HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN CHC 1999-04-14HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION
Transcript of Meeting of April 14, 1999
Hawaii County Liquor Commission Conference Room,
Hilo Lagoon Center
Attendance: J. Ray, E. Alonzo, S. Bess, M. Herkes, R. Higashi, S. Irvine, D. Kurozawa,
G. Martin, J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama, Corporation Counsel R. Wurdeman
Absent: K. Balog
And no members of the public in attendance.
RAY: I'll call the meeting to order. The Special Meeting, Wednesday,
April 14th of the Charter Commission is now called to order. Let the minutes reflect that all
members are in attendance now other than Mr. Balog and Mr. Kurozawa, and we expect both
to be here shortly.
The minutes, we did not have prepared prior to this meeting, so how -?
HERKES: We didn't?
RAY: Well, we didn't have them prepared for distribution prior to the meeting.
HERKES: The taped minutes.
RAY: The taped minutes.
HERKES: The minutes that I took were faxed to everybody.
RAY: Right.
HERKES: And mailed.
RAY: • But I think we -.
HERKES: We had some minutes.
RAY: Okay. Well, I think we've decided -.
HERKES: I'm not going to do all that work for nothing, John. I want some credit.
HIGASHI: Let's cut out the editorial and move on.
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RAY: Okay.
HIGASHI: But I have just one question. Which is the official minutes?
RAY: Actually, I guess Marni's minutes -, no, I think we should go with the
verbatim minutes.
IRVINE: The transcribed.
RAY: As the official minutes. Okay. So we can defer approval of those minutes
until the next meeting. Does anybody have a problem with that?
HERKES: Hundred and twenty-six pages? I don't think we're going to read them.
BESS: So moved.
HIGASHI: The minutes is the whole meeting all over again.
RAY: Okay. Could I have a motion to defer the minutes?
ALONZO: Move that we defer the -.
RAY: Defer the meetings (sic) -.
ALONZO: Minutes -.
RAY: Until the next meeting
ALONZO: Next meeting.
RAY: Okay.
SANTANGELO: We did all that talking?
RAY: Okay. Second?
IRVINE: Second.
RAY. Okay. All in favor? So we'll defer approval of the minutes to the next
meeting so everybody has a chance to go through them.
HIGASHI: Mr. Chairman?
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RAY Yes.
HIGASHI: Have we decided whether we're going to do this kind of minutes or we're
going to do Marni's type of minutes?
RAY Based on the input we've received from a number of people in the
administration and past Charter members, I think we're going to need to go with verbatim
minutes.
HERKES Would you like a motion?
HIGASHI: Wait, wait, wait, wait.
RAY I have in Unfinished Business, this is on the agenda, the format of the
minutes.
HIGASHI: Oh, okay.
RAY: So we will -.
HIGASHI: Okay. Okay.
• RAY: Take that up.
HIGASHI: Fine. Fine.
RAY: Okay. And also in regard, I guess, let the minutes reflect that in these
minutes that there are a number of speakers who are not identified, three, so I'm not sure how we
want to handle that.
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SANTANGELO: Which ones, the big ones?
HERKES: Yeah, the big ones, the verbatim ones.
RAY: Right.
HERKES: Most of them are Santangelo. Can we just put his name of them?
SANTANGELO: That's not true.
ALONZO. Can we amend the minutes?
HERKES: The verbatim minutes?
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ALONZO: Yeah.
HERKES: You want to amend them?
ALONZO: To add in the new names.
HERKES: Sure, we can always amend them at the next -. We're going to deal with
them at the next meeting.
RAY:
ALONZO:
We're going to deal with them next meeting.
At the next meeting.
RAY: Okay. All right. Financial Status Report. To date, I'll give the Treasurer's
Report, to date, we have total expenditures of $434.92, with one outstanding obligation, a
meeting notice that was published in the Hawaii Tribune -Herald. That gives us a balance right
now of $29,565.08. The County Council did approve the appropriation that was submitted at the
last Council meeting. I sent in a letter on behalf of the Commission just describing generally
where we were in the process, and the Finance Department submitted information based -, some
budgets from the last Charter Commission explaining, you know, how they came up with the
ballpark figures. So the Council approved that appropriation of $30,000, which is an
appropriation until June 30t. At that time, unexpended funds will lapse, and then they also have
an appropriation in the budget for $100,000 to go from June 30th until the following year. Okay?
Let's see. Communications. I don't have any communications from anyone, written or
otherwise, okay.
Statements from the Public. Do we have anyone here? No? Okay. Reflect there are no
statements from the public.
Okay, let's move on to Unfinished Business, the selection of Commission's attorney. Mr. Bess,
do you have anything to report?
BESS: The Committee has received a total of five applications, and so we need to
schedule a committee meeting before -, I guess Sue's taking off for the mainland, so we hope in
the next couple of weeks, meetings so that we can interview the candidates.
RAY: Okay. And what was the deadline on that?
BESS: The deadline has passed, April 12th.
RAY: Okay. Okay. Any comment on that? Okay. In regard to the time line,
what do you anticipate is the earliest, you know, we could get somebody on board in terms of
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having -.
BESS:
RAY:
Well, you know -.
Our own legal staff
BESS: What we could do is, as I say, complete the interviews, have the
Committee make recommendations to the Charter Commission, and if we're -, I'm hopeful that
we can do that this month.
RAY: Okay.
BESS: And then be in a position to report back to you next meeting and a decision
could be made at the next meeting by the Board.
RAY: Okay.
BESS: By the Commission, I should say.
RAY: And in regard to that process, can we arbitrarily, you know, just approve
the recommendation?
• BESS: Arbitrarily?
RAY: I mean, you make a recommendation, right?
BESS: Right.
RAY: And then we vote on that. And so it doesn't have to be fee based or just -?
BESS: Oh, I think that, you know, in terms of our -, when we interview these
people, we're going to be getting an idea of what they're going to be demanding in terms of
hourly rate, so that it's going to be our recommendation would include -, and the guy is going to
want $125 an hour.
RAY: Okay.
HIGASHI: I have a question.
RAY: Yes, Roland.
HIGASHI: Steve, is it the intent of the committee to come up with one name or maybe
two or three names?
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BESS: • Well, you know, I'd like your feedback, you know. I think that in looking
at what happened at the last Charter Committee or the subcommittee in dealing with the
appointment of the attorney, they came up with one name, and I guess it was clear that that
person stood above all others in terms of who they wanted to appoint. That may not be the case
in this case, I mean, you know, unless someone is clearly the recommendation of the committee, I
can see us saying, hey, look, here are two names or three names that we feel strongly about but,
you know, you folks give us your input.
HIGASHI: I, personally, would like to see at least two names, because if we do not
agree on that one person, then it further delays it for another meeting and you'll probably have to
go back and do it again.
BESS: And we could submit two names with a recommendation -.
HIGASHI: Right.
BESS: Of the two names that we'd like, is that right? You know, okay.
HIGASHI: Yeah, yeah.
BESS: Yeah.
HIGASHI: I'd feel more comfortable than just one name.
BESS: I have no objection to that.
HIGASHI: You mentioned five people who have filed.
BESS: Five applicants, yeah.
HIGASHI: Within the deadline, yeah?
BESS: Right.
RAY: Mr. Santangelo.
SANTANGELO: Being on that committee, we could rank them, and we could, you know,
put the names.forward ranked as to, you know, some sort of scale.
IRVINE: That sounds good to me.
BESS: Well, we could, but I -, my personal opinion is that we should come out
with a recommendation and there should be a second name.
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SANTANGELO: Right.
BESS: I'd just as soon not getting into ranking five attorneys. Our duty is to
come forward with the two, you know, and we'll come forward with the two, together with a
recommendation.
SANTANGELO: So, Steve, I guess we can handle that within committee so, okay, that's
fine.
RAY: Marni.
BERKES: Has the committee developed a criteria for the attorney, for hiring an
attorney, not for hiring, for an attorney that would be most appropriate?
BESS: Well, I -, to answer your question directly no. There is a criteria that came
out at the time of the publication so, you know, there are five -.
HERKES: That's the criteria?
BESS: There are five points that we are considering.
HERKES: Okay.
BESS:
But further than that, we don't have -.
HERKES: So -.
BESS: Specific criteria.
HERKES: If you recommended someone to the Commission, you would say this
person best fits this -, these -.
BESS: That's right.
HERKES: Criteria.
BESS: These are the reasons why.
HERKES: And these are the reasons why.
BESS: That's correct.
HERKES : That's what I'd like wanted.
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BESS: - That's correct.
RIES: Thank you.
BESS: Yeah.
HERKES: Then that would be the best person, fits the criteria best. Okay.
HIGASHI: One last question.
RAY: Yeah.
HIGASHI: In the process, are we intending to interview the last two, at least, people
that you're recommending?
BESS: You know, I got to be honest with you. We have not met as a committee
to decide what that is, and I'd be out of place in -, I can tell you personally I feel that the
committee should be the one to come up with the two names and a recommendation at that
meeting in May, you know. We would get input from you and if there was any question at all as
to whether or not you felt that you ought to, you know, interview, fine but, again -.
HIGASHI: No, Steve, don't get me wrong.
BESS: My -, I'm comfortable if the Board itself wants -, the Commission itself
wants to interview, but he's already -, he or she has already been through one interview -.
HIGASHI: No, Steve -:
BESS: We've come -.
HIGASHI: Don't get me wrong.
BESS: Yeah.
HIGASHI: I wasn't asking this Commission to interview.
BESS: Oh.
HIGASHI: Your committee would have interviewed -.
BESS: Oh, we will interview everyone, right.
HIGASHI: At least those two people. Right, right, right.
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BESS: That's correct.
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HIGASHI: Okay.
BESS: : Yeah. Oh, definitely.
HIGASHI: Yeah, right. You need to talk about -.
BESS: No, it's not going to be on paper.
HIGASHI: You know -.
BESS: And we will interview -.
HIGASHI: In terms of limitations, hourly rates, pro bono, whatever, yeah.
SANTANGELO: Right.
BESS: Right. And -.
RKES: Pro bono?
HIGASHI: Well -.
RKES: Good discussion.
HIGASHI: Marni, I think just stick to the facts.
HERKE S : Okay.
HIGASHI: The people, the rates that they quoted last time, a lot of it was pro bono
work because they did work for $95 a hour or something like that.
IRVINE: Right.
BESS: Yeah.
HIGASHI: And the past attorney doesn't charge $95 for his legal work, so it's some
pro bono.
RAY: Okay.
IRVINE: I guess I -, I'm supposed to be on this subcommittee, but if you look at our
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time line, our tentative time line, this -, in May, we have meetings in Kona
brainstorming, and we weren't really meeting -, we didn't have an agenda,
about when we're going to get this attorney on board.
BESS Well, is there a problem with us getting -, having -?
separate session with regard to the appointment of the attorney?
HERKES
BESS:
and Hilo, which are
so I'm a little worried
Can we have just a
Special meeting?
Well, I mean, you know, in conjunction with the Kona meeting going on.
RAY: I don't see why not but, you know, do we feel like we need to have our
own legal staff on hand, you know, for those public informational meetings? Mr. Wurdeman, we
are anticipating, or we are considering having a couple of brainstorming informational sessions in
May; we're going to be talking about that tonight. Do you have any sense of how important it is
to have our own staff attorney, prior to that?
WURDEMAN:
RAY:
WURDEMAN:
RAY:
WURDEMAN:
critical.
RAY:
MARTIN:
RAY:
MARTIN:
WURDEMAN:
MARTIN:
WURDEMAN:
BESS.
You're not going to be making decisions, right?
No.
You're just going to be gathering the sense of the public?
Right.
I leave that up to you, but I would -, I don't think an attorney would be
Okay. All right. So let's don't kill ourselves on that. Okay.
Mr. Chair, if I may?
Yes, sir.
Would Corp. Counsel be willing to at least attend these meetings?
I told you the first meeting that I would attend until such time as -.
Okay.
I was replaced. So either I or someone.
So Mr. Chairman, what you're saying is that we have until after these
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brainstorming sessions, the meeting following the two brainstorming sessions to select the
attorney?
RAY: I would feel comfortable if we had our attorney on board, you know, for a
couple of reasons. Number one, I'd like that person to be involved and get the input, and number
two, you know, we're talking about a couple of pretty lengthy sessions, and you know, that's sort
of an imposition on Corporation Counsel, as well, if we can get somebody on board sooner rather
than later but -. Does that seem realistic from your standpoint? When do you think you'd be
comfortable coming up with a -?
BESS: Well, I guess -, I mean, again, I'm flexible. I don't really see the necessity,
there certainly isn't a necessity to have an attorney at either of the brainstorming sessions and, you
• know, my feeling is that what we could do, if you'd like to, is go ahead and select the attorney at
that meeting, that first brainstorming meeting, deal with the Corporation Counsel as our Counsel
at that meeting, and then he would be advised if -, the attorney being selected would be advised
and would be available for the next meeting.
RAY: Okay.
BESS: I don't think it's practical to select -.
RAY: Yeah. Mr. Wurdeman.
WURDEMAN: Yes, sir.
BESS: The first.
RAY: - Do you think -, would that be a problem as far as having a -, that part of a
combined -?
WURDEMAN: No.
RAY: No.
WURDEMAN: I wouldn't think so, and you're authorized to, in discussing personnel
matters to be in executive session.
RAY: Okay. All right, well let's shoot for that and just do the best we can, okay.
IRVINE: I was going to say, we'd have executive session then either before or after
the meeting.
RAY: Okay. All right. Okay. Moving on in the selection of Commission
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secretary. We have some material that I'm circulating, some information that Gary Yoshiyama
put together, as well as some criteria here, so I'm going to pass these around and so everybody
take one copy of each. So who's going to -?
HERKES: You want a report?
RAY: Take the lead?
HERKES: You want a report?
RAY: Yeah, we want your report.
HERKES: I want to first introduce Jan Kama, who is taking minutes, who has
graciously volunteered to take minutes for a couple of meetings until we get a secretary on board,
and she was taken aback, as was I, with the responsibilities that Mr. Legaspi laid on her when she
said she'd take minutes and do the 126 -page verbatim, and she's going to do this verbatim.
We're not sure what the responsibilities are from here, but we're both willing to work with it and
see what happens. But I want to thank Jan very much for being so gracious and introduce her to
the Commission.
RAY: Okay. Thank you, Jan.
HERKES: She does a lot of stuff for the County and the Planning Commission.
RAY: Okay.
HERKES: Some -, I don't know what all this material is; I don't have time to get
copies of it.
RAY: These are the -, you've seen the -.
HERKES: I've probably seen -.
RAY: Two copies of -.
HERKES: Most of it.
RAY: The -.
IRVINE: Okay.
RAY. Correspondences -.
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HERKES:
RAY:
Gary -.
From Gary.
HERKES: Has done a lot of work with the County, and I want to thank Gary, too, for
all the work he's done. Gary, Kevin, and I met about two weeks ago or three weeks ago, and the
three of us decided that a personal service contract was the way we wanted to go since the
Commission has voted to hire staff rather than a contract staff. A personal service contract would
run from June through March 2000; if our schedule changes, we'll need to look at the changes in
that, too. We're working on the job description; I need to get some things to Gary to finalize it.
We want to put it out, advertise it, and the County will do that for us, Civil Service will do that
for us. SR -20 is the pay rate; if we use the employee's equipment, we may want to pay, we may
want to change that a little. If we hire an employee that has their own equipment, we may want
to do something different. We are in VS °sement tiation -,
yet.l, we're in discussion. It'll The personal service contractpemaybe I'll
nd on who
that person is. We haven't put any ad Y
ask Gary to explain a personal service contract; it's a Civil Service status.
YOSHIYAMA: Okay, we're going the route of a personal services contract, and while this
person will be a temporary employee, non -Civil Service, working, I think Marni mentioned,
19 hours a week, okay. And then, I guess, if the Commission sees fit that on a continuous basis
this person or this -, we need the services of this employee for longer, then, you know, we can
renegotiate the contract. Okay.
RAY: Suppose you just -, how flexible is that in terms of the renegotiation? In
other words if, you know, all of a sudden you're into, you know, more time, I mean do you have
to stop and renegotiate before you, you know, require more services or how does that work?
YOSHIYAMA: Oh, no, no. If you're talking like specifically in terms of hours.
RAY: Yeah.
No, you don't have to. I mean, we can go beyond 19 hours as it is, you
YOSHIYAMA:
know -.
HERKES:
YOSHIYAMA:
I-IERKES:
YOSHIYAMA:
with attached to it
specifications, and
And beyond the term of the contract.
Even if we have a contract. Yeah.
Too, by extending, and Gary says it's fairly simple to extend.
Yeah. And I have -, we have a sample of the personnel services contract
is a job description, and also attached the updated version of the class
this was updated, you know, really for our purposes. It was updated by Civil
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Service Department on April the 9t, and really the major thing that they updated in there is the
computer and periphery type equipment.
SANTANGELO: What's the salary on SR -20?
HERKES: SR -20 is what?
YOSHIYAMA: Yeah, I -.
HERKE S : I've got it somewhere.
YOSHIYAMA: Okay, that would be equivalent in the range -, and that is, I guess, subject
to negotiations, you know, as we sit down, you know, with a likely candidate. The range of pay
an hour would be anywhere from $14.53 an hour to $22.37 an hour.
SANTANGELO: Twenty-two?
YOSHIYAMA: Twenty-two thirty-seven an hour.
SANTANGELO: Pretty good money.
