agenda meeting then we can talk about Scott Leonard if we want to
invite him for the next agenda or for future.
MR. MATSUDA:
So, if we put him on item number 10 then all we’re doing is we just
say okay, you’re going to be on the agenda the next time.
MS. NICHOLSON:
No, we’re going to discuss it then.
MR. MATSUDA:
Right. Okay.
MS. WONG:
And I’d like to make the motion now so that it be acknowledged that our
committee is making the recommendation.
MR. MATSUDA:
Yes.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay, so you’re making the motion that we do what?
MOTION:MS. WONG:
Invite Scott Leonard to speak to the commission particularly
to discuss his responses that was sent to us. The choice of when that is
can be discussed in Item 10, but I would like to make a motion that Scott
Leonard be invited to speak the commission to discuss his responses.
MR. MATSUDA:
Second.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay. Well actually discussion now.
MS. O’HARA:
I’m sorry, but who precisely is Scott Leonard? I see his communication
is coming out of the Planning Department.
MS. NICHOLSON:
He’s a staff.
MS. WONG:
He’s staff with Planning.
38
MS. O’HARA:
He’s a planner with the Planning Department?
MR. MATSUDA:
Planning Department.
MS. O’HARA:
I didn’t know who he was. He was never described.
MS. WONG:
And in meeting with him, and hearing his background, and then the way
he laid it out was a lot more impressive than the letter. So, I think we didn’t feel that we
could do it justice by just speaking about it. He’s got a lot of credentials behind him.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any other discussion? All those in favor?
ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any opposed? None. Motion passes.
MS. WONG:
And I’ll make a motion that the commission send a letter to the mayor in
support of immediate implementation of county utility of micro fische, video conferencing
and any other multi-media communication in lieu of face-to-face meetings when and
where practical. And that the commission in that same letter recommend that boards
and commissions immediately evaluate scheduling of their meetings. And this letter will
be to the mayor.
MOTION:MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay, we have a motion on the floor. Do we have a
second?
MR. MATSUDA:
Second.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Discussion?
MR. ARMOUR:
I think that video conferencing is a good idea and maybe a suggestion
to encourage whenever possible would be a good thing but your point, you’re talking
about bombarding the mayor with a letter potentially after our meeting that maybe that
we hold off and do an interim letter like a semi report instead of every committee sends
a new letter to the mayor or possibly a new letter to the mayor.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Eileen.
MS. O’HARA:
I have concerns about sending such a general message to the mayor’s
office right now. We just heard from the mayor’s office via Bill Takaba who indicated he
felt that we had adequate video conferencing available within the county. I think once
we hear from the departments another question to put on the list to department heads
as they come through to speak with us is, do they feel that they have adequate access
to video conferencing equipment in order to be able to conduct these meetings for their
needs? I think we need to understand the issue better before we send a letter because
I think what we might receive is a response from the mayor’s office saying we have
those capabilities already and we encourage that to happen. But if we then hear from
the departments and say no, our staff over in Kona does not have access, or our staff is
over here in this building and has to drive across town to make a meeting and it’s not
39
convenient. It would be great if we had video conferencing on site. Then we can make
a more specific recommendation to the mayor than having general comment like this.
That’s my feeling.
MS. WONG:
As a matter of discussion, since we have three committees and I see the
sense of not coming from each committee. Could we consider that each committee
within the next month, before the end of the year, see if there is anything that your
committee would like to suggest to, advise to the mayor before the end of the meeting
to send a letter? I’m fairly sure that he knows that we have three different committees.
And something in process going to the mayor. Would that be more acceptable or
compromising?
MS. NICHOLSON:
I like your idea of sort of an interim thing because I think there is
some sense in, geez they really are meeting and doing things and thinking. But I agree
with Eileen. I would like to be real specific and not general. So, I guess I would like a
little bit more input from people because I feel like I don’t know enough about it. It’s
easy to say, yeh, they should be doing more video conferencing. But I’d like to be a
little bit more specific on circumstances and if it is a meeting that it’s in somewhere else
in Hilo, they can go the meeting just as quickly as they can go to the video
conferencing facility. So, does it make sense? In what cases does it make sense?
MS. WONG:
And responding specifically to that, I’m trying to make it so broad that
instead of specific where they have to look at this, a broad recommendation so at least
they get the flavor of that we’re working on this and interested in this. Then they get to
make their choices.
MS. O’HARA:
Instead of a recommendation we might put it more in the form of a
question. Just so the mayor’s office has to let us know how they perceive the issue.
We’ve heard from Bill Takaba that there is video conferencing available and how widely
is it available? Does it connect your satellite offices in Waimea and in Kailua-Kona with
the departments on this side? Just let them look at it rather than make a
recommendation since we don’t have all the information that we need to make a really
good recommendation. At least my feeling is we don’t have the information yet to make
a really good recommendation.
