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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN CHC 1989-03-08 . Minutes of • • HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION March 8, 1989 I . CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order at approximately 3 : 35 p.m. by Chairman Robert Bethea at the Department of Liquor Control • Conference Room, 101 Aupuni Street, Hilo , Hawaii . II . ROLL CALL Members Robert E. Bethea, Chairman Present : Pamela F. Cushnie Francine Duncan David Fuertes James 0. Juvik (arrived late) Pete L' Orange Aileen Lum Steven T. Nishikawa Akira T. Omonaka • Patricia M. Poppe R. Marie Jacobs, Secretary Members Sherwood Greenwell , Co-Chairman Absent : Others Scott Leithead, Housing Department Present : J. R. Smoot Virginia M. Smoot Lester J. Ishado, Attorney Fred Giannini, Corporation Counsel John R. Hughes , KIPA Gordon Pang, West Hawaii Today Hugh Ono, Department of Public Works Bruce McClure, Department of Public Works III . REVIEW/APPROVE MINUTES OF 1/18/89 and 2/15/89 Mr. Omonaka clarified his statement in the 2/15/89 : minutes , page 30, last paragraph, that Mr-. Legaspi did not call Mr . Omonaka but they met at a chance meeting and Mr . Legaspi volunteered to come before the commission. There were no other changes to either minutes and they were approved as circulated. IV. GENERAL ITEMS • • . 1 . Messrs . ;, Bethea and Omonaka met with the Finance Director conc.erni.ng- the commission' s .budge-t for the balance of this fiscal year, which ends June 30th. A budget must be prepared for each fiscal year . the commission is in existence. - - 126 The budget for the next fiscal year will be submitted to the Finance Director sometime in April, 1989 . 2. Mr . Bethea explained that we are purchasing some equip- ment because the County has none available for the full duration of the commission. Some items will be rented or borrowed. Whatever is purchased will be able to be used by the County after the commission terminates . V. FINANCIAL-EXPENSE REPORT Commission expenditures to date have been $1 , 080 .48 . This includes $286 .93 for advertisements , $141 . 99 for office supplies and printing, $258 .44 for mileage and $393 .12 for equipment . VI . DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS PRESENTATION By Hugh Ono and Bruce McClure (Verbatim) ONO: Mr. Chairman and members of the Charter Commission. I gather what you wanted was for me to quickly do an overview of our departmental functions for your basic understanding as far as what Public Works does . Am I correct? BETHEA: That ' s correct . ONO : Okay. Let me start this way. The department consists of seven divisions , and. . .totaling 336 employees. We're broken down this way and now we ' re pretty much in alphabeti- cal order . We have an automotive division. And the auto- motive division has two basic functions , one in terms of a line support . That means services to the public. And the other one I call support activities , which would be activities that support other agencies of the County or other agencies of the government . So the automotive division has 20 employees . They per- form the abandoned-car removal program and they also provide for the care and maintenance program on some 600 to 700 vehicle and equipment units within the County of Hawaii, with the exception of Police and Fire that performs their own. We have a building division that on the public side provides for (inaudible) . BETHEA: Mr . Ono , would you. . .when we have questions , would you rather take them as w e go, or would you rather make your presentation, and then we can come back and. ask you questions? ONO : If I go right through this , it ' d probably take about 5 minutes . BETHEA: Alright . Very good. ONO: That might be easiest I guess . So the build- ing division has 46 employees perform code enforcement for the general public and as a support to the other County 127 agencies, does building repair and maintenance and does contract administration on buildings only. We have an engineering division with 26 employees . They do code enforcement for subdivision and civil engineering type works for the general public and as support, provide for contract administration and development review for the other agencies of . . .within the County and state. Our highway maintenance division is our largest division with 138 employees . They perform maintenance on the 1 , 000 miles of highway throughout the County of Hawaii and incidental work, perform flood control and also take care of a few sanitaries . And for other agencies they per- form miscellaneous work upon request . I might add that this is a special fund, the highway fund, and so they have their own resources . The traffic division performs streetlighting, signal work, pavement markings and signs and also operates the parking meter operation for the County of Hawaii . They also perform incidental work to other agencies , making signs for them. Th eir. . .they also operate out of a special fund called the highway fund. The . . .our priority division is the next one. It ' s called our solid waste management division and their primary goal is to handle all the refuse on the island which constitutes picking up the refuse at the transfer stations and hauling it to our two regional landfills , one in Hilo, one in Kona. And they have 33 employees . The wastewater management is almost like a mini- department on its own and it administers all of the sewers to include the collections and the operation and maintenance, as well as constructing. . . the contract administration of all the sewer projects throughout the County of Hawaii . They are also a special fund (inaudible) administered under the sewer fund. And the last unit is an administrative unit which is attached to the 14 people in the unit and I would. . .handle the fiscal, general administration contracts and personnel matters of the entire department . And pretty much, that ' s a brief explanation of what our department does . BETHEA: Would there be questions from the members of the commission? Let me start . I noticed in your letter that you were requesting the commission to consider the following. • And the first was an amendment to §6-2 . 2 . which in its present form simply says the chief engineer shall be appointed by the mayor, confirmed by the Council and may be moved. . .removed by the mayor . He should be. . .he shall be a registered professional engineer . You' re suggesting an amendment to include the deputy chief engineer and deputies as authorized. . I 'm not 128 sure what you mean by that. ONO: Well, for one thing, Bruce McClure is here with me today ; he ' s the deputy chief engineer . Sometimes he feels he ' s a non-person because he ' s really not addressed any place in the Charter . And. . . so we talked about this a while back . In order to just do some house cleaning on this , I think it would be nice if it were included. And in order to not restrict the department to just one deputy, with its growing responsibilities , I would ask that some language be considered to keep the door open for more than one deputy. BETHEA: What I 'm asking, if I could just finish my question, are you suggesting that the chief engineer and a deputy be appointed by the mayor , confirmed by the Council and be removed by the mayor? Or what are you exactly suggesting with respect to the deputy engineer? Are you feeling that (inaudible) appointment . . .or simply that he should be mentioned in the Charter? ONO : Yeah, I feel that he should be mentioned. I 1, think the language at the present time makes allowance for appointing of. the . deputy chief engineer by the chief engineer just as the secretaries are now appointed. And I would prefer to have it remain that way. BETHEA: Well, I 'm sorry to be persistent on this, but are you simply talking about . . . I 'm not sure what you' re telling us . If I understand it by ordinance, you as the chief engineer appoint the deputy engineer. ONO : I . . .you may be right . I don' t have the ordinance with me . Perhaps when I put this together, it was a bit hasty. So I may have missed something along the way. BETHEA: Well, let me put it this way, 6-2.3 says the: powers, duties and functions of the Department of Public Works shall be prescribed by ordinance and shall be exercised and performed by the department . I assume that there ' s an ordinance which fixes the number of deputies and which, in fact , authorizes you to hire a deputy. In other words , it creates the position and then authorizes you to make the hire . Do you know whether that ' s true or not? ONO : I don' t know. I don' t recall . BETHEA: Well, let the record show that Bruce McClure, the deputy engineer ' s (inaudible) . McCLURE: It ' s not in the ordinance. The ordinance calling for the responsibility of the department is not named. The only place I believe it does appear is in state statute currently. BETHEA: Well, who selects the deputy engineer? 129 ONO: The last time I did. The only time that I've had an opportunity, I did. BETHEA: Alright. Well, how do you provide . . .is there a money ordinance that provides there shall be created one deputy director? ONO : Yes, that ' s correct . It ' s in the salary ordinance, the County salary ordinance. BETHEA: So if you wanted to create additional positions, it would have to be done vis-a-vis the salary ordinance, is that it? - ONO: That ' s correct . And through the County Council. BETHEA: Well, if I could suggest that what you specifically think should be mentioned in Section 2 .2, if you would give us that in writing, in other words, what you' re suggesting. `I 'm not (inaudible) . ONO: Uh-huh. Most certainly. L ' ORANGE: Mr. Chairman, I ' d like to just make a comment while we ' re at this point. I noticed the Planning Commission is the same. . . or the Planning director is the same way, it just says, the Planning director shall be appointed by the mayor. So if we should take Hugh' s recommendation under consideration, to be consistent, you ought to look at them all . I 'm not saying it ' s good or bad, I 'm not saying for or against , but I just wanna get that point down before I forget . BETHEA: Yeah. I think that ' s a good point . The thing that confused me is that this sets out . . . the purpose of 6-2.2 is to set out how the chief engineer is appointed by the mayor and he ' s confirmed by the Council. And he can be removed by the mayor. It also requires that he be a profes- sional engineer. Now unless you' re going to recommend that there be a deputy position created by Charter, I think it ' s now handled vis-a-vis the salary ordinance and perhaps other ordinances that create positions . ONO: What I ' ll do is I ' ll . . . BETHEA: (Inaudible. ) ONO: . . . I ' ll go back and research the matter a little bit more thoroughly and see how it applies to our department as well as other departments and I ' ll send something over here in any case. 130 BETHEA: Okay. Thank you. Yes . Would the record show that Mr. Jim Juvik joined in. Yes . CUSHNIE: Mr. Chairman, may I ask several things of Mr. Ono? Okay? BETHEA: Certainly. CUSHNIE: Mr. Ono, do you feel that the chief engineer needs to have a professional degree as a professional engineer? ONO: Yes and no. Okay, it ' s a hedgy answer, but because I 'm a professional engineer and a member of several national and state organizations, we pride ourselves on hav- ing the registration, and it ' s kind of like the doctrine of our organizations that we support wherever possible, engineers as managers . So on that side, I support it . But whether or not the operations of the department and the management of the department require a registered engineer or not may not be necessary in all honesty. CUSHNIE: Thank you. Do you believe that your deputy should have professional degrees in engineering or in appropriate areas? ONO: My answer would be identical. CUSHNIE: Uh-huh. Certainly you've had exposure information about public commissions, for instance, the Police Commission, which is run by a group of public individuals . Do you feel there ' s any application to Public Works to be run this way, to separate you, perhaps, from the mayor ' s office? ONO: No, I don' t. CUSHNIE: In. . .perhaps this will be clarified later, but on. . .quite sensitive -to an inclusion -in the Charter, would you say the deputy and chief engineer are both equally (inaudible) or have some difficulties where, "political (inaudible) are made, " and the chief engineer, or the chief of the department, is unable to appoint somebody of his own choice . Do you feel that would be a problem if you wanted to include a deputy engineer in your charter? ONO: I believe what you' re saying is that it ' s pre- ferred that the chief engineer appoint his or her own deputy and I would strongly concur with that . CUSHNIE: So you' re not asking for an inclusion of deputies to be appointed by the mayor? 131 1 ONO: No. CUSHNIE: Okay. ONO: No, I 'm not. DUNCAN: . Mr . Chairman? BETHEA: Yes . DUNCAN: I have a question. Mr . Ono; would you be able to comment on Section 10-14 regarding centralized purchasing? This is back. . .well, specifically, the bidding process, the competitive bidding process of $500 to $4,000? When Ron Ibarra was here to speak to us earlier, he brought that up as one of the concerns he had in that the dollar amount , that might be a little outdated for today' s market place . ONO : We agreed. We led an effort two sessions ago at the Legislatureto change the amount of the $4,000 maximum up to $10,000. And being unable to get it through as a blanket overall for all operations, we ares . .restricted that t o just sewer facilities and heavy equipment main- tenance, that we were able to get that adopted through the Legislature. But that $4,000 has been there since. . . DUNCAN:: 1955 . ONO : . . .1955 , and I think it ' s . . .do.11ar value today, inflated, would be something like $29,000, so what ' s it ' s done is it 'has not created the effectiveness nor the efficiency in government that we need to get some things done. DUNCAN: In this particular case, what would you recommend that the range is? if we were to change this County Charter? ONO: What I would recommend is following the state statute, because we see a move in the state statute now to amend those amounts. And what was started two years ago with raising it to $10,000 is now being expanded into many, many areas; and I understand there ' s some bills going in now that will probably raise it even further. BETHEA: If I could ask a follow-up to that last ques- tion, you said follow state statute. Now the general rule is that a state statute, a general application, supersedes a Charter provision. Do you know whether or not the state statute that you're referring to that operates or that sets a different limit for sewers, etcetera, whether that statute is designed or, in fact , does supersede the (inaudible)? ONO: We weren' t able to get an interpretation, and _ 132 it took us, gee, two or three months to get the interpreta- tion, going back and forth, that we were able to use the statute rather than get tied down to this particular item in the Charter itself, we were using actually some of the other ones that promote exigency or effectiveness or efficiency. But there is a contradiction within the Charter itself by placing a you know dollar amount in the Charter. As an example, Kauai was not able to use the $10,000, because their charter is worded in such a way that they' re corporation counsel has ruled that they would be in viola- tion of their charter, so they' re unable to expend their $10,000 until they go through their charter revision. JUVIK: Excuse me . Would you favor perhaps amending the Charter or simply stating that ; on these issues, the Charter follow state statute? I don' t know, if we put any dollar value , inthe Charter, obviously that could be changed if the state ' s -own s-t a t u te .-may- be revised in the future before the Charter is revised. And maybe we shouldn' t have any dollar value in there. ONO: That could be well and dandy. There is also the possibility of the state statute becoming even more restric- tive. So we always look for the one that allows us to, you know, get our jobs done. CUSHNIE: Mr. Chairman. BETHEA: Yes . CUSHNIE: That was my understanding, that the more restrictive clause, whether it was the state statute or the County Charter, applied, the more strictive clause. Now that may be not legal, but that ' s my understanding. Perhaps when you have (inaudible) . BETHEA: Yeah. If we could note that that is a legal question for the attorney for the commission, whoever that is going to be, should take a look at. Because the state statute could operate to say specifically that, or it could be a statute of general application which may supersede Charter provision, so that we 're not really doing very much in any event . I assume that you have defined all of these things to be true in order to use the. . . to go without adver- tising. That these things are cumulative. You've got to find one, two, three, four and five. Is that the way you interpret it? ONO: No. The. . .we did interpreting at the . . .whichever condition best applies . Of course, there ' s always a concern that there will be abuse within the system, so there are 133 duplicating reviews that occur at many, many levels to assure that there is . . . we don' t encourage any abuse of the system. BETHEA: Yep. In other words, if this. . . these really should be ors, some of them. . . ONO: Yes. BETHEA: . . .or. You. . . if the public existency will not or anyprocedure, bo that ' s of the delay, other y, pretty wide open it seems to me, that you can always go down to five and not advertise for anything. That ' s the way I would look at it . Yes. CUSHNIE: I have a question, Mr. Ono, about what is your opinion of the mayor ' s right to line-item veto? and to transfer funds within departments? Would you like to see that continue? ONO: I . . .my personal opinion on that is that the. . . I think the system the way it is now works pretty fine. The beauty about having our County Council right here is . . .you have the ability to go to the County Council and get approval of interdepartmental transfers if they're necessary. In comparison to the state, you don' t have a legislative session always there, so that perrogative is not available to you. So I think it works fine . BETHEA: Was your question to interdepartmental or intradepartmental? CUSHNIE: I believe it ' s intra, within the department . ONO: Oh, I agree that we should be able to transfer funds within the department. CUSHNIE: I think that i s the wording, if I 'm [not] mistaken. I think. . . ONO: I think I misunderstood you. CUSHNIE: (Inaudible) ; ability to transfer funds . BETHEA: Yeah, I think that was pointed out to us earlier, that there ' s some inconsistent provisions in the Charter that at some stage we need to look at. I have some more questions . In your referring to your outline, you said maximize departmental revenues with effective fiscal management. What revenues . . .what do you mean by revenues? What revenues do you receive? ONO: The sewer fund is the one that I 'm speaking 134 mostly about. That ' s. . . the sewer fund is the one out of which the wastewater management division operates right now. And the fund has always been subsidized to nearly 40 or 50% of its budget every year. So what we ' re trying to do is maxi- mize the revenue by sewer fee monthly collections, and try- ing to get as many people on the sewer system as possible. BETHEA: Well, the sewer fund money that comes in, is it earmarked so it can be only used for that particular program? I mean, how does it work? Is it general funds of your department? Or is its use restricted by ordinance? ONO: I 'm not sure of the background, but by practice it goes into the sewer fund. And it's. . .there is probably an ordinance or a state statute that supports that, so you are not. . .unable to use these funds as general funds. Specifically for the sewer operation and maintenance and capital improvements. BETHEA: So at least by practice, it ' s not used for general fund purposes? ONO: No, sir. BETHEA: And it ' s been operating in deficits of each year as far as your budget request you make, you request the County supplement that fund? ONO: Yes, sir. BETHEA: Is. . . in your automotive section, is any of the work on County vehicles--I know you've said you exclude the Fire Department and the Police Department because they do their own--is there any private contracting? ONO: Yes . BETHEA: How much of that? How does it relate to it? ONO: About 30% at the present time is contracted out through various vendors or stations. . .service: stations or garages . BETHEA: Do you think the County gets value through that contracting process? ONO: Oh, absolutely. It helps us to balance our work load. We have probably the worse ratio of mechanics to equipment. Our ratio is in the neighborhood of 63 pieces per mechanic. And you will never find that in any other organi- zation around the entire state, as I compared when I wanted to 135 find out why we weren' t getting our jobs out on time. BETHEA: Okay. Another question, highway maintenance division. Does your department receive a portion of a state highway fund? You said you have your own resources--highway maintenance division. That was a note I made. ONO: As far as I know, the only funds that we would get would be funds funneled through the Department of Transportation, but they are not included as part of our operating budget . The fund comes from fuel taxes and weight taxes and other miscellaneous charges . Oh, the other one is the franchise tax, which comes from the utility companies . BETHEA: Fuel taxes, weight taxes and the public utilities franchise tax. . . ONO: Yes , sir. BETHEA: . . . for this County all goes to. . . ONO: The higher. . . BETHEA: . . .your department or your own County highway fund? ONO: Yes . BETHEA: What portion of your budget is met by revenues from these sources? McCLURE: Roughly a third for each of them. You know, I think it ' s 30, 38, roughly a third from each of them. BETHEA: So that the funds expended by the highway maintenance division come. . .all come from these revenues? They' re not supplemented by any other revenues? ONO: That ' s correct . Over the past three years, the fund has been unsupplemented. McCLURE: Mr. Chairman, there ' s a nominal $150 , $200,000 out of the $6,000,000 dollar budget that comes from services performed by the highway maintenance personnel to other departments that is reimbursed, because they are highway funded people . . .you know, the highway fund is to be expended only on highway activities When they do other activities like cleaning up a solid waste station, we pay them back. ONO: By law, we have to pay them back. 136 BETHEA: So, is this controlled by state law? McCLURE: Yeah. BETHEA: Well, with respect, for example, to the fuel tax, the amount of that tax is set by the County Council. ONO: That ' s correct . BETHEA: The weight tax, is that set by the County Council? McCLURE: Yes . BETHEA: Now, the PUC, the public utilities franchise tax. . . McCLURE: Set by state statute; we get 22% of their gross . BETHEA: Well, the public experience I think has been that this fund is not adequate to casually maintain the County road system. Do you have any suggestions to resolve that problem? ONO: I sure do. In May or 1986 we completed a study, it was done by Bruce and myself, to again to find out why we can' t do our job the way the statute says we 're supposed to do it . We have 100 and. . .a total of 158 people being paid for out of the highway fund, with our current road inventory as it was in 1986 . We evaluated that we would need 201 people, so we were short by some 50 people, and a budget of what $13. 