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HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-06-2009-Doc15876r • FY 2009-2010 Departmental Budget Reviews Table of Contents (in sequence) Overview/Mayor's OfI`ice ....................................... 1-31 Office of Economic Development ........................... 32-50 Office of the County Attorney ............................... 51-57 Prosecuting Attorney/Victim Witness Program....... 58-91 Fire Department ................................................. 92-115 Liquor Department ............................................. 116-119 Civil Defense Agency .......................................... 120-129 Kauai Humane Society ........................................ 130-142 Police Department ............................................... 143-160 Personnel Department .......................................... 161-168 Office of the County Clerk .................................... 169-191 Housing Agency .................................................. 192-196 Agency on Elderly Affairs ..................................... 197-198 Transportation Agency ........................................ 199-210 Planning Department .......................................... 211-236 Parks & Recreation Department ........................... 237-277 Department of Public Works (Operating & CIP)...... 278-350 Finance Department ............................................ 351-370 Table of Contents (alphabetically) Civil Defense Agency .......................................... 120-129 County Attorney ................................................ 51-57 County Clerk's Offiice ........................................... 169-191 Economic Development ....................:.................. 32-50 Elderly Affairs ................................................... 197-198 Finance Department ............................................ 351-370 Fire Department ................................................. 92-115 Housing Agency .................................................. 192-196 Kauai Humane Society ........................................ 130-142 Liquor Department ............................................. 116-119 Mayor's OfI"ice ........................................................ 1-31 Parks & Recreation Department ........................... 237-277 Personnel Department .......................................... 161-168 Planning Department .......................................... 211-236 Police Department ............................................... 143-160 Prosecuting Attorney/Victim Witness Program....... 58-91 Public Works (Operating & CIP) ........................... 278-350 Transportation Agency ........................................ 199-210 APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) BUDGET & FINANCE COD~IIVIITTE FY 2009-2010 Departmental Budget Reviews MINUTES The FY 2008-2009 Departmental Budget Reviews of the Budget & Finance Committee of the Council of the County of Kauai, was called to order by Daryl W. Kaneshiro, Chair, at the Council Chambers, Lihu`e, Kauai, on Monday, April 6, 200~'at 9:10 a.m., after which the following members answered the call of the roll: q Honorable Daryl W. Kaneshiro Honorable Bill "Kaipo" Asing Honorable Tim Bynum Honorable Dickie Chang Honorable Jay Furfaro Honorable Lani T. Kawahara Honorable Derek S.K Kawakami OVERVIEW Mr. Kaneshiro: All right. Good morning everyone. Councilmembers: Good morning. Mr. Kaneshiro: The...with a lot of smiles...the chair of the Budget & Finance Committee will call this budget review to order at this time. Before I begin, I just wanted to point out some highlights, okay. So maybe this is how we can proceed as we move along on this budget for the next couple weeks. And I guess the first point I wanted to make was that as we move forward with this budget, committee members, we...there...there's avery good possibility that as we move through this budget, keep in mind that we may still lose the TAT tax which is up to $11.8 million. So I think that was a real important point I wanted to make first of all as we move forward and start reviewing. And I want to try to stay on the budget schedule and on track, and sometimes if you have some questions, you know if you need more clarification I would say that we write those questions down and we can get clarifications from the department rather than stall the process. So, if at times the department, you know, may need some time to...to get answers back to us, bear in mind that we need to give them some time and write the questions down and I'll try to get it back in a prompt manner from them. I also want you to know that we won't be making decisions at this point. This is a budget review process. We'll give the departments the opportunity to present their budget to us and in no times we'll be making any kind of decisions on the floor during this review process. And if at all possible, members, as we start moving forward on the departments, let's continue to do so. So, this way we don't have to go back again and come back again and go back again. Just move forward in a timely manner and again, you know, if you have questions, you can always write the questions down and have the department get back to us. And I really wanted to point out that in the mayor's budget, you all know that the administration has already taken steps to cut the budget and keep the budget as low as possible. I believe there was a small percentage decrease from last year's budget, so keep that in mind. And one important note, on the dollar-funded positions, we will need justification, okay. So I going to ask...as the budget chair I'm going to ask for a justification from, 1 APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) you know, the departments to the administration before we...we...we fund the positions in its entirety, so all the dollar-funded positions that we currently have on the budget. And keep this in mind also, there is an economic stimulus package available, but again, you know, that is only there to provide assistance. So let's not try to...try to think that there'll be some economic money around and try to put it into this budget and try to, you know, resolve issues as we move along this budget. And to the greatest extent possible, you know, I know all of you and the administration, we don't want to raise real property tax, especially now when people are on the verge of losing jobs. So keep that in mind as a...as a top priority as we move forward with this budget sessions and review, okay? So, any questions? Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro, first of all I want to thank you for taking on the chairmanship of Finance and the budget process. This is probably the most important function we have as a group every year. So, thank you in advance. -I just want. to say this for the benefit of the admin., to give them some particular points that I shall be looking at and other councilmembers should be aware of as we move forward, especially during very difficult times. The first point I wanted to make to the administration and to my colleagues, payroll taxes and benefits as they are spread out in various departments this year was based on a request that we had made previously, and so the comparisons might be very difficult to make, but we wanted to make sure...one of our goals from a previous process was to make sure that there was more accountability by department heads on their o...own...their own payroll benefits and other cost associated with our biggest single exposure which is payroll. So that's item one. I...I want to make sure the administration knows that I will be focusing on that this year. Also, I have not seen it and I would like to make sure that we continue the strong point that I made last year that when it comes to managing utility cost, we wanted to see a combined management program of actually monitoring our consumption of electrical cost. And we did do this last year through Mr. Sato. He put together a total summary of utility cost consumed by...by the county. And so I wanted to remind them again after payroll, that's a significant operating cost for us. I also want to make sure that...and as I totally recognize, Mr. Kaneshiro, your comments that we should not be putting grant moneys into the budget on particular items, but as the stimulus package grows and I think as...as I've had previous conversations with Mr. Bynum and those of you that were able to go to NACo, grant management is going to be very important over the next 30 to 60 days and I want to see a policy statement driven by the administration that says our grant writers, whether they're in civil defense, public safety, economic development, I want make sure...I want to be assured that every day they're looking at the federal websites on grants that might become available. And I would like to make sure that as we start this budget process there is an administrative directive that indicates to all departments, especially those that deal with housing, transportation, the justice system, that money would be made available to us. I also had mentioned in two previous council meetings item four, that when we get to the finance department, as you suggested Mr. Kaneshiro, we actually have a review of revenues, especially how we arrived at the $11.8 million on the Transient Accommodation Tax. So, we know what we have in our budget. It has a solid framework of how we arrived at those numbers. In the event that we lose that money, we're losing what we put in the budget and not more than we could have possibly been allocated. So that TAT piece is very important. And then also, since it's going to be a very lean year, somewhere when we get to finance, I would like to have a review of the treasurer's statement. And on those notes... Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: I want to leave on that and thank you again for leading the charge on our budget review. 2 • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Kaneshiro: Very good points, Mr. Furfaro. We'll have that noted and I guess the administration is here today and are making notes of that so you can prepare ahead of time. Thank you. Any one else? If not...Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Just real briefly... Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Bynum: Jay talked about some of the things that I'm concerned about, but just for...our staff prepared a budget analysis, did a lot of great work, but just to highlight one of the things Mr. Furfaro said in...in finance/accounting there's $11 million...11.3 that, you know, got moved into the various departments... Mr. Furfaro: Got allocated out, yes. Mr. Bynum: So what looks like a huge cut in budget finance, but it skews these percentages that are on this sheet and...and does make it more difficult to compare this year with last year. It's a good move, but it...it makes the budget analysis different. So even though a department may look like there's an increase, it...it's actually a...overall could be a decrease because of just the way this is accounted for. And regarding the stimulus funds, I...I intend to look, you know some of those stimulus funds are available now. They're on their way here. They're coming. Others are competitive and require our departments to step up and so that's certainly an expectation I would have that we aggressively pursue the funds that are available to us to serve .the people of the county and some other questions I've been working on over the last few weeks. So, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, with that I'll suspend the rules and we'll take public testimony first of all before we get the mayor's office up for their budget review. Mr. Asing, did you have... Chair Asing: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...a comment to make? Chair Asing: Before we start... Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, go ahead, Chair. Chair Asing: Regarding the stimulus package, is it the intent of the administration to keep us on-board on the package as things come in so that we will be kept on.:.on- board. I...I...I really think that we almost need someone special kind of handling that, just that stimulus package because, you know, it's a matter of tracking. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. Chair Asing: And unless we're on it all the time, we could be maybe losing out, so. Mr. Kaneshiro: I'11...I'll have a communication sent over to the administration in that regard, Mr. Chair. Thank you. 3 APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro: I think the Chair's point was excellent. Yeah. You know these grants are becoming available daily. Absolutely. And we need to be on top of it. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. All right? So with that, I'm going to suspend the rules. Speakers that wanted to testify this morning? There being no objections, the rules were suspended. WILMA AKIONA, Council Services Secretary: The first speaker will be Mel Rapozo. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Rapozo, how're you doing this morning? MEL RAPOZO: Groovy. Mr. Furfaro: I haven't heard that for awhile. Mr. Rapozo: Good morning. Councilmembers: Good morning. Mr. Rapozo: For the record Mel Rapozo and...and I understand you guys are ready to start the long, drawn out process, so I'll be brief. Mr. Kaneshiro: You've been here before. Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry. Mr. Kaneshiro: You've been here before. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, you know, and...and that...part of the reason for me coming is...is, you know, although I've sat through six...six budgets... Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, sir. Mr. Rapozo: The first one was a blur and in fact for the new councilmembers, that first one is oftentimes, well for me anyway, it was the...it went by the quickest because I really didn't understand much, so. And my comments are really geared more to the new councilmembers, but I would ask that everybody take it really for what it's worth, but just some general observations about our economy. We know that this is not ashort-term problem that we're facing. I mean it's...this...you know as a small business owner here, I'm feeling the effects and its...you know, I'm at a point right now where I gotta make a decision whether or not to lay off some 4 APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) employees and it's not an easy thing to do. But we gotta make the decisions...in my business we gotta make the tough decisions and I'm asking that you folks do the same. You know we hear a lot about the TAT, visitor arrivals, stimulus packages and all of that, and that's all fine and dandy, we gotta consider that, but the bottom line is it is what it is. And...and if we lose the...we gotta assume that we're going to lose the TAT. We just gotta assume that because you cannot budget for something that might not happen. The problem I see is that as we move forward through this tough economy, we have the advantage at the current of a surplus that we can tap into even till today. But even if the economy should turn around in two years and I think it's going to be longer than that, but i£..let's say in two years the economy starts to turn around, it's going to take us years to recover even after the economy starts to turn around locally. It's gonna...it's gonna take some time to recover. So this is a...a long-term effort and...and I guess my point is the decisions that you folks make in the next few weeks are not to get us through this year or shouldn't be to get us through this year. It...it's to get us through the next ten years because the decisions that we make today are gonna affect this county in the next ten years, fifteen years, and I...I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir and I heard...one of the...the things I heard from the chair was the...the fact that the raising of property taxes should be the last resort and...and I totally agree. I mean right now we...you know and many of you know in my business we serve papers and we serve evictions, we serve collections. We serve all of these documents and we serve over 200 a month of families that are being sued because they cannot pay a bill. And they don't need to be...raise their taxes or fees raised. And I gotta tell you, maybe to some it doesn't really affect you if we raise the property taxes a little bit, but I think for the landowner or the homeowner, when you raise the tax, the rents gotta go up to cover. So, I think that it's something that we gotta really, really consider and...and that's kind of the overall observation, but more specifically I think as we gb through that budget and you...you make the decisions that you gotta make, it boils down to really one question, I think, that you need to ask every single department head that comes up to this table and the question is a simple question. It's, do you need it this year. Can you do without this item this year? Simple. Because if they can, then you should not fund it. It's that simple. I mean, you know, we...we all want to be the nice guys, but I gotta tell you, and nice girls, I gotta tell you, in this time as you prepare a budget...and I'm not saying to cut it out for...forever and ever and ever, but if it doesn't have to be purchased or expended this year, why would you allocate the funds as responsible budget people? Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Mel, your three minutes are up, but I'm going to...there's...how many more do we have signed up here. Only one more? I'll have you go ahead and give you...the other three minutes. Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: And then we'll take the other speaker right after that... Mr. Rapozo: Thank you very much. Nlr. Kaneshiro: ...since we only have one more speaker. Mr. Rapozo: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you very much. And it...and...so it really comes down to essential versus nonessential. And if you ask that question and the department head or whoever 5 APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) the representative is is up here and if they basically say, no, we can do without that this year...because I went through the budget. I did a cursory check; I didn't read every page, but I went through some of the items that I was familiar with and I see that it's still there, like the sister city, like a lot of the things in there that really...you can do without for one year. You're asking the public or we're asking...the government, federal, state and local asking the public to tighten up our belts, but some of these things are not essential. And if the answer to the question, do you need it this year, is no, then by golly, put a dollar in the fund, keep the line open for the next year so you can reassess. But to simply fund it because it's been funded every year or to fund it because you don't want to lose the item, put a dollar in it, save it and revisit next year. Or you could even visit throughout the year if the economy should change. And then the last thing is...is...is more of a personal note and I think I want to bring it up is...is.:.it's involving a position that the prior council put in the budget is a KPD legal analyst. And when I saw what happened, I got...I'm going to be honest, I got frustrated, I got._.I got upset and I took it as-.a. how of disrespect to the council.,in. , general. The council prior to your council based on what had been happening with KPD over the years in lawsuits, extreme amount of moneys paid out on claims felt that that department needed a legal analyst that could help them redo their policies, redo their procedures, help them through accreditation and bottom line, give the chief some advice to lower the claims in this county. The council put that position in. And we set it up so that the chief could appoint someone that he felt was in line with police procedures and policies. And this year as I reviewed the budget, I see that that position has been taken out of the police department and put in the county attorney's office, and dollar funded, which means this year, because as I understand it, that position was frozen. The administration froze that position and it prohibited the chief from even hiring that position after the council asked and...and...in the prior administration, it seemed like a common thing if the council put it in, they just never executed it, but in this case it was for a reason that this council, the prior council felt it was very important. And...and now I see that it...it...not only had they frozen it...froze the position and not allow the chief to hire-something that I feel would save this county millions of dollars. Now, it's been transferred to the County Attorney's Office and dollar funded. So, to me it's...it's a...with all due respect to the administration in the back, I gotta tell you, to me it was a show of disrespect to the body, to this body. And I would ask that you seriously consider putting that back in the chief budget so that he can fill that position and ultimately save this county millions of dollars and...and that's literally because we've...we've all seen it. And that's all I have, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you, Mel. Thank you very much. Any questions? You have a question? Mr. Furfaro: Yes, I have... Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: ...something for Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo, thank you for coming this morning to testify. Your history with the council and the past budget process is very gratifying that you remembered some of the points that are extremely important for us. I do plan to raise the KPD question about the legal analyst. As you know, it is part of our original plan for risk management.... Mr. Rapozo: Correct. 6 APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Furfaro: ...that we did feel that along-term goal for the police department is to get them certified. And certification of the department means being able to have access to the...the right legal training, the right legal resources for the police officers, but let me assure you that that is something I will follow up when we get to KPD. Thank you very much. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Kawakami, go ahead. Mr. Kawakami: I also want to bring up a point that often gets overlooked, but the TAT tax that we're looking to lose is not just for one year. I think the proposal is for up to six years. So when we look at the economy turning around even within two years, it's going to impact us deeply for the next six years and that may have the...the ability to change the way the county operates and also is going to make us look into ways that we're going to need to balance this budget. So, the...that's the scary part. It's not this year. Mr. Rapozo: I...and I...I agree and that's why I said it's not a budget for one year and oftentimes the public under...you know, and even some legislators, not just county, but state and federal look at the budget as either aone- or two-year budget for the state. And...and it...it's not because the decision, whether it's a position today which will...we know what happens with the positions. When you hire a new position, civil service and the collective bargaining, it's not something that's just going to cost today. It's going to cost tomorrow, the year after and the year after :that. So...and that's all I'm saying, is as we make the decisions, if it doesn't have to be purchased or encumbered this year, then we should not be funding that item, whatever it is. Whether it's a camera, whether it's a vehicle, whether it's travel, whatever. If it's not an essential need for this county this year, then we should not be funding it. And I can guarantee if you do that, all of a sudden if we lose the TAT, it won't be as big of an impact. I promise. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you, Mel. With that, the next speaker, please. Chair Asing: Let...let me make...make a comment. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, go ahead Mis....oh, comment, go ahead. Chair Asing: No, I think I...I think it's kind of directed at you a little bit. I guess, Mel, now you understand what I was talking about many times during the budget processes, that, you know, I don't think that you've experienced a budget like this. And all during the time that you were on, yeah, money was not a major problem, right? Mr. Rapozo: Correct. Chair Asing: Always had money, was...it was...it was easy. Mr. Rapozo: Lots of it. Chair Asing: Lots of it. It was easy and you remember my reflecting back and saying, now councilmembers, you need to understand that there were times that we didn't have money. 7 APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Rapozo: Correct. Chair Asing: And this is that particular time now. Mr. Rapozo: And I... Chair Asing: Again we...we...we go in cycles and this is the down cycle time. Mr. Rapozo: I will tell you, Mr. Chair, from my first budget you made those comments. Every budget you made those comments and we all, I guess because for me personally I had not seen or been involved in a budget that the money was a problem, I do not envy you folks because I know some tough decisions'are'going to have to be made:' But Iwill°say-this, that " ~'- "' _' - as a member of the public and I'm here as a citizen, I'm not here representing anybody, that I think the people understand that. I think the people understand and expect the tough decisions to be made. So, it's not an issue of, you know, counting votes or whatever. It's really an issue of what has to be done and I used to always use the analogy of the leaking roof versus the swimming pool. And right now, we gotta fix the leaking roofs and put off the swimming pool until we are in better financial economic times. And...and I appreciate that Mr. Chair and I'm here to tell you that you were right all along...all along and that's why I think, thank God we no more term limits yet. You still get a few more years. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Mel, thanks. Mr. Rapozo: Okay, is that it? Chair Asing: Yeah, I just...I just want to make one more comment and that's the comment that was made by Councilmember Kawakami regarding the possible loss of the TAT for maybe six years. It's not maybe six years, maybe forever. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. Chair Asing: If you look at the...the last comments coming out of the House, and I'm talking about the speaker, we may go back to a time that I can remember when we had Grants-In-Aid. That's how the money was coming to us. There was no such thing as TAT. It was Grants-In-Aid and Grants-In-Aid is just a matter of how much we want to give you when we want to give you, yeah. And so if you look at history, you're going to find that if you trace the TAT back all the way, you're going to find that it goes back and then you will notice that... Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. Chair Asing: ...when the TAT started just before then it was Grants-In- Aid. That's how we...we got the money. So, it's...there's no formula. It's just whatever we think that we can afford to give you is what you'll get. So, it could be even that bad. So, it's a...it's troubling right now, but anyway it... Mr. Rapozo: Yeah and the responsible thing, Mr. Chair, is to plan for that. That's how we gotta plan and if at the end of the day they release some of that TAT back, whether 8 • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) it's $10 million, $15 million, $8 million, then you consider that as part of the surplus for that year. But to...to count on that money at this point, as I've read the bills, I've read the notes coming out of the legislature on the TAT, it doesn't look good and I think you all agree. Chair Asing: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you, Mel. With that, our next speaker, please. Ms. Akiona: The next speaker is Mark Hubbard. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mark. MARK HUBBARD, KPAA Treasurer: Good morning. Ms. Kawahara: Good morning. Mr. Hubbard: Good morning, Committee Chair Kaneshiro and councilmembers. I'm Mark Hubbard, the treasurer of the Kauai Planning and Action Alliance. Diane Zachary, the KPAA CEO, had hoped to be here today, but she is facilitating a stakeholders meeting for the Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan. Since KPAA was created in 2003, we have been very fortunate to receive an annual grant of $35,000 from the County of Kauai through the mayor's office. The funding received through that partnership with the county has enabled us to collaborate with government agencies, businesses, non-profits and community groups to tackle some of the challenges our island faces, especially those relating to our long-term sustainability. Over the past year, we were able to leverage the power of the County's grant in a number of ways. Let me give you just a few examples. We secured an additional $12,000 in cash and in-kind support to update the 2006 community indicators report Measuring What Matters for Kauai. That new report will be published within the next six weeks and has been designed to provide valuable information in eight different areas of life on the island as a tool for decision-makers. Our proposal to the American Institute of Architects' Sustainable Design Assessment Team program brought to Kauai the volunteer services of a talented team of planners, architects and policy analysts. They led a three-day charette last November for more than 300 community participants who gathered to plan for Lihu`e's future. That assistance was valued at more than $35,000. The SDAT written report is expected later this month. KPAA collaborated with the county's transportation agency to prepare congressional appropriation of $200,000 in fiscal year 2010. If approved,'that funding would enable KPAA to provide support to the county to coordinate the initial implementation of the long-range transportation plan that will be developed in the coming months. As a benefit to our residents and visitors, we were able to secure a $1.225 million state grant-in-aid to repair the first two miles of the Na Pali Coast Trail and the CCC Camp in Koke`e State Park. That project has just been launched and will be completed in late 2010. More information on our projects is attached to your copy of this testimony. You have a listing of KPAA's accomplishments in 2008, along with a listing of our 2009 programs. Also attached are charts that offer a breakdown of KPAA's revenue sources for the past two years. County funding has been critical to our success in securing grants, contracts, membership, participant fees and contributions. Currently the mayor's budget includes $20,500 for KPAA for the next fiscal year, a decrease of 41% over previous years. We are appreciative to be included during this difficult economic time when there are so many needs to be met with fewer dollars. At the same time, if it is 9 • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) at all possible, we ask you to consider increasing the KPAA grant to its previous funding level of $35,000. We recognize that the additional $14,500 requested may not seem significant, but to KPAA it is an essential part of our funding plan for the next fiscal year. KPAA looks forward to continuing it's partnership with the county and we thank you for your willingness to carefully balance the community's many needs and requests. Thank you. ahead. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Hubbard? Mr. Furfaro, go Mr. Furfaro: I just wanted to thank Mr. Hubbard for the...for reconciling how effective you've been in leveraging the money that we've given you to increase either data or scope capacity on probably the most important thing for the county is long-term ,planning: And your memorandum helps me put all of that in perspective. Thank you so much. Mr. Hubbard: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Questions for Mr. Hubbard? Go ahead, Lani. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. I really appreciate the KPAA and I feel like it's only one of the very few organizations that actually does take along-term view of how and where we want to go with the island. So, I...I just wanted to say that, that I really appreciate all the work you do and I had a question about, if I could ask you about the state contract that you get which is...says here 55% of your operating...your revenue. What is that contract? Mr. Hubbard: The...you...you're talking about...oh, the 50... Ms. Kawahara: This 20...268. Mr. Hubbard: Oh, the 268, that's part of the $1.225 million grant for the Na Pali Coast Trail and the CCC Camp... Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Hubbard: ...Koke`e. Ms. Kawahara: So that was a... Mr. Hubbard: So it's just that part that's coming this year. Ms. Kawahara: The grant and contract. Mr. Hubbard: Right, well it was agrant-in-aid and the...we now have a contract, but it goes over multiple years. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, that's specific. Okay. (inaudible) Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, Mr. Bynum. 10 LJ • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Ms. Kawahara: I just wanted to know what that was. Thank you. Mr. Bynum: Thanks, Mark, for being here today and you know we're...it is a difficult year. You heard the opening and... Mr. Hubbard: Yes. Mr. Bynum: You know, we were hoping that the few non-profits we do fund that maybe they'd take a cut similar to the state, to our hopeful 10%. But I think I just want to mention that the grant that Lani just talked about, it's a great example of collaboration. That having the county funding gives KPAA credibility when going out for other projects and you know one of the first projects of KPAA was the Parks Action Team. I was fortunate enough to be one of the volunteer members of that Parks Action Team. And because of that effort, I think it resulted in getting these moneys for Koke`e and for the Na Pali Coast Trail... Mr. Hubbard: Right. Mr. Bynum: ...which enhances our visitor product and makes it available for people and so, it's that kind of collaboration that KPAA does that...for the funds we give them, they gave to many people in...in efforts for the future of Kauai. So, we'll do our best. Thank you. Mr. Hubbard: Great, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. With that... Ms. Kawahara: Excuse me, one more thing. Mr. Kaneshiro: Question or comment? Ms. Kawahara: Comment. Mr. Kaneshiro: Comment, we'll save that for later. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, (inaudible), okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any questions for Mr. Hubbard? I think, yeah, we need to keep the comments for later discussion. But if you do have a question for Mr. Hubbard, you know, go ahead and address your question. I have one for you. Did you go before the legislature for some funding because I know you have some state funding that you people have been helped in the state with. Mr. Hubbard: We've...we've asked for, I think four point some million grant- in-aid to do the rest of the Na Pali Coast Trail. Mr. Kaneshiro: No, I'm asking about to fund the...to fund your alliance. Mr. Hubbard: I'm sorry, what was... 11 r~ u APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Kaneshiro: If you've gone before them to ask for some funding like how you came before the county to ask for funding...some of their funding. Mr. Hubbard: No. No, we have not. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. I...I just brought that up because I saw how much money you got for the state...from the state to do state projects. Mr. Hubbard: Right, okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. With that, I don't have any more questions and I don't think any committee members have any questions. Okay, with that I'm going to call up the mayor's office. Do we still keepthe.rules suspended? Lbelieve~so.._. -__. - ..~,~_- =Y-,.,,.-_:~-.-,~- . RICKY WATANABE, Council Services Coordinator: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes. Okay. We have the mayor to give their overview on their budget and we can proceed with that. GARY HEU, Administrative Assistant: Okay, good morning, Council Chair, councilmembers. Councilmembers: Good morning Mr. Heu: It's a pleasure to be here this morning with you folks to kick off our 2009-2010 budget discussions. First of all, relative to the overall budget, I think I just wanted to say that probably this year more than any other year, we've attempted to make our budget and our discussion of the budget more transparent and available to the community. You folks, I think all seven of you, were here when the mayor did his state of the county address and he covered in great detail his budget and the budget...the entire budget as well as the mayor's. budget message is available on the county website and that's a...that's a first and I think we've gotten a lot of good feedback in terms of people who've really appreciated having that...that sort of access. I handed out copies of the mayor's budget message, but I'm certainly not going to sit here and recite it to you folks because I think, you know, we transmitted it with the budget, so I'm sure you have had an opportunity to see it and like I said, you folks have also heard...heard the mayor talk about the overall budget. I just wanted to make a few points as we...as we start into the discussion, number one, that it is a budget reflecting a total of $154,000,000. It is a decrease of approximately 2.5% from the current fiscal year budget and I think to the credit of the mayor and his team, I believe this is the first time in about 14 years that we've er...we've ever had submitted a budget that was actually lower than current year budget and that didn't come without a bit of pain. As you folks are well aware, projected revenues are down about 4.4% or about $6.3 million, and what that reflects is an estimated decline in real property tax revenues of about 3% and then it also assumes a TAT or Transient Accommodation Tax decrease of about 10.2%. Now having said that, as our speakers related to earlier, you folks all know that there is a tremendous amount of discussion taking place down at the legislature right now. In fact, I think decision making on the TAT bill in front of the Senate was supposed to take place at 9:30 this morning. And...and we...we fully expect that that bill will move out of the Senate Ways and Means Committee and will end up in conference as, you know, we think that most of the significant budgetary type of bills will move on to conference and in conference that's where all this will be debated and hammered out. I...I don't need to tell you folks 12 ~ i APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) all the different variations of things that are being offered up, you know, from increase in excise tax, increase in...or giving the counties the authority to raise sales tax. So, there are many things out there. They'll all end up in conference and it's going to be a wait-and-see type of exercise for us. As was related to earlier, we did not factor into the budget that we submitted a total loss of TAT. That...that is not what this budget represents. It...it shows a...a decline of an anticipated amount that we felt that revenues would be reduced by based on the overall reduction in TAT revenue statewide, but it does not account for an estimated $12 million that we could lose if in fact the legislature decides to either suspend or as council chair said do away with the TAT tax. So, that's just you know, a 20,000-foot level view of the overall budget and as we get to the various departmental budgets, you folks will have the opportunity to drill down as you see appropriate to get specific answers to...to some of your questions. I...I just wanted to address a couple things right up front that...that I heard this morning and I thought it...it might be useful just to kind of have a short discussion before I get into the actual mayor's office budget review. I heard...first of all, I heard Councilmember Kaneshiro talk about justification for dollar-funded positions. Now, I...I just wanted to get clarification as to...are you saying that when we come across to get those...those positions fully funded at a point in time where we think it might be appropriate, you're saying we need to provide full justification? Or are you saying that just to keep that dollar-funded position in the budget, you'd like the justification up front during this budget process? Mr. Kaneshiro: Right and I guess what I referred to is that if you want to get that position funded... Mr. Heu: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...that's what I referred to. Mr. Heu: Okay, okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: When you have that position funded, that's when we would like to have the full... Mr. Heu: The full, okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...justification... Mr. Heu: Got it. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...as to the reason where the departments will give you, you know, hopefully the justification and you'll come and request that before us. Mr. Heu: Okay. There was also quite a bit of discussion on the stimulus package and the projects and...and I got to tell you it...it is a challenge for us on the other side of the street. We have...we have an entire department head group that is...is being very vigilant about keeping eyes and ears open for any ARRA opportunity. The problem is that or the challenge, I should say, is this initiative...this federal initiative is so large that I think our lobbyist has a staff of like three people just monitoring the stuff.. So a lot of the stuff we get comes from our lobbyist, so it's been a great resource for us. But I want to give you guys an example of how...how 13 APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) crazy this thing is. One night I was going through my email and I had received a...I think this was a Thursday evening and I received an email from Donald Fujimoto and it was just something that was for...that he forwarded up to me. It was a communication, as I started the email string, that started off with...with a gentleman at the USDA and he had shot this to all public works directors. So, you know, it came to Donald and Donald just passed it directly on up to me. So, what it showed was that there were...there was an opportunity through USDA to get appropriate projects funded and it said, please, you know, work with your local RC&D representative and for us that representative is Lauri Ho on-island. Now previously we had not heard anything about this, not got...been contacted by anyone. I£..if Donald had not forwarded that email up to me, it would have been an opportunity missed. Now what...what the email said was that...as I read down and the due date for that submittal of those projects was the following day. And so that night I got on the phone with Lauri Ho and this must have been about 8 o'clock or so in the evening and I said, hey, Lauri, I mean, is this something that the county is eligible for. Can the county apply through this channel and she -- -- said she believed so. So, the next morning when I got in, I got together with Lani Nakazawa and we just went through this fire drill and I think we submitted a total o£..there were about four projects that we were able to...to package, you know, in the course of the day and get it off to these people. And today, I mean I'm glad to report that right now where we sit today, three of the projects have made it through the initial scrub and they've come back to ask us for additional information. And it is a challenge because, you know, we've got the legislature going on and all the challenges that are...that we're facing there this year. We have our congressional package for normal congressional funding that we're working on with our lobbyist and...and so there's a constant exchange of information there and we go through fire drills all the time to...to get additional information to support our projects. And then we've got the ARRA and part of the difficulty is even as we communicate to congressional staff in D.C., they can't even provide us guidance in. terms of...we see that funding is available out there. We just can't get clear how we access that funding. So it...it's a constant kind of thing. Quite frankly some of those federal agencies haven't even set up guidelines. And so although if you were to look at various sites, you'd say oh, wow, there's all this money available through this one channel, but when you contact them, they're...they're not even to roll their stuff out maybe till May sometime...they...because they don't have things in place. So, it's...it is...I agree it is a challenge. I was speaking with George Costa, our director of economic development one night, and he was, you know, he was wondering how do we get our arms around this and I said, that's a good question. I think everybody's asking the same sort of questions. Even where moneys seemingly have passed down through the state, let's say as an example relative to Energy Block Grants, we still can't get a good fix on how...We know that the...Kaua`i's share is about $267,000, but the question is how do we get our hands on that $267,000. So, I just want to, you know, I want to assure the council that, you know, we're doing everything that we feel we possibly can. I mean it would be nice if we could dedicate three bodies to do this, but we don't have that sort of resource. But...so it's...it's a collective effort really. I mean I've reminded department heads during our daily morning briefings many times that anybody hearing anything about an ARRA opportunity needs .to funnel that information up to the mayor's office and let us make a determination as to, you know, whether it's something that can or cannot happen. And then we'll chase it down with our lobbyist. So, I just wanted to...and...and yes, chair, I...I...I think that, you know, we should be providing information to the council in terms of what we've already seen. But quite frankly, what we know of in terms of moneys that are flowing into...or that the county actually has an opportunity to...to receive or has been approved to receive, even that is not a comprehensive view of what Kauai may receive because there may be non-profits out there who are working through their channels applying for grants and we many not, in fact, know that that non-profit has received money until we read about it in the paper or we stumble across some other source that tells us, eh, you know YMCA just got awarded this. 14 C~ • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Kaneshiro: And...and...and that is why I pointed out in my notes that that is for assistance. You know, we...we...we can always keep that in mind as we move forward that if there is something that comes through, it's for assistance. Mr. Heu: Right. Mr. Kaneshiro: So, but we need to focus on the budget, the way the budget is written... Mr. Heu: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: And how we're going to move forward trying 'to, you know, meet the budget with some of the cuts we're going have. And then if this assistance comes in, then we can all smile and be happy about it, but I know how tough it is because we've been up at D.C. during NACo, you know, voicing and lobbying for many of these packages and it's really hard to track. So, we...we realize the situation. Mr. Heu: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: And I'm going to come with a communication to you so we can get...get, you know, too an idea of how we're going to set this up so we can have better communication in the stimulus package and so forth. So, just, you know...and that's why I said it's for assistance and we'll focus on the main budget. But before we start that, Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, thank you. You know these were your words, Gary, the mayor's state of the county gave great detail. Well, quite frankly under these times, which are full of fire drills, the detail that I'm looking, I'll be very honest, is I haven't seen anything that tells me, hey, if I get a lead, who do I send it to at the county? What is our policy? How do you frame it? Something gets on the radar screen, whose tracking it? Okay. That...that's what I'm looking for. And...and I think Kaneshiro was correct... Mr. Kaneshiro: That's the communication I'm going to come with. Mr. Furfaro: ...when he's saying, you know, we don't...we're not dealing with that in this budget right now, but I want to know because, you know, I get things from (inaudible-loud buzzing sound) development, I get things from serving on the Salvation Army, I get things from Habitat, you know. I want to know, is...are our three grant writers there, the catch people, you know? Mr. Kaneshiro: So...so again, I'm going to send a communication, then we can... Mr. Furfaro: I understand, but I want to make... Mr. Kaneshiro: We can have some discussions on it. Mr. Furfaro: I want to make sure I made myself very clear. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah and...and that's why... 15 APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Furfaro: Because this is found money. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, but...but I don't want to get...keep going back into this discussion as we move forward with the mayor's budget. I'll come with my communication. When my communication comes back, then we can look at the communication and get contact with the office and have some discussion. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you, thank you, Mr. Chair. That's all I'm looking for, the policy. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Mister... Mr. Heus ~~. _ _ =__~.Cou1d.L..could.I just.answer._. z «, ,~_~,~_.__ Mr. Kaneshiro: Bynum. Mr. Heu: ...the vice chair real quickly? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, go ahead. Mr. Heu: Vice Chair, I would say please, if you do come across what you believe may be an opportunity, please feel free to forward it to me and.I...and I will take that and have it distributed to wherever it needs to go. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: And those are my questions as I...I...I'm thrilled to hear what you're saying about sensitivity to this issue because it's an extraordinary year, it's an extraordinary opportunity and many of these funding sources do impact our budget because traditionally they've funded positions and...and what looked like six months ago was going to be cut is looking like increases in...in some of the circumstances. So, who is in...who is the contact person? Mr. Furfaro: He just said he's the guy. Mr. Bynum: I mean, I've been talking with Mr. Rezentes about some of these issues... Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, that's what my communication will cover, Mr. Bynum. So, we'll do that, okay. Mr. Bynum: But some of them are...have direct impact on what we would fund on the county budget depending on if we're looking at cuts or increases in areas that are traditionally funded, even salaries in...for some of our people. Mr. Kaneshiro: I...I, you know, I want to stay away from that discussion because again, the stimulus package is to assist, you know, and many of the funding we've had or grants funding like those fundings and they...they're not part of the stimulus package or some of them are part of the stimulus package in some ways, but we've been focusing on anything that will assist the county. So, with that, we'il...we'll send a communication and if you want to add anything 16 • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) to the communication, committee members, please get it forwarded to me with your comments and we'll send that over to the administration with one correspondence rather than have several correspondence going back and forth to the administration. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you, Mr. Kaneshiro. Mr. Kaneshiro: I would really appreciate that. Okay, Lani. Ms. Kawahara: Chair, can I ask you a question on the communications that you will be asking for. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, yes. Ms. Kawahara: They're going to be in a timely manner while we're doing the budget, their responses, yes? Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, I'm hoping. Ms. Kawahara: So that we can make a... Mr. Kaneshiro: I mean, I can't tell them. It's not my position to tell them, but I believe they hear...I believe they hear, you know, they hear our concerns. So, you know. Ms. Kawahara: I'm just...I'm just not aware, I don't know how it works, so... Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, I think they got...we're giving them a clear message. M5. Kawahara: Yeah, so any resp...any kind of communications that we do send to you, they are considered urgent and priority and they get back to us as soon as possible so we can make educated decisions? Mr. Heu: We...we usually get a series, an ongoing series of questions that come over during budget and we respond to them, hopefully in what you feel is a timely manner during the budget discussion session, yes. Ms. Kawahara: Oh okay, okay. I appreciate it, thank you. Mr. Furfaro: And Lani, in the past, all budget communications that go over during this process go through Mr. Kaneshiro or whoever is the budget chair so that there's one streamline effort. Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro: Ms. Kawahara: Okay, okay. Correct. It was a good question. And...and they all... 17 • • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Furfaro: But that's been the past pra...practice. Ms. Kawahara: Okay and those go through... Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum. Ms. Kawahara: ...no matter what the question is, yeah. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. Mr. Bynum: I...I just want to say briefly that I've spent several weeks looking at federal funds and the stimulus package and I think some of it is assistance and some of it is integral to our operations and, you know, I certainly intend to ask questions of~every department in what areas that traditionally that helped fund our budget...that...that we are moving forward to make those (inaudible) so. I think there's a distinction between what's in this package and what's in these funds that are coming that are assistance, that might be gravy or above the call, but there's also fundamental aspects of that and I certainly am anticipating that departments are aware of that. I'm sure they are and they are pursuing those aggressively because it's going to impact our general funding, how we provide services to the community. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Gary, continue with your...anything else you wanted to add to your budget message. Mr. Rezentes. WALLACE G. REZENTES, Jr., Finance Director: I just wanted to... Councilmem... Councilmember Bynum, what you're talking to more or less is the...the...some of the recurring grants that we get outside of ARRA, right, the continuing operational grants that we receive from federal and/or state sources that...that come into our various departmental budgets, right? That's what you were referring to just now. Mr. Bynum: Yes and no. I mean, some of the AARA (sic) grants are coming here with a...a...with an expectation from the federal government that other state and county resources are being impacted and they want to continue the level of services. So, it's both and, you know, there's certainly stimulus money that's coming... Mr. Rezentes: Right. Mr. Bynum: ...specifically that will bolster those other operations. Mr. Rezentes: Yes, right, right. Mr. Bynum: And that's the...you know, I want to make sure that we're taking advantage of the opportunities that are made available to us. And this comes from a long- term sense and...understanding that I know that Kauai has not always gotten its fair share of state and federal funds because we didn't step up and ask for them. You have not because you ask not. I think we've been doing a really good job at that. And so this isn't a criticism, but like, we don't want to...as you pointed out, Gary, this is a fluid thing that's happening daily and I'm glad to hear the...the point person is you. But...but they're both, Wally, yeah? I mean, it's...some of the...the stimulus money specifically with that in mind that the federal government knew that states were going to be burdened with other constraints and wanted to make sure that the level of services in 18 • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) education, justice, housing, you know, workforce development and, you know...and...would...would be sustainable. And, you know, that's a big issue at the state level where the board of education is very critical of the governor right now. Mr. Kaneshiro: You know, I think we should keep this conversation back to the mayor's budget. At this point as chair, I'm going to send a communication over to the administration and when we get the communication back, we can get into more discussions. At this point, Gary, can you continue... Mr. Heu: Sure and... Mr. Kaneshiro: ...any other highlights you wanted to point out about the mayor's budget. Mr. Heu: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mayor's office budget. Mr. Heu: Yes, there are, and I apologize for taking us on that bunny trail. Anyway, the first thing I wanted to say before we even get to the graph that I provided you folks is relative to that discussion on the funding for...or the reduction in funding for KPAA. And I'll just lay this on the table right now 'so that we don't have to get into too much more discussion as we go through the mayor's office review. But unfortunately I cannot sit here and tell you this morning how...what the rationale was for taking it from the $35,000 down to the 20.5. All of that along with our funding for Red Cross and any number of other "special projects" roll up to a single line item, which is called special projects. And I saw the overall reduction in the special projects line, which was about $80,000 or so. In my initial review of the detail within the special projects, KPAA was reduced by 10% like...as were a number of other special projects in that...in that category. I think Mel Rapozo mentioned sister cities, which I think took a 50% reduction, you know, but still all rolls up to the...the special projects. So, as I was doing a detailed view of the special projects in preparation for this...this...this discussion this morning. I tried to ascertain what the rationale was for going from 30 down to the 20.5 versus the 10% that had...that I originally saw in the budget. I have not been able to...to nail down an answer yet, but I will get back to you. I don't think it was the mayor's intent to take it down to 20,000 quite frankly. I think the...at...at...on the outside, all he was trying to do was say, hey, look, if we're asking all of our departments to take a 10% reduction, then and I don't want to use the governor's words, but you know, I think we all need to participate and, you know, give something. So that was the intent and...and how it got to be over 30% reduction I don't know, but I will find out the answer and get back to you guys on that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Mr. Heu: Okay, now I would direct your attention to this graph that I provided you and what I tried to do for the sake of both time and resources so as not to kill a bunch of trees, I tried to do everything on this one graph. And the second graph is only to give you, you know, the pie chart behind that is only to give you another way of viewing it, but I think for the most part this...this...this...the bar graph will be able to illustrate what we've done in the mayor's office: So; first of all I would direct your attention to the red numeric one. And what that shows is that...it shows our budget for 2009 being $2.1 million; it shows our proposed budget at being ov...a little over $2.3 million for a variance of an additional $193,430, okay. So, the initial, you know, blush is...okay, 19 • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) the mayor's office did not in fact take a reduction, but they actually added additional expense into their budget. So I direct you down to numeric number 2 and what you'll see is that first of all, in...in the benefits category, as was mentioned by the vice chair, there were certain costs that had previously resided in...in finance and were now being allocated out to the individual departments. So in order to do anapples-to-apples comparison, what I've done is shown you that in that benefits...in that increase in benefits is $206,000 that was previously not allocated to the mayor's office and that is the other post-employee...employment benefits or OPEB as we, you know, affectionately call it. And...and you'll see that...you'll see that in every department's... Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, we noticed that. Mr. Heu: ...budget as they come through. Number two is the Ho`ike... the budget for Ho`ike had previously-resided-in finance -under IT, but this year is-being transferred..to the mayor's office under boards and commissions, and they will manage the Ho`ike contract because for the most part, other than council, most of our Ho`ike activities are in support of our boards and commissions. So it made a certain amount of sense to, again, transfer that responsibility and the funding for that to the mayor's office. So, having said that, I direct your attention now to item number three, the red numeral three, and you can see that if we adjust the budget, the proposed budget for the total of $406,000 which were an add to the mayor's department this year, and if you were to pull that out you'll see that in actuality and you were trying to compare apples-to-apples that our actual budget would be at about $1.9 million and in actuality we'd actually have a reduction in our budget of nearly $212,000 or a 10% reduction. So, then very quickly numeral number four in red shows you what makes up that...that reduction. In general terms $65,000 comes from salary-related line items, 81.5 thousand comes from that special projects line item that I was talking to you about earlier, 25.7 thousand comes from a reduction in our travel budget which represents a 50% reduction in travel, and the 6.1, I just threw that in there because. that was the mayor's car allowance that he continues to say that he has given up, which he has. And so that's in there and then the balance, miscellaneous things that were reduced. If you go line item by line item through the mayor's budget, you'll see that various equipment and supply line items, advertisement, printing costs, those were all reduced for a total of 34.1. So that's how we came up with the adjusted variance of $212,000. So I hope that, you know, that in a very concise manner shows you what you're seeing in terms of the variance in the mayor's office budget. I should also say that part of the sala...in the salaries category, what that reflects is current year we have 16 fully funded positions and in our proposed budget you'll see that we've gotten 15 fully funded positions and one dollar-funded position. And then it also reflects the mayor's intent not to provide any type of salary increase within the mayor's office for the proposed budget year 2010. So, in a nutshell that's...that's our budget and I'm more than happy to...to take any questions that you guys might have. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you, Gary. Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, thank you. Gary, thank you for a nice presentation. Let me just, going forward, query you on two things if you could for me. Starting, with travel, you're reducing travel by 25.7. Do you have some general guidelines o£..that the mayor's office is setting up for across-the-board how you're reducing travel? I mean, is there a criteria of how you're valuing certain meetings or conventions or you know? Mr. Heu: Oh. 20 • • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Furfaro: Is...is there something that tells us specifically how you're...how you're trying to reduce travel? Mr. Heu: Yes, that's a good question. Relative specifically to travel, we put out a directive back in January. So, it's in place today that we would be reducing proposed budget by 50% and current year budget, what we did was we said, as of December...as of the end of December, whatever your travel balance was, you reduce that by 50% and that needed to take you through the rest of the year. Now part of that was because we feel that travel needs to be budgeted down at the department head level. Historically it's managed out of the...out of the mayor's office. I mean I end up being the guy. I'm the bad guy. I'm the...I'm the...I'm the travel Nazi, you know. And...and...you know, I mean, I've got a bad reputation across the street. I've got a person down in an unnamed department who to this day still won't talk to me because I denied travel. It's a very sensitive thing, but I don't think we should be managing it out of the mayor's office. So, I...it's not for me to tell a department head, well, yes, this mainland conference is okay and this inter-island one is not okay. That's...as a department head, that's your responsibility. So, we give you the budgetary constraints by which you have to live by and you make the decision. If you want to sent somebody to the mainland, to the east coast for aone-week conference at the expense of being able to send five employees to Honolulu for atwo-day training, that's your decision, but these are the guidelines. We're also encouraging more video-conferencing and that sort of thing, and we...we've seen a major increase in the use of our video-conferencing facilities. Mr. Furfaro: One more question, if I can, Mr. Chair? ;.a_: Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: And then Gary, when you reference the deferral of salary increases for the mayor's office, you're talking about the one that comes up December 1 of this year. Mr. Heu: December...December of this year, yes, yes. year? Mr. Furfaro: Okay, so it would impact about eight months of the 2009-2010 Mr. Heu: Yeah. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, okay, that's it, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Go ahead, Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: These numbers include...in...that you're talking about including the board...They include the boards and commissions that are under the mayor's office? Mr. Heu: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Heu: Yes. 21 • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Ms. Kawahara: office that are getting funded? Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: May I ask about specific programs that are under the mayor's Absolutely, yeah. Thank you. Go ahead. Ms. Kawahara: I want to congratulate you actually on getting the budget on-line and I really appreciate that. In relation to that I wanted to ask about the Ho`ike contract. I understand that it's ongoing. I have an invoice or I have invoices here and I am curious. I didn't even know what the Mayor's Kuleana was. What-.that is. If you could tell me what that is? : _ Mr. Heu: Sure, it's the mayor's program and I think this was actually start...It wasn't called Kuleana at that point in time, but I think it was started back when Maryanne Kusaka was the mayor. And it's just a...it's a venue for the mayor to be able to speak to the public and so I think different mayors have used it in different ways. I think there are periods of times where mayors have not used it at all. I think that Mayor Carvalho is beginning to use that on a weekly basis and it's an opportunity for him to have different guests on his show. It might be a department head talking about specific issues. It might be a member of the community speaking about community issues, but that's in general what it is. It's just a...again, like I said different mayors have used it for different purposes. Ms. Kawahara: Could you show me where it is in his budget and what the funding is or is it a broad amount that includes all the boards and commissions? Mr. Heu: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Heu: Ms. Kawahara: No, it...it's just a...it's a...it's a bucketful of money for w... Bucketful? ...for...that funds these council meetings... Right and the boards and commissions. Mr. Heu: ...as well as police commission and other commission meetings, planning commission and Ho`ike. Ms. Kawahara: Because...yeah... Mr. Rezentes: It...it's shown as a line item in boards and commissions, on the one line. So it encompasses all the boards and commissions (inaudible). It's a (inaudible), one contract. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. Mr. Rezentes: And right now Ho`ike is the contractor. 22 • • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Ms. Kawahara: Okay, for...just for record purposes, I guess, is it correct that it's $265 an hour for...for those Kuleana ones? Are they charged at a different rate than the boards and commissions and at council? Mr. Rezentes: I...I believe so, but I would need to confirm. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, could I see this get back, chair? Mr. Bynum: It's a higher rate. Ms. Kawahara: It's the Ku...I would like to get the Kuleana rate. Mr. Kaneshiro: What do you want? Ms. Kawahara: I would like to get the Kuleana rate. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, can you write it down and then we can...that's why we passed out this sheet here. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, but you've been talking about making a communication so, I thought that was it. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, we have this here, so... Mr. Bynum: That's what the pads are for. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's what it's here for...for the procedure. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: So, if you have any questions, write it down and then we'll have those questions addressed through this communication coming before me. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, I'd like to get that broken out, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: And from the budget here, I was wondering what happened to E-45, the position from last year? Mr. Heu: E-45, that position was previously...the title of that position was previously commission specialist and is currently the mayor's administrative aide. Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Heu: Ms. Kawahara: Administrative aide. Yes, oh, I'm sorry. What's the...under boards? 23 • • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Heu: Boards and Commissions. Ms. Kawahara: And what was the number on that E-45 and now? Mr. Heu: It's just...the position number always stays the same. Ms. Kawahara: The amount, the amount of moneys that funds it, the salary. Is it different? Mr. Bynum: 73.4 Mr. Heu: Let's see, I think... Mr. Kaneshiro: 73.044. y ~ j~~! Mr. Heu: I don't have the... Mr. Kaneshiro: It's under boards and commissions. Mr. Bynum: It's under boards and commissions. Mr. Heu: Yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, 73...73.044. Mr. Heu: Okay, yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. So now; but it's still in...that's. still a mayor's administrative aide and helps in that office. Mr. Heu: Yeah, it's just...it's the title, yeah, yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Any other questions? Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: I...I would like to on the Ho`ike cost, Gary, I think you know as we come to the ends of the year and so forth, I know we have a...kind of a bundled number there, but separately I'11...I'll ask for a communication that kind of breaks out the council's portion in the event we have opportunities that...because we've been conducting business relatively within the time frame that has been allowed. But you know, if we get to the end and we have an opportunity to maybe publicize the county's year-end audit during review and so forth, it'd be nice to know that if we do or don't have funds. So, I'll send that question out in a communication. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum. Mr. Rezentes: I...I...I just wanted to let everyone... Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, go ahead, Wally. 24 • • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Rezentes: ...know the...the...I'm not sure how much longer...how relative the cost per hour is going to be because we're right in the middle of a new procurement. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Mr. Rezentes: So depending on the new contractor's bid, the winning contractor's bid, it may...it may adjust, yes. Ms. Kawahara: When are you expecting that to go through. Mr. Rezentes: It's...I think it's being advertised now. Right, it's going through purchasing right now. Ms. Kawahara: So it's not going to show up here for this budget. Mr. Rezentes: We may know an answer for our May 8 submittal, so we could probably refine the number for our May 8 submittal to...to the council. Ms. Kawahara: And I did want to thank you for tracking down those numbers for me because it was very important for me to find out how much money we did have and how much money the council could use because we have...I have put in a request to have the budget hearings televised. And I believe we had money to do that and I don't see it here, so...our tele-people here, so I just wanted to be clear on that, that that money is what I was looking at and that's why I was asking that question. Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: I think the way we'll pose the question across .the street...your question is similar to mine if...if there is credit available, we as a body can consider that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Correct and again, we...we...we can have that discussion when the time comes. Ms. Kawahara: Because, yeah, I'm looking at we are halfway through and we still have several million dollars, thanks. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, I don't want to get into that discussion right now. We'll go over with a communication with that unless you have a specific question, Mr. Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: No, not a specific question. I was going to address a statement that was just made. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, I...I know. I...I...I think, you know, we need to stay on track of what we're trying to discuss here, Lani. I think what happened is that there's communications going forward to the administration, budget communications that I think should come before me and then I'll send it over because at times you may get a different report from a different person. If it's not the right person that we send the information that we want to get this information from, you may get a different figure from a different... Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. 25 • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Kaneshiro: ...you know, person. So, again, for budget issues, I would like to have the communication or you want to send something for budget, if you want to discuss it about...in the budget about this specifically to find out if there's money in a certain project, there's money in a certain fund, how much money there is. Ms. Kawahara: That's what I'm asking. Mr. Kaneshiro: I...I think... Ms. Kawahara: I would like a communication and I'm writing it on our notes and questions, etc. Mr. Kaneshiro: -- Okay,-all right. - - - . . _,« - _ - _. - _ ~ -~ .. _-,.~., Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Because I don't want calls...be calling different departments saying, oh, how much money do we have in here or how much money and we come here and we start getting into a discussion when, you know. Ms. Kawahara: I needed to...I needed to find out in order to see if it was even a viable thing. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay and this is why I don't want to start throwing out numbers until... Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...we have a communication so each and every member can see that communication. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Rezentes. Mr. Rezentes: In...in an effort to...to hopefully save time, you know, by other departments, I think Gary had touched on the OPEB cost and I know Vice Chair Furfaro is, you know, well aware of this...this item from...from I think fiscal year '08 when we had discussed it at length in the past, but for...for those of you who...who are new and...and weren't aware, basically the OPEB cost represents 19% of salaries. And we...we ob...we obtain that cost from the health fund annually. What...what they do is they hire an actuary...an actuarial firm to estimate the post- employment cost of all our...of our employee load right now. And...and they adjust it based on the life expectancies o£..of...of...of employees in...in all the different areas, fire fighters, police, our regular employees. So, you know, you'll see the benefit section in the graphs that the departments all provide you that show an increase because of our allocation, our attempt to place cost where they...where they come from, you know. And...and it's something that we...we continue to work on and refine and I believe, you know, that was the intent of past councils to try to cost allocate out to the respective cost centers. So, you know, this, again, is an attempt to do that, but you'll see that with all departments. 26 • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. Mr. Furfaro: And I do want to thank Mr. Rezentes for that approach because it...it actually shifts some responsibility to manage those costs as well to the various departments. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any other questions for the mayor's office? Mr. Bynum or Lani or...? Mr. Bynum: All right...this is...also any questions about boards and commissions would happen during this period, is that correct? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: I just want to follow up on questions I've asked the last two budgets really quickly and it can be in writing about the (inaudible), about whether we are completing the minutes of the boards and commission meetings within the 30-day statutory limit and if there's any ongoing challenges with that. Mr. Heu: That's a good question. I...I believe that for...for most of the commissions that it...that's probably a true statement. I...I...I couldn't sit here and tell you for every commission that it's always within 30 days. I...I know that we've had challenges. I mean it's no secret with planning inter...I mean, you know, that their...their meetings are sometimes as complex and voluminous, you know, material as...as...as the council. And...and so...so I know that they...they did have a backlog; they were working on it. Whether they are now also within the 30-day period I couldn't tell you this morning, but we could get that information to you, no problem. Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Anyone else has any questions for the mayor's ofI`ice? Ms. Kawahara: Sister city. Mr. Kaneshiro: This is your chance now. Ms. Kawahara: Sister city, sister city. Mr. Heu: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Can you explain that to me, what $10,000 is for? Mr. Heu: That's for...that has been used in the past for when mayors travel to our sister cities, whether it's an established sister city or whether it's a new sister city. Let's see, we have many sister cities in Japan and when they come to visit us, you know, I mean it's the...it's the exchange of gifts and that sort of thing and just to support that...that effort. So I think we've reduced it by about 50% in...in the coming year. Ms. Kawahara: Is there a plan for him...for the governor, I mean the mayor to do a trip with that money? 27 APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Heu: planning at this point in time. Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Heu: officers, yeah. I'm currently not aware of any international trip that he's Okay, thank you. What's the JPO picnic? That's just the function for in recognition of junior police Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. That's...they always have that every year where they do...all the people that participate in the JPO because the program also has kids involved in that, where they go out and help, you know, to learn the functions, so. They have a picnic after that. Ms. Kawahara: One last question,- I think.. The Challenge Day,-$9,000, where~- does that go? Mr. Heu: That's...that is a...that is a program used for drug and alcohol awareness and... Ms. Kawahara: Drug and alcohol awareness. Mr. Heu: For high school students. Ms. Kawahara: High school students, okay. Mr. Heu: Yeah, yeah, it's targeted at... Ms. Kawahara: And it's three days. Mr. Heu: It's at the three high schools, yeah, yeah. I mean all indications are that's a very...it's an impactful type of program. We think it's...it's...it deserves to be...to be funded on a continued basis, yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Could I get...I'll write it down. I'm going to ask for measurements on that program and then also on the anti-drug programs. Thank you. For...yeah, measurables, statistics and the impacts. Mr. Heu: Sure. Ms. Kawahara: Thanks. Mr. Furfaro: You know, I might make mention that...that it'd be hard to do a comparison because it's a relatively new item, just for your knowledge. I...I participated in the Waimea High School last year, but I think...I think Mr. Bynum might have more detail on that for you, so. Ms. Kawahara: I'm going to ask him... Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, Mr. Bynum. Maybe... 28 • U APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I...you know I want to recognize that, you know, a lot of these small funding amounts are critical to our community and the priority of things that we've done for a very long time. You know, I appreciate your comment earlier about looking at the funding of these kind of special programs because they're just...you know I tried to get Challenge Day in last year's budget and frankly the Challenge Day people didn't respond in a timely manner. So I'm thrilled to see that in here. You know, we...it's a tough budgetary time, but we can't stop engaging in things that are culturally and traditionally part of our community like you know Lights on Rice and you know don't take a whole lot of money but have a very large impact in the kind of culture of our community and so I was thrilled to see Challenge Day in here and...in...and I appreciate that you're seeking to have balance for...for these kind or programs. Mr. Kaneshiro: And...and...just to add on top of that, many of these programs we participate in too, the council participates in too, so...especially like the Challenge programs and I've done that several years ago with Waimea High School, but it's a...unreal programs. I mean when you...when you participate you got a chance to participate with the kids and to really be on- line, you know, and see what they're going through, so. We...we've supported these projects and we're the ones that said I think we really need to put some funding in this projects. Mr. Bynum: And I think... Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, go ahead, continue, Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Just a...yeah, it's like I think Mr. Hubbard made that..correct, you know that it's not a lot of dollars but in terms of what it...the leveraging it allows these organizations to do and...and their funds. You know, we're dealing with millions o£..we look at thousands arid...but for the...a lot of them, it's just like an integral part and it...and it can be part of what is like a...a lot of non-profits in particular have very targeted funds and so if they have something that gives them a little more latitude, it really goes a long way. So, thank you very much. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Dickie, you had something? Mr. Chang: Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to say I think it's important that, you know, perhaps we also look into getting Island School, you know, not just the public schools, but I think if we can include them in. You know, we already lost Kula School. Kahili Adventist is a small school, but Island School has a big, you know, population and I think the kids, whether they're private or public schools, they go through the same challenges. So, if we can get them included also, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: I just want to be clear, if I could, Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: What's that? Ms. Kawahara: I just...if I could be clearer. I'm asking about those programs not because of... Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead. 29 r: • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) Ms. Kawahara: meas... Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: everybody... Mr. Kaneshiro:. _ Mr. Furfaro: Ms. Kawahara: I'm asking about these programs just to find out what they Yeah, no problem, we understand that. I want a measurable thing. We understand. So I can say I'm funding this because and I appreciate Lani, we totally understand_that. __. We...we understand. Thanks, okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: We understand. It's not a prob...I'm not objecting to any of the questions that you're asking. I'm also helping... Ms. Kawahara: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...to answer some of the questions... Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...because we've had the opportunity to participate in some of those programs. It's just for clarity. So, don't take it that you know... Ms. Kawahara: You know (inaudible) Mr. Kaneshiro: Because you're questioning those questions. Mr. Furfaro: No, no, no, when you asked about measuring the program, the reality I wanted to make sure you knew that we didn't have it from last year. So we don't have something to measure it with. But for the JPO program, you know I'm an ex-sergeant of the JPO in Waianae. I going measure myself as being pretty successful, so. Mr. Kaneshiro: And...okay. Mr. Furfaro: I turned out okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: And...and Gary, you know, for me as a chair, I'm also going to be asking a lot of the...the ones that come before us if they have some other sources of funding too. Because often you have some state funding on some programs, you have some federal programs, you know on...on things like this, you know, that we do, so. Sometimes if I ask that, you know, it's just so I know and see how bad it is. They going say, yeah, we had state funding on this particular 30 • APRIL 6, 2009 MAYOR'S OFFICE (1) program that we're trying do, Teen Challenge or whatever, but now it's been cut and now, you know, it's falling upon the county responsibility and so forth, just so we have a better understanding on some of those programs. Mr. Heu: Thanks for that clarification... Mr. Kaneshiro: I just wanted to let you know. Mr. Heu: ...councilmember because, you know, I...I think you guys...this...I'11...I'll state the obvious that...that in these kind of economic times, everybody's feeling the pain, so non-profits also, maybe more so than others. So, even if we reduce them 10% from current year, this was the year they probably were going to come in and ask for additional funding. Mr. Kaneshiro: Because of other cuts. Mr. Heu: Yeah and... Mr. Kaneshiro: Correct. We understand that. Mr. Heu: I'd be surprised if you guys haven't already heard from them, if you don't hear from them as we go through this process, so. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thank...thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you, Wally, for being here and any other questions, we'll forward over...will come through communication from me. But thank you very much, appreciate it. Mr. Heu: Thank you very much. Mr. Kaneshiro: We...we'll take afive-minute break and then we'll go right into Economic Development if you guys don't mind. Five minutes okay? There being no objections, the budget reviews recessed at 10:36 a.m. 31 • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 10:47 a.m., and proceeded as follows: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Budget...Finance review is now called back to order. We'll start with the next department. Before we do, are there any comments? No? Thank you. Anyone here wanted to speak? No. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Costa, you're up in the hot seat. GEORGE COSTA, Director of Office of Economic Development: All right. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, all ready to go. Just give a brief summary on your budget. Mr. Costa: Okay, aloha, Finance Chair Kaneshiro and members of the Finance Committee. George Costa, Director of Office of Economic Development, here to present our fiscal budget 2010. I believe all of you have the handout, which basically is a summary of our budget, our department budget. Just some of the highlights, on salaries, increase of 4% mainly due to allocation of Workforce Development funding. In the benefits section, there were significant increases through FICA, 49% or about a $14,000 increase from the 2009 budget. The Employee Union Trust Fund was up significantly by $106,000, over $106,000 due to reallocation from the finance department. And the same thing with the retirement fund. It was up by 49% or $27,750 due to the reallocation from the finance department. The main areas of focus are in operations and, you know, we followed the goal for...of Mayor Carvalho to start the budget process with a 10% reduction of overall department expenses and initially we...we presented a...a budget that reflected a 22% decrease in the operating expenses or about $200,000. But then with the need to assist our Visitor Industry and the Cattlemen's Association, we increased the operating budget by $500,000 for the Kauai Visitors Bureau Grant and $50,000 for the Cattlemen's Association, respectively. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Any...as... Mr. Costa: And that's the...the summary. Mr. Kaneshiro: As George just pointed out they were to...basically most of the budget was kept the same except with some of the increases that he just pointed out. So with that, I'll open it up for questions. Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. So, Mr. Costa, thank you for this presentation. It looks like from previous years, I have to put back the HVB and the Cattlemen's money, but it looks like before we got to that point, your budget reduced by about $130,000? Mr. Costa: Yeah, we were actually almost 3% under budget from 2009. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, that's the only question I have. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Anyone else has any questions for Mr. Costa? Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Good morning, George. Mr. Costa: Good morning. Mr. Bynum: The...I just want to clarify that what Gary was saying earlier about looking at the non-profit funding, some of which is in your budget... Mr. Costa: Right. 32 • • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Mr. Bynum: ...that the cuts are, you know, significant percentage amounts, that that's being looked at overall. So, particularly the YWCA that is now...those are down more than 25% or something like that. I can't remember the figures. So, is that something that's going to be re-looked at in terms o£.. Mr. Costa: Yes, the YWCA and I believe there were a couple of other non- profits that from what I've heard...haven't approached me yet but may have approached the council for either additional funding or funding levels that were reflected in 2009. Mr. Bynum: Because what I heard Gary say is that the original intent was to spread the difficulties around 10%, that those cuts that are larger needs to be looked at and...like earlier we were discussing KPAA and now in your budget of gross significance is the YWCA. So is that going to be addressed differently? Mr. Costa: Yeah, we would look at reallocating some of that. Obviously, there's this quite a bit of programs that we...we deal with in the-Office-of Economic Development. --- But if that's...that...that's anarea that should get revisited, then we'll do that. Mr. Bynum: Mr. Costa: Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: funding and...and thanks. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. You're welcome. Lani, you have a question? I just wanted to echo that too. The...looking at the YWCA Okay, Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. I want to move on to another item now that you have some of your staff are here (inaudible). It has been the desire of this county to manage our utility cost and it is a burden that has to be put on individual departments, prosecutor, civil defense, building, and so forth, but the one mechanism we've used in the past is Glenn's ability to track all of the county's utility bills and kilowatt consumption. And that was started about three years ago when I was the Finance Chair. I want to make sure that we are continuing that going forward so that mid-year we can look at the differences in, of course, the bills, but the thing that really drives it is the management of the kilowatt hours. We now have three years of that data and much to the county's credit, our kilowatt hours have remained about the same for this period of time, even though there's been the fluctuation and the fuel surcharge that has changed the bill. But I...I would like to emphasize how important Glenn's ability to consolidate as our...as our energy man in your office, he's been able to consolidate all those bills so that we can measure our performance. We've had significant issues with the police building and the train system there. You know, it was designed to manage the circulating pumps and certain demand periods, but I think they've gotten that corrected. May I impose on you again and i£..if not I will write through Mr. Kaneshiro the...the value of having Glenn consolidate the utility bills for us so... Mr. Costa: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: ...that we can control operating cost from that standpoint. And I'll put that over in a question, Mr. Kaneshiro. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you, Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Costa: Thank you, duly noted. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions for Mr. Costa at this point? If not, thank you very much, Mr. Costa. Is there any other questions with...for some of his staff or...because again, you have different...different, you know, ones here. You have any question about the film from Mr. Umezu? He's here or anything like that? How you doing, Art? No, I'm just joking. 33 • • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Mr. Furfaro: I might...I might...I might have a question for Mr. Umezu when we're finished with Mr. Costa. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Costa? Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: this. The KVB Visitor In Okay, okay, so Mr. Costa? Oh, you have a question for Yeah, yes. Go ahead. I was talking to you earlier and saying I was going to ask you dustry Grant... Mr. Costa: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: We have been discussing and I have it down that it's a bill, a money bill, but I was...I was wondering how far along you'd gotten on being able to actually measure and track the money that'll be coming back from that $500,000 into the economy on Kauai in employment and (inaudible) blab, blab. Mr. Costa: Okay. Sue Kanoho of the Visitors Bureau and I have been working on this for several months. Unfortunately until we actually get approval, a lot of our discussions have been preliminary and to the point where we...we contact some of our wholesalers and kind of throw out what-if scenarios. But until we actually have a firm number, then we can, you know, go to, you know, what we believe as far as one of the sections of our plan is to go to the top wholesalers that have shown a track record of producing visitor arrivals to the island. One of the best ways to track that is through a marketing code. Whatever program we come up with with each wholesaler, we would have to have a code, say Kauai County Aloha Stimulus or something to that effect, where when...when their clients book, that code is utilized. It would take a lot of tracking either from the Visitors Bureau and the various hotels or...or facilities where our visitors would be staying so we can collect that information. Part of that would be the coupon book. We're again working with Randy Francisco and the Visitors Bureau to...to put a coupon book together and...and utilize our various businesses on the island. Again, until we get approval, a lot of this is...is preliminary, but we've had discussions and we've had interest out there in the...in the business community to participate in something like this. Again, it's going to take a lot of effort once we do get approval and do put it in place to have, you know, these various businesses and establishments to...to report on a...on a weekly or monthly basis. Ms. Kawahara: And they...so knowing how much work it is, you do have people interested in participating? And have you gotten any reaction from hotel managers about the plan? Mr. Costa: Well, with...with the hotel managers, obviously anything the county can do to help, you know, support their efforts which they're already doing is much appreciated and... Ms. Kawahara: Do they think...do they think that it's going to be effective? Mr. Costa: They...they believe so. Ms. Kawahara: Different from what is already happening? Mr. Costa: Right, right. It's just additional awareness put out in the...in the general public and...and as I mentioned previously, you know, this plan is not only through the wholesalers but we're looking at the kama`aina and military campaign as well as radio and print media and a live radio spot, similar to something that the Marriott just recently did in their...in their campaign. 34 • • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Ms. Kawahara: Okay, okay, because...yeah, Ijust was wanting to make sure it's not just more money going into a really bad economy already, that they're...they're not coming, they don't have the money. What difference is it going to make if we tell them to come? And just prior to this project, I was hearing that we just wanted to talk to the people that could come and they were the upscale ones. Mr. Costa: Right. Ms. Kawahara: Right? Mr. Costa: Well... Ms. Kawahara: So this one seems to be different from that approach. Mr. Costa: Well, we'll be focusing on the key market areas that have shown even with this down...downturn in economy and lower visitor arrivals that those that•are still ~ -- - coming, you know, we'll focus on those key marketplaces. Ms. Kawahara: And...and then I just...I just have the concern about the radio and I was wondering about the effectiveness of that and how you would track that because there's no coupons and... Mr. Costa: Yeah, the radio...the radio would be difficult. It's...it's an added piece that would continue to keep the awareness out there. And as I mentioned, like with the...the program that the Marriott just did, it helped to emphasize the...their...their ad campaign that they were doing. They had a bus program where they...they filled the bus with sales and marketing people and managers and went up and down the west coast and then throughout the country and their live-radio campaign helped to, you know, create more awareness. And we target this in, you know, key metropolitan areas where their drive time commute would...would be the...the focus. And the...the mayor and I personally participated in the Marriott program and it was interesting, you know, how many people were calling in, you know, on the live...the live radio program. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. I think that was all I had. Thank you, appreciate it. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. The other thing I wanted to point out is that we have this bill coming before us that's scheduled for public hearing. When this bill comes before us, we'll have an opportunity to hear from the Visitors side and also Mr. Costa do a presentation as a...we still got to work on this first part of the $500,000. This is the second part of the $500,000. At the same time, I will allow you to speak on this because it's part of this budget. Ms. Kawahara: I was asking about the second half. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah and I just wanted to point that out that we do have a bill pending before the council that will go public hearing, committee and then we'll work on that too. Mr. Furfaro, yes? Mr. Furfaro: I'm glad you mentioned that. I think the public hearing for that is scheduled on Apri122? Mr. Costa: That's correct. Mr. Furfaro: So, you know, that will be dealing...we're actually dealing with two halves... Mr. Kaneshiro: Correct. 35 • • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Mr. Furfaro: ...of a marketing plan and I do want to share, I think Councilwoman Kawahara asked some very interesting questions about the actual measurement portion. But I do want to add I think after myself, Mr. Costa is probably the second and third general manager on Kauai with the most longevity, so some of us have seen these reporting systems. You know, they started out where they...they get a block of rooms at these various hotels and they have management reports that used to come in weekly by mail reviewing their sales counts and you could compare them to last year's figures. As technology progressed, you now have a block of rooms that shows you the sales almost on a daily basis and you can actually get a comparison from the previous year. Mr. Costa's challenge is going to be to get those hotels to share information with one another. Mr. Costa: Right. Mr. Furfaro: If not, we have to lean more heavily on the Kauai Visitors Bureau, who will get the master management reports and could report on those specific consumption figures. So, to answer your question, there are a few ways to get that information out of them. If not, we go directly to the wholesales. Mr. Costa: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thank you. You had a question for Mr. Costa or was it particular...okay, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: Or Nalani, but I...I didn't get a chance to do this comparison, but I want to...Hi, Nalani, welcome back. I wanted to just get an...an idea about some of the promotional programs like for the...supporting the festivals, whether the funding is the same, is it being reduced or...like for festivals and for...I think it's in these line items, right, KVB consumer, special events grants, tourism product enhancement? I didn't get a chance to compare those till last year. I just wanted to see if they were similar or there's a decrease or an increase or... Mr. Kaneshiro: We're talking...we're talking about the... Mr. Costa: Did you want Nalani to come up? Mr. Bynum: Sure. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, you can, unless you can answer it or Nalani could. We're talking about the HTA match funds. Mr. Bynum: Well, not...yeah. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, these are all matching funds. We put out 50%, HTA puts up 50. Mr. Costa: Right. Mr. Bynum: Right for the support we give festivals, greeters, related to the visitor industry, are we similar to last year or reduced? NALANI BRUN: We are...this is the last...this year is the last of a three-year contract. So unfortunately we're coming into this year that we don't know what's happening because we don't even we don't even have a contract to look at. We're going to find out when you go up in...we need to for the first time in a long time, Hawaii counties are going to get together to bang heads again with HTA and see where we stand. We're hoping...usually they give us about $500,000 a year just on that separate funding. This year it got cut to $350,000. So at the...we're hoping to at least get $350,000 and so is the HTA; they're hoping to give that. So in the meantime, of course, we're starting to compare the festivals and events because this year we had some rollover so we were able to maintain our funding with everyone. But next year, it looks like we're going to be, you know, having to make some cuts, so we're having everybody look at... seriously looking at their budget or, 36 • • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) you know, is this the year that you're not going to want to have your event. Let's really work together, that if we're going to have an event and we're going to pay for it, we're really going to have to make, you know, the money work for us. So, we honestly don't know anything about CPEP. We're unsure about the greetings money. That contract also ends at the end of 2009. We do have the other product development money, which we're scheduled next year to get another $100,000; however, this year we got. cut completely. So, we don't have any money this year. So, just like the county, we are struggling to even find out what they're going to be doing. And as the TAT money, you know, begins to continue to take a dive, it's...it's scary. We have heard from HTA that if they are going to save something, they're going to try to save CPEP, the county product and they want to try to save as much of the greetings program as they can because they realize that there really is a lot o£..a lot of people and a lot of kama`ainas that are involved with those programs and they're going to pick those over a lot of the other things that they try to fund. And that's what they've pretty much done this year. So, I think they're going to carry the course that way. Mr. Bynum: So if the state chooses to reallocate TAT, then it's the question of how much they allocate into these visitor-related projects. ° " °-- - '- ° - ` -~- ----- --~- - - Ms. Brun: Right. Some things are by law like natural resources, right? So they automatically get that first million. But not a lot of the other things are...I don't know if that bill is still on the table to try to make sure that some of the funding goes to CPEP. That was the other one that they really want to make sure got some kind of funding...from the legislature. But I'm not sure if that one is still sitting on the table. Mr. Bynum: I appreciate that overview, but I also am interested about the county's contribution to these programs o£..in this budget. Ms. Brun: Yeah, we have... Mr. Bynum: Is it...are we sustaining the previous level or is it cut or... Ms. Brun: We cut a little. We tried to, you know, take it like every other line item. We cut about 10% there and, you know, we tend to be as creative as we can with the money that we have. It's nothing like HTA money, but when we match it, we make sure we're matching, you know, 3:1 so that... Mr. Bynum: Right. Ms. Brun: So that it...we...it really makes it count. And even with those because those tend to be more of our sports ones which we're really kind of looking at now because we're looking at sports events and can we bring groups over that we can really track and those kind of things are kind of more falling within the county lines because they don't really fall in the HTA area. So, that's kind of where we're going. If we can really see bodies coming in off of this money at this point, that's...that's really where we want to go. Mr. Bynum: Right. You know creative is a good word because you guys have been really good at that over the years and it's just an area I wouldn't want to see us make big cuts. I mean just like we're...we're going to invest in the visitor industry because it is our engine and you know these festivals and grants and greeting things is what sets us apart from other destinations and so, you know, generally I'm very supportive of funding for this. You know if we're...we're going to make, you know, the 10% cuts but please not 30, 40. Ms. Brun: No. We appreciate it. Indeed, the public definitely appreciates it. Mr. Bynum: Well it's a big bang for the buck kind of thing because you said it involves a lot of kama aina, it involves a lot of creativity in leverage and again those things that leverage other resources for us, including human resources, right? Ms. Brun: Yeah, important. 37 APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Mr. Bynum: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum: Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: about the papaya...papaya plant or... Mr. Costa: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: papaya, so. Hold on one Mr. Bynum: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum: Mr. Costa: Big time. Okay? Any other questions for Lani or, I mean Nani or... Nalani. Nalani or... I have one for George. George Costa? Go ahead. Could I...could...could you...are you able to tell me a little bit That... And that... We can have...we'll have... The $20,000. Have Bill come up. We'll have Bill later if not. Okay. Bill can probably ans...answer some of the questions on the second because...any questions for mis... One more. One more for Mr. Costa? Go ahead. Was the Food Bank funding in...in your budget last year? It was. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, last year. Mr. Costa: And when we came to the council to present an update with Judy Lenthall in January, when she received a grant for 2009, fiscal year 2009, there was an understanding that there would be no funding for 2010 and she would seek her own funding sources, which she agreed to and she did mention to the council, but that's one of them that I've heard is...is looking for...to come back with funds. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. 38 • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Mr. Bynum: And I don't know when's the appropriate time, but... Mr. Kaneshiro: I'm going to have her speak later. Mr. Bynum: Oh, okay, great. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, I'm...we'll give her the opportunity to speak, Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: And then if you have any other questions, you can ask it. Okay? Okay, any other questions for Mr..Costa? If .not, I wanted Art Umezu up here. I believe Jay ~_ _ Furfaro had a question for him or something? Is Mr. Furfaro around? If not, I'll get...I'll bring Bill Spitz up first and then we'll get back to you, Mr. Hollywood. Bill, just introduce yourself for the record...for our record here. WILLIAM SPITZ, Agriculture Support Service: I'm Bill Spitz, Office of Economic Development. Mr. Kaneshiro: And mostly agriculture (inaudible) is yours. Mr. Spitz: Mostly agriculture, other things as assigned. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Lani, you had a question. Lani, regarding the papaya, I guess funding. Ms. Kawahara: the papaya? Mr. Spitz: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Spitz: Ms. Kawahara: Because it's been a really long time... Yes, the $20,000. Is that for Disis...Disinfestation Plant for Yes. It is? At Ahukini Road, there's a facility there, yes. Is that to make it...is that to make it active and ready to go? Mr. Spitz: It...the chambers have been checked over and the chamber, one now, is ready for certification, but they were last...they were checked six months or so ago, so we'll have to do that. The problem is that we have a chicken and an egg balancing act too. Ms. Kawahara: Your production, yeah? Mr. Spitz: Well, we were short of production, but it's climbing. As you may know, the...we obtained a grant and Dr. Sakioka of the College of Tropical Ag is training six farmers. I think they're production is probably at around a thousand pounds per week. Once it hits 39 • • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) three thousand is when we'll probably try to certify the chamber. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is aware that it's in the offing. Harold Taira will be doing it. We no longer have to go to Hilo or bring people over from Hilo to have this done. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Spitz: We have people on the island...people who are doing it with oversight from Hilo. This has been a long and drawn out project. Trying to aggregate resources and get the timing right, etc., etc. is difficult. The transfer of leases from the owner who is the University of Hawaii, for those of you who do not know that, to the Agricultural Development Corporation, which is a state entity housed in the department of agriculture responsible for state-wide agricultural initiatives. There...there are a lot of people involved and we meet on a monthly basis with the various partners. On the 14th of the month they'll be meeting with the mayor...the main players. Ms. Kawahara: program, right? Okay, so I heard you say there are six...six farmers in the Mr. Spitz: The training program, new farmers. There are some old farmers who are out there waiting. Ms. Kawahara: Oh okay, so..that's what I wanted to know. Mr. Spitz: They're waiting to see what happens. Ms. Kawahara: I£..if there was going to be a demand once the...the facility comes...goes up and running and it'll be a...okay. Mr. Spitz: They're...they've...you know, they're...they're...these guys have grown quite a bit of papaya before. Some of them were in the business in the year that Kauai grew 12 million pounds... Ms. Kawahara: Right. Mr. Spitz: ...which caused a real problem in the state-wide industry, by the way. But there...there are some folks out there who can do it, who have land and have the resources, but need to be shown that there's a reason for them to do it... Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Spitz: ...which is one of things we're trying to do with the plant. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you, thanks. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Since I have him up here, any other questions about ag? Mr. Chair, go ahead. Chair Asing: I want to follow up on that question that was just asked. On that...Disinfestation Plant, is...is that part of this $20,000, no, huh? 40 • • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Mr. Spitz: Part of the... Chair Asing: That...this...this $20,000. Mr. Spitz: Yes, sir, it is. Chair Asing: And you said that it was going to be up and running soon? Mr. Spitz: Well, it's going to be certified... Chair Asing: Certified. Mr. Spitz: ...soon.. That would be the.first step... _ _ _ __ ~.. _ _ _ . __ Chair Asing: Are we talking about the one at the airport? Mr. Spitz: Yes, we are. I would ask you to disregard its appearance because it's...it's like a...it's like an old beach beater car that we... Mr. Kaneshiro: That we continue to run. Chair Asing: (Inaudible) I look at that building almost every week and look like the building is halfway down. Mr. Spitz: It's... Chair Asing: Is it? Are you saying it's going to be operational? Mr. Kaneshiro: That's what they're pushing for. Mr. Spitz: The chamber...in...in the interior, Council Chair, there is what's called afly-free zone, which is built into what used to be the main portion. From the end of the chamber that is going to be certified, there is a shade...basically a shade house structure built inside in which the packing will take place rather than having to secure from flies the whole interior of the building. So, I...I...I will agree with you. The University of Hawaii hasn't done a thing with it since 1998 and the Ehukai... Chair Asing: No, the...the only point that I'm trying to make is is it...you're telling me that is..it's going to be operational when? Or is it operational now? Mr. Spitz: We can't operate it now, no. It will not... Chair Asing: Okay. Mr. Spitz: It will not... Chair Asing: When do you anticipate it to be operational? 41 • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Mr. Spitz: I do not call the shots on this. What I would tell you is...well, I'll let my boss tell you. Mr. Costa: Yeah, okay. In the...in the short time that I've been in the Office of Economic Development, I've had the opportunity to meet with the committee and the last one being about two or three weeks ago. I...I had the same questions because I go to the transfer station every week and you know, that was my first question. I said wait, wait a minute, you know, it doesn't look like anything's happening. But in the last two weeks, if you've been out there, they have gone in. They have grubbed. They've cleared the area. They started cleaning up the exterior of the building. When the workmen that were hired by KEO to clean the grounds were working on it the Saturday before last, I took that opportunity to go into the grounds and look at the area. So, yeah, it doesn't look like it's ready to go, but our goal is in the next six to eight months to have it, you know, at least fired up, certified and...and hopefully get...get going on...on that project. Chair Asing: That's a state project now? No? Or... Mr. Costa: Its... Chair Asing: Or you're handling everything? Mr. Costa: Actually we're... Chair Asing: Are you funding everything for that? Mr. Costa: No, no, we're not funding, no. We...we... Chair Asing: Nothing? Mr. Costa: Our...our $20,000 is only a small portion... Chair Asing: Okay. Mr. Costa: ...of the entire grant. The bulk of it is through Kauai Economic Opportunity Office and...and maybe Bill can explain some of the background. Mr. Spitz: The...the thing about this thing is that there are a lot of players in it. The Agricultural Development Corporation actually had $150,000 to...do the chambers, some of the external work. KEO went to the legislature and has a quarter of a million dollars for a variety of different things, including some working capital to run the plant once it starts up for some repairs. The county has put money in basically for repairs and to help them get chartered. The...it...it really is a chartering for the entity that will run this organization that...that it will be the next thing that needs to fall into place and they're...they are working on that now. I...you know, I...I'll share your frustration. I came over here in 1991 and the thing was built by 1995. It went...that part of it went far more quickly. But from 2000 till now to get it back up and operating has been something of a challenge. However, pulled off', I think it's worth it because we're the only island that can grow a variety...or grow papaya that really doesn't have to be genetically modified. We don't have the ringspot virus over here. 42 • • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Chair Asing: Well, let...let me ask this question. Which agency is the lead agency to operate that facility? Who is that? The lead agency that handles the facility, who is that? Mr. Spitz: It...it will be the...the operator will be the organization that is in various stages of incorporating. They're probably...there are two of them. The lease is controlled by the Agricultural Development Corporation, the master lease, and the facility is owned by the University of Hawaii. So there...when you get down to who ships the papaya, it will be the organization that we're now waiting for the charter on. I...I understand that it's confusing. Chair Asing: We11...I...I'll send the question over. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, all right, we'll...we'll have the chair, you know, write a communication and .the communication. will. come.- through me _ and .then. we_.can have a _ better , . . . understanding as the channels of how and who's the organization going to be. I know it's been an ongoing thing. I've had some conversations with Mr. Oyama and the Farm Bureau on this too, so. And...and so we'll get the communication over and then that time you can... Mr. Spitz: Okay and we'll...we'll answer it. Mr. Kaneshiro: All right. Mr. Furfaro, you had a question? Mr. Furfaro: You know my...my questions were just along the lines of the chair and I...I think the opportunity certainly sounds like the chair is going to take some written action. And I would also make recommendations if Bill separately could give a briefing to Councilman Kawakami in his relationship as liaison with legislation and the University of Hawaii for us. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Fufaro: I think that would be most helpful because we're all waiting for this. This opportunity is...is long overdue and you know we put money in in the past and so forth, so. That was my questions. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thank you. Any other further questions for Bill since we have Bill up here? If not, yes (inaudible). Ms. Kawahara: So, I just want to be clear. You're confident that there's going...the expense of operating the plant will be offset by the interest of people that are going to be able to provide that volume of papaya, to grow it? Mr. Spitz: I...I would fully expect the interest to be there. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Spitz: Although, you know, these things are not...not always predictable. I...I don't think I would have been supportive of it had I not felt that it...it is an opportunity and..and there...there are other things that this plant can do down the way. It is at the airport. We can't ship pineapple without treatment. We have some growers who do very good pineapple. 43 U Ms. Kawahara: Okay, great. APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Mr. Spitz: I mean...people can pick it up at the airport. Down the line, if we get more value-added products and we have some like coffee and a few other things, that under the auspices of the Farm Bureau Corporation, (inaudible), this entity that will operate it, that can be done too and that will carry some of the operating cost. Ms. Kawahara: Value-added processing? Great, great, thank you. Mr.Kaneshiro: Derek, go ahead. Mr. Kawakami: You know, I have a specific question because it deals with agriculture, but I think it may be more for...for George Costa. So, you know, I'm looking at the Kauai Made Advertising site. I know at one point with KDEB (inaudible) report there was an initiative to do also a Kauai Grown kind of marketing thing too. Because if we are still planning to move forward with Kauai Grown, does it fall under the Kauai Made budget as far as funding goes? Mr. Costa: Actually, the Kauai Grown program, we're working with the Farm Bureau... Mr. Kawakami: Okay. Mr. Costa: ...to have them take...take...take that program and develop that and Melissa McFerrin, with the Farm Bureau, is working on that. Mr. Kawakami: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, all right, thank you very much. With that, Mr. Umezu, I know you've been waiting and anxiously to be...to sit up here. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair Mr. Kaneshiro: How you doing Mr. Umezu? Yes, Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Can we take care of a housekeeping item here. Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: Can we put that black table on the other side of Mr. Costa because the three of us... Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, we might need to slide it over, this way. Mr. Furfaro: ...we look like we talking to a...a...a black blanket. Mr. Bynum: Maybe...maybe we can like move the camera. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll...we'll slide it over. 44 • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) (Inaudible -many people speaking at once.) Mr. Furfaro: No, no, George, leave the table there. Move him over. ART UMEZU, Film Commissioner: Oh, you guys get a film permit for this? Mr. Furfaro: See, move that black table. It's portable, right? Mr. Kaneshiro: Move the table. Yeah, on this...on...more down or something. Mr. Furfaro: I don't know. Maybe they get... Mr. Bynum: Then we won't be able to..` Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. Mr. Furfaro: That's...that's fine. Mr. Kaneshiro: There you go. There, now we got it. There...we see...you...you cannot hide behind the camera. Art, you're not supposed to be hiding behind the camera. You're supposed to be right there in the camera. Now we can see you. Mr. Umezu: Art Umezu. For the record, Art Umezu, Kauai Film Commission. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: All right. Mr. Furfaro, I believe you had a question or comment for Mr. Umezu. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, Mr. Umezu, I...I...I wanted to hear from you how Hollywood is doing during these economic times. And with...and I do want to make note of this for the administration, we have a 17% drop in occupancy as reported and a 12-1/2% drop in rate. That's what our resorts are experiencing, 17% drop in occupancy, 12% drop in rate. And if Hollywood is seeming to be doing okay, does that pose any opportunities for the film industry on targeting Kauai more than some of our overseas competitors? Mr. Umezu: Thank you for the question first of all and I apologize to my boss, I was about 10 minutes late. We have a...I have a film crew back in the office and I'll get to the answer for that question. For instance today I had a gentleman walk in and I've been working with this local production coordinator. He worked on a project last summer and it was a $1.2 million budgeted TV reality show. I was not very fond of TV reality shows because of several incidents that occurred on Maui a few years ago. So I monitor closely as I can the production company because not all reality shows are the same. With this particular one and I'll name it because it's already out there and it's called high school reunion. And the gentleman last year and I happened to just be in the office when he called, and I had a late night dinner with this gentleman who is the producer. And just because of that one dinner I had at Bull Shed and he said, I'd like to come back to the island because we had a good reception from Kauai. This is...we're talking last year around July and he 45 • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) because we had a good reception from Kauai. This is...we're talking last year around July and he had called earlier this year and says, we're coming back. We prefer Kauai over Maui and this crew happens to be...part of the crew is in the office right now this morning to say that they are coming back. It's a $1.6 million project which will take up almost six weeks of prepping and actual filming on the north shore. I was just talking to a gentleman who is the local coordinator. There is a...he serves as a location and also a production coordinator and he's from Kauai. He did tell me that there's going to be 40 to 50 people employed during this month and a half. And we're looking at close to 2,000 room nights. This is for one production. And I do believe earlier this year before the Oscars, there was a mention in all the tabloids as well as the mainstream entertainment magazines and newspapers. In fact it was actually in the Wall Street Journal, I believe, that of all the various types of businesses that is affected by this economic downturn, it's...it's the healthcare, especially the long- term care parent...facilities and care homes and the film industry. I never thought you'd be putting those two together, but they seem to be the one that's surviving this economic downturn and at the same time there is two other film crews, two. I would say a television feature movie coming here and they're also returnees from three years ago and especially with...in light of our film credit that kicked in in July of '07. As you know July '07 I believe when we had the Tropic Thunder movie filmed here and that was a record breaking year for Kauai, for the state for that matter because we had major filming on each of the four islands in '07 and Kauai took the lead with Tropic Thunder which, I believe, the $68 million expenditure on Kauai. Frankly and unfortunately, I don't think Kauai is going to experience that or that Hawaii in itself will experience that. That was a great year. I work very closely with the hotels. Each hotel will get a heads up prior to these film crews visiting our islands to say that to give them the best rate you can, whatever you can give because they do stay even temporarily but they'll take up a lot of rooms. In this case we're looking at close to 2,000, maybe 3,000 depending on how long they'll shoot. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you and I appreciate you acknowledging that in the film community we always want to put Kauai in the best light. I think it's also important that with the health and wellness industry growing, wherever we can promote the concept of health and wellness on Kauai, it's extremely important to portray that. So, thank you for giving us a quick update. Mr. Umezu: Thank you. And especially when you mentioned Yoga, there was two Yoga video filming last year and it was a pretty hefty budget that they carried with them to Kauai. It was three or four days, but nevertheless they had a dozen crew showing up and they all stayed in hotels. Mr. Furfaro: And I...I think the shorter programs, the Yoga again helped promote health and wellness. I think the work economic development is doing now on the upcoming marathon in September will show well for us. So, thank you very much. Mr. Umezu: And I am meeting with a Japanese TV crew. I've been informed that Mainichi television, whom I'm very familiar with, I will be touch with them as well. Mr. Furfaro: I think they were very conservative in the numbers in their proposal to us about participants from Japan, but they all felt that if there was any margin of growth, it would be with marathoners that would come here in September for participation in this first Kauai Marathon, so. 46 • • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Mr. Umezu: Absolutely and it was noted to me again through Mr. Bob Craver, I believe, with the Kauai Marathon and a gentleman that I know from Japan is that he participates in the Honolulu Marathon for the last 15 years, and he was a co-producer for a smaller production that brought celebrities to these events. So I've been asked already to look into a few celebrities to participate even in this first year. It does make a difference for the future of the Kauai Marathon. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Umezu: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Art, is the._.just real briefly,. is the state_messing. with the_ tax. credit, the film tax credit? but... Mr. Umezu: Oh yeah, but you know, I don't know if the word is messing, Mr. Bynum: Are they trying to raid it or steal it or eliminate it or... Mr. Umezu: I gotta be careful because I'll be traveling with the State Commissioner next week to a four-day event in Los Angeles and this is the key event that I attend every year, the one and only that I would attend. Mr. Bynum: Thank you for saying that. Mr. Umezu: Yes, 60% of my travel has been cut prior to even being asked to. But I do go to this one event in Santa Monica, which is the one and only event where all the commissioners get together. We have a booth, not the Kauai booth, but the Hawaii booth and we have our four commissioners there. And all the Hollywood producers, studio people, film-related people would attend this and I'm preparing for that already. And who's leading this is the State Film Commissioner. So I'll be very careful, but I think they're trying. We're all trying as a commissioner to make this work for all of us, not just for Kauai County but for all the counties. We're all struggling as you know and we're working very closely, especially with the hotel industry. I know Sue Kanoho, who wanted my job 22 years ago, believe it or not, she's been very supportive. She has a lot of contacts also in the business. So she gives me the heads up. So I'm very fortunate to have people like that to help me out. Mr. Bynum: I appreciate that, but I didn't hear an answer. Is the state trying to eliminate or reduce the film tax credits? Mr. Kaneshiro: He was careful not to say much. now. Mr. Umezu: They were trying. Yeah, I...I think we're...we're good right Mr. Bynum: Because if I understand it correctly, I mean, we give them a tax credit but if they don't come, we're not getting any taxes anyway. 47 • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Mr. Umezu: Absolutely, yes. And there's another bill that it...it was the tax credit bill and they seem to have sort of got mixed up in the very beginning, but I think they're identifying this particular 88 bill which is good for us. If not, I think Mr. Ben Stiller would probably have shot Tropic Thunder in Mexico where they were originally going. Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you. Mr. Umezu: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you, Art, it's been that long already, 22 years? Mr. Umezu: The reason he picks on me is because he was the former Mr. Hollywood, so. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro; Well, we...I remember the first time when we had to come before council and fund this program through economic development, so it brings back a lot of memories. But thank you, you're doing a great job. Mr. Umezu: I learned most of what I know in this business from Mr. Kaneshiro. I'm talking back in 1985, '86, and '87. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thanks, Art. Any, any, anyone else, committee members, that...that you had some questions for the economic development or economic office, development office? If not, thank you very much, Mr. Costa. But before you do leave, I have, I believe, Judy? You wanted to do a presentation or something or speak? The rules are suspended so this is your opportunity now to do so. Mr. Costa, you can go sit down and relax. Mr. Costa: Thank you. JUDY LENTHALL, Food Bank: No, stay here. Mr. Costa: Stay with you? Okay. Ms. Lenthall: Judy Lenthall, Kauai Food Bank. Thank you for this brief opportunity. I will be brief. We're still seeking $20,000 for next year's budget to continue for one year our Food Stamp Outreach Program. For the first three quarters of our program, we've brought in over $150,000 new money to Kauai that has an economic impact of a dollar, about a dollar eighty. For every dollar that's brought in, there's an economic impact of $1.80. That's only going to expand because the Food Stamp allocation just was increased about 14% effective April 1st. The demand is out there. The county is losing $3 million every year of unclaimed Food Stamp money that goes directly to our local grocers, goes directly to our growers when...when they sell their product. It's a win-win all the way across the board. And our outreach program is...had some pretty good results so far. The county gave us a $58,000 grant last year and George is right with the caveat that we should try and go raise that money some other place and we've raised about three-fourths of it, which we will lose if we don't have that additional $20,000. We have secured a 50% reimbursement from the federal government. For the Food Stamp Outreach program, I wrote about four grants. One of them got funded and t...the time is coming up and I understand that a supplemental budget will be forthcoming and we'd like your consideration for this economic development program now more than ever. 48 • APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) Mr. Kaneshiro; Okay, any questions? Mr. Bynum, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: So we funded it at 58. It brought over $130,000 of additional Food Stamp funds to... Ms. Lenthall: Over $150,000 as of March 31St and we have one more quarter. Mr. Bynum: And we tasked you to go out and find other money and you did find another...you found three-quarters of it. Ms. Lenthall: Yup. Mr. Bynum: You want us to fund a quarter because it will leverage the ~~ three-quarters that you found and it will leverage an increasing amount of Food Stamps for local people during a time when they're hungry, right? Ms. Lenthall: Exactly. Mr. Bynum: Have I got this all right? Ms. Lenthall: That's about it. Mr. Bynum: Hope we can find it. Ms. Lenthall: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thank you. Any other questions, mister... Mr. Chang: Yeah, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead. Mr. Chang: Judy, you mentioned that we're losing...the county's losing like three million in...can you...can you explain that? Ms. Lenthall: Sure. Food Stamps is what's called Snap Now. They changed the name because it's supposed to be a snap to get it and erases the stigma, so I have to keep reminding myself it's a snap. Snap is an entitlement program. Anybody who qualifies gets it. The number of people who are eligible and not receiving this entitlement, we've got about a 72% elig...participation rate in the state, so we're not even three out of four that are participating and could get this money. Instead, I don't know what they're doing. They're robbing the Food Bank, I can tell you that. A couple months ago we got robbed. Our pantries have been robbed. People need food here. I would...kill for three million food dollars for Kauai. That's...that's...that's awonderful opportunity. The only reason we're not getting it is because people aren't signing up. The reason they're not signing up is because it's a 21-page no-can-see font application. It's kind of hard. The seniors can't...can't complete it. A lot of the seniors can't complete it without our help, so we do the outreach. We get some prequalified. We help them with their full application. We get them to the interview. We monitor and make sure they don't miss their appointments and get booted out 49 APRIL 6, 2009 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2) because $3,000,000 is a terrible thing to waste for food when there are so many people hungry in our community, when we're scrounging over...I scrounge over pennies. Just to see $3,000,000 sit there kills me. We need that money here on Kauai. We can get it with aggressive outreach. Councilmembers: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: All right, thank you, Judy and also Mr. Costa. And at this time I'll go ahead and recess the budget review... Mr. Furfaro: Oh, I have one item, Mr. Kaneshiro. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, go ahead. If any comments, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Ah...ah, just for my colleagues at the table, I wanted to circulate the breakdown of the State Transient Accommodation Tax so that you understand that it came up in the discussion here where...how is HTA funded. This is a response to questions I sent to Murray Towill as well as how is the Convention Center debt carried. And as you can see from this piece, it shows 32.6% of the TAT fund going to fund HTA which is the state's marketing group, 17.3% goes to fund debt service for the State Convention Center, leaving 44.8%. This was done at a time when the legislature was considering how to allocate an additional sales tax for the rail system and that summary is attached as well. But just so that we're very clear, the legislature that's in front of us now is talking about the 44.8%. They are funding the HTA and they are funding the debt service for the Convention Center. I just wanted to pass this out so we were clear going forward. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you very much, Mr. Furfaro. With that, we're in recess and we'll be back at 1:30 p.m. with the County Attorney. There being no objections, the budget reviews recessed at 11:42 a.m. 50 • APRIL 6, 2009 COUNTY ATTORNEY (3) The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 1:30 p.m., and proceeded as follows: COUNTY ATTORNEY Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, this budget review session is now called back to order. At this time, we'll have the County Attorney's office up for their review. Mr. County Attorney, can you please be...oh, you're there. ALFRED B. CASTILLO, Jr., County Attorney: Good afternoon. Mr. Kaneshiro: Just state for the record your... Mr. Castillo: Okay, Al Castillo, County Attorney, good afternoon, everyone. Mr. Furfaro & Mr. Asing: Good afternoon. Mr. Kaneshiro: Good afternoon. Al, basically just go ahead and highlight your office budget. Mr. Castillo: Okay, I guess when we were...earlier, Iguess amonth or so ago, we were put to the task to reduce our budget and you know, what we completed, I guess, on the administrative side, we compe...completed the...and we ga...we gave you two graphs and it basically shows 2009 and 2010, the budget comparison and in the back the pie chart. But you know basically, it...it...it...just looking at the pie chart below, it...it...it shows via a picture of a pie that we have reduced our budget not...not in the terms of the salaries and benefits which I really didn't touch at all. But when put to the task and...and...and looking at the...the...the line items, you know, we...we...we cut a lot of things by actually by 50...by 50%. And I guess what you...what we submitted to you is the budget preparation worksheet for the fiscal year 2010, which basically...You know what I did was, especially the training and the airfare, you know from where we had training budgeted in previous years we went from 2008 $30,000; 2009 $10,000; and 2010 $6,000. And that's just to give you an example of the...and may...maybe if you can see at the bottom left of our budget preparation worksheet where it says litigation and discovery training for deputies and staff, that's where we went. I'm sorry, I mean that's where we had a drastic reduction. I know we don't show it here in our budget preparation worksheet, but when I asked...when...when I...when I did our research and how much we cut...I mean I don't know where you want to go with this, but just the numbers alone we submitted to you, the pie sheet or the pie chart to show you in total our reductions. So, I don't know what else to tell you. What...my concern is having gone to the mediation, the Ka Loko mediation, and having to deal with this special counsel and litigation cost. When I look at the special counsel and the litigation cost, our litigation cost from 2009 to 2010 went from 200 to 125 and our special counsel went from...we kept it at one million two hundred. But you know, these are items that I cannot sit here and tell you what the future will be. I can only tell you that I will be requesting to meet with the council or...or even in special session matters involving the Ka Loko Dam case and that's for a later day which probably will be a couple of weeks from now or maybe even a...in as we submit it on Wednesday or Thursday, maybe we can have the hearing next week. However, the...for the litigation cost, when I went through the Ka Loko Dam mediation, what is...what was clear to me was that the discovery process was really kept at a minimum and that did not sit right with me because that meant if we're...we're gearing up for trial, which trial is scheduled for June, it'll go...it's going to cost...the litigation cost might be more. The special counsel might be more. You know even if we will get reimbursed at the end, you know that's a reimbursement at the end. So, those are big ticket items that I'm sorry I have no control over. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Al, I really think for this...for this budget process what...what I have I'm having a hard time digest. Let's take the Ka Loko Dam matter separately. It was a very tragic and very unfortunate situation, which we all understand we will have to support with legal counsel. What I want to make sure that I'm sharing with you here, we had a budget for last year of a million two for special counsel. It looks like we're going to end the year one million six 51 • C~ APRIL 6, 2009 COUNTY ATTORNEY (3) ninety...six ninety five. $490,600 higher than what we budgeted for special counsel. This budget coming back here is going to be at a million two and we understand there's a lot of variables. But my thinking with the...with the previous council was we were going to add a legal support person for the chief. And I see in this budget that came over from the mayor that position was dollar funded and was transferred over from the police department to you. Now, this was a component of a bigger process. First of all we want to set some goals for the police department to get, you know, their certification. We also want to minimize risk associated with all the things that our police department are expected of today in law enforcement from the servicing of warrants to, you know, the gathering o£..of critical information for a case. I felt and I still do that that position was very important in the police department because that person is there. That person can offer them some sound advice on, you know, search and seizure, arrest, all of those but...and he...he's kind of at the fingertips of the chief and the police department. Secondly, for our accreditation, which I think is a goal for Chief Perry, at least that's...he has shared that with us here at the council. This person would actually be involved in police science training for the officers and we have a sizeable group. I think 91 officers took the test for this last go around. Forty-five of them are pursuing the application, but all will require legal training as well. So, I don't understand 'arid I`.. ~I"believe with the group of attorneys you have organized in your office that and, of course, with your litigation experience, we will find ourselves probably defending ourselves more often and therefore, I understand the rationale between budgeting the million two. What I'm trying to go about is how do we save the $490,000 that we exceeded last year's budget on without necessarily giving the police department the kind of legal beagle, I guess, and training that is going to be required for accreditation and...and it's been moved back to your department. I think that...that is extremely important for you to know that was a goal of the previous council: loss prevention and the support of someone for the police department. Could I just get your... Mr. Castillo: Sure. Mr. Furfaro: ...kind of gut feeling on this? Mr. Castillo: Sure. I...I...I have more than a gut feeling. The reason I say that is I share your concerns. The reason why I share your concerns is that because coming in...before coming in or making my decision to help our county, one o£ ..I...I...I had thought that the police they were going to have a legal analyst and I thought the water department was going to have a legal analyst. And I was wondering which attorneys or what level of attorneys would be vying for those positions. The concern that I had was these positions, from what I understood back then, were positions where they would be so-called like civil service. I wondered if the person that would be in the police department would be as competent as I would have wanted that to be in my police department. The reason why I said that is because I started with the prosecutor's office way back with Gerald Matsunaga. I spent four years with Judge Matsunaga when he was a prosecutor. Chief Hiram was the chief back then. I personally went through many chiefs: Chief Hiram, Peachy Sheldon, Hans, Chief Fujita, Chief Fujiuchi, Chief Lum. When I was four years under Judge Matsunaga, he was the prosecutor, I was the...although