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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010-09-10 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, September 10, 2010 – 10:00 a.m. Department of Liquor Control Conference Room 101 Aupuni Street, Suite 230 Hilo, Hawai`i 96720 CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by Ms. Nicholson at 10:05 a.m. MS. NICHOLSON: I’d like to call the meeting to order. Present Kenneth Armour Glen Matsuda Marilyn Nicholson Eileen O’Hara Patricia Provalenko Gloria Wong William Takaba, ex-officio Guest speaker Alex Frost Also present Kathy Garson Emarie Carvalho Sandy Arriola STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC MS. NICHOLSON: Do we have any statements from the public? It looks like we have no statements from the public. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: MS. NICHOLSON: I would like to go right into approval of the minutes from our July 30 meeting. MOTION:MS. WONG: I move that it be approved. Hawai‘i County is an Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer MS. PROVALENKO: I’d like to make a correction. K. GARSON: How about move to approve. MS. NICHOLSON: So, do I have a second? MR. MATSUDA: I second. MS. NICHOLSON: All right. Move to discussion. MS. PROVALENKO: My company’s name is spelled wrong. It’s PATDI. MS. NICHOLSON: You are on page what? MS. PROVALENKO: Page 2. And it’s all caps. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other corrections to the minutes? If so, I’d like to move for approval. MS. GARSON: So, with the spelling correction, so move to approve as amended. MOTION:MS. NICHOLSON: Move to approve as amended. MS. WONG: Second. MS. NICHOLSON: All in favor. ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye MS. NICHOLSON: Oppose? (None) MS. NICHOLSON: We don’t have our speaker here yet. Is there a way to check to see if he’s coming? MS. CARVALHO: I can do that, and I’ll be back. CORRESPONDENCE MS. NICHOLSON: Moving on to Agenda item 4, Correspondence. Anyone want to move to file this. MOTION:MS. O’HARA: I so move. MS. NICHOLSON: Second? MS. PROVALENKO: Second. 2 MS. GARSON: So, it’s a motion to file all of them, A thru AA? Or are you going to pick them in order? MS. NICHOLSON: At this point, I think we want to go ahead and move to file all of them and then we may come back to some of these when we get to the discussion regarding how we’re going to handle the correspondence. Does that work? MS. GARSON: That would work. MS. WONG: I’d like to suggest that we discuss them as after we file them at this point. MS. GARSON: Then if you’re going to discuss them, what I would do is move to file, second, discuss. There’s not going to be any action. You can discuss it, and if you want to do something with the idea they make that that would go later when you’re talking about the approach. Does that make sense? MS. NICHOLSON: So if we want to have some discussion on a couple of items? MS. GARSON: In a particular correspondence. You can go ahead and have that discussion after you move to file. So, you’ll discuss it. There’s not going to be any action except to file it later. If you want to say lets call in the HR person so that we can get more information on this, you can talk about that but I guess later on when we get to approach, seven, then you can kind of organize what you want to do with the things you already discussed. Otherwise when you get to seven, you’re going to have to go back anyway and reference a particular communication for idea. It probably a little bit better if you do all that when the communication is right in front of you. MOTION:MS. NICHOLSON: All right. We do have a motion on the table to file correspondence A to AA. Do I have a second for that? MS. PROVALENKO: I’ll second. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Can I call for a vote on the motion? MS. GARSON: Before you file, were you going to discuss anything in particular? MS. NICHOLSON: Do we have anyone who wants to discuss any of these items? MS. WONG: Yes. I’d like to ask if there are anymore that came after this? I’m assuming no, because we haven’t received any. MS. ARRIOLA: Well this was already filed. The agenda was already posted. But we do have more. We have about 10 more. MS. GARSON: So, what happens is the agenda has to go out and be filed six days prior to the meeting pursuant to the Sunshine Law. So, basically we cut off what was going go on the agenda the day before it had to be filed which will be for every meeting. The communications that come in after that will get put on the next agenda for discussion. But the response has been quite good, I would say. 3 MS. NICHOLSON: Any other discussion? MS. WONG: Yes. Continuing on to the quite good, compared to previous years, is this comparable or better than previous years? MS. NICHOLSON: Much better at least from last time. I can’t speak to the first Cost of Government Commission. MS. PROVALENKO: And you have to understand that we didn’t go out to the individual employees last time. We only went to the departments. MS. NICHOLSON: If we did, we didn’t do it through the pay stub method. It went as a Notice to Supervisors. MS. PROVALENKO: I think we reached them in much more direct manner this time. MS. WONG: I’d like to say too, that I’ve been approached a couple of times by people that have responded out in the public, and I thought Sunshine Law. What do I have to remember? And so I let them speak and I just said, did you respond to the pay stub. The two people that approached me, one said is anything going to be done with this? And I bring this up because I want to disclose I’m concerned about the Sunshine Law. I don’t think anything was against the Sunshine Law happened, but I’d like to disclose it. And the other person was very grateful that employees got a chance to give input. So, I was pleased about that and I didn’t venture any information or anything, but I said everything is public so if you want to comment don’t be afraid. MS. GARSON: And it’s not a Sunshine Law for someone from the public that is not a board member to talk to you. However, I would encourage them to come and make a statement at a meeting otherwise it’s not part of the record. So either encourage them to send something in writing and it can be anonymous. Or have them come to the meeting. If you receive individually an email, maybe because they just know you and they emailed you, please give that email then to the board secretary so that it can be given a communication number and be part of the record. So, a communication to you that is related to board business should be considered a public statement. And what we’ve been doing is if the communication came in, and that was identifying information, we want to be sure that the person had a choice as to whether or not they wanted to remain anonymous. So, Sandy or Emarie would have contacted them and said, did you want to be anonymous? And if they said yes, we redacted the identifying information even an email or a name. We were going to just assume that if they signed it that it was okay that it wasn’t going to be anonymous. But if there is any identifying information on it we did contact them. And the vast majority said oh no, I want to be anonymous. I’m not sure that they realized it was all going to be a public record. So then that would be the only thing. If you do get an email from somebody, you might just want to check with them, did you want this to be anonymous? And just let us know and we’ll be sure to take their name out. 4 MR. MATSUDA: So Kathy, so you’re saying that before we even bring the email to you, we should check with the party first because otherwise she would be checking with the party? MS. GARSON: She can check with them. I’m just saying like if it’s a friend of yours that happened to run into you and said they’re going to send you an email because they knew you, and you might do that. If not, we’ll do it. MS. NICHOLSON: Does that answer your question? MS. WONG: Yes. I was actually more so trying to disclose and make a statement. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other discussion on any of the communications we received? MR. TAKABA: Is it too much trouble to list all the comments, summarize the comments? MS. O’HARA : Categorize or summarize? MR. TAKABA: Actually either way. It could be a two sheet of major comments. I mean keep this intact for somebody who wants to review it to see the comments of the staff, employees made. Some were good. Some were really redundant and there were a couple of people who had the same comments, but all in all the comments were pretty good. I’m not pushing it. I’m just saying if it’s easy enough to do and it’s helpful sometimes it might be better to just summarize the comments. MS. GARSON: We can. We will always provide you the actual communication but if you want a summary maybe actually if you want to wait like another month and then we can go ahead and summarize it, reference it back to the communication. MR. TAKABA: Yeah, because it’s some explanation that might be necessary to back up with what the comment is. MS. GARSON: I’ll be happy to do that. MS. WONG: I was thinking that maybe the in the approach side that the end, when we get all the comments from everyone we could submit that and perhaps give that to the mayor to see the input, so that he could see the input. MR. TAKABA: He won’t want to read each response. MS. GARSON: That’s a good idea and again when you get to how you’re going to approach the report, is that something that you want to put in your report? Employees commented on various items, and just put them all in there, that would be fine too. MS. NICHOLSON: Just keep in mind that once we accept it, it doesn’t go into a black hole. We will be discussing it as part of Item seven and as part of our Approach. And I think we need to keep in mind how we want to incorporate this so that when we have that discussion at this meeting or subsequent meetings, we make sure that we are 5 reflecting that kind of input. Any other discussion on that correspondence? Okay. We have a motion and a second, and we vote. All those in favor of filing correspondence, please say aye. ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye. MS. NICHOLSON: Oppose? (None) Motion carried. MS. NICHOLSON: Just in the nick of time. I believe our speaker is here. Is this Alex Frost? MR. FROST: Yes. Sorry I’m late. It’s all set up. MS. NICHOLSON: Mr. Frost, would you like to come to the table and introduce yourself? PRESENTATION REGARDING THE COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I’S GREEN TEAM MR. FROST: Yes. My name is Alex Frost. I’m an economic development specialist for the Department of Research and Development. I’m also the coordinator for the Mayor’s Green Team which is made up of volunteers from various departments. MS. NICHOLSON: So what do you have for us today? Are you first going to give some general remarks or are you going to go right into your presentation? MR. FROST: I will just go right into my presentation. To just give a little bit of context of the work of the Green Team as why optimize our resources, and then a little bit about the Mayor’s Green Team, and going to show results in some of the cost saving measures that’s been identified which may be helpful to this commission. Alex Frost did a Power Point presentation on the Mayor’s Green Team. (Presentation is attached to the minutes.) That’s it for my presentation. Thank you for inviting me to share the work of the Mayor’s Green Team. Any questions? MS. WONG: Let me start off. The partnerships that you garnered, how did that come about? I’m kind of impressed by it. Did you just ask him, was it you, or was it the Mayor, or how did the partnerships develop? MR. FROST: We’ve been cultivating some of these partnerships for years. But like Kohala Center, we have a very strong partnership, County has with the Kohala Center. They helped draft our energy sustainability plan in 2007 with Yale(?) University We work closely with them. The Natural Step Canada, they are an international non-profit, real leader in transitioning organizations to move towards sustainable practices. They provided trainings last year to local community leaders. So we built that relationship. MS. WONG: And with those partnerships, was it R&D that got the ARRA funds or did that 6 MR. FROST: The ARRA funds, yes, came through R&D. The energy coordinator is managing that. But when the ARRA funds came we were already working in a lot of these areas and we were able to target specific areas for implementation. So, there’s just a lot of moving pieces, but I’m just trying to stay dynamic. MS. WONG: So a lot of this is not only cost saving but kind of income almost producing for the partners. MR. FROST: Potentially especially renewable energy. We have the net metering set up for the old county building so any excess energy we don’t use like on weekends then the meters will roll back. So there is a savings there as well. MS. WONG: One last question for me. Number one on the strategy was awareness a,b,c,d, awareness to the employees. Are the employees, county employees encouraged to take some of these concepts and are they educated to use it in their own families at home? Or this is just for the county? MR. FROST: We have done some. It’s been focused on internal office hours, government operation. But as part of our outreach I presented the administrative support staff conference as a conference for all of them. And I did share about the Green Team, but also what you could do at home. So, another training we did was composting, turning trash into soil. I think over 100 people participated even within the county. We were offering it in the community as well. MS. WONG: I went there. MR. FROST: So those kinds of training and workshops were always promoting and trying to – the good thing about the Green Team is there is a forum for people to connect within the county departments and that’s how a lot of the trainings came about. MS. WONG: Thank you. MR. ARMOUR: Have you rolled this out the employees and asked them to cut back on electric use and things like that? MR. FROST: We work with the University of Hawai‘i Hilo for one of the projects and this was looking at energy usage behavior of county employees. So, we just finished the survey. The result is quite encouraging actually. But it also shows we have significant percentage of county employees that use heaters in their office, portable heaters because it’s too cold. Or fans because it’s too hot. So that report is available and we are planning to share the results from that survey which is everybody is already practicing energy conservation behaviors or want to engage in energy conservation behaviors. October is energy awareness month so we’re rolling out at least the energy conservation campaign letter. Which is just turn off the light.It’s no cost, low cost action that we can take. MR. ARMOUR: On some of the suggestions and this isn’t a comprehensive list but one said cut electric heaters, use l.e.d. lights, eliminate take home vehicles, turn off lights 7 when not needed. Somebody said the highway in Kona was too well lit, cut off every other light. Another one, county vehicle is driven home and one was on a fuel graded county cars. So it looks like the employees, at least some of them are interested in this so if you could get all the employees on conservation it might make a big impact right away. MR. FROST: That’s great to hear, the comments that have come up. MS. O’HARA: I have a couple of questions. The first one is a point just brought up about heaters being used in the offices. What’s the suggestion of the Green Team to mitigate that issue because it is being used intensely. MR. FROST: The heaters are very touchy subject because what we’ve come to understand is that the way the building has been designed, and the way that the air conditioning system has been designed, there is a certain flaw so certain sections of the office is colder and the other section is hotter. But also it’s personal, there’s quite a bit of personal kind of subjective preference on what is comfortable air temperature. Like right now this would be too cold for me, but for a lot of people this is just right. So, we recommended 74 degrees Fahrenheit is the best temperature according the International Energy Association. So, those things have begun in certain offices where the department heads have really taken initiative. So Civil Defense actually has operated and just changed that. Just that alone, two degrees, there is quite a bit of savings in terms of electricity use. We’re still trying to figure out the heater thing. The other piece was refrigerators. We have a lot of old refrigerators that use a lot of energy, but we cannot take away the frig, so the recommendation is, okay how do we upgrade to the energy efficient refrigerator which cuts energy use by 30, 40 percent. MS. O’HARA: There was a good program for that just a few months ago. MR. FROST: Yeah. The rebate? Yeah. MS. O’HARA: The fleet analysis, you said you got, or you are complete on it? MR. FROST: The first level of the fleet analysis which was looking at the fuel use, the annual mileage of all vehicles and separating it into diesel and gasoline. So, we’ve finished with that. We’ve made some preliminary recommendations but for more detailed analysis because we’re looking at okay, what is the feasibility of electrifying our fleet electric vehicle or bio-diesel. So NREL, National Renewal Energy Laboratory, is a federal organization focused on research and deployment of technology is providing us with technical assistance to complete the detail analysis. They were helping us earlier in the year and then the State Department of Business Economical Development and Tourism kind of took our resources away to focus on Oahu projects. But now we’re going to be getting it back in September. MS. O’HARA: I’m just curious because in terms of emissions the vehicles represented 10% and what number of vehicles that we have total diesel and gasoline? MR. FROST: A little over a thousand. I can’t say on the top of my head what the percentage of diesel and gasoline is, but I can find that out. 8 MS. O’HARA: At this point, the county is buying no renewable fuels? MR. FROST: At this point no renewable fuels. The county, the Automotive Division under the Department of Public Works did do a pilot study on bio-diesel and tracked performance of all county vehicles using bio-fuel. And that was the only study that we have. MS. O’HARA: Is that study available to the public that use the analysis? MR. FROST: I think it would be. Yeah, I would have to confirm. The study was very interesting in that it didn’t show good performance using bio-diesel which is a little bit contrary to other studies we’ve seen. That is available. MR. MATSUDA: Alex, question. For the heating and the fan and the refrigerator situation, we’re talking about personal items, am I correct? Not equipment that was provided by the county. MR. FROST: Yes, personal. MR. MATSUDA: As a state worker, I’ve received, maybe in about the last two years, I think all state employees have gotten, which is cease and desist using any kind of fans to cut energy cost. That was the bottom line of the whole memo. Is something like that maybe coming forth regarding, maybe coming out of your committee or the Green Team for recommendation to the county? Cause that would be something that, well, if this is your own thing, obviously other things will have to looked into further. MR. FROST: Yes. MR. MATSUDA: But before you make your recommendation, might that be a solution? MR. FROST: We’ll be looking at every possible solution. And in terms of limiting or minimizing personal equipments or energy, phone charges and what not, we would make our recommendation, but it’s really up to the administration too. This is a great suggestion. MR. TAKABA: Why not use the recommendations, the interviews. MR. FROST: How long is this commission? Eleven months. MR. TAKABA: We have about 10 months left. MR. FROST: Ten months left. So when is the report due to the Council? MS. GARSON: June. MR. FROST: We’ll definitely have all of the recommendations done by then. MR. TAKABA: Can you send a copy to the commission. 