MR. ARMOUR:
I think a letter based on the video conferencing to encourage people to
use it whenever possible to avoid traveling. I know in the ag industry they are starting a
new stage, ag organization. And they do video conferencing with the other islands and
it’s readily available. The problem is that they have to find somebody on each island to
kind of make sure it’s dialed in correctly because the user don’t know how to us it. You
know, like you’re invited to a conference, you show up and somebody has the camera
going and all that. So I think that’s the biggest draw back with video conferencing. But
local ones, I tend to avoid video conferencing because you can accomplish a lot on
breaks and after meetings, before your meetings if those people all work in the same
department and you find out a lot more than there under a camera. So, I’d be in favor of
the letter encouraging the mayor to send out a letter to the department heads to
encourage video conferencing whenever possible. And micro fische part, I would leave
off because that’s something that you’re not going to get immediately done. If they have
40
it then they’re probably using it. If they don’t have it in the department they’re not going
to get it until the next budget.
MS. WONG:
I think all of the departments really like the micro fische, that we’ve met
with. My mind went back to the other topic, I’m sorry.
MR. MATSUDA:
Maybe the micro fische area as was mentioned by Gloria, I think like
she says, I think it applies to all of the departments so that all of them can use it. It’s
just a matter of getting the technology on as far as training and be able to use it. But I
like Eileen’s situation where maybe we just pose a question and get the response
regarding the micro fische and the video conferencing as an addendum to, an addition
of that. Maybe that might be a route that might be more well received than giving a
recommendation at this time. But I still like having this interim thing, well, this is what
we’re doing, this is what we’re talking about. Now we’re asking them a question.
They’re going to give us their answer back. What do they think about these things and
maybe by the end of December we’ll get something and we’ll get a better direction.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
If I could just chime in with a note. Per the Charter, the
a
commission’s role is to submit report of the findings and recommendations. So I just
wanted to put that out there. The objective is one report.
MS. NICHOLSON:
This isn’t really a report we’re talking about.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Right. But I just wanted to you know, I don’t know if you’re
sending a series of individual letters would contradict what the intent was that you would
come up with one report. But of course you are also able to study and investigate all of
the different departments and that sort of thing. I’m merely putting that out there, not
coming to any kind of legal conclusion that you can’t or can do it. I just wanted to point
that out.
MS. O’HARA:
Good point. And I think if we couch it as more as an investigation, say
we have surveyed and gotten considerable responses from departments and
employees with the county and one of the recommendations, or a couple of the
recommendations that have risen to the top are to make use of micro fische and make
use of more video conferencing. Could the mayor please elaborate on the capabilities
of the county currently to hold video conferencing and to what extent is micro fische
being used within the county. Let them know that we’re investigating this. We’re
looking at this as a possible area of cost savings.
MR. MATSUDA:
That’s acceptable?
MS. NICHOLSON:
Cause we are asking for more feedback. I would think it’s totally
acceptable.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
As a point of clarification, micro fische, is that referring to the
laser fische system?
MR. MATSUDA:
Yeah, laser fische.
41
MS. MECKLENBURG:
I’m envisioning the old micro fische like at the library. Okay.
MS. NICHOLSON:
And I must say, I have no idea what micro fische or laser fische is.
And so I feel very uncomfortable writing a letter to the mayor even talking about either
one because I don’t know what it is. And I am on the technology committee. But I don’t
have a clue what it is we’re even talking about. So, I could not support personally such
a thing because I need to know more. And I want to hear more from some departments
about that. So, I think it’s a little premature because I need to know more.
MS. O’HARA:
Well I would support a letter asking, couching it as investigating what the
county’s capabilities are currently and whether we’re considering expanding it to a
countywide plan. I would be supportive of that kind of letter.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I think what we should do is probably vote on Gloria’s motion that’s
on the floor and see whether that passes or not. And if it doesn’t pass maybe we want
another motion because her motion includes both of these recommendations. And
we’ve really been focusing on just one. So I think we should sort of just clean that up
and then maybe refocus.
MS. WONG:
Then I’d like to amend it?
MS. NICHOLSON:
Well let’s just go ahead and if it works for you, go ahead and vote
for the motion which is on the floor to basically send an advisory letter to the mayor
requesting that the county immediately implement micro fische, video conferencing,
multi media communication.
MS. WONG:
Support implementation.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Support implementation and that the motion also includes
recommending that boards and commissions immediately evaluate their meeting
schedules. So that is the motion on the floor which we have a second for. Can we go
ahead and vote on that and see where we are in that, and we’ll know how to move
forward? All in favor vote aye
ACTION ON MOTION: All: One.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any opposed? Three.
MS. NICHOLSON:
And you’re abstaining?
MR. MATSUDA:
I’ll abstain.
MS. NICHOLSON:
You’re abstaining. Okay. So we have one for. We have three
against, and one abstaining. So I will entertain a new motion on either or both of these
two. And I think we probably should separate them. The motion we might want to
address timing because timing seems to be one of the issues we’re talking about now.
MS. O’HARA:
Timing of what?
42
MS. NICHOLSON:
Do we want to send an interim report to the mayor with issues that
come out of the subcommittees? And this is actually going beyond just this committee
report so we shouldn’t be talking about it?
MS. MECKLENBURG:
You could talk about it as it pertains to this item.
MR. MATSUDA:
It’s pertaining to this item so it’s good.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay.
