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HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-12-2011 PH re bill no 2389- PUBLIC HEARING JANUARY 12, 2011 A public hearing of the Council of the County of Kauai was called to order by Jay Furfaro, Chair, Committee of the Whole, on Wednesday, January 11, 2011, at 1:57 p.m. at the Council Chambers, 3371-A Wilcox Road, Lihu`e, Kauai, and the presence of the following was noted: 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 The Clerk read the notice of the public hearing on the following: BILL NO. 2389 — AN ORDINANCE AMENDING ORDINANCE NO. B-2010-705, AS AMENDED, RELATING TO THE OPERATING BUDGET OF THE COUNTY OF KAUAI, STATE OF HAWAII, FOR THE FISCAL YEAR JULY 1, 2010 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2011, BY REVISING THE SURPLUS AND APPROPRIATIONS ESTIMATED IN THE VARIOUS FUNDS AND MAKING THE APPROPRIATE TEXT CHANGES AS IT RELATES TO FURLOUGHS ($2,328,554.00), which was passed on first reading and ordered to print by the Council of the County of Kauai on December 15, 2010, and published in The Garden Island newspaper on December 22, 2010. The following communication was received for the record: Monty Downs, M.D., President, Kauai Lifeguard Association, dated 1/12/11. The hearing proceeded as follows: MONTY DOWNS: Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity to testify before you today. I keep hearing the word furloughs being rescinded, but I'm here basically to plead that not only furloughs be rescinded, but certain of our positions didn't get furloughed but got pay cuts. I need to introduce the word pay cut and have that be on the table. Oh yes, I'm sorry. Monty Downs, emergency room doctor and president of Kauai lifeguard association. Anyway, to get the pay cut into the conversation and on the table. Three weeks ago I had the opportunity to present some data to you showing that drowning is overwhelmingly the number one cause of trauma deaths in our visitors, and this is despite the fact that great efforts are made here on Kauai and on all the islands to add lifeguards to our beaches. And despite these great efforts 1 that's still our number one problem. Our oceans are rough with obvious and also unseen dangers, so I think the council and the mayor acted very appropriately to not have the lifeguards take furloughs, and I applaud you for that decision. Also, in the budget for 2010-2011, there was no mention of lifeguard pay cuts, so everything looked like it was going along very well for my interest area, which is maintaining safety on our beaches. Than about a week before July 1 of 2010, the lifeguards were suddenly called in to a meeting at the HGEA offices and they were told that the Oahu lifeguards were taking a five percent pay cut, and therefore they had to vote between either taking a five percent pay cut or the furloughs, and the water safety officers voted for the five percent pay cut for a couple of reasons. I think one is that the furloughs represent more like a 10 percent pay cut, and second, I think there was some real sentiment among many of them to not allow any reduction in personnel to take place, as what happened with the furloughs in some beaches that have to suffer some closures. So like I say, they kind of ..the water safety officers kind of dug their own hole a little bit and voted for the five percent pay cut; however, July 1 rolled around, and to and behold, Oahu lifeguards did not get a five percent pay cut or any pay cut. So to me, the lifeguards suffered a gross injustice— they were given false information, made a vote with misinformation, and I think a great wrong was committed to them. So I'm asking you here today not only to rescind their pay cuts, as well as apparently the furloughs for other county positions are likely to be rescinded, but also to retroactively to July 1, 2010, to retroactively restore their pay cuts that were put into effect at that time. Thank you. Council Chair Furfaro: Dr. Downs, it's not typical for us to give feedback, but I do want to let you know that the item that we're dealing with here is the furloughs. The fact of the matter, if we are going to look at the lay-offs, then that would be a separate money bill and would need to be introduced by councilmembers. The fact of the matter is, as you stated, the lifeguards, within their own bargaining unit, had voted in Honolulu on the choice. That choice was never portrayed by this council, but it was a consistency...or inconsistency amongst the council of mayors in having some discussion there. Now, I also want to make sure that we recognize that ending furloughs is not just dealing with one union. The same is about the pay cuts, it's not about dealing with one union. We have people who are jail attendants that took the five percent, we have people that are in other public safety offices that took the five percent, and this furlough bill is not referencing anything retroactive either. So it would have to be addressed separately and would have to be engaging with the administration. So I appreciate your testimony, but it's going to be an avenue that other councilmembers may have to introduce in a way of a new bill. Dr. Downs: Okay, thank you for your explanation. Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much for your testimony, and thank you for all you do in our community. JAKE DELAPLANE: Thank you members of the council. For the record, my name is Jake Delaplane, I am the first deputy prosecuting attorney over at the prosecutor's office. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank each of you for hearing my testimony today, and to thank the members of the council for their careful and dedicated review to the furlough process and examining how that's affected our community, and specifically how that's affected public safety, and that's what I'm here to talk about today. On December 15, Shaylene came in and gave some 2 testimony, both written and oral testimony, about how the furloughs affected public safety. I'm here to expound upon that today a little bit and give some specific examples of how the furloughs affected not just our office, but the safety of the community as a whole. One of the major issues that Shaylene talked about back on the fifteenth was that unlike most other departments in the county, the Kauai police department and the office of the prosecuting attorney are both bound to operate within some very specific and at times harsh time constraints that are put upon us by State and Federal law. For example, when a person is arrested for a serious crime and taken into custody, the judge has 48 hours in which to review the facts of the case to confirm that there's probably cause to hold that person in custody. After that, if they remain in custody, after that point the judge will then schedule an initial appearance for that person within the next 48 hours, and the prosecutor's office is required to prepare formal charges and other paperwork to file with the court to ensure that that initial appearance does take place. There's an additional 48-hour period after that. If the arraignment or the initial appearance actually occurs, then the judge will then set a preliminary hearing for the next 48 hours in order to determine whether there's probably cause to go forward with the charges. So we're dealing with a series of very tight time constraints, and our office is obligated to generate a very large amount of paperwork, locate witnesses, subpoena witnesses, just do a whole host of things to make sure that the process happens correctly, and that the offender is kept in custody, and that the community is kept safe by this offender being kept in custody. What we saw with the furloughs, and we saw this all too often, is that time after time, especially when someone's picked up near the end of the week, our office was just unable to generate the necessary paperwork and do the legwork on the case in order to hold that person in custody. So after reviewing our records for the furlough period, we were averaging about a release of two felons per month as a direct result of the furloughs. We could tie that back to being short-staffed because of the furloughs. And we're talking about felons here, people charged with sex offenses, serious property crimes, serious drug crimes, and a release of these offenders back into the community only hours after their arrest, I mean I think the members of the council could see how that certainly would pose a risk to public safety. In addition to the scenario I just mentioned, there were other...many other ways, actually, that furloughs affected public safety and our office's normal operations. Another one of the ways I wanted to highlight today was the fact that the Kauai Police Department also had furloughs imposed on them, not for their sworn officers, but for their support staff as well. The evidence custodians at the Kauai Police Department are not sworn officers; they were subject to furloughs just like any other county employee. So what we saw... Council Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, that's three minutes of your time, but I'm going to extend you three more minutes now, so you can continue with the continuity of your presentation. Mr. Delaplane: Thank you Mr. Chair, I appreciate that. Thank you. What we saw is that the prosecutor's office, we would be involved in a trial or some sort of court proceeding, and unexpectedly we may need some physical evidence produced in the case. All physical evidence is housed at the Kauai Police Department in the Kauai Police Department evidence room, and the only people who have access to that room and access to that evidence are the evidence 3 custodians. So we would be in the middle of a trial or a court proceeding needing this evidence; we wouldn't be able to get to it because these people would be on furlough. And as a result of that, we saw cases be dismissed or continued unnecessarily, and that posed a significant delay and an unnecessary delay, and really was a big roadblock in our mission to pursue justice for our community. So that was a very serious problem as well. And I just wanted to come in and highlight these two specific scenarios for the council and for the public in order to show just exactly how dangerous and harmful the furloughs were and could be in the future if they're ever imposed again. Although I understand that furloughs were never meant to affect public safety offices, the fact remains that these offices were affected and they were drastically affected. Public safety should never take a backseat to economic concerns, and should economic hardship return to the county, I would hope that the members of the council and also the members of the public would remember what it's done to us just over the short period of time. And with that, I thank you for the extension of time, and that concludes my testimony. Council Chair Furfaro: Jake, I do want to clarify one thing for you. The questions that you raised were the exact questions raised by this council. It was this council that put the proviso in the budget mandating the administration review the furloughs by December 15. We have now successfully had that review as we put in a proviso, and the exact issues that you mentioned to us were a major concern. The furloughs have ended by a mandate from the mayor. And so that everybody understands, it doesn't change us needing to go through the process, because we ultimately control the purse strings. So we need to go through this first hearing, this public hearing, and then get to a point where we can formally end those. The council and the mayor are in agreement that this process goes through. But ultimately, each of us at the table here have that vote—whether the action that's already been taken to end furloughs occurs. And so it's put it us in somewhat of a delicate position, and I just want to make sure you knew, and I think members of this body in the budget review and providing that proviso put it in for the exact reasons you've given testimony on. Mr. Delaplane: And we appreciate that, and thank you very much. Council Chair Furfaro: Your testimony is muchly appreciated... Muchly? There's no 1-y in that word, so I guess much appreciated. There being no further testimony on this matter, the public hearing adjourned at 2:12 p.m. Respectfully submitted, C� PETER A. NAKAMURA County Clerk 4