5 million dollars a year. We ' re working presently with a budget that is nearing $7 million dollars a year. So, there's a. . .we "were working with about 507 ofwhat we need to-do a complete and adequate highway maintenance program, including the recycling. resurfacing of roads that should be done once every 15 years . BETHEA: Well do you have any specific suggestions of how that could be. . . ONO : No, I don' t . JUVIK: Excuse me. Do you have any idea of whether. . .a question of County liability for poorlymaintained roads has been a factor in successful litigation against the County? ONO : Would you repeat that question, please. JUVIK: I 'm just wondering if the inability of the County to maintain these roads to whatever standards you 137 indicated that you require , has that ever shown its head in the form of litigation against the County, dealing with liability from accidents which the County is deemed to be at fault, at least in part, from inadequately maintained road ways or associated. . . ONO: I 'm sure there ' s an effect, although I believe that our experience over the past four years, now in- our fifth year, is that there ' s been a reduction in the number of claims and suits being filed. JUVIK: Is that pretty much. . . ONO: We see less success on the people filing suits; and to be quite honest, I can' t say that that ' s because we ' re doing a better job. But we are trying to document things a little bit better and show that what we ' re doing with our limited resources is reasonable. And, of course, we have a . . . good defense lawyers that are defending us . I think that has helped, the aggressive nature of our Corporation Counsel . BETHEA: Are there other observations , or questions? L' ORANGE: Just one observation. Bruce, you don' t think (inaudible) unnecessary staff . CUSHNIE: Mr. Chairman? BETHEA: Yeah. CUSHNIE: Let's see. Along the lines _of .raising income for.the County, have you considered toll roads? ONO: Yes . CUSHNIE: Okay. ONO: I. . . the toll road would have to be a function of the volume of traffic that is generated. So the improvement would have to be to such a degree that it would attract ridership. CUSHNIE: Such as the Saddle Road. ONO: I 've never felt extremely excited or enthusiastic about going in and doing the Saddle Road. We 're looking at an expenditure of about $110 to $130 million to put that road into a condition that would attract . I 'm not sure the rider- ship would be there to retire the debt service. CUSHNIE: And the second question that came up last . . . or during the last meeting when (inaudible) Mr. Sewake, in 138 the Water Department. And it was tossed around that perhaps there should be a combination of water and sewage out, and some metering and monitoring of that . Have you given any consideration to spinning off the water waste treatment program into its own entity? It ' s going to be a fairly huge undertaking. ONO: I think that there will be a time that it will have to be its own entity. And like I mentioned in my pre- sentation, it is a mini-department . It has all the functions of the Public Works Department on a smaller scale. The only thing it doesn' t have is the revenue to support it . CUSHNIE: Assuming those will be coming on a timely basis, could it operate in a manner similar to the Water Department? ONO: Very much so. Very much so. CUSHNIE: Should that be addressed in this Charter or do you believe that ' s more than 10 years down the road? ONO: I think the time is appropriate for. . . to address such an issue, especially with the immense capital that will be required to develop these systems and it. . . there are ways of isolating this particular activity so they can look at generating income for how they're going to retire their debts that would probably be best occurring if you were a self-contained department. JUVIK: Excuse me, just to follow up on that, the current responsibilities of your department. . . I apologize I was late today , so maybe you covered some of this already . Correct me for . . . interrupt if I 'm going over old ground. Can you see. . . I ' d also inquired about the possibility of whether or not it was appropriate to consider , for example, a sanitation department as something that might be appro- priate at this point in time, given all the expenses that might be incurred for wastewater treatment . Under the responsibilities of your department go some solid waste and those other areas . Can you imagine any preferred organizational structure. . . you mentioned the possibility of spinning off the sanitation. . . you know, there are other places in the United States that have road. . .just road departments , for example. . . ONO: Yes . JUVIK: . . . county road departments . You have build- ings , surveys and these things and a number of these 139 activities which may or may not be particularly closely related and there are some generating revenue. Othersmainly Busing general public revenues for their expenses . Have you any ideas about. . . if you were in our position to restructure the County ' sdepartmental structure, - , would you think about restructuring Public Works and the different departments , bringing more things into Public Works , breaking it into separate departments , in general, not just sanitation? ONO: I think this is a good opportunity to do some restruc- turing. There ' s some duplication of services that currently occurs . We do repair and maintenance on. buildings.. So does the Parks Department do repair and, maintenance on buildings . So there ' s an area that can possibly be consolidated. But the. . .as far as we 're concerned, Bruce and I , we don' t want to give too much away. We won' t have anything to manage. But just the entironmental issues , the solid waste and the wastewater take up a great deal of our time. We can' t neglect those areas because they are such high priority. And I see that continuing for many, many years until the handling of refuse becomes a matter of fact, a routine kind of thing. But with all the things we 're looking at as far as refuse management and recycling or via waste-to-energy, we really have a hard time looking at all the things we need to because of the lack of staff . CUSHNIE: Along those lines , do you consider that the arrangements and control over certain sanitaries is a repetition of perhaps what 's been done in Parks Department? ONO: Yes , I do. CUSHNIE: Add that to the list, then (inaudible) . ONO: Of things that could be solved (inaudible) . CUSHNIE: (Inaudible. ) JUVIK: If you were willing to spin off wastewater treatment, would you put solid waste in the same category? Perhaps as a. . . ONO: Well, sure. JUVIK: . . . so a so-called department of sanitation would include the responsibilities of both solid waste and wastewater? ONO: It could very well be, yes . DUNCAN: What are your thoughts on privatization? 140 ONO: I think it has its place. I don' t think it ' s been a popular idea as far as . . . I 'm talking about politically acceptable. But there are places which we can contract out for a long term and get out of the business of operating these things so that we can spend our time on research and develop- ment items , you know, the new things out there that we should be looking at. And right now, just the, operations and main- tenance of some of these activities just keep us so involved in these day-to-day crises that we 're unable to give the kind of time that we would like to have for some of these other things.. So I have always been supportive of that. It ' s not something that ' s easy to accomplish. CUSHNIE: Is one concern about privatization the ability for these people to go on strike, and you would not want critical services to be discontinued? Is that a problem? I mean. . . ONO: That may be. I ' ve never considered that before. But it may be. CUSHNIE: Are your employees able to go on strike? ONO: Yes . CUSHNIE: Policemen are not ,(inaudible) . ONO: Yes , I believe you 're correct. CUSHNIE: But your department is? ONO: They would be. BETHEA: Yes . L'ORANGE: You know, just out_of curiosity, do you know what percentage of homes in Hilo are hooked up to the sewer system that can be hooked up? My understanding is there are a lot of homes that could be hooked up to the sewer system that are not . ONO: About 907 are hooked up. L'ORANGE: (Inaudible. ) ONO: So you have about 10 that are not yet. L'ORANGE: So your revenues are close to max then? ONO: Pretty close. L'ORANGE: With your existing system? ONO: Yes . 