MS. WONG:
The thing that I brought up for discussion, perhaps we could include all
three committees if there is anything that they would like to see happen sooner or give
some advisory to the mayor from your particular committee focus. Then wait on
sending a letter till the end of the year.
MS. O’HARA:
I like that idea.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Are you seconding it?
MS. O’HARA:
Is that a motion?
MS. MECKLENBURG:
I don’t think that needs to be a motion. It is kind of outside the
report cause it’s generalized, but you can discuss it.
MS. WONG:
So if that’s generally agreed to, then I would withdraw my motion and wait
upon
MS. NICHOLSON:
There is no motion on the floor so you’re not withdrawing anything.
So we’re looking at a new one.
MS. O’HARA:
I like that idea.
MS. WONG:
So we would have to make a motion on that?
MR. MATSUDA:
She said we don’t need a motion.
MS. WONG:
So mine fell? Mine died.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Yes. That one died. So now we’re on if you want to propose a new
motion that if I’m getting you correctly, we would consider or we have sort of a goal to
send a letter, an advisory letter to the mayor or maybe I better not say advisory – a
letter to the mayor by the end of the year with questions from all of the committees
including these two. Is that sort of what I’m hearing?
MS. WONG:
And I don’t necessarily need to have the word question in. A letter to the
mayor.Some feedback to the mayor about what we’re doing.
MS. O’HARA:
I think that’s an excellent idea.
43
MR. MATSUDA:
You don’t have to be specific.
MS. O’HARA:
I if we have questions we can include questions. Whatever. I think it’s a
good idea.
MS. WONG:
As a question, would we need to keep this on the agenda somehow so
that it can reach till December?
MS. NICHOLSON:
I think if we’re talking then an agenda item would be the contents of
the letter. And so we could then bring this up as one of the things included in the letter.
MS. WONG:
Okay.
MR. MATSUDA:
Is that correct?
MS. MECKLENBURG:
Yeah. I think what you need to do is just the secretary just note
things you want to put into the letter, and then when you decide to leave it to that as an
action item then you can discuss.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So we don’t need any kind of motion.
MS. O’HARA:
Chair, I don’t mean to, please don’t take me as being rude, but we have
quite a few items to discuss.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Yeah. I know we do. It’s our longest meeting yet. Anything else on
the committee report dated October 8 meeting of the Operations, Budget, and
Consolidation Report? No, if so any other discussion on this report that we’ve been
discussing?
REPORTS FROM SUBCOMMITTEES
MS. NICHOLSON:
If not we will move on to agenda item 7.
MS. WONG:
Oh boy. That’s me. You have a copy of our report that was passed out.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So remember we’re not discussing now. This is just information.
MS. WONG:
Yes.
MS. NICHOLSON:
But do we want to discuss it at the next meeting?
MS. WONG:
Yes. I’ll just give an overview like we did last time. I won’t go through
each of the items just to say that we met with four different people and that some of
these brought in their stamp. If you have any particular questions we can discuss later.
There’s like the previous summary, there’s action items and comments. There is an
overall, the last item would be a suggestion that we might especially focus on in our
discussion at the next meeting. Would you like me to bullet any of, or highlight any of
the, focus on any of the meetings or just let it sit as is?
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MS. O’HARA:
The only thing I would ask Gloria, and it’s just my ignorance, is you
might put the position of the of the individual next to it so we know which department
we’re talking about without having to reference back. It’s minor.
MS. WONG:
Okay.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Could you tell us right now and we can pencil it in cause I haven’t
had a chance to read this yet.
MS. WONG:
Ron Takahashi is HR. Warren Lee is Public Works. Bobby Jean
Leithead Todd is Planning. And Nancy Crawford is Finance.
MS. O’HARA:
Thank you.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay so we will put discussion of this committee report on our next
agenda. Next report is Revenue Enhancement and Collections. Ken.
MR. ARMOUR:
Since Patricia has left, she was going to have…. We’re not as far
along as we’d like to be. We divided up all the recommendations and Patricia took the
ones from department heads and I took all the employees suggestions and
summarized them and we need to schedule a meeting with Bill. I was kind of
disappointed that there weren’t more revenue enhancement suggestions from the
employees. And after I’d gone through all of the suggestions, I went back and looked
whether two of the employees and there was no request from any of the employees for
any of that. So we only had like three or four items from the employees and I can pass
out a summary sheet if the commission would like that on what I found. But I don’t have
Patricia’s. She sent it to me electronically, but I did not print it out because I thought
she was going to do it. I sorted it and if it says NO REAC SUGGESTIONS that means
no revenue enhancement and collections suggestions. So they had bus fees, collecting
all the back revenues, facility fees, housing fees, a couple of police fees, property
assessments, vehicle tax, and water usage. So when we meet with Bill, we’re going to
look at what departments we want to interview. I think it’s going to be the Property
Assessment department. I don’t know the proper title for them. And maybe looking at
police fees. That’s still to be discussed.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So is there anything on this report or the one that you don’t have
but Patricia has, that we want to put for discussion at the next meeting?
MR. ARMOUR:
We talked about that last meeting, and I can’t find the notes, but I
thought we’d looked at scheduling a couple of department heads, property tax, and
something else for future meetings because we discussed that we couldn’t have them
all at one meeting.