9 MR. FROST: Yes. I’ll send a copy to the commission, and then I should probably send you the copy of like the energy audit report for Wastewater. Would that be helpful? Or anything that already has a cost analysis, I will arrange for that to be sent. MS. PROVALENKO: I have a question. In regards to, going back to the refrigerators and the heaters, what about refrigerators that are in the employee break rooms and stuff like that? Are they being replaced with energy efficient? MR. TAKABA: Maybe I can give you some background. Each department bought their own refrigerator so if they need a replacement it would have to be purchased by the employees in that department. Only refrigerators that are supplied by the county would be like if assuming like an emergency center, like Civil Defense, every base yard that responds to emergency that they need a refrigerator. In most cases, most other cases, it’s purchased by employees and if we were to say replace all non-energy efficient refrigerators then it may create a hardship for employees to have to buy one. I’m not sure. That could be a recommendation to the employees who purchased the refrigerators. MS. NICHOLSON: I have a question. You mentioned briefly composting, but basically it sounds like your charge is energy use. MR. FROST: Energy is the most significant cost in terms of it. The Green Team’s mission is beyond energy because it’s electricity fuel and in waste, and when we get to waste which is paper, or anything that the county produces, there is potential cost implication. MS. NICHOLSON: So you’re involved in recycling but your focus and mission has been on energy use because it’s such a big item? MR. FROST: Yes and potentially biggest saving. MS. NICHOLSON: This is like a standing committee that has been appointed by the mayor as long as we have the current mayor? MR. FROST: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: That you will continue to work on these items so you, in the future you’re going to move into other areas beyond just energy? MR. FROST: That would be ideal. But right now the mayor wanted the focus to be on energy first, but we are also looking at waste. We did finish a waste flow analysis for West Hawai‘i County facilities to look at how much waste we were diverting. It was just taking it out of landfill. And it’s over 30% at that time, which was quite encouraging that we want to move that great way for minimizing, at least physical waste in county operations. 10 M. NICHOLSON: So are you involved with the purchase of equipment for the county so that people don’t have quite so many say personal printers so that things are sent to a network? Are you involved in that aspect too or is that another effort? MR. FROST: The procurement policy will be involved and we’re looking at that because there is a procurement policy for buying a vehicle or a certain policies for materials. Again, that’s hopefully as we get early successes and we’ll build on that to expand into other areas. We’re not really looking at procurement policies, looking at everything – all materials which would be quite a task. MS. NICHOLSON: The Cost of Government Commission has, I would say, a broader mandate than you have but definitely includes your mandate. And I would say that we could enhance your efforts and you can enhance ours by working together because we will be putting together a report that will have recommendations to the mayor that will also go to the County Council that can include some of your items. So, we would definitely like to have the information you have gathered so that we can null it over and decide if we want to include it in our report also. We would definitely like to be working with you. MR. FROST: Okay. Thank you. MS. NICHOLSON: Are there any other comments? Thank you very much for coming and making the presentation and please stay in touch with us. DISCUSSION REGARDING IDENTIFICATION OF CORE COUNTY RESPONSIBILITIES MS. NICHOLSON: Okay we are on Item 6 of our agenda – discussion regarding identification of core county responsibilities. I’d like to really thank Gloria for doing some research for us. Hopefully everyone’s had a chance to look at this. Gloria, why don’t you just talk about what you did, how you got here, what some of your conclusions are. MS. WONG: I think it was very well noted that this was key for our committee to define the core responsibility for services. So I Googled, dog pile, whatever search engines, and I was really looking for white paper concepts. But as I was searching I’ve seen that a lot of states experiencing what we’re experiencing. We’re making statements about how they had to reform the counties and we really look at their core services and what budget items needed to be cut, consolidated, just as we’re trying to do here. So, I probably looked at 30 states and various different newspapers and I kept all of the bulk of the research but I tried to hone it down to three pages was the least as I could get. To help us to look at what our county has and to compare it to what other states and philosophers and educators have indicated as services under those departments.I think what I was trying to look for what cannot be touched we have to have those. And what are things that are changing. One of the things that I really noted and I couldn’t really put it in here was that different states and counties were saying that although there has been a standard, because of the economic changes, they have had to change departments and change the way they look at. So, I think that gives us a certain leeway to make recommendations if we want to say, although it’s been done this way before, maybe this way will work for this period of time during economic hardship. So, these 11 are the recommendations that I saw and copied and tried to be concise. The one on the bottom of page 2 and top of 3, that’s from Wikipedia. It looked at the different departments. I think I put in core departments, county departments, or counties. And I thought it was curious that Hawai‘i is noted, on the top of page 3, is the only U.S. state that has no incorporated municipalities. Instead it has four counties. And I realized that but I didn’t realize that we were the only ones. We have the liberty to be even more different or creative or whatever. This was sort of my backup to these two concerns that I have for our county. I’ll just mention it now and bring it up at another time, but I really would like to see, and it’s not the county ‘s responsibility but I see in our minutes that it was discussed last meeting – health care and education. I have a concern for health care and education. And it’s not the county’s duty. But just as ag is in R&D in special focus, eventually I’d like for us to look at health care and education be something that the county can, not necessarily build a department on but have an assignment too that would mean budget assignment. But this is a background to help us decide on, and Bill Takaba said we need to determine what our core services are, our core responsibilities. This is what other states and educators are saying. MS. NICHOLSON: Do you have any comments on Gloria’s report? W. TAKABA: I think with what Gloria is referring to, I’ll just pass out this copy, just to tie in with what the county does is what’s stated here. I’ll pass out what the county does.I think the first section of the report that I passed out, it’s pretty much in mind with what the county does except there may be some functions that we don’t do, like community colleges. I passed out what we do have. This is based on how we establish our budget. So, just say as an example we have General Government, and below General Government we have the County Council, executive branch auditing directions. So if you relate that to General Government in the hand out that Gloria gave us, we also have the grouping so what we have to look at is the underlying heading. And that’s the heading that’s that relates to Gloria’s paper. And below that would be the subcategories. For example we have General Government, public safety, highways, sanitation and waste removal, health, education and health welfare and education, culture and recreation, death service, and miscellaneous. The categories are there but we just don’t fund it. We haven’t been funding them. The county has not been funding too much in these areas. We have some like health. I notice that even in our health side, it talks about the physicians, the county physicians. They only do employee physicals. It’s not like to serve the public. So it’s more, that should be more of a general list that was health, welfare and education. Again, that’s what the county is. If you want to relate it to what you have maybe that’s a good way to start. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, we were all sort of agreed that our last meeting that we would spend time going through the County Charter and using that as sort of a base to follow up. I’m thinking about those quorums. MR. TAKABA: I think if you just follow these. It’s basically what you have to do. MS. NICHOLSON: What the core MR. TAKABA: Yes. These will be like what you would consider as. And you can see by funding where we get our money. It has a budget attached. That’s what currently 12 budget so, the first category is the key under General Funds. That’s Real Property Tax. And I think this is where you should focus because, although we can still cover other areas but the General Fund is what our taxes pays for, Transient Accommodation Taxes and so forth. If you want to know where we spend our money this would give you a good idea of where the money goes. MS. NICHOLSON: So you’re saying that the items funded with the General Fund are the ones that we should focus on because those are the ones that we could actually maybe have some impact on? MR.TAKABA: Yeah. We should look at everything, but the General Fund is where you will fund with taxpayers money. Like Highway Fund has fuel tax so when you fill gas, and that’s self sustaining. What you get with what you spend. That’s not really something that will concern us as much as the General Fund. MS. NICHOLSON: It seems to me that we might want to just move right into agenda item 7 because, how we identify the core county responsibilities and how we tackle our task seem to be intimately related. We can’t really separate them. So, does anyone have any objection if we move right into agenda item 7 to cut discussion regarding approach to take? MS. WONG : No problem. MS. NICHOLSON: While we’re going to do this, does anyone want to take a quick break? Cause this could be a lengthy discussion. MS. WONG: Who has to leave early and what time do you have to leave? MR. MATSUDA: I leave at 12. MS. PROVALENKO: I leave at 12:15. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. I hope someone, I have been sort of racking my brain about the best way to tackle this. We certainly got a start by sending out our letter and getting some feedback. But I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tackle this, and I haven’t come up with anything other than the way we had done it in the past, which is go through department by department. When we did it that way in the past, we were in quite a different situation, financial situation for the county. I think we have an opportunity to tackle things in a different way this time. But other than our suggestion to look at core services, I haven’t been able to formulate a way that we could tackle it. So I’m hoping that you all have some wonderful suggestions. MR. TAKABA: As I was listening to Alex, that’s an area, you know like energy, it’s almost like a subcategory of general expenditures and it cuts across all departments. So I’m wondering if a team of two or three people just work on energy. People who are interested in that area, just work on energy related matters and maybe somebody else or another group work on, concentrate on other areas. It was just a thought as Alex was giving his presentation that maybe some of us who might be really interested in digging deeper into what they’re doing and working with them on and find out what 13 recommendations we could come up with that relates to inaudible. I’m not sure. I mean it’s up to the group how we want to do it, but it seems like one day we could have subcommittees explore different areas of cost savings. MS. WONG: That’s on my list right here. Not so much to focus on just energy because I didn’t know what he’d be talking about, but it’s hard for me to take a two week break or one month break and still remember what happened so I have to reread. And I thought, I personally really work much better if I focus in and just keep on going at a project. I would like to suggest if we broke up into two’s and choose topics that we’d like to focus on so we could have that interchange instead of waiting for our next meeting and two weeks before we can talk to each other and sort of come up with an assessment and recommendations on whatever we choose to. It could be the energy thing. I’m probably more interested in the budget and in the operations, and that basis on the core services. But I’d like to go along with Bill’s comment and suggest that we break off into two at a time. What do you think about that or what does everybody else think about that? MS. NICHOLSON: And what kind of categories have you come up with? MR. TAKABA: If you follow the comments that were made, it gives us some idea of what kind of categories. MS. PROVALENKO: What the concerns are. MR. TAKABA: Some are interested in streamlining forms, duplicate forms. Why do we have to fill out all this paper work? This relates to the energy, turning off the lights. One had to do with gasoline, why are we buying super gas instead of regular. Another one was streamlining operations. But maybe it’s something that the group should come up with, a major category. Maybe Patty may be interested in our leases, right? We have a lot of leases out there. MS. PROVALENKO: I was thinking we should wait till we get the letters, the rest of the responses in and see from those responses the areas that really are a concern to the employees as well as to the management, and kind of form those areas. Follow through those areas. MS. WONG: I think the responses are helpful but the employees see their little piece and the department heads see their bigger piece. And perhaps only the executive assistants see, even though if they see the whole piece, so we need to be able to look at, our commission needs to look at the whole piece and then filter down to the smaller pieces. MS. PROVALENKO: But yeah, I agree, but what I’m saying is I think that the responses we get back, because they are in there on a day-to-day basis so they have, like with the paper, the duplicate forms, one was with the police department and having these forms that are printed up and have dates on them, why not do it. So what I’m saying is with these suggestions that come in, I mean I think then we could find out where we need to, what the focuses are with those various departments. Cause I think the employees are really the core group that’s going to come up with some of these 14 things. Because on a big picture, as sitting on top of it all, you don’t see a lot of that. The guy down below is who sees it. So, that’s why I was thinking wait till we get the rest of the responses in before we determine the two people, the parties and where you want to go with it. MS. WONG: Perhaps it could be two people collecting those information and getting more, we discussed last time from the public, getting more from the public somehow and the two people would be authorized and tasked with getting more information and summarizing and maybe coming up with a recommendation based on those recommendations. Another two could be doing something else. And another two could be doing something else. Just so we’re not waiting. We’re taking action at this point. We have something to work on. At the first meeting I had these ideas. And when I read the Charter, can’t do that, can’t do that. Well, that limits what can do. So that was very helpful to realize what I couldn’t do. I still have some recommendations that I came in with before we even started, and I’d like to eventually get it somewhere. But it’s nowhere spaced on the agendas yet. So, if it opens up to the public, there’s an avenue for someone to go to instead of just passing it to the secretary. Then we could start evaluating and assessing for, and come up with a report for our next meeting. M. NICHOLSON: Do you have a comment? MS. O’HARA: Yeah, I did have a comment – talking about how to divvy up task and what we need to focus on, we’ve asked these five questions which refers to, has to do with the core services that the county should be providing. And that’s a question that we want to address as commissioners. But the four questions can be categorized, in my opinion, as recommendations on consolidation, enhancing revenue, technical adoption and operational suggestions. When I asked Bill earlier when he said summarize all the comments that are coming in, I was thinking of categorizing. Because we’ve asked these specific questions and as you know the responders are responding to these specific questions. So we have these four categories that we’ve asked for input on savings. So why don’t we organize along those lines and take the public input, categorize it, and see what they’re saying and if these suggestions can be incorporated into our recommendations as a commission. MS. NICHOLSON: So what are your four categories? MS. O’HARA: Well, question number two asks if they see opportunities for consolidate, coordinating services in the department, consolidation. The third question asks if they see opportunities for enhancing their revenues. As Bill has pointed out all the other columns on the sheet are empty because these are special funds, and these are user fees to pay the funds that fund the different services. So we asked the question if there was potential revenue enhancements. The fourth question was technology adoption. And we got some recommendations about data systems and so on that could be upgraded. And the fifth question is basically operational measures.Operational things that can be done. This is where we get into the, don’t take the vehicles home and reduce the number of refrigerators, and all those are operational suggestions. So those are the categories that we’ve asked for and that’s what we’re getting back. So why don’t we stay organized around those categories. That might help. I did have another comment, a little bit on what Gloria provided us and duck tailing it with what Bill provided 15 us. And thank you for coordinating those two things. I can see under our General Fund which is primarily funded by tax revenues, that we are providing most of these services. The services that are being provided by the states are not the county’s responsibility as organized here in Hawai‘i. But one thing down below where you’re talking about service functions, there’s a very broad category called community service. And I’m kind of curious what all we’re offering in the way of, and what is community services? It’s a very broad topic as written down. What do you really mean by that? What are we really providing as community services? Just kind of curious. I think that helps us to focus on what the core actions this county should be providing when we really look at it in those terms. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Before we go into discussion on community services, did you have something you wanted to add? Gloria, did you want to address what, because you’re referring to the document. Do you come up with any that is included under that category of community services? Anything specific? MS. WONG: I don’t recall. All of this is cut and paste so I didn’t add anything to it. I can look back at my notes but I don’t easily recall. MS. O’HARA: We do have the health, education, welfare department. Health, welfare and education. MR. TAKABA: It’s not really the county’s function because Office of Aging inaudible. We have Office of Housing functions. MS. WONG: Is Karen Tashima part of that? MR. TAKABA: Karen, well she works out of the mayor’s office on a special project. MS. WONG: But her focus is health? MR. TAKABA: Yes, because we never had any kind of health initiative before. And what we wanted to do was at least have somebody covering health care issues because it is such a big subject, big issue. And we wanted to make sure that at least somebody can represent the county on health care issues. We don’t have an educational person, when you’re talking educational policies. So there’s a conference going on today, we send someone from the mayor’s office. He’s out of Kona. He works out of Kona. And the question came up as to who is going to be our contact on educational issues. Because we didn’t have one, we sent the Deputy Managing Director. In those areas, I think because we don’t do direct services in health care, we’re doing more recognition and planning. That’s the extent of what the county has done. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, we have a sort of a suggestion on the table that we divide ourselves into groups to talk about specific issues. And we have some tentative issues on the table. Actually I’d like to ask, in terms of the Sunshine Law, if we have two of say talking to a department, that’s not a problem? 16 MS. GARSON: No. Just make it clear who is in charge of what. But two is no problem. You can have a committee of less than a quorum and that still wouldn’t be a problem. MS. NICHOLSON: Because we’re not reaching any conclusions, we’re just making recommendations. MS. GARSON: Yes, two is fine without having a noticed meeting, yes. MS. WONG: Based on what you’ve heard us saying over the last 15 minutes or so, do you have any comments or suggestions? MS. GARSON: No. Actually on the communications that were sent to you, one thing that I would like you to do is to forward them to the department that those suggestions kind of had to do with for comment. For example, I don’t know if it was in this batch, but a comment came in from someone who is probably from the police department cause his suggestions all had to do with police functions. I think you should send that to the Police Chief and have him maybe have someone call him back. Or if there is a technology suggestion, at some point you should either invite or maybe send that to Data Systems to see what comment they would have about like, great idea. They haven’t seen these so that would just be my suggestion, at some point maybe before you have them come in or somehow forward those to the department. MS. O’HARA: Just responding to that, I would be a little bit concerned if they came in as an anonymous comment to sending that. The writing might be recognizable. MS. GARSON: Or again a summary. Just somehow, just remember to get input back from the department. MS. O’HARA: A summary would be good. MS. PROVALENKO: I agree with the summary. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, I’m trying to get my mind on how we would do this. If we divide into groups and you all say I’m interested in delving further in this, I’m interested in delving further in this, that’s one action. But it looks like we’re actually, we want to also be focusing on the big picture, be looking at the comments we’re getting back from the departments, but we’re not necessarily going to be going department to department to department. We’re looking at a more interdisciplinary approach. Is that set? MS. WONG: I think the thing is yet. We may still go to a department MS. NICHOLSON: Because I don’t want to loose sight of our task of maybe looking at programs or activities that the county may be doing that we may want to suggest be eliminated, transferred, or whatever. MS. O’HARA: Modified. 17 MS. NICHOLSON: Modified in some way, which we might not catch by going through these four categories that we’ve determined. My question for you, could you serve on one of these committees? MR. TAKABA: I think so as an ex-officio. MS. NICHOLSON: As ex-officio. MS. GARSON: I think that you can. I don’t’ think that there is a problem. MR.TAKABA: I could assist each group as a subcommittee. Maybe the core committees should be official members and I can serve as like a resource to the subcommittee. MS. NICHOLSON: Or help us determine who we’d talk to to get certain kind of information. MR. TAKABA: It seems like a two person committee and I sit on a subcommittee that has just one more person. It’s like my ideas, I don’t want to influence how you do the work of the committee. MS. PROVALENKO: Is there any chance of us getting more committee members? MS. GARSON: I don’t that there’s anyone nominated as far as I know. MS. O’HARA: An alternative way to do it if we do want tie this into the department is to take these services and split them up into three categories since there is only six members. To have three committees. General government, debt service is one of the same. Public safety and Public Works could be combined. Recreation, Parks and land planning can be combined. We could look at that as relative departments. MS. NICHOLSON: Can you elaborate a little bit further. MS. O’HARA: Well, we take Bill’s list and all of the items under General government that don’t fall under Public Safety, Public Works, for recreation, Parks and land, Planning would therefore be part of Group A. And then we have Planning and zoning. We have Public Works. We have Public Safety which includes police and fire. Public Works also includes Highways. The question is it’s not really broken out. Sanitation and waste renewable is really Environmental Management. It’s a separate department. So that would be part of Public Works. And then we have Culture, Recreations, and all the Parks and Recreation activities and all the Planning activities. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay that’s a modified department? MS. O’HARA: Yeah, modified department trying to categorize all the departments into three sections. We could go that route. MS. GARSON: Can you speak just a little bit louder? We’re having a hard time hearing you. 18 MS. O’HARA: Oh yeah. MS. NICHOLSON: Any comments on that approach? I personally like the interdisciplinary approach a little bit better. The first approach may be a little bit better because the departmental approach is to combine that much is just almost an insurmountable task. MS. O’HARA: It really is. I agree with you. MS. NICHOLSON: At this point we have 10 months to go. That’s my personal feeling about it, but I would welcome others opinions about it. MS. WONG: It kind of scared me. I don’t want to choose any of those. But it might be that if we start of with the first option, we might eventually break down to the point, but at this point, that thought kind of scares me. MS. NICHOLSON: It could be that as we’re working on the other approach we’ll come to an area that we’ll want to discuss say Parks and Recreation as a whole. We could then focus on Parks and Recreation. If that seems to be some sort, there seems to be some issues or suggestions that the team wants to bring forward. Comments? MS. WONG: So, are we then saying we’re all agreeing on option one? MS. NICHOLSON: I’m not sure. I just want to make sure people think that this a viable way to approach it. MS. GARSON: And when you’re talking about A, you’re talking about Ms. O’Hara’s first suggestion about breaking it down, consolidation, enhancing revenue and operation? MS. NICHOLSON: Well, we don’t have enough people to do four unless someone wants to tackle on their own. MS. WONG: Could we look at operational and consolidation as together? MS. O’HARA: True. That would be the logical one to do. MS. NICHOLSON: So we’re talking about breaking down into teams of two for the following groups: One would be addressing operational measures which is sort of a policy committee and also tackling consolidation, potential consolidations, consolidations of activities or functions as one. Another would be looking at revenue enhancement opportunities, which may get broaden down a little bit also into some of the cost saving issues. Technology. Andy maybe things like the paper forms from the comments made can fall into that committee. So, that means as we got these comments and suggestions in, 19 they would be sort of probably parceled out to one of these three committees as being addressed by that subcommittee. MS. WONG: On the technology though, if you’re talking about technology, I think it should be coupled with HR training. HR and/or training, don’t you think? Or no? MS. NICHOLSON: Give us your thoughts on that one. MS. WONG: Cause if you have new technology that will improve, will it eliminate someone? Or will they have to get added training and how much will that cost? And will the union buck at that? Everything I’m reading I just keep thinking, what will the union think. MS. NICHOLSON: But even with revenue enhancement it may require having additional people. So I think any action we’ve opposed would probably impact Human Resources.. MS. WONG: Okay. MS. NICHOLSON: And so that’s something that the teams can take into consideration. MS. WONG: Okay. MS. PROVALENKO: But at the same time I think some of that stuff overlays one another. As far as technology goes with all of the departments and should certain programs work for one, end up work for another one, so I think even technology that would roll over into all of the various departments. MS. O’HARA: It will, yeah. MS. PROVALENKO: So, some of that’s going to be overlapping regardless. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, any other suggestions? MS. O’HARA: As we take these comments that have come in and categorize them into these three categories, consolidating categories, I think it would be helpful if we also identify the relevance to which department, I mean we should be able to tell from the comments like who said about the police department to go check out the highways or whatever department, division. I think we should also identify if this is an energy cost savings. We don’t realize how much of this relates to energy, but I think it would be good to identify that so that we can eventually tie this in to the Green Teams’ report more conclusively. So as we categorize the comments that come in into these three categories we can also have call ups too identify the effective departments and whether or not this is an energy use related issue. MS. NICHOLSON: Well, we’ll get into how we’re going to do that once we divvy up our teams. MS. O’HARA: That was just a suggestion. 20 MS. NICHOLSON: No, but that’s definitely going to be a consideration of how we do that and how we get that as you expressed, Katherine, how we get that information, back to the relevant departments for comment. MS. GARSON: One thing, as you divvy up your committees, I think Bill might have to be on each committee in order for you to communicate with him because he’ll make, there’ll be two who will then communicate to Bill and you’re the third board member whether or not you’re ex-officio. So, I think you’ll have to be on all. Is that all right? MR. TAKABA: Yeah. I’m not sure what kind of meetings you’re going to have. MS. GARSON: You can be tasked but it’s really just so that they can communicate and get information from you without having the Sunshine Law violation.So the two of you might work together but if you need information so that he can provide it to you. MR. TAKABA: That’s not a problem. MS. PROVALENKO: That’s what he’s suggesting. He was suggesting that from that beginning. But necessarily being on the committee but just being as an advisory person. MR. TAKABA: Yes. MS. GARSON: No, I’m saying he has to be on the committee. MR. TAKABA: I’ll be an ex-officio member. I think it’s important that all the departments turn in their reports then you can analyze each department. There may be some that may not want to even discuss it because there is nothing to discuss. After reviewing what they write, we might want to decide who to talk to and who we don’t need to talk to. I’m not sure if that’s going to happen, but it would be good to get all of the reports in and look at it. There are some interesting ones from the individual comments. They talked about technology. That’s another one that cuts across all of the departments. Getting a better copy machine. It’s actually cheaper now to get a new copy machine, with multi functions. It takes less space and maybe we can do a recommendation across the board for all departments to evaluate the simple kind of copy machines. MS. NICHOLSON: Well, I think as part of this agenda item, we’ll still get to how we want to handle all those communications that come in so that we make sure that they are addressed at some where, some way. MR. MATSUDA: Bill, on the questionnaire, how has the response been in the past as to each department because if we don’t get a response can you require them? MR. TAKABA: Yes. That’s why I just asked Kathy to keep track of who submitted and who didn’t. I can send a reminder, but if for some reason somebody, after the reminder they don’t submit – is there a deadline? 21 MS. GARSON: Yes. MR. TAKABA: September 1, is that the deadline? MS. GARSON: It could vary. The boards had an October deadline. MS. NICHOLSON: Didn’t we have a different deadline for County Council members? MS. O’HARA: September 5. MR. TAKABA: We’ll follow up on the department side. The Council side we can keep reminding them. MS. NICHOLSON: It think that’s probably going to the second thing that we’ll be focusing on. We’ll be in teams for part of this and the other part will focus in are those responses and the more general questions. Let’s see how it goes. So, we have three categories and of course Gloria already has her hand up. We need to divvy up into two people per category. Since you’ve been so anxious, which one do you want to be on? MS. WONG: The operations one and budget and consolidation. I don’t want the technology one. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. MR. MATSUDA: I’m with budget and operations also. MS. NICHOLSON: You also. So that one is officially filled up. MS. WONG: He’s the tax guy. MR. TAKABA: Which one was that again? MR. MATSUDA: Budget and operations. MS. NICHOLSON: Budget and operations which also is going to be the consolidation and sort of policies and all that. MS. PROVALENKO: I’ll take the enhanced revenue and revenue collections. MR. ARMOUR: I’ll also do that one. MS. O’HARA: I guess that leaves the other one. MS. NICHOLSON: I guess we are in technology. They’ll all be interesting. MR. TAKABA: Can you read off the committees. 22 MS. GARSON: So, what we’ll do is we’ll just, let’s articulate clearly that there is going to be three separate committees. MS. NICHOLSON: Do we need an action to do that? MS. GARSON: I think that would be good. Somebody can move to establish, you can do it all at once. Three separate committees, first committee being this with these members, second committee being this with these members. MS. NICHOLSON: With Bill ex-officio in all of them. MOTION:MR. MATSUDA: I move that we establish three separate committees, one for Budget and Operations and Policy Consolidation. The second committee is Revenue Enhancement and the third being the Technology. MS. NICHOLSON: Second? MS. WONG: Second. MS. NICHOLSON: Discussion? All in favor? Aye MS. O’HARA: Yeah, I do have something. I think you want to have their names. MS. GARSON: You’ll have to say the names later. MS. O’HARA: I just, the discussion being this is to be able to evaluate, categorize and take action on the responses that we’re getting to our questionnaire. MS. NICHOLSON: I think probably beyond responses. It’s also looking at whatever that team chooses to look at. MS. PROVALENKO: Having a meeting with the department heads and stuff like that depending on what type of responses we get. MS. O’HARA: Okay. MS. NICHOLSON: All in favor, aye? All: Aye. MS. NICHOLSON: Any oppose? (None) MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, we are now officially, we have a structure. Now the hard part starts. MR. TAKABA: Who is on the committees again? MS. NICHOLSON: The operations and, kind of a cumbersome one, Operations, Budget, Policy and Consolidation are Gloria and Glen, and you of course. 23 Revenue Enhancement – do we need to expand on what revenue enhancement is or that’s fine for that committee? MS. O’HARA: Revenue Enhancement and Collections. MS. PROVALENKO: I think it includes all the stuff on the general government that would be part of the revenue side. MS. NICHOLSON: That’s Patricia and Ken and you of course. And Technology and Streamlining? MS. O’HARA: Technology recommendations and adoption. MS. NICHOLSON: Eileen. Am I saying your name right? MS. O’HARA: Oh yeah. MS. NICHOLSON: Eileen and myself, Marilyn. So, we now have our committees and I would like to first figure out how we want to handle the communications then as they come in. Would it make sense for you guys to, I think we all want to see the communications. At least I want to see all the communications. But then what is the best way for divvying them up into these committees? MS. WONG: Are we not all receiving the responses through emails? Cause I received MS. O’HARA: Just two. MS. PROVALENKO: The corrections. MS. O’HARA: The corrections were sent out by email. MS. WONG: The first five responses from employees that came out, I had requested cause I thought you weren’t going to be here, requested to have it scanned and emailed to me. So, I received those early and was able to review it. If we could receive it, all of us receive it through email than we could all see what everybody is seeing. MS. GARSON: My only concern with that is, as long as it’s real clear who is going to pick up on what because of the various committees cannot discuss with each other. MS. PROVALENKO: But some of the information, it could be a collaboration of information. Maybe one person is talking about ways to save monies and enhance revenues at the same time is talking about consolidation or technology, so you’re going to have that. 24 MS. GARSON: And I really would prefer that, you have to communicate with each other at a meeting intercommittee so a communication like that, if you each get it, you will have to distinctively know what’s your committee and what’s not somebody else’s. MS. O’HARA: Exactly. I think we need to see all the responses because they are responding to all the questions which includes these three categories. And then the two people will go through each communication pull out the suggestions and discussions relevant to what we’re focusing on. M. NICHOLSON: Why don’t we do it like