141 JUVIK: Excuse me. Just to follow up on that . As I understand it, and I 'm not certain (inaudible) this from newspapers , part of the problem with the existing sewage treatment plant was underflow orinadequate flow of sewage into the system. Yet, 90%-of the. . .when you say 90% of the homes that could be hooked up are hooked up, that doesn' t mean that you couldn' t extend the sewers up to Waiakea Uka or something? I mean. . . ONO: You' re right. You' re exactly right . It ' s a collective system that limits us from hooking up people. But we can start aggressively pursuing the collector system, then we can hook up people. Wherever we put a collector system, then we can put that subdivision on that (inaudible) . JUVIK: As I understand the mainP a problem is politi- cal problem of people -not wanting to pay these hook=up charges . And the general (inaudible) of the politicians to force (inaudible) cost to the individual homeowners when putting them on the system. Do you feel, given the, large number of cesspools in the County, that maybe it ' s unfair to ask only those people hooked up to the sewers to pay some. . . in other words , many people who are on cesspools should pay some cost for their pollution of the groundwater . How would you divide these sewage costs when in fact, in the next 20 and 30 years , it ' s very unlikely, even over that period of time that all of these vast subdivisions and so on are going to be hooked up to sewer systems? ONO: That ' s why I think . . . that ' s the basis for using the G.O. bond rather than a special assessment bond, so that the cost for cleaning or building these systems is spread out over the entire population. By the same token, the general fund subsidy allows for the payment to operate the system by the general public. If each person that were on the sewer system were required to pay the amount to support the opera tion and maintenance, our sewer bills would be upward of between $35 and $49 .:a month. And that would be, I think, a bit in excess . BETHEA: Mr . Ono, I think there 'are a lot of good ideas coming out here, and I ' ve been trying to take some notes . I 'm afraid I 'm going to lose them. I don ' t believe anybody e 1 s e on the commission shares that concern, I mean about the possible creation of a new semi . . .different department of sanitation and these other types of things (missed conver- sation during tape change) changes or things that this commission should consider as you submitted in your little letter . Could I ask you to kind of make a listing of those things so we don' t lose the benefit of your thoughts? 142 ONO: We ' d be happy to. BETHEA: One other . . .go back to another thing. You expressed some thing that you didn' t think the chief engineer needed to be a registered professional engineer . Is it the registered part, or is it the engineer part? Because I would think that, examining the duties in your memorandum, that what you need is an engineer and he may need to be an administrator . But that he needs to be able to understand a lot of the tech- nical aspects of what the department does . And it seems to me that the person running that department should be an engineer . Why were you hesitant on that? ONO: (Inaudible. ) Okay . To be quite honest, I don' t know the impact of what my background has as far as doing the job. I do know that I understand what everybody is talking about and coming from a highway construction and maintenance background, and a building background, I know those areas . And I came into this area and all of a sudden the solid waste and the wastewater matters were priority County-wide as well as nationwide. I didn' t seem to have any problems grasping on to what-;.they :were talking about because civil engineers had become wastewater people. But I don' t know if it ' s because of my background that I 'm able to understand that or , you know, whatever the reason is . I think the certification as far as being registered has been helpful in understanding the total problem or even using that kind of engineering analysis it takes to make our business decisions . That ' s why I 'm a little bit hesitant. Because I know you can find good managers ; we have good managers within our own organization at the division level, some of which have. . .one of which doesn' t really have a formal education. But here ' s a glowing example of someone who can do the job, in many cases , much better than someone who has had a formal education. So I guess it ' s a kind of individual . . .depending on whom the individual. . . JUVIK: Excuse me. Are you involved in the management organizations that (inaudible) public works officials and so on? ONO: Yes , I am. JUVIK: Could you state generally whetheryour- 'peers in this .. ..iin these, from counties and other parts of the -United States or wherever these organizations represent general area qualifications or general area (inaudible) engineers . . . ONO: I 'm not aware. . .only. . .Maui ' s the only county that doesn' t require a registered professional engineer , within the state. That ' s all I 'm familiar with. BETHEA: Are there any other questions that can be directed to Mr . Ono (inaudible) ? Very well, thank you 143 • very much. We will much appreciate it if you will. . . . ONO We' ll get back to you on (inaudible) . BETHEA:_ . . . (inaudible) . Thank you. The next presenta- tion is going to be by Scott Leithead, who is the director of the -Office of Housing and Community Development. And he ' s not here, which gives us a chance to take up one item. VII . GENERAL ITEMS - (continued) 3 . Dr . :Juvik said Dr . Zachary Smith, a political scien- tist at the University of Hawaii-Hilo has agreed to speak to the Charter Commission on alternative forms of municipal government. 4. Mr . Bethea said the commission is. still working off of the initial work plan of the commission, in connection with receiving exposure to alternative forms of organization, and that the commission still needs to make the decision whether or not to stick with the present form of Charter and rework it or adopt a new form of government, subject to public input ._ 5 . Mr . Bethea suggested the commission ponder whether or not Fire should function via a commission system because of public safety. VIII . HOUSING .AND COMMUNITY DEVELOP. PRESENTATION By Scott Leithead (Verbatim) LEITHEAD: .First of all,. thank you for allowing me _to be here. I.' ve read some. of the .Charter Commission proceedings previously when I worked as a law clerk for the Corporation Counsel Office about 10 years ago. I ' d also like to apologize. I 'm just getting over a cold everyone has or is getting or will be getting shortly. So if you want me to speak up, please let me know. I will try and go through in some summary fashion and then and answer questions. Let me just clearly state before I start, our office, which is frequently referred to as a department, does not exist in the Charter (i.naudible), some- thing they missed. And their . . .we ' re probably the queerest of the queerest ducks out there as you will see. The Office of Housing and Community Development, herein- after , OHCD, is reponsible for the planning, administration and operation of all the County of Hawaii housing programs . It is also responsible for the administration of the Federal Community Development Block Grant, CDQ, program and other programs consistent with the goals and objectives of the office. Funding for the office comes principally from the operation of the federal programs , I would say about 85 to • • 144 907 . The housing administrator and the Hawaii County Housing Agency, hereinafter HCHA, consisting of all of the members of the County Council were created by ordinance No. 124 in 1975 . I believe it has not been amended since then. The HCHA is responsible for establishing the overall policies , goals and directions for the OHCD, as well as reviewing and approving the budget, carry out the Housing and Community Development programs and activities . The housing administrator has the responsibility to administer and operate the County housing programs under the direct supervision and control of the mayor . The housing administrator is authorized to staff the agency with necessary personnel to carry out the purposes of the agency. Currently the office has 20 positions , although 28 are authorized. Actually, we recently passed our 1989 operating budget of $964, 352. So we 're moving to 28 positions . The overall goal of the OHCD is to provide for the develop- ment of viable communities in Hawaii County, by providing decent housing, suitable living environments , and expanding economic opportunities . That ' s not the goal that I made up one night (inaudible) the federal program goals and state and housing goals . In order to carry out this goal, the office is organized into three major divisions . Existing housing, community development and development. Please see the attached table of organization and functions chart [Attachments 1 and 2] which are the two next pages for more information on each of the divisions and their responsibilities . The Office of Housing and Community '(Development o3erst'e8 under the legal authority_ of_Ordinance_124_of the Hawaii _ County Code, see as Attachment A [not attached to minutes], Section 46-15, 15.1 and 15.2 and Chapter 201E of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, which we had attached as Attachment B [notattachedto minutes], and three, the Federal Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 as amended, which is included as Attachment C [not attached to minutes] . I will be jumping through the next narrative to give you, the best way I can, an understanding of th_e operation of the. office. The existing housing, this is on page 2, the existing housing division is responsibleforthe management of the County ' s rental housing programs and projects , which includes the Section 8 housing assistance payments program andthe housing voucher program. The division also manages the County-owned Kulaimano elderly housing project and assists in the management of the rental housing projects of non- profit organizations . The Section 8 housing assistance program and the housing voucher program total about 1100 families and a littleover $4 million dollars annually in receipts passed through it. I ' ve completed a summary of the programs organized according to whether or not it' s an on-going program, its goal, its objectives and accomplishments and plans for further 145 activity. I won' t go into detail, but just to give you a sense of the programs . Those two are rent-assistance programs in which we con- tract with landlords to provide an existing unit in the community that is privately owned to eligible tenants that are qualified by our office. We then inspect the unit to make sure that it meets the federal housing quality standards that are applied nationally, things such as lead paint and decent plumbing, etcetera, are checked for . In. . . this capacity, we function like an agent. . .an agent of the federal government, responding directly to HUD. The housing voucher program is a similar program and then housing management is basically we own some housing and we manage it. Many of the housing programs that. . .housing projects on this island require that a part .;of non-profit apply for the funds . The catch is that no private, non-profit has your fiscal wherewithal up front to put together information and data and secure land to go and apply.for .the funds . So we step in behind them, and do the applications for the funds and (inaudible) ,basis we create the non-profits, and a couple of members on your commission have been involved in that surrep- titious ...activity with me previously. We used. . .wecreate non- profits . We actually create them when we (inaudible) funds . And that ' s the only way that, you know, get -u•s certain kinds of housing in the community. It gives us some unusual ties to the private sector . The next division of the office is the community development division. It is responsible for the administra- tion of the Federal Community Development Block Grant Program. The