MS. O’HARA:
You mean Treasurer was part of that?
MS. NICHOLSON:
For presentation to us?
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MR. ARMOUR:
Yes. And so I don’t know if any of those are scheduled or if we
finalized that at our next meeting. But that would be more on, I guess we can talk about
it now. So did we schedule anybody for future meetings?
MS. CARVALHO:
No, we only scheduled who came today. So when we
MS. NICHOLSON:
Talk about the agenda items we can talk about it. But do we want, I
guess we can talk about that when we’re talking about the agenda items whether we
want to discuss something. Any other discussion on the report of the Revenue
Enhancement and Collections?
MR. ARMOUR:
You can’t discuss it. All we can do is present.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
No discussion. Presentation from the committee.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay. Moving on to Technology Recommendations and Adoption.
Eileen has our wonderful document.
MS. O’HARA:
Did everyone get this handout? Marilyn and I had a short meeting this
morning before our regular meeting and independently we had agreed to use this matrix
spreadsheet to analyze the questionnaire responses that had been sent in both from
departments and individuals in the county regarding our subcommittees focus which is
technology, recommendations and adoption. So Marilyn logged all the department’s
responses identifying which ones had technological issues, what recommendations
were, and I did all the employee responses. Missing from this is the code.
MS. NICHOLSON:
No, it’s on the bottom of the back page.
MS. O’HARA:
So you see these codes on the side, A,B,C,D and that gives you an idea
of whether it relates to Data Systems, energy use in the office, equipment or
software/hardware/computer use. So this is the log that we developed. This is good for
information and it’s good so we can sort and see how many responses were similar in
their recommendations. That gives us a starting place to work from. So that’s as far as
we’ve gotten. I think we did have a discussion last meeting about bringing in people
from Data Systems and from the departments that have their own independent
technologies with Data Systems such as Police, Fire. I think the Water Department was
also mentioned. I have to go back to the minutes and see all the departments that were
mentioned. And having a dedicated meeting like we did today for contracts to talk to all
those people so we get a better understanding of how the county is dealing with
technology issues since it doesn’t appear to have an overarching technology plan that is
coordinated amongst all the departments. So that was as far as we got as a
subcommittee. In the handout, I guess I should speak to it now, I just threw in this
Summary of the Cost of Government Commission’s efforts to date, in the few months
that we’ve been meeting and some of the theme that we would initially identify, wanting
to identify what services the county is actually responsible for providing as a theme for
this particular commission. And we’ve looked at some overarching policy issues like
the contracting policy, the collections and fees, delinquencies, countywide technology
plan and how those relate to the three focus subcommittees that we have formed and
are proceeding with, and a list of actions that some of which we’ve accomplished, some
46
of which will be ongoing. So, I just threw that in cause I like to look at things graphically.
It helps me look where we’ve been and where we need to go. So that’s our report.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I think the interesting thing is to see how our various subcommittees
are picking up on some of the same things. It doesn’t bother me that some are
redundant. It says those are pretty important items that we all feel relate to all of our
subcommittees. And certainly video conferencing is one of those.
MS. O’HARA:
Oh, one more thing to point out, on this spreadsheet, we threw in
potential energy savings. This was a throw back to the Green Team’s presentation a
couple of meetings ago. Since this is the focus of that in through county committee and
whether he’s technology, adoption, technology can help with energy savings.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Moving along. Can we speed through all this and certainly be out
of here by 1:30? Let’s give it a try.
DISCUSSION REGARDING APPROACH TO TAKE TO TIMELY ACCOMPLISH
MANDATE OF THE COST OF GOVERNMENT COMMISSION
MS. NICHOLSON:
Agenda item 8, discussion regarding approach to take to timely
accomplish mandate of the Cost of Government Commission. This is just general
discussion. How do we think we’re moving along? How do you think our approach is
working? Are we missing some things? Comments?
MS. WONG:
You heard Nancy say today that she appreciated us reaching out and in
the meetings that we’ve gone to, there was surprise, appreciation, especially
appreciation that they get to say things that are not being recorded. So I think at least
the department heads that we’ve met with, number one, I asked them do they know
about the Cost of Government recommendations? At least half of them did not know
about the recommendations. So when they were informed, they got to appreciate what
the recommendations were. And I got to know that they didn’t know. So they couldn’t
act on anything if they didn’t know it. So now they know. So now we can kind sort of
plug that idea into our, whatever we recommend. I’ve had comments from employees
that are friends of mine that, wow we get to say something? They like the idea of being
heard. And I think that in my email cover between my committee members on these
meetings, I find that it’s been very positive and productive of the discussions we’ve had
with the people. And even allowing them to think outside of their day-to-day functions
and priorities, what else. So that opens their thinking and I think that’s been a positive
step.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any other comments? I guess my feeling is I’m concerned that we
get really involved in some of the minutia of things. And in so doing we may avoid,
maybe avoid isn’t the right word, looking at really big issues and turning off lights or
putting out the thermostat one degree is a really good suggestion. But when we first
started meeting we were told the county is faced with some very critical financial times
and are there entire departments that should be eliminated?Are there programs that
should be eliminated? And I guess I’m concerned that we may not tackle some of those
big issues. I think that we are the only ones who could really tackle those big issues
because no department head is going to say, I think we should eliminate the Hawai‘i
47
County Band, just to use an example. And an elected official is not going to do that
either because they’re going to be in hot water if they recommend some of those things.