this. If we all got all those communications and we had our committees A, B, C or 1, 2, 3, and as a regular agenda item we’ll go through and say okay, that’s a 1. And so committee 1 knows it’s their thing. So one communication may have five different things, and they’ll be in different categories. So we’ll just go, okay everybody agree that’s a 1, that’s a 3, that we all agree who we are going to parcel it out to, and we do that publicly. And so that’s an agenda item at every meeting that we go through, quickly go through communications and just agree who it goes to. MS. O’HARA: That sounds like a great idea to me. Maybe we should do an experiment right now with one communication and see if we’re good at doing that. MS. WONG: And my question is why do we have to parcel it out to a committee to a committee or any committee? Why is it not just data for us to look at? MS. PROVALENKO: Well, I think that was Katherine’s concern. Maybe she can explain that to us. MS. WONG: We’re going to get the data anyway at the meeting, so why do we have to parcel it out? MS. NICHOLSON: It seems to me it just sort of gives better insurance that it gets compiled and addressed if we need further information or confirm that that really is the way things work. I would feel more comfortable doing it that way. But how do the rest of you feel? It doesn’t mean that it’s not still data that everybody sees and has and might choose to address. Maybe some things could be two different subcommittees. MS. O’HARA: Often that will happen. MR. MATSUDA: I think it’s just a matter of everybody is going to have the data and if we think part of that data is applicable to your committee, just answer whatever you think feels applicable to you, and if he has the same question and part of that question, the answer is applicable to that committee, it can actually be their, say technology. And we would answer it something with budget wise and so forth. So, we might have three different answers to one question. MS. WONG: And that will come out at the meeting. MR. MATSUDA: Correct. 25 MS. NICHOLSON: Ken, you’re the logistics guy, what do you think? MR. ARMOUR: I think everybody should get a copy of everything and we just pull out things for our committee and then maybe do a little check later to make sure we haven’t dropped anything. Go through and say this comment, did you pick it up? Yes. All right. Everybody agrees. It goes in yours. I don’t think we need to spend a lot of time on it. MS. NICHOLSON: We don’t need to decide then. Okay, that work for everybody? MS. WONG: And so, beside the subject is, if we’re going to be getting it in email and I’m assuming everybody has – oh, you don’t have email? MS. O’HARA: I have. But we were sent hard copies. MS. GARSON: You got a hard copy cause it’s compiled as part of the agenda packet. MS. WONG: Let me make my suggestion and if you don’t like it, but as an example of our cost savings, I’d like to suggest, cause I even brought the envelopes and the copies – if we receive the data in emails and then we can pick up the hard copies when we get here, you don’t have to mail as much. And one mailing is $2.75 and the other mailing is $2.24 and there’s the envelopes and there’s a time of putting it together. Just six people that’s small, but it’s an example of how we could save money. You don’t have to send us everything out in a big packet. When we arrive here we can pick up the hard copies. But some things we may want to get ahead of time. But some things that we don’t need to we have it emailed. That doesn’t have to be sent. It saves little money but it’s an example of what we’re trying to accomplish. MS. NICHOLSON: I personally prefer to get it in mail because otherwise I have to print them out. MR. MATSUDA: Maybe you can get the bulk of the information via mail but as things come up you can get something via email. I take it back because of this thing that we have to give notice. Yes, I take back my answer. How would it work on an email situation regarding that area where they need to give notice ahead of time? I don’t know if I’m wording it correctly. MR. ARMOUR: They just couldn’t send emails to us six days or seven days before the meeting with new information. MS. PROVALENKO: But do they have time to get it on the agenda? MS. GARSON: It’s cut off on, basically it’s the seventh day is when we’ve cutting off the communication for a particular agenda. It would just be on the next agenda. MS. PROVALENKO: So, seven days prior to our meeting? MS. GARSON: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: So, I’m not sure where we are with this discussion here. 26 MS. WONG: Status quo. MS. GARSON: We can email anything and everything to everybody and that’s not a problem. If you want a packet mailed or you want to pick it up here, it can be on an individual basis. That’s fine. You don’t have to all agree. So let us know your preference. MS. NICHOLSON: We could just express our preference? And that’s really no part of this meeting. It’s just how we’d like to receive our correspondence. MS. GARSON: Yes. MS. PROVALENKO: And then any corrections could be emailed to us. Say if we chose to do the hard copy and you mailed it to us but changes to that could be emailed to us if that was the case. MS. GARSON: That’s fine. No problem. MS. NICHOLSON: Now procedurally if one of the subcommittees has, and I assume that Eileen and I will be emailing each other back and forth, talking about issues and Bill will be included in all of those emails, if we then have something that we MS. GARSON: Need a report. MS. NICHOLSON: Yeah. If we have a report that should come through you and then it would get distributed to everyone? MS. GARSON: You can either do a verbal or a written report and give it to us seven days at least prior to the next meeting, and that will be agendized. Report from the Technology Committee, and then you will discuss it at the next meeting. MS. PROVALENKO: Could it be a standing agenda item? MS. GARSON: Oh yeah. M. NICHOLSON: Actually I think it should be a standing agenda. Reporting from each committee, and there could be some weeks where that committee is not reporting at all but other times we’ll have more. MS. WONG: And I’d like to suggest that since it’s standing, the topic of discussion regarding approach keep staying on the agenda because we may keep changing our approach. M. NICHOLSON: I think we may fine tune it, yes. So item 7 we want to continue to put on the agenda. Okay, any other discussion on Agenda item 7 – our approach to take, timely is the key word here, timely mandate. Any other discussion? We shall move on. 27 DISCUSSION REGARDING RECOMMENDATIONS OF PREVOUS COST OF GOVERNMENT COMMISSIONS MS. GARSON: I believe this item is on the agenda because one of the board members had asked if which of the last commission recommendations had been implemented or followed up on. And I personally did it. And the answer to that question is would be for, would the commission like to send a communication to all of the departments asking them what happened to all of the recommendations from the last commission. MS. WONG: And it was me that asked that question and I thought it was going to be answered today but since it’s not, I’ll jump to another topic that I had – maybe since the mayor, maybe we might invite the mayor and ask him what he would like from the commission or what has been recommendations that were taken, if that’s appropriate. MS. GARSON: Actually Mr. Takaba is here really representing that administration. MS. WONG: Okay. MS. WONG: And it’s been expressed on the core. MS. NICHOLSON: It seems to me there are two ways we could handle this. We could either go back to departments and write a letter saying these were the recommendations from this report, maybe we want to go to both reports or just the most recent, please address how your department implemented these and if not why, or explanation. We could either do it that way or now that we have decided to divide to divide into these three teams, each team could go through those reports and see what was relevant to their topic and follow up if that seems appropriate. MS. PROVALENKO: I’d prefer just going back to the previous commission’s recommendations and asking each department to respond back with what they did or why they didn’t do it, and get that feedback. I like that one better. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other comments? MS. WONG: You’re saying through a letter? MS. NICHOLSON: Let’s talk about the purpose of this. How are we going to use that information? MS. WONG: And the reason I ask that was before I even started, my concern was, if we make a recommendation, is anybody going to do anything with it? And did they do anything before, would kind of indicate if they’ll do anything with our recommendations. But when you really think of it, it really doesn’t matter if they didn’t do it before, that’s history. If we make good enough recommendations that they can buy into and the county administration buys into it, our job will have been done, that we made the recommendations and hopefully they will seek the value of that. So, my question is not greatly necessary. I would have appreciated to be encouraged that what we’re doing will be enacted upon. But this morning I was thinking, rereading this agenda item, why was this commission really formed? What was the purpose? Is it really necessary, 28 cause someone chewed out my ear last week, you folks create commissions for what? To spend more money and then you’re going to talk about stop spending money? So, I guess I wanted to see if our commission is really necessary? Will we have an impact? Will there be changes? Or was it something that someone just put together and it was voted upon? Why was this commission really started? MR. TAKABA: The Charter says MS. WONG: Yeah, but why