HERKES: Plus benefits.
YOSHIYAMA: Yeah, well, at this point, there's no benefits.
HIGASHI: What would be the benefits be?
ALONZO: No benefits.
HIGASHI: They take care their own medical, yeah.
YOSHIYAMA: It's 19 hours but, you know, well, the other benefits or what we may
negotiate, as we will put it under the heading of a stipend, is if this person bring their own office
with them, their own office equipment, etcetera, and then we would negotiate a stipend, you
know, with them.
HERKES: And we also talked about using the County Information Offices as the
intake for the inquiries from the public -.
RAY: Okay, that's -.
HERKES: Then they could call the Kona and Hilo office, and there could be a referral
number for them to refer calls to.
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RAY: There's a separate item here which I thought about combining it, it says
office space, so let's go ahead and kind of -, we can incorporate that into this discussion, as well,
so, yeah, how that would work so -.
HERKES: I think in the discussions that we've had that the office space is not
necessary to have office space, that probably what we need is a file cabinet that locks, that we can
put our tapes in, that we can put our material in, but we don't need an office per se.
RAY: And we need -, we also need a drop-off mechanism, right?
HERKES: Yeah, right.
RAY: So that people can -.
HERKES: Well, we thought of a box or a file box at the County Information Offices.
RAY: John.
SANTANGELO: Okay. A couple things. One is with the 19 hours, I think it's -, Gary, if we
show good faith at 19 hours, but once in a while that goes over 20, as long as it's not three
consecutive pay periods it's okay, right?
YOSHIYAMA: Yeah, as long as it's not continuous.
SANTANGELO: Okay. And then as far as the office space goes, I know there's some
concern about that. I'd just like to weigh in on -, I'm open to hearing how the other committee
members feel but I also would like to show an example of these are austere times. We need -, you
know, this is a really important job if we do it right, with the Commission, but I think we need to
be very, very aware of the value of money today. You know, this Council is really struggling with
a huge budget problem, and I wouldn't want to be a part of that problem.
RAY: Yeah.
SANTANGELO: But by the same token, I really want to be open to how committee
members feel.
RAY: Well, I think when you're talking about office space, we were talking about
a desk, you know, and when I discussed with Rudy, I asked him to look into, you know, file
cabinet and the drop-off mechanism or whatever, and he didn't seem to think that would be a
problem. So, in fact, I think he may -.
HERKES: And that's what we need, yeah.
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RAY: Already have something for us.
HERKES: Yeah.
RAY You know, I don't anticipate that being a problem, Marni.
SANTANGELO: So within the County Building itself?
RAY: Yeah, yeah, right.
HERKES: And on both sides of the Island, within the County Building in Kona, too,
because I want to emphasize that one of the reasons that I'm so strongly in favor of this is to
make this an island -wide effort, is to not headquarter it in Hilo is to make it in the Hilo County
office -, in the Hilo County Building and the Kona County Building so people can feel that they
can be involved in both places they can call.
RAY: Okay.
HERKES: Kona phone numbers of Hilo or phone numbers. They can drop them off
on either side.
RAY: Okay, well, this brings up the point of, you know, who's the spokesperson
for, you know, these facilities and decisions? You know, I've already talked to Rudy and, you
know, we need to decide how, you know, how we're going to do this and who's going to be the
contact person that's going to talk to the County and, you know -? It's fine with me, so I made a
request for something in Hilo and, you know, I didn't mean to leave out, you know, Kona so, you
know, we need to get that clear as soon as possible so we know what it is we are requesting of
the County. Because right now, I just mentioned Hilo, and I didn't even think about it, you
know, otherwise. I don't know why.
HERKES: That's normal.
RAY: I live and work in West Hawaii.
HERKES: That's normal.
SANTANGELO: That's not why we elected him.
HERKES: That's right.
RAY: So do we feel like we need a file cabinet in Kona, as well, or just the drop-
off?
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HERKES: No.
RAY: Capability?
HERICES: Just the drop-off capability. They have pouches that go back and forth.
RAY: Okay. Do we think the Mayor's Office or the Council Office?
SANTANGELO: Mayor's Office.
IRVINE: The Mayor's Office.
ALONZO: Mayor's Office.
HERKES: Mayor's Office.
RAY: Mayor's Office, yeah, it would be better. So we just need a mechanism to,
you know, drop and pick up stuff at the Mayor's Office.
HERKES: I don't know. Does anybody else -? Anybody think of anything more?
That's the only thing I could think of. And I also, on a phone system, you can have mailboxes, so
you can have a secretary that answers and it could be call forwarded to wherever she is, and then
they can say if you want to leave a message for John Ray, press 1; if you want to leave a message
for John Santangelo, press 2. We can do that as we get into this process so that we can be
more -, they can have more contact if we feel it's important.
IRVINE: I guess I'm a little reluctant. What if we hire someone who isn't totally
connected and what not? Then we either buy the equipment for them or we find a spot in the
County where there is a desk and a computer.
HERKES: You can lease equipment.
IRVINE: Okay.
HERKES: And I have no intention of hiring anybody that isn't totally connected.
RAY: Roland.
HIGASHI: So the idea is we're going to have a drop-off area in Hilo and Kona where
people can put their written comments.
RAY: Yeah. That covers -.
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HIGASHI: That. Okay.
RAY: The physical hand-off, but 1 don't think we've fully explored, you know,
the telephone and the other communications, you know, how all that's going to work, right? So,
you know, that's a major -. I mean, are we going to have a published number?
HERKES: I would hope so, but it doesn't have to be anywhere; it could just be a
phone number, and then it can be accessed from anywhere.
RAY: Okay. So can your committee look into that?
HERKES: Sure.
RAY: How we might, you know, set that up?
HERKES: Well, okay, we'll look into it.
RAY: Okay, so right now, it's basically being handled through the Mayor's
Office, through the Information Office, and there, you know, it's being routed to them. So -, and
they clearly would like us to take responsibility, you know, for that, right, so you know, we need
to set up some mechanism where somebody calling for, you know, information or contact with
the Charter Commission has a direct line, you know.
HERKES: Right.
RAY: To us, whoever us is, you know. But certainly, at least somebody that's
going to, you know, receive and promptly respond, you know, to calls. Yeah, Eddie.
ALONZO: Mr. Chair, I know some clubs have these phone system where they call this
number, then like an answering machine plays back their message, or if someone calls the office,
and they wanted information about anything with the Charter Commission, they can leave their
name and phone number and some, maybe the office personnel, comes in, got to listen to the
messages, and maybe she can, da kine, call them up and refer some of the -.
RAY: Yeah.
ALONZO: Information to them.
RAY: I see that as the administrative person, secretary will be, you know, doing
that on a continual basis, right, and then -.
HERKES: If it's a legal question, it goes to the lawyer or it goes to John Ray if it's a
question that she can't answer. If somebody wants material mailed out to them, she can do that.
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RAY; Yeah.
HERKES: She or he.
RAY: Okay. Sue.
IRVINE: No, I guess I was wondering, like we have the past minutes sitting over
here from the past. If somebody wanted to go look at those, are they going to be somewhere for
us, like in this file cabinet?
RAY: Yeah, I think that's a good idea.
IRVINE: Yeah.
RAY: I think we should have a set in East and West Hawaii and so that's a good
idea, so that somebody can go in and review. They'll have to, you know, physically, I guess, sit
somewhere; they can do that and, you know, just the same way -.
HERKES: - We just buy one of those cardboard file boxes.
RAY: Same way they do in the County Council or whatever.
HERKES: Yeah.
RAY: Yeah. Roland, do you have a question?
HIGASHI: No.
RAY: No? Okay, so I think we're getting closer to, you know, a working
situation there.
SANTANGELO: You had brought up something I wasn't prepared for, but maybe we should
clarify that, and you said who is the spokesman? Now, I assumed that was the Chairman.
RAY: Well, you know, I hadn't really thought it through and anticipated, you
know, every possible contact, so let's just see how that goes.
IRVINE: Yeah, I think there was some -..
RAY: I'm certainly, you know, willing to, you know, take it on and, you know,
see how it goes, yeah.
SANTANGELO: Because one of the qualifications that, you know, certainly bore my
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support, John, was your ability to work with people, and we need some clear statements, you
know, as we go along, if we get into anything.
RAY: Yeah. Well, I think the administrative person can handle probably the bulk
of it. I think the bulk of it'll just be, you know, when are you meeting, what are you up to, where
is this information, you know, how can I get input, you know? So. I think that that will be bulk of
the correspondence.
IRVINE: I think at the last meeting we had asked Gary to talk to the Mayor about
being attached to the Mayor's Office, and that may have been why he was talking to the Mayor's
Office and so were you. Is that correct, Gary, or am I -? I don't know, so it's in the minutes.
YOSHIYAMA:
IRVINE:
you were talking
RAY:
IRVINE:
RAY:
HERKES:
Well, the ball was tossed to John.
Oh, it was tossed to John, okay. Okay. So I just thought maybe both of
to the Mayor's Office and that was the confusion.
Well, you know, I did through Rudy, and he said he'd, you know -.
Yeah.
Work on a situation somewhere so -.
Gary, have we missed anything that we had talked about?
YOSHIYAMA: Yeah, I just wanted to complete this thing about -. Well, you have a page
on recruitment and recruitment and selection timetable. So you have it in black and white, you
know, where we intend to advertise and the length of time, and if everything goes to plan, unless
you have any objections this evening, you know, we'll meet with Civil Service, give them the
green light, and then if everything goes well, then we'll have somebody on board early June.
That's the bottom line.
SANTANGELO: Because the committees have been put together pretty inclusively, and I
believe in committees doing the work, then I totally support what comes out of that committee.
HERKES: We had a great committee meeting.
RAY: Okay. All right. So any more questions on it? Does that -, so that means
we got to get until the first of June. The only problem I see with that is, you know, if we go with
this suggested schedule, or at least the first part of it and, you know, hold, you know, major
informational scoping meetings in May, you know, we could be generating, you know, a lot of,
you know, contact, you know, in the month of May, so we need to really think that through. I
mean if we, you know, we go out to the public and ask them for, you know, major input in May,
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we got to be prepared to, you know, receive it, right.
HERKES : I've already -.
RAY I'm sorry, Roland had his hand.
`HIGASHI: I think -.
HERKES: I've already asked Jan if she's available, and she's thinking about it, so we
have somebody that can pick up the ball, if we need it.
RAY: Okay. Well, the ball would be, you know, in play, you know, five days a
week, you know, once you start, you know, those meetings and, you know.
HERKES: Five days a week is probably an exaggeration.
RAY: Well, no, no, but I mean to check things.
HERKE S : Yeah.
RAY: I think, you know, you want some -, you want to be able to respond on a
timely basis and, you know, if you're out there; you know you really throw this out to the public,
I think you're going to generate a lot of input and interest and questions and -.
HERKES: I suppose another thing we talked about that we didn't really talk about
tonight is we talked about another person besides the secretary doing research. The secretarial
skills were probably not the best for research skills, and that we probably, as the research
questions come up, we probably could contract with a university student, with somebody like that
that has better skills than the secretary, however, that's open to negotiation. That wasn't a hard -.
We were just kind of bouncing the ball around.
HIGASHI: It's not on the table though.
RAY: Roland.
HIGASHI: You know, you talked about a person who needs to digest all the
information and reduce to writing in the brainstorming session. I think the proposal is to have a
PR firm kind of do it all, and I expect for the fee that all of the information that was presented
would be presented back to us in some kind of written form. So I don't think the secretary, you
know, should be there to take all -, I don't know how long the meeting is going to last but -.
RAY That's not what I was thinking of. I was thinking of once you hold these
meetings and, you know, not only the people -.
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HERKES: You open the dam.
RAY: There but, you know, they're going to be publicized. You know, I assume
the press, you know, we'll have press coverage, and then of a sudden, you know, it's like the box
is open, you know, everybody's saying, hey, where you guys going? This was -, this came up,
that came up. And I think, you know, I would anticipate we're going to get, you know, a lot of,
you know, immediately get a lot of questions and a lot of people that, you know, want to input.
HIGASHI: At our brainstorming session, is that what you're talking about?
RAY: Yeah. Well, from that.
HIGASHI: Okay.
RAY: And -, but I think we can deal with that in part, and we'll discuss that, you .
know, when we get into, you know, the communications, public relations report, how we can be,
you know, pro-active to contact people, let people know ahead of time what it is we're up to, you
know, how they can respond to it, what the process is, and so hopefully we can, you know,
mitigate some of that. But, you know, I think -, I would expect, you know, we're going to get a
lot of, you know, a lot of calls, a lot of questions generated by those meetings. So that's the only
question I had with the secretary not corning on until June. I think that's going to be, you know,
an extra burden for that person way beyond just the recording duties, so that's just something we
got to think about. And, you know, I don't want Rudy screaming at me that he's -.
HERI{ES: No, he's screaming at Jan.
RAY: You know, where he -.
MARTIN: Mr. Chair?
RAY: Yes, George.
MARTIN: Gary, is there any way to expedite, in this format that you've presented
here? I mean because I hear what Roland is saying, and I agree that if we do have a PR firm
come on, whatever is produced out of these meetings should be given back to us in written form,
but as you were saying, Mr. Chair, if the general public comes in and asks, how are we going to
get it to them, so forth, with the secretary, is there a way of expediting? Can we move it up a bit?
YOSHIYAMA: I don't know. The longest period is the throwing out the ads and then
waiting for the reply, with the standard is I guess what, 11 working days.
HERKES: Two weeks and two weeks, so it's a month between -.
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YOSHIYAMA: Yeah.
HERKES: Yeah.
YOSHIYAMA: You know, so -.
IRVINE: We could always modify our time line and meet with County departments
in May and then have these public hearings in June, too, because County departments, it would be
a matter of them presenting and secretary, and it wouldn't be so much public hoopla.
RAY: Well, let's -, okay, let's -, we can talk about that when we get into that
schedule.
SANTANGELO: Right.
RAY: But I think it's something to think about that we need to be prepared to
deal with it, yeah.
SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman, I would suggest maybe we can defer this portion of the
conversation down to the scoping because I know I've got some concerns and the Scoping
Committee did a job on their own, but it needs to be inclusive for the rest of the committee, so we
need to talk about that.
RAY: Okay.
YOSHIYAMA: John, I have one final thing.
RAY: Yes, sir.
YOSHIYAMA: I'd just like to recognize the Civil Service Department, you know, for all
the support -.
RAY: Okay.
YOSHIYAMA: That they've given us.
RAY: Right.
YOSHIYAMA: They did a lot of work.
RAY: Okay. Thank you. All right. Why don't the minutes reflect that I'll send a
letter of thanks to them for, you know, helping us with that process.
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So I think we've handled the office space category, as well. Seven C, Budget Considerations,
you know we, there again, until we get into the actual, you know, scope and where we're going
to go with this thing, it's going to be hard to discuss budgets. I do have the budget breakdown
here for the 1990 Charter Commission that I'll pass around, and I want to reflect that I also have
the breakdown, the detailed breakdown of those expenses that we have in the file here, so this
gives an exact breakdown of -, a detailed breakdown of these expenses. Okay, so this is the 1990.
Does anybody think -? I put this on here so that I could give you this information. The other
thing that occurred to me, you know, we are in the middle of the budget process. We are, you
know, as I mentioned, the administration has got $100,000 appropriation into the works, you
know. The budget is just in process, so if we wanted to, you know, modify that or have any
input, there is still time. You know, it's getting kind of late in the game, but I wanted to, you
know, throw that out there.
SANTANGELO: The one input I'd like to give, Mr. Chairman, and you and I both agreed
when we worked together that getting information out to the public was one of the hardest things
that we dealt with on the Council. And it's been the -, it's been prevalent in the conversation
among other Commissioners here of rectifying that. So I would like to see this budget reflect,
with the input of all Committee members, some attitude towards this informational position of
whatever it is, but getting the facts out to the public, getting their input, and getting, you know,
just communicating with the public is really important to me and I don't see it in this '90 budget,
and I just wonder how other people feel about that.
RAY: Yeah, I think it's difficult to tell. There's more detail in this, but, you
know, you're correct, and as part of our, you know, report on communications, we're going to
give you some information in terms of, you know, hiring a public relations, you know, person to
help with this effort. But you're right, it's not well included in terms of the budget here.
HERKES: Advertising?
RAY: That advertising -.
HERKES: Eighteen thousand dollars?
RAY: I think that advertising, the bulk of it, is just advertising the meetings.
SANTANGELO: Good Lord.
HERKES: That's a lot of money.
RAY: Well, there were -.
IRVINE: They had a lot of meetings.
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RAY: There were 24 regular meetings, five combined public hearing/regular
meetings, and one public hearing so, you know, they had 30 meetings they publicized, so I'm not
sure exactly how that works out, but I believe that was the bulk of that expense. So I don't know
that there's that much more we can do in regard to this, but does anybody have any thoughts on
it?
HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, as we move along, maybe once we hire a PR firm and a
executive assistant, we can then be in a better position to project a budget and reflect the will of
the Commission as far as, you know, announcing our meetings and at the end promoting whatever
we come up with. I think most of that money was in their promoting the Charter changes, not so
much just advertising the meetings, but that's going to happen at the end.
HERKES: I wondered that, yeah.
RAY: Yeah.
HIGASHI: Educational function that we need to do, and I think we need to have a lot
of money doing that.
RAY: Yeah. Okay, just so you know, I wrote a letter on our behalf to the
County Council and, basically, it said that the Commission's presently in its organizational stage.