And we’re the only ones who don’t have any really vested interest in this because we’re
not part of the political process, and we’re not county employees. So, I guess I’m
cautioning that I’m afraid that we might get so involved in some of these other little items
that we’re not thinking big and bold and being big and bold in making some
recommendations that will create some waves which we are the only ones. I really think
we have a responsibility to create those waves if we see that there is something that
maybe the county is doing now and should not be doing. So, I’d like to make sure that
we sort of keep the bigger picture in mind while we continue to look at some of these
other issues that we’re looking at because if the county is really faced with serious
financial problems and all they can really come up with is raise taxes, cause that’s
politically expedient and they can do that, then we failed in our mission as the Cost of
Government Commission. We’re merely looking more boldly and without an agenda at
what the county could do, either short term or long term. It’s not really a different way of
perceiving it. It’s just let’s continue to look at some, or start to look at some really big
issues and try to figure out how we might tackle some of those bigger recommendations
because we can talk to Parks and Recreation and of course they’re not going to say,
eliminate the Panaewa Zoo. Not that I support that. But they wouldn’t say that. Who
would say that?
MS. WONG:
Well let me tell you, I’ve had, and you’ll see in the report there’s been a
suggestion to eliminate some committees, some boards. We’ve pulled out on line,
commissions and boards, all of them, and said which ones can we combine? Which
ones can we delete? And Bill set with us and went through the process. No this one
has to stay and some were untouchable. And some can be combined. And then we
went back to oh, maybe they don’t have to meet monthly. Maybe they can meet
quarterly. So, I totally agree with you that we can and who else would be. But I was
surprised when, for example, Bobby Jean Leithead Todd said, why do we have to, and
this is what I was trying to say earlier, why do we have to a screening and an action
committee when the screening, yes the public needs to input, but they should trust us to
implement what they just told us to do, not have another committee to tell us what to do
when we’re doing it, which loads us down. So there’s even that point. And I try and be
sensitive to you know, is that really necessary? But on the bigger picture, why is there
legislative audit and us? Legislative audit comes at the very end when, to find the
mistakes, and we’re supposed to be at the beginning on the planning and where is the
in between? So let’s look at the functional processes that are necessary and what is
not necessary. But then we need to get the County Council people and so there’s all
these points that I’ve been trying to really look at the bigger picture, but still handle the
little things first to see if, test it out. Will this be acceptable? And from the beginning
I’ve heard comments from people saying to me, you folks aren’t going to do anything,
aren’t going to be able to accomplish anything, which then got my dander up. I want to
accomplish something. And that’s why I want to share with all the members, when we
go to meeting so that you get the information although you can’t meet with everyone,
but we share information between ourselves in the meetings so we have the big picture
not only our little committee meetings, what was said in here that we can pull in all the
information. And it would be nice if we are able to help our community.
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MS. NICHOLSON:
Sometimes if you propose a lot of really big bold things and people
go no way, but we can take these smaller ones. Whereas if you just do a bunch of
smaller ones it’s like it’s easy to go no. But then I also keep in mind what one, we got a
communication from one County Council person who said we shouldn’t be cutting
anything. We should be getting more revenue in. Which sort of leads me to wonder
Ken, because we didn’t do that revenue enhancement piece with the employees, should
we go back and try to do that? Do you think that’s a good thing to try to get or maybe
you and Patricia should talk about it?
MR. ARMOUR:
I’ll talk to her and Bill about it. I was thinking about that whether we
should send another letter out or combine it with another letter for additional
suggestions and thanking everybody for just the suggestions that they’ve already given
us, but we’re still looking for more suggestions.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I kind of like that. Cause I think the suggestions from employees
were really interesting and really sort of across the board and they didn’t necessarily
just do things that were in their departments. They were thinking a little larger than what
we got from the departments because that was specific to departments.
MR. ARMOUR:
I was impressed by most of them because it was most of the
respondent, I thought were helpful. There were a couple that were just looking out for
the pet peeves, but most of them were helpful suggestions.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Well, why don’t you and Patricia talk about that. The other issue
that came up actually among the employee responses, and I’m not sure how we could
cover it, is several people said, get rid of the county employees who aren’t doing
anything. I don’t know how we would tackle that. Well, we’re going to run into the union
with probably lots of our suggestions. But that’s really not our job to have to worry
about how the union does it. We're putting it out there, but is there a way we can get to
some of this stuff that we’re not covering in our committees?
MS. WONG:
I don’t understand the question.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Well for instance, several of the employees had said we need to get
rid of the people, the county employees who aren’t doing anything. I don’t know quite
how to tackle that. But I don’t know if it would come up in any of our subcommittees. Is
there a way we can get it, say either that issue or other issues that come up that really
don’t fit into any of our existing categories? Or some of these larger issues like are
there things that should just go away? Be eliminated. How do we continue to keep
those things on the table?