was it put in the Charter? In my mind the mayor is the executive of the county. He should be the leader. He should be managing and directing. What we’re doing is trying to help manage and direct when you look from the outside. I like the idea. I just don’t know if it’s executable and of value. MR. TAKABA: It looks like there was an ordinance passed by the Council to put something like this on the Charter. And the public voted in 1998. M. NICHOLSON: I just remembered there was a lot of pilikia, there were a lot of complaints, and so it became an initiative to the ballot. I can’t remember what it was about, but I guess in the past, I don’t think it’s been taken seriously. I would hope that this time it might be taken a little bit more seriously. MS. O’HARA: I think, I mean we can make the assumption whether it was serious or not, there’s been a lot of issues that have prevented implementation of recommendations in the last three years, i.e., the economy. And so, I think it would be great if we, we’ve already asked the departments for an initial response to our five questions, but in the last report, which was January ’07, the commission made some very specific recommendations to certain departments. Perhaps we should send those out to those departments and ask, were these implemented and if not why not? Was it a budgetary problem? Was it the lack of funding? Or was this recommendation simply did not make sense to them? It wasn’t useful. I think it would be great to have that feedback because it would just improve our product in the end. Let’s not make recommendations that are not doable at the department levels. So maybe we could that. I don’t think every department received recommendations. Looking through the report, focus on six departments, Data Systems, Environmental Management, Public Works. And so the ones that are specifically identified and have recommendations, let’s write a letter asking what’s the status on the recommendations. MS. PROVALENKO: I think it strengthens our case too, in the sense that this is going to be the third commission like this. And the first one probably weren’t really sure, didn’t take it really seriously. Second one okay. And now we’re following up on the second one. And I think it adds a lot more credibility. More strength to it. MS. WONG: And accountability. MS. NICHOLSON: And is that something that you can handle for us? And what kind of deadline would we like these responses back? Give them 30 days? MS. WONG: Can we get it by our next meeting? 29 MS. PROVALENKO: That’s in two weeks, I don’t know. Get the letter out and get it back. MS. NICHOLSON: What’s your preference? Because obviously the responses then will fall back into the subcommittees that we have. Because if it is not implemented, and you say well maybe that’s something we should look at. MS. WONG: And if they’ve got five items they can say done, not done, in process. MS. NICHOLSON: I think we want more than that. I think we want, if it was not implemented, what was barrier. Because you don’t want to put that same recommendation forward again. MS. O’HARA: We need to know why if it was just a matter of not having the funds or if there were other possible reasons. MS. GARSON: If you would like something by the next meeting, what about inviting a representative of the department? When you come to your next meeting and respond verbally. MS. NICHOLSON: That’s a lot of departments, but we could certainly do that. MS. GARSON: Well you can invite them. MS. NICHOLSON: Or we could divide them into two different meetings. MS. PROVALENKO: I personally would still like to have a written information. MS. O’HARA: I do too. MS. PROVALENKO: I would really prefer that then having them come and make their presentation. Time is really constricting. MS. O’HARA: I think there’s only eight departments. MS. GARSON: I’m just thinking, we send a written communication, they have to write back in two weeks. That was my only concern. It would be more expeditious just to say like can you come to a meeting or send a representative two weeks from now to respond to that. MS. O’HARA: Could we just ask them to respond within the month? MS. NICHOLSON: The reason I like written is that it keeps them on track, and so they can’t go off on a tangent, but they really need to address 1,2,3,4,5. MS. WONG: Well they can bring their written response with them. 30 MR. ARMOUR: If they have to do a written response then they couldn’t come to the next meeting anyway because don’t you have to have the response in the agenda within seven days before the meeting? MS. GARSON: What needs to be on the agenda can just be a generic one. MS. NICHOLSON: Responses from the departments. MS. GARSON: It depends on what you want to do with it. What it would be on the agenda for is because you want to discuss it so it will be discussion regarding responses from the departments. MS. NICHOLSON: Well, actually if they are going to come in it’s going as communications and then we would discuss how to handle the responses under our under item 7. MS. GARSON: That gives them then only a week until it comes in. MS. NICHOLSON: We’ve got two weeks on the table, we have a month on the table, can we compromise at three weeks? Which will give us still seven days before our meeting. MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Three weeks. Okay, are we through with agenda item number 8? That’s how we want to handle follow up from the previous report? I just want to make sure we’re not creating busy work for them, but we’re actually going to pay attention to this and can use this as some of our raw data that we’re going to be looking at in our subcommittees. MS. O’HARA: I agree, and that’s why I think it should only be used specifically the 2007 report and those departments that had more than one specific revenue. MS. WONG: Could I just jump back to seven a moment and I drew a big arrow for me to pay attention on my notes and I just passed it by. But just to pose the idea, I was reading the notes from last meeting, to get the public involved, if we had a workshop for input from employees and the public, to get the union involved, ask the union if they would sponsor the workshop to invite the employees to get feedback and the public. Do you think that’s a possible, doable, or something that would be of interest? And the reason that I looked at it this way is I’d like the union to get involved at some point. I don’t really but, I was trying to think, our budget is very limited so if the union, and this will help all the employees, the county employees, maybe the unions might be able to facilitate and sponsor a meeting like that and invite the public. Just to pose that. We don’t have to vote or discuss it. I just wanted to pose that idea and maybe we could discuss on our next meeting. Or if anyone has any thoughts on that. MS. NICHOLSON: It seems to me that we need to sort of get together with our teams between now and our next meeting and strategize how we’re going to tackle this and 31 whether that’s an appropriate technique might be after we sort of figured out how we want to go about tackling it. Are there thoughts? MS. WONG: And that’s why I didn’t want it really discussed in this meeting, but I wanted to pose that so that we could think about it in the future because it seems like we had such a discussion at the last meeting about involving the public and we didn’t get to how we’re going to do that. I just wanted to pose that. MS. O’HARA: Just a follow up on both of those things, I think we did discuss the recommendations about being public involved, and I think we wanted to get to the point where we had some graphic invasions before we take that step. The second the unions, and there’s more than one involved here so, I think that could get very complex, the coordination of such a type of meeting. Personally, I don’t know if that’s something we’d want to undertake. It diverts us from our main focus. ITEMS TO BE PLACED ON NEXT AGENDA MS. NICHOLSON: Are we ready to move to item number 9 – Discussion of items for the next agenda. We already have some, but anything else anyone wants to put on the agenda? MS. WONG: I think we’ve got plenty for the next agenda. MS. NICHOLSON: Could we, for our next agenda have something with all meeting dates so that we can look at if there is a holiday, or something we might need to reschedule a meeting, but just have something we could all look at and figure out where we might have some problems like Thanksgiving, Christmas. th MS. O’HARA: I’m not able to make the 24, the next meeting date. MR. TAKABA: Me too. I’m only ex-officio so. MS. NICHOLSON: Hopefully the rest of you will be here. Any other items for the next agenda? So at this point, we have no presentations scheduled, but we will have presentations from each other, our teams talking about where our approach will lead. MR. TAKABA: Are you looking for a presentation? MS. NICHOLSON: Do you have something to suggest? MR. TAKABA: Today we heard from the Green Team. If one of our subcommittees is going to be on technology, maybe we can have our IT person come in. How we can save money. I’m not sure if he has any suggestion. MS. NICHOLSON: I think it might be more appropriate for our technology team to decide and meet directly, but are there other sort of interdisciplinary teams that we might not know about that we want to talk to? I think the Green Team was very helpful but. 32 ANNOUNCEMENTS MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, on to announcements. The next meeting of the Cost of Government Commission will be held on September 24, 2010, at 10:00 a.m., at the Liquor Conference Room, 101 Aupuni Street, Suite 230, Hilo, Hawai‘i. ADJOURNMENT MS. NICHOLSON: The meeting is now adjourned. Meeting adjourned at 12:15 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Sandra Arriola 33