We're researching past Charter Commission budgets and formulating a plan of action. My
understanding is that the past Commission expended $113,000, I think it was $111,000 to review
the Charter, with the majority of the funds going to staff and meeting expenses. And then it refers
to the appropriation request before them. It says as we get further along, we'll notify you as to
our refined budget projects, as well as to our schedule to implement the review. So I think that's,
so they clearly understand that this is very much a ballpark figure right now and that we're, you
know, we're formulating the plan of action.
HIGASHI: As soon as the session is over, the Mayor then revises his budget and
resubmits the budget to the Council, is that correct, John?
SANTANGELO: Yeah.
HIGASHI: Do you recall it? At that time, we still have a chance to insert a more
defined budget, if we choose to.
RAY: Sue.
IRVINE: Have we already asked for like $30,000 between now and June and then
another $100,000, is that -?
RAY: Right.
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IRVINE: Okay.
RAY: Right.
IRVINE: Because -.
RAY: Right. So in other words, theoretically, we could spend $30,000 between
now and June, and if the budget's approved with $100,000 in it, then $100,000 in the following
calendar year under the appropriation that's in the works. Okay?
Okay. Format of Minutes. This discussion is to what type of minute, you know, we should have.
We did receive input, I did, from former Charter Commission Members, from the head of the
Department of Finance, some other folks that felt very strongly that we should have verbatim
minutes so -. Yeah, Roland.
HIGASHI: I have a question for Mr. Wurdeman.
WURDEMAN: Yes, sir.
HIGASHI: Mr. Wurdeman, if we would have official minutes, whether it's taped, in
the archives, and have the type of minutes that we've had in summary, would that be sufficient in
protecting us in both ways? If somebody wanted to go to the archives to hear the verbatim
minutes, I mean it's there on tape. Is that -?
WURDEMAN: Well, I think that would meet the letter of the law, but I think you saw
Mr. Takahashi's -.
HERKE S : Yeah.
WURDEMAN: Letter and -.
HIGASHI: What did he say? I didn't see that.
WURDEMAN: It says the intent of this Commission will, over the next 10 years, come up
all the time. Minutes that are readily available and printed, I think, are much better.
HIGASHI: But wouldn't you say that the actions taken, that is what is going to be
controversial rather than who said what and -? I mean it's a two-hour meeting; it takes us two -.
WURDEMAN: Believe it or not, when arguments arise over what something means in the
Charter, they go back -, it's not uncommon to go back, look at the minutes, and to find out that,
you know, a certain Commissioner said something about this particular issue, and another
Commissioner said something else, and then try and derive the intent of the meaning from that.
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Now, that doesn't happen every day, but it happens.
HIGASHI: It still ends up with the attorneys.
WURDEMAN: Yeah. Attorneys do that.
BESS: Roland, if I may. You know; I would second what Mr. Wurdeman's
saying. I can tell you during the time that I was with the Corporation Counsel's Office, the
verbatim minutes were very important in deciding some issues and hearing the talk going back and
forth to derive intent, so I think it's very important to have verbatim minutes in print.
SANTANGELO: And I'd like -.
BESS. And, of course, you know, there are some technological problems with the
tape itself that may deteriorate.
SANTANGELO: I'd like to weigh in on that, mainly, as we meet, we know what the intent
and certainly we judge what our intent was in live dialogue, and having verbatim minutes doesn't
really cause us to have to digest the whole hundred and some pages of every meeting because we
were there. But for open public perception and for the whole historical archives, it's probably
best, and I would weigh in on verbatim minutes.
• RAY: Roland.
HIGASHI: Mr. Wurdeman, let me pose this other question to you. How many
reports, mainly committee reports? If we have verbatim minutes on actions that are taken, is that
something that would suffice? I mean, we have a hundred and I don't know how many pages of
minutes.
•
HERKES: One twenty-six.
HIGASHI: And it's dialogue and committee reports and a lot of things that are not
action -oriented, just general discussion.
WURDEMAN: Well, is it your intention to have subject matter committees, like Finance
Committee and maybe Police Committee or things like that, or are you going to do it as a body?
RAY: I think we're planning on doing it as a body.
HERKES: Interesting question though.
WURDEMAN: So there would not necessarily be any committee reports.
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HIGASHI:
stuff, there's reports.
WURDEMAN: I was thinking more of not what's going on today but when you do
get
into
substantive areas and make changes to the Charter, and five years from now, people are trying to
figure out what this means.
RAY: Okay. Sue.
WURDEMAN: Unfortunately, things go into the Charter don't come out for five years,
you know, and all of a sudden somebody raises -.
IRVINE: I move we have verbatim minutes of our proceedings per Mr. Takahashi's
request from the Finance Department.
Yeah. Selection of a Commission secretary and, you know, that kind of
RAY:
BESS:
RAY
HERKES:
HIGASHI:
minutes, I'll
• HERKES :
HIGASHI:
HERKES:
RAY:
HIGASHI:
RAY:
Okay. A second?
Second.
Okay, discussion?
Yeah. I'd like to ask Mr. Higashi what his concerns are about 126 pages.
Well, to be honest with you, I probably will not vote to approve the
probably abstain, unless I read the whole thing.
Yeah.
You know.
And see -.
Well, we've deferred -.
I have these other minutes I can read, you know -.
Okay.
HIGASHI: And understand what went on, but for me to vote to approve minutes that I
haven't read, I think I would probably abstain from voting.
RAY:
Well, wait, wait.
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0 HERKES: And I -.
HIGASHI: Not approving the minutes.
RAY: Let me address that issue, okay. We're not approving these verbatim
minutes today
HIGASHI: No, no.
HERKES: No.
HIGASHI: In the future.
HERKES: Anytime.
RAY: Okay.
HERKES: And what I'd like to address is it is possible to do a summary of the
minutes. It will cost more, it will take time, but it's possible to do a summary of the minutes for
the Commission, but I'm not sure that will handle our concerns about having to read 126 pages of
minutes.
• RAY: Well, you know, the County Council -.
HIGASHI: Mr. Chairman, the point I want to make is that approving the minutes
ratifies my actions of the previous meeting, and if I haven't read it all and there was a mistake in
there or something that I ratified by approving the minutes, I don't think I'd approve of that. I
can approve the action that was taken.
RAY: Well, I think there's considerably more mistake that that would happen
with the short form minutes than with the long form, but I mean, you know, it's -, but anyway,
yeah.
ALONZO: Mr. Chair, may we approve the minutes the following month, where it says
we have one this meeting, the next month we get this meeting minutes?
RAY: Sure, absolutely.
ALONZO: And we can refer it to the next meeting -.
RAY: Right.
ALONZO: To get approval.
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RAY: Right.
ALONZO: Then it gives us some time to read it.
RAY: Yes. I mean, the County Council frequently -, I mean they very rarely, I
mean, approve it on that timely a basis so, yeah, that's fine.
IRVINE: I might say the previous minutes were verbatim, but they're very nicely
indexed at the front so that we might have Page 1, 2, 3 has what content, if you wanted to go
look something up.
RAY: Yeah.
IRVINE: You wouldn't have to read the whole thing.
RAY: Yeah. And, you know, we are in the organizational stage, and I think that
point was made, so there are things that are, you know, of less substance now but once we get
into the meat of it, then I think it'll be more important. John.
SANTANGELO: You know, one thing, I hadn't gotten Mr. Takahashi's letter, and I don't
know if we're getting it faxed and -. I'm getting most of the things through my fax. But with
Harry, one thing I do know is Harry has extensive experience in the Council, having run Leg
Auditor for almost 14 years, and if he things verbatim is what we should do, let's just do it.
RAY: Okay. Gary.
YOSHIYAMA: Question. If we have a transcript of our meetings, it's not official unless
the Commission takes some kind of action to accept it or approve it or confirm it, is that it? You
know, just having a transcript on its own is meaningless, I mean, you know, it wouldn't stand up
as being an official document.
RAY: I don't know. Maybe that's a question for Mr. Wurdeman. I mean, I
guess, do you understand what Mr. Yoshiyama is getting at, I mean, if we didn't want to approve
the minutes, I guess, or we wanted to approve a summary and have a transcript as unapproved?
WURDEMAN: What's required is minutes, meaning a synopsis, a digest of the
proceedings.
RAY: Okay.
WURDEMAN: Now, the problem with minutes in the true sense of the word is that
sometimes a little editorial license is required. What's important, what's not important? It
sometimes makes it harder to write minutes than to do a verbatim transcript. And if it's a
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verbatim transcript, I really can't see, unless there is a flagrant error by the secretary as to what
someone said, I really can't see why, which is all you're approving when you approve the minutes
is that they are accurate. You're not approving the fact that you agree with what was done.
You're saying I've reviewed them, they're accurate, this is what happened. At least that's my
understanding.
YOSHIYAMA: Okay.
RAY: Okay. Sue.
IRVINE: Move the question.
RAY: Okay. We're voting. The motion is to approve verbatim minutes. All in
favor, raise your right hand. Okay, motion carries.
All right, Reimbursable Expenses. This is just a bit of housekeeping. I'm sure you're all aware
that mileage is approved. I'm not sure exactly what the rate is, and I know some folks had
mileage to, you know, special committee meetings. I have the -, as well as other reimbursable
expenses. I met with the Finance Department today, and let's see, Dixie said as long as they're;
you know, minor expenses, you know, less than $100, that, you know, there's no problem with
my approving those. So, you know, I picked up some pupus for us here for the meeting today
because, you know, if we wanted to go out and have dinner afterwards, that's also a approved
expense. But anyway, I have the forms here. If you'd like to fill them in and claim mileage, let's
go ahead and get up to date as quickly as possible this evening, then I'll sign them and we can go
ahead and get these turned in. There's not an official time limit, it doesn't have to be done, you
know, weekly or monthly or whatever right, slaterbut
So I've
dot these forms here.ke to -, not to Yese it s hanging
Eddie.
there so that we get this in sooner rather than g
ALONZO: Mr. Chair, as far as like committee meetings, for instance, the attorney
committee get together certain place, they can claim mileage, too, for that?
RAY: Sure.
HERKES: We can have lunch, too.
RAY: Yeah.
HERKES: Why don't you pass those around?
RAY: Sure.
BESS: And the dates of the two previous meetings?
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IRVINE: February 20th and March 17th.
RAY: Yeah, March 17th was the last meeting and the -.
IRVINE: February 20th.
RAY: February 20th was the first. So anymore questions on these? You know,
folks, in regard to the last Commission's activities and budgets, you know, just from glancing
through here, people routinely claimed mileage and whatever. Okay?
All right. New Business. The Scoping Committee report, Roland are you going to -? I have -,
Roland, I have these. Did you get them? I got copies, too. Okay. This is the critical path
schedule that the committee came up with for discussion. This is probably for Jason. Yeah, give
one -, give Jason one.
RAY: Give these guys a copy.
SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman?
HERKES: Roland, do you have another one for Jason?
RAY. I just want you to have one so you know what we're talking about.
(Indiscernible discussion)
SANTANGELO: No, don't give anything to Jason; he doesn't deserve it.
MARTIN: John said that. Could you repeat that again, John?
SANTANGELO: No, no, no. Oh, good ears that guy get.
HERKES: Verbatim.
RAY: John, are you making this report?
SANTANGELO: No. I have comments to that report.
HERKES: He's anxious.
IRVINE: Roland, it's Roland.
HIGASHI: Well, why don't we put it on the table first, John.
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SANTANGELO: Okay.
RAY: Yeah, let's have the committee report, Roland.
HIGASHI: We had a committee meeting consisting of Sue, George, Mr. Alonzo, and
Kevin, and what we did was we came up with a draft for you to start with. And bearing in mind
that we wanted to have as many community meetings as possible, we wanted to have the
brainstorming session start out, the community input, as sort of a kick-off. So what is proposed is
to have in May two meetings, one in Kona and one in Hilo, and rather than scoping, we called it a
brainstorming session in which we hope to hire a PR firm that would put the whole package to us,
for us. But the idea is to invite as many people as we know to come to the meetings on both sides
of the Island because as of this moment, we don't.-, except for Henry Ross' suggestions, we don't
have any suggestions. And I think it's a good opportunity to have everybody come down and
have a -, feel free to give their suggestion to us, hopefully in writing, if not, using a facilitator to
put it on the board. And, hopefully, within these two meetings, we will have digested at least
what the public sentiments are. In June -.
RAY: Can you -, I don't know how in detail you got in regard to those meetings,
but could you talk about them a little bit more in terms of, you know, these are Saturdays, right?
HIGASHI: It was Saturday meeting, I'm sorry, yeah.
• RAY: Yeah.
HIGASHI: It was Saturday meetings.
RAY: So would these -, you know, what would the length of the meetings be?
HIGASHI: Eight or nine o'clock until finish.
ALONZO: Until noon then.
IRVINE: We had said, yeah, nine to noon, maybe might even go on and it would
just -.
HIGASHI: If it goes on, people are there -. The idea is we didn't want to shut up
anybody. One o'clock or -, yeah.
(skip in transcript... changed tape)
RAY: I mean published in general or PR in general.
HERKES: If we're going to hire a public relations firm, I think it would be a good
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idea to let them help us design this, especially if they're a good one.
HIGASHI: And it's going to be quite some time, so that's the idea of hiring a public
relations agency, using their expertise.
RAY: Yeah, and we do have some information on that.
HIGASHI: Expertise and especially getting the word out.
RAY: Okay.
IRVINE: I thought you folks were going to come up with a one-page statement.
MARTIN: There was discussion on that.
RAY: I have that.
• IRVINE: Yeah, okay.
RAY: And I'm going to pass that out.
IRVINE: Oh, okay. I thought that might be -.
RAY: But that's not nearly as extensive as, you know, I think a presentation
would be.
IRVINE: Okay.
RAY: This would be more just like a heads up notice that we'd send out that,
hey, we're rocking and rolling and here we go.
HERKES: Starting the discussion.
RAY: You know, and these are the kinds of things we're going to be talking
about but, you know, I envision something quite a bit more comprehensive, you know, to Lead off
this thing.
HIGASHI: Mr. Chairman, at the critical path meeting, we never went into that far
detail as to how it starts, who leads off, you know, what the scenario would be to pick it up.
RAY: Okay. And the only reason I brought it up is because the 8th of May is
coming up.
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HIGASHI: That's correct.
RAY: Very quickly.
HIGASHI: That's correct.
RAY So to pull all this together by the 8th of May and publicize it and all, it's just
a consideration. Okay.
HIGASHI: Whether it's the 15th, and we move back two weeks, I mean, the idea was
that in May -.
RAY: Okay.
HIGASHI: Hit two sides of the Island.
RAY: Right.
HIGASHI: In June, while we're digesting and reduce to writing what the public has
said, maybe work with the County departments. In July -, this is through July and August that we
hold meetings, again for public input, and at least a scenario of what other people have already
said, having meetings in Hilo, Kona, Puna, Waimea, and Honoka`a.
RAY: Are these primarily input meetings, or are we going to be discussing -.
HIGASHI: Input meetings.
ALONZO: Input.
RAY: Input meetings.
IRVINE: It was my -.
HIGASHI: And having a chance to dialogue with the community.
IRVINE: Yeah, it was my understanding though that we were definitely going to
have an agenda of our own in case nobody showed up.
HIGASHI: Right, right.
MARTIN: Correct.
IRVINE: And it might include, I figured that even at our scoping meeting that it
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might mean more meetings with County departments because I can't see County departments all
coming in two meetings in June.
HIGASHI Well -.
IRVINE: So I thought maybe we could ask some of them later, no?
HIGASHI: Right, right, right.
IRVINE : Yeah?
HIGASHI: But I don't think the County departments have that much changes within
their department that they'd want to do. The other thing about the County departments, we
wanted to make sure it's well advertised. The public may want to have comments about the
different departments, and they only can speak to it if it's agendized, so that's one of the reason
why I have -.
RAY: Okay.
HIGASHI: The County meetings. I think the Mayor can probably meet with his staff,
reduce to writing all their comments and submitting it to us. But I think the public may have, you
know, some input into different divisions, and if we don't have a meeting, and we don't agendize
them, they'll probably be not allowed to speak.
Okay, I'll go on to July, August. It wasn't meant to be in July we'll hold Hilo, Puna, you know.
Within those two months, the Committee can decide, you know, we will have five meetings, and
it's geographically we have these areas, and if you look to October/November, we have other
areas that weren't covered, like Naalehu, Kohala, Mt. View, but Hilo and Kona is always
covered.
In September, we're looking at the Committee having two meetings and probably start to having
our drafts put together. And in October and November, again, we have five meetings, and now it
is the intent of the draft, then start -, go out in the community for more input, acceptance, making
sure the people understand what the draft looks like and further amendments to the draft.
In December, having two meetings with the final draft, and maybe Sue can remind us, we need to
send this to the Council, remember?
IRVINE: I think that was somebody else's input.
ALONZO: It was Kevin's.
IRVINE: But we thought -.
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HIGASHI:
Oh, Kevin, yeah, yeah.
IRVINE: By the 10th of December it had to go to the County Council if you wanted
to have things happen in January and have your -.
HIGASHI:
IRVINE:
HIGASHI:
for consideration.
IRVINE:
send them back to
HIGASHI:
HERKES:
IRVINE:
State law.
HIGASHI:
IRVINE:
RAY:
WURDEMAN:
RAY:
It's not in the Charter, but the -.
Election.