CDBG program was established by the federal government in 1974 and provides grants to units of general local government, to carry out a wide range of community development activites . The County has been participating in the CDBG program since 1975 . Since then, we have received $12, 503, 102 in federal CDBG funds . I might note that the ordinance that created the office and government (inaudible) does not include CDBG as one of the activities , and that ' s why I 'm referred to as the housing administrator , though frequently you see me on non- housing programs . This program, which came out of the war on poverty, allows you to get into a wide range of activities and I. . . to illustrate that, we have included a listing of the current ones . Let me just, for illustration at the expanse of the program, go through it. _ _ _... We have the Ainakea Elderly Housing Project, the Hale Ulu Hoi Housing Project--this is for retarded citizens--the Homeless Shelter Acquisition project for Hilo; Self-Help Housing Project. And then we have development projects. These are economic development projects that are particularly 146 suited to either the elimination of some Tike: .or .some other eligible activity (inaudible) program and principally benefit low and modern income residents of the island. And that distinguishes it from projects to be done by the Research and Development Department. Under that category, we have the downtown Hilo revitali- zation program, which includes our funding... . BETHEA: Excuse me one second, Scott, how did you say it differentiates from the Research? LEITHEAD: We. . . (inaudible) translation of what I said was . . . is , we do economic development projects that benefit low and modern income residents only, or eliminate some (inaudible) . You have to have the low and moderate income requirement satisfied first, but in some other areas , you also do elimination of some b 1 i g h t which is the activity that, you know, . . -We can get back .to the point . :: the =technicalities of the point, but there ' s a downtown Hilo revitalization project which includes the mainstreet project that we have funded. It also includes an architectural design and technical assistance project for downtown, which did a build- ing survey of buildings and demonstrated some: possible renovationdesigns for buildings downtown. The rehabilitation and renovation of the bus terminal at Mooheau. And set up. . . we set up a demonstration loan program of approximately $2 million dollars with the banks to renovate stores and build- ings downtown. Another economic development project is the Hawaii Ocean S c i. e nce Technology Park marketing program, Phase II , per- taming to themarketing of the program for the host park in Kona and another example not listed in the materials is the air cargo warehousing distribution center project which we just completed and we ' re still working with the state in g r an t block capacity . We 're transferring that project over to the Research and Development_. Department since it is now into a more promotional phase. And then there are public facilities projects , fixing the drywall in Pahala, renovating the Hilo Armory, the water- line in Villa Franca, the Alzheimer ' s Disease Patient Care Center at Hilo Hospital, and then there are some other general on-going programs , fair.:.housing : . the fair housing programs for the community, a. . .an economic development strategy directed specifically at the CDBG program and we ' re in the process of developing the 1989 program so we 're taking applications around the community. This program is capable of almost anything and in many ways represents the only disposable income of the County . As long as you satisfy low and moderate incomerequirement benefits -- 51 of it to have your project benefit, 51% low 147 and moderate income residents--you can do a wide range of things . You cannot pledge the money ahead of achieving it. And so, unlike most of the other funds the County receives it is not. . . it is not spent before it walks in the door . In many cases . . .many years , it ' s been the only money with which we can do new projects in the County (inaudible) trouble because the money ' s been sought after . Some other programs that we administrate, the emergency shelter grants program, and this is an example of another program that comes directly from the federal government; it does not go through the state except as a conduit. . .except their function as a conduit with no decision making and it comes straight to the local government, municipality on the mainland, and is administered by (inaudible) . We also own the Spouse Abuse Shelter in Hilo. We ' re working on a preschool at. a:.housing project in Kona, using CDBG and working on the assessment of child care needs for West Hawaii . The development division, the third division of the office, is responsible for overseeing and coordinating all of the development and construction projects sponsored by the OHCD. It is also responsible for all of the OHCD' s housing and community development planning activities . They ' ll be moving that into the administrative branch of the office and that ' s reflected in the new table of organization we provided. Here, without going through it, we have listed a wide range of housing projects that involve working with the state, working with private developers , working with resort developers , working with the Farmers ' Home Administration, public housing projects such as Lanikila, and Farmers ' Home Housing Preservation programs in which houses .in rural areas are renovated by owner-occupancy, the low-income rental projects, for sale projects . One I might note, which is going to be dedicated on Friday, is the Hillhaven Kona Healthcare Center project, which we took CDBG funds , and together with a group from Kona, . two_groups , the West Hawaii Housing Foundation and a group called Kapuna Villas . We did a. . . long-term care needs study for West Hawaii , sent it out to the appropriate people in the industry, attracted six applicants within the top ten operators of nursing homes in the county. It resulted in the Hillhaven Corporation build- ing the first long-term caremedical; facility in West:. Hawaii . We dedicated that project. You will see there is some overlap between development projects and CDBG projects and others , because there ' s CDBG dimensions project, specific funding for say, site improve- ments , but the overall development of the project is done by the development division. The next section I ' d like to go through very briefly 148 is on page 17 , under planning activities . This section does the housing planning for the County, among other things ; among other things , works with. . . is working with the develop- ing evelop- ing of the master plan for the 300 acres at Waikaloa the County has received as a housing condition for Waikaloa development; and, I should have gotten it first, helps the County in administering all of the housing conditions placed on developers as a result of rezoning in the County of Hawaii .. . In the. . . in that division, we"re also working on business (inaudible) . figures , a project with R&D, enterprise zone, zoned separate from the state, the Urban Development Action Grant, which is a. . .another grantkprogram out of . . .out of HUD. We are their partners in (inaudible) . And we 're working with the state in a joint venture on the Kealakehe master plan community, which is in the planning stage. The final section of my presentation simply describes the administration division of the office and its function. I don' t think I ' ll go through it in detail. But that ' s basically what we ' re about . Let me add one final thing. It seems to me that the most unusual part of our situation (inaudible) many difficulties , is the. . . the housing adminis- trator is appointed by the mayor , not confirmed by the Council. On the other hand, two-thirds of the decisions required for the programs that we administer , fully all of the community development block grant: actions and Section 8 housing assistance._program actions--and that program provides most of the funds for the office--those decisions are. . .. are made only by the Council sitting as the Housing Agency. There is no veto by the mayor . They ' re done by resolution in accordance with federal procedures that are in place for all of the counties . And so you have this very unusual situation in which each. . . I report everywhere. BETHEA: This is all pursuant to the federal (inaudible)? LEITHEAD: Yes . We are. . .we arecloser to a.:.state housing agency in our activities and. . .and the federal department of HUD than we are to our brother and sister agencies in the County. Most of our funding comes from them and generally, the Farmers ' Home Administration, U. S. Department of HUD. . . the Farmer `s; ' Home is with the Department of (inaudible) . Occasionally, they ' ll be something from the U. S. Department of Interior . POPPE: Scott, do you have a firm feeling as to how that should be resolved (inaudible)? LEITHEAD: The a. . . POPPE: In other words , would you' recommend that the Council have approval or . . . 149 LEITHEAD: I can see it . . . there ' s no simple answer to this . And I 'm not dodging it because it ' s easy ; it ' s a complicated situation. And as I understand, :_the agency was created in the office of the mayor back in '75 because the state law had just passed giving the housing powers to the counties as well as to the state. We have the same housing problem as the state. Use the same law, you just read= in County where it says state. BETHEA: Did (inaudible) receive federal funds from that side? LEITHEAD: In (inaudible) housing, prezoned for housing projects and everything else. It really doesn' t deal with the federal programs . Federal programs come directly to (inaudible) and you:.have. . . to understand that, you have to look at the way things operate on the mainland. You have these huge municipalities that don' t care about their (inaudible) sometimes , Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and they go straight to Washington. And you look at the character of inner city renovation, housing, which is where all these programs come from, and that ' s the nature of it. The community development block grant program was an attempt by President Nixon to consolidate:.all of the model cities , inner city programs , all of these separate block grants , one for water , one for fixing the road, one for this , one for that, into one cohesive unit. But housing has always been the focus or the first priority. At any rate, that ' s not in the state law. It was created in 1975 , as I started to say, because that federal program came, and also the state law at the same time came, with housing' s , yet state law bringing the housing program, federal law bringing housing and community development. So they created a small office and it has grown rapidly. I recognize that we 're three times the size of some Charter departments . BETHEA: But you 're not. . . LEITHEAD: None of our people are civil service. Every one is appointed. On the theory that federal funds are temporary. They have been temporary, but on-going and grow- ing since 1975 . L'ORANGE: You know, I (inaudible) you 're a -very compli- cated setup because you got County ordinance, state and federal requirements . Are' ther.e. . . is there any reason or group of reasons that you could operate more (inaudible) if you were in the Charter? and youwere covered under the Charter rather than this particular form of . . . 