The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My WebLink About05-11-2009-Doc15877i 0 BUDGET & FINANCE COMMITTEE DELIBERATION AND PRELEWNARY DECISION -MAKING FY 2009 -2010 ANNUAL BUDGET MAY 11, 2009 A Deliberation and Decision Making Meeting on the FY 2009 -2010 Annual Budget of the County of Kauai was called to order by Daryl W. Kaneshiro, Chair, Budget & Finance Committee, on Monday, May 11, 2009, at 9:06 a.m. at the Council Chambers, Historic County Building, 4396 Rice Street, Lihu`e, Kauai, Hawaii and the presence of the following was noted: Honorable Bill "Kaipo" Asing, Council Chair Honorable Tim Bynum Honorable Dickie Chang Honorable Jay Furfaro Honorable Daryl W. Kaneshiro Honorable Lani T. Kawahara Honorable Derek S. K. Kawakami The meeting proceeded as follows: Mr. Kaneshiro: Before I start, do we have anyone in the Chambers that would like to give public testimony, this is your opportunity to do so now. I will suspend the rules at this time. So with that... JOANN A. YUKIMURA: Good morning Councilmembers, Chair, Budget & Finance Chair, Chair Asing, members. JoAnn Yukimura for the record. Thank you for this opportunity. Over this weekend as I prepared for the public hearing which is tomorrow on the solid waste plan, I kept thinking about how we could align the budget to our goal of promoting recycling, and as I mentioned in the public hearing on the budget, how we could actually shift to a new system. And I know that you have such a hard job with the funding being so limited this year, and so I knew that you had to find something in the budget that you're going to eliminate in order to fund the things that I've been advocating, if it is your thought that that would be a good way to go, and I... So I have some suggestions that I hope you will consider with respect to the solid waste, and I want to pass this out if I might. (See Attachment 1 hereto.) As I was going through the solid waste plan, I started listing all the things that the recycling coordinator or the business recycling specialist would have to do,. and I took it from pages in the plan, and I only started late in identifying the pages, so you'll see on the backside on the second page, I started identifying the page of the task. And I'm going to go back, I just haven't finished yet and I had to pull this off my computer early this morning, but you'll see the tasks that have to be done if we're going to shift from a throw away system to a recycling system, and you can see that the tasks are immense, and I haven't even finished. This is only halfway through the plan in terms of identifying the tasks. And so it's really clear to me that if we're going to move on a reduce reuse recycle'system, we have to have the recycling coordinator position in this budget. And I urge a sense of urgency about this, because I see this as part of a strategy on the landfill —that is if we can start reducing and divert more and more from the landfill, we really can extend the life of the landfill. And so there needs to be a sense of urgency about this. So what I'm recommending is of the 385,000 that is presently earmarked in the mayor's budget for waste reduction that you sent aside a hundred thousand for the MRF, and these would be CIP moneys, so for planning and design, land acquisition, whatever. I know it might not be enough, but at least you have some money to ... so that the recycling coordinator will be able to work on this issue. And then I suggest that you delay the curbside recycling pilot project and follow the sequence of the plan. The plan itself says that curbside recycling should start in year 4, I think, or year 5, rather in year one. So delay it and use the 150,000 this year to fund the recycling coordinator at 75,000. I think it's about $50,000 salary and about 25,000 benefits. And then also spend money on the hazardous waste collection, and I'm not ... I don't have the amount for that, but I'm sure that it would fit within the 150,000 that you'll be saving from the curbside recycling delay, and home composting and a curbside recycling implementation plan that would work out all the details for how to roll out this curbside recycling and make sure that all the elements for successful curbside recycling are in place .before you start it. And what you'll be doing is you'll be setting up the system for long term curbside recycling, rather than spending the 150,000 for a pilot project, at the end of which you're not going to have a system in place for curbside recycling. So it will use the money more effectively to set up a system, and it'll move us strategically toward extending the life of the landfill, putting in a real solid system of curbside recycling, and also business recycling because the MRF is going to be of great use to business recyclers or contractors who want to bring their recycling... okay I'm almost done, the recycling... unsorted recycling to a place where it will be sorted and then turn into a saleable commodity. And if we have another MRF, we can also convert the present recycling center into a CHRM for hard to recycle materials like electronics and hazardous waste, and our citizens will have a place year around to take their things, which will really promote recycling. So your budget decisions are so strategic this year, and I urge you to give careful thought to how we can really move into a recycling system for our island. Thank you very much. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you very much. Any questions for JoAnn? Tim. Mr. Bynum: Good morning JoAnn. Ms. Yukimura: Good morning Tim ... Councilmember. Mr. Bynum: I just want to get the first part. I heard your recommendation regarding curbside recycling. The first part you said take a hundred thousand from where? Ms. Yukimura: From the 385,000. Mr. Bynum: Okay. That's why I want it clarified. Ms. Yukimura: And that'll be CIP design/planning money. And I'm seeing this come together —the recycling coordinator and some moneys to focus on a MRF, and that's the way to get it done. You don't need high powered consultants. Mr. Bynum: So you're aware that there's 1.6 in the bond float for MRF. Ms. Yukimura: I know, but it's going to take a while to float the bond, and I think we have no time to waste. And we will need the money for actual construction and equipping of a MRF. Mr. Bynum: Okay, so the 385 right now is ... that you're suggesting that that be used for planning for a MRF. Ms. Yukimura: I'm saying hundred thousand. I'm being modest. But if you want to do more, that's fine. Mr. Bynum: But that ... those funds could be used for that now, the way it's currently aligned or allocated, right, for waste reduction? i 0 Ms. Yukimura: Well, because it's been used in ways that I don't believe are really waste reduction, I would encourage the council to specify that it be for a MRF. Mr. Bynum: That's something that I was ... you know, we put in provisions on budget items before the, you know ... before they're spent they come before council and explain it. So that was an option I was thinking about. Ms. Yukimura: Well, that's fine. At this point, in my mind there's no question we need a MRF, and rather than, you know, require more time to come on the agenda and talk, I would put some money in for a MRF. Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? If not, thank you very much for your testimony JoAnn. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Anyone else here? If not I'll just... You have a question Lani? If not, I'll call the meeting back to order and get into the highlights of the mayor's modification. I have some notes here, and perhaps if I can just highlight those, then we can move along from there. One of the first things I wanted to bring up was that if you look at the vacant positions, what we did is we short funded those vacant positions, and I think most of you would agree that that's probably a good way to do it. As you know, no matter what positions are available, you know, as you go through the process, recruiting, police, fire, and so forth, it'll take longer than a month, much more than a month to fill some of these positions. So if you look at it overall, you know, some positions may not be filled possibly until October or November. But overall, you know, if there are some real critical positions that got to be filled, I think the administration will make that attempt to fill those critical positions. But at the same time, on the average, you know, we should come out okay with the 11 months of full funding for those positions. So maybe if anyone has any questions on that, we can discuss that right now, because that was one of the first part of the highlights of this budget that I saw. Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I think there's a lot of wisdom in that move, and I just had a question that because you're right, the vast majority of these positions unlikely would be filled prior to August 1 when they would be fully funded. And so I think that's a good move. But if there were positions on that list that they were recruiting for now and they could get them filled in June or July, the departments, as I understand it, would still have that latitude. This wouldn't wire them into no sooner that August 1, is that... Mr. Kaneshiro: My assumption, we can ask Wally that, but he's here. My assumption is that if there are some real critical positions that really need to be filled, and I think, you know, with how they figure this out, you'll have enough play in regards to, you know, you fill this position for a month, there's some other positions won't be filled for 2 months, so you know. And then we can ask Wally that if you want to. Are there any other questions like that that we have in mind? If not, I can go ahead and suspend the rules and bring Wally up at this time. Rules are suspended. Wally? Mr. Rezentes: Good morning. Wally Rezentes Jr., Director of Finance. I'm sorry, I was talking to Alvin Honda when you folks were... Mr. Kaneshiro: That's fine. Mr. Bynum has a question for you. • • Mr. Bynum: Wally, just start with saying thank you for the supplemental budget. You guys obviously worked really hard on it and made ... you know, listened to the community and other members in many ways, and I'm very appreciative of the work and most of the changes. Mr. Rezentes: Thank you. Mr. Bynum: Regarding the short funding of unfilled positions, I also understand that and think that's a good move. My question is specific to, because the vast majority of those are unlikely to be filled prior to August 1 anyway, when they're short funded a month. Is that correct? That's the rationale, right? Mr. Rezentes: It depends on when the department starts, you know. That may be the case for some, may not be for others, but it all depends on where everybody would be at in the process of hiring, you know, in July. Mr. Bynum: So my question is, if there are positions on that list that, you know, they can get the recruiting done prior to August 1, say in June or July, they still would have the latitude to hire those folks... Mr. Rezentes: Sure. Mr. Bynum: And by using savings from other elements of their budget. Mr. Rezentes: Sure. For instance, if a department like mine that I think I have (what ?) about 4 or 5 dollar funded positions. If I pick up one of those positions in July and ... July 1, you know for another position I may have to pick them up September 1 to get the funding. But it should all come out in the wash. It's not necessarily... not necessary that you could not hire July 1 for something that you needed. Mr. Bynum: Right, and so I wanted that clarification, and these positions are not the dollar funded ones. They're other vacant positions. Mr. Rezentes: Partially funded. Yeah, the 11 -month funded positions. Mr. Bynum: And that's a good move. Thank you, and you've answered my question..- Thank,you very much, Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any other questions for Wally since I have him up here regarding these positions, the short funded positions? Go ahead, Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Wally, good morning. You know how many division heads actually have recruitment in motion right now? Mr. Rezentes: I am not aware. I believe there are some in various stages, but I can't answer that on a specific case. Mr. Furfaro: Specifically, would you know if between the chief of police and the county attorney that one position that was to contribute to loss prevention for the police department, as we went through the process there was a argument on ... both very constructive arguments on where that position would be best placed, whether it's in Al's office or in the police chiefs office. Do you know if there's been any recruitment effort on that part? • Mr. Rezentes: I don't think so for the county attorney. But you know, Councilmember Furfaro, for the county attorney's office, it's exempt because it's a appointed position, so they don't have to jump through all of the hoops as a civil service. So the process would likely be... could likely be quicker. Mr. Furfaro: I do want to point out, but that was the argument that the police chief was made where the county attorney is an appointed position, where he was looking for the continuity in the police department where that legal analyst would probably go through the civil service process and give the office continuity. Where on the flipside if it was in the county attorney's office, it would be just as you said, an appointed position which could be expedited a lot quicker. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Wally. Any other questions for Wally? Mr. Chair. Council Chair Asing: I have. I guess a follow -up on that question, Wally, could... You know, we're talking about an appointed position in the county attorney's office. Could that be also an appointed position in the police department? Mr. Rezentes: I don't know. I believe it poss... I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Actually, I think there was... There has been, for instance, the golf course in the past was appointed, yeah, so I would imagine the same thing would apply. So I think that's possible. Yeah. Council Chair Asing: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Wally. Okay, thank you very much Wally, with that. Call the meeting back to order. As I go down my list (see Attachment 2 hereto), members, I'll just go ahead and go over my list and just highlight everything that has been put in and what has been done with this current supplemental budget, and then we can open it up for discussion for anything else after that. Because this way, we don't have to be discussing the same issue if it's already in this budget. The second issue is the additional funding for the KPAA. Originally they put in 14,500 more, so the KPAA is funded at 35,000. So any questions on that? Are we clear on that for that funding? Ms. Kawahara: That's back to its original? Mr. Kaneshiro: What's that? Ms. Kawahara: That's back to its original? Mr. Kaneshiro: The 35,000. Ms. Kawahara: As last year. Okay thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: The next position is, you know, feeling what we had to go through these past couple months with the TAT and with us trying to be there all the time and following up on things is a State lobbyist funding position for 50,000. I think next year it'll be prudent for us to have someone like that, I mean I feel, and I think what most the council would feel also, because as we heard from the legislature, they're working on a 2 -year budget. And you know, we still are getting the messages that there are going to be more cuts. There are going to be cuts coming for next legislative fiscal budget. We don't know... The council of revenues won't have their report out `till May 27, so at that time may be much more gloomier for the State and you know, who knows what else they're going to try and tap from the counties. So I'll open it up for any discussion • 0 at this point on the State lobbyist funding. It's a new position (hasn't been in the budget) for 50,000. Mr. Bynum, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: I was happy to see that funding in the budget, and I concur that, you know, to have someone representing the county's interest on not just fiscal matters, but other matters of interest that at the State could be extremely beneficial for the county of Kauai. And you know, councilmember Kouchi, when he was here, on the federal lobbyist asked for more collaboration with the council and the administration. So the only caveat I'd have is that, you know, I hope before decisions are made about exactly how that funding is spent that that is in dialogue with the county council, and because we work together... I don't know if that needs to be a provision, but I was happy to see that. But just make sure we get the right person and the right kind of representation; hopefully that's a dialogue between the council and the administration. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for that, and I believe that is the concept. I believe with the administration we'll be working closely again, like how we did working on the federal level, and I think, you know, all of you would agree that when we do that, we're more effective in getting our message across. Again, like Mr. Bynum said, it's not only about the money itself, but there are other bills that would affect us that passes through State legislature all the time. So the lobbyist position will be working on that also, working on bills that affect our county, or perhaps even looking at bills that can help the counties. Any other further discussion? Mr. Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, I would, you know this is something I've supported in concept in the past. I just want to echo Mr. Bynum's comments —this is someone who ... you know, I don't necessarily see us looking at a firm. I see us looking at an individual who understands the moving - parts at the county level, the potential impact of everything from water safety to transportation issues, and at the same time, obviously it is very important that we have somebody that can demonstrate working together with the administration is wired for sound across the pond. Mr. Kaneshiro: Good. Thank you. Any other further discussion on this? Lani, go ahead. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, I just ... I did want to also say that we would be able to assure that they would represent both the council and the administration and things that we would agree on. You know, what if there were separate things? Mr. Kaneshiro: And I can tell you, this has been a message that has come .,across, from the council side, to them that we need a_ lobbyist, and they all agreed, you know. And I know, as we went through the budget process, we were thinking about all these things that's been happening with the legislature and how much it affected us as we try to make decision making. So the administration does have that message that, you know, this is a position that the council are very serious about and we would like to really work with the administration, and we appreciate the administration for putting this position in, and to work with the administration as we look for how, you know, what'are the factors really affecting us in decision making through the leg. So we'll keep that... Ms. Kawahara. So the council would have input into what they're going to lobby for? Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, we both, through the council and the administration. I think we still are, as has shown through the federal side, we've been keeping that open communication. So I believe ... and more so because again, this position specifically came across from the council side, and I know Mr. Kawakami been involved. Yeah, we can even put that in the text, and Mr. Kawakami being on HSAC, you know, being there and seeing a lot of these bills and a lot of • 0 things that would affect the county or would be a plus for the county was part of the suggestions that came out that we thought would be a good idea. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. And I wanted to be sure that they're tracking bills too, like you mentioned. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll put that on the text. Okay? Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright. Anything else? Mr. Chang. Mr. Chang: I guess my only question, is 50,000 enough? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, because this is mostly when the legislature I think is in session, and you know, they run into session a certain period of time on those when all the critical bills come up. And as you seen, you know, those were the times that Derek was there a lot, we were there a lot, Lani, Tim, were all there a lot, during the regular session time and decision making time. So we feel comfortable at this point, you know. We can measure that out after. Mr. Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: I do want to add something to that if I can. I mean ... and it means we all still go over. Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: It's even going to be a rougher session, but you know, I've been over a couple times, and you know, you get... In a full day, you may be able to talk to about 3 people that really have (inaudible)... Mr. Kaneshiro: No, absolutely, and there's... Mr. Furfaro: We need to have the army present. Mr. Kaneshiro: We still got to be there, and like you said, when anything important comes up, we're there, and we got to be there. But at least, you know, we're in Council meeting or we have some functions or something that the council is at, at least we can depend on the lobbyist and say look, we won't be able to go this time, how about you going there taking the message across to the leg for us. You know, of course we're going to continue the same process through the council side. Mr. Furfaro: And I do also think that another benefit here is as we see stimulus money, there may be a second package next year, there may be a need really to point out the readiness of our projects so that we're assured of our fair share, and you know, this lobbyist... Well, like I said, I've supported it in the past. I think it's more urgent than ever now. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thank you for that. Mr. Bynum go ahead. Mr. Bynum: Just in terms of operationalizing it, last year the administration made a number of presentations at council about bills that were moving through the legislature, and the advantage of that was that, you know, the public was aware and informed and helped us lobby for those as well. And you know, this year Councilmember Kawakami kind of was our lead about coordinating that effort and did a great job, and you know, I know when the TAT was our big issue this year, although there were others, and you know, when that came before the senate finance committee and every single council was present, every mayor was present, I think that was ... it was really effective, and so a lobbyist will allow ... help us coordinate even better our efforts, because we're busy doing many other things, and kind of let us know when we need to make the trip over there. So this is all in all a good thing. And in terms of operationally, it'll help educate our community better that, you know, this individual or people from the ... can make presentations at the council during the time that are ... so the public has an awareness of how the State ... the decisions the State makes impact us. If we were to lose TAT this year, it would be a real different process this next 2 days. So this is a really good move, and the public can be involved as well on for if we go back to that, if we're getting regular updates on the agenda. Mr. Kaneshiro: I also want to note that the staff had put together what they thought would be ... we could use in the text, and would be "to work together with council to develop the joint package and lobbying effort." So we'll put that as the... Mr. Furfaro: For the proviso. Mr. Kaneshiro: In the ... with that position. Is that okay? Mr. Asing. Council Chair Asing: I don't have any problems at all with the lobbyist. I think it's a part of life. It's a part of the political system. You know, I can tell you that during my early years on the council, here's what I told myself. I told myself, oh, why do you need a lobbyist? You have all of our legislators there. They should be the people that should be lobbying, you know, for our benefit. So why do you need a lobbyist? When you look at it that way, simplistically, you saying you really don't need one, because we have people there, and we have people there with the experience of being Councilmembers prior to being in the legislature. So when you look at it in a simple matter, it's why do you need a lobbyist? You have. We have 4 down there right now, you know, that have access with knowledge, and may of them former Councilmembers. Now, that was my early on experience. Then we started to get to the real world. When we started to get to the real world is that you need much more than that. And then what we found is that we needed, because there was just so many things going on, there's just literally hundreds of bills going through, and to keep track of all of that is just horrendous. And so we did, at a time I believe ... what I'm talking about, I'm talking about, you know, professional type lobbyists. We had Okudara, I believe, who was a lobbyist. We hired him, and we talking about a professional, that's his line of work, he's a lobbyist. So we did hire Okudara as a lobbyist, and we found that that was effective. So I totally agree. For the county of Maui, as an example, they felt it was so important that they hired Dain Kane, and Dain Kane, again, you know, former councilmember, being around, have ... with the background he has, so he's : ,been the, Maui Council's lobbyist. And I totally agree with the move. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: The other thing I wanted to add to, you know, with the Chair comments was that if you look at the 4 representatives that he's talked about, that's only 4 votes. So the lobbyist... obviously the lobbyist position at least have to go out there, because there's some of them that our own leg can talk to other people, they have some problems with other people, they have personality clashes. So you know, we all know that as we're going through this fighting for our TAT that, you know, an effective lobbyist can also give good communication to others that can also help us to get some of those swing votes that at some times we may need. So it's real important. We found that out through this TAT process. Okay, with that, that's a go. I'll move on to the one of the bigger funding areas, and I think if you look at it, our county council building lease, it wasn't ... the lease wasn't in the budget at all on the original budget we had, . and they put in $240,000 for that, and the idea was that we'll probably make the move some time in August ... or October ... yes, October, and that's why the 240,000. Just an estimate if we're going to move out from here and have this building done. That's what the lease amount is for. So it was • • never in the budget at all. So with that, any discussion? I can open it up for discussion now. Lani, go ahead. Ms. Kawahara: You talking about the renovation, right? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, absolutely. Ms. Kawahara: Well, the last time that we talked about it, were we going to decide whether or not we were going to move out at all, or whether we're going to move to one section while they did one section, because I know there was ... it wasn't going to be much of a difference in savings, the guy said. Mr. Kaneshiro: You brought up a good point. We had some discussions, but because there's some hazardous materials that need to be taken cared of in this building, we felt that for safety -wise is get everybody out of this building, instead of working on the top first or the bottom first, and taking out some of the hazardous materials that might be in this building, because this is an old building. And I remember we having some discussion with that, and I think ... I'm not sure if we did come to a full conclusion, but our thoughts were would be better for ... to completely vacate this building, have them strip down everything, and then at that time work on this building all at once at the same time. It's up for discussion. Council Chair Asing: Well, I don't have any question. I think what it is, the bottom line is it's a cost saving mechanism. When I say cost saving, I'm saying that according to the estimates, if we do it in phases, it's going to be very expensive. As an example, if we were to say, okay the contractor comes in, yeah, and we work on the top portion, which means that we all go downstairs, everybody just goes downstairs and the contractor will be upstairs working. So with us so called being in the way of the contractor, we talking about noise, we talking about dust, and then when we finish that, we reverse it and now we come upstairs and the contractor goes downstairs. And the cost estimates by the public works department was that it's going to be expensive if we do it that way. So it would be in our interest, and we could save some money if we did it the other way by doing it one time. We move out entirely, and the contractor has full access to the entire building. So this was discussed, and that was the recommendation that came over from public works. Mr. Kaneshiro: And it makes sense too, because if we're going to conduct our council meetings, I mean we got to go ... where else we're going to go? We all got to move someplace, because obviously we can't ... or we're going to have to have them stop construction for the day, you know, things like that. So if you look at it, and it may be a longer process to finally get this building done as to where they can cost much more for the contractor because of that, and just coming in here and stripping this whole place down, and getting the job done. But it's open for discussion. Any other discussions on that? Ms. Kawahara: The 242 ... so is it for alternate space, right, and we haven't... Mr. Kaneshiro: I think we have a space in mind that we've had some discussion on previously. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, so what I want to ask is, we would take into account making it a very efficient space and not ridiculously big and we're paying too much for space. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, I think this cost also includes for us, you know, including the electric and all those other areas, right, and some improvements to make us all feel comfortable in where we're going to go. So it's not just the lease cost itself, what we're saying. This • 0 includes some of that, you know, when we move. So we kind of average it out for by per month yeah, even though with the cost for... Ms. Kawahara: This is an upfront one time only probably yeah. Mr. Kaneshiro: Like for, you know, for some of the space. Okay. Mr. Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Yes. I understand what both you and the chair have shared with us. I would like to point out that I think it's very important before we start to have a very clear understanding from the building department the critical path, the construction mechanism, target date for completion, because you know, we just have not been very good at that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, and I agree. I wholeheartedly agree with you. Mr. Furfaro: I would hope that we could... I guess that's (inaudible) Mr. Bynum's committee, I would hope that we could have some soon to be critical path schedule presented to us. Mr. Kaneshiro: You know what to put on your committee. Mr. Bynum: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: But he totally agree with you. Anything else? Okay, thank you. With that, I wanted to move on to the fifth item where we talked about the deputy county attorney for Kauai police department for the funding of 86,583. So I'll open that up for discussion now. It's in the budget under the county attorney's office. Any discussion on that? Mr. Furfaro: (inaudible) Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Alright, the other one is another... It's a deputy county attorney for the water department, but it will be funded through the water department. It's not through general fund. So anyone has questions on that position? Mr. Furfaro go ahead. _ Mr. Furfaro: x, _ So we're saying_ that similar to the kind of ad hoc position we have here with police, public safety, loss prevention, we're saying this is an attorney that for continuity is under Al, but the reality is the operating budget is in the water department. Is that correct? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes. Absolutely. The money comes from the water department. Mr. Furfaro: I take that with Ricky nodding his head across the table. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Yeah, my understanding of the ... from the county attorney about consolidating these positions in his office is an attempt to coordinate overall the work of attorneys and provide as most latitude of what they can do, including going to court, and perhaps saving us consultant funds. Where if they're in the departments, they may be limited because • • they're not under the county attorney's supervision in terms of all the duties they may perform, including representing us in court. So there's a... As I understand, the rationale is a potential savings in consultant fees and hiring outside attorneys to represent us, with that coordination. Mr. Furfaro: I would like to expand on Councilman Bynum's comments. We have seen is under the new county attorney. You know, we have attorneys with trial experience now actually showing up in court, saving us... So the savings ends up being in contract services. So thank you. Council Chair Asing: Yeah, you know, I have some reservations about that, but I will go along with it, and my reservations are really centered between the service that the department gets. When I talk about the service that the department gets, will ... and because it's an administrative, you know, function, I will leave it to the administration on how best to do it. But as an example, for both positions (water and the police department), where will the person be housed. Will the person be housed at the water department, at the police department. You know, I know that Amy was the attorney at one particular time for the water department, so she was the attorney, and she was housed there. And my understanding was that it was very convenient and conducive to operations with her being there, and so they had, you know, some control. So I think,. you know, while I have some reservations, I will go with it, but I hope that they work something out that will be beneficial to both sides. I did have an opportunity to talk to the county attorney, and he feels like what you folks have described here as to the big picture, and the big picture meaning that, you know, it's what is in the best interest of the county from the attorney's view that's important, on the decisions that are made. So I ... while I have some reservations, I'm hoping that the administration makes a good, wise decision on how they actually administer the position. So thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Just to follow. I really appreciate the Chair's comments, because it got right to the gist of it. You know, the ... and I share your reservations, because you know, the chief made a pretty compelling argument here as well. And so the onus falls on the administration and those departments to make sure that they collaborate and try to address those issues. So I was interested in what the colleagues thought here, because initially, we funded a police position in the police department, and so I kind of agree with the chair about the reservations and what ultimate decision, because I thought there might be a move to ... you know, a discussion here. So it's important that we share our feelings, because I could be persuaded either way at this point. Water and police. So thank you for those comments, Chairman. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, Mr. Asing. Council Chair Asing: Let me just make one more point. I will tell you this is how far I would have gone if I was the mayor. When I was mayor there for the 4 month period, here's what I found. I found that I had at my fingertips, I had an attorney in that office, and with the attorney in that office, it's like for me, it was ideal, it was perfect, in that anytime I had anything that I wanted, legal information, if I wanted some guideline, if I wanted immediate help, it was right there. So I could just go to the attorney in the office, yeah, and just ask or work out things with that attorney. So you know, it was so convenient, and my recommendation would have been that the mayor's office even have an attorney there. It is just ideal. But that being said, I think that the administration feels that with the county attorney working closely together, there's no need. So just my personal feel on what I found while working there. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any other comments or questions about this position? There's another position that's a new deputy county attorney position, and this one is for the liquor department and to be funded by the liquor department. So also very similar to the water • department funding. The money will come out of liquor department side. With that, I'll open it up for questions or any discussions that you have on that position. Lani? Ms. Kawahara: The liquor department is the one department that funds itself with the (inaudible) fines and everything, yeah? Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, with that, I'll move on to the next item, and it's additional funding for the Kauai Humane Society, which would bring them up to I guess the current budget amount that they have this year that they're running on. So we did bring them back and give them a funding of 64,000, or administration got the funding back to 64,617. So I'll open that up for discussion if anyone had any discussion on that. Mr. Furfaro: Appreciated. Ms. Kawahara: Yes, I'm glad to hear that. Mr. Furfaro: Very appreciated. Mr. Kaneshiro: The other one is the Kauai Food Bank, 20,000. As you see in the current budget, there wasn't any funding for Kauai Food Bank. So with that, I'll open up that again for any discussions or questions. Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Just to repeat what I told Wally. I appreciate that they listened to all of these issues from the community and Councilmembers, and the food bank, last year we funded 58. They did a very innovative and great program that brings a lot of federal food stamp dollars to Kauai that wouldn't be coming. They went out and did their due diligence and got most of the funding for that position, but needed 20 to continue. So this is a really good move, and I thank the food bank for doing ... not just distributing food, but bringing more food resources to our community through this innovating program. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Chair? _ Council Chair Asing I have a concern._._ I agree with the money going to food bank, but I'd like to see us put in the text that it's a onetime funding. And the reason for that is, you know, we're going to have to be real careful on how much money we have next year. We did initially... the initial move the other year was a one time funding, and ... but I understand that, and so I hope we can put in the text that it's a one time funding, and if we have available money next year, we can do so. But I'm just so concerned about what's going to happen next year. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, would you have a problem if the proviso said that this is the second of a 2- year? That way we can point out we reminded them last year... So this is the second of a 2 -year. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright, thank you for that suggestion. Moving on to elderly affairs, the enhanced fitness program 114,211. Most of you know what happened to that funding. I think it was a funding that came through HMSA, I believe. There was some grant program. Is that correct? Mr. Wally, I'll suspend the rules for this, and maybe you can have some clarification. I believe the funding is not there at this point. 0 • Mr. Rezentes: Yes. There was a federal funds that started the program off, and then that funding source went away. Elderly affairs did apply through the HMSA for a grant; they were unsuccessful. So then they.:.elderly affairs approached us to see if we would consider funding that program, and I believe the... I believe they're operating out of 6 sites now, and there's one location at least with a waiting list that they're trying to address, you know, with the total funds that we have requested. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum, you had a question? Mr. Bynum: Just, again, thank you Wally. Because you know, like the food bank, the elderly affairs made very effort to find funding available through grants and not use county funds, and that's ... our departments generally do that, and so given the... you know, thank you for recognizing that it really is an important service to our seniors. None of us want to deal with them if they were told oh no moa, no moa. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Wally. With that, I'll call the meeting back to order and just have some discussions. Any discussions, further discussion or questions regarding that funding? If not, we'll move on to... One more funding that I have was the hazardous... household hazardous waste funding of 65,000. Basically that was inadvertently left out from the current budget that came to us before we got the modif...the MOD. So just wanted to point that out. Okay, with that, I just wanted to touch on 2 things on the CIP budget real fast. One was the host community benefit. As you know, we had a host- community benefit appropriation that was ... last year they appropriated 650,000 from the budget for the first time, I guess, right? (Inaudible), they felt that Kekaha been impacted from having the landfill close to that community, so they funded 650,000, and now the proposal is to add another 80,000. Basically, this was based on a host community study that was done by EarthTech, and you know, of the 48% of communities nationwide that receive some of these benefit, 65% calculated by annual allotment based on tonnage. So just to let you know. This is how they came with the figure. It's not something they just pulled out, and basically they utilize the dollar per ton multiplied by 220 tons per day to give that, at this point, to come with that. It's just a rationale based on an EarthTech study that was done last year. Any questions on that? Mr. Kawakami: Yeah, I just want to make one comment. Thank you Mr. Chair. I want to thank the mayor's office and administration for putting that in, and I think in the future, once that community group in Kekaha gets organized and they identify what they're going to do with the money, I'd hope to see some sort of mechanism like adding a dollar into the tipping fees included, so that it'll ensure that they'll be receiving these funds in perpetuity. So thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. My comments are similar to Mr. Kawakami's, and I did attend one of the meetings, and I clearly think it would be appreciated if the administration could look at the amount being added to the actual tipping fee, and the reason I point that out is if we're successful with diversion, the reality is, rather than dumping 80 to 90,000 tons a year, we will be reducing that, which then may put us in a position that you're still ... Kekaha is still the host of the site, but yet the contribution is being reduced, because we hope to be successful with diversion. Mr. Kaneshiro: Less rubbish. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, right. But it does echo what Mr. Kawakami said regarding attaching an amount to the actual tipping fee. Thank you. 0 w Mr. Kaneshiro: And I think we've had some, you know, discussions on that, just friendly discussions. And as we all know, you know, the general fund currently subsidizes most of the landfill anyway. But the tipping fee will be a good guide, like you said, a good guide to use when it goes up or it comes down, so forth. So we've had some pretty reasonable discussions. Mr. Furfaro: That's the concept —it would be a good guide. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, absolutty, because as you know, you know, we still being subsidized by the general fund. So no matter how much tipping fees we put on it, it ain't going to cover or make up for that anyway. So but as a guideline. Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I just... I agree with the comments of my colleagues here, and I'd like to see this fee institutionalized if we choose to do it. But because we kind of went at this backwards, we didn't have a discussion about implementing host community benefits, we just kind of plugged this money in last year without any real planning, without a decision about how the use of those funds would be operationalized, and again this year the funding is based on a rationale, but it's not institutionalized in, as you pointed out and the administration pointed out, about half the communities in the country provide these kind of host community benefits, that means half don't, and the ones that do, most of them they do it based on a formula and they do planning. And so I have some real concerns about how the decision's made about the distribution of what now is over $700,000 will occur in Kekaha. It would have been nice to work that plan out first before we started dumping funds in to this, and I think it'll be an issue here for council in the future because there's some struggle about how to equitably make those decision, and I think that because we did it, kind of funded in advance, not to diminish our desire I think from everybody, to recognize the impact on the Kekaha community of hosting the landfill. But I just wanted to make those comments, because I think the issue will have to come back here for more discussion, and I'd encourage administration to ... rather than plug it in as a dollar figure in the future, as our colleagues have said, institutionalize it in a way where there's plans and rules, and bring that before the council for us to endorse a plan rather than a budget line item. Mr. Kaneshiro: And I agree. The other factor, Tim, I wanted to point out, is that if you do some research, you'll find that a lot of the host community benefits that are awarded to the communities as such are usually privately run companies. In other words, they'll big on the landfill and find that they have some perhaps by their profit and margin they can be able to do that. So I wanted to point that out too as a note, because if you go through the website, you'll find that many of these county run municipal places like that don't really have this fund, you know. So we're ;- being-generous to do that,-but I still got to agree that we need a ... we got to have a system how we're going to do it. And currently, my understanding is that this money will stay in a fund, and whatever we're looking at, they're looking at ways that even if it gains interest that part of the interest portion also goes to, you know, to this community once they decide and has a process as to how they're going to use the money. So I just wanted to point that out. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright, any other questions? Mr. Asing? Council Chair Asing: I totally agree with everybody's comments. You know, there actually was 2 studies done. One was by EarthTech and the other one was by Pacific Consulting Group that did studies. And you know, I totally agree, but I think the biggest concern, and I think Tim, you mentioned that, what is going to be the going forward program. I think that's the most important thing, and my understanding is, at any rate, they have a meeting tonight in Kekaha and they'll be discussing that, and I assume that they're trying to set up some means of how they're going • • to be asking the council for money and what their program will look like. But I agree with everybody. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead Derek. Mr. Kawakami: I just want to ... because I went to the last meeting, which is I think a month or a month and a half ago, and so the process and the plan right now currently is that they've identified the members of the community, that's going to sit on this board, and so it's a pretty diverse group, and they had a facilitator, and they went through the same process that we did. They went over their—there are rules how they're going to operate, you know, they're going to adopt Robert's Rules, and I think it ended with the decision of what officers are going to be on this board, and I'm not sure if they decided who's going to serve as president, or if they're going to have a president, but if we get out in time, I plan on going down tonight. But there is a process, I mean in place, and the planning has begun. So I look forward to seeing what comes out of that group. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, I've said this before and I want to stress it again. I'd like it to be in the budget minutes. You know, I understand how the administration is earmarking this money in the budget process, but as you heard me earlier, I really think there should be amount tied to the tipping fee. But I also want to state that the amount that we're talking about at this point, there is some potential unarmored moneys for that host community when we actually get to the point that we tap the gas in the landfill itself. You know, we've seen that show up in our energy sustainability plan, but at some point, a organization with the technical skills to use gases from the landfill to convert it to electricity will certainly, in my opinion, need to also compensate the Kekaha community, because the gases sit in their landfill. And so, you know, at this point I just wanted to make that statement that should be in a calculation in energy conversion that the host community has some index fee of what that revenue might be. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for that. The other thing I wanted to point out is that the council will have to adopt an ordinance if we go through that process, any fee increases or so forth. So we'll have plenty of discussions come up in that regards also. So basically an ordinance has to come through us if we're going to adopt any kind of fees at all. So I just wanted to point that as a note. Go ahead Mr. Asing. Council Chair Asing: You know, I think Councilmember Kawakami, you were there are the meeting, so you kind of understand a little more what really happened. You know, the concern I have that when you make reference to host community, who is the host community. As an example, in the Kekaha case, it is right in Kekaha proper you might say. Some people would say, well I don't know if it's Kekaha proper, you know. Could it be Waimea, so should Waimea be part of the host community? As an example, if you were going to do it in the back of Kalepa, and if you went through Maalo road, as an example, would the host community be Hanama`ulu? You know, it's ... so I think we need to be careful, because if we're to just take, as an example, and identify the closest community to the actual landfill, you know, there might be very ... a small amount of affect on the community if it's inland someplace. So who's the host community, and in some cases it's possible that may be a very limited amount. So I have that concern. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's a real good point too, because if you look at the study, many of the host communities, if you look at it, are really in real close. I mean they're like not miles away. Their community is right next. The district is right next. So just, you know, something. It'll be a fun discussion when we go through the process. I think it's going to be a long one ... long and fun discussion as we go through decision making when we going to get there, but you know... • • Council Chair Asing: Well, I think we're reminded that according to the mayor's state of the county address, I believe that the landfill site is scheduled to be released to the public in August, and that is right around the corner. Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Okay, with that, the last note that I had under the CIP budget was the planning and zoning engineering system, the 189,000, and basically, you know, if we all look at it, and I think Mr. Furfaro would probably agree, I won't speak for him, but if you look at the highlights of this electronically item, this IT item that they want to get, it will store parcel files, project files, and any other associated documents, and besides that, it could potentially store natural, cultural, historical, community, and other resources associated with the parcels. So this way you get online and you can see that. It pops up, and not only the planning can use that, but other departments. So with that, I'll open it up for comments. Any comments? Mr. Bynum: Again, technology gives us better productivity. You know, the things that this technology can do used to take humans researching paper, you know, hours and hours and hours. And so it fits with the GIS that we funded in the past and the systems that IT are working on, and it makes us more productive and more efficient, and saves lots of money in the long run. Mr. Kaneshiro: You're right, Tim, and the mayor did .send a message across that with technology, you know, we're hoping to ... other cost, I mean, to save in that area by using technology. So his message was clear about that too. Okay, with that, before I'll open it up, you know, for other discussions on the budget, I just wanted to thank Jade and Stephanie, Ricky and Peter, because I know they worked late, `till late Friday evening putting this budget comparison together so you could have it for the weekend to look at it over the weekend, and I know ... you know, it's a very short time span, but you know, you get all weekend to do something nice and read the budget and go over the plus and minuses. So again, with that, at this time... Oh, and Alvin. Alvin was here right through too Friday evening working on this plus and minuses with the council. So with that, thank you, and Wally, thanks you guys for, you know... I know was kind of hard trying to keep the line solid, so with that, we'll see. We'll have some open discussion now on the budget overall with our committee members. Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, I just wanted to say a couple things regarding revenue. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, absolutely. It's open up. Mr., Furfaro: I would like... I do recall I think the State revenue of council, Wally, if you can just acknowledge (a shake of the head's fine), they're meeting the next I think on May 27? Mr. Kaneshiro: I believe that's when they have their council on revenues stated to come out. Mr. Furfaro: And I did place a call into the Hawaii Hotel Association. I see we have adjusted downward another 650,000 on the TAT, and I'm trying to get a little better handle on that. Maybe if it's only a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand that we went a little deep on, it's worth trying to reconfirm with the Hawaii Hotel & Lodging Association. I do know that during the legislative session they were very active in presenting to the legislators their forecast on the impact of the transient accommodation tax. And so I've asked Murray Towill to get us a copy of those projections, because he does it statewide, and we do know, by legislative effort, we get 14.8% of whatever that number is, and if it is only a couple hundred thousand dollars, it's during these challenging times that a hundred thousand dollars could also make a little bit of difference on some of the social service programs that we do want to support. The next comment on the revenue side of • . 