State statute, 1 think, says that we need to send it to the County Council
I think they can offer changes but not mandate changes.
That was my input. They can -, they have the right to make change and
us, which we then can either include or not.
Or not include so they can offer changes.
So they're -.
We, also, weren't sure at our meeting, however, whether -, that was in the
Yeah.
And whether State law applies in this case or not.
Mr. Wurdeman?
Well -.
Can you give us some help on this process?
WURDEMAN: Personally, I think that -. Well, the State Constitution says that when
there's a conflict between the Charter and the State law in questions of organization and structure
of the County, the Charter prevails. So my -, if I was forced to answer yes or no, I'd say the
Charter prevails. But, unfortunately, when there are these conflicts, and during the course of your
deliberations you're going to find other conflicts that may come up, there's several that have
pestered us for the last 10 years, people argue both sides, and it just adds to confusion, so if it's
possible to comply with both, I would recommend doing so.
HIGASHI: In kind of finishing it off, in January with the intent in March maybe special
election, we publish the digest of changes in the newspaper. It needs to be 45 days before any
kind of special elections. February would be a regular committee meeting, kind of planning
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strategy for educating the public, making sure the public is educated on the changes, and if we
have a special election, it'll be done in March.
RAY: In regard to the special election, or the issue of a special election, was there
•
any research in regard to budgets related to that or -?
HIGASHI: Sue was going to work on it.
IRVINE: Yeah.
HIGASHI: Sue is going to work on it.
IRVINE: I did go to the County and talk to the County Clerk's Office, and they
actually gave me estimated costs for a special election, which they did last month. I think Roland
got this, as well, right? I just went in to find out on my own, and they said they'd already done it
and handed me this. It's $336,000, well, $336,650 is what they estimate for a special election.
RAY: And that's a normal format full -?
IRVINE: Yeah, there is no other format. We do not have vote by mail at this time in
the State.
RAY: Okay. That was what I was going to ask you, okay.
IRVINE: No.
RAY: So the -, are there any other legal options to going this route?
MARTIN: If I may, because I was part of the discussion in that subcommittee, we did
touch upon the mail -out, but nobody had any inclination as to if it would be or wouldn't be legal,
and nobody, I don't think, did research into it at this point. As I mentioned in that meeting, this
being a County, and as Corp. Counsel just saying the Charter would carry some precedence, and
it doesn't have anything to do with the State or changing any State laws, why couldn't we go to
some sort of a mail situation?
WURDEMAN: I would say we have to follow State election laws.
HERKES: State election laws.
IRVINE: Yeah.
RAY: Okay. So, wait, wait. Sue, let's finish that up.
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IRVINE: There was a measure of -, at the Legislature this session, as there have been
in quite a few past sessions, it failed to pass, as far as I know.
RAY: It did.
IRVINE: For vote by mail. Yeah.
RAY: Now, I followed that.
IRVINE: Yeah.
RAY: Whatever was up before the State did fail this year. So that didn't provide
an opportunity. So is it -, so we -, I guess the question is, you know, is there another option, and
the answer seems to be no. So when we're talking about a special election, we're talking about
full-blown, you know, as laid out by Elections Office, and we can use that budget figure as a
ballpark to discuss this.
HERKES: I think we can use the budget figure, but I think there are other options out
there that we can set up. We don't have to set up as many polling places. I don't think you have
to set them all up, and you can maybe set up one in each district and make four of them absentee,
and we can certainly push absentee balloting.
RAY: Do you know -?
HERI{ES: I've voted absentee balloting for years.
RAY: Okay.
BERKES: And I haven't been absent yet.
HIGASHI: Mr. Chair?
RAY: Yeah, Roland.
HIGASHI: I think the voting mechanism and how to reduce costs, we'll have time to
work on that. If issues are not significant, we probably won't have a special election. But talking
to the elections officer, they have a problem because they don't have a voting mechanism yet.
The last one that they used is not -.
RAY: Okay, yeah, because of the -.
HIGASHI: Right.
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RAY Right.
HIGASHI: It's not for sure. They don't have a contract with anybody.
RAY: Right.
HIGASHI: So, he's not sure exactly what they're going to use. He suggested maybe
for the interim especially, you can use the old balloting system with the punch; that's still
available.
SANTANGELO: Sure.
HIGASHI: So I think it's something that still needs to be researched and -.
RAY: So you're -.
HIGASHI: We have time.
RAY: Sense is that, you know, this would be a preliminary path that would allow
for the consideration of a special election and -.
HIGASHI: If one is decided.
RAY: But not definitely put us on that, you know, or that commitment. And I
guess, of course, the big question is where would the money come from?
HIGASHI: Right, right.
RAY: If we were to decide this is something we wanted to pursue anyway?
HIGASHI: Right, right, right.
RAY: And, obviously, the appropriation requested from the County Council
doesn't, you know, take into account a special election so, you know, we'd certainly have to deal
with that reality.
HIGASHI: It's funny because the Charter determines that this Commission will either
call a special election, but it doesn't say who funds it, you know. I mean I'm sure that the County
funds it. The Council doesn't fund it, then it's a kind of two -edge sword, yeah. They don't fund
it, and we probably will.
RAY: Like those raises, right, Gary'?
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YOSHIYAMA: I didn't hear that.
IRVINE: I guess I did have a question about it does say that this Commission is -,
can set a special election, and I think in the Charter on Page 34-35, it talks about the Council, you
know, appropriating money for us, but I'm not sure if we say we will have a special election
whether that requires the County Council to come up with the money or not.
RAY: See, I told you.
YOSHIYAMA: Sounds familiar.
IRVINE: Yeah.
RAY: Same old thing.
SANTANGELO: Well, they're into raising taxes, so it's cool.
YOSHIYAMA: You guys better watch out.
HERKES: We can close the zoo, for heaven sakes.
WURDEMAN: That would be a constitutional crisis.
HERKES: And we'll have the money.
WURDEMAN: I don't think you want to get to that.
HERKES: No, we'll just -.
RAY: Okay. John, did you have a comment?
SANTANGELO: No, I think that special elections is something that we can look forward to.
I know that me sitting on this Commission, I'm going to want to see a tremendous value to the
community, that we want to see 100 percent consensus at this Commission, and we want to see a
lot of support from the community to move forward with that kind of an expenditure. And I think
if that was the case, whoever the parties were would probably buy into it and it would be a done
deal. I think a special election has its place, but I would sure question the public is going to really
scrutinize this thing.
RAY: Okay. Can I ask for some in put from the committee in regard to, you
know, any discussion or thoughts behind a special election versus, you know, just going with the
general election in the year 2000. Were there, you know, specific reasons to consider this or -?
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MARTIN: I think one of the, not so much driving reasons but the discussion was
carried that if something were to come up that would change our Charter, per se, drastically one
way or another, and it's put on the 2000 ballot, then you'd vote on it and not being sure as to
what's going to transpire, would it take place in 2000 or 2002 or 2004, the following elections?
And with that in mind, what we were saying is if, in fact, there was going to be significant change
on how our government is shaped, then we'd like to have it in place so that when you vote in the
2000 election, you know what you're voting for and you're going to be voting for that change.
RAY: Okay. Well, that's specifically, you know, what I'm interested in, and, you
know, I've had some discussions in regard to this. And I don't understand, you know, the
process and the time lines of, you know, how all this would work logistically. And let's take, for
example, the head spot, the mayor versus a supervisor type -.
MARTIN: City manager.
RAY City manager type of government, you know. Using that as a for instance,
right, I mean if you were to have that on the ballot, you know, how would that affect, you know,
the election in the fall of 2000? In other words, you already will have had, you know, declared
candidates.
HIGASHI: The filing is in July.
IRVINE: Yeah.
HIGASHI: The filing of a candidate is in July.
SANTANGELO: That's true.
HIGASHI: They can announce whatever they want but -. So it's important that with
that special election, we sell within a reasonable time -.
RAY: Well, that's one -.
HIGASHI: Of the filing.
RAY: Okay. That's one aspect: But from a, you use the word reasonable. You
know, if you've -, you've got folks committing, you know, years of time, and you know,
hundreds of thousands of dollars on a mayoral race, you know, I think that's also -.
MARTIN: So what you are saying is we wouldn't change something because
somebody's already planning an election?
RAY: I'm just bringing that up.
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HIGASHI: John.
RAY: They're not just planning an election, you know, they've already been
campaigning for, you know, six or eight months, and so -.
MARTIN: So -.
RAY: I mean -.
MARTIN: I don't understand it, John. I mean, if -.
RAY: Okay, suppose -.
MARTIN: The public comes up and says we'd like to have a change, but because
somebody's committed to run for mayor, we're not going to change that?
RAY:
MARTIN:
RAY:
I'm just bringing it up.
I'm just asking.
Okay.
HIGASHI: Mr. Chairman?
IRVINE: I guess I was kind of a dissenting voice at the committee on having a
special election because of the expense and because
really
e Bally disastrous
document and,
I mean, our Charter has been strong enough to withstand some, at Bast one pot
mayoral race, and I think it can stand, you know, through the next elections. And I can see your
concerns that changing things, you know, might affect those running for office right now, but I
can't see expending this money on the part of all of the citizens to have a special election because
I'm not sure it's anything the public really needs because -. And the other thing 1 did talk to
Elections about turnout for special elections, and there were two special elections, one -, a
Charter election in 1979, the turnout was 24 percent, that means 9,000 people voted. In 1978,
the Con -Con election, turnout was 34 percent, which meant 12,000 people voted.
•
SANTANGELO: What's the usual turnout, Susan?
IRVINE: Okay, the regular turnout in 1978 was 78.5 percent.
SANTANGELO: Okay.
IRVINE: So that, you know, in that time frame, that was what happened.
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SANTANGELO: Unregistered voters.
IRVINE: So we'd be, you know, having -.
RAY: John:
NINE: No matter how much PR -.
SANTANGELO: Yeah.
IRVINE: We're going to have a low turnout.
SANTANGELO: One thing I'd ask is, Sue, and I direct this towards you, and not saying that
I've had more experience, but one thing I have learned is remaining open, you know.
IRVINE: Right.
SANTANGELO: And it's real important that we be open. I can't say that I disagree with
you at all. An example that I would give though, that has a lot of public support that I'm
experiencing, Mr. Chairman, is non-partisan election. And I can see how that could really affect a
mayor's race, because you're going to have two of the major vote -getters move up. And
something that impacts an election so drastically, at first I looked at it with one hand and said,
gee, this is something that probably should be dealt with early so that it does come up. On the
other hand, there's a lot of wisdom that says this can wait, and it gives the public time to buy into
this thing before the election. And so I'd say, let's stay open minded about this, but there is a
tremendous expense involved, and there is also public cofidence. We've got to go aout best interests are being kept in crundb andius in a
way that the public feels very confident that their
wouldn't want to be a part of anything, right or wrong, because I've learned that lesson, that the
public perceived as not being in their best interest. And I hate to say that we're going to let them
push us around, but in one case, this is a place where I'm totally willing to be in that seat. So it's
not just a managing director versus a mayor; that can wait. It's also if we go non-partisan, which
seems to be a lot of groundswell support for something like that, how does that impact? And I
see, for me, both sides supporting and also saying let's delay this, give a chance to vote on it, give
a chance to assimilate it, and then become involved in it. Thank you.
RAY: Okay. Gary, you had your hand up?
YOSHIYAMA: Yeah. I guess overall, I agree with John, and I like this critical path
because it provides us options. I would look at this, you know, our public meetings, hearings and
Stuff, as an opportunity, also, for, you know, members of our community to let us know their
feelings about whether or not they want a special election or not, you know. It's just as important
as the changes.
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RAY: Okay. Marni.
HERKES: I agree with Gary that we have an opportunity to design a process that the
public can let us know if they want a general election. I worked in the polling place for the
primary and the general in the last election, and it was mass confusion. And that's one reason that
I, when there's four big issues that people are talking about changing the Charter, a rather drastic
structural change in our form of government, I would like an opportunity, or I'd like the public to
have an opportunity, and I want an opportunity, too, to really understand those changes, to really
focus on those changes, to really have just those changes in my eyesight. And that's why I think if
the public wants those, wants a structural change, that we need to pay special attention to that
structural change.
RAY: Okay. Roland.
HIGASHI: John, getting back to your question about candidates who put a lot of time
before that, I think in September when we come with our first draft, it would be kind of fair
warning to everybody running for office as to what may be the public sentiment, what the
Commission may be thinking, and they need to be prepared both ways so -.
RAY: Okay. John? Okay. Moving on to something else, just a little
housekeeping, being a fairly involved individual, although I try not to be, I want to ask this
Commission to please help me with the May 8th and the May 22nd; these are something I wouldn't
want to miss, but I would just share with this Commission that it's a matter of public record in the
newspaper that I will be in charge the food booths at the Portuguese Chamber Rodeo.
HERKES: No, no, we're all busy.
RAY: Excuse me. On the 8th, and it's the scholarship fund drive. And also the
Republicans are having their convention on the 22nd
HERKES: Well, God damn, we can't have it then.
HIGASHI: Gee, you think we Democrats don't know that?
YOSHIYAMA: Ironic how we chose those dates there, eh, Roland?
SANTANGELO: And I lay that out there for you to -, Gary, being non-partisan as he is, I
know he would support my right.
YOSHIYAMA: That's right.
RAY: Okay, well -, you know.
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SANTANGELO: But it does make it so I can't make these meetings, and they are public
meetings and, hey, I'm already committed.
RAY: Let's -.
SANTANGELO: And that's the point is I was committed to these things prior to this
Commission coming up with this, and that's, I mean, I would make any other change.
RAY: Okay, wait. Okay, that's fine. But before we get into, you know, what
dates suit everybody, you know, particular dates, I'd like to focus more on the time frame and is it
reasonable to schedule a meeting as soon as the 8th? I mean, that's more the question I have, in
other words, can we gear up to do a good job? That's what, three weeks from now?
IRVINE: Two and a half.
HERI{ES: Yeah, three weeks.
RAY: Yeah. So -.
HIGASHI: Three weeks.
HERKES: That's just to May 14t.
IRVINE: Oh, May 8th, oh, sorry. Okay.
RAY: And -.
IRVINE: Yeah.
RAY: You know, we're going to talk about, you know publicity and what, but,
you know, we can't bring somebody on board, you know, PR -wise, to function in that time frame.
HERKES: We can't?
RAY: Well, we might be able to get them, but they wouldn't be able to, you
know, I don't think practically speaking we could.
IRVINE: I don't think the critical path committee was committed to those -.
HIGASHI: No.
MARTIN: No, we just -.
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doIRVINE:
MARTIN:
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Dates at all.
It just was a -.
IRVINE: We said let's do two meetings in May. I will not be here the 8th or the 15th
Let's put them at the end of May, the two last weekends and -.
RAY: Well -.
IRVINE: Or the first weekend in June.
ALONZO: Memorial Day weekend? No.
RAY: Okay, the -.
IRVINE: Pardon?
BERKES: I'm busy on -.
IRVINE: Oh.
HERKES: Those weekends.
IRVINE: Yeah. Okay.
SANTANGELO: When's the Democratic convention?
ALONZO: When we submit this to the Commission to review, then if there's any
changes, we can make the -, justify the changes.
RAY: Yeah. Because there is a, you know, end of May, early June -.
IRVINE: Yeah, there's some graduations and stuff.
RAY: You know, super crunch with graduations and, you know, stuff like that,
so Saturdays, I think, become increasingly difficult, you know, for a few weeks there, so we need
to think about that. Can I -, you know, some comments I had when I looked at this is the last
Charter Commission held 24 regular meetings, substantive meetings, to discuss Charter changes,
and I think the Commission before that held close to 50, so that's a concern to me, you know.
Are there -?
HERKES: Two a month? Four a month?
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IRVINE: Yes. Yes.
RAY: There were -, no, well, no, no, the process was like a year and a half, the
review process, but -, and so it's -, in my sense is we're a little short on, you know, a thorough
review of the Charter and meetings in this scenario. And it's also my sense that we've short-
changed the input from the County departments. I've gotten a lot of input from folks in the
County who are really looking forward to and very much want to be involved in this process, and
I think, you know, my sense is, you know, it's going to be more like, you know, budget hearings,
you know, several days' worth of department inputs. Maybe we can encourage them, you know,
Roland, you mentioned to, you know, really be organized in this approach and, you know, get it
down in writing and whatever, so maybe we can shorten that up. But I've gotten a lot of input
from the departments that, you know, would really like to -. And I think when we get into, you
know, the Finance Department, these are going to be some really pretty involved and lengthy
discussions on, you know, the budgets, in other words, the budget formats and stuff so that's
just -, I'm just throwing that out there. So I guess my sense is we're going to need -, and this can
all be accommodated in this time frame easily, but we're going to need more time with the County
and that we're going to need more time to, you know, go through section by section, you know,
the Charter in regular meetings, as well, just based on -.
HIGASHI: Well -.
RAY: But maybe not.
HIGASHI: It was my, well, at least I would rather just go through the Charter, make
my own concerns rather than going section by section and having 11 guys comment on what I
have to say. I don't know how they did in the past but -.
RAY: You know, I think one thing that -, we had a couple of volunteers, other
people, you know, from past Charter Commissions, that, you know, volunteered to come in and
just give us some, you know, feedback on, you know, past Charter Commissions. I think that
would be real helpful to get a sense of -, because I'm really struggling with this whole process of
the budgets and whatever. I just feel like I'm just headed into kind of unknown territory; I really
don't have a strong sense of, you know, what we're taking on time -wise and process -wise.
