Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout1-11-2011 Special Council Meeting MinutesSPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING January 11, 2011 The Special Council Meeting of the Council of the County of Kauai was called to order by the Council Chair at the Council Chambers, 3371 -A Wilcox Road, Lihu`e, Kauai, on Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 8:35 a.m., after which the following members answered the call of the roll: Honorable Tim Bynum Honorable Dickie Chang Honorable Nadine K. Nakamura Honorable Mel Rapozo Honorable JoAnn A. Yukimura Honorable Jay Furfaro, Council Chair EXCUSED: Honorable Derek S.K. Kawakami PETER A. NAKAMURA, County Clerk: Six present, Mr. Chair. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. Before we go any further, I would like to announce that Councilman Kawakami is traveling on business on behalf of the council, several meetings in Honolulu in preparation of the upcoming legislative session, and so he has been excused. APPROVAL OF AGENDA. Mr. Nakamura: Next matter is approval of the agenda. Mr. Bynum moved to approve the agenda as circulated, seconded by Ms. Yukimura, and unanimously carried. INTERVIEWS Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you and I guess on that note, we can begin the interviews, Mr. Clerk? Okay, Pua, would you call the... Oh, we have a separate list here, okay. Mr. Nakamura: Mr. Chair, first interview is Michael S. Kano for the Building Board of Appeals. BUILDING BOARD OF APPEALS: Michael S. Kano, Fire - Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Mike... good morning, Mike. MICHAEL S. KANO: Good morning. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much for being here. For all of the potential board and commission appointees, I would like them to just open by a little bit of background, if they're currently serving in that capacity, or if this is a new capacity, and tell the members a little bit about their willingness to participate in government by sitting on these boards and commissions. So, if you can give us a short overview, Mike? SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 2 - JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Kano: Okay, I've already been on the Board of Appeals. Actually I'm the current chair... well, not current since my term expired at the end of the year. This is a reappointment and I'm willing to serve. Actually I served as one of two fire representatives on the Building Appeals Board, and my former position with the county 10 years ago was a fire prevention inspector, and I think that's where I have my expertise. So that's why I'm willing to serve at the request of some co- workers or former co- workers at the department. Council Chair Furfaro: That's always a nice endorsement with their encouragement. Members, do you have any questions? Councilwoman Yukimura? Ms. Yukimura: Thank you very much, Mike, for your willingness to serve and for your long service. Mr. Kano: Thank you. Ms. Yukimura: I'm a bit outdated because I've been out of office for awhile, but I know that at one point I don't know if you were having regular meetings or that may have been before your term. Mr. Kano: We had... this past year we had one meeting in January to elect me as the chair, but other than that we've had no... Ms. Yukimura: No appeals. Mr. Kano: ...outstanding appeals, so (inaudible). Ms. Yukimura: So you haven't had a need to meet. Mr. Kano: Ms. Yukimura: sufficient support to d Mr. Kano: job and they're... Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Kano: Ms. Yukimura: well. Yeah, mm -hm, right. Okay, so I guess, I just wondered if you have o your work? Your county building division is doing a fantastic Okay. ...willing and able to support us, yeah. And I guess the lack of appeals indicates that as Mr. Kano: They're doing a good job. Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, okay, good. Okay, so my last... second and last question would be have you seen places where improvements can be made to increase efficiency and fairness, but you may have answered that with your... in your first question. Mr. Kano: Yeah, well, I'm not the shadow. I don't go around looking for things, but there's always places that can be improved. So, you know, I cannot name anything specifically, but you know there's always room for improvement. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 3 - JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: Right, but if it were to come to your attention in the process of doing your work, I presume you would report it to whoever... Mr. Kano: Right, right. Ms. Yukimura: ...has the authority or power to make those changes. Mr. Kano: That's right. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, well, thank you very much. Mr. Kano: Thank you. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you again. It's good to have people we can rely on and trust in positions like yours. Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Any furhter questions? If not, I too want to thank you for... oh, Mr. Chang is ... you have a question? Mr. Chang: No. Ms. Nakamura: I have a question. Council Chair Furfaro: Go right ahead. Ms. Nakamura: In ... last year, you said, there were no appeals. Is that pretty typical? In a given year about how many appeals do you usually... would you typically see? Mr. Kano: I think just a couple years ago, we had four appeals in the year and most of that were ... I think we made a couple decisions and a couple of them were withdrawn at the last minute, so. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Again, I want to thank you for your commitment in your current role and thank you very much for giving that time, Michael. We will not be voting today... Mr. Kano: Right. Council Chair Furfaro: ...but we will be voting at our next meeting. But again, there are no more questions. Thank you very much. Mr. Kano: Thank you for your consideration. Mr. Bynum: Thank you, Mike. Council Chair Furfaro: Have a good week, okay. WILMA AKIONA, Council Services Assistant: Next interviewee is Miles Akira Tanabe for the Building Board of Appeals. • Miles Akira Tanabe, At -Large —Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) Council Chair Furfaro: Good morning, Miles. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 4 - MILES TANABE: Good morning. JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: I will ask again if you can just introduce yourself, give us a little background before I ask if there's any questions from the councilmembers. Mr. Tanabe: My name is Miles Tanabe. I'm a retiree from the County of Kauai. I served a little over 30 years in government law enforcement. The last 22 -2/3 was with the Kauai Police Department. The last two of the last three years, I served as the acting assistant chief for the Administrative and Technical Services Bureau. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Many of us do know Miles and I do appreciate all your past service to Kauai County and law enforcement, so let me see if there's any questions, Miles. Mr. Tanabe: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Nice to see you, Miles. We miss you at the police department. So, you got... in the... Appeals Board is not a real active commission, but maybe next time we'll get you on the planning commission. (Laughter) Mr. Bynum: Anyway I just wanted to say thanks. Mr. Tanabe: You're welcome. Council Chair Furfaro: Any other questions? Councilwoman Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: So, yes, thank you for your willingness to serve. So your... this will be your first term on the Board of Appeals? Mr. Tanabe: Yes, it is. Ms. Yukimura: And you haven't been there before? Mr. Tanabe: No. Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, okay. Well, we look forward to having you serve. Thank you very much. Mr. Tanabe: Thank you, Ma'am. Council Chair Furfaro: Well Miles, I see no other questions of you. I do want to point out again that we thank you for all your past service and for stepping forward, and we will be voting on your appointment at our next scheduled meeting. Obviously, it's a new role for you, but one we want to thank you for stepping forward on. Mr. Tanabe: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: No other questions. Mr. Tanabe: Okay. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 5 - JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Miles, have a good day. We will not be seeing our next candidate until Kurt Akamine is here, and so I'm going to go into a short recess. The Chair recessed the meeting at 8:44 a.m. The meeting was reconvened at 8:53 a.m. Council Chair Furfaro: I'm going to call the meeting back to order and we are on our third interview and it's Mr. Akamine. Mr. Akamine, please come up. BOARD OF ETHICS: ® Kurt Seichi Akamine —Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) Council Chair Furfaro KURT AKAMINE Good morning, sir. Good morning. Council Chair Furfaro: I would like you first to start by telling the members a little bit about yourself. We have some new members on the table and also if you're currently serving in that role and we'll kind of take it from there. So, the floor is yours, Mr. Akamine. Mr, Akamine: Thank you. Born and raised on Kauai and I'm currently... employed by Garden Isle Healthcare. We're a skilled nursing facility located in Wilcox Hospital. I served in the past on the Ethics before I moved to the Planning Commission and resigned from that. I'm a fan of Wala`au. Council Chair Furfaro: Members, are there any questions of...go right ahead, oh, Mr. Bynum. No? Councilwoman Yukimura? Ms. Yukimura: Oh, okay, thank you. Good morning, Kurt. Mr. Akamine: Good morning. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you for your willingness to serve in the county. Mr. Akamine: You're welcome. Ms. Yukimura: I wanted to I guess discuss a little bit how you see the function and role of the Ethics Board in the county. Mr. Akamine: Well, it's urn ... from my understanding, it is, unless things have changed, is it's an advisory, not a decision making commission and following the code of ethics, and it provides advice, recommendations on matters relating to financial conflict of interest type decisions for county employees. Ms. Yukimura: How do you see this role as being important to the county... if you see it? I presume you do. Mr. Akamine: Yeah, I think it's really important that the... our county conducts business ethically and with integrity. And so the Board of Ethics is critical in ensuring at least some level of accountability in this point... you know disclosures are made. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 6 - JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: I agree with you. I think the Ethics Board is a really important board for the county and sets... helps to set the standards for performance, yeah. So in the Ethics Board sometimes I think the decisions are really tough. Sometimes making the call, whether it's actually ethical or not ethical, is tough. And sometimes people before you are people you know or you know, have a relationship with. Would you agree that it is sometimes difficult? Mr. Akamine: Yeah, I think, you know, there's that code of ethics that guides... should guide the decision. I think there are areas that maybe it's not... or the... that's silent on and you have to make decisions. I think the ... part of the beauty of the process is there are seven members and so with that, all members being committed to it, you get the best decision, I believe. Ms. Yukimura: that you don't mind making. Mr. Akaminue: Ms. Yukimura: sure. So I take it you're willing to make hard decisions Yeah. Okay, you're used to it in your position at work, I'm Mr. Akamine: Yeah, I think any, you know, decision that affects people, it might not be easy, but being willing to serve, you know, I think for me personally part of it is being committed to make tough and the right decisions. Ms. Yukimura: Mm -hm. Okay and I guess I'm just curious as to the reason you resigned from the planning commission. Was it a time thing? Mr. Akamine: Yeah, you know the ... I really appreciated the opportunity to serve on the planning commission. It was a fulfilling experience and one that required a tremendous amount of commitment given the responsibility and... well initially I had that time commitment. When things changed at work, I could no longer make that kind of commitment that I felt was necessary to do a good job at that role and so I decided to resign because it would not be responsible of me to have missed so many meetings because of my work. Ms. Yukimura: That's absolutely right. I mean, what, they say 90% is just showing up... Mr. Akamine: Yeah, it requires... Ms. Yukimura: ...of the job. Mr. Akamine: Yeah (inaudible). The planning commission requires a lot of commitment, not only for the meeting, even homework on weekends, and... Ms. Yukimura: Yes. Mr. Akamine: It took a lot of my time, so I had to make a decision based on the priorities that I had in my life. Ms. Yukimura: So the ... the Ethics Board works better for you because I don't believe it has as demanding a time schedule. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 7 - JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Akamine: Yeah, it's meeting once a month, I think, one to two hours... Ms. Yukimura: Mm -hm. Mr. Akamine: ...my understanding. Ms. Yukimura: Mm -hm. Oh, is this our first... you're just going on board or have you been on it? You've been on it before. Mr. Akamine: I served on it in the past, yeah. Ms. Yukimura: Oh you... okay. Mr. Akamine: Then I was ... yeah, then I was asked to... Ms. Yukimura: This is not a... Mr. Akamine: This is my first... will be my first term. Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, your first term, okay. Thank you very much. Mr. Akamine: You're welcome. Council Chair Furfaro: Do we have any other questions? Mr. Bynum? Mr, Bynum: Hi Kurt, thanks for your service. How long were you on the planning commission? Mr. Akamine: Mr. Bynum: Mr. Akamine: Mr. Bynum: Mr. Akamine: Mr. Bynum: Mr. Akamine: I think about one year. One year? I'm guessing, give or take (inaudible) And it's like work every week, yeah? Oh yeah. A lot. It's a lot of work. Mr. Bynum: I think you're accurate that that's the commission that takes the biggest amount of commitment and I appreciate... because your answer showed a lot of ethics, right? So that was a good answer. The Ethics Board, although the work may not be as intense, can be potentially the most controversial or you know, a lot of attention from the public. So ... and I think it's one where members need to be able to assert themselves to do their job well and where you might run into resistance in terms of doing your job well. So ... but I have total faith in your ethics and how seriously you take your involvement in the community. So thank you for stepping up. I appreciate it. Mr. Akamine: Thank you. Mr. Bynum: That's it. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 8 - Council Chair Furfaro: Nadine. Ms. Nakamura: Hi Kurt. ITO I I JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Nakamura: I have a question. I wanted to know your thoughts about one issue. One of the first decisions confronting this council was the hiring of the county clerk, who happens to be my brother -in -law. And I learned from the county attorney's office that this county does not have anti - nepotism provisions in the charter, the ethics code, or the council rules. I was wondering your thoughts about this and whether you feel an anti - nepotism provision should be introduced into the county system? Mr. Akamine: Whoa, it's a good question. Given our ... the size of our island community, which I believe is about 60,000, to venture into getting some type of rules that would address nepotism, it might disqualify very qualified and capable candidates from serving in various positions. If it was my personal opinion then I would... if we were to go there, we need to be very, very careful because we might set rules that will not be in the best interest of the county. And I ... in this particular matter... yeah, I will state my opinion. You know I think Mr. Nakamura is an extremely capable person and if that would somehow... because you're in a ... on the council would disqualify him, I think it would have been, in this particular case, a huge disservice to the county. And I can think of many more... many more situations that it may affect. Your decision to recuse yourself, great, I mean that's what ... you know, there's a process to address that. Ms. Nakamura: Okay, thank you. Mr. Akamine: You're welcome. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Kurt, for that answer, but I too want to share that I'm very concerned about the pool of people that we have on the island, especially as it relates to work in government and work for nonprofits, and I too am a personal example of that. I served as treasurer for the Salvation Army for nine years. We set up two Food Banks, we built a certified kitchen only to find out that the Ethics Board indicated that I could no longer serve on the Salvation Army. I've had the same situation as President of Habitat that, you know, I saw there was no monetary contribution for me. The fact of the matter is I had no children on the list to get a home. You know, it just... it saddened me for my personal commitment on things like feeding those less fortunate, finding shelter for those that need, that my expertise in business was eliminated. Mr. Akamine: Mm -hm. Council Chair Furfaro: And I was not being compensated. There were no family opportunities, and I think even Councilwoman Yukimura probably found herself in that place when it came to the YMCA. It is a really important item considering we have a relatively small professional pool of people to go to to work in nonprofits and important questions, and whether now the question comes out about your benefits while you're in government is certainly something that I would like also, the Ethics Board, to kind of struggle with that question a bit, find out what works. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 9 - JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Akamine: I think there's a process, yeah. I mean, you look at the Board of Ethics, where there's a financial conflict of interest, you allow a body to make a recommendation or advice toward that. Difficult ones go through the attorney and at the end, you gotta balance that out with ... with the realities of being in an island community such as ours and I totally ... I agree with you. Council Chair Furfaro: I just wanted to state my concerns because I had a very deep commitment to that and I can understand the issue with Leadership Kauai as the founding executive director. I was being compensated. But Salvation Army? Habitat? That was pretty far reaching on what I thought as my commitment to community on housing and feeding the ... those that are less fortunate, so. Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: I really appreciate your answer to the previous question and I think that's one of the reasons I'm going to be really happy you're on this board, you know, to look at the nuance. And you know because I think you know on the Ethics Board there was this drive from community members about this rigid application of the conflict of interest and it's like, you know, we are in a small town and we need to draw on the assets we have, and there are other ways to put boundaries to make sure that people don't act, you know, in an unethical way rather than a blanket. I think it was Mark Hubbard who came before council and said, hey, I really hope you support KPAA, where he's a volunteer on a non - profit board, and people made issue of that. It was like, wait, if we're going to be that rigid, nobody's going to be able to, you know, serve. And I know certainly as a councilmember I've turned down the opportunties to serve that I would have liked because I wanted to avoid that, which is a shame, you know. It's like ... you know, so you have to unofficially provide your support, but you can't, you know, take an active role particularly. So I don't know if it's possible or if the Ethics Board can look into that: Is there other mechanisms we can establish that make the boundaries clear but allow the flexibility we need for people to serve when, you know, a rigid application is so unreasonable in terms of...it's like, you know, it's a real stretch for the... If I was the executive director of an agency, then I wouldn't... you know, I couldn't appear. But I'm a volunteer board member. So I appreciate your answer. Mr. Akamine: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Any other questions of Kurt? Ms. Yukimura: Yes. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chang? Oh, Councilwoman Yukimura? Ms. Yukimura: No, go, please, you go first. Mr. Chang: Okay, thank you. I just wanted to say I appreciate this conversation because I think it's a very interesting situation that you're in, you're back at the Board of Ethics. And I appreciate the Chair bringing up the fact that he served with Habitat and with the Salvation Army. In fact, I was there when they recognized you after nine years of...almost having to have to leave. So that was actually pretty sad, but I just wanted to bring up that point too because, you know, in this changing world, it is very different and difficult because I think as you were serving you were also the board chair of our chamber at one time. And I'm sure a lot of that had to do with your decisions with the Board of Ethics or Planning and everything going on because I was also on the chamber as the membership chair and the public relations chair, and you know, we were on the roll, everything was going good, great momentum and then boom, I was like, I think you should step SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -10- JANUARY 11, 2011 back or this might not be the right thing for you to do at that time. And like Councilmember Bynum was saying, you know, a lot of us give our time and the little expertise that we have but it's just because you care, but then there might be some conflict of interest that, you know, maybe we can look into that because, you know, the one thing that I'm hearing that there is a pool of professional volunteers and I think that's the key with this whole... everybody that we're interviewing today, everybody's on a voluntary basis and where are you going to get people to come out there professionally to volunteer and it's all about, as you say, 90% is showing up. So, you know, I think it's real important that we take a look at that because it's... you know, almost anything you get involved with these days is conflict of interest and I feel that at many times especially for a small community like Kauai it's unfortunate because maybe we're not getting the best of the best that has the expertise. So, you know, I'm glad you're back on the Board of Ethics and I'm sure in the back of your mind you'll be thinking about this discussion. Thank you, Chair. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Any further questions? Councilwoman Yukimura? Ms. Yukimura: Yes, I just wanted to correct, I think, a misunderstanding about the role of the advisory ... I mean of the Ethics Board. It's not just advisory. It actually finds whether... it makes findings of whether there was a violation of the ethics code. There is also provision for rendering advisory opinions, but the first function of the board in the charter, if I could read this, is "to initiate, receive, hear and investigate complaints of violations of the code of ethics and to transmit its findings to the council as to complaints involving county officers and to the civil service commission as to its employees." The board "may also, on its own, file impeachment proceedings in the circuit court." So those are not just advisory powers. They're pretty... because there's penalties and there's standards of conduct and there's findings whether... Then the second function is "to render advisory opinions or interpretations with respect to applications of the code. All requests for advisory opinions shall be answered within 30 days of its filing." Mr. Akamine: Yeah, as you said I mean ... I'm not an attorney, but it ... we can... the Board of Ethics can make advisory opinion. I think when it goes to who makes the final decision, on that point that you brought up, it's submitted to the council. I mean it's not that the... Council Chair Furfaro: You know, let me ask the county attorney for that because, Councilwoman Yukimura, I think when we're dealing with the question about findings, if it deals with officers of the county, I believe it comes back to the council. When it deals... Ms. Yukimura: Yes, it does. Council Chair Furfaro: ...with anything associated with the CBAs or civil service, and CBAs meaning collective bargaining agreements, you know, I think there's a different approach because then those are employees. But if Councilwoman Yukimura wouldn't mind, may I ask the county attorney that an interpretation? Ms. Yukimura: That would be very good, thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: I mean it doesn't have to be now if you can come back to us before the end of the day. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 11 - JANUARY 11, 2011 MARC GUYOT, Deputy County Attorney: Let me just make sure that I'm clear on that, Chair. You want to know whether powers of the Ethics Commission in terms of their investigations and findings, whether there is a separation between officials and union represented employees? Council Chair Furfaro: Yes, people that are covered by civil service and/or CBAs. Mr. Guyot: We actually had a situation last year and that was exactly how it was handled. Members of a union represented group, the information came back to the civil service commission. Whereas officers and elected officials and I believe even board members, that would come to the council. Council Chair Furfaro Councilwoman, thank you foi Ms. Yukimura: Council Chair Furfaro Ms. Yukimura: attorney. That comes back to the council, okay. Go ahead, letting me... Oh, I think clarification is very good. ...reestablish my interpretation. Yes, if I may ask a follow -up question of the county Council Chair Furfaro: Yes, go right ahead. Ms. Yukimura: So, I mean as to findings, it's not an advisory function, but apparently as to penalties or ... as to penalties I guess, then it goes to either the council or to the civil service commission... Mr. Guyot: Yes. Ms. Yukimura: ...with respect to remedies or... Mr. Guyot: The remedies are ultimately with the ultimate organization being either the council or the civil service commission. I have seen that the findings occasionally will have a recommendation and they may not. Again, it's very incident specific. Yes, you're correct, Council co -Chair that... Vice Chair that it ultimately does reside with either the council or civil service commission. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: You still have the floor, Councilwoman. Did you have any more questions? Ms. Yukimura: Oh, no, thank you very much. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: As long as we got in this... wasn't this... we changed that 30 days to 60 days? John, isn't that the charter provision? (Inaudible) SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -12- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Bynum: (Inaudible) to give the Board of Ethics a little more breathing room. But, you know, when I was thinking of assertive, it's like...you know it talks in here about providing the resources to do the job and that the council and mayor would do that. And one of the issues may... I could see a circumstance where the Board of Ethics would require special counsel because there was some inherent conflict with the county attorney's office. And that really gets weird because the county attorney represents each individual councilmember, the council body, the mayor, you know, they truly are... and unlike other department heads requires the council's authorization. So, you know, we trust the integrity of our county attorney's office, but it gets a little complicated when you serve that many masters. Unf... fortunate ... I almost said unfortunate. Fortunately, attorneys are pretty good at compartmentalizing their responsibilities, but I can see circumstances where, you know, an ethical member of the Board of Ethics would really need to assert themselves because they may be investigating people in the administration or, you know, I can't think of a potentially more sensitive commission to operate under, so. Mr. Akamine: I think it just, if I may, behooves this body to then make wise choices on who serves on the board. Mr. Bynum: Absolutely and to make wise choices about who serves on the Ethics... Mr. Akamine: Yeah. Mr. Bynum: And I think we've had some really outstanding members and I feel confident that, you know, you're going to be a good member as well, and I appreciate you stepping up. Thanks. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, thank you. Kurt, I'd like to... Mr. Rapozo: (Inaudible) one question and you know. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: And I wasn't going to ask a question, but I will after Mr. Bynum's comment because I think he brings up a really important point is that as we've seen in the past, you have an ethics commissioner that speaks out... he speaks out against the institution and then he's no longer asked back. I mean he's done. He's short one -time term, one -term wonder. Does that have ... you have a problem with that? Is that... that fear of not being reappointed to the next term, does that... is that going to affect your diligence in your duty? I know you personally, so for me it's ... I think that you have very... the integrity level is very high. So I don't anticipate any problems, but I gotta ask the question because that is true. The Ethics Commission, you tread on some very, very touchy areas and in fact at times may have to speak against this body or the mayor's administration. So, is that something that you're concerned about going forward that my gosh if I do this I may not be reappointed? And I guess all I ask is your honest answer. Mr. Akamine: No. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Mr. Akamine: I think, though, that for each of you that the people that you confirm would have, and I will speak my own opinion, would be ones that would be willing to make the right decisions regardless of the consequence. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 13 - JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: The right decision for the right people for the right reason. Waianae football, we call it no guts, no glory. Any other questions? Kurt, thank you very much. Mr. Akamine: Thank you. Ms. Akiona: Next interviewee is Sheri Kunioka -Volt for the Salary Commission. SALARY COMMISSION: ® Sheri S. Kunioka -Volz — Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) SHERI KUNIOKA -VOLZ: Good morning. Council Chair Furfaro: Good morning, Sheri. I don't know if you were in the room earlier when I asked that when you do come up if you could just give us a little overview for the new members, if you're currently participating on the board or commission that you're being appointed or reappointed to, just to give some of the new members a little background, so. Ms. Kunioka -Volz: Okay. Council Chair Furfaro: So the floor is yours. Ms. Kunioka -Volz: Okay, well, I have been serving on this committee for the past... little... about a year or so. It was to fill Dawn Murata's position. My previous background, I had worked for a computer company in California for a couple years and then I worked for Motorola in Austin, Texas for six years, and then moved back to Hawaii and I've been back since 1990, for the past 20 years. I currently am the retirement... the district representative for the employees retirement system, and so I do work with salaries for the state and county workers. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Sheri. Sheri, I do want to thank you for stepping into a partial term and I also want to thank you ... your experience with the various positions and compensation plans to the state is extremely important to this commission. So, on that note, may I ask are there any questions? Councilwoman Yukimura? Ms. Yukimura: Hi, Sheri. Ms. Kunioka -Volz: Hi. Ms. Yukimura: I have the greatest respect for you, you know, because I know how competent you are in your job and how knowledgeable you are about the system, so I'm very thankful for your willingess to serve. My question is ... let's see, you've been on the salary commission for about a year. Ms. Kunioka -Volz: Yes. Ms. Yukimura: So, I think the major salary report was done in 2008 and then there was an addendum after that. And in that report, it focuses on tying pay raises to performance. Ms. Kunioka -Volz: Yeah. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -14- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: And so I guess, I'm ... my question is do you personally feel it is important to connect pay raise to performance. Ms. Kunioka -Volz: I do. You know, this is the only government job that I've worked where it's been a union type of job. Prior to that it's all private industry and it's always been a ... pay links to performance. However, in the government sector, you know, we do have the performance evaluations also, where all salaries are linked to performance. All raises, in essence, are linked to performance. Ms. Yukimura: Are they? I'm not familiar Ms. Kunioka -Volz: Yeah because if you don't pass your performance evaluation, you don't get the pay increases. Ms. Yukimura: That is at least in policy, but do you know whether it's true in practice? Ms. Kunioka -Volz: I ... I can't say. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, but at least the policy is in... I mean I guess it's a two -step process, right? Having the policy and then having the practice follow policy. Ms. Kunioka -Volz: Right. Ms. Yukimura: And your experience in the private sector probably showed you a lot of how that works. I don't know of too many places in the private sector that don't work that way. Okay, thank you, I appreciate your thoughts on that. Ms. Kunioka -Volz: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Let me see if there's any other questions here. Ms. Kunioka -Volz: Okay. Council Chair Furfaro: I ... Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Ms. Kunioka -Volz: Good morning, Sheri. Good morning. Mr. Bynum: Thank you for your service, I really appreciate it. My understanding of the salary commission is that it was created by charter and that when the charter does a ... when the charter commis... salary commission does a resolution, that has the weight of the charter, right? Those are expectations, right? Do you... is that your understanding as well? Ms.Kunioka -Volz: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 15 - JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: Any other questions? (Silence) Again, let me thank you for being here today. We're going to actually, in our next meeting, actually vote on the appointments and reappointments. We're not making any decisions today. But let me say I thank you very much for your service and we'll be in touch with you after we vote at tomorrow's meeting. Ms. Kunioka -Volz: Okay, thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. Ms. Akiona: Next interviewee is Stephanie Aranio for the Civil Service Commission. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION: • Stephanie A. M. Lam Aranio —Term ending 12/3112013 (Mayoral Appointment) Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. STEPHANIE ARANIO: Good morning. Councilmembers: Good morning. Council Chair Furfaro: Steph, I don't know if you had heard what I said. We're asking... oh, okay, very good. Ms. Aranio: I did. Council Chair Furfaro: And before you start, let me share with the members here that first of all I wanted to thank you and the commissioners for receiving me in the past when I gave testimony about opportunities to constantly make improvements on our policies and procedures. Thank you very much. And on that note, let me go ahead and give you the floor., Stephanie. Ms. Aranio: Okay, thank you for your input and for sharing your information with us. That's been helpful in trying to improve some of the current processes that we're reviewing. I've been on ... I've served one term on the civil service commission and I've been in human resources for over 24 years. I've enjoyed what I've learned so far in the responsibilities that come with being a civil service commission member and look forward to hopefully serving another term. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Are there any questions here? Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Hi, thanks for coming, appreciate your service. You know, your background and expertise, it's the perfect commission for you to be on, right? And I was very interested to see in your answer that you see your role as assisting with the transition from department of personnel services to human resources. Ms. Aranio: Yes. Mr. Bynum: That's an exciting prospect for our county. And if this isn't a fair question, you don't have to answer it, but... Ms. Aranio: Okay. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -16- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Bynum: Can you explain to me the difference between personnel services and human resources? I mean I have my own idea, but it's probably not as informative as yours. Ms. Aranio: Well I ... well, I don't know if it'll... I think in having the experience of working in a government entity, previously most of my experience has been in the private sector, but one of the biggest differences is when I was with the government, we began the transition from being very —I hope I use the right terms here — regulated and regimented and not flexible in meeting the needs of the hospitals. That's the division that I was with. And so what we transitioned to is we provided more cross - training opportunities because we couldn't add staff, so we provided more cross - training opportunities to the current staff that we had. We looked at ways to smooth line processes; you still had to follow certain procedures. We looked at...it was... its basically, when you become a human resources department, your goal is to best provide the support that you can to achieve what the departments need to accomplish in the most timely and efficient manner as possible, and it's not a process in which you say, sorry, you have to wait until this person gets back, sorry you have... you step in and just do the best that you can to meet the needs as efficiently and as quickly as possible. So you kind of...we've gone from a specialized industry to more of a generalized. It's kind of flip - flopped with the HR field. But being better cross - trained, which is one of the steps that the DPS has taken to cross -train their limited staff because of finances and adding more bodies and staff is not always practical. So I don't know if I've answered your question, but that's how I view a human resource function. Mr. Bynum: I have the experience of having worked for a county 25 years ago as a middle manager and, you know, when I came to the County of Kauai there were a lot of elements that the HR in the county I had been in that didn't seem to be part of the... including a focus on training and staff development, and risk management, and... those are all traditionally part of human resources. Ms. Aranio: That's correct. Mr. Bynum: Is that correct? Ms. Aranio: Yes. Mr. Bynum: And like staff advancement... Ms. Aranio: That's correct. Mr. Bynum: ...training opportunities, and I just haven't seen that. So, I guess ... let me put a bigger question, is risk management, risk management training, that kind of thing, does that fit in an HR department? Ms. Aranio: Within the private sector it does. Within the government it's a little different. It didn't... when I was with the hospitals that didn't fall under my area of responsibility in human resources. It fell under safety and in another department, but there's definitely input that you can provide. HR should be able to define the needs of and prioritize the training that needs to be done. As with most training, there's usually a lot of money that's associated with it. What we try to do to accomplish that was do a train the trainer kind of thing. You pay to have a group of people become trainers so you can utilize them within your company, whether it's private or public. Mr. Bynum: You said train the trainers. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 17 - JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Aranio: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Right, right. Ms. Aranio: Yes, train the trainers. Mr. Bynum: Right, which is a ... you know, as a middle manager in that county, the employees I supervised were expected to have a certain level of training and then were offered a level of training that they could use towards (inaudible) advancements, so to speak. Ms. Aranio: Right. Mr. Bynum: But... and there was an auditor... an internal auditor that audited me as a manager to see if I had, you know, made all of those opportunities available and had seen, as a manager, that the employees I supervised had the required trainings and that was all part of an HR at a county level. Ms. Aranio: Yeah. Mr. Bynum: It was like not only were they doing the risk management and training and providing it, but they were auditing the managers to see that... Ms. Aranio: It was being done. Mr. Bynum: ...it was actually occurring, you know. Ms. Aranio: Yeah. Mr. Bynum: And they did use some of those models that are cost savings like train the trainers and identified people in departments, you know, employees rather than bringing outside people who could train other employees in their departments and that kind of thing. I don't think our department of personnel services is involved in that at all that I'm aware of. Ms. Aranio: We're not to that level. You're correct. Mr. Bynum: So, I very much appreciate your willingness to serve and I think I was thrilled to see that you see as part of your role in assistance in, you know, our journey to perhaps make changes in the way we handle... Ms. Aranio: We're optimistic that we'll get there. Mr. Bynum: ...human resources. Yeah, great. Ms. Aranio: Hopefully sooner than later, but you know, we're going to keep pushing along... Mr. Bynum: Great. Ms. Aranio: ... in trying to achieve that. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -18- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Bynum: Well you know what... and the reason I ask... focus on risk management, we just hired a risk manager there in the finance department. I don't know where they'll end up eventually and, you know, maybe I'm biased by my own experience, that HR in the county I was in, you know, that was under that umbrella, so to speak. So, thank you very much for your service. Ms. Aranio: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo? Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Lani, thanks again for agreeing to serve another term. I believe you were there when I testified back in '08 I guess it was. Ms. Aranio: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: And you know, obviously, I had some concerns. One of the common complaints we get from employees is that, you know, they're not being treated fairly, that people get promoted and so forth. And, you know, the real... the function of personnel is really to provide that equal playing field, this equal opportunity... we're an equal opportunity employer. And that... at that meeting —I don't know if you remember this —but Tom was there and he testified about this list, this list that really is at the discretion of the mayor. You know, he calls for so many employees and they give him the names. There's really no qualification. He has ... I forget what the name of that list. It was... he named it, a list. And with that list, certain entry level positions, the mayor could pick who he wanted. To me that's not very equal in its opportunity. It's obviously biased based on the administrator at the time. And I'm not going to ask you your opinion. I'm just going to ask that if you would be willing at least to bring it up at a meeting should you be appointed that now that we have an auditor, we have a department of the auditor, that in fact we ... or you utilizing your own special funds that I would gladly support from this council to audit that process because I think as a complaint that ... a written complaint that was filed that someone was basically disqualified, no test was ever given. And yet in my opinion when you look at HRS, it's clear that there should be an exam and it's an interpretation of what an exam is. Ms. Aranio: Correct. Mr. Rapozo: But I guess my question to you is would you be willing to at least bring that up and have that discussion because I think it's one that needs to be done? Ms. Aranio: Sure. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Ms. Aranio: Of course. Council Chair Furfaro: As I thanked Lani earlier and just also to tag on Mr. Rapozo and Mr. Bynum, my discussion was then ... was the beginning of a 360 process for reviews. I introduced to them what we are doing here at the council with upward appraisals. They are, in my understanding, looking at different options. Ms. Aranio: Yes. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING _19- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: On that, we also talked about, you know, a 360 needs to be a feedback from your peers as well as the traditional top -down review. That will eventually hopefully lead us to a continuity and succession planning where we can identify high achievers and I think that goes to the heart of these two gentlemen's question about performance, fair play, as well as giving everybody an opportunity that meets the minimum qualifications. So Lani, thank you very much for participating in that and thank you for serving and being here today. Ms. Aranio: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Oh, one more question, I'm sorry. Ms. Aranio: Yes. Ms. Yukimura: Actually, more than one, but first of all thank you very much. I think the county is so lucky to have someone of your background on our civil service commission, someone who has such a good foundation in the private sector, but also with your experience with the Hawaii State Sys... Hospital System, experience in government systems, thank you. I too noticed, like Councilmember Bynum, with great ... I noticed with great interest this assist with the transition from DPS to HR and I wondered is there a strategic plan in place for doing this? Ms. Aranio: Well, we didn't ... we don't have a formal strategic plan. What we've done is ... let's see I'm going to say over the last two years where our director has moved towards doing the cross - training, maintaining the minimum staff, meeting the budgetary needs, and trying to prioritize because training has come up numerous times in various areas but trying to prioritize those training needs with the existing budget that he has. I think the strategic plan is a good one. We haven't... that's something that we should look at perhaps formalizing. Maybe not as detailed as a strategic plan is normally done, but definitely outlining the next steps... Ms. Yukimura: A plan. Ms. Aranio: ...to take, yes, putting in a plan of action. Ms. Yukimura: And thank you for your explanation of what it means to go from DPS to human resource. That was helpful to a lay person like me. One of ..you know in indicating what you understand the primary duties of appointment are, you didn't mention review and oversight of the director's job and role. Ms. Aranio: Mm -hm. Ms. Yukimura: But I've ... I would guess that you would agree that it is a very critical... Ms. Aranio: Yes, and I think I took that for granted. Ms. Yukimura: ...role. Ms. Aranio: That... because that's our primary responsibility, being on the commission. Ms. Yukimura: And the leadership of the department. Ms. Aranio: Correct. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -20- JANUAR,Y 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So okay, two more questions. One, regarding the training of the trainer... oh, not the training of the trainers, but just cross - training and looking at the training needs of your department, I think we would look very positively on requests for training moneys if we saw that it was part of a plan that was going to really improve the services of the DPS to the rest of the county. Ms. Aranio: Okay, good, that's good to know, thank you. Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, I mean I'm only speaking for myself, but I think many of us here around the table understand the importance of training and how that can really increase the leverage and the capacity of any department. Ms. Aranio: Correct, okay, thank you. Ms. Yukimura: So, just to let you know that. Ms. Aranio: Thank you. Ms. Yukimura: And then the other thing is I presume that a human resources department —I'm showing my ignorance here —would also have concern about training of the whole county and all the employees of the county. So I was just wondering whether the commission has had any time or space, because I know how full your agendas are, to look at that issue and look at ways to impact that issue of training within the county as a whole or is that something you have been able to deal with? Ms. Aranio: I think what's... probably in the forefront would be training to prevent certain types of issues from occurring that's been causing our county a lot of liability. Ms. Yukimura: Prevention. Ms. Aranio: Yes. And so, that's been a priority, obviously, because we've been paying for some of those areas that we've... .Ms. Yukimura: (Inaudible) moneys. Ms. Aranio: ...lacked training in, yeah. But we will be looking to the director and the department to provide us with some direction as to what they would consider in prioritizing the training. You know, other than what's in the forefront now, but ways that we could improve training to help current employees advance within their area, within other areas, other training that we could use to prevent different types of... Ms. Yukimura: Costs. Ms. Aranio: ...situations from occurring and reducing some of our expenses and costs. We would look to the department and the director to provide us with some of those recommendations and prioritizing that. They should know the pulse of the county better than we would, but... Does that answer your question? SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -21- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: Yeah. I know in a very small way, when I was mayor, we learned that there were so many equipment malfunctions and repairs, and we traced that back to equipment operators' knowledge of how to use the machinery well. Ms. Aranio: Mm -hm. Ms. Yukimura: So we created a training position for that and reduced the... not just the equipment cost, but the downtime that affected the other workers, you know, throughout. So, I mean, that was just a small example of how the training was pretty critical in the operations of the county. Ms. Aranio: Mm -hm. You know what? Ms. Yukimura: And... Ms. Aranio: And if I may, I'll share an example with you on ... in a position that... in the... with a company that I previously worked for, we had very limited funds and resources to purchase additional equipment so we were faced with the same thing. We had to ensure that our equipment lasted as long as they could. But what we did was we used that same train the trainer concept and trained our managers and supervisors to provide the required training for our equipment operators so that the ongoing process could be better monitored because we were not in a position that we could hire anybody else. But that would be another oper ... you know, rather than hiring somebody to do that, you could train your existing staff to monitor and implement those. Ms. Yukimura: Excellent and that kind of system has the synergy of providing advancement for... Ms. Aranio: Yes, yes. Ms. Yukimura: ... employees ... advancement opportunities. Very good. My last question is that I think it was in the last year or two that the mayors of, I think, all the counties went before the legislature asking for the appointment power of the personnel director. And I just wondered and you know, this is a difficult question because it involves people, but if we could take away the personalities and the personalness of anything and talk about the best organizational structure, do you have some thoughts about which would be a better system? Ms. Aranio: Well, if I look at... as a civil service commission member, we are not involved in the day -to -day operations. That's where your primarily... your primary responsibilities come for supervising... for being... We are in once a month. We get a general overview of things, but we're not in a situation where you can immediately address issues that occur on a day -to -day basis. So it's a very... while I understand what the statutes require, if we're looking at best practices to efficiently manage your department heads or your county... Ms. Yukimura: Right. Ms. Aranio: ...I would look towards the day -to -day supervision of that. That would be most effective. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you very much. I know it's a very informed opinion and so I appreciate it very much, thank you. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -22- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: Lam, I'm not going to excuse you yet. You can see by the general questions there's a lot of interest here. Nadine Nakamura, Ms. Nakamura: I'm just going to keep this short because of the time, but I just wanted to... We recently received the cost control commission's recommendations, three of them, one that highlights the need for training and preventive training, so I'm happy to hear that that's at the top of your agenda and really look forward to hearing more about what it's going to take to actually make it happen and whether resources are needed to implement it, not just the preventive, but the big picture, long -term training. So I hope that that's the direction... Ms. Aranio: Yes. Ms. Nakamura: ...the commission will be moving into really pushing for a big picture strategic plan. Thank you. Ms. Aranio: Mm -hm, thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Well, you can see from the questions, as I said, a little different than you and I are used to, having a business training plan in the organization, having incentives, and performance review of department heads tied to following through on their business plan, but I want to thank you for your service, and we're going to go to our next interview. Ms. Aranio: Okay, thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. Ms. Aranio: Thank you. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Ms. Akiona: The next interviewee is Brad Nagano for the Board of Ethics. BOARD OF ETHICS: • Brad R. Nagano —Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) BRAD NAGANO: Good morning... Council Chair Furfaro: Good morning. Mr. Nagano: ...and happy new year, honorable councilmembers. Council Chair Furfaro: Brad, just to let you know, I would like you to kind of give an overview of your current role, your time on commissions, and just a little background for the members here, if you can do that. Mr. Nagano: My, yeah, past I guess experience with the County of Kauai, I served 10 years on the cost control commission way back when. I also served a short stint with the board of ethics commission, I guess a few months ago. I'm currently now employed with the Mokihana Insurance Agency, made a move from Noguchi and Associates. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -23- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: Brad, may I just confirm and you just acknowledge that I know there was a period of time when you were on the ethics committee and serving as a representative of another insurance agency at a time where there was some competitive bidding going on and you chose to... Mr. Nagano: Res... Council Chair Furfaro: ...back out of a few... Mr. Nagano: Resign, yes. Council Chair Furfaro: ...for good reasons because of potential conflict and I just wanted to give you a moment to acknowledge that as it did reflect in your attendance, so. Mr. Nagano: Yeah, what I did was... well, at Noguchi and Associates, I had an unfortunate situation where my staff had to take medical leave which meant that theoretically our office consisted of two employees and when one is gone, I was not at liberty to close the office and leave. Also, what we did was we went into a competitive bid to get some county jobs and what we... I submitted a letter to the board of ethics to see if it was a conflict or not. And they ruled against me, so I thought the best and cleanest way to do this was to resign. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay and you are also now with a different agency, am I correct? Mr. Nagano: Which we have more than two employees now, yes. Council Chair Furfaro: As well as the competitive bid, I understand was for a three -year period and will not come up again, and so you may not have that conflict again, am I correct? Mr. Nagano: Correct. And we were under the assumption that if it's a competitive bid, it ... you know, wasn't an ethics type of violation. But because of the ruling, I felt to keep it very clean was to resign. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you for recognizing that possible conflict. Thank you. Mr. Nagano: Okay. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, Brad, I'm going to open up any questions to the members. Mr. Nagano: Sure. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Nagano is a pretty seasoned commissioner with various boards. Are there any questions of him? Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: I just thank you very much for being willing to serve and I got, you know, a sense from Mr. Isobe about the circumstances on your previous service, so you're with Mokihana now. They're fine with you, your partners or whatever are fine with you providing this service on the ethics board. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -24- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Nagano: Yes. I'd like to make one thing clear, though. Should a situation like that arise again, I would have to be truthful with you all that I would resign again. Mainly, I hope you can understand that that... my other life is my livelihood, so I hope you folks can understand that. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. You still have the floor. Mr. Bynum: Speaking for myself, absolutely. You know, I appreciate your willingness to serve and any of us that find circumstances ... I mean you did just the right thing and said, hey, I can't meet this responsibility now. You've owned it and you feel like you will be going forward and so I'm very appreciative of your answer. Mr. Nagano: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo, the floor recognizes you. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you and thanks for your honesty, Brad. It does raise a concern with me because I don't know if you anticipate that coming up? I don't know if there'll be an opportunity? Do you see that coming in within this term? Mr. Nagano: Not really. I would hope so. Mr. Rapozo: No, I mean you need to give ... you know, I ... because I ... you know, one of the important things about ethics is the continuity. Mr. Nagano: Correct. Mr. Rapozo: Unlike a commission that meets once a month or once a year or buildings appeal, when you're talking ethics, some of these issues last, as you're well aware of. Mr. Nagano: Correct. Mr. Rapozo: And my concern is if there's an opportunity or a good chance that you're going to be resigning again, then, you know, I may not be so supportive for obvious reasons. Mr. Nagano: Right. Mr. Rapozo: Because again, when you deal with ethics, it's executive sessions, its personnel issues. To have some new guy or woman come in and take your place and be briefed up, I don't think that's fair for that person. I don't think it's fair for the county as well. So I guess, I'm asking and my vote is going to depend on your answer because I had all intentions of supporting you without even asking a question. Your comment raised a little red flag for me. Do you anticipate or what are the chances of something coming up in the next three years... it's a three -year term, right... Council Chair Furfaro: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: ...three -year term, that would cause you to resign again because I think the ethics for me is one of the most important commissions in the county? SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -25- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Nagano: Correct. I don't anticipate any. Not sure whether the county would put out any type of competitive bidding situation which we would be able to participate in as of right now. Mr. Rapozo: Okay and no feel bad because I was the sole bidder on a competitive bid with the county and I had to get rung through the ringer... through ethics twice. Mr. Nagano: Okay. Mr. Rapozo: No feel bad, yeah. Okay, thank you. Mr. Nagano: I also find the ethics committee quite interesting with the situations that have been brought before us when I was serving. Council Chair Furfaro: I do want to point out, Brad, that's one of the reasons I mentioned it's a three -year term and also the insurance award on loss prevention was for a three -year period. Mr. Nagano: Correct. Council Chair Furfaro: So, you know, it's... they're kind of paralleling each other even though you're with a different agency now. Mr. Nagano: Correct. Council Chair Furfaro: It's questionable something could happen that might surface again, but that's what I found out in my review of your attendance piece. well? Mr. Nagano: Okay. Mr. Rapozo: One more question. Was Mokihana a bidder as Mr. Nagano: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: Oh, they were. Mr. Nagano: Yes. With my association with Mokihana, a little background, I came from Noguchi and Associates, which is a larger agency. Mokihana, as you know, is one of only two locally owned insurance agencies. What I did was I merged in with Mokihana Insurance, moved my clients over, and continued association with Noguchi and Associates, which meant that we would have had the additional markets and the manpower to go after larger accounts such as the County of Kauai. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you again, Brad. Nadine. Ms. Nakamura: I'm going to ask this same question to all of the ethics commission nominees, but what ... Kaua`i county does not have an anti - nepotism policy that, you know, nothing in our ethics rules or charter that prevent people from, you know, making decisions about the hiring or the wage salaries of relatives. Mr. Nagano: Correct. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -26- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Nakamura: And I was wondering what's your take on this and... on this issue? Mr. Nagano: I guess if it doesn't come before the ethics board, I ... my assumption or perception is we're strictly an advisory board, and policies and procedures are not being set by us, and that we would render a decision, an opinion, when the question arrives in front of us. So, I think policy and procedures will... won't be coming out of our commission. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Brad. Councilwoman Yukimura? Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, Brad. Congratulations on your new business. Mr. Nagano: Thank you. Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, let me see. I'm going to ask kind of the same questions I asked Kurt Akamine. And you already said... Mr. Nagano: Can I limit you to two questions or what? Ms. Yukimura: Huh? Mr. Nagano: Nah, I just joking? Ms. Yukimura: Not yet. Let's see, you answered... in answering Councilmember Rapozo's question, you agreed that the question of ethics is important to the county. I just wanted to hear more about how you see ethics in relationship to county operations and why it's important. Mr. Nagano: Well, strictly I think I would view myself as a —how you say —a non - biased party looking at opinions, both for and against, and rendering an opinion based on the question involved. That's what I would interpret. Right, wrong, or indifference is stricly an opinion from our committee. I don't think we have any —how you say jurisdictions to —how you say — present any policies or procedures but an opinion. So should there be an ethics violation, it would be up to the council or to the civil service commission to render a decision. Ms. Yukimura: Well, you will make a decision as a group or a finding... Mr. Nagano: A finding, correct. Ms. Yukimura: ...of whether there's been a violation or not. So it is the ethics board that determines whether there's been a violation. Mr. Nagano: Strictly opinion, though, right? I mean... Ms. Yukimura: I don't think... unless ... I mean I guess we can ask the county attorney. Unless there's an appeal to the court, I don't think the council or the civil service commission is an appeal board that can overturn a finding of a violation. But I think we might determine what the penalty would be. Mr. Nagano: Correct, correct. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -27- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: So the ethics board is not advisory as to whether or not there was a violation. I mean I think you find that there was a violation or that there wasn't a violation. Mr. Nagano: We would... we would render an opinion, correct. Ms. Yukimura: No, that's the second part, as I understand it, of the ethics function. The first part being your investigative powers to find whether there was a violation or not. And the second is to render advisory opinions... Mr. Nagano: Opinion, correct. Ms. Yukimura: ... as to whether there was a conflict of interest. Mr. Nagano: Correct. Ms. Yukimura: So, yeah, so on page 26 of the charter, "it shall be the function of the board to initiate, receive, hear, investigate complaints of violation and to transmit its findings to the council." I presume for the establishment of penalties. Mr. Nagano: Correct. Ms. Yukimura: And then the second is to render advisory opinions or interpretations with respect to application of the code on request. Mr. Nagano: Correct. Ms. Yukimura: So two separate, right. So, you are basically the board that determines whether there was a violation of the code or not. Mr. Nagano: Correct. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, okay. And I like your thought that it would be an unbiased group or individuals with unbiased positions that look to see whether the code was violated. Mr. Nagano: Correct, as a group, yes. Ms. Yukimura: And the importance of that to the county, I guess, would be the proper functioning. I mean otherwise, we ... if they... if we were a county where you could violate the ethics code right and left, bottom line, things wouldn't work very well. Mr. Nagano: Correct, correct. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so .the... you know in making these decisions, they're... they're not always easy decisions, they're not always easy to know whether there was a violation or not, and then sometimes there are people who appear before you or who are brought before you who are friends or, you know, acquaintances... Mr. Nagano: Which is very difficult here in Kaua`i... Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, right. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -28- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Nagano: ...because almost everybody is our friends, relatives... Ms. Yukimura: Exactly, exactly. And I mean in terms of the difficulty, I want to say that I wouldn't have found a conflict of interest in a competitive bid situation. Mr. Nagano: Oh well, I kind of felt bad about that, but you know it was... and they're my friends. Ms. Yukimura: But ... so ... but whatever the decision is, yeah. Mr. Nagano: But you know, that decision was made. Ms. Yukimura: Right. Mr. Nagano: And I felt that I had to follow it the best possible way we could. Ms. Yukimura: Right and I respect you for that, and I just brought that up as an example of how hard the decisions are sometimes. Mr. Nagano: It is, it is. Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, so I just want to presume or want to confirm that you're willing to make these hard decisions without consequent thought of...you know, irrelevant consequences. Mr. Nagano: I have in the past. Ms. Yukimura: Sorry. Mr. Nagano: I said I have in the past... Ms. Yukimura: Yeah. Mr. Nagano: ... made some very difficult decisions. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, and thank you very... and by your willingness to serve again, you know what you're getting into. Mr. Nagano: Of course. Ms. Yukimura: Right, okay, thank you very much. Council Chair Furfaro: Earlier we visited these similar questions, but let me ask the councilwoman, did you have a question for the county attorney on these referrals on findings? You have the floor to ask that question. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. I think clarification would be helpful. So... Council Chair Furfaro: Are you going to address the question? SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -29- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: Yes, if I may, the question would be whether the ethics board is basically the final decision maker as to the findings of whether there was a violation or not, other than the court, I guess, which to whom you could appeal? Mr. Guyot: I think at this point that probably ought to come in to a written question, perhaps with a hypothetical. But again, I think we're getting into somewhat of a ... somewhat incident specific as to who the parties are involved in certain areas and I'm just going off of memory in terms of how ethics applies to certain different entities within the county. So that's why a written request would probably be best at this point. Ms. Yukimura: I'll be glad to do a written request. Council Chair Furfaro: Very good and the written request will be coming from Councilwoman Yukimura, but it'll be channeled through my office as well. So when we share the response and we'll take it from there. Ms. Yukimura: All right, thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Brad... Mr. Nagano: Yes. Council Chair Furfaro: I don't think there's any more questions for you. Mr. Nagano: All right, well thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: We want to thank you and we'll be discussing this at the upcoming council meeting and we'll vote on the appointments then. Mr. Nagano: Thank you much. Ms. Akiona: Next interviewee is Mr. Hubbard for the Board of Ethics. • Mark S. Hubbard – Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Hubbard. Good morning, Mark. MARK HUBBARD: Good morning. My name is Mark Hubbard. Council Chair Furfaro: Mark, I had earlier asked that potential board and commission members would just give a quick overview, if they're serving now, a little bit about themselves, and its relationship or experience that adds to the board or commission that they're being considered for, so I'll give you the floor. Mr. Hubbard: Thank you. I have been on the board of ethics recently, so for the last two or three years, I can't remember. Prior to that I think I served two terms in the late 1990s, early 2000s or some time around there —my memory's not that good. So I have had considerable experience on the board of ethics. That doesn't mean that I know anything about it. I do notice that there is... And I have been on the island for 34 years, worked at Lihu`e Plantation, Grove Farm Company, and I'm a human resource consultant, now mostly retired. I enjoy doing volunteer work. I'm willing to be on the board of ethics again. I find that it's... continues to be challenging and the decisions coming out of the board change, SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING _30- JANUARY 11, 2011 and it's interesting. Oh, what's... what I've found interesting is in the last six months or so, because there has been over the last couple years some controversies regarding decisions and regarding certain sections of the charter, I spoke at a couple of Rotary Clubs about ethics and conflicts of interest and certain things, and I ... what I did was I just brought up several of the issues that had been before the board of ethics and I gave just the brief here's the charter language, and I asked people to raise their hand, yes or no. And almost invariably, I mean there was never universal agreement, and it was usually, you know, half/half, two - thirds /one- third. And these were all decisions that you know I mean ... I thought we were... you know, as you ... we all have our own opinion and I don't know how we get that opinion. I believe it's just from a long upbringing and yet that taints our reading of the language. We read the language and say oh, it obviously means this. Someone else says, well no, it obviously means this. Luckily there's seven members and the majority rules and that's the way it goes. But it is interesting that ... I'm still working on that, why do we have such varying degrees of ..on particular issues, why don't we all agree? It's just... in fact years ago when I joined board of ethics, I joined and I said oh, this is going to be easy because it's black and white. And usually for...I mean, you know, that's the way we think it's all black and white, but unfortunately, everybody doesn't agree on what the color is, you know, it's... so. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Do we have questions for Mr. Hubbard? Mr. Bynum, then Councilwoman Yukimura. Mr. Bynum: Hi Mark. Thank you very much for being willing to remain on the board of ethics. I value your service there very much and I appreciate your comments this morning that it turns out that it's not black and white. And in what we all bring, you know, to our interpretation, you know that those are (inaudible). I just thought I'd take this opportunity, in our packet now are these interpretive rules that I think came from the board of ethics... Mr. Hubbard: Mm -hm. Mr. Bynum: ...struggling with one of those black and white issues. Mr. Hubbard: Right, right. Mr. Bynum: And you know, I think you came under some criticism for appearing on behalf of KPAA at the council and my recollection is you just said hey, this is a really good organization, I hope you see their value and want to support them. Under these current rules, could you do that? Mr. Hubbard: No. Mr. Bynum: Okay. So the interpretation of the rules, I hear, became pretty rigid then? Mr. Hubbard: Yes, yeah, and that's... well it was as ... we gave as much leeway as we could, but the language, just the way it reads, you know you can't appear and... Mr. Bynum: And... but you still could serve on these very ... like say on the KPAA board. Mr. Hubbard: Right. Mr. Bynum: Are you currently on the KPAA? SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 31 - JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Hubbard: Yes, I'm on several boards, and it's just... and so I cannot appear before groups, you know, meetings, etcetera where there's a body. I could probably do, you know, ministerial business, go get my driver's license, etcetera, but you know. Mr. Bynum: So you can still serve these agencies. You just can't appear before a decision - making body like the county council? Mr. Hubbard: Right, in behalf of the organization. So now, I'm just in here in behalf of myself, so there's no conflict. But I couldn't talk about one of my organizations and try to convince you to, you know, give money to them or whatever. That would be in conflict. Mr. Bynum: And would that conflict apply to communication with an individual councilmember? Mr. Hubbard: Ah ... no, I don't think... the interpretive rules, it appears... well, it's give written or oral testimony. If the council was considering something, I probably shouldn't talk to an individual councilmember regarding it. Mr. Bynum: But these rules wouldn't make that an ethics violation? Mr. Hubbard: Yeah. Mr. Bynum: Because you're not appearing before the board, right? Mr. Hubbard: It... Mr. Bynum: Ah, one of those black and white... Mr. Hubbard: Yeah, well I haven't... I'd have to look at it a little more care... review the language more careful... you know, carefully, which is what I try to do. Mr. Bynum: So in this instance though the board of ethics struggled with it and ended up promulgating interpretive rules to kind of give guidance to other individuals (inaudible). Mr. Hubbard: Yes. Mr. Bynum: And that's a positive thing in your view? Mr. Hubbard: Yes, yes. Mr. Bynum: So it helps bring clarity. Thank you very much for your service. Council Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Hubbard: Hi Mark. m Ms. Yukimura: Happy new year. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -32- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Hubbard: Thank you. Ms. Yukimura: And thank you. I ... the community holds you in such high esteem as do I and we're really thankful that you're willing to serve in this sometimes very difficult job of determining what is ethical and what is not. And so I'm asking you the same questions I've asked of every ethics board appointee who has come up before us today. Why do you think ethics is important to the county? Mr. Hubbard: Well, I just think in every relationship you have to be ethical and most of us are brought up to have some integrity, etcetera, and we just need ... you know, these... they are some guidelines. In fact it's just the, you know, the state law says that we have to have a board of ethics and it has to do certain things and so we do that. I mean and it's a good thing that we're... tries to lend clarity to situations. Ms. Yukimura: And, you know, I think your example with the Rotary Club was perfect in terms of illustrating the difficulty of arriving at a decision as to what some, you know, whether some of the closer cases are ethical or not. And also, this is a small community, so we know everyone and it's not always easy to pass judgment which is part of the ethics jo ... board's job in making a finding. So, I guess this... my question is whether, you know, you're willing to take on this kind of difficult job and I know the answer already because you've served for so many years. But you're in to... Mr. Hubbard: Yes, I'm willing even though the last few decisions I've been on the minority side, and it bothers me a little bit, but hey, that's... luckily we're... Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, I think Martin Luther King says the are of justice always moves toward justice, but it's very slow. I think that's all I have. Thank you very much. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Hubbard, may I ask you, do you know how these interpretive rules were developed, handled and if there was a public hearing? Mr. Hubbard: believe. And so we followed the. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Hubbard: Council Chair Furfaro: Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Hubbard: Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Hubbard: Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Hubbard: Yes, there was a couple of public hearings, I So we've met the criteria. Yes. Okay. Chapter 91. Right, right, the... Is it 91 or 92? Oh, it's the state... Oh no, 92 is the... It's the state law regarding... SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -33- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: Administrative Procedures Act. Mr. Hubbard: Council Chair Furfaro anyway, the number doesn't was able to participate. Mr. Hubbard: Right. 92 is the sunshine (inaudible), I'm sorry. But matter. The procedure did in fact occur and the public Yes. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. Any further questions of Mr. Hubbard? Is your hand up, Mr. Chang? No? Mark, I want to personally thank you for the time you've served the community through boards and commissions, and I also want to personally thank you for the effort you've put in to some of the questions we have developed here at the council. Thank you very much. Mr. Hubbard: Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Hubbard: Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Chang: Ms. Akiona: the cost control commission. You're welcome. We'll be voting on these things tomorrow, so. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. The next interviewee is Lawrence Chaffin, Jr., for Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chaffin is not in the audience, so we'll go to the next one for now. Ms. Akiona: The next would be Edgar Justus IV for the Charter Review Commission. CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION: • Edgar Sevier Justus IV —Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. EDGAR JUSTUS IV: Good morning Chair, good morning council. Council Chair Furfaro: Good morning, good morning, nice to see you here and thank you for being here a little early so we can go right into your piece, Mr. Justus. Mr. Justus I would like to ask if you can give us kind of an overview. We know this is your first opportunity to serve on a board or commission. Give us a little bit of an overview. We only have 15 minutes allocated for this time and then we'll go into some questions as they come up from the members. So the floor is yours, sir. Mr. Justus: My name is Ed Justus. I'm a resident of Hanapepe. My wife and I run a successful bookstore out there called "Talk Story" and we've been in business for six years. I'm involved in the Lions Club and the Rotary Club, and we do a lot of community events and things like that to ... recently we (inaudible) a 50s event and a winter Christmas Festival, and so we're always trying SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -34- JANUARY 11, 2011 to find some ways to liven the community. My wife and I came here nine years ago on vacation and we just never left, and never sent for anything, and haven't been back since, so. For some reason Kauai felt like home and it's just the place we've decided to stay. I was asked by the Mayor to join the... or to serve on the charter review commission, and I'm honored to be asked to serve. It was certainly unexpected and it's a really... to me it's a great honor to be able to serve in any capacity to help the community, to help the county to find ways that we can, as a group, make a difference, make things better. You know, not only for those that serve our community, but also for those that... to actually serve the people better. To me that's, I think, the ultimate goal of any of us if we can improve our community as a whole. And I guess that's about it. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, thank you very much. May I ask if there's any questions here of Mr. Justus. Councilwoman Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Justus: Ms. Yukimura: day... Mr. Justus: Ms. Yukimura: willingness to serve. T reviewing the charter or function of the charter is purpose in the charter? Yes, good morning Ed. Good morning. Long time no see after seeing you almost every Yeah, I know, right. ...during the campaign. I'm grateful for your its is a very important body and so I guess I ... and in considering amendments to the charter, the purpose and very important. So I wondered how you understand the Mr. Justus: To me the charter is like the consitution of the United States except it's for our county, and to me, it's a really great ... I think it's a great opportunity to look it over, find out what works, what doesn't work, what can we improve, listen to everybody's opinions, you know both sides of every argument so we can get a very balanced opinion before there's voting. At least that's how I've always operated. I see that it's really the integral framework that makes our county do what it does, at least that's always been my understanding, with the ability to amend it to make it more functional for us. Ms. Yukimura: Sometimes if the amendments are not well considered, they can actually make more problems for us. Mr. Justus: That's true. Ms. Yukimura: And because it's not an easy thing to change the charter, it's a real problem. Mr. Justus: Yeah. Ms. Yukimura: So, how would you go about determining whether a proposed charter amendment will actually be an improvement or not? Mr. Justus: Okay, to me I kind of... from what I understand, the criteria basically is is it necessary or is it desirable? Does it actually improve the functioning of the county in all of its different bodies? Does it also make it more accessible or more functional for the community since to me the community... you know, the county and the community are kind of one thing. You know, they really SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -35- JANUARY 11, 2011 have to be connected and so to me, if there's ... I would think if there's something that further separates the community from the... from the charter or from the accessibility to the county, that's something I would certainly use as a criteria. But basically I think it's gotta be ... it's gotta be necessary. And I think if. -you know, it's why you got all these different ways to do that. Whereas, you know, you all can do that, charter review can suggest things, and then the community can petition. So I think to me those are all excellent ways to find out what is the pulse of the community, what ... you know, what is asked for, what is needed. Ms. Yukimura: That's a good answer and sometimes there are things called unintended consequences. So something that looks kind of good and might actually do some good but then has these unintended consequences, that may actually outweigh the impact of the good things. So how would you discern that? Mr. Justus: I think that's why ... I think it's great that we have the ability to discuss it amongst many people that are part of that commission. That way (inaudible) can get all these different ideas and we can all discuss them and then I think just use our best judgment of what... what seems right, what seems ethical, you know. That's... I'm grateful to have differing opinions. Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Justus: Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Justus: That's true. Sounds like how (inaudible)... That is one of the roles of... ...how this operates. Ms. Yukimura: ...descent and different opinions, that they raise things that you should consider that you may not have on your own. Mr. Justus: Absolutely. Ms. Yukimura: So the other way is to really understand what the mind of the originators were in the charter, at least to know that so you can look at whether things have changed from that original time or not. And we lost a great resource in Morris Shinsato who died, I believe, last year, who was the county attorney for many years and who was responsible for drafting the... most of what we still have today. But there are records also that can be looked at in turn... and others who may have some historic memories about why things were done. I mean even our furniture, Kaipo Asing has some of that history and so forth. So, that's the other thing to look at as you're looking at the charter. I really appreciate your answers. I think they're very thoughtful and I think you'll be a good member of the charter review commission. Mr. Justus: Thank you very much Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, the floor recognizes Councilman Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, thanks Ed for jumping in the fire. You know, it's always nice to see new people on the commissions. I guess, you know, I just wanted to ask... several years ago while I was on the council, I introduced a resolution that would urge the charter review commission to consider creating a whole new charter. You know our charter is over 30 years old. It's... there's a lot of SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -36- JANUARY 11, 2011 moving parts. If you amend one section, like Councilmember Yukimura said, there's unintended consequences somewhere else. And it will almost, in my opinion, requires a comprehensive review taking into account general plans and everything to create this new document. You know, one of my colleagues who's no longer on the council referenced it much like the Bible, which I took quite offense to it because the Bible was never, ever intended to be amended. The Bible is a historical capture of what occurred. It is not... it has nothing to do with our charter. Our charter is intended to be amended as times change. So, I mean is that something you would consider, a comprehensive review of the existing charter and possibly coming up with a new charter for Kauai, the sequel or whatever you want to call it? Mr. Justus: Right. Mr. Rapozo: Because we know the language in the charter is oudated. It's much like having a 1956 engine in your car and you know to go get parts today, it's tough, it's... times change, systems change. Is that something you would be supportive of? Mr. Justus: I would certainly consider it because just for the simple fact that if it's something that you as, you know, that you're asking for, I think that's ... I would think that's the job of the charter review is to discuss those kinds of options, to find out, you know, is this something that we do need to do right now? Is it effective? Is this the time for it? You know, that's... that's something I think would certainly be worth looking at, you know. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you and thank you again for your reply. Council Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Nakamura. Ms. Nakamura: Hi Ed. Mr. Justus: Hi. Ms. Nakamura: I want to echo the concerns of Councilmember Rapozo. The charter is quite old and I think while the contents might be there, it's not gender neutral, and there are 20 years worth of amendments that make it very difficult to find unless you work with the charter every day. And I think it's harder for the lay person, it's hard for me as a new councilmember to get my hands around just preparing for today's meeting because there was information on so many different pages within the charter based on amendments over the past 20 years that have never been incorporated and updated so it's all in one place. So that's something that I would ask you to take a look at. Mr. Justus: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Are there any other questions of Mr. Justus? Ed, first of all let me personally thank you for stepping forward. I plan to handle the actual voting on these appointments in tomorrow's council meeting and you would hear from us directly thereafter. Mr. Justus: Okay. Council Chair Furfaro: But thank you for your answers to the questions and you will have my support. Mr. Justus: Oh, thank you very much, happy new year by the way. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -37- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: Yes, happy new year to you. Ms. Yukimura: Same to you. ( ?): Thank you. Mr. Rapozo: Is it possible to take a real short recess? I mean we re... Council Chair Furfaro: Yes, we're actually six minutes ahead, so we're going to take a six - minute. When we come back, Mr. Chaffin, you'll be called up. There being no objection, the Chair recessed the meeting at 10:24 a.m. The meeting was called back to order at 10:35 a.m. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chaffin? No, Mr. Chaffin, I have a favor to ask of you. I would like to see if I could reschedule your time since Mr. Nishida is here and today is a planning commission meeting. So, he's two down from you and you are appropriately next, but if I could have Mr. Nishida come up, then I'll send him back to the planning commission, and we'll bring you up following that. Thank you, thank you very much. Let's find out first if we can announce this restructuring real quick. We're going to go to Mr. Nishida, then Mr. Chaffin, and then Mr. Oda, if that's all right with everyone in the office. Okay, on that item, could we read Mr. Nishida for the record. Ms. Akiona: The next interviewee will be James Nishida, Jr., for the Planning Commission. PLANNING COMMISSION: • James E. Nishida, Jr., Environmental — Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you and the reason for that, before we get started, I'm going to give Councilmember Nakamura the floor. Ms. Nakamura: I'd like to recuse myself from this item... planning commission and board of water supply nominees. I have a possible conflict of interest due to my sub- contractural relationships with a couple of firms, Wilson Okamoto and Kodani and Associates. So I'm finishing up on some projects that actually are complete. One of ..the planning department one is complete, but... still some pending payments. So I'm going to just recuse myself. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, I'd like to... Ms. Yukimura: I have a question. Council Chair Furfaro: I would like the record to so note Councilmember Nakamura's comments and I will recognize Councilwoman Yukimura now. Ms. Yukimura: Yes, I'm just not clear what the conflict of interest could be. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -38- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: I guess from what I understood, and ... the work for the planning commission is complete? Did I hear that Councilwoman Nakamura? Ms. Nakamura: Yeah. Council Chair Furfaro: It is ... what you are waiting for... payment? Ms. Nakamura: So the contract is not closed. Council Chair Furfaro: Closed. Ms. Yukimura: But what is the potential conflict of interest. Council Chair Furfaro: They could withhold the payment? Who knows? I have no idea, but it is something I'm going to send over to the county attorney's office for future interpretations. Ms. Yukimura: Um ... okay, I mean I ... you know, if there is a potential conflict of interest, it would help to state it or to ... and/or perhaps get a ruling from... an advisory opinion from the ethics... Council Chair Furfaro: Let me ask the clerk, if I could. Mr. Nishida, could you step away for a moment? Could I call up the county clerk and gain the attention of the county attorney as well? Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Mr. Nakamura: Council Chair, Peter Nakamura, county clerk, for the record. Council Chair, my understanding is there is a ... the contract for the Kapa`a- Wailua Development Plan is with the County of Kauai via the planning department and Wilson Okamoto and Associates. Councilmember Nakamura, my understanding, has a sub - contract from the county's contractor, is Wilson Okamoto, to conduct... to complete certain tasks of that contract. And at this stage, although the work is completed, the final payments, which means the closure of the contract with her sub - consultant contract with the planning department is not completed yet... as of yet. So in this case, I believe what it is ... it's out of an abundance of caution, I believe, that that is being done. And the same, I believe, the same sub - contractural relationship exists with the... Councilmember Nakamura's work with the consultant to the department of water for conservation district use application, where she is not the direct contractor with the department of water but is a sub - consultant to the direct contractor. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, thank you... Ms. Yukimura: Question. Council Chair Furfaro: ...to the county clerk. The Chair recognizes the Councilwoman Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: So, does the planning commission have anything to do with the signing of contracts or the payment of money to contractors? Isn't really something between the planning department ... I mean the staff and the planning director rather than the planning commission? SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -39- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Nakamura: Cou ... Vice Chair, I think that is correct, but I think, again, the relationship is that the contracts are signed off, my understanding, by the planning director who is under the supervision of the planning commission. So in this case, I believe this is more out of just being... out of an abundance of caution. Council Chair Furfaro: And councilwoman as you heard me earlier, there's five of us to conduct this interview. I would like to honor her request to be recused and I will be sending over communications to the county attorney as this period of time on the expiring of contracts and the closing of them through payments is resolved. Councilwoman Nakamura. Ms. Nakamura: I'd like to add that my actions are being taken as with the advice of the county attorney. Council Chair Furfaro: Very good. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: So on that note, Mr. Nishida, if you can come up and we'll wait for the question until Councilwoman Nakamura has left the chambers. Ms. Nakamura was noted recused from the meeting at 10:41 a.m. Council Chair Furfaro: Would somebody go and grab Mr. Chang, so we can have five members? Thank you. I didn't want to raise another question if we had worked through appointee interviews with four, so I'm thankful that you could come back in. Mr. Nishida... JAMES NISI-IIDA, JR.: Good morning. Council Chair Furfaro: I would like to let you know that I have asked previous board and commission appointees if they could just give a little overview, especially if they're currently a member of the commission or board, and then we'll open to questions from members. So welcome. Mr. Nishida: When I first... Council Chair Furfaro: Start with your name for the record. Mr. Nishida: Okay. James E. Nishida, Jr. I ... when I first came on I criticized, you know, I always had an opinion of the planning... how planning was going on the island and I was one of those ones that used to watch TV and yell at the TV, and then so I kind of felt like one obligation--you know, it's sort of one... kind of an obligation to serve. And the benefits to it has been—I never anticipated the benefits. The decision making that occurs when'a group of people get together and how the decisions get made and... is really ... like interesting and I've learned a lot as well as having the county attorneys there to kind of help us interpret the law as it applies to the different projects has been really, really interesting. So, it's been a good few years, real interesting and productive, I think, for me, few years. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -40- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: Well, thank you for that opening statement. As an ex- planning commissioner myself, I concur. It's a little different once you get at the table, and all of the kokua and support that is given by the administration to help you complete your job is truly a benefit to your long -term outlook on practice in government. So on that note, Mr. Nishida, I will go ahead and ask if there's questions. Do you want to start, Councilwoman Yukimura? Ms. Yukimura: Hi, Jimmy. Mr. Nishida: Hi. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you for your willingness to serve. The planning commission is one of the most... has one of the most onerous demands on time, so... and stress, I think, so thank you for doing that. I guess when... you know on your application what are the primary duties of appointment, I mean, you talked about what you got out of it, but what are the duties of the planning commission as you see it, the primary duties? Mr. Nishida: Well we ... we make the decisions as required by the charter or the CZO, whatever... as far as the laws, and then we make the decision on the applicants... the applications that come in, and we also oversee... well oversee the work of the planning director, and we ... when bills and proposed changes to the general plan or CZO or the county laws as it relates to land use things that come through us, we ... the first line, we take a look at and provide input. And sometimes, like an applicant will come in with some concerns regarding the department and/or some of the community plans ... you know a complaint would come in directly to the commission. We've had a few of those and then we listen to and determine if there's any further action. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you and I want to commend and thank you for the hard work you folks have done in the very important oversight on the leadership of the planning department. I know it's not easy, but it's critical in terms of how this county develops as a community, and I see that you folks have been doing your work there, so I appreciate it very much. Among the duties of the planning commission is, you know, oversight of the long -range planning for the island, and I just wondered what kind of focus or emphasis you folks have done in that arena in terms of long -range planning for the county? Mr. Nishida: I think one of the real strengths that Ian had was commitment to that long -range planning process. So there were numerous kinds of, you know, like different development plans that were brought up. I think we're coming up with a CZO update. And then several other smaller ones that are coming through. And then he was in the process of initiating the, I think, Koloa update. And then I don't have my list with me, but there were several that were being initiated. Now with the changeover, initially Mike is ... I think has been saying that that will continue. The only thing is I think the long -range planner position isn't filled yet, so ... because Myles moved to ... I'm not sure... he moved out of that and the long -range planner is vacant right now. So, as far... we're supposed to have an executive session today kind of to work on how we're going to assess Mike's progress and that has typically been coming up with a list of, you know, his goals and objectives, and you know things like that, that we can, you know, assess him at. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, good. I mean one of the concerns was that we were... well I can't say we were knocking off those plans because they take inordinately long to do. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -41- Mr. Nishida; Yeah. JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: So that's one of the questions that a lot of decisions get made on a case -by -case basis before the long -range plan is updated. Mr. Nishida: Yeah. Ms. Yukimura: But the other thing is that just doing them as a matter of doing them is not going to really address the long -range problems of the county. So the question is whether they are actually creating the long -range framework that's going to bring us the kind of development that we want and the kind... and exclude the kind of development that we don't want. So, would you be able to explain how that is being administered or overseen? Mr. Nishida: Well, we ... we look at ... we set up the goals and objectives. for the planning director, and then as part of that has tended to be whether there's progress regarding the ... on the long -range plan, you know, as part of the assessment because we assess that ... on that progress. And then the mayor came down and... this past year and put his priorities which included a few of those plans. You know I kind of forget which one exactly was. I would have to look over the record. But they were along the same lines that Ian had. So I don't think that has changed. And then, so we don't, you know, really get involved with the staffing kind of level, making sure, you know, the progress based on whether the long -range planner is doing... we just look at whether the director is moving these things along or not. And then there's... you know, there's been progress ... a long time, but there's been progress, so. And as far as the quality of the plan, though... Ms. Yukimura: That's what I'm asking. Mr. Nishida: I think that comes through the input process that has been established, through the planning... through the administration of the contract. So ... and that... and then usually the plans would come to us first and we tend to be an advisory to the council on those kind of issues. So we'll provide our input, which tended to be, you know, fairly shorter, kind of smaller because our point... you know, our responsibility is different from a legislative kind of body, huh? So we, you know, we look at whether the (inaudible) ... you know these plans have come up and then we're going to move them on to you folks, where there's a whole other series of public hearing and... public hearings. Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, well, I appreciate that you ... you know, you recognized that what I was talking about is the quality of the plans. I mean you can just say like a term paper, check, I did that, I did that, but what does it actually do? And it does come through the administration of the contract, you're right. But... so you know, how the RFPs or RF ... yeah, request for proposals are done, how they're administered is ... and how the contracts are drawn up are really critical. And I think there was a lot of room for improvement on that if you follow the IAL process, which has been very difficult. Okay, so my last question is you're being proposed as one of the members who shall have knowledge and awareness of environmental concerns. So, could you tell us how you qualify in that arena? Mr. Nishida: Well, I try and keep up. I think the environment is important to everyone. I think that's the priority. I think everyone should have the environment as a priority, and I think the news, and where we're headed as a community, and where the council is headed as a council, I think, shows that... and even slowly state government and the federal government, I think the environment SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -42- JANUARY 11, 2011 is a priority because I think we've come to a point where, you know, the ... our environment affects each one of us in every day in almost every way. So I think it's... and then I think everybody recognizes that. I think the news recognizes it and so just keeping up with the news ... you know, I subscribe to differ... well, that environment Hawaii newsletter, I take a look at the blogs, I ... you know I keep up with ... I like technology, not like a geek or anything, but I like how, you know, like the electric cars and hydrogen gas, and all that kind of thing, you know, I try and keep up with that, you know, how they work, what they do, you know. And then we all pay gas prices... high gas prices. So, you know, I kind of keep track of that. So I don't know...I think I'm familiar with most of the ... a little familiar with most of the environmental, I think, concerns or ... I'm not an expert by no means. Ms. Yukimura: Well, how do you see that the planning commission has been addressing environmental concerns? Mr. Nishida: I think that part is different because I think the ... I think that's why the CZO updates... having not seen the CZO update, I think a lot of the... what the... the decision making that the appli...that the commission does is really based on what happens in the general plan and more importantly what is given and not given in the CZO. So to me, in the general... in the... so if it's not in the CZO and general plan, especially in the CZO, I think it's kind of ..it has to be in the laws in order to have real progress, I think. And then (inaudible) ... yeah, so we do what we can, but in general, you know, it's kind of hard to implement because we're not the legislative body or kind of one activist kind of body too because we have the CZO and then we got attorneys on both sides coming in, as well as our own county attorney, so you know, it kind of ..you kind of narrowly make your decisions based on the existing laws and things, so. Ms. Yukimura: So, are you aware that the planning commission could suggest amendments to the CZO? Mr. Nishida: I think we ... I think we're coming up with the... the department was scheduled to send one update. I think was like in December, January, something like that. But I don't know what going happen now because, you know, there's been a change, heh, so. Ms. Yukimura: But do you... do you realize that you don't have to be a reactive body, you don't have to wait till the planning department brings you something, that you could actually initiate and say, can you prepare an amendment to the CZO... Mr. Nishida: Well, we have... Ms. Yukimura: ...for us to consider. Mr. Nishida: Oh... Ms. Yukimura: That the planning commission could do ... as individual commissioners or as a body could do that? Mr. Nishida: Well we ... the things we have done was ... I don't know, you have anything particular you want to ... well, the things we have done is we've included a LEEDs ... Cami Matsumoto spearheaded like a move to include in the list of conditions encouraging LEEDS qualifications if possible, so. Ms. Yukimura: That's good. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -43- Mr. Nishida: Yeah. JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: Well I mean it's that ... I guess I'm just asking about the possiblity of the planning commission seeing itself in a larger capacity than it's presently playing, especially if you think it's important to protect the environment that especially... and especially because you see on a weekly basis the loopholes and the problems with not having laws that address, whether it's environmental or social or cultural issues, that you folks could actually initiate and request of the planning department changes to the law? I mean you do have a legislative role, you know, because you make suggestions to the legislative body. Mr. Nishida: Yeah, I ... well, you know, a lot of times... well in each application we have an opportunity to like talk to the planners and ask them about different issues regarding that, so on an individual basis, my own self, so I've gone in and I've asked the planners to ... you know, how... well, some of this stuff is like the helicopter landings, the cell phone towers, you know, get one whole bunch of different things that we've had to go in. But a lot of these things are limited. Like the federal government has the jurisdication over the landing... the actually landing of the helicopters. The flight path... you know, today's one we're talking about the flight paths, so the flight paths, you cannot do one condition regarding the flight paths. The cell phone towers, the thing on the health, that took a few hours of research into the health effects and how the ruling regarding cell phone towers, you know, we cannot really deny an application or take into consideration the health effects of cell phone towers, you know that kind of things? All that kind of things.. Ms. Yukimura: Well, it... Mr. Nishida: ...we bring in, but ultimately when you go back to the department, plenty times they come back with, you know, the dilemma that they're in. So we're just part of the part that, you know, I value in my role as a commissioner that, you know, you get that kind of insight or opportunity to talk to the planners. Ms. Yukimura: There... of course, everybody has limitations about what their jurisdiction is. So, you're right that certain things you can't control. But, you know, in the arena where you can control and maybe you are already doing this, so I'm just asking in the... as this conversation evolves in terms of how you incorporate environmental protection in the laws and planning process. Mr. Nishida: Well, I think... you know, there's a lot of stuff already in there, like shoreline access. There was one ... I sort of get one dilemma too because like okay, say you take shoreline access and it's part of the responsibility of being a commissioner, I think. To me there should be more shoreline access all over the place, but when you ultimately see that shoreline access, you're going to ... when you push for that shoreline access, you'll see increased usage of that particular site. So then the dilemma is, okay, so do we go in and when we have a study, try to set up some kind of parameters to make sure that we have shoreline access at each point and then what the effect of that is. So before, you know, it's like ... you know you kind of caught up and you don't want to increase the access because that'll mean that the area would be more utilized and then to the detriment of the area. Ms. Yukimura: Right. Mr. Nishida: So the question becomes greater than the parti ... you know what I take in to the place. Like to me, I like more shoreline access, I like more mountain access even, then you get the liability issues and you SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -44- JANUARY 11, 2011 get all these things, hah? So, it's stuff that I've brought in and even like helicopter landings or the cell phone towers, well helicopter landings more so. So say you go in and you say, you know what, we get one issue of these cell pho... helicopter landings. And then you come up with these parameters for these helicopter landings. Then all of a sudden you get... you get one whole thing that says, okay, yes, you can land at these particular areas. Then you actually saying... well, you actualy telling the helicopter companies that this is what you need in order to have a helicopter landing. So, by having the department address the issue of helicopter landings, actually increases the likelihood of helicopter landings rather than dealing with them on an individual basis. So, that's my dilemma. Ms. Yukimura: Well, that's what planning is supposed to do, take the large picture as well as the individual, go back and forth between the very small and the high level view, and you may say at some point and you have to do it in conjunction with the law that there can only be so many helicopter landings on the island and they only can be in certain areas. We've done that with a lot of things. We said in certain areas with slopes, you can't have this kind of development. On ag land, you're supposed to only have this kind of development. We're struggling to know what that is. And we're going to struggle even more when it's IAL, but that's what you do. You keep expanding or contracting the picture in order to understand and bringing all the factors together. Public access, maybe access is not a parking lot and is only access by foot or it's restricted to a certain number of parking spaces and that's all. I mean there's... Mr. Nishida: Yeah. Ms. Yukimura: That's what planning is all about. Mr. Nishida: Yeah, but we... Ms. Yukimura: And... and in certain... Council Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, Mr. Nishida... Ms. Yukimura: ...natural areas. Council Chair Furfaro: Go ahead. She wasn't quite finished. Ms. Yukimura: And in certain natural areas, we don't allow access at all. Like at crater hill, we had to ... in Kilauea, we had to give up this wonderful hillside where we used to go and have wine and cheese and watch the sun set. But for the purpose of wildlife and birds, it was fenced off, you know. So you make these judgment calls and decisions about where you can do it and where you can't and under what conditions. That's what planning is about I think. Mr. Nishida: Mm -hm. Ms. Yukimura: I'm sorry, go ahead. Mr. Nishida: Yeah, no, I agree. Council Chair Furfaro: Would the council... Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Council Chair Furfaro: Would the councilwoman... SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -45- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: I'm done, thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: ...consider yielding the floor for another question? Ms. Yukimura: Yes, I'm all done. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo? Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Mr. Nishida, thanks for agreeing to continue to serve. I have a ... just a couple of questions. Number one is what do you see the planning commission as? Is it an independent entity focusing on planning for Kauai or as an extension of the administration? Mr. Nishida: I think we're an ... I think we're charged with making some decisions that the public has charged the commission with as opposed to the department. So, we make decisions... we have to make decisions that the planning department wouldn't... that the lawmakers or the rule makers had decided that there should be some kind of community input into that particular decision. So that's our role like. So, the day -to -day operations, we don't... you know, we don't go over the day -to -day operations of the planning department. So the administration and the commission is really kind of weirdly handled, yeah, because like Class I, II, and III zoning permits are handled within the department, but Class IV zoning permit —I don't know what you call it but —I think it's a Class IV zoning permit, we take care of that. Class IV use permit is the same thing. Class I, II and III, the planning director has control over certain types of usage as the planning director does. Certain other types of uses or variances, we have control over. So that question is really one... we're not one extension of the administration, but we definitely have roles to play within the planning department... Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Mr. Nishida: Separate roles. Mr. Rapozo: Back in ... when the former planning director resigned, Ian Costa left planning... Mr. Nishida: rM s11 Al_ Mr. Rapozo: Mayor Carvalho recommended the current planning director as an interim. Mr. Nishida: Yeah. Mr. Rapozo: Is he still an interim or have you... has the planning commission... did any efforts to find a qualified person or based on the recommendation of the mayor, you folks... because that happened quite quickly. I mean it was... Mr. Nishida: Yeah. Mr. Rapozo: ...boom, done and there was the interim planning director, and what I hear you saying earlier today with Councilmember Yukimura was you are preparing goals and objectives for the planning director. So I'm assuming between that interim and today, he became the permanent. Mr. Nishida: Well, the way I view that is that there really is no... no title as interim planning director. What was proposed was Mike Dahilig SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -46- JANUARY 11, 2011 enter into the process as an interim until we can select a new one, which we haven't had a chance to start that process going. But in order to be able to do what we're charged with, we have to view him as the current planning director, I think. So we have to tell... you know, we have to know what he plans to do with the department and he has to ... you know, we have to be able to tell him and we have to be able to measure it too. You know to me, you know, it's one thing to just say okay, put everything on the agenda and then you tell us what you going do, and you know but we have to hold him to it, I think, whether it's interim or... Mr. Rapozo: Well, but I guess my question is what was your... what's your impression? Is that something you're going to do? Are you going out and looking for a permanent director? Or... Mr. Nishida: Well, I think we'd... we're charged with ... he's supposed to be only an interim thing and then I think he said that too, that you know, he's come in as an interim director. So, we need to ... the process is one whole involved process. I would think that which I don't... Mr. Rapozo: I understand. Believe me I understand, Mr. Nishida. I'm asking you a real simple question. Because you're on the commission, so you're not a new one, you've been there. You were there through all of this. So I'm asking you as far as you know, as far as your information, what is the planning commission going to do? I mean are you going to not seek a process to fill that position with a permanent planning director? Are you going to just keep the interim forever until the mayor comes back and says I want somebody else? That's my question. The commission is tasked, again, with being separate from the administration. That's the point I'm trying to make. Much like the police commission and the planning commission and the civil service commission, these commissions are tasked with finding the best person for the job, not to ... and whether or not Mike is ... that's not my point. You take the names out of it. It's... regardless of the commission, the process is set up so that the mayor doesn't have the ability to come in and say okay planning commission, this is who I want. No, that's not the process. That's why we have a commission. Otherwise, we'd just have the mayor appoint, same as the deputies. You know, nobody can appoint a deputy except the department head. So my question is real simple. Is the commission moving toward or are you supporting that or are you not support that, the fact that you're going to go out and... whatever the case is, solicit for a ... the position, in which of course the interim can apply? Mr. Nishida: We're going to be ... we will be looking for a new planning director. Mr. Rapozo: You are? Mr. Nishida: Permanent planning director. Mr. Rapozo: And that is your understanding of the commission? Mr. Nishida: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: Okay. And then the other question is real... and just a comment about as far as the legislative process and Councilmember Yukimura talked on it, but the charter is quite clear that you folks do have the ability to adopt regulations for that department that carry the weight of law. Mr. Nishida: You mean the rules and procedures? SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -47- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Rapozo: Any regulation in the operation of the planning department, the commission has the authority to implement a regulation that carries the weight of law. That is your function. So please don't let anybody tell you that you don't, that's in the charter, and that is quite clear. And then the final question is as far as the capital improvement program for Kauai, you know the capital improvement projects, the planning commission is tasked with preparing that report or preparing that program for the county. Does the county planning commission today participate at all with the capital improvement program for Kauai? And I'll be honest with you, I don't think so because I haven't heard a thing. I haven't seen any communication to that effect as part of the charter. I'm just curious. Mr. Nishida: I don't know if the department does... Mr. Rapozo: No, no, no, the commission, not the department. Mr. Nishida: ...but the commission... Mr. Rapozo: You guys don't. Mr. Nishida: Yeah. Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Another function of your commission is that you must do that, you shall do that. You know the council gets all these CIP projects and they make press releases and they say gosh, we're going to go out with $60 million of projects, and the planning department and the planning commission has no input. And yet, the planning commission is tasked with the planning of this county which should be a part of the capital improvement projects. I mean why would you project... or fund projects that don't fit in the scope of the planning or the plan for the county. So I appreciate what you do and you know, my support will be contingent on you confirming today that that is something that you will look into, that in fact you will properly execute your duties as a commissioner by at the very next agenda saying, you know, we need to have that discussion as a commission that we're going to s ... we need to work with the administration as far as this capital improvement program because that's a duty that's ordered and required by the charter. Council Chair Furfaro: On a... Mr. Nishida: You know (clearing throat)... Mr. Rapozo: And if you're not comfortable with that, you can say that as well. I mean... Mr. Nishida: No, no... Mr. Rapozo: (Inaudible) Mr. Nishida: I'd be happy ... part of the ... part of...I think the frustration I think with almost every planning commissioner when they come in is the lack... the sheer size of the work involved on the non - planning issues. You know, it's just the sheer size. Now, we've been really lucky in the past year or so where, you know, there just aren't the applications coming in. There just aren't the projects. You know, they're finishing up; it's really scary. You know, whereas before we going to 12 o'clock and you know all that kind of thing, so the CIP is something we'd love to get involved with. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -48- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Rapozo: Well, it ... Mr. Nishida, don't get me wrong, I think you need to be ... you need to understand this clearly. You know the police department is here. I don't think they enjoy going to alarm calls in Ha'ena when it's the third or fourth false alarm, but they have to. See, the commission is not... it's not a ... it doesn't say the planning commission may prepare a capital... You see my point? I need the commissioners to understand that it's their role. If you need more help, you need to ask for help. If the commission needs more resources, you need to ask for more resources. The administration and this council really gotta give you the tools you need. So if it's extra staff, if it's training, whatever it is, you need to ask. But to say, well, we're too busy is not acceptable because it's a charter requirement. And (inaudible)... Mr. Nishida: No, no, no, I not... what? Mr. Rapozo: No, no, I heard what you're saying. You get bombarded and I watch those meetings, it's crazy. You guys get the toughest commission in the island, in fact even more tough than this body here. Eh really, I mean that with all my heart. So, I appreciate what you guys do, but you also gotta understand that the charter is our guiding document, and if the charter says we have to do it, then we have to do it. Simply because if one component is not there... if the fact that the planning commission is not part of the CIP process, then we are budgeting for projects that may not fit into our plan. That's, I think, what happens a lot is when we fund the projects, we go out, we float a bond... write millions, we're talking millions, not twenty- thousand, but millions of dollars and then the bond funds get ready, and then all of a sudden the project cannot go because we're not ready, because the planning commission was not part of that. So I think when we work with the CIP Program, the commission has to be a part and that's why I think it's in the charter. So that's just... and I just need your commitment, Mr. Nishida, today that that's something that you'll support and if not, I'll be honest with you, I cannot support you as a commissioner. (Inaudible) because it's a function of your commission. Council Chair Furfaro: May I just add something here so that we can stay within the time frame and... as allowed, but I do want to say and I'm the only one here on the council that has been a planning commissioner as well as a councilmember. First, I think the jobs are probably neck - and -neck. It's pretty difficult over here too. ( ?): They don't get paid. Council Chair Furfaro: So without that checkmark of compensation, yeah, maybe you're ahead of us. But let me say that the work you do there is also duplicated here. And I just want to start out by saying (inaudible) the last two years I was planning chair and I put together the eight capital projects that are identified for the planning department to complete. I'm going to give you a copy of it. It is important for the commission to mandate to the planning director that you keep this body informed as to these target dates because it ties in to funding and additional funding. I'm not going to go over it in this commentary, but please look into this because the four items that I've identified here, we have not met the targeted dates and the dates weren't my dates. The dates were from a main meeting that said there's reach, but they're obtainable, and this is the money we need for it. We should get regular updates on that one. Next item I'm going to share with you is, and I'm not saying this because the gentleman is sitting behind you, but when I was a planning commissioner, every year there was a session where the commissioners were briefed on the capital plan SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -49- JANUARY 11, 2011 and it tied into issues that dealt with infrastructure, park work, for all departments that the planning director gave us a briefing as to where we're going to get to. I would ask you to make sure that that's reimplemented because as Mr. Rapozo said, that is definitely part of the charter and I know we did that. So, there's an opportunity here, with some of the reduction in applications, for you folks as commissioners to really get more involved with that and I know your commitment to Kauai, Jimmy, and I know you want to do that too, and you will have my support. But please know that the mechanics are there, and the expectations of communicating to the council is one that I think will make a big improvement. Now the list I passed down to you I turned over to the planning chair Nakamura, Nadine, and I understand her and the vice chair of that committee did plan and attended a recent CZO update. But we gotta keep that line of communication open and we all have to see our obligation as it relates to ... you know, we're expecting certain things to happen, they have to happen, and it has to be a date that we can mutually agree on; we just can't ignore it. And I want to personally thank you for your work, especially in the ag area with the work being done now on important ag lands because this council is supposed to get a report towards the end of this year and I just want to point those things out to you and thank you for your time. Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, thanks, Jimmy, for being here. I really appreciate it and I very much appreciate your service on the planning commission. The only thing I watch on the county... on TV is the planning commission and not all of it, you know, it's too much. And I want to start by saying that I agree with almost everything Councilmember Rapozo said about the role of the planning commission being huge and that the charter says these things shall happen. I also am realistic about the ability of the planning commission to do that, so I think it's an inherent dilemma that a planning commissioner's job is huge and I agree with Councilmember Rapozo that it's difficult and what you said, the sheer amount of time on the non - permitting kind of things, and I have seen, in my view and I want to see if you agree, the commission step up in terms of their role of governance of the planning commission. You made a personnel change recently, right? You said at the outset that you're going to have a meeting with the new interim director to review his goals and objectives for the department. I don't think that was happening at the planning commission five years ago, right? It was just more of a permitting kind of thing. And so I recognize that part of your charter responsibility is that governance of the planning department and I see that the commission has stepped up in that and I appreciate that. I was going to ask the same question. I was going to ask it more open- ended. You know, what does it mean when it says the planning commission shall prepare a capital improvement program because I also don't think that that's happening. And so when you look at your... at the responsibilities you have now, and where the charter envisions the planning commission goes, I don't know ... I mean the questions I ask myself is that something that volunteers can accomplish? You know, do we need to really look at special volunteers who can give 20 hours a week, you know, because it's a huge responsibility under the charter. And in a number of areas of our charter other than the planning commission, if it's the charter, it's the marching orders, it's the rules, and we can't, you know, follow them... some and do things differently. There are other areas that I think will come up in the ensuing months, way outside of planning, where... say hey, the charter says that, but that's not our practice, right? So, with having said that, I recognize that there's just physical and pragmatic limitations to how quickly the planning commission can assume those responsibilities and you know to what extent given the realities of it being a volunteer board. But I do appreciate the growth I've seen. Have I got that right? Has the planning commission, in your view, stepped up in its area of governance of the planning department? SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -50- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Nishida: Cannot say what happened before because the view that I get now is different from the view that I had before when I wasn't a planning commissioner. Mr. Bynum: Right. Mr. Nishida: But we've spent a few years developing an evaluation tool that would take into consideration the goals ... the planning goals for the department, and then it's been a few years developing that. And as far as these... this is the CIP? Jay, this is the... Council Chair Furfaro: No. Mr, Nishida: This is the (inaudible)... Council Chair Furfaro: Those projects... those projects appear in the CIP, but they are specifically managed by the planning department. Mr. Nishida: Yeah. Council Chair Furfaro: The CZO, the important ag lands, and those are the dates committed to the planning committee of the council. Mr. Nishida: Yeah, the last couple... yeah. Council Chair Furfaro: We haven't gotten an update yet. Mr. Nishida: Well, the last couple years, we received quarterly... you know, we worked with the director to move these projects along quarterly, yeah, and as far as Councilman Rapozo's ... actually the discussion today was real encouraging because I think one of the frustrations of being one planning commissioner is that you don't do enough planning. You know, you don't have enough say in the planning of the... given the constraints of the individual projects and so it's kind of easy to get caught up in it, but I feel real ... like kind of encouraged. I'd be glad to do ... to participate in some of that. Now, how far we can get, I don't know, you know, because it's in the hands of the building division. One of the... the hard part is that the ... a lot of times like different... it's a ... different departments have different control over some of the ... like when we get one report on the individual project, it comes from different departments as to what they want, you know what they demand of that thing. And then as far as the overall planning, we've been trying to move forward so that we can complete some of these plans, and then I think part of the problem is the integration into what... not only the CZO but what like ... what Councilman Rapozo is talking about as far as the actual projects that come up, whether it be waterline and all of that, I think we'd love to be able to participate more in that. I think I can speak for most of the commissioners I bet they'd be really happy if at least part of the time could be spent looking at where Kaua`i's going, you know what kind of projects going use... be used to help out, and then whatever help you guys can give us to move the department or the administration would be really helpful. Council Chair Furfaro: Jimmy, before you go any further, I want to make sure that giving you that report was not making a demand on the part... on the department. It was saying communicate, give us information that is fair and reasonable, fair and reasonable. I also want to say, the commissioners are not responsible to put together the CIP Plan, but they are responsible to review it as it relates to growth plans and timing and when a bridge is going to be done and so on. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -51- Mr. Nishida: Yeah. JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: And that's really the important part here. But more importantly, it's communicating the information back. Not finding ourselves rolling into the last month and hearing that we have a change order for $100,000.00 because the agreed upon project didn't have the right amount of reach. Was it reasonable? Was it fair? For all of the things we need to do. I think ... I want to make it clear, that's what I'm saying, and I think there's room for constantly making improvements as we go forward and we need your kokua on that as Mr. Rapozo pointed out. Mr. Bynum, I'm going to give you the floor but I must say we're now one... half -an -hour behind schedule and we have three commissioners that we bumped to get Jimmy here and back to his duties. But you have the floor. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I didn't know when I lost it. The... Council Chair Furfaro: Well, I'll explain that to you. And if you're due an apology, I'll give it to you. But he made some statements that needed to be corrected and so if I took the floor from vou. I anoloeize. Mr. Bynum: No, I just want to be able to complete my question because yeah, and I wanted to preface this by saying I know that you can only do so much, right? And I very much appreciate what I've seen of your efforts and how seriously you take the job. But I want to talk ... I'll leave some of these to go. Because I was surprised to hear you say I hadn't seen the CZO yet, because we've been waiting 30 years for that document, but I won't go there. I want to go to the legislation because under our charter when we have planning legislation, whether it's generated by the mayor or council or it could potentially be generated by the commission but maybe we'll get there some day, it goes through a public process at the planning commission. I want to speak for myself. I really value that process. I pay attention to that process. It goes there because the planning department is going to make a report, right? And they're going to give their mana`o on whatever proposal it is and the commissioners who live this day -to -day are going to give their input and you know potentially make changes. Now in the long run that comes as a recommendation to the council, right? But I take those recommendations seriously, and then we've had legislation come here, and we've had constituents get up there and say ah, the planning commission never paid attention, they don't really care, you know, because the council's going to mess with it anyway, right? And so, you know, I want to know, does... you know, whether you agree with that? Does the planning commission take that role, you know, seriously, that you know that this is part of the public process to shape good legislation? Mr. Nishida: You know, I ... part of the kind of like growth of one commissioner, I think, at some... for me, for myself at one point, especially with this like real general, the kind of bigger plans when people come in to talk about like particular traffic intersections or particular changes to the ... like where the parking lot should be as it relates to the front of the roadway and then the... how it looks and you know, that kind of ..and even some of the stuff as far as the trees planting and how that looks and all that, I really started to push the... personally I would vote to ... I would try to move that to you folks because I thought that a more thorough discussion would probably be handled here rather than at the department... at the commission end. But then when we started to do that, we sent couple up like that and then I heard comments from, I think from you and Kawakami... Councilman Kawakami as well as others, you know, that they wanted it to be a sounding board. So I had kind of backed off from moving a lot of that legislation through, you know, without having, you know, any changes. I kind of hesitate to make changes to the existing plans because they go through that with the department, you know, and SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -52- JANUARY 11, 2011 then they put that in and then when somebody talks like... especially in the long - range planning end, when somebody speaks here, the staff is really good and they include that in the report going to you folks. So rather than coming up and trying to actually change the plan or making suggestions to the plan, you know, I was kind of pushing to push it through, but get other commissioners too. So we all sort of agreed and then you got what you got. So I can see where some people wouldn't, you know, be happy with what we did because we didn't include that as a suggested change to the plan, but it was part of the documentation that came up. Mr. Bynum: All right and I... Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum, could you yield the floor for Mr. Chang, who has to leave in five minutes? Mr. Bynum: Sure. Council Chair Furfaro: Did you have anything before you need to depart? Mr. Chang: I just wanted to comment and just say thank you. I mean I didn't realize the discussion was going to be this long; however, as you mentioned a little bit earlier when you came here you laughed and said when you used to watch the TV you used to yell at `em and want to kick the TV, and as you probably know there's people out there that are probably yelling and wanting to kick the TV right now. But you know, we realize the importance of having a planning commission. I mean the key is, as we mentioned a little bit earlier to everyone here, you're all here on a voluntary basis and we appreciate that. I don't have anything really to say except I wanted to thank you personally because there's a lot of passion and I know of your involvement with the commission for many, many years and I hope that the ... you can advise the, you know, the acting planning director as well as our deputy on the concerns of the past. And I guess something, (inaudible) very interested as being on the planning commission, I found it was very interesting that I've never seen anything like this on an application before, but are you currently an officially registered or card carrying member of any political party, and you said yes, and it says democrat, republican, green, and I guess all of the above, pretty interesting as far as being neutral. Is that true? Mr. Nishida: Well, I re ... you know, I paid ... I don't pay dues to any. The latest one was the democratic party in 2008. But I think what that question was asking was where my affiliation was and then I ... part of ..I list... you know I believe in parts of the democratic, republican and then the green party. I mean things that they say I agree totally with and some things I don't. Mr. Chang: Okay, thank you, and again, thanks for serving. Mahalo. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, Mr. Chang, if you have to take a break for a previous appointment, that's fine. Mr. Bynum, I'm asking that each of us close with a question. You have the floor. Mr. Chang was excused from the meeting at 11:37 a.m. Mr. Bynum: This ... I'm going to stick with this legislation thing because I really value that process. When those reports come back, I read them. When the planning commi ... I either watch the television or I read the transcripts, right? Because I think planning issues are so important that I really want the planning department and commissioners to weigh in on it, right? And I've come here and said hey, the planning commission unanimously approved this with these SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -53- JANUARY 11, 2011 changes and then people say ah, that don't mean nothing, they don't take that seriously, they're just passing it on because you guys are going to mess with it anyway. Well, I just want you to know I take it seriously. I think that's an important part of the process. I want to use the wind energy bill as an example. I authored a wind energy bill. I sent it to planning. The planner assigned to that did a very serious job of looking at all those parameters. The planning commission did a very serious job, made many changes. When the bill came back, I scuttled the one that I had originally written and adopted the planning commission's bill as the one that would move forward because that process, I thought, was really done well. Now that bill ended up not passing the council, but that work set the (inaudible) ... I think this is true and you can correct me if I'm wrong, set the parameters for the commission and the department to address those future applications because we went through that process. It's like it wasn't so unfamiliar when the next wind energy... small wind energy system came forward, you know. And I believe the department has kind of adopted those as their guidelines, so to speak. Is that accurate? Mr. Nishida: I'm not sure. I'd have to ... I leave it up to the department to apply whatever guidelines they have to each project. Mr. Bynum: Well, for my part, when something comes from the planning commission that was voted on as a recommended course of action, that's exactly how I'm going to take it. That that is a recommendation of these individuals, you know, who've done their due diligence and weighed in on whatever the issue is. And I've also seen...I can understand the frustration on the other hand, though, because I've seen instances since I've been on council when the commission worked really hard and the planning department... and the council went the exact opposite direction. You know I can see on your side it's like well, why did we go through all of that if they were just going to go their own course anyway. But it really concerned me last year to hear people testifying who were major players in the community saying ah, that commission action means nothing, they didn't take it seriously, right? And I'm like, no, I think they did because I read the reports and I read... you know what I mean? So, I know that your job's overwhelming and I intend to support you for your... and I appreciate that you're s ... that you're willing to hang in there as a volunteer and I do recognize the areas where the commission has increased its responsibilities, you know, but I just ... I wanted to focus on that legislative part because you're getting some things now and you're going to get new things and I learned from that public process that happens over there and I hope the whole council does pay attention and we make better decisions because we have that lay perspective of those seven commissioners, so thank you very much. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, any more questions? No Mr. Nishida, thank you very much. Mr. Nishida: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Can we go in the following order and get ourselves caught up here? Mr. Chaffin, followed by Mr. Oda, followed by Mr. Kahawai. I had to put on glasses for your name, Leland. COST CONTROL COMMISSION: ® Lawrence Chaffin, Jr. —Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) LAWRENCE CHAFFIN, JR.: My name is Lawrence Chaffin, Jr., and I'm known as Larry Chaffin, and I live in the Po`ipu area. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -54- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: You have previously served on two commissions? Mr. Chaffin: That's correct. Council Chair Furfaro: Can you tell members? Mr. Chaffin: I followed your footsteps... Council Chair Furfaro: Oh. Mr. Chaffin: ...on the planning commission where I served five years and I've now served a year on the cost control commission. (Ms. Nakamura was noted to have returned to the meeting.) Council Chair Furfaro: That's right. We are back to five members now, Larry, and I will ask if there's any questions of anyone of your appointment as planned and submitted for the cost control commission. Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Larry, I'll make this quick so we get back on track. I appreciate your service on previous commissions. I appreciate your input at the cost control commission and the opportunities we've had to talk, and I totally support your reappointment. Thanks for stepping up. Mr. Chaffin: Thank you, Tim. Council Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: Also, thank you for your willingess to serve, Larry. The question, I guess, I have is ... let's see... so you're... this is a reappointment, right? Is this a reappointment to the cost control? You've... Mr. Chaffin: I filled one ... part o£.. Ms. Yukimura: Oh, okay. Mr. Chaffin: ...I believe a full year fulfilling someone else's appointment. Ms. Yukimura: And... that your ... just went up or was it a while back? Mr. Chaffin: No, it's just up now. Ms. Yukimura: It's just up now, okay. So given your experience on the cost control commission, do you feel that you've had enough support to do your work? Mr. Chaffin: Yes. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, and have you seen ways in which there could be greater efficiency or effectiveness in your work or how it's done, I mean as a body? Do you need more statutory authority or do you feel like you've... your reports are being heard and implemented? What is your take on how the process is working? SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -55- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Chaffin: I'm very pleased to say that I think we're having significant input. Our major direction is taking personnel, and each department has numerous personnel people, but no one has a human resource department, and we are looking towards creating a human resource department and taking the people from personnel out of each department and I think we can have a far better county organization at less cost. We are not there yet by a long shot, but we do have an ability to talk to each department head and they are very supportive, they're very honest, and I think we're having a big input and I'm very pleased with this as opposed to the planning commission. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, I think that's a very big and important topic that you folks are addressing and I think the administration is also to be commended for that review and creation of an ... or re- creation of a ... the hu ... the personnel or human resource functions. So thank you very much. Mr. Chaffin: Thank you. I think our biggest problem is we're a five- member board and very often, previous to my appointment, the board did not meet for four, five or six months because we did not have a quorum, and we're not meeting this month because we're lacking a quorum. We are going to have, I believe, a new member shortly and that will certainly help. Council Chair Furfaro: Yes, we will try and fix that tomorrow. Mr. Chaffin: Yeah. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Did you have a question, Nadine? I do want to caution, the fact of the matter is creating and evaluating human resources as a resource for the county is to be commended. I think, you know we need to reach out beyond just identifying civil service issues and so forth, and there could be cost savings there as well. I also want to caution you on the fact that you are a cost savings unit, not a revenue unit. And the fact of the matter is we had this whole business plan created for us regarding the golf course, raising rates and everything, and yeah, the revenue cycle is part of it, but the county is not a profit center. The county has to focus on cost and achieving managing cost going forward. And you know I think there should be a separate revenue council, just like the State of Hawaii has, that reviews quarterly the county's revenues, whether they be fees, from taxes, property evaluations, you know that's where I'm headed. I just wanted to share that with you, Larry, because I think having a look twice a year, four times a year at the county's revenues is an item that is as important as looking at the cost issues, and maybe in my bill I tried to have your commission do both, that there should be a period of time where revenues are evaluated too. But I thank you very much for stepping forward. I don't think there's any more questions? And thank you for letting people cut in front of you folks. Mr. Chaffin: Thank you. And thank you for your efforts on behalf of the county that we- all love and enjoy. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Larry. Mr. Oda, I think you're next. LIQUOR CONTROL COMMISSION: Dane K. Oda —Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -56- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: I too want to thank you for allowing some change in the agenda here for other interviewees. So, Mr. Oda, I'm going to ask you to just give us an overview again (inaudible). DANE ODA: My name is Dane Oda and I served on the planning commission in the past for seven years and then after that for the board of water supply for about a year or two, and I've spent the last seven years at the state paroling authority and prior to that with some other state commissions in the so- called enforcement or law enforcement areas, also with the harbor use facilities, and I guess, currently I'm serving with the liquor commission board. Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: And I want to thank you for your work there, but let me open up for some questions. Are there questions for Mr. Oda? Councilwoman Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: I guess it's still good morning, Dane. Thank you for the time you've already served on actually many state and county boards and also for your willingness to serve into the future. My question is ... let's see, it's regarding a tough issue, but I have to ask it. I guess you're aware of the charges of sexual harassment that arose in the liquor department. Mr. Oda: Yeah, I've read something about it, not in depth. Ms. Yukimura: Do you see a role and responsibility of the commission in dealing with this issue? Mr. Oda: I think whatever happened there or if anything like that should happen in the future, of course the responsible person, as far as the person that's in charge of the department, should make it known or report it to the proper people so that the continuing sexual harassment situation can be put to rest or any investigation that has to be done can be conducted by the proper people. Ms. Yukimura: Well, did the board get any training in the issue of sexual harassment and how to handle complaints like that? Mr. Oda: I wasn't there at the time this incident happened. I just heard about it, so. Ms. Yukimura: Oh, no, no, it's not about the incident. It's about whether you got any training, which would be separate from any incident. It would just be... Mr. Oda: No, none. Council Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, just for a second, councilwoman. May I have a moment for a question for the county attorney? Ms. Yukimura: Of course. Council Chair Furfaro: Sir, with the question drifting to personnel matters and maybe any potential legal concerns that may surface from this, can you give us some advice? Mr. Guyot: It's kind of hard to give you a warning on a course that I'm not sure where your ship is going. So far at this point I've heard nothing to cause me alarm. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -57- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: I understand, you're not the navigator of this ship. Mr. Guyot: Yes. Council Chair Furfaro: But I just wanted to make sure... now that I know you're aware of the conversation, and you're not sure where it's going, you will raise the navigational chart if it goes into waters that are (inaudible)... Mr. Guyot: I will ring the bell and wave the lantern if necessary. Council Chair Furfaro: And if you could still yield the floor... Mr. Rapozo, you have a question for the county attorney? Mr. Rapozo: Yes, I do. I think the question I have is this is an interview and it's an interview based on an application for a commission, not an opportunity, in my opinion, to interview a commission on a matter that has already or has occurred. I mean I think if that is the discussion, then we should post that on the agenda and have that discussion because simply put, what... his... whether or not he got training by the bosses, really this is not an examination of the department. It's an examination of him to see if he fits the qualification. So I'm concerned that in fact we're ... we ... and it happened earlier today as well. I didn't say anything on another candidate, but I am now because I think really this is an interview for the candidate. And if there's some specific concerns regarding the handling of an issue that occurred in a department in the year, prior year, that should be addressed in a communication to the department or to the administration that handled it, put on the agenda, whether in executive session or public session, at that point, but not in a... not at an interview, in my opinion. Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Chair? Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, one moment please. He framed that question. Would there be any response from you at this point? Mr. Guyot: The response would be that there's generally a great deal of latitude afforded to you councilmembers in your questioning of potential members of boards and commissions. And as long as a specific instance without getting into an area of confidential personnel information is encroached upon that is used as an example to springboard to somewhere forward, I'm not sure it's proper to curtail that at this point from my position. If we start to get into a dangerous area, I would, of course, alert you. But I'm trusting in your Chair and yourselves that you will act appropriately in terms of using an example of something that happened in the past as to how we want to move forward and use that at as a progressive type thing. If it's merely just a fact - finding mission to look at something in the past, then I would definitely agree with Councilmember Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: Just one follow -up question Council Chair Furfaro: Go ahead, Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: And... the question is I ... we're not asking whether or not you anticipate training in the future. We're asking were you trained? Were you trained? And the reason I say it, not so much to protect the county because I think it's an issue that's in the public, but it's a sunshine law issue. If we had posted that we were going to be discussing that case and the elements are the SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -58- JANUARY 11, 2011 actual elements of that case, then this gallery would probably be full today. And I think once the public... we're ... I just think we're going into that area that is beyond the scope of an interview. That's just my opinion and as well I trust the Chair and ... but if I feel we're violating sunshine law because we're discussing an issue that's not on the agenda, then I'll just leave and then I just won't be part of it. Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Mr. Rapozo. And I want to say to the county attorney's office, I appreciate the fact that people recognized I asked the question because the county attorney's office, their job is to keep me out of trouble. So, they will raise their hand. Now, I will go back and recognize the original holder of the floor, Councilwoman Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. I just want to explain that I feel my questions are totally in line with the issue of our oversight of the appointing process because the ... a liquor commissioner has... one of their responsibilities is a performance review of the liquor director and how these very difficult issues are handled by the director are part of the review. I am not asking about a specific case, but I am asking about the commissioner's awareness or understanding of his role and part of that is related to what he's been trained in. So that's where I'm ... I'm ... that's my intention here and I feel it's very much related to the agenda item. Mr. Oda: Okay, not alluding to the previous incident, but just to answer your question plainly, as a former manager of a company, I did not have a situation of sexual harassment or anything, but that issue was mentioned in some meetings that we had where we were informed as to what to be aware of and what to watch for in the event that a situation like that should come forth and what kind of actions we were supposed to take to prevent having this type of issue become a full scale problem. And we were told basically to do an investigation if necessary, but make sure that it's reported and not just put in the closet, so to speak. Ms. Yukimura: So knowing that and you're in a different role now, you're not in a manager role, you're in an appointing authority role, would you think that it would be your responsibility in any case of that issue arising in the department that you're overseeing to, whether it's a past case or a future case, to investigate the performance of the person that you are charged to oversee? Mr. Oda: Yes, I believe we would have to take action and do something instead of just take no action at all. I think it's incumbent upon the commissioners as well as any human resource director or anybody that's in charge of that type of situation to take the case forward and try to put it to rest, so to speak. Ms. Yukimura: Well, I mean the case may be put to rest by, as I think the past one was, by a settlement with the county, but there is still the remaining issue of the performance of your manager and how it was dealt with and whether there would be counseling or ... just in terms of a proactive future action. And so if you see that as your responsibility, I would assume that you will implement that in your next term. Mr. Oda: If that's the directon of the commissioners, yes. I mean, I'm not going to speak just for myself. Ms. Yukimura: That's right. Mr. Oda: I think this should be... SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -59- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: I mean you can't speak for the other commissioners, so you can only speak for yourself. But do you see it as part of your responsibility? Mr. Oda: Well, I wouldn't hold any type of conclusion on it because I'm not familiar with what really transpired and I wouldn't put the horse before the carriage, right now, or the carriage before the horse. Ms. Yukimura: Well then, okay, so I guess the question is then would you consult with the legal authorities that are available to you in terms of your role and responsibility as to that situation? Mr. Oda: Yes, I can see me doing that, yeah. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you very much. Mr. Oda: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Just on that note, I would like to make a ... that the policy is being reviewed and for members here at the table, that was my note that circulated on the county policy in your mailbox yesterday. So, it is being reviewed and please direct any questions you might have on that modification to Mr. Topenio, who is representing the council. Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Thank you, Mr. Oda, for your service. I appreciate it. Who appoints the liquor control commis... the director? Mr. Oda: I believe it was the mayor. Mr. Bynum: So the mayor appoints the director? You know, Councilmember Yukimura said that part of your responsibility is to do performance evaluation of the director. Is that your understanding? Mr. Oda: Well, my basic understanding or what I've observed in the past was that the mayor normally appointed the department head and I just took it from there. And if the responsibility is for the commission to oversee the director himself, then I believe we'll do that. Mr. Bynum: I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time hearing you. I apologize, So I didn't quite get that. Is it the role of the commission to do the performance evaluation of the director? Mr. Oda: As far as I know of commissions, yes, basically that's what it is. Mr. Bynum: I'm sorry. Council Chair Furfaro: He answered affirmative. Mr. Bynum: Yes, oh, okay. Yeah and... yeah, this is an important issue because the charter says the commission appoints and "the director shall be appointed and may be removed by the liquor control commission." So... and I'm not suggesting either action, just that it is the role of the commissioners to provide the governance and the oversight of the director. And just like we ... I think you were here for the discussion with Mr. Nishida. You know commissioners ... I think in this instance you have a very clear task about... and some... and not only SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -60- JANUARY 11, 2011 the liquor commission but in other commissions... kind of lost sight perhaps of that larger governance role. You know, some ... many of our departments are appointed by the mayor, they're responsible to the mayor, you know, the clear lines... are really clear. And the police, fire, planning and, my understanding, liquor commission, the responsibility is to that board or commission and so, you know, we created a department of boards and commissions, the charter did. You know, we have capable people there, Mr. Isobe directing a crack staff, in my view, and so they need to provide support to the commissioners to fulfill that role under the charter as well. I think it came up in this recent incident because of a lack of any investigation is my understanding. So I just would encourage you and other commissioners to understand that is your role and you know determine your commitment to the commission based on that as being part of the responsibilities. Does that make sense, Mr. Oda? Mr. Oda: No, it does. Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you very much. Council Chair Furfaro: Any further questions here at the table? Sir, I just want to thank you again for stepping forward and for your past service and we'll be voting on these items tomorrow, so thank you very much. Mr. Oda: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you for giving floor time to the planning department. Mr. Oda: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Kahawai. BOARD OF WATER SUPPLY: • Leland K. Kahawai — Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) LELAND KAHAWAI: Good morning. Council Chair Furfaro: Leland, we have one of the councilmembers who will be stepping out because of the topic with the water commission. But I know you've kind of heard the introductions I'm looking for, so the floor is yours. Ms. Nakamura was noted recused and left the meeting at 11:59 a.m. Mr. Kahawai: I'm up for reappointment to the water board. I've served on the board for the past four years filling a one -year vacancy of a previous member and then filling my first term... my first three -year term. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay and members here at the council, do you have questions for Mr. Kahawai? The floor is yours (referring to Councilwoman Yukimura). Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Kahawai: Hi, Leland. Good morning. Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, good morning, one minute more. The water board is a really interesting board. It's probably the most powerful board in the SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -61- JANUARY 11, 2011 county because it actually has the power to manage, I think, and so I guess my que ... and you also have oversight of the water engin ... what is his (inaudible) ... Mr. Craddick... Mr. Kahawai: Manager. Ms. Yukimura: ..water manager's position. So you appoint and remove if necessary the water manager Mr. Kahawai: Correct. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So maybe you can give us an idea of where you see the water board going in the next three years of your term in terms of performing their function of providing water and also in terms of any ... I guess you have a 2020... you have some kind of master water plan? Mr. Kahawai: Yeah. Ms. Yukimura: But were you planning to go there? Mr. Kahawai: Sure. The board is ... has tasked itself to follow the water plan 2020 that was put out and with that said, I guess with the recent bond float, you know, we were able to obtain about $60 million in funding. Of that we've been able to encumber about $22 to $23 million of that for projects associated with Water Plan 2020. The majority of those projects are part of the Water Plan 2020. And so we feel that, you know, our commitment to completing that task in seeking out new water sources, replacing some facilities, we've been able to do so with the. funding and with the projects that we have. In 2009 we did hire the water manager and so that has... Ms. Yukimura: Congratulations. Mr. Kahawai: ...brought some stability to the department and so having someone there, you know, as a manager has helped the board itself as well. in bringing oversight. Ms. Yukimura: He does seem very knowledgeable and I'm sure that helps to have somebody like that. is... Mr. Kahawai: Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Kahawai: Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Kahawai: Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Kahawai: Yes. So congratulations, $22 million out of $60 million Encumbered. ... encumbered within...I don't know how many... Less than a year. Less than a year. The bond float came out in March. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -62- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: That's a really good record. I think you have the record in the county. I mean maybe you're setting a standard for public works. Maybe we should get a friendly competition going here. Mr. Bynum: We do, we have it. Excuse me, sorry. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, can you highlight any key areas that need to be addressed in terms of preventing any crises in the future? Are there areas that are real problematic that we need to be aware of? Mr. Kahawai: In the coming year, the board will be taking a look at water rates and reserve... facility reserves for the future in order to repay the bond float. So that is something we'll be looking at this year... this coming year. We are awaiting reserve studies from our consultant and so that'll be coming up definitely this year for review. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Thank you and also, congratulations on your... in the last five to six years I feel like you've really developed a good educa ... public education, public outreach program and I think that's really helped you achieve your mission. Mr. Kahawai: Thank you. Ms. Yukimura: So congratulations. I have no more questions. Council Chair Furfaro: Leland, I do want to point out one thing for you that was raised when I was finance chair, the ability to borrow money is based on the association with the county. Mr. Kahawai: Yes. Council Chair Furfaro: The fact that we provide the tax base that allows that amount and the original request put us in a position that we looked favorably on the $60 million, but I do want to point out that one of the other issues that we are faced with, as Councilwoman Yukimura framed the question, is we need to make sure we spend the $60 million inside of 36 months. If not, there are penalties and risks for the county. So, I want to add that to your list of urgencies. Mr. Kahawai: And we're... Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum, you have the floor. Mr. Kahawai: Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum: Mr. Kahawai: ...are very aware of that. Thank you. Hi, Leland. Hi. Mr. Bynum: Thanks for being willing to do another term, very much appreciate it, and thanks for the update, $23 million out of $60 million encumbered. That is great. We do have a competition. We are going to ... at least I'm going to speak for me, I want to see how public... primarily public works, but how the rest of the administration does with their $60 million because I think the water department has a history of managing their CIP programs well and I'm not as concerned about those deadlines with the water department as I am for the other SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -63- JANUARY 11, 2011 $60 million. In fact, I think the water department is already figuring out how to spend some of the sixty that came to the other half of the county, and so I want to tell you don't do that. That sixty is going to be spent by the administration. But I think the water department would step up and help us out if we were up against the wall because you have this plan, right? There's a 2050 plan as well, right? Mr. Kahawai: Not... not that I'm aware of. Mr. Bynum: Oh, okay, I don't know where I got that. So were you on the board when we hired Mr. Craddick? Mr. Kahawai: Yes, actually that was the year I was the chair. Mr. Bynum: You were the chair. Mr. Kahawai: So we hired him in June '09. Mr. Bynum: And I assume the board is happy with our manager at this point. Mr. Kahawai: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Yes, good, I'm glad to hear that affirmative answer. What... can you say anything briefly about what the process was? It wasn't easy to find a water manager and was... did you do anything formal to try to seek that person or? Mr. Kahawai: You know as part of the requirement for the water manager, that person needed to be a Hawaii resident. So it limited our options to seeking, you know, a qualified candidate, you know, beyond the state. So we had, I would say, a handful of applicants. We whittled that down to the top three, interviewed all three, and based on his background, his experience, and... we decided to go with David Craddick. He was a water manager for Maui. Mr. Bynum: Okay, so you didn't use any consultants or ... to do a job search or... Mr. Kahawai: No, no. Because it was... because the position was limited to the state, you know, we didn't need to do any national search. Mr. Bynum: And that limitation is through state law is your understanding? Or ... or is it... Mr. Kahawai: I believe it's part of. -I know it's part of a document that we saw that they had to be a Hawaii resident. Mr. Bynum: Okay. Anyway, thanks for your service and as 1...I want to be serious. I am, at least as an individual, looking at those two pots of $60 million and seeing how the water department does and tracking that, you know, and how the administration does and you know hopefully you don't have to help us out by spending the other parts of it. Mr. Kahawai: Oh, we'll be more than helpful. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I know. Thanks, Leland. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -64- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: Well, Leland, I've a little more faith... have a little more faith in our engineering department that we will spend on time, but I want to let you know that they got the same red flag about making sure that we are close to those things. And during the time that the director of water was solicited and employed by us, was that at a time where the County of Maui was, in fact, debating which... to let the water department not operate as semi - autonomous and they brought them back under the umbrella of the county engineer? Was that... do you recall that? Mr. Kahawai: When we hired David? Council Chair Furfaro: Just before we hired Mr. Craddick, was Maui evaluating should the water department be absolutely under the county umbrella or an ad hoc operating department as it is now? Mr. Kahawai: I don't... Council Chair Furfaro: You don't... Mr. Kahawai: That I don't know. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions? Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. I can tell you exactly when the water department started to shift their priorities and their goals, and I don't know if you were there, Leland, but it was a couple of councils ago when a resolution was introduced on this table to bring the water department back under the county and take away their semi - autonomous structure. That's when the board came up with the audit. They did that independent audit. They did an investigation and they came up with all of these things and they... And since then, obviously the resolution was not... did not pass, but since then a lot of good has come out of the department, a lot of progress. And I agree that the reason you guys are much better at spending the money is because you have a plan. You have actually a plan that is a realistic plan. The question I have is as ... and again I don't think you were there when the resolution surfaced the last time, but... Mr. Kahawai: No, I wasn't. Mr. Rapozo: ...in your opinion, and it means a lot to me because, you know, I think that you're a very, very credible, intelligent guy, is do you think in your honest opinion that the water department should be semi - autonomous versus brought back under the control of the county? Mr. Kahawai: Personally speaking... Mr. Rapozo: Personally speaking. Mr. Kahawai: ...I feel it should be semi - autonomous. Mr. Rapozo: The way it is? Thank you. That's all I have, Mr. Chair. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -65- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, thank you for bringing up that, but there's some of us that didn't support that, but the reality... the message was sent. There was some urgency in paying attention to where we're at now and I think we're all very pleased where we're at now and we thank you for your service. There's no more questions. We are only 11 minutes off of our schedule now. Mr. Kahawai: Thank you. Mr. Bynum: I think we're more off than that. Council Chair Furfaro: Oh yeah, we're more off than that. I'm sorry. Mr. Rapozo: About 40 minutes. Council Chair Furfaro: Yeah. So, who's next now? Ms. Akiona: Next interviewee is Gilbert Maerina for the Civil Service Commission. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION: ® Gilbert F. Maerina — Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) Council Chair Furfaro: Gilbert, if you could just give us a quick overview for the members here and we'll start from there by introducing yourself. The floor is yours. GILBERT MAERINA: My name is Gilbert Maerina. I'm seeking reappointment to the civil service commission. Council Chair Furfaro: You're currently on the civil service commission? Mr. Maerina: Yes. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, Councilmember Nakamura has joined us again and may I raise any questions from the members here? You're still with General Dynamics? Ms. Nakamura was noted to have returned to the meeting at 12:11 p.m. Mr. Maerina: Council Chair Furfaro: service commission? Mr. Maerina: Council Chair Furfaro: Yes. What has your experience been so far on the civil It's been different since I'm mostly from a... Can you talk a little bit more directly into the Mr. Maerina: It's a different experience. I'm mostly from an engineering background and this is more personnel, which ... I'm glad I could bring my subjective point of view to the meetings, especially to some of the cases that we had to face over the years. It's been memorable. I don't know what else to ... how to explain it. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -66- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: Well, we appreciate the value that you bring to the commission because as we all know engineers want to make sure that every bolt is in the right place and every hinge works appropriately... Mr. Maerina: Yes. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Maerina: Council Chair Furfaro: have any questions here? Col Ms. Yukimura: all, my- re -na? ...you know, there's that... (Inaudible.) ...value you bring to the commission, so. Do we mcilwoman Yukimura. Hi, Mr. Maerina. Thank you. (Inaudible) first of Mr. Maerina: Yeah. Ms. Yukimura: Is that how you pronounce it? Mr. Maerina: Yeah. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you for your willingness to serve. So you've been serving for three years now? Mr. Maerina: Wow, that's fast. Yeah, three years. Ms. Yukimura: Three years is fast. And... do you... have you been a supervisor? Mr. Maerina: Yes. Ms. Yukimura: Oh, okay, and so you have experience in supervising people and you have experience from the private sector which I think we really value. Ms. Aranio was here earlier also as a reappointee and she talked about the ... one of the transitions that you folks have been overseeing was the transition from DPS to human resources. Mr. Maerina: That's one transition that we're trying to make, we've been exploring. It's still in the beginning process. Ms. Yukimura: Yes. Mr. Maerina: So we don't have much details yet but something that we should be discussing in following meetings. Ms. Yukimura: Yes and with her background she kind of had this thing in her head about how to go, which was really edifying for us. But we did talk about a possible plan where there would be some things put down on paper and next steps outlined. Mr. Maerina: Would that be our responsibility to put that on paper? Ms. Yukimura: I ... I don't ... I... Mr. Maerina: (Inaudible) commissions? SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -67- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: ...would imagine that you could ask the personnel director to create such a plan and that you would have input and oversight over it. Mr. Maerina: Okay. Ms. Yukimura: I think that might be an interesting thing to lay out. So, with your three years on the service... civil service commission, are there learnings or increased awareness that you've received in terms of what the county needs to do to improve its human resources management and framework for the betterment of the employees as well as for the betterment of the public, which is the receiver of county services? Mr. Maerina: Honestly, the input that we receive from each department usually occurs during the time of the director's evaluation, from his evaluation. I would like to see it happen more often or more frequently. There's a disconnect between the personnel department and the other departments in the county. I don't think ... I don't know if there's a ... is there some way...I don't think there is a way to capture everyone's opinions or everyone's needs at the moment. I remember the other person who was saying that he's from the cost council and they said they were looking into establishing an HR in each ... a human resource in each department? Ms. Yukimura: Oh, the cost control commission... Mr. Maerina: Yeah. Ms. Yukimura: ...has taken that issue on too. Mr. Maerina: No, yeah, he's taking... he's brought up that issue, but its just an idea yet. I don't think there's a framework or any path to how you would see that be implemented, which from the engineering world you can have an idea, but if you don't have the means to ... you don't have a path to implement it, then it's just a napkin, just an idea. But I think there is some benefit to that. From the other companies I worked for, having a more accessible HR where each department can convey their needs and get responses from ... I keep saying HR, but it's still a personnel department right now... but it's from the personnel department. Ms. Yukimura: You're proposing some very interesting and I think useful ideas, and it may be working with the boards and commissions staff and the mayor to ... because this is across... Mr. Maerina: Yeah. Ms. Yukimura: ...across the county kind of issue. To develop a plan sounds like a good idea, and in fact the mayor may have some semblance of a plan already. Mr. Maerina: Yeah, he brought it up at one point and I asked for a ... like a draft or a mod... sorry, engineering... a model. Ms. Yukimura: You did? You asked for a model? Mr. Maerina: Yeah, but I guess I'll ask him again for it. I didn't get a response. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -68- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: Or you can propose to the commission that it be a commission request from the whole body if you pass it on a motion and... Mr. Maerina: Yeah. Ms. Yukimura: ...then it represents the majority of the commission making a request to the mayor. That might be a way to push this idea forward. Mr. Maerina: Okay. Ms. Yukimura: So, related to that and this is my last question is what we also discussed with Ms. Aranio, the idea, which was being pushed by the four mayors at the legislature, that the personnel director, who will probably be called later on a human resource director, would be appointed by the mayor instead of by the civil service commission. And I wondered if you had an opinion or thought about which would be better for the county? Mr. Maerina: If the mayor appoints the HR, I think it still needs an oversight by some committee or somebody, council or commission. Ms. Yukimura: Or the commission? Mr. Maerina: Yeah. That provides a ... checks and balances, I guess, and provides like a third -party point of view. Somebody outside from within... not within the county to gather ... like evaluations on the director. Was the idea just to have the mayor just appoint the director with no oversight except by the mayor? Ms. Yukimura: I'm sorry that I'm not aware of the exact legislation. I see Mr. Isobe raising his hand. So, yeah, I don't know how far in detail that went, but I appreciate your input and I think it is something that may surface again this legislature, who knows. Or if it doesn't, it may still be put forward by a mayor or a civil service commission, who knows too. Thank you very much. Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo, you have the floor. Mr. Rapozo: Thanks Gilbert, and you know I think you asked a real good question early on. Councilmember Yukimura asked a question and you said, "Is that something that we're supposed to do ?" because it sounds like you've actually read the charter. Because the charter is clear. You know your function... you have two functions. Number one is to really make sure that this county has a system of basically fair employment. That's what it is. It's not about HR. It's not training. It's not... it's... this commission was put in place to make sure that this county goes out and is fair in their hiring practices. That's your job. The second job is to appoint or remove the personnel director. You know... and I take that seriously because I think that is what. this county's lacking right now and I spoke of this with the earlier candidate that, you know, we don't have a system of fair and equitable employment. We have many complaints of people getting promoted when they shouldn't be or people getting hired when they shouldn't be. We've... and we've ... you know, I'm not going to bring up the ... I don't think you were there when I testified at the commission meeting a few years ago, but the bottom line is your commission is really to establish that system so that... and let me just quote it so I don't misstate what's in the charter "establish a system of personnel administration based upon merit principles devoid of any bias or prejudice and providing a systematic and equitable classification of all positions through adequate job evaluation." That's your function. That's what... that's what you do and then of SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -69- JANUARY 11, 2011 course it talks about the organization and your powers. And your powers, as far as adopting "rules and regulations, shall distinguish between matters of policy left for the determination of the commission and matters of technique and administration to be left for execution by the director." So its clear, yeah, that separation of power. But that's pretty much it. And then of course, you know, you gotta evaluate your director. Now, that is where, I believe, you have some latitude because you have that authority. So you can expect goals and objectives, and you can say, you know, we want to see a training program, we want to see this and that, and that's fine. But I think it's important to understand the primary role of the civil service is it's not an HR commission, it's a civil service commission because we have civil service law, state law that governs certain hiring practices, certain promotional practices. And I think it's the commission's duty to follow that. And I just wanted to bring that point up because I hear a lot of the questions coming up about this... all this (inaudible) stuff and that's fine. I think the county needs an HR department. But for the longest time, the disconnect between the personnel department at the county and all the different HRs throughout the different departments, you know, the personnel director really doesn't have an idea of what's happening at the police department or the fire department or public works because it's all separate. Mr. Maerina: Yeah. Mr. Rapozo: And however that plays out in the future, as of today and your function on the commission is a very, very important one. And I'm hoping as I spoke to the other commissioner that... not the commissioner, the other applicant... was I asked her if she was willing to take a look at and in fact ask the council or the office of the auditor for some help in taking a look at our hiring practices because of the complaints that I personally have received, that you personally have seen and the fact that is it fair to be able to pick people that you want just because you want or is it really... is our equal opportunity stamp on all our letterheads, does it really mean anything? So my question to you is simple. Would you consider having a comprehensive overview or look, either through you folks retaining the services of an auditor or using our county auditor, requesting anyway to take a look at our hiring practices, to make sure they comply with civil service and state and local law? Mr. Maerina: Sure. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Do we have any more questions here? Mr. Bynum Mr. Bynum: Gilbert, I just wanted to thank you for your service and some of the things you said earlier. I'm going to get the transcripts because I love what you said about as an engineer if it's just an idea, if there's not a pathway, it's just an idea, and it's just well said. I appreciate your comments here today, thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Gilbert, I do as well, thank you very much for letting me make a presentation on upward appraisals to your commission when you were there and I was assured that you folks are going to pursue that, and the question I surfaced about a separate HR department for the county. I also want to say that your value as an engineer came through in your interview, as Mr. Bynum just said. The use of a preliminary drawing on a napkin, having a model we can look at, and making sure there's checks and balances, there's value in having an engineer in every commission almost. So on that note, thank you very much. We'll be voting tomorrow on appointments. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -70- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Maerina: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. Mr. Rapozo: Thanks. Ms. Akiona: Next interviewee will be William Gibson for the Liquor Control Commission, followed by Robert Crowell. LIQUOR CONTROL COMMISSION: • William F. Gibson —Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) Council Chair Furfaro: Happy new year, Billy. WILLIAM GIBSON: Happy new year. I'm Billy Gibson, recently retired as an instructor at Kauai Community College, and I've served on the liquor commission for three years. Council Chair Furfaro: It's very good to see you, Billy, and I think the value you bring to the commission with your years of service either as ... in food and beverage at the Hilton and Coco Palms, and procedural teachings at the community college, especially as it relates to rules and regulations, is very valuable and thank you for stepping forward again. Do we have any questions for Mr. Gibson? We'll start with you, Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Mr. Gibson, who appoints the liquor director? Mr. Gibson: The commission. Mr. Bynum: Okay. Mr. Gibson: Gee, I got one right. Mr. Bynum: Huh? Mr. Gibson: I got one right. Council Chair Furfaro: He said he got one right. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I appreciate the work of the liquor commission and your willingness to serve and you know, earlier somebody said they thought the mayor appointed and so, you know, that... I don't know if you heard my earlier comments, but just some commissions are responsible for the director and for appointing and for evaluation, and it's important that the commission see that governance role as in addition to the duties that are assigned by the li ... commission. So I'm confident you understand that. Thank you very much. Mr. Gibson: Mr. Bynum, who puts together that questionnaire for us to judge our director? Mr. Bynum: The board... you mean, this... this... Council Chair Furfaro: Evaluation. Mr. Gibson: Evaluation form. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING - 71 - JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Bynum: Yes, the director of personnel has an eval ... we have a standard evaluation form for the county. Mr. Gibson: Because we've gone through that several times and each time there's been questions about how to answer that, you know, particular inquiry /the question. So, I was just wondering if it could be reviewed and made a little more direct as to what we are judging the director on. That's just my opinion. Council Chair Furfaro: Sounds like somebody who wants to serve on an ad hoc committee to review the form. Mr. Bynum: So ... I mean I don't have a better answer than the department of personnel services... Mr. Gibson: Okay. Mr. Bynum: ...creates that form and also as ... I think for any commissioners, we have this great boards and commissions office now with a good administrator... Mr. Gibson: Yes, they've been very helpful. Mr. Bynum: ...and you know, I'm very hopeful that that move is going to increase the effectiveness and support that the commissioners receive, and you should, like all commissioners, should be assertive and ask for resources if you need it. You can ask through, I think initially probably boards and commissions, but you can even ask the county council. You know if you need resources to accomplish the goals set under the charter that's why we created the boards and commissions... Mr. Gibson: Mm -hm. Mr. Bynum: ...and have staffed it to provide that resource. But above that if you need legal counsel, you can get that, you know, through the county attorney initially or if they're conflicted by some reason, get special counsel. I speak for myself, but I think it's true of the entire council, we value the work of all these boards and commissions and I mean it's great. You look at that list. You know it's great to see up on the wall there, I don't know if you've seen that, I really appreciate that I got the pictures, you see the commissioners... Mr. Gibson: Mm -hm. Mr. Bynum: ...you look at the list of people that are serving our community on various boards. It's very impressive. Those are our, you know... and we want that to be meaningful for the individuals involved and to help with the governance of our county and... Mr. Gibson: I think that's good advice as the direction to take to answer questions because a lot of times we just... after the meeting, you know, forget about it. Mr. Bynum: Right. I think, Mr. Gibson, you know... and I think that's changing and it's a very positive thing that commissioners, especially like this, you know, you oversee the liquor, the whole program, you know, like here's this prescribed effort. But for some commissions like yours, there's this much bigger one where the board is responsible for the department, and for the goals and objectives, and the director, and that's what... I'm using the word governance, you SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -72- JANUARY 11, 2011 know. It's like who's the boss of this department? You guys are. Unlike say other places where the boss is clearly the mayor, right? And so if there's personnel issues, the director handles the personnel, but if those issues involve the director, you're the boss, right? Mr. Gibson: Mm -hm, okay. Mr. Bynum: That's why you do the evaluation and if there's concerns, you know, (inaudible) ... who does the personnel director answer to? Not the mayor. The answer is to you guys, right, so. Mr. Gibson: Okay. Mr. Bynum: So thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, Mr. Rapozo, then Councilwoman Nakamura, in that order. Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: Congratulations on your retirement. Mr. Gibson: Thank you. Mr. Rapozo: I didn't realize you retired. You must have just retired. Mr. Gibson: Yes, December 31. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, after you submitted the application. Just one question. You guys get provided any kind of training as far as evaluation, filling out the evaluation forms, and how to evaluate the department head? I guess I was kind of disturbed earlier when a commissioner ... a commission applicant didn't even realize who appointed the department head. That's kind of disturbing. Don't you guys get any kind of training from our county boards and commissions as far as how to ... when you do an evaluation, in fact you know, as basic as your charter duties? Is that something that's offered? Mr. Gibson: Mr. Rapozo: (inaudible). I'm not sure, Mel. Well, apparently you haven't been offered Mr. Gibson: They offer almost everything on every topic and it could be the fact that I didn't pay close enough attention. Mr. Rapozo: But that's two from the same commission today. I think, that's concerning, and I guess I want to make sure that in fact these... and to me the fundamental training is your charter duty, that's the fundamental. First of all, Commission 101 is what is the ... what is your duties under the charter. Commission nu ... I mean training number two is if in fact your commission is one that evaluates a department head... Mr. Gibson: Mm -hm. Mr. Rapozo: ...this is our form. How do you fill it out? I mean how... what's the... and if you have concerns, and it doesn't sound like that's being done because I just ... I've heard... haven't heard that today. So I just ... you know, SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -73- JANUARY 11, 2011 we'll follow up with that with boards and commissions, but it's quite telling when a commission applicant... standing commissioner doesn't know who appoints his department head. Mr. Gibson: Mm -hm, mm -hm. Mr. Rapozo: So, congratulations, thank you for your service and... Mr. Gibson: Thank you. Mr. Rapozo: I still remember the bar tending training. I do well ... best with beer, though. Council Chair Furfaro: First part of training is check the ID. Mr. Gibson: Yes. Council Chair Furfaro: (Inaudible) Nakamura. Ms. Nakamura: Congratulations too and we're going to miss you at KCC. Mr. Gibson: Thank you. Ms. Nakamura: But I wanted to ask you, based on your experience, what do you think the biggest challenge is in enforcing the liquor control laws? Mr. Gibson: The biggest area? Ms. Nakamura: The biggest challenge. Mr. Gibson: I think ... I think it has to be the challenge to keep our young people from drinking and becoming overly intoxicated. Even though I know that I train young people in the area of beverage, but you know it's a matter of when you're 21, then you can appreciate this wine. You can't taste it until then. But I think that's our number one area which leads into the second area which would be drunken driving and behavior relating to over consumption. Ms. Nakamura: Thank you, thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Mr. Gibson, thank you very much for stepping for... oh, you have another question? Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Gibson: Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Gibson: Yes, hi, Billy. Hi. How are you? Happy new year. Happy new year. Ms. Yukimura: I asked these of other liquor commission appointees and so... and they're not easy questions to ask, but I feel like I have to ask them. You are aware of charges of sexual harassment from within the liquor department. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -74- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: Do you see that the commission has some responsibility of oversight in matters like this and I'm not talking about any specific incident, but before or ... if...things that have happened in the past or in the future? Mr. Gibson: You asked if we were trained in sexual harassment. Ms. Yukimura: Right. Mr. Gibson: If I could kind of say something about that first. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, sure. Mr. Gibson: I think that has been made available through boards and commissions and I did not or could not take the time because I was working. Ms. Yukimura: Sure. Mr. Gibson: However, I felt confident that in my years at the school we had been subject to or had required our department to go through training, and so I've been, you know, exposed to different training in that area. Now, about the specific incident, I think, specific ... I thought that this was a human resources or personnel responsibility. I didn't realize that the commissioners should put that on their agenda. Ms. Yukimura: You're... you're right that it is a human resources responsibility. The commission has one human resource responsibility and that is your oversight... your appointing power over the liquor director... executive. Mr. Gibson: Ms. Yukimura: And through that responsibility, you may have some responsibilities regarding these incidents. And so that's why I had to ask Mr. Oda if he was willing to seek legal counsel or even human resources counsel in terms of your possible responsibility here. Mr. Gibson: Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Gibson: Ms. Yukimura: performance. Mr. Gibson: Mm -hm. Because ii.. In this specific incident. ...it relates to performance, Mm -hm. it relates to Ms. Yukimura: Your oversight relates to performance reviews and so that... that's where the connection may be because performance of your executive director is in terms of how these cases are handled in the department. Mr. Gibson: Mm -hm. Ms. Yukimura: And my understanding of the roles are if there's any reporting of any incidents, there has to be an investigation. So, you know, it's your oversight responsibility to see whether investigations were done in terms of SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -75- JANUARY 11, 2011 performance. So ... and I think this applies ... I mean you need to seek counsel... well, my opinion is that you need to, and I guess I'm asking whether you are willing to do that if that is said to be one of your responsibilities? Mr. Gibson: Sure, definitely. Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, okay. Mr. Gibson: Mm -hm. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Mr. Gibson: Okay. Ms. Yukimura: I appreciate that. Council Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, may I just make a footnote here. Ms. Yukimura: And I believe that's all I have too, so... Council Chair Furfaro: Oh, okay. I just wanted to (inaudible) by ... we need to take a break at one o'clock if we're not finished with the last commissioners by one, so. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Council Chair Furfaro: I'm going to try and finish here by one `clock. If I can have acknowledgement from the staff, you okay with that? Very good. And thank you for letting me interject that message. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Well, Mr. Gibson, thank you very much for your service and I don't know if I'm still thanking you for 40 years ago when you handled my wedding... catering of my wedding, but thank you for that (inaudible). Mr. Gibson: I'm feeling very tired now. (Inaudible) thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. Ms. Akiona: Next is Robert Crowell for the Salary Commission, followed by Shirley Akita. SALARY COMMISSION: o Robert Blair Crowell — Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) Council Chair Furfaro: Robert, I'm going to make another announcement. Mr. Chang might leave us at one o'clock because he is going to have an opportunity to attend the last public hearing on the plastic bag bill at one o'clock. So if he leaves during any of the dialogue here, please understand he was committed. Happy new year. ROBERT CROWELL: Happy new year. Council Chair Furfaro: Nice to have you here. Give us a little background, introduce yourself, and we'll go from there. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -76- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Crowell: Good afternoon, I'm Bob Crowell. I'm a ... I guess I'm being nominated for a second term on the salary commission. I've served one ,year... a one -year term and I guess I finished out someone else's term and then I was appointed. So I've been there for four years on that commission. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. We have a very experienced commissioner as he's seen evolution to the plans here and so I'll open any comments to members. Go right ahead, the floor is yours. Ms. Yukimura: Hi, Mr. Crowell, Bob. Mr. Crowell: How are you? Ms. Yukimura: First of all, thank you for your service. The commission has done some really hard work over the last four to eight years and you know, executive salaries are so important because unless you have properly set salaries, you can't recruit the quality of people you need, and I think the water department was an example of that as well as when I was mayor, the county engineer position took ... it was vacant for a long time. So thank you for that hard work and I have read your report, and... the 2008 report was very good. So I only have one question. In your report, you... the main emphasis was on the connection between performance reviews and pay raises. Mr. Crowell: That's correct. Ms. Yukimura: And I just wanted to get your individual thought about why that's so important in the operations and performance of the county. Mr. Crowell: Well, I think what was missing all along was that no one was really evaluating. Everyone was taking for granted that just because you serve as a department head, you deserve the pay raise, you know, and you got whatever. I don't think anyone was being evaluated. I think just as the civil servants, the underlings, get evaluated on an annual basis, I think it was that the deaprtment heads should be subject to those same types of requirements. That was... Ms. Yukimura: And that makes for better performance. Mr. Crowell: Yeah, in the long run it should. Ms. Yukimura: Right, right. Mr. Crowell: That's correct. Ms. Yukimura: Right, okay, thank you very much. Mr. Crowell: Yeah, we ... and it was basically that, you know, I think we were just hoping that somebody's looking at it. Ms. Yukimura: Yes. Mr. Crowell: You know, somebody's looking at their performance, you know. Ms. Yukimura: Right, right, thank you. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -77- Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum. JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Bynum: Thank you very much for your service. I appreciate it. My understanding is the salary commission was created by the charter. When you have a salary commission resolution you vote on— (sorry, Wilma)—that has the weight of the charter. Is that your understanding as well? Mr. Crowell: Well, yeah, we have a ... we have a resolution that we submit to the mayor as well as the council, and if you don't act on it, it becomes the law. It becomes law. Mr. Bynum: So what I'm saying is that ... but that resolution, those aren't suggestions. They're requirements. Is that your understanding? Mr. Crowell: Well, yeah, that's correct. Mr. Bynum: Okay, and you know my understanding and from my reading and I've recently read a lot of your minutes, the... you know it was in 2007 when the salary commission said we want evaluations and then subsequent resolutions kind of made the criteria more specific. Is that your understanding as well? Mr. Crowell: I can't recall, but I believe it did, yeah, it did. Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you for your service and just as an aside, I know the salary commission, I think since you've been on it, moved to address department head salaries and increased them significantly, and I'm very supportive of that. When I started working for the county, department heads were making far less than some of the people they supervised and I want... and we have many quality department heads and we want to be somewhat competitive, maybe not totally competitive, right? Because there's, you know we have this sense of hey, public service is part of the motivation and it certainly is for many of our department heads who could make more in the private sector. But to make their pay reasonable, you know, and profess... for the level of professionalism, you know, I support that and I appreciate the work the commission has done to do that and then dealing with the issues of the economic downturn and what's equitable during a period of time that we're asking for furloughs and other things from our workers, so. I appreciate how the salary commission has, you know, sought that balance. So, thank you. Mr. Crowell: Well just as a side note, my own personal opinion too, you know I hope whoever's here on the council that this salary commission continues long and you know throughout the years. When I sat... when I sat... on the first day I sat, during that time I don't know how long it was since they looked at executive salaries. It looked like we were way behind and Kauai, just because we're small doesn't mean we should be last... Mr. Bynum: Right on. Mr. Crowell: ...you know, so. Mr. Bynum: I totally agree and I think your... Mr. Crowell: I think a lot of people were thinking that and you know... and I, all I got to say about that is that this continues, you know, in that direction. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -78- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Bynum: Yes, sir, thank you for your service. Mr. Crowell: You're welcome. Council Chair Furfaro: I want to say thank you very much as well. Although I know we're like fourth cousins or something... Mr. Crowell: (Inaudible) like that. Chair Furfaro: Something like that. I just want to say thank you very much for your five years, I think. Mr. Crowell: Four. Council Chair Furfaro: Four years all together. Mr. Crowell: One plus three. Council Chair Furfaro: Yeah, but anyway thank you very much. We'll be voting on these items tomorrow at tomorrow's council meeting, so thank you. Mr. Crowell: Okay, thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you for being patient with us. Mr. Crowell: Oh no, thank you. You're only 45 minutes behind. Ms. Akiona: Next is Shirley Akita for the Liquor Control Commission, followed by Charles Iona. LIQUOR CONTROL COMMISSION: • Shirley T. Akita —Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) SHIRLEY AKITA: Council Chair Furfaro: Happy new year everybody. Happy new year to you. Ms. Akita: I'm Shirley Akita, former educator, retired, enjoying my services in the community. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much for being here and being patient with us. Shirely, I want to say, you are currently... Ms. Akita: I'm up for reappointment (inaudible). Council Chair Furfaro: Yes. Ms. Akita: Yes. Council Chair Furfaro: And there may be a series of questions here that you might have heard earlier, so. I'm going to open those questions up to the council, so. Is that... you have the floor, JoAnn. Ms. Yukimura: Yes, hi Shirley. Ms. Akita: Hi. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -79- JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Yukimura: Thank you for your long service, both in the DOE and on the liquor commission and in so many other ways, RSVP, etcetera, etcetera. Ms. Akita: Well, part of my job at least ... I feel it is. Ms. Yukimura: Well, thank you. I know that your ... I know your commitment to the community, and you've heard my questions and they're not easy questions to ask, but I feel like they are part of the responsibility of a liquor commissioner. So number one, is it your understanding that the liquor commission is the appointing body of the liquor... Ms. Akita: By the commission... yeah, commissioners, yes. Ms. Yukimura: And you've been... you've participated in performance reviews, I take it? Ms. Akita: Very much so. Ms. Yukimura: Okay and so with this recent incident within the liquor department, do you see it as your responsibility at least to seek advice of human resource and legal resources as to your potential responsibility with these issues? Ms. Akita; Absolutely. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Ms. Akita: On a personal and professional level, I think all of the commissioners on the liquor control commission have felt this as very important. Absolutely. Ms. Yukimura: Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum: Council Chair Furfaro: Ms. Akita: Council Chair Furfaro: Ms. Yukimura: Council Chair Furfaro: Ms. Akita: Okay, thank you very much. Any other questions? Thank you, Shirley, for your service. See the thumbs up here, no more questions Oh, well, thank you. Thank you, Shirley and... Thanks very much. ...happy new year. Same to all of you. Ms. Akiona: Next Charles Iona for the Police Commission, followed by Randall Nishimura. POLICE COMMISSION: ® Charles Chu Chun Iona —Term ending 12/31/2013 (Mayoral Appointment) SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING _80- JANUARY 11, 2011 CHARLES IONA: Good afternoon, members of the council. Councilmembers: Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Iona: Council Chair Furfaro: questions from there. Good afternoon. Charlie, you are currently on the commission? Yes, I am. If you can just give us a brief overview, we'll ask for Mr. Iona: Sure. My name is Charlie Iona. I'm finishing up a partial term, two -year term, and I'm coming up for reappointment for a full term. I'm a retired police officer from Maui. I also am presently the director of safety and risk management for Kikiaola Land Company and Waimea Plantation Cottages. I'm also a former medical examiner investigator for the City and County of Honolulu, as well as a liquor investigator for the City and. County of Honolulu after the indictment of the seven investigators way bath when, and now 1 reside here on Kauai in the Waimea area. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. With that, I'll. open it up for any questions, Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Charlie, thanks for reupping your service. Mr. Iona: Sure. Mr. Bynum: Appreciate it. And I know since the chief has been here, there's been more focus on internal affairs and discipline and police officers, and a key part of the police commission's role, it says "receive, consider, investigate charges brought by the public against the conduct of the department or any of its members and provide a written report." Has the police commission fulfilled that responsibility in specific instances? Mr. Iona: Yes, we've been pursuing that very vigorously. In light of the term that was fulfilled by Leon Gonsalves, I'm probably the only other person that has a police background. So in understanding those type of complaints that come before the commission, the other commissioners ... I've felt that it's been very helpful for them that I point out certain specifics regarding police work and how complaints come before the commission in trying to decipher between a valid complaint or a gripe because sometimes a gripe can be masked by a valid complaint. So it's really taking a look at the present policies that are in place, how it comes before the commission, and from that point voting on it. So we have... that's one of the things that we take wholeheartedly. Mr. Bynum: I know the... if I said that the credibility and the integrity of the police department's important to the community, and that given the nature of police work, there's an ... there is an opportunity for people to abuse power, so it's very important that any abuse of power be taken seriously, you would agree with that statement? Mr. Iona: I agree, sir, yes. Mr. Bynum: And so I just very much appreciate the police commission's role in helping ensure that integrity and taking any complaints that come about conduct of our police officers seriously and I'm sure you do. Thank you very much. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -81- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Iona: Well, I do like to say also that as a former police officer, especially in training statewide with all the different counties involved, over the years Kauai has always been considered at the bottom of the totem pole. It was always they were in one corner; HPD, Maui police department, Big Island police department was on this side. They would never participate one way or the other and I don't know if it's because of how they were viewed. But since I've been on this commission, I've seen the great progress that's been done with the present police chief at hand. I can see that bond, especially with the recent state law enforcement conference which Kauai hosted. To see a recognizable figurehead such as Chief Perry being recognized by others in different agencies, DEA, FBI, TSA and the different police departments, it really puts Kauai now at that level, at the same level with HPD, Maui Police and Big Island police. So ... this county is very, very fortunate in my opinion. Mr. Bynum: I appreciate your enthusiasm and I'm also optimistic about the direction the police department is headed and you know, but there's` still an element of our community who is suspicious about whether things are improving on this level and you know... and that's important. So, you know, having a strong police commission, strong chief, you know, that values that role, you know, is it going to help improve that credibility? And it is, and I ... and I'm happy about that. Thank you. Mr. Iona: Well, I think the county, you know, just by televising it, especially with trying to get accreditation onboard because that is a big, big process. I went through that same process with Maui police and once you get on that level, it makes everybody's understanding, especially the role of the police department, a lot easier to digest and understand. Mr. Bynum: Appreciate your service, thank you. Mr. Iona: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Kale, may I say that, you know, over a period of time things are evolving and you know we have an attorney now assigned to the police department and so forth, but one of the agenda items that I would like to see in a joint discussion between police and fire is, as we go towards accreditation as well as, I would also like to hear of some dialogue about the value of a public information officer for both police and fire to share, whether it comes from public safety issues, issues related to welfare along the Na Pali Coast, new policies that are being put in place for the benefit of the citizens, so. But I think that first has to be discussed at the two commission levels and I would like to see us at least open that dialogue. Mr. Iona: Well, I am ... I am all for it. I've talked with our chief before. That's something that we want to take a look at because it's very important. I can say, as a former medical examiner investigator with the City and County of Honolulu, the PIO is one of the most important positions. Especially I had the 3 to 11 watch, which was the most busy watch. So whether it be Guy Hagi calling me right before 5 o'clock because he has to get on the 6 o'clock news or Keoki Kerr calling at 9 o'clock because he has to get on the 10 o'clock news, it's the... what type of information you get out... because news sells. And there's a public hysteria out there and especially when you get a bad rep of say things happening and the perception is things are not getting solved where there is a process and one of the process is how the information is disseminated. So I'm wholehearted behind backing... getting a PIO onboard. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -82- JANUARY 11, 2011 Council Chair Furfaro: Well again I don't know if we're big enough to have one just for police, but I'm sure we should have constructive dialogue between police and fire. Mr. Iona: I agree, sir, I agree. Council Chair Furfaro: And if you could talk to your counterparts on the police commission and give us some feedback, I think it would be well received here. Mr. Iona: Will do. Council Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Iona: Yes, hi Charlie. Hi. Ms. Yukimura: First of all, you have su. ... you've heard this before, but you have such a wonderful deep voice. Mr, Iona: Well, thank you. Ms. Yukimura: You should be a newscaster. Dickie can hire you. Council Chair Furfaro: Public information officer. Ms. Yukimura: I'm really ... I feel really fortunate for the county that they have someone with your background that's being proposed for the police commission and has served up to now, so thank you very much for that. Mr. Iona: You're welcome, ma'am. Ms. Yukimura: I think your experience, it is ... I can see how helpful it is. And I just want to say too that I think a lot of us have been very pleased with the improvements of the police department under the leadership of Chief Perry. We still have a ways to go, but the progress has been tremendous and that goes to the credibility that you mentioned, statewide and then with our community. So thank you for that. The question I would ask is the police commission was formed mainly as a lay person body between a paramilitary organization and a community. Mr. Iona: Correct. Ms. Yukimura: And so your issue about discerning between... what did you call it? Complaint? Mr. Iona: Complaint... well, valid complaint... Ms. Yukimura: Valid complaints... Mr. Iona: ...or a gripe. Ms. Yukimura: ...and a gripe.. Mr. Iona: Right. Ms. Yukimura: ...is like one of the keys to the performance of the police commission and also to the credibility of the police in the community. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -83- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Iona: Correct. Ms. Yukimura: So how do you... maybe just having you there trains the other commissioners to do that. Is there training that people can go through to learn this? I guess your investigator background also probably helps. Mr. Iona: Well, like Councilmember Rapozo with his training, there is an Investigative 101 class that anyone can take, but I would have to say it's just the years of experience. I'll give you an example, such as in the County of Maui you might have 16 to 20 deaths a year, investigative deaths /cases. With the medical examiner's office, I handled between 300 and 400 a year because in the City and County of Honlulu, the medical examiner's office was entrusted to do death investigations because of the size of the population base. So all natural, unnatural, suspicious cases came before the medical examiner, which was our department. So given that type of training, along with the police training I have, I kind of think of myself as someone that can be helpful to the other commissioners. But yet being in the private sector now, my life does have a gray. For police officers everything is black and white because we have the law at hand, we know what the constitution is, we enforce it as such. But in police work and for the commissioners to understand that you're asking a young individual who comes on the police department to be a juror, a doctor, a counselor, a priest and if have to to take one's life to preserve life, you're asking them to do that in a split moment in time, which is very hard to do. So given your question, yes, I feel like I'm ... hopefully the other commissioners look at me...I think they do ... they just voted me in as their new chair for this 2011 year. So hopefully I can lead them in the right direction, but it's always good when the other commissioners have input because there are things that—that I may not see. But when it comes to police work and again especially when you're talking about external complaints that we are entrusted to investigate, we really take a hard look at those complaints. One is understanding what is written, two — what is the complaint involved, three — how the complaint comes before the commission, all of those things. I think when I first got on, they looked at complaints because oh, here's another complaint. Maybe tag words in there and say oh, it's valid. But let's really look at the complaint hard because sometimes what an officer does is in the course of his duty. So is this person who's complaining about that officer just complaining because they got stopped and cited and maybe they were upset? So these are the kinds of things that I look through. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you very much. Mr. Iona: You're welcome, ma'am. Council Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Nakamura. No? Mr. Chang. Mr, Chang: Charlie, first of all, thank you for all your passion... Mr. Iona: You're welcome_ Mr. Chang: ...and thank you for such a great, great involvement within the community and I just would like to thank the Chair for bringing up the public information officer. We had a conversation yesterday and that's one on your wishlist and I think it's a great idea of combining both the fire and the police. I think that makes a lot of sense and I just want to thank you for your public participation and, you know, wanting again to continue to serve. And I want to thank the chief and all of the department heads for being here to support the people that support you. So I'd just like to say aloha and thank you for hanging in there with all of us this afternoon. Mahalo. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -84- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Iona: Thank you, sir. You know, one thing, last thing I can say about PIO. No matter how good a department is, it's really the PIO. What ... whatev ... wherever the communication comes from, it's how they put it to the community because that person can make or break the credibility of that department that's affected. So if that person that's giving out the information doesn't understand the mechanics behind the department, I don't care what information they give out, you're going to have the nay sayers out there being skeptics and saying I don't believe you. So I think that's what you gotta work hard at is getting people that's willing to communicate the message that each department has, but doing it in a convincing manner which means that they may have to attend training just to see what the department or fire department goes through, just so they know how to give the information out there to the public. Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Welcome, Charlie... Mr, Iona: Thank you. Mr. Rapozo: ...and congratulations on your being elected to the chair. Just a couple of things. Number one, you know one of the functions is to review the budget and make recommendations. I think that's where... for us on the council, you know, that can help us by making recommendations so that we can help you folks with what you need. You know one of the things you mentioned earlier accreditation, you know, the ... a prior council provided a position for the department that was to help with accreditation. That position was to allow the chief to hire who he wanted to hire, someone that had expertise in accreditation, in rebuilding the policies of the department, get the department back on track to accreditation, and you know, we all know what happened to that, yeah. The mayor took the position, put it in the county attorney's office and gave him a county attorney. That was not the intent of that position and unfortunately, that sets us back in the track to accreditation. So that's one of the kinds... one of the recommendations I kind of would like to see back is if that is in fact something you need, please let us know. Mr. Iona: Okay. Mr. Rapozo: The PIO is another situation and we must not forget the prosecutor's office as well. Because if you print the wrong thing and, you know, we're served by a newspaper that's a tabloid. We're not served by a newspaper on Kauai that... that is concerned about getting the right information out. No, they're interested in selling papers and they'll print whatever they gotta print to sell papers. And you know, and I can honestly say just from some of the articles that I've read and in my former employment with the prosecutor's office, they printed erroneous information, and it's unfortunate. So I think a public safety PIO or somehow, as Mr. Furfaro said, somebody gotta get trained in what needs to get out and what can get out, not just to let the public know that six people got arrested for doing some heinous crime, but also to preserve that case so that we can convict them and not have to put the cops and the prosecutors through extra hoops just to get this thing in front of a judge. So, I'd appreciate it if you could review that budget with the chief and come up with any... and if there's anything we can help you with, please let us know because that's really what we need. We don't understand. Yeah, I was a former cop long time ago. Today it's a different world and Mr. Bynum is completely right that, you know, the suspicions of KPD. Well, guess what? There's suspicions of the county council. There's SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -85- JANUARY 11, 2011 suspicions of planning. There's suspicions of the mayor's office. Everybody's suspicious today because of Facebook, 'twitter and. all of that stuff. Somebody prints a little thing, a tweet, and by the end of the day that tweet becomes the news story for Kauai which is entirely false. So I think information control is vital and it's something we gotta look at, but more importantly for me and as the public safety chair, we'll get to meet again starting Februaryy, with the public safety hits, is getting the department on track to accreditation. And I've already discussed beat expansion with the chief and that's something that I think a lot of people complain about the police department, but they don't realize they only get 10 guys out there every single day. And I encourage anyone and I've spoken at community groups, Mr. Iona., and I've said, you know, if you want, I'm sure you could go sign a waiver and go ride along with some of these guys overnight. We used to be able to kick back, stop at 7- Eleven have a cup of coffee, and go do bar checks. It's not possible anymore. The radio doesn't stop and I don't think people get... understand that. They don't, they don't. They look at cops as being superhuman, but you know they are human and they do get burnt out. So I just want you. to know that as far as I'm concerned and I'm sure 1: share the support of this council. that whatever. the KPD needs to get back on track anal. get to accreditation. Chief, you've done a hell of a job and that's a big part, of why we've progressed so much and with the support of the commission, I think we Carl get to where we need to go a lot sooner, so thank you very much. Mr.. Iona: Why I think the commission as a whole we support everything that the chief of police has been working towards. Some things maybe complicated when it's put on paper, but as long as someone explains what's the goal and functions of that, then it's very digestible, it's very... it's palatable, we can take it. And on the last note, you know, as you say the news media plays havoc on any investigation. I know when Mr. Paul Curtis was in place at the newspaper he once asked me, you know, why... why do think the police... they have a bad—scene, DUI killed somebody on the road. They arrest, but let the guy go. I said because it's the process, because if they do that, they get the guy into the system, they know who the guy is. But what you don't understand is that if you go arrest and charge the guy, the guy might just say I want to go to court tomorrow. Does the police department have all their evidence ready to go? No, they don't. The police department doesn't have a crime lab. So we know these kind of things take time. You need to send it out, get the results back, so you can get a successful prosecution on that whole thing. So I think with that said, again having the PIO understand what the message is to get to the public. Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Charlie, thank you, and this council is committed to accreditation. Just because a position was moved or something doesn't mean that it changed our focus and I would encourage you to talk to the fire commission about a PIO. And we'll vote on this tomorrow. Mr. Iona: Thank you very much. Council Chair Furfaro: So you'll hear back from us then, thank you. And we have one more. Ms. Akiona: Next is Randall Nishimura for the Board of Water Supply. BOARD OF WATER SUPPLY: ® Randall T. Nishimura — Term ending 12/31/2013 SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -86- (Mayoral Appointment) JANUARY 11, 2011 Ms. Nakamura: Chair, I'm going to step out again. Council Chair Furfaro: Yeah. Ms. Nakamura was noted recused from the meeting at 1:07 p.m. \ j Council Chair Furfaro: Chief Perry: Council Chair Furfaro: Chief Perry: Council Chair Furfaro: Chief, we're on for Thursday? Yes. Eleven o'clock. Yes. Here. I'll see you then. RANDALL NISHIMURA: Good afternoon and happy new year. Mr. Bynum: Happy new year. Mr. Nishimura: I'm Randall Nishimura and this, if reconfirmed, this would be my second term to the board of water supply. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you and... you and I served together on the planning commission and I'm very pleased to see you up for a second term on the water board. Obviously you've heard some of the earlier discussions about, you know, the council is supportive about borrowing, but we want to make sure that, you know, we're on time and on target with projects inside that 36 -month bond period. I'm going to ask others if they have questions of you right now and I will start with ... was ... did you have something, Mr. Rapozo? Mr. Rapozo: an Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Thank you, Randy, for your service, appreciate it and you know, we're going to get the administration to spend their $60 million, so don't look at it. I'm just teasing. Thank you for your service. Mr. Nishimura: Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Anyone else? Ms. Yukimura: You know I was looking at your application, Randy, and I think you're very unique because I don't think we had ... we've had anybody who has as much experience as a planning commissioner as a water board member, anybody else on this island. And so my question is about the connection between planning and water and how we might improve our processes in either arena or our communication between the two that might make for better planning and better water provision. Mr. Nishimura: That could take all day. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, well take two minutes. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -87- JANUARY 11, 2011 Mr. Nishimura: Short answer is there are some processes already in place. As an example, whenever there are either general plan amendments, subdivision applications that go in, the planning department automatically requests comments from the water department, and the water department looks at the overall capacity of the system and whether it can accommodate the, in most cases, increase in zoning or density, and the needs, you know, to be able to not just provide water but fire flow oftentimes... oftentimes create roadblocks to being able to approve those applications. But to their credit, the department does first and foremost protect its existing rate holders. And to the extent that any kind of change increases the demand on the system, there are safeguards in place which require the developers to put in sometimes, in the case of Kukui`ula they put in almost $30 million worth of infrastructure in order to go forward with their development. So there are processes in place. Could it be better? I think in terms of our long -term planning, certainly there could be some improvements, but I think, you know, each department needs to establish their own priorities because, you know, in addition to the new developments that may come onboard, we still need to upkeep the existing systems, so. Short answer is yes, it could improve, but I think the department right now does a real good job of it. . Ms. Yukimura: Does a real good job of what? Mr. Nishimura: Of trying to make sure that the infrastructure is in place prior to the developments even starting. Ms. Yukimura: Right. Mr. Nishimura: And to that extent, you know, I would say that aspect of the equation, you know, has been... has not been so much of a problem so much as if you wanted to push a development forward, the constraints may be severe enough to impact the timetable. Ms. Yukimura: Mm -hm. Okay. I ... you know when. I look at your, answer to what the...what you're... why you're interested in serving and what you understand to be the primary duties, it's clear to me that you have a great understanding of the water department and where it needs to go. So thank you very much. Mr. Nishimura: Thank ,you. Council Chair Furfaro: Well, Randy, I want to say thank you for again stepping forward and serving. I think Councilwoman Yukimura recognizes for all of us the great wealth of information you have about the function of two very important departments here and your service is very much appreciated. I don't think there's any more questions and on that, we will end 14 minutes past our closing time as previously scheduled. Mr. Nishimura: Thank you. Ms. Yukimura: - Thank you, Randy. SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING -88- JANUARY 11, 2011 ADJOURNMENT. There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 1:14 p.m. Respectfully submitted, PETER A. NAKAMURA County Clerk /wa