150 LEITHEAD: It might remove some pretense. I 'm not sure, I 'm not sure what solutions it would bring. But it would probably resolve one way or the other the issue of whether or not to maintain employees exempt from civil service, but even that ' s not absolutely . . .you could make us a departmentand civil service some people and not civil service others as seems to be the trend in housing programs throughout the state. The idea is that housing work is very (inaudible) . You get a deadline from HUD and you have to crank out. . .get the project and you have to put people on it. That' s why I 'm_ :. sitting here with eight vacancies . (Inaudible) Waikaloa and Kealakehe stuff cranks up and I ' ve got to put people on it. L'ORANGE: (Inaudible) just one thing. Just. . .my- impression. Okay. A change would do more harm to on-going programs and: things you ' re doing by (inaudible) , up and leav- ing more uncertainties than it would solve. LEITHEAD: What I ' d like to do is just raise some issues rather than answer the question with a conclusion at this point. I 'd be glad to get back to you in writing with some- thing better thought out, because I really haven' t prepared that kind of thorough answer on this . Let me suggest for example some of ,the,issues andimplications of putting us in the Charter . I suspect then we would have to go through the regular budget process . We do not at the present time. Our budget cycle is from December 30. or 31st , whatever is the last day of the calendar year , from January 1st to December 31st, we do not run our administrative budget along with the County . We are not in the budget that will be submitted, according to Charter , to the Council. Furthermore, our administrative budget is approved by the Housing Agency. It ' s not approved by the Council. It does not follow the same line items as . . . as the County budget, because we realized. . .we changed this (inaudible) it was absurd, we had. . .we followed federal guidelines provided in A-1 and 2, which is the federal hand- book on accounting for federal programs and local government, and they specify the (inaudible) different from the County budgeting procedure, and we have, you_ know, :two sets of books . We tried budgeting July 1st to June 30th and on July . . . and in May, June, you don' tknow what the federal government is doing. What happens is the federal fiscal year begins October 1st and it takes from October to December , if we ' re lucky, for word to trickle out (inaudible) exactly what you 're gonna have. Trickle out from Washington to Hawaii . And so, at a point several years ago, we just said why don' t we just use common sense here. We receive the word at some poine in time when we put the programs in place, we use the County (inaudible) . Now to make our budget legal, 151 all of our funds are reappropriated every year through the receiving ordinance from which we receive the funds from the federal government and are handed out allocations with assis- tance payments and all of (inaudible) , which is the main portion of the money. And we receive that and then appropriate it out into one general account as an amendment to the County ' s operating budget, just after the County operating budget is put in place. So it happens sometime in early July . And a lot of this doesn ' t sound neat and formal and orderly, but it is what works . And we have gotten there by a lot of hard experimentation. And it seems reasonable to me.. . . it may sound private sector , asa matter of fact, but we try to do what ' s practical. We. . . there' s some advantage on that, I have seen personally, in not going through the normal County purchas- ing procedures and the rest of it. I 'm not saying that we are bandits , as we have been accused of being, but we try and expedite things . We move very quickly. And we 're probably more automated than other departments . We had the first fax machine. I use that as an illustration. And if you ' re going to do projects with the private sector , and they ' ve got the artillery, then you 've got to get it too. . .otherwise you have no business in dealing with them, you ' ve got to bring an operation to government into the last decade of the 20th century. CUSHNIE: Mr . Chairman. May I ask Mr . Leithead, you feel that you 're going to be called upon than more to over- see the impact assessment fees for the County? LEITHEAD: Yes . (Tape change. ) CUSHNIE: Do you feel this would be an appropriate time to=free yourself from County constraints and let the County set up, perhaps under the Charter , your own housing adminis- tration, and free you from the impact fee responsibilities? LEITHEAD: I 'm not sure if you 're combining a couple of things , first asking about whether or not we 're going to be more involved with administering the impact fee?. CUSHNIE: Uh-huh. LEITHEAD: If I could take that first. We did a study . to develop the model ordinance that ' s being considered to be usedin block grant funds and we went through. . .used our plan- ning activity to draft up the ordinance. It was originally intended to be just a housing ordinance, but we were asked to do it for everything. So we are involved in the impact fee business because the housing fee is the most controversial. So we will be involved in some way, the entire department and the administration. Now if. ... I 'm not sure how it connects , but I guess the second part of your question was , would it be 152 better to free us up from the administration and have the Council set up its own housing agency , and I don' t. . . _ myhi p s h o: t answer is that it ' s not such. a hot idea. But it begs another set of choices . Let me say that, on the main- land, in many jurisdictions; .youu have a. housing agency that is semi-autonomous like the Water Department. Their commis- sioners or agency members are not the members of the Council. We are the unusual. And there are pros and cons to that. One pro is that I don' t have to deal as much with Council members and . . . though it ' s a pleasure dealing with you, and I 'm not sure (inaudible) , but you. . . I don' t know which pros and consbut you would have to deal with Council members , but then there ' s a whole 'nother set of people that you have=-to educate and I suspect the decisions still will come back to the Housing. . . the County Council. But you could set up a semi-autonomous one with private citizens . You could keep it the way it is . You could, I suppose, tryand do away with the Housing Agency though something has to, for the federal programs , function as the Housing Agency . They don' t permit the mayor alone to sign the requests for funds and authorizations to apply for programs and that sort of thing. It ' s not permitted. L' ORANGE: Mr . Chairman. This should to me, really is . . . should be included in the Charter at all, ' cause it ' s not in the Charter now. So, we won' t have any power to change anything unless we want to include it in the Charter . So that ' s really the issue. I don ' t have any answer to that right here, but I think that ' sthe point that ought to come in our outline if Scott ' s . . .or the big::issue is should the whole thing be redone, I mean, in the Charter . All these other issues , that' s County Council decision. If Scott 's gonna have, appointed by the mayor , and confirmed by the County Council under the existing thing, that ' s none of our business . LEITHEAD: Well, I was responding to. . . I agree up to a point . I was responding to if you did include it in the Charter , and that ' s . . .you 're right the way we do it, then you. . .you have some choicesin .setting ..it up as a semi-autonomous (inaudible) Charter , and that ' s what I was responding to. And let me just take it one step further . The ordinance that sets up the Housing Agency specifically says that--let me make sure I 'm reading it-- when the Council acts as the Hawaii County Housing Agency, it' s role is limited to public housing policy formulation and is not charged with the duties of administering housing programs . This doesn' t do any better job than the housing agency in our office gonna do, any better job than anybody else, so, what is policy? And what is administration? Now the point I want to make is , the history from the mainland United States , that you drag into all the housing 153 program stuff, is that they have semi-autonomous housing agencies on the mainland with private members . And they traditionally review the prior . . .all the details of a pro- ject before, and so, while they may say publicpolicy , we submit housing.;projects'_right now to. . ;as do all the other housing programs in the state; , submit projects to the County Council that include what color the doors are going to be and: what kind of door -.nobs we 're gonna have and what color the rug is in the projects , and that ' s where that issue comes from in that some different. . . some of the other discussions relating to other departments that you have about administration versus policy . I just want to point that out, so when you read this ordinance, you do . understand that the legality is different. That has been the practice, the custom, since the beginning. BETHEA: So that this . . . the role of the County Council kind of goes beyond policy formation? LEITHEAD: Yes , I 'm not sure that you can ever , until you get a policy-making body, out of the administration business once they have the authority to approve. . . to approve a budget. Budgets get you into details ; details get you into specifics, of the projects. BETHEA: You said that 85 or 90% of the money thatyou have in your budget, in the budget it -says $9, 900, 000 _ figure, comes from the federal government. LEITHEAD: Most of it. BETHEA: Now that ' s an operating budget . LEITHEAD: It ' s very much. Yes , we get an administra- tive fee from the Community Development Program and we get a fee per Section 8 certificate that we administer . And, let me say that our office oper ... .the funny thing, the federal government operates in the same principal as. the Chinese laundry, no picky, no shirt. If you do the work and you getthe certificate out into the community--in other words , there' s somebody renting or using that section (inaudible) --you -ge:t A each month it ' s out there. If it ' s not out there, you don' t get paid and you may have the odd position that you don' t get paid. This is not like a department of the County where you make a budget and you submit it, and depending on how the pie is sliced up, you get your money , and then 'you have that for the, year, and when it'.s over, it lapses . Our money doesn' t lapse. It goes