IRVINE: I'll second that.
RAY: Yeah. John.
SANTANGELO: And then, John, I have back you up. I have written down here over the
June meetings with the departments is very important. I think we all have maybe a pet peeve that
we have banging around in our heads or among our circle of people that we deal with. On the
other hand, within the procedural part of our government, we probably have the greatest ability to
create impact, positive impact into the new millennium, and so to me, that's extremely important.
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I think the other thing, too, that I'm floundering with, and I think you just put that into words was
we really don't have a sense of direction yet, so it is a huge blur. I may agree with Roland giving
some more information. On the other hand, to me, I actually see a section by section review
because of the mind set that exists here and going over that, you know, process.
And so I guess the thing that it comes down to is I do lack direction, I do lack a focus on how
we're going to effectively, you know, do the best job we can. And anything that can happen in
the short term, that helps us get that focus, I think that's when we're going to start doing the real
work.
RAY: Okay.
SANTANGELO: And as far as the Council goes, I -, somebody needs to help me understand
why the Council has a living thing to dohere at this table, Pncluding myselfhis except for inut like any rcitizen. And I
offered to be very
know that at our confirmation, many people
attentive to anything the Council put forth as individuals or as a body, but we are autonomous,
and that political process and that political pressure has been removed in this Charter, and I think
what we deal with goes to -the voter.
RAY: Yeah.
HIGASHI: This is -.
RAY: More comments?
HIGASHI: I have just one comment. This is the fourth review of the Charter
Commission, is that, or the Charter, is that correct? Yeah, I don't see substantial changes.
RAY: Well, I think that's relevant in that, you know, it has been gone over in
great detail, right, so they have visited probably most of the issues, you know, that we're going to
be talking about, so I think that has some relevance but, you know, so that's certainly -.
HIGASHI: I think taking the input from the County departments, if they were
organized, it shouldn't take that long. Dgesting oes thatthat or we td tit into col collaboratively, willges 'notesure butt .
time, you know, whether the legal staff d
RAY: Well, when you get into the -.
HIGASHI: The taking the input, I don't -.
RAY: When you -.
HIGASHI: Think it's going to take that long.
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RAY:
complex.-.
HIGASHI: That's right.
Well, when you get into the budget cycles though, that's a pretty
RAY: You know, area, and the effect of that and on the State budgets, so I -.
HIGASHI: For the timing?
RAY: Yeah.
HIGASHI: Timing? The Association of Counties, that's pretty much the standard
thing in terms of your early budget, and after session, you know how much money you get, then
you go back for the final budget. I think City and County of Oahu does that.
SANTANGELO: I'd like to -.
RAY: John.
SANTANGELO: Roland, I have -.
HIGASHI: But anyway, it's not an issue right now. I don't -.
SANTANGELO: As far as, Roland, yourself or any other Commissioner, I have a lot of
respect for everybody that's here, but one thing -.
HERKES: But -.
SANTANGELO: But -.
RAY: Gee. what are you going to say next?
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SANTANGELO: This Charter's been looked at. In spite of the side comments, the Charter's
been looked at, again, like you said, the way it has. On the other hand, let's be contemporary
about it. You know, we are in new times, we're in times in which just the struggle with the union
influence and how that helps or hinders the movement of government, our budgeting process, the
fact that we have three parties now, three basic parties running for office, which confuses the
majority type thing. There's a lot of things that have come up in the last so many years that do,
that the Charter and it -, are struggling with, that we can bring up to date, so I there's -, I think
there's some real issues that we can deal with in this that may take some time to understand.
RAY Roland.
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HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, I don't recommend that we vote on this and approve this as the
critical path. I think this is a guideline, and as we go along, if we find bumps in the road and I
think we need to have a look on that, and adjust accordingly. I think it gives us some idea for
discussion as to what we're looking at. Of course, if special election -, there's no major issues,
this whole thing will go back to June or July as far as our time line so -.
RAY: Yeah.
HIGASHI: I think we should adopt this -.
RAY: Yeah.
HIGASHI: As a formal critical path, but it gives us some idea, some starting point, and
as we move along, if we have to amend it, you know, we have that opportunity.
RAY: Yeah. Well, yeah, and I really appreciate the work and I think -, I like the
idea of tackling this, you know, vigorously in a shorter versus a longer time frame. I think
there's, you know, a lot to be said for that. And, you know, I don't, you know, whether holding
extra meetings or whatever can certainly be accommodated in this time frame, especially, you
know, in areas like the administration because I, you know, I certainly saw it being wrapped up -.
HIGASHI: Right, right.
RAY: During this same time frame, just maybe requiring more meetings or
whatever, but maybe it's just an all day meeting versus a, you know, a three-hour meeting or
whatever so I, you know -. It works for me and, you know, if we do come up with creative and a
supported format, you know, to look at a more dynamic approach to this rather than waiting for
the other election, well, let's consider that. Okay. All right, any other comments or -, on this?
HIGASHI: - One thing we're going to decide on is whether in May we're going to go
on the 8t.
IRVINE: Yeah.
HIGASHI: Fifteenth.
RAY: Okay, well, let's -.
HIGASHI. Thirtieth or 29th.
RAY: Yeah. Okay, well, let's kind of fold into the next topic, and then we can
discuss both of them together. Marti and I did some work on the communications and public
relations and, you know, the piece I talked about, and this is just a rough draft, all this was was an
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idea of, you know, a handout, a one-page handout that we could send out when we came up with
a, you know, a general process time line to, you know, broadcast this out to community groups,
to everybody we could think of, to give it, you know, as a heads -up that we are getting ready to
go. So, you know, I just put this together as a way to kind of publicly kick off the process, so
that's all this, you know, represents. So anyway, we don't have to spend any time on this now
and we could, you know, all have input on it before we send it out. It was just a, you know, a
starting notice. So I envision that, you know, as soon as we do pick that initial date, that's going
to set this, you know, time line on and we'll need to kick this out as soon as possible.
And then Marni and I met with one public relations firm, Current Events in Kona, just to get some
feedback from them, and I don't have copies of this. Do you want to go over this? Do you have
your copy?
HERKES:
to make.
I've got -, well, I've got about four copies; I didn't know how many copies
RAY: Okay.
HERKES: So I made about four.
RAY: In regard to a contract, as long as it's under $25,000, we do have to, you
know, publicly notice, you know, for bids or whatever, but it's not a prolonged, you know,
process. In other words, we can, you know, put out a little RFP and, you know, publicize it and
get something in the works pretty quickly, but I'm not sure exactly what that is and exact time
line to bring somebody on board to, you know, plug them into a May, you know, meeting.
HERKES: One of the reasons I liked this particular public relations firm is because
they've done such a wonderful job with the Saddle Road project and I'm on that advisory group,
and that's -, had a possibility of being contentious, and those hearings have been very well done.
They've been very well organized, and everybody feels that they've been included, and I think it's
really been well done with newsletters and -, widely distributed newsletters.
IRVINE: Current Events is the name of the company?
HERKES: Yeah.
IRVINE: And who are the -?
HERKES: Ross Wilson and Debbie Baker.
IRVINE: Oh, okay.
BERKES: Ross Wilson would do it.
52
RAY:
HERKES:
Well, this give us, you know, the reason we did this -.
Debbie has a conflict.
RAY And I'm really glad they came up with this proposal, is that, you know, it
gives us a kind of scope of work and what, you know, an estimate of what, you know, we get for
this kind of money, and it's just, you know, a guideline of something we could discuss this
evening so -.
SANTANGELO: John, this paper you gave us, what's the purpose of this?
RAY: The purpose of this is when we decide that we're going to proceed on a
certain process that's going to involve, you know, the public, especially scoping meetings, that
we, you know, and we come up with sort of a general time line, that we broadcast this out to
every organization and group, you know, around the Island and encourage them to participate.
SANTANGELO: One of the things I'd like to see us get up and running here is Rock got the
Charter Commission -, the Charter on the Web, right?
HERKES: Yes, it's on.
SANTANGELO: So that's available.
HERKES: It's on.
SANTANGELO: We should be letting people know that. Something like this, I said
something, either this, but at the will of the Committee, but something like this should be a
preface or should be included with it because it gives the people a reason of what, I mean at least
what they're looking at, and then -, and it gives everybody the opportunity to download and have
in their home the County Charter, and that's never really been available. That's groundbreaking.
It's on the Web, we've got that available, and if there's anything, we should be advertising -.
RAY: Yeah. We will make it available in every, you know, way possible, but I
think the, you know, what we're waiting for, hopefully, is that we can come up with some sort of
a tentative time line or, you know, something we're considering, so that's why -. Gee, mine was
just the same as yours, and I hadn't even seen yours yet. March special election.
HERKES: Yeah. And I would not put that on there.
RAY: No. Okay.
HERKES: Or I would put that on there -.
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RAY: This -.
HERKES: If necessary.
RAY: This is very rough.
HERKES: Because -.
RAY: I mean, I just put something -.
HERKES: . That makes me think that it's already been decided.
RAY: Yeah, I'll put something -.
HERKE S : Yeah.
RAY: Just to -.
HERKES: Yeah.
RAY: Show you what it might look like, so we'll all get input and agree that, you
know, whatever it is we want to send out so -.
HERKES: And if we're going to hire a public relations firm, they are the ones to-.
RAY: You got that, Jason, this is not -?
ARMSTRONG: It's in print. I believe everything that's in print.
IRV : Oh, God.
HIGASHI: Mr. Chairman, back to the agenda.
RAY: Yes, sir.
HIGASHI: We're back on the -. I just have a question. When they talk about
advertising for $4,000 -.
RAY: Marni, maybe you can -.
IRVINE: Where are we?
I-IERKES: What's your -?
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HIGASHI: Back to the agendizing item.
HERKES: What's your question?
Oh.
HERKES: What's your question?
HIGASHI: The question is you have advertising and a fee, and in the fee, it also speaks
to advertising the two scoping meetings.
ALONZO: Seventeen thousand.
HIGASHI: So is it $4,000 advertising and another "X" amount of dollars for
advertising again or -? I'm confused by it.
HERKES: Develop an advertising schedule for Big Island print and radio advertising,
and then includes -.
HIGASHI: That may be kind of expense developing -.
HERKES: Includes adverting the two scoping meetings. The advertising would also
be for Charter Commission meetings, for input for the Charter, for -, I would suspect that we'd
want some ads as to how to give input, that we want some -, I'd like to see some attractive things
as to how you give input.
HIGASHI: Well, it's just a conflict. One says $13,000 includes meeting facilitation,
public relations and advertising.
HERKES: For the scoping meetings.
HIGASHI: Yeah. Right, right, right.
HERKES: Only. Two scoping meetings.
HIGASHI: Right, right. Okay.
HERKES: The other advertising is a budget for the Commission.
MARTIN: Would that be for the life of the Commission or -?
HERKE S : What?
55
MARTIN: Would that be for the life of the Commission?
HERKES: Yeah.
MARTIN: Okay.
HIGASHI: But on the top, when it says the preparation is for the upcoming Charter
Commission scoping meetings, Hilo and Kona, I mean those are the budgets so it's going to
confuse -. If it's going to be $4,000 -.
HERKES: Okay.
HIGASHI: It's going to be for something else -.
BERKES: Okay.
HIGASHI: Maybe it should be deleted from this proposal.
HERKES: Okay.
HIGASHI: You know, I mean, for this -.
RAY: Well, this is not, you know, this is not a bid or -.
HERKES: Yeah.
HIGASHI: Yeah, it's a -.
RAY: This is just a -. There again -.
HIGASHI: Yeah.
RAY: You know, something to give us a general, you know, ballpark figure.
HIGASHI: Right, right, right.
RAY: Of what a firm represents it could do for a figure, you know, and so that's
all it is right now.
HERKES: Well, yeah. You develop the advertising and then you place it.
RAY: So, you know, getting back to, you know, a starting point of, you know,
when we could, you know, kick this off from a public standpoint, I think that's what we need to,
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•
•
•
•
you know, hone in on when, you know, what's a realistic starting point to, you know, kick this
thing off And, you know, obviously, these two initial meetings, you know, we want to do a
really good job, and so we got to have, you know, time to, you know, publicize it and get the
word out, so that's the question, I don't know.
SANTANGELO: Okay. John?
RAY: John.
SANT ANGELO: I can
would like to see changed a
brought up here. And, you
speed and being running by
of commitments were made
that that schedule was there
like to see some -, maybe o
go back to the -, I really like this. The only thing, again, I take it,
bit is May moved a month ahead for a lot of reasons that were
know, when we first met, we talked about coming up, getting up to
June or at least by the end of the budget period, and that's -, so a lot
, and I think that after May, you know, we are "alone." We've known
, and we've gotten into it, and just for the whole comfort zone, I'd
ut kick-off in June rather than May, because we're really kicking it off
in June.
RAY: Yeah. Well, I think the -.
HIGASHI: Had it been expounded in several meetings, I never picked that up, and if
we did, I would have probably -, probably would have omitted.
RAY: Why? The logistics are the main consideration rather than people's, you
know, personal -.
HERKES:
RAY:
HIGASHI:
RAY:
HIGASHI:
I think so.
Just -.
Yeah, yeah.
When we can, you know, do a good job.
Right.
RAY: And as soon as we can start and do a good job, I'm all for going ahead.
Yeah.
KUROZAWA: John, do you think it's reasonable -? You hate to waste a month of time
for us, but would it be reasonable for us to meet with the County departments in May, since I'm
sure they've been thinking about this for years. And then plan on doing the community things in
June; that'll give us time to get the word out. But I surely hate to waste a month of not doing a
57
whole lot, and I'm sure the County departments have things and items that they want to bring
forward already, I expect.
SANTANGELO: And I would make comment to that that during the middle of a budget
process that's just grueling, like never before, and we did, Roland, we did make a change in that.
We kind of started off a little leisurely, and then you brought the urgency to it, that I bought into,
so I'm just saying we did change a bit.
RAY: Okay. Well, what -, okay, what's the -?
HIGASHI: Mr. Chair?
RAY: Yeah.
HIGASHI: When do we get to -? If we can hire these guys and they can do it within a
reasonable time, we can move along. If they feel that they cannot do it -?
SANTANGELO: Do we need our secretary or lawyer?
HIGASHI: They cannot do it within that time line that we've had, we can always move
it back.
RAY: Okay, now, let's just focus in on what these first meetings are, okay. So
what, you know, what do we really need to have on -. I mean, logistically, to pull them off in
terms of the public input, you know, we just need a certain amount of time, right, to, you know,
publicize it and pull it off.
HERKES: If we had the first meeting on May 22' and then the second meeting two
weeks later, that would give us four weeks, almost five weeks to plan.
ALONZO: Two weeks after, that's going to be June.
HERKES: The second meeting would be in June, but the first meeting would be
May 22', before Memorial Day weekend.
ALONZO: Then you're looking at June for graduations.
• HERKES: Say June 15t. What's a Saturday in June?
IRVINE: Yeah, it is, it's the 15t.
HIGASHI: Right in the smack of -.
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SANTANGELO: We have graduations through the whole damn summer.
HIGASHI: You have parties through the summer, yeah. Yeah, but graduations right
about that time.
SANTANGELO: Right there, the actual school graduations.
HERKES: Isn't it the end of May, early June?
SANTANGELO: Yeah.
HERKES: Is June 15th a -?
ALONZO: University is May.
HIGASHI: We don't have to hold it two weeks apart; we can hold it back-to-back,
one week -.
RAY: Yeah.
HIGASHI: In Kona.
• RAY: Memorial Day is the 3191
IRVINE: Twenty-two, yeah.
HERKES: So if we did one on May 22nd
HIGASHI: What about May 15th?
ALONZO: May 15 and 22"d?
HIGASHI: Yeah, I mean -.
HERKES: That's a month. Can we ask Roland to work with a public relations firm
and get some feedback?
HIGASHI: Once we hire them, I will.
HERKES: Yeah, because they won't work with you before you hire them.
YOSHIYAMA: When is the earliest that we can hire a firm? John, do you have any idea?
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MARTIN: We have that budget of $30,000 for this month, for this end of the fiscal, I
mean, we could hire them now, the prices at what we're -.
RAY: Yeah, yeah, he's asking -.
YOSHIYAMA: At anytime then, right?
MARTIN: I believe the criteria was that -.
RAY: Yeah, I apologize. I don't have that exact information as fax as -, I
discussed it with Bill Gray, but I don't remember exactly, and I don't want to misrepresent it.
HIGASHI: Okay.
RAY: In terms of what the time frame is on -.
YOSHIYAMA: But there's no bidding, there's no need to -.
HIGASHI: Professional services.
RAY: We do have to advertise.
HERKES: Yeah.
YOSHIYAMA: Oh, we do?
RAY: Yeah. He said yeah and solicit.
HIGASHI: Over $25,000?
RAY: No, under. If it's over 25, we do, but he said we do want to solicit.
YOSHIYAMA: That'll take time.
MARTIN: Not if we put it in the paper tomorrow.
HIGASHI: You can solicit proposals from PR firms, I mean, you don't have to
advertise.
RAY: Right.
HIGASHI: You know.
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• YOSHIYAMA: Oh, just solicit.
HIGASHI: Yeah, you can write to Kikuchi and
YOSHIYAMA: Oh, okay.
HIGASHI: Ross and -.
RAY: Right. Yeah, yeah. We don't -.
YOSHIYAMA: Oh, okay.