0 it is I am a proponent of the tax cap, as you all know. But I do have the latest indications of the consumer price index for Hawaii. It is at 3.8 %. Come the next round of taxing, there might be an opportunity for us, as we've talked about, is to look at the cap moving up for the second half of the year to 3.8% versus the 2% that's currently in the bill. That is approximately ... you know, that's almost 2% more ... about 11,000 households, and it still provides them the opportunity to predict their tax bill. And I only throw these out as, you know, kind of caution in the wind, because it's difficult times, and also, I think we do need to study, as we move forward on curbside recycling, we need to study the possibility of at least incrementally looking at charging for trash pickup. And Wally, I only offer those 3 things on the revenue as kind of contingencies that are worth looking at, you know, now, especially since we don't have anything firm until after the 27th, 28th. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: You're welcome. Any other discussion? One of the points I just wanted to throw this out, Mr. Furfaro, and I ... as you know, I've been a strong supporter also of the 2% when we had that, but the legislature has been saying to us, and we've got this message real clear, and this was made by Mr. Say himself that every time we save you guys one certain place or you guys get the money, you guys give tax break someplace else. So be careful. But I just wanted to point that out. I thought would be ... they've been giving that message to us. Mr. Furfaro: Well, I know that my contingency message was more of a when we lose $7 million on solid waste and we're moving into a program that's going to cost us upfront $400,000, it might be the time to consider adding every 6 months something to the tax bill for trash collection. It also might the right time to say look... Mr. Kaneshiro: On those circumstances... Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, and those are the only... Mr. Kaneshiro: That means we're sending them a message that hey, you know, we getting hard times too, we got to try do these stuff to make up. Mr. Furfaro: And I do acknowledge you were the co- author with me on the cap for predictability. So thank you on that, Mr. Kaneshiro. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. With that, I'll go ahead and open it up for... Mr. Asing. Council Chair Asing: Let me... I just have some comments. While I... I guess, Jay, I have some concerns about the tax cap. It is ideal, it is something that I think people can look forward to and have an idea as to what their tax can be, and it's good. But boy, the way we heading now, there's going to be the some day with the cap on, who's going to pay? I'm just concerned, and I think we're going to have to work that problem out. It's not going to be easy... Mr. Furfaro: And again, I only offered, if you heard my narrative, for the second half of this year, you know, in case we need to find some money. You know, and there also is a hidden part in that. When you have a third of your taxable property that has a cap, it doesn't mean you have to add a lot of staff to figure out 2 % ... or 4 %, so... But I-just meant it as a contingency plan. Council Chair Asing: Okay, and then just... I guess for me it's almost like history time. I can tell you that, you know this trash pickup, this trash pickup goes back over 10 years. Over 10 years ago it was on this table, yeah, because the study was that, you know, we need to charge for trash pickup, but it was never implemented. In fact, in probably 15 years ago it was on the table. • • Mr. Furfaro: I remember seeing the last study, and it said that home trash pickup is now costing us about $46 a household per month, and again, I was talking in terms of an incremental piece, maybe 12.50 or something. Again, just as a contingency backup. Council Chair Asing: And again, I cannot stress more what Councilmember Kaneshiro made reference to on we need to be careful what we do here and what we give on tax breaks, because the leg is very, very concerned about, you know, what we give, and I did get that message on the take away of the TAT —it's your taxing power that you have, are you fully utilizing that? So some concern. Mr. Furfaro: Well fortunately and unfortunately, all that I mentioned, none was a tax give back. It was all a tax add in a ... if necessary. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: You know, that's stimulates good discussion, because you know, I agree. If you tie in the tax cap to the consumer price index, it more accurately reflects the cost of doing business as we move forward. And I think this legislative season has given us a good taste of what we're going to see next legislative season, and the TAT is also going to be up for grabs again. And we talk about who's going to pay, we can kind of feel out what options are ... might be on the table again, and one is the retail sales tax which gives the counties limited authority to implement a sales tax, but it also gives the counties authority to exempt what they feel is appropriate. And as we talk about source of revenue, to not have an option, if they're going to take away TAT, would be disastrous for the counties, and I think if the goal is to stabilize the economy, versus close the budget, to cripple the grassroots efforts of the counties would be counterproductive to stabilizing our economy. So I think they gave us a good taste of what we're going to see again. We're lucky to escape with out TAT this time, and one of the comments made at a WAM committee meeting is that ... and I got a history lesson too, I think that TAT was tied into somehow going back to stimulating our visitor industry, and the only county to do so is Maui, and they made it very apparent that the other counties are not putting that TAT money to where it was supposed to have been originally, and that was the message I got when I was up there. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. And you know, we realize too that how the tourist affect us all around, right, and that's the reason why we have taken the more conservative approach, .rather than specifically earmarking that for tourist promotion and so forth. We've used it for county . parks, we've-used.iteforfixing.up, some of the roads, we've used it for (inaudible). So before we take a recess, what I wanted to do is... I want to take a recess. Is just if everybody agrees, the proposed, you know, that has been sent to us, the plus and minuses that have been sent and what I have discussed on, I believe that staff said we need a vote on this? Yes. On the comparisons. You've seen the comparisons they did, right, all the comparisons, what was plus, what was minus. Basically, it was in reflection to this proposal. Ms. Kawahara: The one we just went over. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes,' and we just want to take a vote on that, and then we can come back and we can discuss our plus and minuses of each individual Councilmembers if they have anything else that they wanted to do on the budget, we'll get into that discussion on the plus and minuses and so forth. So at this point... Mr. Kawakami: Mr. Chair, before we take a vote, I just ... I was going to try and look into it when we had a recess. But just under the county attorney's budget, I do have some • • concerns that was brought up. But one of them... We're going to take a vote now, or we're going to recess first? Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh we can come back. We can do a recess. If you have some questions about that, you can go and do some research on it, it'll give you some time, and then we can come back and then take a vote on this. It's not a problem. Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: I kind of wanted to make some comments about the last discussion we just had. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh I'm sorry. I didn't see you. I'm right next to you, you can kick me. Mr. Bynum: Okay, I'll kick you next time. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, alright. Mr. Bynum: You know, I think it's good that we're talking about the way we tax, because that's really appropriate. And the 2 %, you know, it's not a secret that last term we looked at tax reform. One of the proposals was to eliminate the 2% cap. That was a proposal that I supported and I just want to say why, because when the escalation of property taxes went up, the council responded (before I was on it) by placing that cap to protect the resident homeowners. But when property values... assessments go up, we can also adjust the tax rate; that's the traditional way counties regulate the taxation to the people. There's no rule that says if assessments go up that your tax bill goes up. What that situation created, in my view, is some inequities for people who have had the cap for 6 years versus a new family who just gets their property. Now the impact of the tax cap is very interesting, because... Mr. Furfaro: Because it's the reverse. Mr. Bynum: As the assessments escalated, it protected homeowners from increases. But as assessments are coming down, it's protecting the county because people... people whose assessments went down still having their tax bills go up 2% because it's in that cap range. And I think we're going to have citizens this year who are saying, hey my assessment went down but my tax bill went up. What's up with that? And then if we had to address a big shortfall in the budget, traditionally counties would look at us changing the assessed rates. But we can't ... if we say, needed to increase the tax rate for the vast majority of that income, it wouldn't impact it because it still would be in the cap range. And so we've taken that mechanism... So it's having very interesting... you know, I think because our real property tax revenue's not down as much as we thought, because in the falling market it's protecting our revenues. But if we needed to make those adjustments, we can't easily change the tax rates because they're in that cap zone for a big majority of people. And so I don't know the real property tax reform bill is pending on our agenda. Given the current economy, we probably won't bring it up again this year, but we will at some point. And so I just wanted to make those comments that ... because now, as Councilmember Furfaro has pointed out, if we want to impact revenues, we got to look at changing the cap, as opposed to doing what counties have traditionally done —look at the tax rate. So thanks for allowing me those comments before we break. Mr. Kaneshiro: okay. Any other further comments? If not, we're going to recess this committee. We'll take a 10- minute recess. There being no objections, the Chair called a recess at 10:29 a.m. The meeting reconvened at 10:49 a.m., and proceeded as follows: • • Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. We'll open up the budget review process again. I wanted to just make a note that the mayor is not here, and also Gary. The mayor is on his way back from Missouri as he did attend his son's graduation, I believe, or someone from his family graduated. If not, he would have been sitting here. And Gary is also on his way back from Honolulu. Mr. Furfaro: Missouri or Mississippi? Mr. Chang: Mississippi. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, okay. Mr. Furfaro: Got to get the right university. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, just to note, so you know that... committee members know that if not, they would have been here during the supplemental budget. Okay, with that, I'll. open it up for discussion as to any councilmember that had some things they wanted to bring up on the budget, or you wanted to add something and minus something, and so forth. We'll have that discussion. Before we do that, let me have Derek Kawakami (Go ahead) address something that... Mr. Kawakami: You can call me councilmember... Just couple points under the county attorney's budget, specifically the KPD portion of it, I just wanted to add the text that, you know, when we interviewed our county attorney, he mentioned that he had no problem housing the KPD attorney at the police department, I mean if they have the room, and I think they may have the room. So let's add that to the text. And I also wanted to make sure that because this attorney is under the county attorney's office and not under the police department, to ensure that this wouldn't affect any of their efforts to become accredited, and that be it. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you very much, Councilmember Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: I just playing, you know. Call me Derek. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. With that, before we move on, again, to the plus and minuses on the council side if you have any proposal, I just wanted to go over, and if the one I highlighted... I believe we had... Mr.-Bynum: Yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge the administration added twelve five to the child and family service summer fun preschool program to keep that intact, and I appreciate that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright. With that, we need to take a vote on what was presented to us under the plus and minuses just to balance this part out. So I'm going to call for a vote. All those in favor of what I went over and was referring to say aye. Yes, the comparisons that was provided by our staff. This is our staff comparison that was provided. With that, any noes? Okay, that's passed. (NOTE:,7 ayes) Mr. Bynum: So Mr. Chair, that puts us in, at this moment, in concurrence with the mayor's changes, right? Mr. Kaneshiro: Correct. Now we shall ... we get down to the nitty gritty (inaudible). 0 • Mr. Furfaro: With a few provisos that were added by myself, the chair, and Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kaneshiro: And any other provisos that were added that was also noted. Okay, with that I will open the floor up with any other items that any of the committee members wanted to discuss or have discussion on. The floor is now open. Lani, you have anything? Go ahead. I mean throw it out on the table. No shame. We're here to have a discussion, and I know you had something to do with the farm bureau or something. Ms. Kawahara: Oh this one, yes. This one. I think she just passed it out. I've been working with Glenn Sato at the energy and office of economic development, and also Melissa McFaren with the farm bureau, and they were interested in further greening the county fair, and we were looking specifically at CFL bulbs in the portion that only the county supports, and not the EK Fernandez side, which is mostly in the tents, I believe, and all the other stuff is EK Fernandez. So we ... I had them get an estimate. She worked with her electrician, and the actual bulbs was $1362.50. I don't think that included tax. So she also wanted to try and get money for the possibility of doing composting for food waste and other stuff. So I put in a request... putting in a request for $5,000. That's to help with getting the bulbs with the tax, and then the labor to install them. It's all those string lights that go through the tents. They're really... they're the old screw in regular bulbs. So the bulbs were... I think she got one of these too, yeah. They're about 5.45 per bulb, and tax, and there are about 250 bulbs, 250 bulbs. So the additional moneys from the base, thirteen sixty -two, was for labor to put them in, take them out, and store them, because they got to take them out every year at the end and store them, and they have storage containers already, and the labor to do that. And the last part was the composting, which she just brought up recently, so I don't have much information, except it was for food waste, because they've been working hard at greening the fair. I think they've done a lot of other things, and they wanted to continue that, and this would be part of their greening. Now you'll ask me where to get it. Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. That's the next question. We can have some discussions first on what you want to propose. Remember, anything you want to propose or add will take 5 votes. Anything you remove from the budget takes 4 votes. Okay, that's the process. We can have further discussion on this proposal if you want to. Mr. Chang. Mr. Chang: Thank you. I have a question for Councilmember Kawahara. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead. Mr. Chang: I'm familiar with what area that you're dealing with, because I did have a conversation with Melissa McFaren, but did you folks maybe figure out what savings we'll have for this year? Ms. Kawahara: The cost savings was from ... I got that from Glenn, and if you give me a minute, I will find it, because he did talk about the cost savings, but it was going to be a long term cost savings, because it's just one time a year. Mr. Chang: Because the area that I think you're making reference to is the orchids, bonsai, fruits, and all the displays that the people...people that rent... Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, the vendors ... and not the games. Mr. Chang: Yes, the games is the EK Fernandez side. But you also have opportunities with a lot of the food vendors, because the food vendors ... and then you might, you know... Then you of course have to think about the main tent, you know, the main tented area, 0 0 because that's, you know, where you get the majority of the singers, the hypnotist, etc., etc. So that just seems like a small portion of the places that we can take opportunity for. And then also you mentioned labor, 1300, 1600 in labor? Ms. Kawahara: She just wanted to have an extra amount over the actual bulbs to be able to put ... to have the labor to put the bulbs in, remove the old bulbs, put the new ones in, and then what they do is they remove the bulbs every year for these because they're very delicate so they're fragile, so they get (inaudible). Mr. Chang: But wasn't that a volunteer driven... Like in other words, the ... I'll give you an example. The KCCC people come down maybe ... you know, various different community groups comes down and does all the setups and does all everything necessary, that I didn't know that ... or I didn't think labor was involved. Ms. Kawahara: It says here, may incur some extra costs there, but will go to free sources first (volunteers and donated space). So she says that they will use volunteers first, but she was talking about taking every bulb off and storing them separately from strings, and then would require additional labor and additional storage, which will be working on their side, and may occur some extra cost, but will go to free sources first, like the volunteers. Then the tents that we're talking about are the farm bureau managed areas, the commercial tent, the main street exhibition tent, food court, agricultural areas, and stage and entertainment for the areas. So if they didn't want to put in for labor, that's fine; I would be happy with just the bulbs. But they're going to require some people to do that, and I don't know if what they do with their electrician, Duane ... Duane handles all of their electrical to install and maintain, and that was the price that he got for bulbs. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any other questions for Lani? Mr. Furfaro: So let me ask you, Lani. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, Jay. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Chair. If you got $1362 for the bulbs, and you got the difference, say $1638 for assistance to the labor for the electrician, that's $2,000. If this was $2,000, do you think the county, with its own staff, can get a place to do our composting and demonstrations on greenwaste, which is no cost to us. I mean that's Allison and the staff being there. , Instead of 5, would you consider 2, and _ask them to provide a place so that the county can demonstrate composting. Ms. Kawahara: To take all the food waste and put it somewhere? Mr. Furfaro: I mean I'm just saying, is it possible. Mr. Kaneshiro: The other part, though, we still got to pay for the county employee to be there. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, but that'll ... that shows up in this year's staffing that goes into next year as operating cost, right? Mr. Kaneshiro: What is that again? Mr. Furfaro: It's a payroll that's in the operating cost already. Mr. Kaneshiro: Not on the weekends, because that's overtime. Ms. Kawahara: For that 4 days? Mr. Chang: Thursday through Sunday. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's overtime on the weekends. Mr. Kawakami: Tell Solid Waste Kauai do it. Mr. Kaneshiro: This is open for discussion. Please feel free, you know. It's a good time to ... what do you call that? Brainstorming. Greenstorming. We're into greenstorming today. Ms. Kawahara: I started off with the composting part. I started off with the composting part, and she saw me recently and was talking about the ... I mean I started with the bulbs, so that's the part that I was more familiar with. Mr. Furfaro: But are you sure we don't already have something there? Ms. Kawahara: Where? Mr. Furfaro: At the farm... Ms. Kawahara: Yes, because I also... Mr. Furfaro: Are you sure we don't already have something there, the county? Ms. Kawahara: The composting? Mr. Furfaro: Yes. She's been there in the past showing off the wire buckets and the... Mr. Bynum: We have a recycling effort there, like they do for plastics. Mr. Kaneshiro: This is more for food waste. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, I understood, composting. I practiced it a long term, and I had a group of worms that each had individual names... Mr. Kaneshiro: The other thing is we cannot feed these to the hogs, because they're on a special type diet that are in the program, but this would have been a good food cycling way to do it. But those are all show hogs. Mr. Bynum: Without getting into details, I think what Councilmember Kawahara is asking for is that we have a fund ... a grant available to the farm bureau through OED to do greening of the ... but they'll have to present a budget and a rationale of how to use those funds, and they'll have to be accountable for them. The OED is really good at that, and so I'd like to find a way to support this effort and let the farm bureau and OED work out the details. Because if they find out they don't need all the funds, they don't have to use them all. I've got that right, yeah, they have to present a proposal with a budget, they'll be held accountable for that proposal, and you know, they may come up with other creative ideas and creative ways to save energy at the fair. You • w know, the farm bureau is like a small city for 4 or 5 days, because we ... almost every citizen spends some time there. So I think this is a cool effort and we should support it. Mr. Furfaro: You got it partially right. I'm saying I can support 2,000. I can't support this unknown $3700. It's labor, it's what? What do we already have there? Certainly the purchasing of the lights go long term, a credit for the electrician on $638, I got no problem with 2,000 as a grant. Ms. Kawahara: I ... because I don't know how ... I haven't done a budget before, I made it higher so that I could go lower. Mr. Furfaro: We all do. Mr. Kaneshiro: It's like a car salesman, you know. Ms. Kawahara: I thought that was a good strategy. Mr. Kawakami: That is the strategy. Mr. Kaneshiro: You know, and Lani, I have no problem with that. I support. You know, I think it's a good way that we can start sending the message out about how we can conserve energy in the long run and doing composting of food waste. So I don't think that's the factor involved right here. It's the amount and where you're going to find the cut from, that's the other question. So if you have a proposal to show us where we're going to get ... if you want 5 or you want 2 or 3 or whatever, let's find ... where are we going to find... You know, we got to obviously cut someplace, because we got a balanced budget right now. Ms. Kawahara: So I have had been... I think I got a bad introduction to budgeting when we went into the reserve for money for the KVB and OED tourism thing. So I was just wondering if we could take a little bit out. Mr. Kaneshiro: You're not going to be able to do that under this to balance this budget. You're not going to be able to do that under this budget. The only other way, if you do this... The only way you can tough something like this is go through next year as we coming to July, then you come in for a money bill to do a grant like this to touch any unappropriated surplus. Ms.- Kawahara:. _,._ .t_ Oh, see, ,because.I don't know how-to do... Mr. Kaneshiro: So that's a possibility. Ms. Kawahara: So I don't know how to do it. So you can't just grab something from there, because it has to be a money bill. Mr. Kaneshiro: And for this year it's already too late to do any... Mr. Furfaro: Let me just explain for her, if I can? Lani, you go right to this page here and you'll see this line, unappropriated surplus. Because we ... that sheet that I reconciled with you earlier on where we were taking the money, this is the start of the new budget... Mr. Kaneshiro: That's correct. Ms. Kawahara: For the following 2011... Mr. Furfaro: Yes. So what's there is the start of the new budget. So it isn't like there is a surplus there, because we're using it to start the new budget. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum?' Mr. Bynum: I hoped that we wouldn't get into this, but the ... because I support what you're saying, Chair, that we should look at the budget as it is, and if we want to add something, we should look where those cost savings might be in the budget. But I asked the finance director, and if he needs to help me he can do this, that this is the ... and I'd prefer to do that, find the cuts, but you know, we haven't finalized what the surplus will be in the new budget. The administration changed ... made a significant change to that based on in this review, as I understand it. If I'm wrong, somebody correct you. Mr. Furfaro: Can I correct you now? Mr. Bynum: May I finish? Mr. Furfaro: Sure, but I will want to correct you, so that we... Mr. Kaneshiro: a Let him finish up. He has the floor right now. Mr. Bynum: So I asked this question specifically of the finance director. If we went through this whole budget process and we had something that was very important we felt to the county and we couldn't find anything we were willing to cut, we could, I'm not saying we should, but we could alter what this is, what the proposal is to place in reserve in order to fund that. And so I just, you know, I... I need clarification; and I'm not saying I want to do that, but I'm saying that that's part of the whole budget process of what we decide to put in reserve starting July 1. So now I'm finished, but I prefer to get the response from the finance director. Mr. Kaneshiro: The rules are suspended. Mr. Rezentes. .Mr. Rezentes: Yes. I believe, Councilmember Bynum, what you're talking about is you stated a reserve. I know that in the past some counties have done such a thing where they created a rainy day fund, a reserve fund, that could be tapped into if and when, you know, the economics required. I know for a fact that the county of Hawaii, in their upcoming budget cycle, has fully tapped their reserve to balance their fiscal ... next fiscal year's budget. So those things have, you know, occurred in the past and you know, and there's many, I think, precedence across, you know, even within the State for that. Mr. Bynum: But one of the things we do in budget is say, this is what we're going to set aside for ... as an unappropriated surplus, correct? Mr. Rezentes: I don't really follow you. Mr. Furfaro:. May I help here? It's called the ... the accounting term is called FIFO okay. You have right at the top here when we first looked at the budget, you had what we thought the tax revenue would be. Then they certify the tax revenue that gives us that piece there. Then they add in to that on the page line that I showed here that shows the difference on the unappropriated surplus. But it's like the first in money, then the new money gives you the total, and that's what this summary sheet is. But during the year, as soon as the first month occurs and we didn't fill a position or we didn't spend on a project, that creates the new surplus. 