MS. WONG:
I kind of see that as a responsibility of HR and department heads. And I
look at our function more as empowering, giving direction or empowering, not actually
getting to that point I guess.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Well then maybe we’re informing people of some of this feedback
and that’s really our method is saying, well we got employees saying that there’s some,
that we’re here. Just so you know. This is coming from employees themselves.
49
MS. O’HARA:
And again this is a policy issue because all employees are subject to
reviews, performance reviews. And even if they’re a union employee, if they’re not
meeting their performance goals, there are actions that have to be taken. So, it may be
that as a policy, the bar is set too low, and that’s something that the county has to
decide how efficient they want their employees to be, and hold everybody to the same
standard. So, it may be a policy recommendation not just a union issue.
MS. WONG:
Often times the annual reviews are not conducted.
MS. O’HARA:
No. Exactly. And they’re not conducted or they’re conducted in a very
flim flam manner and therefore maybe that’s something that we as a commission can
have a direct recommendation over union issues are a little bit outside of our purview.
It’s not something that the county can control.
MS. NICHOLSON:
But it’s something we bring up if have the HR person here.
MS. WONG:
Let me bring up this thought from previously. In talking with Nancy
Crawford, she got copies of all the recommendations. Should we be sending copies to,
all of the responses, to all the department heads then?
MS. O’HARA:
Recommendations of what?
MS. WONG:
No. I’m sorry. Not recommendations. The responses. Is that too much?
MS. NICHOLSON:
I think we need to make some sense of them first.
MS. O’HARA:
We’ve got a lot on our desk to review. That would be a lot to go
through.
MS. WONG:
Then how about just HR getting those responses?
MS. O’HARA:
I don’t think it’s relevant to their job to review this and apply it. It really is
relevant to our questions to these individuals.
MS. WONG:
They might be able to develop policy and training to prevent those
situations.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Well, to me that would be part of our report and recommendations
to HR based on the feedback we’ve gotten.
MS. WONG:
Okay.
MS. O’HARA:
I see our role is something of a filter. We don’t want to just put all of that
information we’re retained and put it on their desk. We want to make sense of it and put
it together in a form of recommendations or additional questions.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay. Any other discussion on item 8, our approach?
50
MS. WONG:
We’ve brought this up before and I’m not pushing it this time. I just want
to keep it on the table of eventually getting input from the public.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Do we want to figure out a way to ask the public for their thoughts
on county cost saving or
MS. O’HARA:
I think I’ve said my opinion on this one several times. And it is that until
we have draft recommendations in the form of the direct report or something, I don’t
know that we want to invite public response. What are they responding to? They need
something specific to respond to. And I feel that if we were able to get a draft report
together by April or May, this would be an excellent thing to do, is to invite the public’s
response to this specific recommendations that this commission makes. To just invite
public input, on what? You’re collecting a lot of information but what are you intending
to do with it and how can it be applied? That public’s knowledge of internal operations
is not as great as the employees of the county and the department heads that we’re
already surveying and sending out questionnaires to. So what additional information
might we get from the public at this point we may take this commission off in any
number of different directions. That’s what I see the potential of happening. Whereas if
we have some draft recommendations and we can share those with the public, then we
can get feedback, this is a good idea. Or whatever the public wants to respond. But I
think it would be better if we had something specific before we go and asking public
responses.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any more discussion? This is a standing agenda item, so we’re
talking about it again and again.
DISCUSSION REGARDING FUTURE MEETING DATES
MS. NICHOLSON:
All right. Discussion regarding future meeting dates. I know at the
last meeting you set the November dates. Wednesday, November 3, and Wednesday,
November 17. I don’t think you went into December.
MS. WONG:
We did December.
MS. NICHOLSON:
You did December. So, it’s one meeting on December 10?
MS. WONG:
Yes.
MS. NICHOLSON:
And that will be our only meeting for December?
MS. WONG:
Yes.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay. Do you want to move into January at this time?
MS. WONG:
At our last meeting, I think
MS. O’HARA:
I think we decided to wait for you to come back.
MS. WONG:
I think we were waiting for November or something.
51
MS. NICHOLSON:
So are we still okay though with January 14 and 28? Or did we
have problems with those dates?
MS. WONG:
We didn’t even address it. We just addressed till December.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay. Let’s just talk about January really quickly right now.
th
MR. ARMOUR:
I won’t be here for the 28.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Well, hopefully everyone else could be. So for now, we will stick
with January 14 and 28. Should we be bold and move into February? February dates
thth
of the 11 and 25 look all right for people? At the moment? Again we’ll be revisiting
these.
th
MS. O’HARA:
I hope to be gone on the 11.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay. For now let’s stick with the dates that we have through
February.
ITEMS TO BE PLACED ON NEXT AGENDA
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay. Items to be placed on the next agenda. I think at the
moment, in addition to our standard agenda items we will want to discuss the report
from Operations, Budget and Consolidation Committee that you handed out today.
That’s an agenda item. What our committee passed out, we don’t really need to
discuss. We’ll have another report probably perhaps next time. Ken did you want to
discuss what we passed out today?
MR. ARMOUR:
No, but we might change number six on today’s agenda just to discuss
subcommittee reports just in case something comes up and somebody has a question
about it.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Can we do that?