RAY: And, you know, and then we can pretty much make up our mind who we
want based on who we think can do the best job, so we don't have to, you know, it's just really
who we think fits the bill and so -, in other words, we can form a committee of three people to,
you know, go out and make this happen, and I think, you know, as long as we, you know, solicit
proposals from, you know, three firms or something, we're okay, yeah.
YOSHIYAMA: And then,. say we hire somebody. I mean, if, can we kind of imagine how
long that firm would take to put together something for us?
•
•
HERKES: No, we tell them.
YOSHIYAMA: A couple weeks?
HERKES: We tell them. We tell them when we're talking to them. This is what we
want you to do. Can you do it? And if so, how much would it cost?
RAY: I think the reason -, one reason, Marti and I, we talked to Current Events
is because we know the answer is yes, they've done and really performed well with, you know,
exactly those kind of things, s� I know they can do it.
HIGASHI: Right, right.
RAY: You know, they're plugged in, and maybe a bunch of other people can,
too, you know.
ALONZO: Can businesses sponsor the advertising, maybe three or four sponsors?
HIGASHI: No, we don't want that.
ALONZO: . Just asking.
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HIGASHI: So, Mr. Chairman, let's move down to resolving this. If we cannot hire
them at this meeting, we need to kind of take the appropriate action.
RAY:
out -.
HIGASHI:
RAY:
Yeah, we need to talk to Bill Gray first thing in the morning and figure
Okay, so -.
Exactly what -.
HIGASHI: At this meeting, what can we do? I mean, if we cannot hire anybody,
obviously, that May 8t thing is definitely out.
RAY: Yeah, I think May 8th seems definitely out, and as far as what -.
HIGASHI: And we're not having another meeting this month.
YOSHIYAMA: We could.
MARTIN: Yeah. If there is need, I think we should consider it.
ALONZO: This month?
HIGASHI: When we select the date, you know, I'd be willing to go secure the
facilities, you know, whether it's King Kam Hotel or Kona Surf or -. Marni and I can discuss
areas that we can hold the meeting. In Hilo, if we want to do it at the State Building in the
conference room or County Council Chambers, we can always make those arrangements, secure
the facilities. Sue and I have been talking about maybe looking at some facilitators. We haven't
been too lucky yet but, you know.
IRVINE: No, I did talk to the YMCA. They're not available on the 8th or the 22nd
HIGASHI: Yeah.
IRVINE: Unfortunately.
RAY: Marni.
HERKES: I make a motion that the Chairman appoint a small committee to hire a PR
firm to develop a plan for the scoping meetings.
SANTANGELO: Just that?
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HERKES: Just that.
HIGASHI: Second.
RAY: Okay, I have a second for discussion. Okay.
HIGASHI: I second.
RAY: Okay. Discussion?
SANTANGELO: My question would be why would we do that just for the scoping meeting?
Why wouldn't we want this firm to be with us through the duration? I'm perfectly willing to go
with the scoping meetings, but as we start to really get into the meat of things, I mean, it was my
understanding this Commission wanted to be able to communicate with the public.
MARTIN: I think John has a good point and that at some point we're going to have to
advertise what we have if we do want to take it to the public or special election, what have you,
and we're going to need somebody on board at that time. If we have the same people, continuity
is good.
HIGASHI: I think that Marni has a good point that we focus in on the scoping meeting
now and also put a RFP for a PR company, because it's going to entail -, scoping meetings are a
small part, but if you look at our budget, we spend a lot of money in advertising, doing the
educational program, whether we go tabloids, and somebody needs to kind of allay something.
It's going to take a lot of thought rather than just having a quick decision, so I think if we do
something now, we take care of the scoping meetings, and hopefully RFP a -, have an RFP out
for doing our total marketing and advertising program and see what people will come up with.
They can look at what's done in the past, yeah. Maybe they'll come up with new ideas, I'm not
sure, but I would recommend that we go with this now and then look at the bigger picture when
we have time.
SANTANGELO: I can support that, but I really have to -, I would like to get a sense from
this committee that what we want to do is we want to inform, educate and deal with the public on
a fair and equal basis, and that's -, I don't want to compromise that. And if we can move forward
with what you proposed, you two, I don't have a problem with that as long as it doesn't take
away from the other, because that's what's really important.
HERKES: Have you heard -, I'd be interested to know what you've heard that leads
you to think that maybe we weren't informing and educating the public, then maybe we weren't
all on that vein.
SANTANGELO: I think you took it a little too personally.
63
HERKES: No, I didn't take it personally at all.
SANTANGELO: I'm going to go back to -.
HERKE S : I'm trying to understand what you're saying.
SANTANGELO: With the County Council, there was so many things and so many issues
that came up -.
HERKES: This is not the County Council.
SANTANGELO: That you never, ever could work with the public. They were never
informed. And if you tried to use -, you couldn't use public funds. You know, you were always
at a loss to be able to offer things to the public; all you had was the opinions of a couple reporters
sitting there. Where here at this Commission, if we bring things up, it's my intent to want to be
able to use intelligent, media experts such as Current Events to be able to tabloid the information
and the education out so that we get informed input. It's just informed public.
RAY: Okay. Sue.
IRVINE: I am with John on that, but I think, on the other hand, hiring somebody
now is fine, just tell them we may have more work coming up.
RAY: Okay.
IRVINE: Thirteen thousand sounds rather high for two meetings.
HERKES: I thought it sounded cheap.
HIGASHI: No, Sue, I think what we need for them to do is to take all the
information -.
IRVINE: Yeah.
HIGASHI: Reduce it to writing, you know, and put it in a presentable form for us so
rather than have our secretary go through all the minutes, listen to everything, and then reduce
that to writing.. So I think a professional can do that.
IRVINE: Absolutely.
HIGASHI: I think the facilitator part may be the more expensive part rather than the
advertising and the planning.
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IRVINE:
HIGASHI:
IRVINE:
didn't ask about cost,
that.
YOSHIYAMA:
Yeah, I don't know if -.
I'm not sure. I have no idea what the cost is.
Yeah, I'm not sure what the costs were either. When I talked to the Y, I
I just asked if they were available and then they weren't and then that was
Can we include -?
(Indiscernible discussion)
RAY:
YOSHIYAMA:
RAY:
Is everybody listening?
Can we include some kind of date or can we -?
Some kind of a what?
YOSHIYAMA: Authorize the subcommittee to fix the date, at least the first one or the
second one so, you know, kind of speed up the process for the scoping meetings? Is that okay?
HERKES:
RAY:
YOSHIYAMA:
MARTIN:
there?
Is this discussion on the motion?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Excuse me. There's a motion on the floor, I believe, at this point, wasn't
RAY: Yeah.
ALONZO: Yeah.
MARTIN: And I'm just wondering if we should -, I'm just thinking out loud if we
should amend the motion to include, you know, giving the committee not only the authority to
hire but to fix a date or dates.
HER{ES: I won't allow you to amend it because my assumption is that if a
committee's going to hire a PR firm, they're going to hire them for dates, they're going to hire
them with a front end and a back end, and they're going to hire them to get it done.
HIGASHI: No, Marni, saying if not the 861, could be the 15th, 22nd, or -, you now.
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HERKES: Yeah.
HIGASHI: What is reasonable.
HERKES: What's reasonable for them though.
HIGASHI: Yeah, yeah. Whether they can facilitate and put the thing -.
HERKES: Yeah.
HIGASHI: Together.
YOSHIYAMA: All I'm saying is, you know, I hate the subcommittee to come back and
forth. I mean, you get the authority, just go with it and that's great. That would be great.
RAY: Steve.
BESS: You know, just so that we don't miss a month, I'm not sure about why we
need to go through with scoping meetings in May at any point in time, whether it's at the back
end of May or not. Why not, and notwithstanding what John said, fine, these guys are in budget
times, tough budget times, but I don't see that there's really any compelling reason why we can't
meet with the County departments in May, push this decision, you know, the scoping meetings off
until June, then they have plenty of time to come up -. Now, I'm not familiar with the public
relations "process and maybe these guys will be on board in no time by the 15th, but it seems like
we're letting the public relations committee and appointment of the public relations firm dictate
the schedule. We can deal with the County departments in May.
SANTANGELO: But I raise the question, Steve, can the County departments justify -, can
they work with us, being in the middle of this whole budget process in which they're cutting
millions, or at least hundreds of thousands out of their budget, they're dealing with vacant
positions, do they need -, I mean, they're dealing with a whole lot right now, and it's a football
that's being punted back and forth between the Mayor and the Council with the Legislature, as
Roland brought up, you know, coming to a close and then dealing with the reality of whatever
they hand us there. Because last time they closed, they closed with the whole TAT readjustment,
which impacted the budget, so I just offer that.
BESS: Is there anything wrong with requesting the County departments to do it in
May and seeing whether or not they can? And if they can't, then let's adjust.
RAY: Marni.
HERKES: I hear people making these suggestions because they're -, or I heard a
comment that we can't just let a whole month go by without doing things, that we have to do
66
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something in May. I'd like to point out that we hire a lawyer in May, we hire a secretary in May,
we could hire our PR firm in May. We are doing things, and these will all be things that will take
up our time, and we all have other jobs besides the Commission. And we want to do them well,
we want to spend some time on them, we'll be interviewing people, we'll be making those
decisions, and there'll be some research that has to go with it, and I think that if I were going to
do a time line, that I'd take into consideration the kinds of obligations that we've all got already in
May and probably look at moving that back. However, that wasn't the motion.
HIGASHI: No.
HERKES: And we're speaking to the motion, let's hire somebody.
HIGASHI: Getting back to the motion, the motion is we hire a public relations firm.
The date is another issue. We probably could come up with a motion to set the County at the
next day, then that's a separate issue, but we should get to this now, I mean -.
ALONZO: Call for the question.
HIGASHI: So the motion was to appoint a subcommittee of so many people doing -,
to engage in -.
RAY: Is the motion for the Chair to appoint a subcommittee?
HERKES: • Yes.
MARTIN: I believe it was.
ALONZO: It was.
HERKES: Yes, it was.
SANTANGELO: Yes, it was, specifically.
HERKES: Yes, it was.
RAY: Of three persons.
YOSHIYAMA: There was no count.
HERKES: I didn't say.
HIGASHI: A small committee, she said.
67
YOSHIYAMA: Small number.
HERKES: Small.
RAY. Do I have to tell you who before -?
MARTIN: We won't hold it against you.
HERKES: Frankly, you don't even have to have a committee.
RAY: Okay. Okay, all in favor, raise your right hand. Okay. Motion carries.
Okay, but -, since we have voted on that, you know, I think -.
HIGASHI: I like Steve's motion -, I mean, Steve's idea.
RAY: The time line, I think, is critical. Daryl, you had your hand up.
KUROZAWA: No, that's okay.
RAY: You know, my sense of -.
KUROZAWA: I was just going to support what Steve said.
RAY: You know, I'd feel more comfortable with a little more time on these
scoping sessions just to get it organized and do a good job and, you know, I'm not sure about the
County input, but we can put some feelers out on that and kind of, you know, see what we can
get in the works. You know, the -.
HIGASHI: We may not get them all but -.
RAY: But the -.
HIGASHI: At least we can get most of them.
SANTANGELO: Sure.
RAY: And, you know, it's a, you know, end-all thing, you know, one session
with a department; just like these initial scoping meetings just to get like a first read-out and
whatever, so it's not like, you know, these departments it's a one-shot deal, right, and we're not
going to hear anything again, so -.
SANTANGELO: That's true.
68
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•
RAY You know, maybe we can, you know, get a level of input initially and then,
you know, we can refine that as the process goes along. You know, the County departments are
also citizens of the County, and I guess they're free to participate in the process, you know,
throughout as well, right, and there are lots of ways, you know -. In other words, they're not
limited to a particular session with the Finance Department for input, right? In other words, they
can input, you know, individually, and in writing throughout the process, right?
HIGASHI: So, Mr. Chair?
RAY: Yeah.
HIGASHI: Moving to the May agenda as to who do we -, what do we do? Is it the
consensus, or you want a motion on the floor, or how you want to dispose of that question?
RAY:
HIGASHI:
MARTIN:
HIGASHI:
O RAY:
MARTIN:
•
RAY:
schedule so -.
HIGASHI:
ALONZO:
HIGASHI:
ALONZO:
MARTIN:
that there may
start earlier if,
with us?
As far as those initial meeting dates?
Whether we use a -.
I thought what he was talking about was swapping the June to the May.
June
Yeah.
That's what Mr. Bess indicated.
We don't need a motion for that, right? I mean, we didn't approve the
So we would use the County, do the County two meetings -.
In May.
In May, is that the consensus?
Yeah.
And I believe we got some of the concern for time as was being mentioned
be more lengthy. Would this format starting at five be appropriate or should we
in fact, these departments are going to take that much time to come in and dialogue
HERKES: We're not going to make them come in on Saturday?
69
MARTIN: We could do that, too; it's not a problem.
ALONZO: No problem.
MARTIN: I mean, I don't know, is that okay with their -.
SANTANGELO: I'm sure Richard would likely be first.
MARTIN: Department heads? Whatever.
ALONZO: We can do weekdays after maybe 4:30 when they finish working.
I-IERKES: I always like, when I'm having people come in and do things, I always like
to ask them what's most convenient for them. It's like to say if you guys had your druthers,
what -, how would you like to do this?
SANTANGELO: As long as they're not cooking or going to conventions.
HIGASHI: When we allow the departments, there's a lot of people we need to ask.
SANTANGELO: That's the Council, not the department heads.
MARTIN: And as was being mentioned, too, the departments are not only department
heads but people who work in them, too, and they should have an opportunity to also partake.
RAY: I'm not sure.
MARTIN: How do we handle that?
RAY: Yeah.
IRVINE: I don't think we're going to find County employees coming over here to
tell us how they think the Charter ought to be changed, other than appointed heads.
ALONZO: They don't have to come here to give some testimony.
IRVINE: Okay. We need -, then we need a mechanism for them to anonymously,
probably, get us input.
ALONZO:
that person.
That means we're going to have somebody to come and speak on behalf of
HIGASHI: No need. They can submit in writing.
70
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RAY: John.
ALONZO: If they submit it -.
SANTANGELO: Let's not underestimate the directors and -.
IRVINE: Oh.
SANTANGELO: And people like that.
IRVINE: Oh, no, they'll come.
SANTANGELO: Who are in a lame duck era, that really probably feel very strongly, you
know, have had eight years of dealing with something, and they may have strong opinions
about how to change it.
IRVINE: I said the County employees; I was not talking about the -.
SANTANGELO: Yeah.
IRVINE: Appointed directors -.
• SANTANGELO: As far as -.
IRVINE: Will certainly come.
SANTANGELO: As far as the management of directors -, of departments, they're available
almost anytime. It's amazing how much time -, they're available at night, but they're available.
during the daytime, too. You know, I mean, they're really, they're very good at that.
RAY: Well, what did everybody envision in terms of, you know, these meetings
with the department heads? Were you thinking of Saturdays, as well?
HIGASHI: I envision most of them having it in writing.
HERKES: Yeah, that's what I envision.
HIGASHI: I mean, they can kind of -, brief summarize their statement, but most of
them, I think, would be in writing. But I think we need to give the public an agendized item in
which they can formally put their input against the departments. What if we start at the regular
time, at 3:00 or 3:30 you know, and still -?
ALONZO: Weekdays?
71
HIGASHI: On a weekday.
HESS: Well, and the nice thing about that is the department heads can come in at
three and the employees can come in pau hana, after work and things, so that there'll be a
continuation.
BESS: You know, in terms of the County meetings, what I envision, anyway, is an
opportunity to really dialogue with these people, that it would be a different kind of format than
what we'd normally have with the public, where we would just be getting input; there really
would be a give and take.
SANTANGELO- That's right.
BESS: To understand what they're talking about.
RKES: Ask questions.
BESS: Yeah.
SANTANGELO: That's right.
RAY: So time frame or, you know -.
BESS: I think that's reasonable.
HERKES: So, Mr. Bess.
BESS: Yes.
HESS: That brought up something really neat for me in the fact that maybe we, as
a Commission, should write a letter to the County department heads and employees and invite
them to come and dialogue with us, invite them to come and explain the problems that they've
had with the Charter, how it could be -, how they see it could be improved. That's -, yeah, I think
that would -.
MARTIN: I think to add to what she's saying, and it's a great idea, is we have so
many departments that this book covers, choose them out and set forth a day that they should be
and a time, and then they're on the agenda and everybody is covered at that point.
YOSHIYAMA: Mr. Chair?
RAY: That's a lot of -, yeah. I mean in budget hearings where we go how many
days for departments.
72
•
•
01, IRVINE: This probably falls somewhere between budget hearings and just submitting
written statements -.
RAY. Right, right.
IRVINE: That Roland's talking about. These people better be ready to defend what
they have to say, but we'd hope they'd send us written something ahead of time that we could -.
Personally, I like to read things first and then hear what they have to say about them and I can
come up with questions.
HIGASHI: Strong budget hearings are going to be end of May, early June, that's
when -? The revised budget from the -Mayor goes in when, 15th or something like that?
SANTANGELO: Yeah.
HIGASHI:
So it's May 15.
RAY: Yeah. You know, I really don't have a sense of how much time this is
going to require.
RKES: Well, why don't you -?
HIGASHI: Schedule two meetings and see what we can do.
HERKES: Ask some department heads? Ask them what they think about it.
ALONZO: See what happens we hold the two meetings and we go from there. We
• don't now until we do it.