into a large. . .another earnings account and we have $700,000 in that account. And it was in the papers recently because we. took our budget to the Council. Our funding is totally 154 different. It ' s much like a construction company and I 'm trying to coordinate having the right projects moving along at the right time. We have to all file timesheets that are an administrative nightmare. But those are the federal requirements that . . . you ' ll notice all the CDBG projects , they are for various years and, I 'm sorry I don ' t have a chart to illustrate it , but we have projects in each year . The projects are never finished within the year . Normally they. . .on the optimistic side, they expect you to finish a project in a year and a half. So they ' re all overlapping. When you fill out a timesheet, you have. . .when I fill out a timesheet, I have to put down not only whether or not my work can be administration, part of the office, or the Section 8 , or the CDBG or the development side, but I have to. . . if I worked on the CDBG, I have to note which project in which year . And the charge is directly to what we budgeted for that project . So, it ' s the project , in the year , in the CDBG program, as a part of the whole thing. BETHEA: Well, your salary is fixed by a salary ordinance? LEITHEAD: Yeah. On page 17 . But we, you know. . .our 080 BETHEA: You have a dual role, really , I mean, as a practice it seems to me this . . .you have your duties as the housing administrator , plus whatever duties the mayor assigns you. LEITHEAD: That ' s correct . To some extent I . . .well, I have been referred to as the wide receiver of the County for one obvious reason and one not so obvious reason. Al Konishi and I used to delight in that description. But in the County of Hawaii you need a couple of wide receivers-- people who are not going to punch tickets and stamp plans and sit behind a counter and receive checks , but are going to go out and explore new projects and make things happen. And in this area, I think the thing to remember is that projects move under sheer force of your personality and they don' t move when you don' t have a certain gut force. And you want to keep as much flexibility as you can so that you can make things happen. And that ' s how it is . Because there aren ' t any rules. And there ' s some kind of tradition that goes with housing and no rules , the harder it is for it to happen because it ' s so complicated. This is why the state has left the housing problem, perhaps to the transportation (inaudible) to the end . And so I emphasize that whatever you do, it has to have that in mind . I think that was intended in. . .when the agency was set up. There was at the time 75 very. . .a close relationship. This was passed to me as legend in the County . But, it was a close relation- ship, I mean between the Council, and its leadership, and 155 the mayor ' s administration at that time. And so, they purp. . . they knew what they were doing in setting up this arrangement where we report to the mayor administratively although you have to get all your okays in final form from the County Council. It sets up a situation in which in very real terms I have two bosses . One is the mayor and the other is the chairman of the Housing agency , presently Council (in- audible) . In practical terms , I try to remember equal appointiveness . Because that ' s who brought me to the dance. Forgive me if I 'm getting into more intimate details of . . . but that ' s the reality that ' s behind the structure. And you would expect that to be the (inaudible) . I think that it is possible to function in this situation. BETHEA: Other questions by the commissioners? CUSHNIE: I ' d like to clarify something again. . . . I must be missing the point . It seems like there ' s such a distinction between the way you operate with all of your different agencies and the way that you're going to be drawn into the Council impact fees . Do you not want that division to get away from the kind of . . .methods under which the Council operates? Seems like you ' re wearing more hats than you might want to. LEITHEAD: I don ' t want any more hats . But I guess . . . I mean there ' s something that I don ' t understand about the way the impact fee business is going to operate. And I 'm just somehow not getting the question. CUSHNIE: I see it as being an appointed responsibi- lity being put on the subj . . .put on the developers and that they will carry their own momentum, as opposed to your methods where you need to go out and, as you say, it is the personality and force behind that personality that gets everything else that ' s been on this island done. And it seems to me, I want to protect you. That you would want to isolate yourself from the slower grindings and gears that you might find in the Council. Would you incur . . . so my second question is , would you encourage us to create a separate agency to remove that burden from you? LEITHEAD: No, because I guess , to rephrase my earlier answer , I think the problem is that you never really get away from the essence of the structure you have now. I . . . I 'm skeptical of how much insulation you get from attempts at true semi-autonomous . CUSHNIE: Uh-huh . Thank you. I needed to hear that, Scott . BETHEA: Scott, in. . . to follow up on this question, when you, prior to the adoption of some impact ordinance 156 which may have a more or less s e t schedule for housing contributions , etcetera, as (inaudible) , when you were negotiating with developers , weren' t you simply negotiating in a sense for your interest as the housing administrator , but simply as a County officer like a (inaudible) of the Planning Department? In other words , the Planning Department for planning purposes requires roads and other things that subdivisions . . .people wanting to sub- divide or wanting some county benefit, if they want that, they ' re going to have to make certain contributions . When you negotiate in that capacity, aren ' t you simply operating like the Planning Department would or in conjunction with the Planning Department? LEITHEAD: In conjunction with the Planning Department . I was doing the negotiating and the Planning director in most cases was sitting there while I was doing the . . . I was the lead in the negotiations for the housing part . And it was to satisfy an element of the rezoning ordinance. That ' s where it was (inaudible) in. I was not, excuse me, functioning as an officer of the County enforcing a. . . the law as stated in the impact fee because it had not been passed yet by the Council. I wanna go back for minute to the thing I 'm not describing, the flipsideof one of the coins . Under the present situation, the appointed nature of the staff in the office is justified, because the office is technically within the mayor ' s office. This whole shabang is within the mayor ' s office; and one of the things we ' re trying to resolve with the Civil Service Department is whether we can continue that . . . to justify an exemption. There is . . . I don' t have this all sorted out, but I can get back to you in writingif you like with further detail. But they 're essentially saying, if you stay withinthe office of the mayor , then you may have to convert to civil service, because this is no longer some temporary nature ; it ' s gone on for too many years . And there ' s a possibility that every position in the office will have to be civil service, including my own. And I just want to make clear that I 'm not in favor of that at all because I . . . some of you have seen how we function and that it is not a produce of ba d management that we have a hand full times a year and stay up all night to get, in some kind of voluminous application to. . . to HUD or Farmers ' Home. That ' s the way the federal process works right now. Or at least it did in the (inaudible) administration. BETHEA: (Inaudible) have a work load that ' s very constant and varied. LEITHEAD: That ' s right. It ' s like a construction company; you ' re chasing projects . And what we do is we lay out at the beginning of the year broad -goals and objectives and, for the Housing Agency, we send through a list of things we ' d 157 • like to do. And we prioritize it. And we do as many as we can. And we again use the Chinese laundry approach. You know, you give us the funds and give us the personnel; we can get it done. You don' t have to (inaudible) . L ' ORANGE: Mr . Chairman, I don' t think we need any further information from Scott unless the commission decides they want to put it in the Charter . He ' s a real busy person. I don' t think we should ask him to respond to with alternatives unless we make a policy decision that we (inaudible) that we include this housing thing in the Charter . (Inaudible. ) BETHEA: Any other questions (inaudible) ? Very good, thank you. LEITHEAD: Thank you. BETHEA: Thank you for this very good presentation. It ' s a very good commission. (Inaudible. ) IX. MISSION STATEMENT DISCUSSION Mr . Bethea directed the commission to the next item on the agenda, which was the mission statement, and requested David Fuertes and Patricia Poppe to proceed. Discussion took place. Ms . Poppe suggested the commission needs to decide whether the whole Charter should be reworked or whether just details should be worked out, before deciding on the mission statement(s) . Discussion continued, and it was finally decided to accept one of the submissions as corrected . X. _NEXT MEETING Discussion took place on further review of departments already reviewed, departments still to be reviewed, scheduling of other speakers , commission members reviewing presentations directly after they are made, and questionnaires being prepared and given to potential speakers that would outline and focus on concerns . The next meeting will be April 4th at 3 : 30 p.m. in the Liquor Commission conference room. XI . GENERAL ITEMS (continued) 6. The budget was discussed in relation to the number of meetings the commission planned to hold during the balance of this budget year . 158 7 . Also discussed was the formation of a subcommittee of three members to review applications for the counsel position. It was suggested a motion be made to that effect. BETHEA: (Verbatim. ) Well, asI understand the motion would be. . .so the Chairperson to appoint a subcommittee of three people to review the applications , to interview the candidates as necessary , and to make a recommendation at the next meeting for the hiring of counsel. Is that correct? OMONAKA: Yes , sir . I think . . . BETHEA: Is there a second to that motion? POPPE: Definitely. (End verbatim. ) Discussion ensued. Dr . Juvik suggested one of the sub- committee members be from Kona. It was decided that applica- tions would be circulated to all members and the subcommittee would interview appropriate applicantsand make recommendations to the commission, who would then decide the final outcome. The motion was carried unanimously. XII . ADJUORNMENT The meeting was adjourned at approximately 6 :45 p.m. Respectfully submitted , R. Marie Jacobs ,- Secretary 159 • COUNTY OF HAWAII OFFICE OF•HOUSING & COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT TABLE OF ORGANIZATION . AS OF 01/25/89 M9YDH HAWAII COUNTY I It1S3 )-f*JSNGAGENCY ADMINISTRATOR J `A-17 • PLANNING ADMINISTRATION .