MS. O’HARA:
Can we just make it general?
MS. NICHOLSON:
Can we, what is currently item 6, can we just put that we want
discussion of the subcommittee, any subcommittee reports that were passed out at
today’s meeting? Or do we have to name them specifically?
MS. MECKLENBURG:
You have problem naming them specifically? Cause there
were three from today, right?
MS. NICHOLSON:
But they don’t necessarily warrant any discussion.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
If there is no discussion you can skip through them.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So we can just list them all?
52
MS. O’HARA:
Yeah. Just list them all and if there’s no discussion we can just move
on.
MS. WONG:
In that case, I think our committee will talk to your committee.
MS. O’HARA:
I think it’s good to leave them all in just in case.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Okay so the big thing that we need to discuss is who do we invite?
And do we maybe want to have a back up in case who we invite can’t come?
MS. WONG:
I think at the last meeting we said we’d invite the department
representative and if they can’t come they choose someone.
MS. O’HARA:
But we had a motion that we passed earlier that we invite Scott Leonard.
MS. NICHOLSON:
But not necessarily at the next meeting.
MS. O’HARA:
Well, I was just reviewing what we had. We also had talked at the last
meeting in terms of the revenue enhancement and collections committee of inviting the
county Treasurer, the Real Property Tax Director and DEM. The last two because
those departments have significant delinquencies in terms of budget so that was what
we discussed at our last meeting. That was Bill Takaba’s suggestion.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So what’s your pleasure now that we have another meeting under
our belt? And boy the minutes are going to be really long for this meeting.
MR. ARMOUR:
I’d like Real Property.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Real Property. What do you guys think? You want Real Property?
Will that be helpful for you too?
MS. O’HARA:
I think we should invite all three if we’re going to invite one. This is a
discussion on revenues and collections. Kind of like today where we invited everyone
that dealt with contracts.
MS. NICHOLSON:
What do you think, Ken?
MR. ARMOUR:
That would be fine. I was just trying to get it where we have time to
talk to everybody and in time for everybody in one meeting. I don’t think they’ll all be
joint presentations, do you.
MS. O’HARA:
They probably won’t but they may. Who knows? We don’t know how
these people team up.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So you’re talking about Real Property Tax Division,
MS. O’HARA:
DEM, Department of Environmental Management has significant
delinquencies on sewer fees.
53
MS. WONG:
And would you want to bring Nancy Crawford back in again to speak on
that topic or Deanna?
MS. O’HARA:
I think Bill suggested the Treasurer, whose name is
MS. NICHOLSON:
It seems like DEM is kind of a separate issue. I don’t see that as a
revenue enhancement. It’s really talking about what’s their problem with their
collections, but
MS. O’HARA:
Well, it’s a technology problem in my opinion, so it actually has ties for
our committee.
MS. WONG:
But not maybe at the same time.
MS. O’HARA:
What we’ve been discussing was trying to bring in blocks of county
employees that all deal with the same issue. If we just bring in Data Systems, we’re
only going to hear about their role in purchasing computers for the divisions that they
serve. They do not serve the Police Station, they do not serve Fire, they do not serve
Civil Defense, they do not serve Prosecutors Office, so we’re not going to hear about
the overall data issues with the county. Same with the revenue enhancement and
collections. We’re not going to hear if we just go to one department to hear what their
issues are. We’re not going the hear overarching issues.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Mike Okumoto.
MS. O’HARA:
Mike Sakamoto is the Treasurer?
MS. NICHOLSON:
Mike Okumoto.
MS. O’HARA:
So that was Bill’s suggestion was to bring those three people in together
to talk about revenue enhancements and collections.
MS. NICHOLSON:
What’s your pleasure? Your Property Tax Division, Treasurer, and
Department of Environmental Management?
MS. WONG:
Seems like Scott Leonard talked on some income, touching upon these
areas.
MS. O’HARA:
He did in his report. He touched upon the delinquencies in the tax office
at Real Property.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Should we add him to the list. Or would it be strange to have an
employee speaking with the department heads?
MS. WONG:
I would hope not.
MS. O’HARA:
No, it shouldn’t be at all strange.
54
MR. MATSUDA:
Should we have him first? Just put him first? No, he would have to
stick around.
MS. WONG:
That’s sensitive to title, so I don’t think they should mind if they’re all in the
same room.
MS. O’HARA:
I think it’s great because Scott has a lot of revenue enhancement
recommendations.
MR. MATSUDA:
Yeah.
MS. WONG:
There’s another name that came up at the last meeting, Molly Lugo.
MS. MECKLENBURG
: She’s a Deputy Corporation Counsel from our office who
handles collections that make it to our office.
MS. O’HARA:
Just for your office or in the county?
MS. MECKLENBURG
: They get referred from other departments.
MS. WONG:
All collections.
MS. O’HARA:
So maybe we should have her like we had Craig Masuda here today.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So we’re up to five. We’re already at a very long meeting. Is that
your pleasure? So we have two specific individuals and three departments.