RAY: So the two meetings, you want to try to do them Wednesday meetings?
BESS: I think that would be good.
RAY: Try to do two -.
YOSHIYAMA: Just don't do it when they have a Council meeting, they may be subject to
call up there or whatever.
RAY: So try to pick two Wednesdays in May? Mr. Wurdeman, do you have any
thoughts on this?
WURDEMAN: Well, which Wednesdays in May?
73
(Indiscernible discussion)
ALONZO: The 15th and the 22°d.
SANTANGELO: The ones that you're not meeting in Council, sharing your non -Council
weeks, so that would be the second and the fourth Wednesday.
WURDEMAN: That would be the 12th and the 26th.
MARTIN: Yeah.
WURDEMAN: Assuming they stick to their schedule, but they do jump around. I don't
know what their -? Is that -?
RAY: Yeah.
IRVINE: That's the second and the fourth.
RAY: They're probably meeting the 5th and the 19th.
ALONZO: Well, our Charter says Wednesdays.
RAY: How about starting earlier or -? So what is -, how about 3:00 p.m.
meetings on the 12th and the 19th.
SANTANGELO: Twelfth and 19th?
HERKES: Twelfth and 19th?
IRVINE: 1 still don't think we're going to get through all the County departments
but -.
HIGASHI: At least we'll have a sense -.
HERKES: Well, let's start them.
HIGASHI: And we can always set it the next month again.
SANTANGELO: And you're right, Richard, they have their Western -, well, most of them
don't go to the Western Regional, but they move their Council meetings as a result of that in
May.
IRVINE: So -.
74
i
HERKES: Twelfth and 19th is fine.
HIGASHI: It doesn't bother your Republican meeting, yeah?
RAY: No, the 12th and 26th, I said.
HERKES: Oh, you're not doing the 19th, you're doing the 26th?
RAY: The 19th is a Council day.
HIGASHI: Don't you have Republic convention on the 22nd or something?
SANTANGELO: April.
HIGASHI: Oh, April.
HERKES: Oh, not -, that's the Western Regional Conference, and John just said they
moved their Council meetings because of that.
(Indiscernible discussion)
SANTANGELO: No, I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about the Council.
St
��g; May 19th.
SANTANGELO: So 12th and 19th are fine because they moved that Council meeting.
RAY: Okay, you want to do them two weeks in a row versus -?
SANTANGELO: Sure. I mean, whatever.
ALONZO: Three p.m.?
HIGASHI: Gary, getting back to the question of the secretary, is that -?
ALONZO: They can handle, the secretary?
HIGASHI: By then we should be able to hire the secretary, by that May, yeah?
ALONZO: Jan, are you available that -?
HIGASHI: Twelfth and -.
75
YOSHIYAMA: They'll hire somebody.
ALONZO: She'll be available both dates.
YOSHIYAMA: I don't think you can hire anybody, but we'll see.
HIGASHI: Yeah, yeah.
RAY: So -, okay. We're going to shoot for two consecutive Wednesdays in
May, the 12th and the 19th, starting at 3:00 p.m. Is that -? Okay.
BESS: With an opportunity for Kona people to meet when, Marni? No, I mean,
you know, we're going to have the Hilo guys, but I mean there are other -.
HERKES: Do we have any -?
MARTIN: It's a good point.
HERKES: Department heads in Kona?
BESS: Employees. No, I'm -, well, I'm addressing what Sue is saying here is that,
you know, we don't want to exclusively limit it to, you know, Hilo employees and so -.
HERKES: Who' s in Kona?
IRVINE: Royden.
RAY: No -.
HERKES: Tom Pack.
RAY: Department heads. It would only be -.
BESS: There's no department heads, it's only employees.
HERKES: Yeah.
SANTANGELO: You know, and somehow, I don't know if we can do that, I realize
everybody's equal under the law and God made all of the little children, but -.
BESS: Well, anyway, I was just -.
HIGASHI: Scoping meeting they can submit it again.
76
40 BESS:
SANTANGELO:
BESS:
•
•
Yeah.
But department heads carry a certain weight with me.
Got it.
RAY: So what are you thinking in terms of, you know, how we divide this up?
Are we going to ask for, you know, half the departments to submit something on the 12t and the
other half on the 19t like we do the budget hearings?
MARTIN How many departments re we talking about, I mean that the Charter
carries -?
HIGASHI: I think, John, maybe you have a sense of what several large departments
and some smaller departments, kind of break them up into two meetings.
RAY Yeah, except that I don't have any sense of which ones would have more
versus less input in regard to the Charter issue.
BESS: Well -.
RAY:
BESS:
comments by
could be split
IRVINE:
us -.
BESS:
IRVINE:
BESS:
RAY:
BESS:
RAY
HERKES :
With the budgets, it's kind of, you know, they -, that's -.
What we could do is just ask that they be required to submit their
some date prior to the 12th, and then you get a feel for how it's going to be -, how it
out based on the comments they're making in the written statement.
Just ask them how much time they think they'd like to have to present to
Sure.
Their thoughts.
And then have them respond -.
But how do we schedule -?
By the 5th.
Who's on the 12th or who's -?
Why don't you let them schedule?
77
BESS: And then you -.
HIGASHI: Schedule them all.
BESS: And then you schedule them.
HIGASHI: And then we just call which one, that way we won't violate Sunshine Law.
SANTANGELO: Steve, you worked in government, so I really respect your opinion here but
just demanding stuff from people doesn't mean you're going to get quality work in this short a
time. My question, and I just ask real quick, is has the departments been really given a heads up
that we care about what they think? Because if they did, then maybe they'd be ready to do
something, but if they're going to be, all of a sudden, given the heads up that we care about what
they think and then submit something intelligent and pertinent within this short a time, I'm -.
HIGASHI: I mean it's our suggestion. We don't know -.
MARTIN: If they have no comment on the Charter, that means that it's working fine
for them then.
HIGASHI: We can just hold the meeting and see what happens.
MARTIN: There's no change needed.
SANTANGELO: I just thought for information, this is the first -.
HIGASHI: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
IRVINE: I think there's no problem with asking if they are able to come up with
something by the 12th because we're planning our meetings then or the 19th, and if they can't do
that -.
RAY: No, I'm just trying to think -.
IRVINE: We'll schedule later.
RAY: How we divide it up, you know, time -wise so that we -. I mean -.
MARTIN: Again, I count 12 departments.
HERKES: Did you -?
IRVINE: At least.
78
i
•
•
0 MARTIN:
IRVINE:
•
That is covered here.
Yeah.
MARTIN: So it's six -six, and then as was being mentioned, big and small, I don't
know how you consider one bigger than the other.
SANTANGELO: Oh, easy, I mean like John said, budget -, yeah, Finance probably has a lot
of things that -, because they touch on everything. They're so inter -.
HIGASHI: Barry's organized, you know, basically, he's organized.
IRVINE: I'm sure Finance is major, and I'm also -, the other thing though, Planning
just had an amendment passed in the last election, so they may not have any further problems with
the Charter.
RAY:
SANTANGELO:
RAY:
So -.
It wasn't exactly their idea.
If we take -, if we divide it up six and six and ask six to come in on the 12th
and six on the 19t and -.
SANTANGELO: And this is opening salvo, so as -.
RAY: Right.
SANTANGELO: Long as it's understood this isn't the end of it all. You may have to adjust
a little bit according what numbers you have, your responses.
IRVINE: I think you need to ask them how long they think they'd, you know, like to
take for their presentation, and if you can get 12 in on two times, fine. If you can't -.
RAY: Yeah, I'm just wondering the logistics of pulling all this together,
contacting 12, you know, 12 different departments and getting, you know, in put back, you know.
YOSHIYAMA: All of the departments are under the Mayor except Water Supply.
RAY:
YOSHIYAMA:
with the logistics and,
Yeah.
So why don't we just write to the Mayor and ask him to, you know, deal
you know, kind of coordinate, and Water Supply same thing and -.
79
IRVINE: We also have Prosecuting Attorney, Liquor.
HERKES: Police.
IRVINE: Civil Service isn't under the Mayor.
BESS. I would prefer to go along the lines that you're talking about, just split
them up, and I would like letters to go out to individual department heads to let them know that
we really do care about what they're saying, that it's not all screened out through the Mayor's
Office and he has just one spokesman. We're really trying to get as broad a participation as
possible.
MARTIN:
the -.
I'd like the letter to proceed down the pike though and make sure that
ALONZO: Employees.
MARTIN: Employees under that person is aware of this letter.
ALONZO: Yeah.
MARTIN: And maybe get a copy of it.
HIGASHI: They can post it, right, Gary?
HERKES: I think that's up to the department heads.
MARTIN: I don't think so.
YOSHIYAMA: No.
SANTANGELO: Sure.
HERKES: Well, how do you do it then?
ALONZO: Put in the bulletin board in front.
HIGASHI: You can post.
ALONZO: Permission
HIGASHI: Gary can post it, right, Gary?
80
•
1
•
RAY: Okay, well, I -.
MARTIN: Put it in the union letter.
HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, I need to leave pretty soon, so if we can resolve this quickly.
RAY: Yeah. Well, let me have a shot at it and I'll scream if, you know -.
HERKES: See what it looks like.
RAY: But let's -, we'll -.
HIGASHI: You can email or fax us a proposal and -.
RAY: Shoot for the -.
HIGASHI: Right?
RAY: We'll plan on meetings on the 12th and the 19th, starting at 3:00 p.m. I will
solicit input from and request, you know, something in writing and hopefully m person from, you
know, interested departments on those two dates and divide it up.
• SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman, just a question as to the administration of this. Do you have
temporary help or do you have secretarial help with this or is this something that's just totally
incumbent upon you?
RAY: I do have -, I have private resources to do this, so it's not a great burden. I
can do -. And we've got stationery now so, you know, I can get this stuff out. Okay. And I'd -.
•
(Indiscernible discussion)
BESS: One thing about this inviting the County department heads. While, you
know, they may be able to come in at any point in time to express their opinion, I think there
should be some indication that we want it now, nicely. You know what I'm saying? I would hate
for them to say, don't worry, we can do it anytime in the next year.
RAY: Yeah.
SANTANGELO: That's well taken.
RAY: I understand. Okay. All right, so I will get to that immediately. All right,
where are we here?
81
SANTANGELO: Give the Chairman an agenda quick.
RAY: Okay. Announcements. I think we covered the next meeting dates, dates,
times, places. Anything else? Motion to adjourn?
SANTANGELO: So moved.
ALONZO: Second.
RAY: All right. Thank you everybody.
The discussion ended at 7:45 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Janet L. Kama
Interim Secretary
82
HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER.
The original Hawaii County Charter, which is authorized by State law, was adopted in 1968 by special election.
',This set up the manner by which the County govemment operates today.
Under the Charter, there are two branches of govemment: The Executive Branch, headed by the Mayor and
consisting of the County Departments, such as Finance, Parks and Rec., Public Works, Fire and Police, etc., and the
Legislative Branch made up of the County Council and its support offices.
The County Charter sets forth the structure of our govemment in Hawaii County. It's the legal rule book which
states how govemment operates.
Amendments or changes to the Charter may be initiated or brought up in three ways:
• By ordinance (Bill) of the County Council after (3) separate readings passed by an affirmative vote or two-thirds of the
entire membership.
• By submittal of a petition to the Council from 20% of the registered voters, or
• By a Charter Commission, which must be appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the Council — to review the Charter
every ten years.
In all cases, the voters of the County must vote on the proposals to amend the Charter.
This third process, a Charter Commission Review, is what we're embarking on and encouraging your participation.
The Charter has been twice reviewed — in 1979, and 1990 and those Charter Commissions recommended (31)
amendments, 25 of them approved by the voters.
IPStarting in February of this year, your present Charter Commission will be reviewing the Charter for the third time
and proposing amendments for either a special election or the General Election in the year 2000.
The general process with a tentative timeline is as follows:
February — March 1999 — General organization and hiring of legal and secretarial staff.
April — May. 1999 — Public relations effort to engage and educate the community followed by island -wide forums
to get input for Charter amendments.
June.- Augusi...1999 — Solicit input from County Departments.
August — December. 1999 — Put together all the pieces with additional community input and dialogue.
December — February 2000 — Commission meets and comes up with specific recommendations.
March 2000 — Special Election
Amendm_e.nt_s oropQeegLky t e_p_rosis_Charter Cammisskm imlude:
• Creation of nine single member Council Districts and reducing Council terms from four to two years.
• Term limits for Council — (4) — 2 year terms.
• Recall of elected officials.
• Centralized purchasing.
• Confirmation of Department heads by County Council.
• Changes to County budgeting procedures.
• Initiative and Referendum.
• Establishing minimum qualifications for Finance Director, Planning Director, Managing Director, and Fire Chief.
These are only a sample of the past amendments which were discussed or proposed. Copies of the County
Charter, which contains previous proposed amendments, are available in the County Council office in Hilo and the Mayor's
office in Kona. Please encourage your membership and friends to participate in this important process.
MAK -31-99 WED 1:30 PM County of Hi Acct Div
•
•
FAX NO. 808 961 8569 P. 2
1990 Charter Commission
Expenditures
2/1/89 through 4/26/91
Salaries and wages $ 31,951.16
Postage - - 15,00
Telephone 784,09
Travel 811.83
Advertising 18,744.62
Mileage 9,651.09
Miscellaeous Contractual Services:
Legal fees 34,297.40
Mail information to voters 7,066.78
Uniforce temporary help 1,800.35
Other 3,411.27
Office supplies 1,581,23
Subscriptions 194.21
Rent 188.21
Miscellaeous Charges 854.16
Total expenditures $ 111,351.40
Subj: Request To Hire
4/7/99 11:25:59 AM Hawaiian Standard Time
: gyoshiya@hgea.org (Gary Yoshiyama)
To: jray464562@aol.com
CC: konakcc@gte.net
John - (follow up to my 4/6 email) Following is a draft letter to Mayor
Yamashiro request approval to hire a Secretary-Administative Assistant for
the Commission. Civil Service informed me that Mayor must give his approval
to hire by contract. Can you please revise/finalize and send to Mayor?
Draft follows:
Dear Mayor Yamashiro:
The Hawaii County Charter Commission requests your approval to hire, via
personal services contract, a Secretary -Administrative assistant for a
period of less than one year.
The Commission is presently working out details (job description, personal
services contract, recruitment and selection procedures) with the Hawaii
County Department of Civil Service.
The Commission believes that the services of a secretary -administrative
assistant are necessary to carry out our function. Pertinent information
follows:
1. Contract Term: June 1999 to March 31, 2000. Contract may be extended
"pond March 31, 2000 but in any case will be less than one year.
2. Hours of Work: 19 hours per week. An increase in hours may arise in
the future necessitating amendment.
3. Job Title/Description: Secretary -Administrative Assistant. Job duties
and responsibilities, and minimum qualifications fall within the class
specifications for Secretary -Administrative Assistant, 1.125 (Department
of Civil Service, County of Hawaii).
4. Pay Rate: Hourly, comparable to SR 20.
5. Stipend: Stipend may be negotiated for utilization of employee's
office space and equipment.
Your approval is appreciated. With your early approval, we will be able to
initiate recruitment, by advertising for the position, on April 25, 1999.
Following this time line, we are confident that a secretary -administrative
assistant will be onboard in early June 1999.
Should you have any questions, please call Personnel Director Mike Ben at
961-8361 or myself at 329-2334.
Sincerely,
JOHN RAY
Chairperson
Hawaii County Charter Commission
Wednesday, April 08, 1998 America Online: JRay464562 Page: 1
Subj: Charter Commission Sec/Admin Asst
r 4/6/99 2:54:49 PM Hawaiian Standard Time
OWE gyoshiya@hgea.org (Gary Yoshiyama)
To: konakcc@gte.net
CC: jray464562@aol.com
I met with County of Hawaii Civil Service staff today. They were very
helpful and informative.
Job Description and Personal Services Contract -
I was given samples for the job description and (generic) personal services
contract. I will continue to work with CMI Service staff to complete drafts.
Recruitment -
When we give the go-ahead to Civil Service, job will be advertised in
Tribune Herald, West Hawaii Today, appear in local State/County public
notice, Civil Service job (phone)hotline, and circulated to interested parties.
Normally a single ad is put out. I need to get back to Civil Service as to
whether we want the ad to appear more than once and what's the frequency.
Recruitment Timetable - Assuming Commission approves our recommendations
gob description, contract, recruitment, etc) on 4/14, the timetable may be:
1. 1 week advance notice to get ad ready/processed
2. Ad to appear on 4/25.
3. Closing date for applications (11 working days) - 5/10. Add two days
for applications post -marked 5/10.
iv,
Service screening of applications (to check if applicants meet
um qualification requirements) - 2 days - depending on number of
applications.
5. Provide applicants 1 week to fumish additional information if necessary.
6. Look like we will get a listing of qualified applicants in the 3rd or
4th week of May.
Some questions we will need to answer in the near future:
a. Do we want applicants to take a proficiency for shorthand or go with
self certification? OR a combination thereof?
b. Do we want a listing of all applicants, all applicants who meet minimum
qualifications, top five, applicants who meet preferences, etc?
As soon as you get the "preference" info to me, I'II get it to Civil Service.
Finally, a letter needs to be written to the Mayor requesting approve to
hire a person via personal services contract. I'll draft a letter and fwd
it to John Ray and you.
Please call me if you have any questions.