••PLANNEWDEV.:}:' PRIVATE 1 1 .:PROGRAM SPEC:'•:: SECRETARY ACCOUNTANT UI '•SIT 21 TO SR-26.•;'; SR•16 •l `SR.21 J CLERK STENn a•• TECHNICLAN - - 1 -[ AC N7 ERK 1 ':.Sii-16•:"to �••:.4,.�� SFI.69 J SA•11 J %Y CLERK/TYPIST�1\ 6y, \I • 1 STUDENT HIRE ."---(HR-04 / . I I I EXISTING HOUSING DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT • I -.1 i. . 1r!&Vt3 ____ i COMM DEV, { SPECIALIST BPI-O&M[ IST':..:• SR-26 J SR-26 ••Sii21 TO SR-26.;••.;•?;:.: • : •� �� •N%1i• i `M3 1 :▪ MOM :-.::*:":.• I•.: •▪ MUM.n :ka221LIELgIXSV AIDE( :;::;TECHNICIAN:;•:: {::::.▪:TECHNICIAN;::::. SR-21-.y-L. , y �.T.I ,... 1-09 ei ';SA-16 TO SR.21'•;:{•:i.'•;• `SR-16 TO SR-21;:•�: : :, • • l 4 l�, ''fY ,r (Cil` tI i i+:: :\ •••u.. I a :T TAN-COMM DEM: i '! AIDE I •N" • " TECHNICIAN -:• 'g'. TECHNICIAN -,`: - .:•-_ V1:,r. ♦ ::S1-16MM ` . SR-1671,:,.... .::5 1 CLERK/TYPIST : ▪ COCHN DEV. r:•TECNICIAN::i:: SR-a / :drii6TOSR-21:::•:::•:;:•:;..- Attachment 1 talarn =rata z - cai ELQ13 AIDE I( •;'•. TECHNICIAN ';i . SR-16 `SR-11 ':S/1-113..-: §A4.-%::e?',^'i'?2 ..' +..'iS°q• 0 • > 1r� ' tai& , 16 .Y"." .. AIDE U LEGENQ • tlA-ta `sR•lt I 4i7.41:;i New Positions Approved FY-BS N. Fri Reallocations Approved FYI MOM ---( on . �H,y4. New Positions Approved FY-Bo SR•16 f ' • OFFICE OF HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FUNCTIONS CHART rn MAYOR The Mayor provides overall administrative poi- . icy decisions,detections:sad general supervision over all activities mired to the office. 1 ADMiNIS1RATDR me Administrator is responsible for the adtninistntion and operation of all activities of the Office including protrammms.budgeting.personnel,coot- dinatio with other governmmaal agencies nod the private sector,develop- DOUSING AGENCY mart of bossing and community deveke pmt programs sod plans and the=- ptomaine of hosing and community development activities. The governing body establishes the Housing Agency's per,rules and The Admidwator supervises the provisions of budgeting,accounting.pur- reguletions and approves the pro- diming.personnel and clerical r4peat services requited by the three divi- a,budgets and plans to carry out aims of the Office. Under the supervision of the Administrator,the Account- the booing activities and pupae'of lug section prepares and mom=for die administrative budget d the Office, the Housing Agency assists the other sections in pepsins the budget portion of federal grant applications and performs all the fiscal tuts required to operate the Section 8 Housing Assistance Payrnaau Program Under the snpavisios of the Admin ieretor, the clerical section provides secretarial and clerical services for the Housing Agency,the Administrator and the operating divisions. l - a EXISTING HOUSING DEVELOPMENT - COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENTrt ( rt The Division conducts surveys end studies to develop long The Ce>nntunity Development Division The Existing Housing Division deal- Devolopsmsot • nops mad administen the federally sub- and inert range housing and cometweity development plans, goals and peefotems a wide ante of activities related F sidined Section$Haring Msisuros objectives and the cohesive implemiemrion of strategies. The Division to Community Development Block Grass than damning the necessity and feasibility d adataking housing and sod other faded programs. The division is rElderly HousingProuram and die Ku one thean° the construction of new for theof all arra- County. Elderly Project for the community programa lining respamaiblepreparation County. The division prepares the pro- single family or multi-family limning micas or to 'debilitate single fives and dootasutien necessary to apply grams, applications, budget, imbue- family or multi-family housing projects for low/moderate income families. for the CDBG grants. las funnier inrids qday reports to obtain and =nein - Upon delamination so carry out a prepped project,the division seeks said conferring with agencies tad pergolas on the housing subsidies from the federal aconites the required building sites,develops plass for improvement of the projects, doing project rising maertk, government. The division prepares site ad cuisine=of the housing rants,prepares applications fat interim preparing project budgets obtaining cki- the necessary rules, Pima and and long term financing for the project,consumes the melts by contract and lens'input,arming compliance with sppli- forms,takes in,verifies and approves places the writs for sale, lease or mat The division may also seek to cable federal regulations, nnpleisg re- applications for assistance, inspects rehabilitate private bases or multi-`[eimily total projects so bring these quned forms.obtaining the requited local and approves rental units for participle- s bstndard housing units to standard. In addition,the division may carry approvals and aw®bliag the applicants tion in the programs, propane owe out special projects,as assigned,to ftuWlI the overall Yousiag and comma- package. Upon receipt of grass,it mai- trees with the mdpiamts and the lad- nky development goals of the County. These'cavities may be carried out tort the implementation of projects so ss- lords, makes disbursements of pay. by the agency itself or in a joint vemmre with other goverment agencies or sure complier=with the gram peoviies' mans to the landlords,maintain the private parties. and prepares required'waits. required records and promotes the pro- 'rams on a continuing basis. DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS by Hugh Ono and Bruce McClure I . AUTOMOTIVE DIVISION A. Function: line support services to public (p.127) B. Function: support for County departments and governmental agencies (p.127) C. Handles abandoned car removal (p.127) D. Handles vehicle and equipment maintenance (p.127) ; exception: Fire and Police do own 1. 30% of work via outside contractors (p.135) II. BUILDING DIVISION A. Performs code enforcement for public (p.127) B. Supports County agencies: 1. Building repair and maintenance (p.128) 2. Contract administration on buildings (p.128) • 3. Some duplication of building repair by Parks (p.140) 4111 III. ENGINEERING DIVISION A. Performs code enforcement for subdivisions B. Civil engineering work C. County support: 1. Contract administration (p.128) 2. Development review (p.128) IV. HIGHWAY DIVISION A. Perform highway maintenance (p.128) 1. Receives some pay-back fees for work (p.136) 1. Cushnie: consider toll roads (p.138) B. Performs_flood control C. Cares for some sanitaries 1. Sanitaries shared with Parks D. Miscellaneous back-up work for County E. Funding: comes from fuel, weight tax, public utility franchise and misc. taxes (p.136) ; receives no outside funds 1. Fuel tax set by Council 2. Need 50% budget increase for division (p.137) 3. Lack of road maintenance funds doesn't cause 1 large number of lawsuits (pp.137-8) ; 161.1 411, OFFICE OF HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT by Scott Leithead I. ADMINISTRATION . A. Receives funding mainly from federal government (p.144) ; also functions under state and County ordinance (p.150) • 1. Have January - December fiscal year (p.151) 2. Budget is approved by Council Housing Agency, not the Council (p.151) a) 2/3 of programs require Council approval (p.149) ; no veto power by mayor • b) But Council cannot administer programs (p.153) 3. Funds are appropriated every year (p.152) B. Director under supervision of mayor (p.145) 1. Director not appointed by Council (p.149) 2. Director's salary fixed by ordinance (p.155) C. Staffs the office: 30 positions (p.145) • 1. No civil service employees (p.150) 1. If covered under Charter. 2. All positions appointed; all funds are could have civil service considered temporary by government (p.150) employees (p.151) 2. Prefers not to have civil service employees 3. Dept. of C.S. says • Housing no longer considered temporary and have to convert some to civil service (p.157) D. Housing under mayor's office 4. Cushnie: free Housing from administration? (pp.152-53) 5. Do away with Housing Agency? (p.153) 6. Make Housing semi- autonomous? (153) 17. L'Orange: change would create problems (p.151) 4110 161.3 E. Works with state, private and resort developers, Farmers' Home Administration, and preservation programs (p.148) F. Some projects overlap (p.148) G. Works with Planning Dept. re zoning 1. Housing acts as lead in negotiations (p.157) 411 161.5 111 OTHER CHANGES TO CONSIDER WHEN DISCUSSING THE 02/21/90 AGENDA ARTICLE V: 1 . Chp. 4: Planning Commission: Have one person on commission in advisory capacity only 2. Chp. 5: Research & Development: Change name of department to Department of Economic Development � R&D: Delete the word "all" in Sec. (c) , because the department no longer performs that duty R&D: Clarify Sec. (c) because present wording does not accurately describe R&D' s functions R&D: Set up an advisory committee in Charter (per reference to "County Code" ) ARTICLE VI 1. Chp. 2: Public Works: Consider separate solid-waste disposal department i P.W. : Mention the deputy of P.W. in the Charter, as being appointed by the department head ARTICLE VII 1. Chp. 1: Civil Service: Redraft language relative to geographical language C. S. : Redraft language relative to the number of commission members ARTICLE IX 1. Sec. 9-1: Change "twelve o ' clock meridian" to "twelve o' clock noon,, ARTICLE X: FINANCIAL PROCEDURES Sec. 10-1: Change fiscal year Sec. 10-2: Change submission date for budget Sec. 10-4: Require Council to publish in all general circulation newspapers on island 111 111 Sec. 10-6 (b) : Insert "as a guide" Sec. 10-8: Delete comma in 2nd paragraph: "the council , may make" Sec. 10-12: Clarify/delete "Special Funds" Sec. 10-14(b) : In line 4 , insert "department of finance, chosen by the director of finance, and who shall serve as chairman, to clarify paragraph Sec. 10-14: Change language: "in conformance with State of Hawaii regulations" so Charter changes when state law changes Sec. 10-14: Change "sufficient" to a specific time limit Sec. 10-14: In (c) (2) , increase minimum bidding amount from $4 , 000 to $10 , 000 Sec. 10: Include that the County may create a public utility Sec. 10: Include that a public hearing should be conducted when a budget amendment is proposed Sec. 10: Clarify that Council should review lump-sum amounts and not check line items Sec. 10: Clarify whether Council ' s or mayor ' s budget SSec. 10: is accepted if the budget is submitted late Clarify that departments cannot set up new accounts , after Council approves budget , to transfer funds to Sec. 10: Clarify that departments may transfer funds between accounts in an department or between departments themselves Sec. 10: Give mayor and Council equal authority to approve contracts Sec. 10: Mandate a Finance Department audit whenever a director is changed Sec. 10: Require transfers of 10% or more to go to Council for approval 110