MS. WONG:
Deanna, seems like Deanna, although she’s with Finance, seems like
when I talked about different departments, she seemed to know what was going on in
their money areas. And she was quicker to respond then Nancy, not, I think Nancy
certainly knows, but she’s good at putting out information.
MS. NICHOLSON:
I don’t know these people, so I don’t know if this is a
MS. WONG:
And she makes it, when I met with them, she made it simple to
understand. You know when I said, what is the priority, and I said who are your
customers and how do you satisfy them? She said my customers are all the
department heads. You want to satisfy them, you give it to them fast. And I said how
do you give it them fast? IT. And I thought I can understand that. Make it simple to
understand. That’s why I kind of brought her name up.
MS. O’HARA:
Deanna is the Deputy Director of Finance.
MS. NICHOLSON:
So do you want to add her? So we have six. Seems like kind of a
lot to me.
MR. ARMOUR:
I think if you have that many I don’t think we’re going to get much
detail.
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MS. NICHOLSON:
I don’t either. I’d rather split them up either at two different times so
we finish with some category and then that person can leave and other people come in.
Or a different meeting? But with only one December meeting, we’re like going to be
running out of time here really soon.
MS. O’HARA:
Okay so who have we talked about? Treasurer?
MS. NICHOLSON:
We talked about Deanna, whose last name I don’t know, from
Finance, Deputy Director of Finance. Molly Lugo, from Corporation Counsel. Scott
Leonard from Planning Department. Real Property Tax Division. The Treasurer, Mike
Okumoto, and Department of Environmental Management. Is there a way to group by
topic or category? Because remember we agreed we wanted to ask them all and let
them know in advance when we invited them. Oh, about purchasing and contract.
MS. O’HARA:
I feel that Scott Leonard is really speaking to his recommendations as
an employee so it’s a little different than the rest of the people who are being asked to
speak directly to revenue enhancement and collections, delinquencies. So, I think it
would be great to have him come speak and if next meeting works out, but I think he
needs to be a separate agenda item because he’s speaking to his recommendations
and they’re great recommendations, and they have to do with revenue enhancement.
So, it would be okay to have him, but I don’t think he’s part of that group in terms of a
team effort.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Could we put him on the agenda for the following meeting? And
we’ll talk about the rest of at the following meeting.
MS. O’HARA:
How would you want to do it, that would work out too?
MS. WONG:
And let me just ask, do you think Department of Environmental
Management is consistent with the other speakers?
MS. O’HARA:
Yes.
MS. WONG:
Okay.
MS. O’HARA:
It’s consistent with Real Property Tax Division. The things we’re looking
at are the fees and the delinquencies for those two departments because both of them
have significant issues with that.
MS. NICHOLSON:
If we’re having Molly Lugo to that, it will fit in. Okay, so right now
we’re looking at Scott Leonard being at the second Wednesday meeting that we have in
November and inviting the rest of these people for the first Wednesday meeting of
November. And we do want to give them some direction on what the Cost of
Government Commission does and what are subcommittees are, and we did want to
ask them specifically about issues they may have with purchasing contracts. Are there
other specific things we want to sort of forewarn them about so that they could target
their remarks over the letter for us?
MS. WONG:
Revenue enhancement and collections.
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MS. NICHOLSON:
That’s sort of the opinion, yes. So maybe we do want to let them
know that that’s one of the subcommittees but maybe we also want them to particularly
address revenue enhancement and collections. And I assume that you guys will take
care of inviting those people? Cause we haven’t been inviting them.
MS. CARVALHO:
Well, the last one Bill invited. Did you want me to ask if he would
invite them again?
MS. NICHOLSON:
Yes. Since he left early, he should do that.
MS. O’HARA:
Just so the departments know what our questions are, that we’re looking
at revenue enhancement and collections because that might involve sending a
particular employee rather than the director.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
And with these people, it’s mostly collections, is that correct?
MS. NICHOLSON:
Yes.
MR. MATSUDA:
Revenue.
MS. MECKLENBURG:
But kind of ends up being the same thing as opposed to
proactive revenue generation, it’s more collections.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Well, actually I would love them to talk proactive.
MS. O’HARA:
Proactive, I think is Scott Leonard’s discussion.
MR. ARMOUR:
It’s a little bit more than just collections.
MS. WONG:
And are you saying that collections is different from delinquencies? Or is
that the same?
MS. O’HARA:
No, it’s the same. It’s the flip side of the coin.
MS. NICHOLSON:
Any other discussions on agenda items for the next meeting?
MS. O’HARA:
Not for the next meeting and since we’ve already put something on the
agenda for November 17, I would just like to bring it to our attention that at some point,
maybe it will be the December meeting, we would like to get a group of people in to
talked about the technology issues with the county, the Data Systems and different
communication systems of the different departments.
MS. NICHOLSON:
We might even be able to do that in November. I’ll just separate
them.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
MS. NICHOLSON:
On to Announcements. The next meeting of the Cost of
Government Commission will be held on November 3, at 10:00 a.m. in this conference
room 101 Aupuni Street, Suite 230, Hilo, Hawai‘i, 96720.
ADJOURNMENT
MS. NICHOLSON:
Our meeting is adjourned.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 1:35 PM
Submitted by:
Sandra Arriola
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