Gary Yoshiyama
Hawaii Division, HGEA/AFSCME
495 Manono Street, Hilo, Hawaii 96720
Ph:808-935-6841 Fax
e-mail:gyoshiya@hgea.org
•
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Projected Recruitment and Selection Timetable - Position: Secretary/Administrative
Assistant to Hawaii County Charter Commission (4/14/99)
I. Recruitment:
A. Job opening will be advertised in the Hawaii Tribune Herald, West Hawaii Today,
will appear in the (new) local State/County public notice, County Civil Service job hotline, and
circulated to interested parties on civil service mailing list.
B. The print media ad will be placed in the Sunday edition. Option: appear on
additional days.
II. Recruitment and Selection Timetable:
A. Provide Civil Service Department at least one (1) week advance notice to place ad.
Example: give Civil Service the word to proceed on 4/15, then ad will appear in print media on
Sunday, 4/25.
B. Application time period will be eleven (11) working days. Using above example:
5/10. Add a couple of days for receipt of application post -marked 5/10.
C. Civil Service will screen application to check whether applicants meet minimum
qualification requirements. This may take two (2). days, depending upon the number of
applications received.
D. Application followup: Factor in providing applicants one (1) week to furnish
additional information.
E. Obtain a listing of qualified applicants. Above example: Third or fourth week in
May.
F. Initiate (optional) oral interview process and fmal processing. Bring new employee on
board in early June 1999.
C:\DATA\W P W IMCHARTERC\RECRUIT. W PD
•
eoi.....‘lvo4 I 41 litzsc.
Following is a note made by Corporation Counsel in reply to our request for
review of draft contract:
"It is unclear what department or agency will be administering this contract; if
the charter commission, note that H.R.S. Section 50-7 and Charter Section 15-3
requires appropriation by the Council for appointment of staff."
H.R.S. Section 50-7 Powers of the commission. ... It may, with the approval of the
legislative body of the county, appoint staff members and consultants as it deems
necessary.
Section 15-e. Mandatory Charter Reviews. ... The council shall appropriate funds to
enable the commission to carry out its duties, including the hiring of necessary staff.
From: Main HerKos I o: Rudy Legaspi
Uate: 3/24790 -Time: 6:50:46 PM nage 2 or 4
HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION
NEXT SPECIAL MEETING: APRIL 14, 1999, AT 5:00 IN THE HAWAII
COUNTY LIQUOR COMMISSION CONFERENCE ROOM IN HILO
Regular (an!or special) meetings will be on the third Wednesday of every month at 5prn
in Hilo. These will be `special meetings' until such time as the rules are officially
changed.
MINUTES for March 17, 1999
Hawaii County Liquor Commission Conference Room
in the Hilo Lagoon Center
I. CALL TO ORDER: The special meeting of the Hawaii County Charter
Commission was called to order at Spm on March 17, 1999. The Chair
distributed a copy of Public Agency Meetings and Records (HRS Chapter 92),
Budget Report from 1988 and advertisement for the Notice of Providers of Legal
Professional Services.
II. ATTENDANCE: Chair, Ray; Alonzo, Balog, Bess, Herkes, Higashi, Irvine,
Kurozawa, Martin, Santangelo, Yoshiyama
111. MINIJTF,S: The minutes dated February 20, 1999, were corrected by Irvine to
add "two" to the end of lire 3 on page 24. They were accepted as corrected. The
minutes need to "record actions of the Commission" but need not be verbatim.
The intent of the discussion and the meeting are important to relay.
IV. FINANCIAL STATUS REPORT: MOTION: THE CIIAIR. AND VICE
CHAIR AUTHORIZE PAYMENTS FOR INVOICES AND THE
SECRETARY HANDLE PAPERWORK. The motion was unanimously
passed.
1. Chair is working w/ County Financial Officer, Harry Takahashi, to develop a
budget. The Charter Commission has $10,000 in a misc. account, the Finance
Committee is discussing allocating another $20,000 until June 30, 1999 and we
would expect S100,000 for the Y2000. The Council is concerned that there is no
budget but Chair is working on draft with Hawaii County Finance Department.
2.Letterhead has been ordered
3.Initial ads for legal counsel are running.
4.County Treasurer, Dixie Kaotsu, is setting up accounts
5. No County boards and commissions have paid stat
From: Marni Herkes To: Rudy Legaspi Date: 3124198 Time: 6:50:46 PM Page 3 of 4
6. Signature cards signed by Chair and V. Chair. Secretary will submit invoices to
county and process paperwork.
V. COMMUNICATIONS: Chair would like us to have short, one page hand/mail out on
the current charter for information. The Charter is now on the web. Do we have a
discussion segment?
VI. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC: Mr. Henry Ross, of Kohala and Hilo Lagoon,
was the only public member present and appreciated the Commission taking the time to
hear his comments. Although he realizes it is early in the process, he has read the
minutes of the February 20 meeting and "was not greatly impressed". He would like
notices of meetings more explicit as he read a notice in the HTH that did not have the
time of meeting. His continents were given verbally and not submitted in writing but he
would like the Commission to keep to broad goals and objectives and:
1. Deal with the shoreline setback and define in Charter. He suggests 200'.
2. No more draft bills in the Council that the public has not seen
3. Try to regulate how people 'can go with land use'
4. Put Chapter 343, EIS code requirements in. County Charter
5. Enable elected Neighborhood Boards
6. No jail on Big Island
7. Police should at least have a high school education
8. Nail down police
9. Police Commission minutes should be made public
10. Attorney Bess is Chair of the attorney search committee and may have a conflict
11. Local police need to enforce noise and drinking laws
12. Qualification of county officials should be spelled out.
VII. 1 TNFINTSHRD RI JSINESS
A. Selection of Commission's Attorney: April 12 is the deadline and applications are
being received
B. Selection of Commission's Secretary: MOTION: HIRE AN EMPLOYEE WHO IS
AN ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT. The motion was carried 6 in favor and 5
oppose.
1. Past Commissions have had a part-time, contract secretary. 10 years ago
secretary was full time assigned to Mayor's office. Is there a vacant position in
the Mayor's office now?
2. Concern about the RFP for a contract hire? Can Commission supervise?
3. Part time would be one commission meeting a month (16 hours = 4hrs. meeting,
4hrs transcribing and up to 4 hours driving); 8 hours a week research (32 hours);
five hours a week answering c -mail and messages (20 hours) which cquals 68
hours a month. To this may be added transcripts for public meetings, al the most
16 hours, which comes to 84 hours a month or ?/ of full time (160 hours a
month).
From: Marni Herkes To: Rudy Legaspi Date: 3!24/99 Time: 6'50:46 PM
4. Independent contractor would he too independent and commission would have no.
say. Concern was expressed that Civil Service hire may not have flexible hours.
Finally resolved that committee would meet again, temporary help would be hired
for two months and committee would recommend to the Commission.
5. It was suggested that working toward consensus would be favorable.
C. Budget Considerations: Chair Ray will develop
1. FY ending June 30, 1999 = $30,000 Full and final budget plan due in May
2. FY ending June 30, 2000 = $100,000
3. FY July ending December 31, 2000
VIII. NEW BUSINESS
A. Goals and Objectives
1. Creation or standing and/or Subcommittees
a. A scoping Committee was formed with Roland Higashi as Chair, members:
Alonzo, Balog, Irvine, Martin
b. Communications/Public Relations committee with John Ray and Marni
Herkes. How do we encourage voter participation?
2. Are we looking at drastic changes, such as special election? Maybe in January
2000? Ask County Clerk to investigate w/ elections officer. What is the
timetable? What are the things that favor special elections? Investigate how
actions affect the people who will run for office?
3. Community Scoping Meetings in Hilo and Kona. What changes? In April and/or.
May. Hire a facilitator, public relations firm to get message out and set up
productive meetings.
4. County department comments and interface: how does their department work?
Maybe through the summer. Get their ideas.
5. Non-partisan elections
6. Can we adopt part of the charter in special election?
LX. ANNOUNCEMENTS: These will be special meetings until we get time/date set.
Next meting will be on April 14, 1999, at 5pm in the Hawaii County Liquor
Conference Room.
Faye 4OT4
CONTRACT
THIS AGREEMENT MADE THIS day of , 1999,
between the COUNTY OF HAWAII, a municipal corporation of the State of Hawaii,
hereinafter called "County," and , hereinafter
called "Employee";
Witnesseth:
For and in consideration of
($ ) per hour, the Employee agrees to provide services as a Secretary -
Administrative Assistant to the Charter Commission for the County commencing on
and terminating no later than the close of business on
March 31, 2000. Employee's work schedule shall be varied with hours of work set at
19 hours per week. Work in excess of 19 hours per week shall be as authorized by
the Commission Chairperson; Employee shall be compensated for such hours in
accordance with applicable statutory provisions.
This contract shall be subject to the additional terms, conditions, and
covenants (Exhibit A) and the Statement of Duties and Responsibilities that are
attached hereto (Exhibit B) and made a part hereof.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have set their hands on the date first above
written.
Recommend approval:
Appointing Authority
APPROVED AS TO FORM AND LEGALITY:
Corporation Counsel
County of Hawaii
Date:
COUNTY OF HAWAII
By
Its Mayor
EMPLOYEE
•
EXHIBIT A
EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE CONTRACT
ADDITIONAL TERMS, CONDITIONS AND COVENANTS
OF EMPLOYMENT
(Personal Services)
1. This employmentcontract is for a limited term only and is pursuant to
Section 8 of Act 230, SLH 1998, and exempt from civil service under Section 76-77(10),
Hawaii Revised Statutes.
2. The Employee shall be entitled to receive fringe benefits as regulated by
law and the Rules Relating to Vacation and Sick Leave of the County.
3. The Employee shall perform the Employee's duties, attached hereto and
made a part hereof, under the direction of the Commission Chairperson.
4. The Employee shall provide an insured private vehicle for use in conjunction
with the Employee's duties and responsibilities for which. Employee shall be reimbursed for
mileage at the rate of 37 cents per mile for eachmile traveled for business purposes.
5. (Other conditions—to be included as appropriate)
6. This contract is for personal services and cannot be assigned or delegated
without the prior written consent of the County of Hawaii.
7. Employee shall not be entitled to continued employment after the
completion of this contract or any other term of employment.
8. This contract may be terminated without cause by either party upon ten
days' written notice to the other party before the effective date of such termination,
provided that it is understood and agreed that any services to be provided in
accordance with the terms of this contract may be terminated immediately, in whole or
•
•
in part, upon a finding by the County that the services must be provided by public
employees pursuant to Civil Service Laws or that such services will be discontinued. It is
further understood that should such a finding be made, the County will not be liable
under this contract for any resulting damages, and such a termination will not be
considered a breach of this agreement.
Dated:
I have read, understand and agree
to the above conditions.
Employee
COUNTY OF HAWAII
By
Its Mayor
•
EXHIBIT B
STATEMENT OF DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
1. Serves as private secretary to the Chairperson of the Charter Commission.
2. Attends regular and special meetings of the Charter Commission and takes
and transcribes accurate minutes of meetings and public hearings.
3. Prepares, reproduces, and records the official minutes of the Charter
Commission and is responsible for the filing and maintenance of the minutes.
4. Assists the Chairperson of the Charter Commission in the preparation of the
Commission's agenda by organizing, arranging, and setting up the various
items of the agenda for orderly review; arranges logistics for meetings/hearings.
5. Gathers background data from historical records; compiles and summarizes
data, and assembles background material as requested by the Chairperson of
the Charter Commission.
6. Relieves the Chairperson of the Charter Commission of as many operating
details as possible, using considerable judgment and application of experience
in making decisions to dispose of matters not requiring the Chairperson's
personal attention.
7. Receives and reviews all correspondence, reports, and other communications
directed to the Charter Commission considering their priority; composes
correspondence for the signature of the Chairperson of the Charter
Commission; maintains files of reports and correspondence pertaining to the
Charter Commission.
8. Receives office callers and telephone calls; answers inquiries and gives
information on Commission policies and programs.
9. Exercises discretion in arranging appointments and itinerary for the Charter
Commission; arranges for committee meetings of the Charter Commission.
10. Maintains a tickler file of various committee projects/programs and follows up
on the official actions of the committees; keeps the Chairperson of the Charter
Commission updated.
11. Maintains all account recordkeeping for the Charter Commission; processes the
necessary documents for payment of the Commissioner's or staff's per diem
when on travel status; processes the necessary documents for the
reimbursement of mileage expenses to those qualified;
orders the necessary supplies through the County's purchasing division as
needed.
12. Performs other related duties as assigned by the Chairperson of the Charter
Commission.
STATE OF HAWAII )
) SS:
COUNTY OF HAWAII )
On this day of 19____, before me personally
appeared STEPHEN K. YAMASHIRO, to me personally known, who..being by me duly
sworn, did say that he is the Mayor of the COUNTY OF HAWAII, a municipal corporation
Of the State of Hawaii; that the seal affixed to the foregoing instrument is the corporate
seal of the said County of Hawaii; that the foregoing instrument was signed and sealed
in behalf of the County of Hawaii by authority given to said Mayor of the County of
Hawaii by Section 5-1.3(g) of the County Charter. County of Hawaii (1991), as
amended: and said STEPHEN K. YAMASHIRO acknowledged said instrument to be the
free act and deed of said County of Hawaii.
Notary Public. State of Hawaii
My commission expires:
STATE OF HAWAII )
► SS:
COUNTY OF HAWAII )
On this day of 19 , before me personally
appeared , to me known to be the person described
in and who executed the foregoing ®knmownt in behalf of
ledged that he/she executed the same as
its authorized representative and that the said
acknowledged said instrument to be the free act and deed of said corporation.
Notary Public, State of Hawaii
My commission expires:
1.125
• DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL SERVICE
COUNTY OF HAWAII
SECRETARY -ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
Duties Summary:
Serves as secretary and administrative assistant to a department head;
provides stenographic and secretarial services to a commission or board; supervises
the clerical and stenographic services in the office; and performs other related duties
as required.
Distinguishing Characteristics:
This class differs from other secretarial classes by its responsibility for serving as
secretary and in addition serves as administrative assistant to a department head.
Examples of Work: (The following are examples of duties and are not, necessarily
descriptive of any one position in this class. The omission of specific duties statements
does not preclude management from assigning such duties if they are a logical
assignment for the position and are consistent with the class concept.)
• Conducts studies and gathers data.
• Analyzes contracts, reports, applications, and other matters.
• Dictates reports and correspondence.
• Reviews matters of administrative detail and disposes of such matters for the
department head.
• Serves as liaison between department head and staff and other
agencies/departments.
• Prepares and issues memoranda to staff by direction of the department head.
• . Prepares reports. .. _
• Assists the department head or commission chairperson in planning meetings and
preparing the agenda.
• Prepares agenda and gathers materials for board or commission meetings.
• Takes and transcribes notes for meetings and conferences.
• Reviews materials for conformance to departmental policies.
SECRETARY -ADMINISTRATIVE -2-
ASSISTANT
• Arranges appointments; receives and screens visitors.
• Receives and screens telephone calls.
• Takes and transcribes dictation of letters, reports, and other messages.
• Screens and independently answers correspondence.
• Screens materials referred from the various divisions, departments, and agencies.
• Searches files, compiles data, and assembles background material and
information for the department head or for the commission.
• Summarizes materials and information.
• Gives information to the public.
• Supervises the maintenance of records, reports, correspondence, and documents.
• Compiles and prepares data for the annual budget and confers with department
head.
• Advises department head or commission chairperson on fiscal matters.
• Responsible for receipt and deposit of revenues.
• Advises division personnel on matters concerning civil service laws and regulations
and bargaining unit agreements.
• Reviews organization and initiates request to fill vacancies.
• Prepares correspondence, reports, and other documents relating to fiscal,
purchasing,: and personnel matters for signature of department head or
commission chairperson.
• Supervises the clerical and stenographic work of others.
Minimum Qualification Requirements:
Training and Experience: A combination of education and experience
substantially equivalent to graduation from high school and five years of
clerical/stenographic experience, one of which shall have included the supervision of
clerical personnel or administrative work experience. A current typing proficiency
certificate with a minimum typing rate of 40 net words per minute and a current
•
•
SECRETARY -ADMINISTRATIVE -3-
ASSISTANT
proficiency certificate for shorthand with a minimum dictation rate of 80 net words
per minute must be presented at time of filing.
License Reauirement: Possession of a valid State of Hawaii driver's license
(Class 3) or any other valid comparable motor vehicle operator's license.
Knowledae of: government organization, principles and practices of
supervision and administration; office practices and procedures, filing methods and
systems; grammar, spelling, and word usage; usage of standard office machines
including desktop computers and peripherals; research and statistical methods and
techniques; public relations.
Ability to: collect and analyze data and make sound decisions on the basis of
data collected; write clear and concise reports; assist with administrative details;
establish and maintain cooperative working relationships; take dictation at 80 words
per minute and transcribe notes accurately; type at the rate of 40 words per minute;
understand and interpret laws, ordinances, and regulations pertinent to the
department; supervise the work of others; give and follow oral and written instructions;
deal tactfully and effectively with employees and the public; work harmoniously with
others.
Physical Requirements:
Persons seeking appointment to positions in this class must meet the health and
physical condition deemed necessary and proper for performance of the duties.
Phvsical Effort Grow:Dina: Light
This is an amendment to the specification for the class SECRETARY -
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT that was approved on February 24,
1961 and amended on August 14, 1963 and December 23, 1986.
APPROVED: April 9. 1999
Date Director of Personnel