2000-02-09 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 02-09-00Page 1 of 41 Back To: Home Page | Table of Contents | Charter Main Page HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION Transcript of Meeting of February 9, 2000 Hawaii County Liquor Commission Conference Room, Hilo Lagoon Center Attendance: J. Ray, S. Bess (from 5:15 p.m.), M. Herkes, S. Irvine, G. Martin, J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama, Counsel C. Yuen Absent: E. Alonzo, K. Balog, R. Higashi, D. Kurozawa And 12 members of the public in attendance. The meeting was called to order at 5:05 p.m. RAY: I’d like to call the February 9th meeting of the 1999-2000 Hawaii County Charter Commission to order. It’s 5:05 p.m. We’re in Hilo this evening. Attendance. Present myself John Ray, Mr. Martin, Sue Irvine, Marni Herkes, John Santangelo and Gary Yoshiyama, and we’re expecting a couple of other members. Statements from the Public. We’ll proceed with our Statements from the Public. We’ll lead off, Coco Pierson. PIERSON: Thank you Mr. Chair and other members of the Charter Commission. My name is Coco Pierson and I’m from Puna. I was here, I think, one time just to give you some ideas before. I recognize some of the faces. Government is more user friendly when we have tags and signs in front of people that say who they are, and that’s not what you folks have here now. But you should keep that in mind to make government user friendly. The people who know you - Okay, we’ve got one. HERKES: No, we’ve got a lot of them. They’re coming. RAY: Okay, glad you reminded us. Go ahead. PIERSON: You have a lot of items on your agenda today and I’m going to cover a lot of them in a very short time, and I’ll start with Fire Commission. Judging from what I’ve seen of the Police Commission, I don’t think we need a Fire Commission, and so I don’t think there’s any need for the people to vote on it. But if it goes on there, the people can tell you what they think. I don’t think there’s a need for one. If a Fire Commission would operate properly, yes, but certainly I didn’t foresee, when I voted to form a Police Commission, that the deck would be stacked with clones of people who considered their allegiance to the appointing authority far beyond their responsibility to the public, and so I would suspect that we would might have more of that if we had a Fire Commission. So, I would put my word out that we don’t need even to vote on it, but if we do, the people can decide. I’d like to see the Police Commission reformed in the manner put forth by Del Pranke, to have it moved over under the Prosecutor’s Office, or done away with. Give the voters a chance. Do we want to change our minds about what we voted on in 1990, ‘92 to form a Police Commission? We can save some money here, and these folks are not doing anything anyway. And then Sharon Scheele comes before you folks. I wasn’t here, but as reported in the newspaper, and says she has no power to do the things she needs to do, and, after having attended many Police Commission meetings, this is pretty much like a child shooting his parents, her parents, and then crying that she’s an orphan. I watched as the Police Commission, with no reason that I can possibly think of, voted to change the Rules and Regulations of the Police Commission, to do away with procedures that would be helpful to the public. In one instance, they moved the time limit for filing a complaint from 30 days to 60 days, maybe. A token crumb, but an actual crumb. Imagine if the same thing was in effect for Wayne Carvalho, then we wouldn’t even have a matter, and they declined to even consider the Wayne Carvalho thing. They also made it easier for them, the Police Commission, to dismiss complaints out of hand with no investigation whatsoever. Why would they want to do that, unless it didn’t pertain to the Police Commission? If they get a complaint, if someone says, well, I’m filing this file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 02-09-00.html7/1/2011