0 0 Mr. Bynum: Right. So we could do that. We could find these funds by (inaudible). Mr. Furfaro: Right. Mr. Bynum: That's all I'm... Mr. Furfaro: And that's what Mr. Kaneshiro was saying, we can find... Mr. Bynum: But I think we can... You know, we're talking about... Mr. Furfaro: ... something not to spend. Mr. Bynum: In a 158 million dollar budget or whatever it is, we're talking about small money, 5,000, 2,000, 3,000. There are plenty places we could find that. We could find that in CIP contingency fund, for instance. We can reduce that by $4,000. Mr. Furfaro: Those are questions for the finance director. Ms. Kawahara: So can I go look for money, since I can't have the 2,000 and 3,000 from the other place? minus. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's the whole purpose. You put a plus, then you put a Mr. Bynum: And what we did the last 2 budgets, the... Mr. Kaneshiro: We can do that. Mr. Bynum: The county clerk was here with a spreadsheet that we broadcast up there, and we went down plus and minuses and then saw how it turned out at the end, and we balanced it by moving things in contingency funds, right? And so I don't think we have much to do this year. We'll probably be done pretty soon, but I have a ... you know, some suggestions of where we might get funds. So if we need to... Mr. Kaneshiro: That's why we have the open discussion and brainstorming all .about.. Ms. Kawahara: So this is a warm up. It's a little thing. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, you got something else? Well, definitely we not touching unappropriated surplus or reserves. Ms. Kawahara: It was a easy... supposed to be easy warm up question. But I think other members might have the same idea about whatever my second one is. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright, well... Ms. Kawahara: So I'm going to ... so I can't take the... Mr. Kaneshiro: Again, you know... If you want to, we can take the vote on the addition, and then later on we can go through the process and then find things out where we're going to minus from. Ms. Kawahara: What if I don't know where I'm going to get it from yet? Mr. Kaneshiro: Well you don't have to. We can all chip in. It doesn't have to be only you to find out where you're going to get it from. So if we take a vote to add this on, which will take 5 votes, and if I would come down with a number that has been thrown around in discussion, maybe 3,000 or something, you know, we take a vote, and then later on we put that up as a plus someplace, we'll get a chart out, Peter, pretty simple, just bring the blackboard I think. Roll the blackboard in, so far you got the plus there, if we got a vote, so we'll do it like that, and then you know, we call can chip in and find in whatever we vote on. It doesn't have to be a... Council Chair Asing: I think it would be better if whoever is making the recommendation make the recommendation on both plus and minus. I think that would be the better way to start.. And then, you know, we (inaudible). But I think that would be the best (inaudible). Let me give you my reason for saying that. You know, I might agree, as an example, to the addition. But in the proposal to delete from an area, I might disagree. And therefore, between the two, I will not be supporting the add, because the area that you're taking from is what I might feel that I cannot agree to that. So that's the reason for my saying if you start that way, I think that would be a better way to go. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, and I'll give you some time. Ms. Kawahara: There wouldn't be one vote and then a second vote for where we take it from? It could be, right? Mr. Kaneshiro: Right now I'm giving you ... I'll give you some time, and then we'll get into some other discussions at this point then. This way, I know what the chair is saying, so if we got the votes to go ahead and move, maybe you can perhaps find some places where you want to take some money out for that amount. So we'll get some time. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, but just to be clear, there is a way of doing it as 2 votes, right? One for the... Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, we're still going to have to call for question the addition, and which would require 5 votes, and we still would have to call for a vote the deletion, whichever you take out, which takes 4 votes. Council Chair Asing: Let me just explain. You know, Lani, because the amount that you talking about is so small, I don't have any problem. You know, I don't have any problem on supporting that. But I'd like to have some idea as to where you're taking it from. You may be taking that out of an area that, wow, that's not the place. Even it might be small, don't take from there, I don't agree with that. So that's the reason. Mr. Kaneshiro: I know this is your first budget process, and we'll be patient. We can work on it. We're not seeing big numbers fly. We know that we have a budget that is pretty thin, you know. We've had budgets with a lot of money and we've had discussions flying all over the place. So with that, you know, you threw this on the table, so we'll keep that in mind, and then we'll go on and have some more discussions on other items. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, I'll be ready. Council Chair Asing: Let me just say this, and again, I seem to go back into history all the time. You know, I can tell you that we've have budgets that we put on the board, and what we had is we had names associated with that. And then when you look at that list, you could see ... I'm not even going to mention the councilmember's name, but you look at that and you see one councilmember is in the, you know, three - quarter million area, and you say wow, what's going on. And so you know, I just want to kind o£.. Ms. Kawahara: No, I appreciate it. Council Chair Asing: What you normally try to do in a budget session is give everybody an opportunity to, you know, get some pluses and some minuses. I mean that's the, you know, normal to be fair. And I have seen some budgets, wow, you know, it is so unbalanced, and on top of that, you know, certain individual is just keep on coming with the numbers, and after a while it gets really unbalanced. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, I appreciate that budgeting 101 and a good icebreaker. Thanks. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, anyone else has anything else they wanted to throw on the table as we go through this process? Again, we can throw it out on the table, we can open it up for discussion, you know, see how we can trudge through this and swing through this. Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, I would like to see that we go back and reinstate full funding for the Red Cross. They had asked a county grant of 25,000, we put in 22,500. I do want to make sure that as first responders that that is something we have some dialogue on. 2500, it's a small amount. They submitted a grant for 25,000. I think we funded them 22,500. But again, just because they were first responders. And then there is one other item I would like too, it's a building item. When we removed the intersection lighting from 10auea on the highway where we had the bridge repairs, we had enough lighting going on that there was not a collection of a lot of youths on the corner across from the corner store there. A lot of drinking and so forth. I'm trying to propose that we get a light post on that road, because it goes right off into the ... it goes right off into the bush, but we've had some trouble there recently. Those are the two items. Mr. Kaneshiro: Is that ... do we put the request through KIUC on that, or how does that work? Mr. Furfaro: Actually, I had a friend draw up a plan for that light, but I'm not sure how that gets budgeted. But you know, during the repair of the Kilauea bridge, they put in all those-,solar-panels, md- if you cross over the highway, there's a single lane that goes back to some homes and then pasture area, there seems to be a lot of collection of...for lack of any other word, kind of hooliganism. Mr. Kaneshiro: Is that a county property? Mr. Furfaro: That's a county road at the end there. Mr. Kaneshiro: County roadway, okay. You have any idea how much that would be? Mr. Furfaro: No, but I do have a drawing of the location. Mr. Kaneshiro: I think staff stated that by request, I'm not sure if that's the procedure, we can request KIUC, but we pay the light cost. So I'm not certain how that works. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. When I get the final sketch, I'll submit it if I can. 0 • Mr. Kaneshiro: Is that right next to a utility line, KIUC line? Mr. Furfaro: Yes, there is utility lines there that goes into those houses. But if you know where the Kilauea bus stall is where they pick up for the Kauai Bus, it's that road right at the end. But I'll... If that's the approach, then I'll put it in that way. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you for the clarification. But I do have someone who's made a drawing for me. RICKY WATANABE: Let me explain the process for street lighting. When Councilmembers make requests, we normally send it off as a personal request, and what we're doing is requesting the engineering division to install a street light. However, they work with KIUC on getting the fixture there if there isn't a fixture, and then the county pays for the street ... the cost. Mr. Kaneshiro: So we don't need to add anything in the budget at this time to do that, right? Okay. Staff said okay. Mr. Furfaro: So I'll get you the drawing and we can send in a request. Mr. Bynum: Thank you for that. I'd like to add to that street lighting request for the street lights on Leho Drive that front the sport fields that were poised to open soon. There are 2 or 3 existing boxes with lights missing, and you know, that's a public facility that will soon be used into the evening. It'll be really nice to have those street lights. Mr. Kaneshiro: Staff also informed me that while we are at it, but now we're almost done, while we're at it that go ahead and meet with staff afterwards on the personal request stuff and they'll forward it over to the right department. Okay. But we don't need to really add that into the budget. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Chair. It's just after they removed all the street lights that ... I mean the stop lights, it became kind of a troubled area by.the bus stop. Mr. Kaneshiro: I understand also, because my thoughts would have been that we would have to install one and what the cost would be and so forth. But through staff, we had that clarification. Mr. Bynum: Last year the council placed in the budget a recycling coordinator at solid waste. That position was filled. Unfortunately the individual who took it didn't go. It's dollar funded. We had a lot of public testimony requesting that. We had JoAnn here this morning requesting it, and she started an effort that I ... much more thoroughly that I've looked at before about the tasks we know solid waste has before them now are many. And so I'd really like to see us fund that recycling coordinator's position, and I suggest that the funds for that come from... Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, how much is it, first of all? Mr. Bynum: 75 plus 55 %. Ms. Kawahara: • It was 50 plus 25 for fringe. i Mr. Bynum: Well, I don't know who said 25, but if the salary's 55, I think it's... Is it 50% that we're doing these days? Mr. Kaneshiro: We need a figure over there. Mr. Bynum: What was it in the previous budget? Ms. Kawahara: It was 50,820. Mr. Bynum: So 50,820 plus fringe would be my proposal, and that was in the previous budget, so we should be able to look at what was the previous budget. So if staff could help by giving me a figure. Mr. Kaneshiro: We can have some open discussions on that. Mr. Kawakami: Mr. Chair, the understanding I had is that the recycling coordinator was ... it was reallocated to a solid waste program coordinator. So within that, the same job description and duties apply, and if we're going to fund it, I think we all... Well me, not I think we all, I support a coordinated recycling effort. But if the administration is not committed to filling that with a warm body, I would have reservations on that one. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, and this is why we can brainstorm and have a civil discussion on the table. My feeling, you know, when I heard the speakers... Let me just tell you from the chairman perspective. When I had the speakers come before us, the speakers all stated, and even in written testimonies stated, that the draft proposal, the draft municipal solid waste plan is what they're looking at to fill this position for. Once the draft is adopted, then to implement that, the recycling position would now implement what the draft plan currently suggests. So for me, you know, my ... for me, I personally would like to see a solid waste plan adopted first, rather than a draft plan, then we look at filling a position as such, you know, as how JoAnn has put out here some of the job description. But you know, we go through this process a lot when we do plans, and until we have a final plan, you know to me, the proper way to do it, if we're going to implement the plan, then we better have someone there to implement the plan. Because until it's a draft, we can't implement much of that anyway. So it's open for discussion, you know. Mr. Bynum go ahead. Mr. Bynum: I did the math. $75,300 is what I would propose adding for the solid waste coordinator ... I mean for the recycling coordinator position. And I agree with .- Councilmember Kawakami-that _this position_, was...._- We -had a recycling coordinator, it was reallocated to a higher level position, but the judgment of the last council was, well in addition to that we need a recycling coordinator because of the huge laundry list of tasks that solid waste is tasked with over the next 2 years, and that person was actually hired. The position was filled. So then that person didn't get filled and it became one of those vacant positions that got dollar funded, and I feel very strongly that the laundry list of tasks that are before solid waste are so great that they need this position, plus the additional thing, and I thought JoAnn had done a pretty good job of pointing things I hadn't even thought of that would benefit our community and reduce the waste stream. So I feel real strongly that we should fund this position, and I have a suggestion of where the funds could come from. We have also this position that's been a lot of discussion has been on, or funding in the budget in the bond fund of 385,809 for waste reduction consultant services. The administration in their testimony said they're poised to do a contract for about 125. I'm not opposed to that contract. That's their call. They've also indicated they have no specific need ... or specific plans at this moment for additional things, and they ... if they have additional things they can come back. So I would suggest taking the funds of what I just said, 75,300 from that line item. Would still leave a considerable surplus in that line item that the administration can use for future plans, and more than sufficient for the current contract that they're poised to award to make changes if they need. I'm not opposed to that contract, and so that's my suggestion. If there are other places we can get it, but the main thing here is to fund the recycling coordinator, and I think that's a potential source of funds for that, and perhaps 4,000 for this or 2,000 -for this, and because like I said, they know they're going to use some of it, I don't want to oppose that, but they have no specific plans for the use of the rest of those funds right now. Mr. Kaneshiro: One of the points that Mr. Kawakami also made is that we haven't had a request from the administration. So if we're here giving them a position which they haven't gotten a request for, then why are we giving them a position? You know what I mean? It's like we give a position to someone and there's not request, how you know they're going to use that position in the manner that you pointed out, because we can't tell them what to do. Mr. Bynum: May I respond to that? Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh yeah, absolutely. Mr. Bynum: Last year's budget we put in 4 or 5 lifeguards that were not requested by administration, we put in this position that they did fill, we put in a legislative analyst for the police department which they've chosen to fill now, we put in a number of positions last time that the administration didn't request, and we can call up the administration and ask them if we put it in the budget would they hire them. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, we're not going to do that right now, because we went through the budget review process, Mr. Bynum. So why would I bring them back here and said, okay tell me, if I give you this position do you really need this position. We've already gone through the budget review process. This is our decision to make. Mr. Bynum: I agree. . Mr. Kaneshiro: And if that's all it is, it takes us here, if that's the way we want to do it, then fine. But I'm saying, you know... Mr. Bynum: I just want to point out that we've added many positions in the past that weren't... Mr. Kaneshiro: And then I'll still stick to my point. Until the solid waste plan is adopted, I don't believe, me personally, that we should just fill the position in right now, because all the testimonies referred to the draft plan. So until we have one adopted, then fine. If the council wants to come in and do one bill or do something, I don't have a problem. But until we ... you know, for me, until we have one adopted, I can't support it. Just to let you know. Mr. Bynum: Mr. Chair, we're supporting the mayor's request for a recycling ... I mean for curbside recycling before the plan is adopted. We're supporting a number of elements of that plan before it's adopted. Mr. Kaneshiro: I know, and I'm just saying as me. That's my personal, you know. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, so that's one vote. Mr. Kaneshiro: So you can count your votes. Mr. Kawakami. • • Mr. Kawakami: You know, this is a good discussion. Just concerns that I have is that for one, yeah, there was a process that they hire it and the person didn't come on, so... But the fact of the matter is the administration took out the position, not the council, and to me that's a clear message of I don't know what plan they have moving forward, and we're going to find out when that solid waste management plan gets adopted. But they took it out. And so in the discussion as to whether or not we're going to fund it, and I just want to bring up what's the possibility of dollar funding this position until we can get a commitment from the administration that they are ... that they want it and they're going to fill it. Mr. Kaneshiro: It is. Ms. Kawahara: It is dollar funded. Mr. Kawakami: It is. Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: And that's the point I was making, it is. Mr. Furfaro: It is? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. Mr. Kawakami: I thought it was taken out. Mr. Kaneshiro: No, no. It is a dollar funded position right now. And perhaps that could be their idea. When we adopt the solid waste then we can come in for description as such, and we're ready to go, ready to roll. Mr. Watanabe: Mr. Chair, one more thing before we go on. Councilmember Bynum indicated the bond fund. The bond fund is strictly for CIP. Bond fund cannot be moved out of the CIP and used for operational cost. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's right. You can't take from the bond fund for operational expense. Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: I think Kawahara had her hand up. Mr- Kaneshiro.:_ < -_- Lani, did. you... Ms. Kawahara: I understand that... I guess I have a question about whether the council is just a, you know, just takes whatever the administration sends over and we rubberstamp it. If they send it over, then we don't do it. Mr. Furfaro: We don't do that. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. What do we do? We are here to say that maybe we feel something's important, you know, that they should put it back in. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's fine. Lani, that's fine. All you need is 5 votes. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. I just wanted to make sure that that... Mr. Kaneshiro: I have my ideas as to why... • • Ms. Kawahara: That we are... Mr. Kaneshiro: I not listen to the (inaudible). Until the solid waste plan is adopted, I don't think, you know, at this point, because there's a lot of questionable things yet, it's still a draft plan. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. So I just wanted to be sure about that that we are here to balance and do, you know, provide other... Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Than what this comes over. I think it's significant that they dollar funded it and not zero ... deleted it. I think that's significant. Mr. Kaneshiro: But it's still dollar funded. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, but I would like to be able to say that this council is committed to recycling. And we committed to recycling and starting up curbside phase one project, that is an administration side that's committed to recycling. It seems that in order to do that that we should have a recycling coordinator. There is, also, when we're talking about specifically about the phase one recycling program, curbside, they have a fund ... they have funded $50,000 for a professional services contract for a curbside pilot project. That is exactly what a recycling coordinator would do. So I'm looking at this $50,000 in that line to not go outside of our county and hire somebody to be ... if you want it to be the professional service contract, to be the recycling coordinator. If you look on page 219, we're asking... there's a line for professional services contract for curbside pilot program, and then the other part of it is curbside pilot program materials processing contract. I'd like to enter that $50,000 we can use towards the funding of a recycling coordinator. Considering all the focus that we have given to recycling, I think the county can lead on this if the administration wasn't able to put it in there. It doesn't mean they didn't want it. It doesn't mean that we can't do it ourselves either. So I would submit at least looking at that $50,000 for a part of that position, but I think that's... That was the only main priority and main thing I saw missing from the modification, which I thought the administration did a great job. Because all the things that were on there were things that I was hoping would show up in the modification, and they did. But this one is a big one, and it's a long term one, and that's where we need to be going. I think ... I don't think anybody's going to say we're going to stop recycling because it's not going to be worth it. It's just what we do to save your environment. It's not whether you're going to do it because we can't do it. You have to do it, and having a recycling coordinator shows a commitment to doing it the right way and not half way, and not waiting for it to fall on us. When this plan gets ready to go, we know we're going to recycling. They already have a pilot phase one project going. Mr. Kaneshiro: When? Ms. Kawahara: October, according to solid waste... And we've already put... Mr. Kaneshiro: Then hire him in October. Ms. Kawahara: Jay, we put how much, $440,000 already in the curb recycling phase one? Mr. Furfaro: Yes, and I'll talk about that when it's my turn. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, but I see that is ... that's an investment that we put in and I think it's only natural that it should have somebody coordinating it, and that's my statement • for now. I want a recycling coordinator. I think we should find the funds for it, and it only makes sense, and it only aligns correctly when you have a recycling coordinator, or else you're doing it backwards, like you have mentioned. Mr. Kaneshiro: So why wasn't the question asked during the review process? That's okay. Mr. Furfaro go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: I'll give him the floor. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you. You know, I just want to know if there's any indication that the current solid waste program coordinator is not able to handle this portion of the job, and I haven't had any indication from the administration, from the solid waste department, from public works. I mean I haven't had any dialogue as to if the current solid waste coordinator is not able to handle it, and from my experience with working with the current solid waste coordinator, they are ... excuse me... Mr. Chair? Ms. Kawahara: Sorry. Go ahead. Mr. Kawakami: And just from my experience, the current solid waste coordinator is extremely proactive, efficient, capable, and hard working. So I mean I haven't had any kind of dialogue or discussion as to whether the current person in this position is not able to administer these additional tasks, and I'm not even sure if these are additional tasks or if this is in the current job description as it is now. Ms. Kawahara: Sorry. I apologize to Councilmember Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: No problem. Ms. Kawahara: I do have a... Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro had his hands up. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you very much. You know, it's very interesting that we voted on spending a lot of money with the previous council on recycling. Councilmember at the time Yukimura was. part, of that vote. We also elevated Allison at the .time, moving her from the recycling coordinator to the recycling specialist, and today we went through a list of items that are actually in the plan, and many of these items, you know, conduct site visits to county offices, expand and sustain the canvas bag program, promote recycling programs on the mayor's TV show, promote the aloha shares network, develop bills and work with the mayor and the council to adopt legislation banning non - recyclables, providing information on the useables, work with the visitor industry to promote source reduction, and the visitor industry has a very strong program, but all of these items are listed to us out of the book. The reality is, you know, from a staffing perspective, what items here are being under the realm of Allison, you know. I mean that was the reason we promoted her, we expanded her scope, right, and we're $440,000 later buying containers. We need to get on top of this. We're expecting the baby, and the baby is coming, folks. And that's the part, but you know, there's such a disconnect that we need to fix here, and together we can do it. I think that's the logo, or together we can. You know, folks, please have the administration clean up for me these 40 items that I just listed some of them that came out of the book that relate to last year's plan of promoting and expanding Allison, who by the way does a wonderful job, and I have to tell you, I'm not all that, you know, unassuming that what Mr. Bynum had presented we couldn't do. I mean the baby's • • coming. We need to be ready, but we really need some help over here, so together we can do this. Somebody needs to separate this list for us today. The position is dollar funded sir? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, it is. It's in there. Mr. Furfaro: If the administration comes to us and says, hey we're ready with the plan in 6 months, maybe we ought to put some money in for the last 6 months of the year. But we just can't go on regurgitating this, you know. I'm sorry if you didn't like my terminology, but that's exactly what we keep doing. Mr. Bynum: I'm just trying to figure out what your point is. Mr. Furfaro: Let me make the point. Clarify for me, when [councilwoman] Yukimura lists over here and says, all these are the 40 things we need to be doing, when the fact of the matter, some of this was Allison's job description. Secondly, we ordered curbside recycling. We're supposed to be working on an ordinance that tells people when they can't park on the side of the road so that the canister can get in and lift. We should be doing things like an ordinance that tickets for citations for blocking the pick -ups, and we spent a lot of money on this. Earmarking some of the second half of the year is not a problem to have a coordinator. So let's do it. Any further expansion on my behalf Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: I was just trying to figure out if you were supporting funding the coordinator or not. Mr. Furfaro: I think what I said it, we got a dollar in there, and if we're going to have a plan ready in 6 months, we should have the second part of the funding in the budget. Mr. Bynum: And so I would like to respond if I could. I agree with you that many of these things that Allison is doing... Mr. Furfaro: Allison's doing half ..three- quarters of these things. Mr. Bynum: But we're... You know, we have a MRF in the budget, we have a composting facility... Mr. Furfaro: We have a MRF in the bond. Mr. Bynum: In the bond, but that's part of the budget, and we have the recycling program we just rolled out, we have to site a landfill, we have to expand our landfill, we have to find a composting facility, we have to ... we're doing, in that same division, a rollout of automated collection... you know, these are huge items, and as Councilmember Furfaro pointed out previously, we don't have a great history of meeting timeframes, of meeting ... you know, when there's that much on the plate in this one division huge projects and minor projects, they need the support, they need the personnel to carryout those things. We have the community members coming here. This is the only thing that we got testimony on in the budget hearing was support this recycling coordinator position. It makes logical sense to me, so... I agree with you that there's a huge amount of work. A lot of it is happening. We have good people there, but they need the position that we once had, and unfortunately it was filled for a while, the guy was there and chose not to remain in the position. Mr. Furfaro: So you agree the stork is flying around, we just need a place for him to land in October. • Mr. Bynum: Well, I'd like to see him land in June ... or July. That's why I'm suggesting we fund the position in full starting July 1. I totally understand Councilmember Kaneshiro's... You know, I was on the council for 2 years. I thought we would have voted in this plan a long time ago, and I've been assured that it's coming to us very soon, but we've already moved forward on a number of elements of those plans. From my read of the council, I don't think that there's going to be any opposition to 90% of the recycling initiatives that are in that plan, and we've already made that movement forward, and so we'll see how the votes come down here. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. And again, Tim, you know if you looked at all the testimonies, the testimonies... and I took special note on that when they said the draft plan, you know. Then if we only have a draft plan, until we have a plan that is adopted, I can fully agree. I mean right now wouldn't be... We wouldn't be here on the table like this. You would have had my vote at that point. But if you read the testimony, the draft plan proposes, draft plan proposes that, draft plan proposes this. Until we have an adopted plan, it's just that, it's a draft plan. And you know, I wholeheartedly, you know, you know we all for recycling, we want to do recycle like that, but the administration may have other ways of once the plan is adopted, how we're going to implement it. You know for me, with a draft plan to fill a position, I can say that I can't support that from my side, so it's on my side. Lani? Ms. Kawahara: One for Councilmember Kawakami ... and then for you. But first you were talking. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh you have a... Ms. Kawahara: A question for you. So do you think that they're not ... that we won't need a recycling coordinator? Mr. Kaneshiro: Until the draft plan is adopted. Ms. Kawahara: And you don't think that there's ... I'm just wondering, so there's not the idea that where the draft plan is going is not enough to fund the position. Mr. Kaneshiro: You know, we've had plans all over this place. And like you said, we've had plans that could go on for years. You never know what may happen. Nobody knows. So you know, until we have a plan that is officially adopted, we have this is the plan, this is where we're going. Because as you... All the testimonies... I'm just saying, the testimonies I've had, and _.. _„every. one- referred, .to ,the=draft_,plan, the draft -plan, draft plan. They didn't say we need somebody right now. We need somebody to get right nowhere so they can implement the draft plan later. But once the draft plan is adopted and finally adopted and becomes a master plan, I don't have a problem. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, okay. I guess I just would say that it seems that it's a pretty well -lit way that we're going to need one, but I can understand if you don't think that that draft plan is enough of a runway to go on to start landing. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, I didn't say it's not... I'm saying that my philosophy or my perspective of being able to watch and curtail the budget and what's our standing, I think it's wise that until we have a plan really adopted that we can start implementing the plan, and by that time hopefully the administration will have their ways about how to implement the plan, I'll fully support that position. Mr. Kawakami: You had something for me? 0 n U Ms. Kawahara: Oh yea, I wanted to apologize again ... (inaudible) Mr. Kawakami: Oh no, no, not at all. That's fine. Ms. Kawahara: I had a paper that was going to help you with the position description, and I did want to say that I have been working with ... I worked with Allison and Troy, mostly Allison, early on when we came on, and we have a list of stuff that's mostly recycling that they haven't been able to get to because of her duties that she's doing now. So I don't know that ... yeah, and I haven't heard it from administration or anybody else, except I know that things are being put on hold because they can't do ... she can't do everything that she wants to do in that department. So but I don't have an official thing, administration thing, saying they needed somebody, but there were projects that I was looking at and they were saying they wanted to do, but they couldn't get to. I don't know where I got this. Mr. Kawakami: No, and that's fine too, and don't need to apologize, Lani. I think this is the part of the discussion where we're going to all be jumping in and we're going to be talking on the side. It's just... You know this job description, the recycling coordinator job description, thank you very much. Is this the paper that you're talking about? Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. Mr. Kawakami: Okay, that's fine. But what I want to see is not so much this. I want to be able to compare both of them, you know, and to see where the redundancies are, where the duplications are. And as far as, you know, whether or not we need a recycling coordinator, you pose that question to budget chair Kaneshiro, my answer is I don't know. I don't know if we need one. And I think fundamentally, the point I'm trying to make is I'm not against recycling or having a recycling coordinator, but if you're asking me if we have a need for it, I think I've been clear that I'm very not sure ... I'm not sure if we need one, and the reason why. I'm not sure why we need one is nobody from the administration, the guys in charge of the operation, have come to me and said, hey Derek, you know if we want to implement recycling, we're going to need one. I haven't had that, and maybe some of you did, but I didn't, so I don't know. And secondly, I mean... Secondly, I may not have a secondly. I think that's the point I'm trying to make. I mean I think fundamentally, it's not the question of whether I think we need one, because I don't know if we need one. If I'm committed to recycling, I think I made it clear that I am. But the thing is, I just want to see and hear with my own two eyes and ears as to where the redundancies are going to be with the positions, and whether or not there's some kind of communication that there's a need for it. Because the last thing I want to do is fight over this and we fund this thing and they don't fill it, and then it gets booted out again. And that would come back and, you know, possibly haunt us, you know. Mr. Kaneshiro: We're still open for discussion and brainstorming, so you know... Yes Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: I don't want to be redundant too much, but you know, we obviously have moved on a lot of these issues whether we adopt a plan or not, but Councilmember Kaneshiro, you make this point about we haven't adopted the plan. Well, we have a plan. We have a current solid waste plan that's been there since '94 that calls for a lot of these same things, and they haven't happened. So if we got to have a plan, let's rely on the one that currently is in force. So to me, this is simple, and we have a history as a council of putting forward many things that weren't in the budget, and the administration by and large have follows through. The last point is that the administration has some wonderful people working for it, and they know who their boss is. And you know, we all know through budget the department heads go to the mayor and say this is what I want, the mayor does what he can, he can't give all of the needs, he makes his calls, and then his good employees fall in line, and they're not going to come up here and say we really need this • • position, when their boss is telling them this is our proposal. So I think we've seen that during the budget review, because sometime... and so I think ... I admired those folks. I worked for the mayor at one point, and I would argue his positions even when I (inaudible) personally agree with him, because that was my job and I know how to do my job. And I hope we have a couple proposals here to vote on. One is to fund this, and the other is to fund it for half a year and see how it plays out. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any further discussions? If not, we're going to move on to some other items too. Ms. Kawahara: I wanted to talk again about the administration and why it's not in there. I believe we do need it, because you were able to say you don't believe ... or you don't know. Mr. Kawakami: I didn't say I don't believe. Ms. Kawahara: No, you said you don't know. Mr. Kawakami: I'm saying I don't know, and I... You can go ahead. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, you said you don't know if we need one, because you wanted more information. Mr. Kawakami: Yes, and that's normally what you do if you're not the expert in this field, is you ask for more information. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. I believe we do need one based on the testimony we received. Based on the list of things that are going to have to be done just for this pilot phase one project of curbside recycling. And whether or not it comes down from administration, whether or not and hopefully they will, or not fill it, I think the council can take ... be proactive and offer the incentive that that position is there, and it would be a statement saying that this county is, you know, committed to recycling and reusing resources and being responsible stewards of the environment. I think it's more about that too, about being responsible stewards and having somebody to coordinate how we're going to do it, and plan how we're going to do it, because it is going to have to be done. I can't imagine that the island would rather not have one, or would rather not want to recycle, because ... just because, you know... It wouldn't make sense for people to want to just throw away things because they can't recycle it. There's a strong motion out there to recycle and conserve and be.good stewards„ and I know we all want that.,_,And,from my perspective, I do believe we need one, and I ... the hump over the administration and it not being in there to me is something that the county council is ... has a way to address it and we put it in. And whether or not it's funded, to me, would be a statement either way that they could make ... that the administration could make. Thank you. Mr. Kawakami: Can I just ask for some clarification on that statement? Just to clarify, and I may be wrong, but your point is without the recycling coordinator we won't be able to be good stewards of the land and to implement any of our recycling efforts from the county side, without this position? Ms. Kawahara: I think we need the position to do it right and do it full heartedly right now. I think like we're doing it half way. Like right now we're starting a curbside phase one, but we're kind of going backwards. We have stuff here ready. We have stuff here ready. When are we going to implement it? It's a big project, and that's just one of them, and there's several others that are coming up. So no, I don't think if we didn't have one, we would not be good stewards. I just think it behooves us to have one so that we can do it well and be efficient at it and not have one • • side of a project sitting here waiting to get done while another one we have to wait for this side to come online. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Lani. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other discussion? Mr. Chair, you've been quiet through this discussion. Council Chair Asirig: Well, I guess maybe I have a little different point of view, and I think my point of view is fairly close to Councilmember Furfaro. Solid waste, the coordinator's position, my view is we have that person today sitting in that office. The only difference, it is called solid waste program development coordinator. We have a person with that experience today in that office. If it is so important, and I believe it is important, then it's just a matter of prioritizing that position's work requirements to achieve the programs that the administration wants to have. So we have the person sitting there. All we have to do is say, do it. The priorities that we're going to set for you is this is the area that I want you to concentrate on first. The rest would take other priorities, but not as high. So we have the position there. We have the body there. Do it. That's my message. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Very straight forward. With that... We'll come back and vote later on. Good to have several good discussions going on and perhaps between lunch you can (inaudible) questions out if you want to talk to somebody (inaudible). At this point, you know, I would like to move on and try see if we got anything else that we want to throw on the table or throw on the chart besides that. We're not cutting it short, I want you to understand that. But give others the opportunity if they have anything else or if they want to discuss budget concerns that they want to throw on the table. Anybody has anything else at this point? No? Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I'm waiting. Mr. Kaneshiro: This is your opportunity my friend. Mr. Bynum: I'm waiting, because this is minor. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: There's a line item in the finance under IT for broadband internet connection. We're currently doing 12 or so; it's in the budget response. I'd like to add $2,000 to that line item and I want to be right upfront, I want the broadband connection on my laptop that I'd waited for a year and a half, to better serve the county, I want to be able to access the internet when I'm sitting at this table, and we don't have that. We don't have wi -fi or connect. We don't have any other way to do that. And so the finance has told us it's $70 times 12, so if you did that for 2 more people, and if there are other Councilmembers here would like that service... I know Mel had that on his computer. You have it on your computer right? But I don't. I have a computer that has the chip built in to it, and I would like that service, and that's the way I can get it. I asked for ... like 2 years ago, and it hasn't happened yet. So I'd like to add 2,000 to that line item and I'm going to disclose that that would be enough for 2 people. That line item also pays for other people who have that service in the county now. That was one of our budget questions and they gave us a response. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, open up for further discussion on that. • • Mr. Furfaro: So if that's the 2 people... So if that's for 2 people, who kapus the second one? So Mr. Bynum should be suggesting a $14,000 item. I mean I don't want to be on a level playing field for everybody. Mr. Bynum: Anybody who wants it, let's add it in, because (inaudible). Mr. Kaneshiro: That's a good point. Ms. Kawahara: It's whoever wants it. Mr. Kaneshiro: It's not about me, it's about us. Ms. Kawahara: It's for whoever wants it. Mr. Bynum: I asked around who wanted it... Mr. Furfaro: I'm pleased to hear that you're willing to rephrase that to say anybody who would like that chip... Mr. Bynum: That was based on asking around who wants the service. Mr. Furfaro: Very good. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Mr. Kawakami, you have something you wanted to add? Mr. Kawakami: No. I think it's a great tool. But just to clarify the reason why I have one, yeah, because I pay for it, or somebody else pays for it out of their own pocket. So just to clarify that I'm not getting any special preference by having broadband; that bill is not going to the county. Mr. Bynum: I didn't mean to imply. Mr. Kawakami: No, no, not all. I wasn't implying that you're implying it. Ms. Kawahara: I just wanted to say that I would (inaudible) and hope that everybody who wanted it would get it, and then we would put that money in there. It's a very—it's a powerful tool, as Councilmember Kawakami, says, and I know that most of you know that the State legislature, three years ago, went paperless. They all have computers at their desk on the floor, and their offices of course, but they all use it from the floor. There's been many circumstances where I've been sitting here and I needed information that I knew was exactly where it was on a website where I had to go for it. That would have made me more effective, would have given me more information on decision making, whereas the way it is now I couldn't do it. The technology is here. It's easy, and this is a basic informational access request that I would support and would really like to see all of us take advantage of if we can pull it off. I think it's almost a requirement for us to be informed while we're sitting here at the desk, if we don't have that information, than to have our staff running around to get it. So for me, I think it's an important kind of infrastructure and informational thing that we need to have access to. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: I'd be happy to amend that to make it ... 7 would be $5,880. You know, perhaps our staff should have that access. I asked long ago, why don't we have a wi -fi • • thing, you know, and there's a security reason why we can't do that, and so the county has moved already in IT to this method, and you know, perhaps our staff could have access to it too, because as Councilmember Kawahara said, I go to the legislature, they all bring their laptops in, they plug it into a wire so they can access data on their own computers, right, and that... You know, I know a couple weeks ago Councilmember Furfaro said, hey I went and left the room to get this information. Well, that could be ready ... that could be right here at our fingertips with these kind of tools. A Mr. Furfaro: Well, let me clarify that. I went and got it on my own piece, because the restrictions that are on my computer in this council office are amazingly stiff to the point that I'm an elected official I can't even get into Google information. So I use my own stuff. And perhaps that's the policy that should review. It is totally unacceptable in the business world to restrict the 7 of us. Mr. Bynum: Amen. Ms. Kawahara: Hallelujah. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. One of the points that staff made is that when we move back here, we budgeted for internet access... Ms. Kawahara: Ethernet. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, okay. Well, I don't know the difference between internet or Ethernet. Mr. Bynum: So that will resolve that in this building in gosh knows how long, couple years. Maybe we can eliminate that from the budget in the future. But I do county business as home, when I travel, at meetings all over this community, and that's why I have a laptop. And you know, I'd like to access that information when it's necessary. If we get this building and we're back here in 2 years, we can eliminate this from the budget. But in the meantime, I'm asking for ... I'll modify it to 5880, which would be 7. I don't think all 7 of us will use it, but I think some our staff could use it, or there may be other people, because I'm asking to put it in the IT budget. Mr. Kaneshiro: So you have a number? Mr. Bynum: $5,880 would be 7. Mr. Kawakami: You can take one out, because I'm... Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, I don't know how to use it too. I don't even know what is broadband anyway. Mr. Bynum: Well, you know, that's why I asked everybody if they have laptops, would they be interested in getting it. Mr. Kaneshiro: But we can... I support the proposal, anything to make it more efficient. Wait. I just said that we're going to make our office more efficient... Ms. Kawahara: Effective. Mr. Kaneshiro: More effective, and make our Councilmembers much more effective, as I heard you can still do work from outside and so forth. That's fine, but I'm not a • • computer kind of person, just to let you know. Any other further discussion on that? That's a good discussion. We can put that up for now if you want to, Peter. Just list it. Like I said, we'd have to come back and vote on it. Was that a proposal of $5,880. Mr. Bynum: $5,880. I think we already have a contract with the provider and all of that, is what I was told. There's already a mechanism in place. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well that was for access for all 7, and this would allow staff and whoever else. Total 7. Ms. Kawahara: One more thing. I do hear Ricky, and I understand that we're going to be addressing it somewhere down the line. But right now is when we'd like to do it, and then address it when we get there ... to the move. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, anything else, because we're going to take a recess for lunch and come back and continue. Anybody else has anything they want to throw on the floor right now? Okay Peter, just put a plus $5,880 for now. Mr. Kawakami: Is that for unlimited, because I know there's like a cap too, yeah. If you go above the broadband cap then you get... Mr. Bynum: No. That's, I think, unlimited. IT has, you know, negotiated with the provider. I'm not 100... I'm assuming that, so I'm 99% sure that's correct. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, just a note, I will, as I've said to my colleagues here at the table, I will be writing to IT and their policy committee on the high controls they put on me and my office right now. You know, we talk about security, I understand. But right now they got me changing my password every 6 weeks, you know. I keep writing the same thing —I need a new password, or can you give me another password... I'm sorry, I'm just telling you what I'm writing. It doesn't mean that's what's where. It changes every 6 weeks. I mean it's just redundant ... too high control. Mr. Bynum: May I support Councilmember Furfaro on that. We have a web filter that filters our access to the internet. I have filled out that proper paperwork, because I was trying to research the cost of soccer goals for our parks, and I couldn't get on the website because it's sport content. I was trying to respond to a request from NACo for information, and I couldn't get --on-to their website.-And.I-wrote,.a justification that said.Lwon't_abuse_this county tool. My judgment about the sites I visit should be sufficient. And so it's a huge irritant to me that ... for that, and I filled out the proper paperwork and I still getting blocked. Mr. Furfaro: Well, maybe you're looking up the Chicago Cubs scores. Mr. Kaneshiro: Again, meet with staff. We'll come with a communication in that regard, okay. But we can move on with our budget concerns at this point. I want to suspend the rules. Mr. Rezentes, you had something you wanted to add? Mr. Rezentes: I just wanted to reiterate, because this topic has come up from the departments as well as far as access to internet sites. And like Councilmember Bynum said, and maybe we got to fine tune what we have, but there's all these various categories where individuals are not allowed to access, and usually... For instance, parks and recreation, they would want to get into sports. You know, there's a form we can have them quickly initial off, have their department head sign, and we can give them access. But you know, there's a multitude of areas that IT, over the past, has felt that certain types of employees don't need access too. For instance, finance department • • employee would not need to get into Food & Wine, you know. But you know, police department obviously they would need to ... certain members need access to the full ... the full run, the gamut, including various sites that are ... you know, I won't say. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, yeah. We get it. Mr. Rezentes: But you know, but maybe like you said, Councilmember Bynum, we need to fine tune it and improve it, and I understand the new filter software that they plan on getting this coming cycle will improve that. But I just wanted to state for the record that, you know, we have those forms and we can have ... give full access to people who need them, and I agree that Councilmembers would need, you know, a multitude of different things because of the topics that you folks need to be privy to. But the process is there. Mr. Furfaro: But Wally, you did hear, when you fill out the form, it doesn't happen either. Mr. Rezentes: Well, I think for the most part it does, but there's some that we need fine tune and fix, and then you know, this is... Councilmember Bynum's one we can look at. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll come with a communication with that, and then I don't think we need the answer right now for this budget...as we move on with the budget. All I need is country western music and I'm happy. With that, we'll call the meeting back to order. Mr. Bynum: I just want to make one final comment on this. You know, it . starts from the premise that we don't trust you. The message to employees is, we don't trust you. You're going to abuse, you're going to listen to music, or you're going to go to a website ... and that's something we should look at. Mr. Kaneshiro: We're straying a little bit off from our budget for broadband or whatever. So if committee members don't mind, we'll take a lunch recess, be back here at 1:15. Okay. We'll have a recess and come back at 1:15. There being no objections, the Chair recessed the meeting at 12:18 p.m. The meeting reconvened at 1:30 p.m., and proceeded as follows: Mr. Kaneshiro: We have, as you can see, the discussion we had this morning. You see the pluses up there. Are there any other discussions? Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: If I could go back to the... I'd like to suggest on the CIP budget the item that I suggested maybe we cut, but I was informed by the staff cannot do that. But this item waste reduction consultant services, I would like to know if there's support to put a provision in there that if the administration wants to spend those funds beyond the current contract that they're poised to execute that they come back and share with us what that would be for. So they have a contract like 125 for waste conversion study. I'm not trying to delay that or impact it in any way. Just any additional funds that they come back and let us know what they are, because... Have I said that correctly? Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. So that will go under the proviso side. Any further discussion on that? Mr. Bynum: The study they got poised to go, but any additional use of those funds. • • Mr. Kaneshiro: Currently they have something in place? Do it again one more time. Mr. Bynum: In our budget response we got an answer that says that they have ... I forgot the exact amount, about 120 or 125, in a contract that's about to be executed, and that there weren't any specific provisions for future uses of those funds. And so I just would like a proviso that says that beyond the budget which they're about to execute, any additional contracts, they come back and discuss with us. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright, so noted. Got it. Any other matters for discussion? Ms. Kawahara: About the same thing, the same study. I just wanted to know what everybody thought of the $100,000 put that aside to make sure that there's a MRF study from that same line. Mr. Kaneshiro: You have that in the bond float. You have 1.8... How much? Ms. Kawahara: For MRF. Mr. Kaneshiro: In the bond float, I think we have 1.8 million, or something like that, to do that. Mr. Furfaro: 1.6 million. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, in the bond float. Ms. Kawahara: Specific to a MRF? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: One million six, Lani. Mr. Kaneshiro: Right. Ms. , Kawahara . Okay, just. wondering. Thank you for the clarification. Mr. Kaneshiro: For doing the MRF, yes. It's there if you look at the bond section. Any other pluses up there on the board? If not, we can get into the discussions on what's up there. Anything else for now? I wanted to call for anything else. That's it. Okay. Then we'll get into some discussions about what's on the board, on the pluses. Does someone have some idea on the minuses on that? Any suggestions? We can open that up for discussion. Mr. Furfaro: I got a couple general items that I might suggest we look at, and it's really loose change, it's not big numbers. But reviewing back on the cost of the audit, previous years, I think we've got the administration making some adjustments, because we will have an in -house audit staff. I'm thinking for the purpose of our annual audit, the number is around 200,000, and we had change orders equaling about 58,000 from the previous year. And the one thing I want to say is under your leadership as finance chair, and the 2 years that I have it, we've constantly made a lot of improvements with the audit itself. We know where the shortfalls are. So I think we could actually find $25,000. I know it's not a lot, but I would say we could find 25,000 there. And in the building department, repair and maintenance, considering the fact that much of 0 0 the work that we got earmarked for improvements will actually be in the CIP portion, that we might be able to reduce that 850,000, I think, for repair and maintenance, we might be able to reduce that by about $37,000. Those are small amounts, but it's a start. Mr. Kaneshiro: For discussion purposes to offset some of this. Mr. Furfaro: And I think again, the rationale is we've made constant improvements in the audit. Maybe we don't need the 300,000. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any more further discussions on that? I'm still going to leave it open, but if we don't, what I want to do is take the easy ones first, you know, and move on that items, if we could, and then we'll find the minuses off of some of the things that Mr. Furfaro suggested, if it's okay with the committee. So he's talking about 25,000 more for the performance audit side, from our side, as a minus. Mr. Furfaro: It's 25 on the audit, and 37 on R &M. Mr. Kaneshiro: So what we want to do first of all is take the easy part. So we would say that... Let me try guide us committee through this. What we're saying that we need to still vote on the farm fair CFL under the economic development. So if you feel comfortable that some of that money can come out from the proposal that Mr. Furfaro said, that's fine.. We'll have some discussion on that if you want to. But I would like to take the easy ones first and save the hardest one for the last to have some discussion on. Lani? Ms. Kawahara: Because I don't have all the information and I was going for that food composting, can I... I can take that out, because we didn't really work on that as much as we did on the other ... on the lighting. Mr. Kaneshiro: So you say maybe put about 3,000 in there instead? Ms. Kawahara: 2,500. Mr. Kaneshiro: Under the farm fair CFL... Mr. Chang: Three. Ms. Kawahara: 3,000, and then as low as 2,500. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright. We have a committee member suggestion that instead of leaving 5,000 to that, we'll bring it down to 2,000? Mr. Chang: 3,000. Mr. Kaneshiro: So with that, I think we can take a vote on that. Ms. Kawahara: Oh, to make it lower? Mr. Furfaro: To vote to see if you have the 5 votes to support it. Ms. Kawahara: Oh, to just add it. Mr. Kaneshiro: To support you. • Ms. Kawahara: Okay. See, this is my baby ... little baby training. Council Chair Asing: Let me just come out right now and say I don't have a problem with that. It's so small, so minor, it is immaterial, and I don't have a problem. Mr. Kaneshiro: I don't think any of us have a problem. You have the ayes for that. You got it. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you my colleagues. Mr. Kaneshiro: So 3,000 in there for that, for the economic development. And then we'll minus, I guess, 3,000 from our county audit. Ms. Kawahara: That was Jay's money. Mr. Kaneshiro: Next item is the Red Cross program under the mayor's office. The recommendation is to add 2,500 to that to make the full funding of 25,000. Council Chair Asing: Again, so small, so minor, immaterial... Compromise on my part, whether I like it or not, it's not a major problem, I will agree to it. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, got it. The minute will be off of the same item reflected by Mr. Furfaro. And we'll go back down to... What else I got up there? Let's do broadband. Now broadband. We're talking about broadband. So 5880...I don't think we have any problems with that. Council Chair Asing: I don't have a problem with that either. I think it's a reasonable request, and the number is small, and I can live with it. Mr. Kaneshiro: . Okay, you got it, Tim. Big smile. Seven zero (7:0) on that. It will also be offset from the county audit portion. Okay, with that I'll take the... I believe that's the last item we have, right, on the plus and minus that we wanted to do. Oh yea, we have some provisos. Mr. Watanabe: One from the CIP, one from the operating. The operating one is for... Three from operating. One is the State Lobbyist text, one is the Food Bank text, and one is the KPD attorney text from the operating, and one is the... The last one would be the CIP text on the, _ waste,contr,act:remaining funds. . Mr. Kaneshiro: Right, we got that on. So on the provisos, Peter, we have Derek's raised that one concern regarding the attorney's office, and the proviso was the if can, the position will stay at the police department. Is that correct Mr. Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: Yes sir. He will be based there at the police department. Mr. Bynum: But still in the county attorney's budget. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, yeah, but... Mr. Kawakami: No, no, but I'm talking physically, that was the main point. Mr. Kaneshiro: Physically, the physical. Mr. Bynum: Just wanted to clarify. • Mr. Kaneshiro: Just that the physical ... or the personnel would be housed there, but still be under the county attorney's office ... if there is sufficient space... Mr. Kawakami: And that it doesn't affect their mission of becoming accredited. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Watanabe: And then the State Lobbyist one is to work together with the council to develop a joint package and lobbying effort. The Food Bank text will be putting that this will be the second of a 2 -year grant. In other words, this is the last year that (inaudible). Mr. Furfaro: I hope everybody's okay with that that we say this is the second of a 2 -year service. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, we had that proviso on the last time, and you know, everybody realize the fiscal constraints that we're going to be facing the next year and a half. So at least it's nice to have that proviso in there in case. Mr. Watanabe: And the proviso for the CIP is any future contracts for expenditure funds, remaining funds from the source reduction contract to come back to council (inaudible)...no not for approval, come back to council with a plan. Mr. Kaneshiro: For discussion of scope of any additional contracted service. Yes Mr. Chang. Mr. Chang: Thank you. Just a question. Do we need to do any wording for the humane society? Mr. Kaneshiro: No, not at this point. We don't know what they may come with next year. They might come down with lower because they had a good fundraising event. Council Chair Asing: I have never in all my years seen that. Mr. Bynum: YWCA requested 20,000 less last year. They said we don't need that much because... I've seen it once. Mr. Kaneshiro: So with that, we need ayes ... at least 5 votes for our provisos. So I recognize that we don't have any noes here, so it's all 7 votes for that. Okay, now we want to go back to ... everybody understands that part, we'll go back to the public works and we'll have some discussion on the recycling specialist position at this point. So again, I've heard some of your concerns, I've heard your concern. Do you have any additional to add to that? At this time I'll give you the floor, Lani. Go ahead. Ms. Kawahara: Could I pass this out to everybody? Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Ms. Kawahara: This came up in February when I was having discussions with that office, recycling office and Allison. And this is to try to help my colleagues and Councilmembers to maybe answer some of your questions about what the recycling coordinator actually would do, and what Allison's doing on top of what she's doing now. (See Attachment 3 hereto). Because they did have a recycling coordinator for about 9 months, I believe. And that includes these and the Hi -5. Council Chair Asing: How many hours does she work a day? Ms. Kawahara: 8? Council Chair Asing: How many hours does she work a day? How many hours does Allison work a day? Ms. Kawahara: 8. Council Chair Asing: 8 hours. Ms. Kawahara: 8 hours would be a 40 hour... Council Chair Asing: Okay, I was just wondering. I was just looking at this list and I was thinking, I don't know how she's going to do all this. She's magic. If anyone in the county is doing this, wow, we need to give all you guys raises. Wally, would you like to provide a list like this on all the things that you do? Mr. Kaneshiro: The other thing I want committee members to know is that there is other staff in there also now, okay. Remember, there's not just one... Ms. Kawahara: Right, no. They have 3. Mr. Kaneshiro: There's other staffs in there to do... Correct, there's 3 people in there too. So I just want to point that out that, you know, you just don't have Allison herself as a program development coordinator; you have some people under her that also work there. I believe there's 2 other staff, 2 or 3 other staff. Ms. Kawahara: If I could get clarification on that. So the environmental service management engineer that would be Troy right? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes. Correct. , ___Ms_Kawahara:___ _ , _ --- , Okay., so the solid, waste, program development coordinator is the one that was funded that is Allison, when you raised her up, you said? Mr. Kaneshiro: Right, program development coordinator. That's correct. Ms. Kawahara: So I've got this plan here. So she's kind of a assistant or deputy assistant to Troy. So it seems like that she's doing... oversee plan implementation, which includes assisting and procurement of service providers, siting of solid waste facilities, communicating with other county offices and the State department of health, and preparation of program budgets, and evaluating plan performance, which to me seems like to be a broad scale overseeing the departments. So that, to me, is a totally separate position, which it is, and that's why this is a separate position on the recycling side. Because all of these things are not broad overview things of a deputy. This is a hands -on frontline kind of position, which is a recycling coordinator, to me. So that's my bid to convince you that that's why we need a county recycling coordinator, because it is 2 separate jobs. • • Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. You know, also you need to look at their budget. They have a departmental contract specialist. Now they're the ones that do the specs. The departmental contract specialist getting paid $60,000. So I wanted to point that out too, okay. Council Chair Asing: Well, I'll just come upfront, and I mentioned I'm not going to support it, period. You have someone there that is experienced enough to do the job, can do the job today, and if it is the priority of this council and the administration, that position could handle the job right now, today. So I won't be supporting it. There's other reasons for my non - support also, and I think on top of all of that, it is in the budget. The only difference is dollar funded. So the position... Let me ask the question. Is the position in the budget? What is the answer? The answer is yes it is. So what is the big deal? It is there already. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I'm really surprised we're even discussing this, because our community has made it extremely clear that this is critical to them and important to them. In our budget we have the position that Troy and Allison fill with a huge backlog•of projects to do, and I think Councilmember Kawahara is correct —in our budget separately there's a recycling office with 2 line items, and that position is currently not filled. It was a few months ago, and so at some point the administration thought it was important enough to fill it. Right now if you call the recycling number, Allison answers, and she has other duties to do. This is something that I think...just the evidence is clear to me that there's a huge amount of projects in solid waste. They need that support. We had it once before. There's a big difference between dollar funding something and putting the funds in there, from my point of view, and I just am really surprised that we're not all unanimously supporting that. And so I just... Mr. Kaneshiro: I don't agree with unanimously supporting what (inaudible)? Mr. Bynum: No, I said I'm surprised that we're not. Mr. Kaneshiro: And I can tell you simply why, and I said it before. If I do have a request come from the administration tomorrow or this afternoon or 10 minutes from now, I don't have a problem. Right now there is no request. We went through the review process. No one in fact even talked about this position through the budget review process. I mean committee members, when we were doing the committee time that we were going through. Only after the public came up here and gave testimony and stated it, that because we have a draft solid waste plan, we need this position. And this is why I'm standing strong on the point that once we have a solid waste management plan fully adopted, I fully support that position. Simple as that. Mr. Bynum: Well I just want to state for the record that my support for this position went prior to the public hearing, and to me that just underscored the necessity. And as the administration knows, because I lobbied them about this, I lobbied, and I'm disappointed. They did such an outstanding job on the supplemental. This was the place that was missing, and I know I'm being redundant, but this council last year funded a number of positions that were not in the administration's request, and the administration filled them. And so I agree with Councilmember Kawahara. Our role here is to share our view on behalf of our constituents about what the priorities of the county should be. This is an extremely high priority to me, and I think to many members, and so enough, let's get the vote, I'm done. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: No, I'm not going to be supporting it. It just goes back to my fundamental decision making process, and... I mean what's the point of putting money in it now, I • • mean versus dollar funding? Is it to be symbolic, to send a message, and that's what I'm wrestling with personally. It's not pointed at anybody. Because we can put the money in, but ... and they can fill it or not fill it. But if they decide that there's a need, it's dollar funded, they can come back. You know, as far as, you know, the community coming and asking for this, they also asked me to base my decision making on being diligent, and also asking for answers to my questions, and I haven't had any feedback from the administration side that there's a need for it right now. And if there is, I'll wholeheartedly support it. And I'm just going to wait for the administration to come back and, you know, answer some of the things, like what the job description is going to entail. I mean what is going to be shifted around. And you know, because people across the United States are consolidating positions, and this is what happened to that recycling coordinator position. No, the individual agreed to take the status upgrade, the pay increase, as well as the additional responsibilities, and you always have an option to say no. And at that time, they accepted the responsibilities, and if it should come back that it's overwhelming, hey I'll wholeheartedly support it. But it's got to come from that side too, the justification. And that's my main point. It's not that I'm against recycling. I wholeheartedly support recycling, but I want to see some justification, and at least the desire to have this filled from that side of the street. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any further discussion? Ms. Kawahara: I do. I understand where you're coming from. I just wanted to say that I'm not sure that bringing up whatever they did with the other position and what they were requiring that position to do would be part of this process. This is just about a recycling coordinator. That other position is doing what they're doing, and I believe it is a separate position, and whatever they took on, I don't have the information on what they promised to do for a certain amount of money. I feel that this is a totally separate position, and I support it 100 %. And the ... I guess what concerns me is that I don't need to wait for administration, as a councilmember, to tell me they want to do something or they don't want to do something. Of course I want to collaborate and work with them. If they haven't put it in there, I don't know what the message is, but as a councilmember and as a person representing my constituents, I know they want a recycling coordinator, and that's where I am. Mr. Kawakami: That's fine. You're representing your constituents fine. Ms. Kawahara: And personally, well never mind personally. That has come loud and clear. Regarding whether ... what happened in the hearings, I don't remember when they were here, but it could be that I let my eye off the ball, but I do want a recycling coordinator. I think - ,that.-it-is. °demanded, by where we will be_ going,_ and it's obvious_ where we'll be going, and that requires a recycling coordinator to get us there and to get us to reduce our waste and increase our diversion. And that's the goal of everybody I know on the island. They don't just want to trash stuff because it's easy. They want to present what we have and not be wasteful. Mr. Kawakami: So are you implying that by my not supporting this that I don't support waste diversion and recycling? Ms. Kawahara: No. Mr. Kawakami: Let's clarify that. Ms. Kawahara: No. I said everybody here wants to do that. I'm positive about that, because I just said nobody wants to just throw trash because we don't have a way to recycle it. But for me, the priority for me to show that we have a commitment is to fund it, and my support is 100% behind a full funding of this position to show that this council is committed, and if • not the whole council, then at least myself I'm going to show that there's a commitment there to do the job, to do the recycling. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. That's okay too. Council Chair Asing: I want to at least make plain, because I am not sure what I heard right now that it appears as though Councilmember Kawamura (sic)... Mr. Kawakami: Which one, Kawamura or... Council Chair Asing: Kawahara, I'm sorry. That you know, if you vote against it, then that means you're not for the program. I don't want that message to go out from me. I am totally committed to that. But I do not feel that we need that position at this particular time, and if we in fact need to have the work done, we have the capability of doing it. It's just prioritizing the work that is presently being done there by a very well qualified individual in the solid waste program development coordinator's position. Thank you. Ms. Kawahara: Just so I can reply. Yeah, I in no way would like to imply or say that nobody would support any kind of recycling program. Just to be very, very clear. I'm sure we all do. Whether and how we get to it, I think we're coming to see that we're different. And I'm glad you brought that up again about whether or not we ... you know, we already have somebody there that can do it. I would submit that we have somebody there, but the fact that we're so far behind and we such a backlog would show that there is an inability to do it because there's a backlog, meaning there's more work than the one person can do, because it is specifically a separate job. That would be what I'd like to submit. Everybody admits that we're backlogged... well, okay. I think he does, and I think I do. I don't know what you think, but I know we're behind. I believe we're behind, and that's been brought up, and the reason we're behind is... My thing is I think it's because it's a lot of work and it's not something that you just pile onto one person when it can be ... it's a totally separate position. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Chang. Mr. Chang: First of all, you know I am ready to vote, and if we're going to break down every single category as being backlogged, from the short amount of time I've had the pleasure and privilege of sitting here, many projects that we've been dealing has been revealed as being backlogged. So during this time, and a case in point, we're voting on getting a lobbyist because we all know we need a lobbyist when we go to the big city. And during lunch and during this whole time, I've never heard anybody lobbying us on the side like, we need it now, we need it. We had a coordinator. It didn't work out for whatever reason. I would have said, is if that coordinator left and there was a sense of urgency, then we would all have jumped on it. I mean Allison Fraley got a bump, she got a raise, she got a higher position. I've worked with her over the years on many, many, many, many occasions, and I feel that we're close enough, we're friends enough, to say you know, can you please help us out, we're having a problem over here, and I don't think our bosses are... administration, understands how bad it is. Then I would think that if they really needed the help, and of course the position is already funded, then we all agree that ... you know, we all agree that, you know, if and when the time comes we'll all be able to jump in. But I can just say that there are other positions here that are backlogged, and everybody's making do with what they have. And you know, earlier there was a statement, and I don't want to bring it up, but there was a statement when you made reference to the administration and to the council, like are just all here to rubberstamp... I mean I'm not here to rubberstamp anybody. I'm here to have discussions with everybody and I want it to be perfectly clear.that we're all 7 different minds and 7 different people that do our research, and in any way shape or form, I'm not going to just have them push something over and say, okay boom, you got my stamp, or boom you got my stamp. And at this particular point, you know, we all know that, you know, the people that came here lobbied because it was something that was true and passionate to their heart, but I don't see ... you know, I don't see a sense of urgency at this particular point. And if and when it gets to that point, I think we're all ready set and go, from what I'm hearing. And in respect to both yourself and Councilmember Bynum, I understand the push and the need. But I think I'm just ready to vote and say let's move on. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro, you had something? Mr. Furfaro: Yes. I actually have an alternative to this, but you know, I want to say something here that's really important. And you know, I think people were sensitive to the fact that are we just here to rubberstamp it. Fact of the matter, I've run budgets bigger than the county of Kaua`i's in my hotel experience, and I'm not here to rubberstamp anything. But I am here to say that if we're going to put some money in, we got to find some money, and that's why I made the early announcement about the R &M, repair and maintenance money, that's in the building department. I think we can squeeze 35,000 out of building, and I think we can put in 6 months of this coordinator. Now, Mr. Kaneshiro has made a very constructive comment. When we adopt the plan, it has to be implemented, and that person needs to be in place. But you know, in very few months we're going to have 4,000 orange containers land at our lap which will require ... I think they're orange, which are going to require training... green? ... I think that's the next color. I saw ... I read it once. But anyway, we have to perhaps fund 6 months of this position, which including benefits, comes out to about 37,649. And I'm saying earlier, and we take 37,000 out of the building moneys that we have. In particular, we have 175,000 in the fire department, and yet the fire department is going to get a new building at one station, they're going to be in a spot where we've agreed on leasing some space for the time, but the R &M budget is 850,000 altogether. We got to earmark it coming out of one particular area. And Allison does wonderful work. I think the chair spoke of her work, and the scope that we have, much of it is planning. But the worst thing we can do is get ready to implement it in October or 6 months from now and find out we don't have the people here that are laying out the critical schedules and doing the training and so forth. And yet I can justify that. I can't justify putting that person in now, but I guess Mr. Chair, if this vote fails on getting 5 votes for staffing now, I will be introducing something for 6 months. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, I mean we're all open for discussion here, and committee members, feel free to indulge. Mr. Furfaro: I just wanted to point out too, we're at a point if you're going to add something, you got to find something to take away too. That's why I did the R &M. Mr. Kaneshiro: You're absolutely right. Okay, with that, I'm going to call for the vote for the full funding right now... Ms. Kawahara: But then I have 50,000 for 75... Mr. Kaneshiro: I'm calling for that vote right now ... to add that position. Mr. Bynum: Let's have the vote. Mr. Kaneshiro: So I'm calling the vote to have the full funding position. This is in regards to... Mr. Furfaro: For 12 months. Mr. Kaneshiro: The 12 months, what's on the board right now, and with that, we'll just take a voice call. 0 0 Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: FOR FULL FUNDING: AGAINST FULL FUNDING: Can we do a roll call? Okay. Full funded position, roll call please? Bynum, Kawahara TOTAL - 2 Chang, Furfaro, Kawakami, Kaneshiro, Asing TOTAL - 5 Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, so that's off the table for now, the full funded position. Now there was some suggestion about a half position. We can have some discussion on that, or even further take it down to 3 -month position if need be. Could be further discussion. I'll open that up. Mr. Furfaro: Since I identified the funding source as well as the expense, I would like the first vote on the 6 months. Ms. Kawahara: Which 6 months was it going to be? Beginning or... Mr. Furfaro: No, it wouldn't be at the beginning, because we terminate the person. So it would be after they deliver their plans, and then fully fund it for the balance of those months. Mr. Bynum: So January 2010. Mr. Furfaro: Could be, yeah. Mr. Kaneshiro: If you don't mind, we usually don't do this, but Mr. Kawakami wanted to ask Gary (Heu) a question. Mr. Kawakami: If this is out of protocol, I have no problem. Mr. Kaneshiro: No, this is good. I think... This is only one item, and I think it's an important item for us to be able to, you know, have some reasonable discussion. I'll open it up. So with that... It's not like we're going through every single line item and we bring these guys up. One question, so I'll suspend the rules. Mr. Heu. Mr. Kawakami: My question is, solid waste program development coordinator, does that job also entail the recycling coordinator when you guys reallocated the position? GARY HEU, Administrative Assistant: Good afternoon, Gary Heu for the record. I think the discussion on the floor has been good this afternoon. I think that in direct answer to your question, the recycling functions and coordination could fall under that position as identified. Now, in these times ... in these kind of tough times, we have been taking a look at how we can, as the chair said, re- prioritize, also taking a look at work functions and seeing how we can reallocate work responsibilities to still carry out the mission of any given division, including solid waste. And we haven't ... I meant his exercise is not unique to the solid waste division. I mean there are ... I mean when you folks said, you know, if this position was really needed we would have gotten the request, people would have asked, and just then I was hoping Donald wasn't going to come busting through the door saying we want the recycling coordinator, but... Because you know, that same question posed to any other department head, I mean you'll get department heads, you know, lobbying and advocating for various positions within their department, within divisions, that at the highest levels within the administration we've had to take a ... you know, hold the line on. Once we start giving the line, I mean everything breaks loose on us and pretty soon we're, you know, a couple million dollars up on the budget. And so these have all been really, really tough decisions to make, but it 0 ! shouldn't... it's not a reflection on our commitment to performing all the job functions, including recycling, that need to be done within that division. And so we have been looking at, like I said, different work functions of various individuals within the overall department, as well as the division, to see how we can reallocate the work so that we can accomplish everything that needs to be done, and that goes up to the very highest level, up to Donald Fujimoto as a department head placing a lot more of his focus today than he was a year ago on solid waste and wastewater issues. And some of his other responsibilities have again, you know, been spread out among other leadership roles within the department to offset and accommodate that. So I think what you'll be seeing over the next year and more is that our county engineer, Donald Fujimoto, at the highest level will be placing a lot more of his focus and emphasis on solid waste in particular, and secondarily wastewater, which is another very, very important division within solid waste. So again I ... you know, I thank you for the opportunity to at least provide some input and to try to assure the council that, again, just because we didn't come over here and fully fund that position doesn't mean that ... doesn't speak to our commitment to getting that work done. Mr. Kaneshiro: Question, Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Gary, it's tempting to ask you a million questions and put you on the spot, but I won't do that. I'll just ask one, okay. If this council funded that position, would the administration hire it? Mr. Heu: Today? You mean July 1? Mr. Bynum: If we funded the position for the full year, would you hire it, or would you just not hire it? Mr. Heu: We probably wouldn't go out and fill that position from July 1. Mr. Bynum: When would you fill it? Mr. Heu: When we felt it was really truly a need. You know, and I just throw this out ... I mean you folks will go back into your deliberation and what you folks do is totally up to you, but you know, I think it was previous to last year or maybe the year before, there is now a budget proviso, we were just talking about it a few minutes ago with council staff also, I think it's proviso number 17, which requires us now to come over and to provide justification and answer other questions relative to dollar funded positions. Previously, and I think what's different in this year, I _Ahink_in- previous- deliberations and discussions, with council,,_a_lot _ of times_ we've come with a fully funded position, and council has said, no you know what, we're going to dollar fund it. So the position can stay, but you guys got to come back to us when you fill it. This year it's kind of turned around and we've come to you guys saying we're going to dollar fund all these positions. But the proviso is still there. You know, another consideration is if you wanted to give the administration a little more leeway or latitude on certain positions is to take that requirement off of that particular dollar funded position, and then when the need arose, we can move fairly quickly in terms of funding it out of the available resources within a given division or department. But I just throw that out for your thought and consideration as you guys, you know, kind of deliberate on this matter. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for that. Thank you Gary. Any... I'll call the meeting back to order at this time. Meeting is now called back to order, and then we can have some further discussions on this if need be. Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. First of all, some clarification on provision 17. I just want to point out to the new Councilmembers that public safety, police, and so forth are exempt from that. I just want to point that out. Secondly, the assumption here about them needing to make controls over there, and our comments over here about the consolidation of positions, I want to make sure that ... and make it very clear, I'm taking my responsibility, saying if I want to put something in the budget, which I have the prerogative to do, I also have to find the money, and I'm doing that in this suggestion. And this is not millions of dollars we're talking about. Some of these items are extremely beneficial for some pretty manini amounts. So I think I want to state my position that I understand the value of ..and the appropriate term is right- sizing the positions we're talking about here. But the fact of the matter is, this is where we let it be known what we would like to see in our effort to do things together, and I would like to again point out that I would like to see the 37,649 put in the budget as a plus for 6 months, and the 37,000 taken out of the budget as a minus under repair and maintenance. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for that. Again, for me, I've heard the administration perspective is that there are many other dollar funded positions, and I think they have a plan, you know, how to use those positions, if not those dollar funded positions wouldn't be there. They still need some opportunity to analyze those positions and look at which ones they feel are important for them to go ahead and fully fund. So I respect their perspective. So you know, I'm not even sure if I can support even a 6 -month at this point ... at this time. Mr. Furfaro: I Thank you. I just didn't want their position be exaggerated, you're talking about, and it makes it difficult for us when we add millions. Mr. Kaneshiro: With that, any more... Mr. Asing? Council Chair Asing: You know, by the response from the administration that if we put it in, will you hire, and the answer is no, until we feel that it is necessary and warranted and we feel that we need to do it, you know, just by that answer alone, it would be in appropriate for me to do that. You know, we got a clear answer from the administration —you can put it on, but we're not going to hire until we feel it's necessary. I have some difficulty with that. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay Lani, go ahead. Ms. Kawahara: I wanted to just thank Chair Furfaro ... Councilmember Furfaro with finding money in the budget, because for the life of me, I couldn't figure out where to find money. So I really appreciate it, and I'm going to know how to and better at reading and finding money next time. So I appreciate that very much. Mr. Kaneshiro: Next budget going be little bit easier. Ms. Kawahara: I guess harder when no more money yeah. . Mr. Kaneshiro: I think this is a good practice for all us, because we are... Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, so I really appreciate it, yes, very much. I did want to say that I heard the administration's answer, and they are committed to recycling. I believe that as a council ... or as a councilmember, if they don't want to fund it, that's fine, but for me, it would be ... and because it's something that it was ... most of what we do here in some ways is incentivising... To incentivise a program to do ... department to do something, and incentivising to start programs. So to me I don't have a problem putting something in the budget, but it makes a statement that I believe is important, and that I believe that it is truly a need now. So for me, in answer to Chair Asing with no disrespect and truly respectful, to me that is something that a council can do is to have that there and to make a statement. And for other Councilmembers, I'm not sure what they want to do, but for me it's a statement that I do want to make. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you. I'm not going to support this one too. Just fundamentally, we got the answer. And you know, if they want a message, I'm not going to sprinkle money on it to send a message. But I guess, you know, as Councilmembers we got to do ... we can do our job too. We can go across the street and lobby these guys, you know, if it's a priority. There are ways to go about in getting things done, you know, and it's just a collaborative effort to go back and, you know, when they're ready they can come back, and with the justification that I need, and you know, we can go from there. Mr. Kaneshiro: With that, I don't think we even need to take a vote, because if you look at it... Mr. Chair, you had a comment? Council Chair Asing: Yeah. Let me... I just want to add one more thing. I think if we all listened carefully to what the administration said, the administration said that we're going to take our positions, and in our positions we're going to be asking the administration's members from doing work and making prioritization on which important items should be handled, and that's the way it's going to get done. And then when the time comes that we need the additional help, that's when they're going to hire. So that's what the administration is telling us. They're doing something. They're not going to do nothing, but they're going to make the departments to handle with whatever they have now, and when it comes to a point where we need help, we cannot handle it anymore, we'll come in and we'll ask the dollar funding position to get done. So that's what I heard, and I agree. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. Mr. Chair, I would like to have a roll call vote on my second particular piece, and I do also want to say that in trying to reach out to the administration on the value and the important that I put on this, I just want to recall and restate what Chairman Asing just mentioned is, if we've put it there, they wouldn't have hired it anyway, the staff person. We have a track record of, you know, not being the most efficient planners and having the right people in the staff positions. I most notably know that because on June 10 I'm going to have the planning department give us a full recap of what they're doing. But I do want to have a roll call vote. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, that's not a problem too. Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: I don't want to belabor this much more at all, but I am concerned about, you know, what, Councilmember Kawahara said is, and I agree with her, that we should put our money where our mouth is and where our priorities are, and this council has a long history of doing that. And so with 3 new members here, I want to know that all the other members that have been here have supported many items in the budget in the past that were a message to the administration, and the lobbying continued, and then the money was there for them to move. So I don't want to get this sense, because I am concerned that, is like oh because they didn't ask for it, you know, we don't have a roll in letting them know what our priorities are and putting the resources there for the priorities to be realized. And we have a long history of doing that, and many items that the administration didn't ask for in the budget were funded, and they moved on them, and they made them happen because they trusted that a majority of members of this council said this is a priority to us, and out of that ... based on that input had the good sense, in my opinion, and courtesy to move forward with what a majority of their legislative told them was important. So I just wanted to make that statement, and I'm ready to roll call vote. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, and I just want to send a clear message. As budget chair, you know, the message I want to send is that we all are just concerned about recycling, everyone of us. But the administration, what I heard, had put some priorities on what they wanted • • to do, and if we were to have discussion on all this dollar funded positions, because to me, all of these dollar funded positions are really important positions, and looking at the list, we have 53 right now, dollar funded positions. And for me, for each department, whether you look at it at the Wailua golf course, you look at it Wastewater, you look at all those different, you know, dollar funded positions, you couldn't even... sprinkler system repair work, they all would be top priorities and things that we ourselves wanted to fund and get done. But I will take the message from the administration that they will be doing some work on prioritizing, and in my belief that, especially now we got to remember when we started off with this budget, we started off in a manner that we felt we were going to have some real declining revenues. We started off where the TAT was been threat of they taking away, and working together with the administration, the administration was frugal enough to dollar fund a lot of these positions, 52 positions, even though they felt that these were vital positions, you -know, that needed to be filled. So for me, I'm looking at it as a budget chair finance person type, I'm looking at it where, you know, once they are comfortable and they address some of this, many of these even dollar funded positions may pop back up and come back to our table. So like I said, for every department, these positions are all important positions. But in no way I want anyone to feel that we are sending the message that we are here not recycling, because you know, even at home I do it, believe it or not, I really do it. I have a basket that I put all my recycling in and my yard man, after he comes and clean the place, takes all of it. So just to let you know. We're all in this... I think the message is out there. We want to do it. We all do it. And I know many of us do it at home and in business, but I just want to emphasize that, you know, that right now I have a list in front of me with 53 dollar funded positions, and if you look at these positions, you'll be surprised, you know, it comes from engineering, building inspection, road maintenance, park maintenance, roads administration, Hanapepe...these are all important positions too that need to be filled, because we have so much problems sometimes with road maintenance and soon. But I ... you know, take a look at this list so you can see where I'm coming from, and I won't be able to support, like I said, any funding until the request comes through from the administration. I will be more than happy to fully fund those positions when those times come. So with that, I will call for the vote. Mr. Clerk please. FOR 6 MONTHS FUNDING: Bynum, Furfaro, Kawahara TOTAL - 3 AGAINST 6 MONTHS FUNDING: Chang, Kawakami, Kaneshiro, Asing TOTAL - 4 Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, with that, I believe we don't have any items on the floor. Mr. Bynum: I do now. Mr. Kaneshiro: What's that? Mr. Bynum: I have one now. Mr. Kaneshiro: We already did our plus and minuses. Unless you have a new one. Mr. Bynum: I mean I want to respond to what Gary said up here, and I'd like to suggest that we put ... that we exempt the recycling coordinator position from the proviso 17, and if they choose to hire it that they can move ahead. That's what Gary suggested right here, unless I got it wrong. He said that's something you may want to consider. So I've considered it, and I'd like us to exempt the recycling... Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, so you're talking about a proviso... Mr. Bynum: A proviso to exempt the recycling coordinator from the proviso that requires them to come back to council should they choose to hire. Mr. Kaneshiro: What about the 52 other positions? Mr. Bynum: You want to get into it? Mr. Kaneshiro: Well I'm just saying, I mean what about the 52 other positions too? I mean we all, you know... I think through the urgency, we'll have communication with them, we'll know far ahead in time that if they're going to come up here and ask us for that position, you know, we can start working on it, you know what I mean? If not, we might have to do for many of the other positions too. But these are all the dollar funded positions right here. Mr. Bynum: So we can't do that? Mr. Kaneshiro: You know, sometimes we still might be good to have some dialogue on the justification. Mr. Bynum: If we dollar fund positions, if they wanted to fill any position on this list, because of the proviso we put in last year, we require them to come to council... Mr. Kaneshiro: For justification, that's all. It's a communication, right? And if we have some problems, we refer the communication... Mr. Bynum: So is it a communication for approval or communication for... Mr. Kaneshiro: It's just a notice, right? Hold on one second. Mr. Bynum: Proviso 17 requires the administration to do what? Mr. Watanabe: Requires a bill. Mr. Bynum: So it requires a bill... Mr. Watanabe: All dollar funded... Mr. Kaneshiro: Well all dollar funded positions going require a bill anyway. Mr. Bynum: v Well I guess I'd like to suggest we change that provision, as long ... the way the administration said. They have to come here... Mr. Kaneshiro: You want to take a 5 minute recess, so we can have some clarification on this matter? Mr. Bynum: Sure. Mr. Kaneshiro: Why don't we do that? In all fairness to everyone, take a 5 minute recess and go ahead and have some clarification. There being no objections, the Chair called a recess at 2:32 p.m. The meeting reconvened at 2:37 p.m., and proceeded as follows: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum, we got some clarification, I believe? Mr. Bynum: Yeah, so during the recess... I just want this on the record. If this position is established, even at a dollar, the proviso says they have to come back one time, get approval to move ahead with hiring. If they need money because it was only dollar funded, then they have to get ... they have to do a money bill, which takes a lot longer and is more complex. And so that is the ... I'm personally comfortable with that, because ... and that allows them, if in their budget they have room to fund that person for 3 months or 6 months or a whole year, and they already have the latitude to move the money around, then they don't have to come here and go through a whole bill process with first reading, public hearing, second reading. They just need to come... They still need to come. They just need to come and say, hey we like hire, is it okay, and we can do it all in one meeting, right? Mr. Kaneshiro: Correct. We can do it all in one communication, one council meeting. Mr. Bynum: And that's what I was suggesting that we make it one meeting, and it already is, so I'm happy. Mr. Kaneshiro: Basically because it was a funded position, it was a fully funded position, and they just dollar funding it now for this period of time. But it was already an established fully funded position. Mr. Bynum: And I ... Thanks Alvin for helping us work that out as well. Mr. Kaneshiro: So the communication would basically come to the council, and if we're all in agreement, basically boom, it's done. Mr. Kawakami: I got a comment on that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: That's something I could definitely support. And just from experience these last few months, the way I've worked with the administration has been very pleasant, so I know that when the time comes, that well in advance they'll have the justification that I was asking for as far as the job descriptions on both positions so I can compare as to if there's any redundancies. So thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, very good. Mr. Chang? Mr. Chang: So just recapping. There's 53 dollar funded positions. Mr. Kaneshiro:. Correct. I have a list there; I'll make a copy for you. Mr. Chang: So does this conversation pertain to any one of those 53 at this point? . , Mr. Kaneshiro: Any one of these 53 positions that were fully funded in this current budget or whatever budget it's been fully funded, but has been dollar funded, this would apply. That same process would apply. Correct. Mr. Chang: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay with that, we have just one item, and the item we need to vote on is... I guess we ended up with what? 13,500 on the pluses? Was that correct? Mr. Furfaro: 11,380. Mr. Kaneshiro: So if that's okay with committee members, we need a vote, 5 vote ... 4 vote only for the 11,380 to be offset from our performance audit. Mr. Furfaro: Move to approve on the presentation. Mr. Kaneshiro: . I see all 7 ayes. With that, I'm certain we're done with our budget. But before we do, I just want to let members know that we will be sending a budget message as we send this budget over with our provisos, and also our pluses and minuses. So if you have anything you wanted to add into that budget message, please feel free to do so. I will also have you review the budget message before it goes back to the administration. So we need to send this back to the administration and so forth through the process, but we will be having our own council, you know, message as we send it back. So with that, I'll open it up for closing discussion or anything else. Staff is requesting that if you have any comments you want to add into the budget message, please provide it to staff at least by the 14th. So whatever you want to add with this budget message, feel free to do so and get it to staff by the 14th so that they can get it out and we can take a look at it and have you review it also. So this will give you all the opportunity to review before we finalize the budget message to the administration. Okay, with that, I'll open it up with some closing arguments... Mr. Bynum had his hand up. Mr. Bynum: Closing comment. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh closing comments. What did I say? Mr. Bynum: Argument. We're done arguing. Mr. Kaneshiro: We're done arguing. Mr. Bynum: I'd just say, this was... I mean we're not coming back tomorrow, right? We're pau. Mr. Kaneshiro: No, we're done. Mr. Bynum: Okay, and so that's real different than it's been the last _couple. ,because -we'_ve done this process _very differently. We're chaired differently, at no objections whatsoever. It's just very different, because we had a lot more to deal with. And this has been a really tough year because of the, you know, the State and the national economy, and I really want to acknowledge the administration for doing a really good budget for responding to most of the issues that were brought up by Councilmembers and others, and not like they're just accommodating council, because they have their own views, and I'm sure there are many things they would love to fund if they could. You know, all 53 of those positions, they're saying we need these, but in this budget climate, we got to bite the bullet. And you know, there certainly were ... there were 3 items that I would have, you know, like us to look at. I didn't even try on the third one, you know. One was the police analyst which they responded to. The other was the recycling coordinator, obviously. The last was an engineering position that I think, you know, if I thought I had a change, I would have argued to get it, because we are in extraordinary times. There is a lot of county CIP money that we have a difficult time getting processed and out the door, and it's an issue that I'intend to bring to the public works committee over the next few months, because we should be getting those jobs as quickly as humanly possible to put people to work in our community when layoffs are happening, when we're going to get the best bids possible. So I'm really concerned about that particular position. But all 53 are... basically I think we're all agreeing that this is what we need to • • run the county efficiently, and this year that will be an impact of loss of all of those people. But I really appreciate the administration's budget supplement was really well thought out, and Wally Rezentes and Gary really serving our community well. I'd like to acknowledge our staff that works really hard and puts together these kind of analysis, so each one of us doesn't have to independently go through every line item; they do that for us, they work late, they generate a great report that makes for the efficiency of this. But I guess my biggest concern about today, I already stated that the council has historically put things in the budget that the administration didn't. And generally, the administration, in my view of watching that over the years, tries to be responsive and recognizes that we are in a collaborative group, and that is a majority of the council says this is important, they try to accommodate it. And so I just, for the future, wouldn't want to say, hey we shouldn't put anything in the budget that they haven't asked or they don't say that they will act on, because it is a message, and as I said, it's wise and appropriate and accommodating, and to say, hey we didn't think it was this high priority, but you guys are elected officials too, and you thought it was important. And so we're going to accommodate and move on those issues. So that's just a comment for the future. And thank you everyone around the table for your patience with me today, and like I said, I thought we'd be here `till tomorrow at 6...7, 8 o'clock. Thank you for that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, thank you. First of all I want to thank Mr. Rezentes Jr. and Gary. I think during the first sequence of division conversations and so forth, many of the things that I was concerned about have been addressed in this budget, and I want to personally thank you two gentlemen. The legal analyst was extremely important to me. I think it's a loss prevention effort in the police department. I'm extremely pleased with the kinds of changes that Mr. Castillo is making in the legal office. Secondly is the number of social service programs that got back on the radar screen, and when you came back with the supplement, you know, the types of things we're able to do with leveraging food stamps. You know, it's a difficult time out there for our community. And then I think getting Red Cross fully funded again was a big, big plus today. So my personal thanks for taking my concerns there wholeheartedly and having the mayor re- address it in his address. And the work our staff did was exceptional. I do want to point out again, none of us here were expecting to blow the budget up. Mr. Heu, I reserve that comment just for your short feedback, but I do want to say, I think even getting to funding the position half time in the coordinator's reuse /recycle efforts here, I think it just demonstrates how important that position is to this council versus what we know we have to do in the other 53 dollar funded positions. I have to tell you that the term I will use is right- sizing, and hopefully from right- sizing, some things do consolidate themselves and we have a higher performance level. For the staff, again thank you for taking wonderful notes. Chairman Kaneshiro, my narrative, though, and that I will send over, will focus on the items that I talked about early on today. I would want you to continue to take a good look of the revenue of council's after May 27, what our share of the actual lower occupancy will be on the transient accommodation tax. Even if we find a few hundred thousand dollars there, you know, that is pretty substantial, but we've got to obtain statewide those occupancies. I talked about the revenue of council, I talked about having some contingency plans, even on the caps for only the last 6 months if the council of revenues does not come back. And of course we're going to be looking for regular updates on moneys that the county gets for the stimulus package, which I still believe we left the repair and maintenance budget pretty much intact. But obviously, if we get items that are focused for buildings, roads, and so forth, there may be an opportunity for us there to look at those moneys. So Mr. Chairman, I'm going to put a few of those comments in the narrative that, you know that's what we got to keep ... we got to stay on lookout for. But overall, I want to thank you gentlemen, and obviously sometimes we use narrative that punctuates the points we want to.make. But all in all, thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Kawakami. 0 • Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Mr. Chair. I want to thank all the same people initially, our staff. As a new councilmember, they had to pretty much hold our hand and walk us through this process. Budget chair, thank you very much, helping us out along the way. The administration, thank you for working well with us. But I think the last thanks I'm going to go reserve for our hardworking representatives in Honolulu, because if we lost that TAT, we wouldn't have any pluses on here. We would be taking some swipes at this budget, and we'd be losing programs. I want to thank Speaker Say, Finance Chair Marcus Oshiro, WAM Chair Donna Mercado Kim. They had to make some tough decisions, and they did it, you know, fearlessly. I want to bring attention to our representatives —Jimmy Tokioka, Roland Sagum, Mina Morita, and Senator Hooser. Because the easiest thing they could have done was just go along with the State initiative to take TAT away. That would be the easiest thing to do, but they made the hard decision to defend the counties, and they did it. And, you know, sometimes there's consequences, but these guys have the bravery to stand up for the counties and to have the foresight and realize how it would have crippled our island. And so I just want to say a big mahalo to them for fighting for the counties, and I think our residents should know, because they're not on TV and sometimes we don't know what's going on. Those guys put their necks on the line to preserve that TAT funding for the counties. So with that being said, thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for that, Derek. Mr. Chang. Mr. Chang: Yes, thank you. Lastly, I too want to just echo thanking the staff and thanking my fellow Councilmembers. I too was sitting in this first budget ever, and sometimes you take things personal. You know people stop me on the street, and we all know we don't have any money, and so you know, it was an interesting ride. And again as the chair was saying, you know, he wants to caution us because next year could be equally as rough. So it was a great time. I had fully expected that we would have ... we were going to lose the money. You know, as our chair mentioned, Maui took out a loan for $18million. I mean it was bleak all the way, all the way, all the way to the very end. And I know that you folks all went to Honolulu many a times to lobby. I just felt I had a personal friend there that I could call and pick up the phone on several occasions, a good friend and classmate of mine Representative Oshiro. But you know, when you speak about the representatives, I had an opportunity to speak to many, and I do really want to point out Jimmy Tokioka. You know, I think he really, really, really went to bat with us at the last minute. Because of his relationship with Calvin Say and the rest of the representatives, I think he gave them a gave them a clear understanding of what and why the counties are so important to the State, and I've heard from many other people amongst many that he stood up there like a champion. So I would like to just acknowledge him, and you know, just thanking everybody here, but budget chair. Kaneshiro, I_thinkyouu did a great job keeping everybody calm, cool, collect, and humorous at many times when I would always say, hey what do we need to prepare for, what do we got to do, what do we got to do, and you kept saying, no worry, we no more money, no worry we no more money. And you know, and you worry. You know, you do worry, because people out there, there's a lot of people that are suffering. So I really appreciate you keeping us all calm and at ease and making ... you know, just letting us know that we're doing the right thing, you know. So with that, it was a great ride, and looking forward to finalizing this, and I certainly learned a lot. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for that Mr. Chang. Anyone else? Lani. Ms. Kawahara: I wanted to thank everybody that's been mentioned already, but a special thanks to you, chair, Chair Kaneshiro, because yes, as a first timer doing a budget, I appreciate your patience and all of the incumbents' patience with me especially, and for being willing and able to take in all the considerations that every councilmember had, I appreciate that. And I wanted to thank the administration, because I was really surprised and very happy to see what you guys came back with with the modified budget, and I really think that this was... Again, we don't • • have any money, so it probably was a lot easier. But I think I learned a lot, and I'm looking forward to the next budget and working with the administration. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Lani. Mr. Chang: You know ... and lastly... Sorry, I forgot. Thank you again Daryl for the lunch today, also. It was very good. Mr. Kaneshiro: That was so we can get out of here by 4. Mr. Chair? Council Chair Asing: I want to thank Chair Kaneshiro for ... and the staff, including the administration, for guiding us through this process. I guess the state of our economy on the county, State, national, and international level has affected us greatly. You know, I cannot re- emphasize how bad the State is on the budget issue. I thought at one point that there's no way that they're going to end up taking away the TAT funds, and then the real issue started to come up. When the real issue started to come up, some of you may not be aware that I've had, together with some Councilmembers, conference calls to the speaker of the house, to representatives in both the senate and house side, and we did talk constantly. At one particular point, my emphasis was there must be lots of other funds, the emergency fund, the hurricane fund, the rail fund that you can take money fund. And to my surprise, all the funds were raided. I thought that there's many funds, why don't you take from these other funds, take a little bit. Why hit the counties? And then I find out that every fund was hit. And then I made a suggestion, which many Councilmembers also made, why don't you do the taxes on the general excise, yeah. Do a half percent on the general excise and that could take care of it. That was very controversial too. And to look at who introduced the bill, it was introduced by the speaker of the house. And to go against the speaker of the house is, if you are representative or even in the senate, you know, you talking about the leadership that you're going to go against, and it's... It has not been easy, so I agree totally with Councilmember Kawakami that we have good representatives there, Tokioka, Sagum, Hooser, Morita that has done an outstanding job for us. We were in contact with them, and they really helped us a lot. And I think because the neighbor islands stuck together, that was where the votes counted the most. And because of that, they had the votes to override, and that's why we could keep the TAT. You know, all of those things that contributed to helping us retain the TAT, and like Derek said, you know, that's 11 point billion(sic) dollars that we would have to find that we would not have, and that's a tremendous amount of dollars. But it was very serious, and again, we have a lot to thank for all of our members, including the leaders, on the legislature. So with that again, Councilmember Kaneshiro, thank you very much for your help and guidance. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Mr. Chair. Can you imagine if we had to go look for $11.8 million? It was already getting very controversial on 13,500, or even 35,000. That's still fortunate that, like you said you know, give our hats off to our legislature. But at the same time, if you look at the end, you know for us, we're also sending them a good message. We're sending them that message that we are just as frugal. We know the hardship that will fall on us within the tax year or so. We still got another budget to work on less than a year from now. And as the mayor had pointed out, there could be some predictions of 10 to 30% reduction on the real property revenues. Can you imagine us getting slashed from TAT funding ?. So in all, you know, I really appreciate each committee member for their desire to be frugal, to keep a budget pretty much status quo from when we started off on the March 13 first submittal. And I want to thank the administration for holding tight also to keep the line as such, because we are sending a message out to them also. We are sending a message to the people of Kauai that, you know, we are hitting hard ... our economic times, and I believe that in coming down through the years, we're going to really find some hard times, because it's just starting to happen. You saw a little that happened from the real property revenues; it went down a little, but then I can tell you something, next one with the decline in construction, decline in economic conditions, and so forth, we're going to have a tough budget. But I really • • appreciate all of 6 of you for being strong to be able to work on this budget and compromise. I can tell you something, Chair can also vouch for this, when we had money ... you know, when we had moneys that we could spend, it was more very contentious issues, because some people would like to take all that money and spend it for some of their project, some Councilmembers want to save this and do this, and you know, we went back and forth. And I can tell you, the administration wanted to keep some, they would keep half, they would give us half, so you'll be here debating for hours about, well you know, I just want this to fix this road. The other one goes, I want this for do that. So you know, you can see some of the issues that arise, because each and every one have different needs and different values in what we want to accomplish for the people of Kauai. But to come through with a budget process like this, we're, you know, we all plan to be on the same level of being frugal. I think it's a really important message for me as the chair that I would probably be putting something like that in the budget message of how we all worked together to do that —to accomplish getting the services out at the same time, and to be aware that a year from now, you know, we probably be hitting some real hard times. So that's the reality. With that, this budget session is now adjourned. There being no further discussion, the FY 2009 -2010 Budget Decision Making was adjourned at 3:04 p.m. esp tfully submitted, Aida Ok saki Legisla ve Services Supervisor APPROVED at the May 27, 2009, Budget & Finance Committee Meeting: ARYL W. KANESHIR , Chair Budget & Finance Committee • 1 0 Tasks of Recycling Coordinator and /or Business Recycling Specialist: 1. Conduct site visits at all county offices and buildings to not only improve recycling efforts, but to increase opportunities for source reduction. 2. Provide information to county employees re recycling and source reduction. 3. Expand and sustain the Canvas Bag Program, which includes procuring and distributing bags, developing a training program for retailers, work with non- profit and community organization, develop a telephone survey to follow -up on resident use of bags. 4. Promote recycling program on Mayor's TV show, county website and County recycling guide. 5. Promote Aloha Shares Network. 6. Educate public as to non -toxic alternatives to hazardous waste generating products. 7. Develop bills and work with Mayor and Council to adopt legislation banning non - recyclable plastic bags and non - recyclable food and other packaging. 8. Provide information on reusable shipping containers and other waste reducing options to businesses through waste assessments and public speaking engagements. 9. Work with the visitor industry to promote source reduction. 10. Administer the home composting program 11. Create a page on County website dedicated to Reduce, Re -use and Recycle. 12. Locate recycling drop bins at transfer stations. 13. Develop a Materials Recovery Facility 14. Develop a Pay As You Throw Fee System for Curbside Recycling 15. Improve bottle redemption program. 16. Facilitate recycling at special events. 17. Expand ban on landfill disposal of non - residential greenwaste on Kauai to include residential waste and expand the ban to include disposal restrictions at the transfer stations. 18. Establish a central green waste and organics processing facility to produce mulch and compost 19. Provide curbside collection for pre- consumer, commercial food waste. 20. Develop "food waste to animal feed" infrastructure 21. Promote reuse of pallets 22. Provide curbside collection or recyclables and greenwaste 23. Develop a green tourist recognition program. 24. Design a recycling campaign targeted specifically toward tourists 25. Provide recycling opportunities at visitor destinations. 26. Facilitate Recycling at Special Events 27. Develop a program to financially support innovative recycling initiatives 28. Assist private facilities with food waste composting 29. Further develop "food waste to animal feed" infrastructure. 30. Develop a CHRM —A Center for Hard to Recycle Materials Attac_hinea 1 Page 1 or 2� a1 0 N 0 i 31. Work with private sector, state and legislature to impose Advance Disposal Fee on electronics retailers and to develop and pay for "Take Back /Recycle" programs. 32. Broaden County's household hazardous waste program to include farm chemicals from small quantity generators. P.1 -3 33. Develop program to include manure (esp from large producer) in any new bioconversion effort. P. 5 -3 34. Develop informational and regulatory program re needle- sticks from self - treating individuals. P. 5 -5 35. Facilitate the development of a program for using sewage sludge to create usable, saleable fertilizer or soil conditioner. P. 5 -7 and 5 -8 36. Research off - island markets for household batteries and indentify the logistics and costs of collecting and shipping the batteries. P. 5 -11. 37. Develop program to publicize that retailers are required to take back used lead acid batteries and monitor retailer compliance and report non- compliance to DOH. P. 5 -11. 38. Oversee propane tank recycling program and lobby for advance deposit fee p.5 -12. 39. Monitor cooking oil disposal by restaurants and propose ordinance requiring recycling and monitor compliance. P. 5 -12. 40. Convene and work with task force to develop Construction and Demolition Debris recovery and recycling. P. 5 -12 and 5 -13 41. 42. 43. A't'tOdhiient 1 Page 2 of 2 �cl,� r� boon tl�d � � n►�;� s Daryl's Talking Points Operating Budget Highlights May 8, 2009 Mavor's Modification 1. Vacant positions that are expected to be filled in the next year were "short funded" — 11 months of funding was provided. 2. KPAA additional funding of $14,500 funding is now $35,000. 3. State Lobbyist funding (NEW) $50,000. 4. Building Lease (New - County Clerk/Council) funding $240,000. 5. (NEW) Deputy County Attorney for KPD funding $86,583. 6. (NEW) Deputy County Attorney for Water Department (To be funded by the Water Department). 7. (NEW) Deputy County Attorney for the Liquor Department (To be funded by the Liquor Department). 8. Kauai Humane Society additional funding of $64,617, brought back to FY 08 -09 level of $655,617. 9. Kauai Food Bank (NEW) $20,000. 10. Elderly Affairs — Enhanced Fitness Program $114,211. This was previously grant funded, but grant is no longer available. 11. Household Hazardous Waste funding $65,000. Funding for this project was inadvertently left out of the March 13, 2009 budget submittal. CIP Budget Highlights (General Fund) 1. Host Community Benefits — Kekaha, additional funding of $80,000, funding available is $729,823. 2. Planning, Zoning / Engineering System (NEW) funding $189,000. Attachment 2 0 PROJECTS AND PROGRAMS MANAGED BY THE COUNTY RECYCLING OFFICE UPDATED FEBRUARY 2009 Public Outreach and Education: • County Recycling Line — Field calls on all waste diversion subjects. Log calls according to subject category and geographic area. • Program Promotions — Create PSA's, newspaper display ads, and radio promotions for all recycling programs. • County Website — Draft and update recycling web pages for County website. • Facility Tours — Host tours of the Kauai Resource Center for school groups, community organizations, trade associations, and Legislative Solid Waste Task Force. • Special Events — Establish information booths at large events like the County Fair and Garden Fair. � X51 • Public Drop -Ins — Meet with public upon request to discuss their experiences /issues /concerns /ideas in regards to recycling. • Public Speaking — Make presentations to trade associations, youth groups, non - profits, businesses, and other groups upon request. • Radio Interview - P - • Publications — Distribute Kauai Recycling Guide at the Kauai Resource Center, at special events, and upon request. 2. Kauai Recycles Program: Contract # 7297 with GID. Includes management of the seven s Residential Drop Bins for collection of cardboard, newspaper, aluminum, glass, plastic and #2, and mixed paper. - - 3. Bottle Deposit Law: Supervise and oversee work conducted by 2 Recycling Specialists - staff hired with Hawaii Beverage Container Deposit Program funding. Inspections of Certified Redemption Centers and retailers; contract for CRCs in Koloa and Kekaha. ,A Recycling Operations at the Kauai Resource Center (KRC): Administer contract #7495. Residential and commercial recycling drop point for standard recyclables and HI5 containers operated by Garden Isle Disposal. 151 Recycled Glass Manufacturing Operations at the KRC: Contract No. 6982 with Last Chance Glass to conduct Glass Manufacturing Operations. The Contractor educates about recycled glass manufacturing and the importance of buying recycled products. _ 6. Household Hazardous Waste Program: Coordinate, manage and promote annual HHW collection events. 7. Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan Update: Draft plan for public review will be U ;y, ,P—L released in February. Home Composting Program: Distributed approximately 1800 Earth Machine Home Composting since October 2001. Most cost effective diversion program, estimated at $6 per ton. ,A( County Office Recycling Program: Oversee recycling of mixed paper, cardboard, and HIS c�J �" �, 'vr containers in County Offices. At a t Beach Park Recycling Program: 600 specialized bins will be delivered and secured at 80 County park facilities. Bins will be self - serviced by the public on a first -come first- served basis. 11f. . Recycling Bin Loaners and Giveaways: Loan out specialized bins for special events and also distribute bins for use by non - profits and schools to collect HI5 containers. -12. Electronics Recycling: First collection event in August 2008. IFB for second event at Purchasing. State program (SB 2843) for computers, monitors and printers scheduled to kick in January 2010, but no program for TV's till January 2011. ..13: School Education Program: DBC Recycling Specialist assigned to disseminate curriculum and give presentations upon request. Host tours of the Kauai Resource Center. Magic of Recycling Shows underway - 26 performances for all K -5 on island. x,1:4° Business Recycling: Conduct waste assessments and assist businesses with development of waste diversion programs upon request. 15. Glass Recycling Grant to Processors: Grant program to assist processors with non -H15 glass recycling is at attorneys for review. 16. State Advanced Disposal Fee Program: Manage State funds under Log 04 -018, which includes the contract with JC Sandblasting. Coordinate associated demonstration projects. 17. Motor Oil Recycling and Motor Oil Filter Recycling: Grant from State DOH allows us to collect MO at all waste disposal sites, and filters from all TS. 1 . Tire Recycling: Accept used residential tires at all Transfer Stations and landfill. <y 9 Green Waste Diversion: Accept used green waste at all Transfer Stations and landfill. Green waste is processed into compost. 20. Nike Reuse a Shoe Program: New program for Kauai. In March 2009 will begin accepting used athletic shoes for recycling at all Fire Stations, the Kauai Resource Center, and the Moikeha Building ,S��wil1 be compiled at County Track Meet on April 23, 2009. Curbside Recyciing_Pilot_ Planning a curbside pilot program to commence by June 2010. t' 22. Used Cooking Oil Pilot: Developing a solicitation for a hauler to collect residential used- cooking oil from Lihue and Hanapepe Transfer Stations and send for processing into biodiesel -v— p ,16 -'23. White Goods / Scrap Metal Recycling: Accept these items at all Transfer Stations and 1 � V �4y landfill and haul to Puhi Metals for processing and recycling. /I .94. Abandoned Vehicle Program: Manage the tagging, towing, and processing of abandoned 1 and derelict vehicles. �U 25. Propane Tank Recycling: Accept these items at all Transfer Stations and landfill for recycling. 26. Reusable Shopping Bags: Solicitation at Purchasing for 30,000 shopping bags (20,000 to be i paid with DBC funding), which will be distributed to the public. �P Attachment 3U. Page 2 of 2 y 2 w I� i(D i� err MAY 11, 2009 FY 09 -10 BUDGET DECISION - MAKING DRAFT - SUBJECT TO CHANGE RUN TOTAL $0 t RED FIGURE DENOTES "SURPLUS" ITEM COST NOTES ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Farm Fair CFL Greenlighting Project' (pg 64) $3,000 ADD new grant; increase "Other Services" from $1,163,926 to $1,166,926 (pg 64) MAYOR Fully -fund Red Cross request" (pg 2) $2,500 ADD $2,500 to increase from $22,500 to $25,000 FINANCE Finance - IT (pg 34)x $5,880 ADD wireless broadband subscription; $70 /mo x 12 = $840 x 7 "air cards;" increase from $94,700 to $100,580 COUNCIL (AUDITOR) Performance Audit; currently $300K (pg 16)" ($11,380) OFFSET from $300,000; leave balance of $288,620 TOTAL RUN • STOPS PROVISOS: • KPD -New Deputy County Attorney Housed at KPD (if sufficient space available); continue work on accreditation • State Lobbyist Work w /Council to determine legislative agenda • Food Bank grant 2nd year of 2 -year, ONE -TIME grant BOND FUND: Waste Reduction Consult Services -X- Proviso; beyond current contracts,come back to Council for discussion of scope of any addtn'I contracted services Page 1 of 1 s 0