I was the newest attorney, I was the attorney that was sent to the...to the police department every day. During that time I developed a good relationship with the police department, in fact a wonderful relationship that has existed and flourished till this very day. My allegiance is with the police department. The...spending time at the police department, you get the ability, the opportunity to understand the difficulty of their...their work. When Kenny Robinson was having a hard time in his disciplinary decisions, and if you read even one of his disciplinary decisions, you would see that he was well-read. He knew the law. He was on top of things. He would come to me for legal advice, not only in his disciplinary decisions, but for a lot of the opinions that were rendered by the county attorney's office at that time because at that time many times he needed a second opinion and I would give that to him. As a prosecutor this relationship with the...with the police department grew even closer. As the first deputy, I was able to be privileged to work within the intelligence unit, the vice unit, to know what goes on...on...on this island. Therefore, when I think about who is best to serve the police department, you know, unfortunately I found that me. So, who would be a good extension of me. It would be a deputy that I can have hands-on with. This is not a control thing. This is for the protection of our island so that there's consistency, there's uniform, there's accountability, there's history. You put out a...a...a...a...you...you hire an attorney that who's out there on an o...on his own; it's like an island. That person would not have the wherewithal to know what to do in the multitude of things that the 52 • • APRIL 6, 2009 COUNTY ATTORNEY (3) police department does, not only the criminal side. The criminal side, I...I...I...I, you know, I...I know it in the back of my hand. The civil side, there's so many different things that this attorney has to do, which you all know: the arbitration, the unemployment, the EEOC things, standard operating procedures, manuals. I was the one that did a lot of training with the Kauai Police Department with their detectives. Mel Rapozo was one of the detectives I trained with the other detectives, which to this day I credit his ability to learn from me because we had a major murder case where the baby was drowned in 'Anini that...not...because of the training that he received and what he latched onto, we were able to save that case. So, I can go on and on but maybe... Mr. Furfaro: No, you don't need to. I just want to reconcile what I heard from you. First of all, you said when you were there you were in the county attorney's office but every day you went to the police department. Mr. Castillo: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: I like that. Secondly, the ability for that individual to be able to come back and spend time with you to get second opinions on particular needs, you would be making yourself available. You're not talking here about control but really continuity. So the only question I have left is will that attorney, being in your office and fully available to the police department, will that still get us to accreditation? I mean that's the chief's goal. Mr. Castillo: Yes...wait, wait, yes, if that person has the energy, the gumption to do what it takes...necessarily takes to...for that position. I cannot tell you who is going to be in that position. I can tell you...I mean, what if you open it up...what if it was separate and apart from the county attorney's office and we had no say. Then whoever that person is there gets the job... Mr. Furfaro: - You've...you've answered me the first three parts, three- quarters, you've answered it. Mr. Castillo: Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Mr. Furfaro: I'm...I'm just worried that we have an understanding with the chief. His long-term goal for the Kauai Police Department is accreditation and this loss prevention/risk manager/legal analyst was part of that plan. I think we still, at some point, need to understand his goal for accreditation. Mr. Castillo: I met with the chief and I fully believe that his goal is what I have been wanting for these many years. They...you all know the...what lies ahead in front of this chief. So, it's...it's...we know it's a hard task. To achieve that goal takes hard work and, you know, he's up to the task, I'm up to the task. Mr. Furfaro: That's all I needed to hear, Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Mr. Bynum, you had a question? Mr. Bynum: Thanks very much for that answer and what I heard was and I agree I think that given your background and your long-term involvement in the community that there is a chance for outstanding collaboration between the police department and the county attorney's office and that you want to nurture that relationship. But we still have to address the dollar funding, right? I mean we still have to address actually... so you would be committed to hiring an attorney to be focused on the police department under your supervision. Mr. Castillo: You know, when I first caught wind that this was happening, my first thought was I have to...that position has to have an experienced deputy, not just anybody because it's a...because of the nature of the job. Mr. Bynum: So, it...so, you're committed to having a deputy assigned to that... 53 • APRIL 6, 2009 COUNTY ATTORNEY (3) Mr. Castillo: Yes. Mr. Bynum: ...arena under your supervision and you feel confident that the chief's okay with that? Mr. Castillo: You know, I...like I said I sat down with him. To me, we can work together in accomplishing that goal. I...I...you know, I sincerely believe that. Mr. Bynum: I very much appreciate your answer because it's not just the criminal side, it's the internal things that...you know one o£..the chief wants to do an invest...internal investigations unit, a very comprehensive look that you just gave of the police department as opposed to, you know, what maybe may have been my more narrower view like how do we keep from getting involved in these lawsuits, right? And that would be part of it, but you're giving a more comprehensive view of that. Mr. Castillo: - - And::.and..:and the lawsuits, I'm::.I'm.::I'm`a:`.:I'm aware of "'°` and I understand where it's...it's coming from. Mr. Bynum: I...I agree that given your background you're in a great position to really bring some real nice assets to this effort. Mr. Kaneshiro: Al, did you have a chance to...to I guess go over this budget before it was submitted to us and the dollar-funded position? Or you were just coming on board at that time? Mr. Castillo: I...I was...I was just coming on board and...and what is unfortunate is I would have wanted to really have ahands-on knowledge of the mechanics of what I helped put together. So, I...I...I...I...I, go ahead. Mr. Kaneshiro: Let me, let me...the reason I ask that because you have seven other attorneys, right? So when I look at the budget right now with adollar-funded position, it seems like at this point to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish with the police department, you're going to have to use one of the seven attorneys right now to do that in this new current budget. So, because it's dollar-funded. Mr. Castillo: You mean i£..yeah, okay. Well, I...I...I'm mindful with the amount of people that I have and the amount of work that I have. So I...I...and...and that still doesn't take away from my belief.. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Castillo: ...that the police department because of the nature of their business has to have an attorney of a certain level. You know, but...but organize...me coming in March 6... Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Castillo: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Castillo: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Castillo: Okay. ...and organizing this law firm... Okay. ...that I have for this county... Yeah. It's...it's a huge responsibility. 54 APRIL 6, 2009 COUNTY ATTORNEY (3) Mr. Kaneshiro: All right. I...I agree with you. I can agree with you, but at the same time then what you're saying to me that you...you really realize that this is really an important position and hopefully that you would want to fill and that there'll be some funding to fill that position. Mr. Castillo: Espe...yeah, I...I certainly agree. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. It's just that when adollar-funding pops out that's why. You know what I'm saying because... Mr. Castillo: Yeah, I...I...I... Mr. Kaneshiro: ...and...okay. Any other questions for Mr. Castillo on...besides this or even on this particular item? Mr. Chair? Mr. Asing: Yes, I would have one. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead. Mr. Asing: Al, thank you for your...your answer. Would this person that we're referencing right now, this dollar-funded position person, would that person be housed at your office or would that person be housed at the police department? Mr. Castillo: If I had my...my...if it was up to me, yeah, the...It's a mixed bag. It's a mixed bag because I know, you know, because we all here...we're all here when we figure yes, you have the person there, that person is readily available for the police. To me that makes sense to have the person there. And obviously the county attorney's office, we don't have that much room, so it makes sense to have somebody housed there. That's the main...but...but then we would like some coordination so maybe report to the county attorney's office in our meetings and then housed there, but I cannot...The thing about it is because I...I'm...I'm trying to run the county attorney's office like a law firm and law firms go on billable hours, yeah, I need to find out how much time this person is really needed because when I was there I know how much...how many officers or how lack of officers, you know, that used to come and visit me. But that was way back when. We're talking about 1980, I'm sorry 1982, 1983; many years have gone by. So, but I think for me it makes more sense that the chief has somebody there so the chief can have this communication and rapport building and understanding with the...with the deputy. Mr. Asing: Okay, so that person would be housed there. Mr. Castillo: That...that's...that's...makes more sense to me. Mr. Kaneshiro: But under you as... Mr. Castillo: Yes. It does make more sense to me, but I...I...you know, I...it's...I don't think it's up to me. It's up to... Mr. Asing: Al, I have to apologize, but at the same time, I am asking you a question. Mr. Castillo: Okay. Mr. Asing: And I would like for you to, you know, try to answer it as best as you can. Mr. Castillo: Okay, now, the best way I can is yes, I want...I would like to have that deputy and if dollar-funded means not yet, I would like that deputy as soon as possible and to serve the police well, yes the deputy should be there. Did I...did...did...did I...I don't know if I'm answering the question because I... 55 APRIL 6, 2009 COUNTY ATTORNEY (3) Mr. Asing: Apparently it's a tough question for you. Mr. Castillo: No, I...because I don't know, I...I...I...I cannot...I don't know if I'm the one to make that decision that's why where that person is housed. I...I...you know I can say yes I would like the person there. Mr. Asing: Okay, thank you. Mr..Castillo: I'm sorry. Mr. Kaneshiro: I got it. Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: So if the chief says it's okay, put him there, then you're fine with it then in...in...in a nutshell. Mr. Castillo: - - I'm fine with~it. _ - --° = - -- - _-r. __ Mr. Kawakami: Oh, okay. Mr. Castillo: Because it's not...you know, it's...it's the service that's rendered. It's the accountability and the consistency and the uniformity that I'm worried about. I'm not...it's not form of a substance. I...I...I rather have the substance, the work done, yeah. So if the chief says here, then it's no problem with me. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you, thank you very much. Any other questions for the county attorney's office? Mr. Furfaro: I have one. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: This is more an observation than anything, Al. I just...I think you might want to revisit your training budget because it seems...it seems from previous years, you know $10,000; $36,000; $26,000 and then this year showing up at $6,000. Unless you're planning to do a lot of the training yourself, I...I think you need to revisit that number. Mr. Castillo: Yeah, we, you know, we had in...in...we had to address the issue of no funds, so we tried to do the best we can. We really realize how tough things are and do the best we can. Mr. Furfaro: Well you know you're...you're in an office that has exposure to a very large portion of the county's treasury. Mr. Castillo: Understood. Mr. Furfaro: So, you know, you need a little bit more in there, when we get into deliberation maybe we can talk about this again, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Castillo: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: Two things real quickly. One is just to point out that on your chart the dollar increase in benefits has a lot to do with that restructuring of the benefits, so overall the total may be slightly down. And the other is when you get more settled, you can share with us 56 APRIL 6, 2009 COUNTY ATTORNEY (3) how deputies are assigned to what kind of task in the future. You know, we already talked about probably it will be a deputy primarily focused on planning or there'll be somebody, where that'd be their primary responsibility. Mr. Castillo: Yes, yes. Mr. Bynum: And I don't want...need to know who or all that now, but eventually we could discuss that. Mr. Castillo: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay? Committee members, any other questions for Mr. Castillo or his staff? Mr. Castillo: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you very much, Al. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you, Al. Mr. Kaneshiro: At this time, council staff, are we having the next department up? We'll take afive-minute break for now and then you let me know and let us know when we can again...Well, we'll take a short break and we'll see if we can make a call and see where we're at. There being no objections, the budget reviews recessed at 1:59 p.m. 57 ~ ~ APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 2:26 p.m., and proceeded as follows: PROSECUTING ATTORNEY Mr. Kaneshiro: The chair of the Budget & Finance Committee now calls this budget review back to order. At this time we have the Prosecuting Office before us. SHAYLENE ISERI-CARVALHO, Prosecuting Attorney: Thank you, thank you for that introduction, Budget Chair. Thank you for having me here, Council Chair Asing, Budget Chair Kaneshiro and the rest of the Councilmembers. Thank you all for indulging in your time last week in meeting with me on four separate occasions so that I was...I had the...a full opportunity to provide you what the prosecuting attorney's office will be seeking in this budget year. We all realize that this is a very tumultuous time in light of the uncertainty that we are facing. And having that in mind is how we prepared our budget. I did provide additional information today based upon the discussions that he had had with the individual members. I also have another handout that I would like to begin the discussion with. And as indicated earlier in my meetings, we had started off this year on December 1, which was a Monday, where the very next day our office was required to go to court. We started off with pretty much 50% of the staff, some by choice, and in light of that, there were a lot of flurry of activity that had taken place. I would like to point out that on the first handout that we provided this shows the salaries that were in existence from the old administration back on November 1 and then the new administration up until April. It's very clear that our department exercised its responsibility in being very frugal with the county's money. In actuality our...our attorneys were hired at a much lesser pay and were required to do a lot more skilled work. As indicated, if you look on the first handout, the old administration on November 1 had pretty much all of their positions filled and...and their monthly salary that were being paid was approximately $71,000. With the new administration on December 1, we pretty much started with about a half of the amount of staff that the old administration had and in that first month, we saved the county over $45,000 in salaries. You can see in the proceeding months after that, we have, up until this date, we'll have saved the county almost $100,000 in salaries. If you look at the amount of positions, we are asking in this budget just to give the amount of positions, really, that existed on November 1. We did some restructuring, reallocation to maximize the efficiency of the office, but clearly the amount of positions that we are requesting for the attorneys are the same amount that was on November 1. What has changed, as we all know, is that the grant funded positions have, at this point, been down to nothing. We have already, beginning April 1, started paying an attorney that was previously funded by grant out of county funding because we have lost all moneys under grant funding at this point for attorneys. So, although it shows on April 1 two vacant positions, those positions exist without any money in it and that is the two attorney positions that the prosecuting attorney's office is requesting. Again, it shows up in the county budget as new positions. These are not new positions for the office. These are in actuality transferred positions that were previously funded by grant. And really that's what has taken up most of the increases that the Prosecuting Attorney's Office is requesting. We are also requesting a special investigator and a legal clerk. As indicated, we came onboard without over 4,000 outstanding legal documents. We also had, when we inherited the office, approximately 400 backlog of circuit court felony cases. These are different types of reports. In each defendant they have multiple charges, so we're looking at over a thousand plus charges outstanding till today. We have approximately inherited 300+ adult family and juvenile cases that were uncharged. These cases range from 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008. I can tell you...and...and district court we have approximately 300 to 400 cases a day that we inherit and that we handle. We have from December 1 that we have taken office till April 1 absolutely no backlog in the screening of cases. Our attorneys have exerted basically 24/7 efforts without any addition in pay in making sure that none of these cases are not unscreened or looked at...not looked at. We have increased grand jury proceedings. We have one every...every other week. We have, from December 1 to April 1, charged approximately 140 new felony cases of different defendants. If you add up all the charges of 140, clearly they would add up to approximately 500 or so charges. Those cases are new cases. People have started...we have brought forth people that have been arrested on a charge and committed an offense within less than a month. They are facing arraignment and plea in circuit court. The 58 r ~ APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) is...there...there are a lot of time issues that are involved in any prosecution of a criminal case. Whenever a person is arrested and they do not post bail, we are required to give them a hearing within 48 hours. This is an extremely time-sensitive area of prosecution. If we do not, that person gets released. It doesn't matter if that person committed a murder, a sex assault, a robbery or domestic violence or a DUI. They are required a hearing within 48 hours and we need to provide witnesses and put on evidence in order to hold that person in custody, evidence that we can prove the case of probable cause at that point and of course beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. So, it's very time-sensitive. We have only six months from the date of charging until the date of trial in order to bring a case without any (inaudible) periods. So, again, time is of the essence here. We have been extremely strapped with the amount of attorneys and other positions. Our...our clerical staff were hired at a much lower level of education and experience. The...the amounts that were provided were for legal clerk III's. We in essence hired regular receptionists and senior clerks to do legal clerk work. That work...that has caused a major delay in documents being filed and also the accuracy of the documents being not what it would be normally if a legal clerk had handled the case. In a case if a number is off, the case is subjected to getting dismissal, a criminal number. If the date of offense is not the same date as the date that it occurred, that is _subject to =a- case °being-dismissed. If thee- - - -- complaining witness is in error and it's a wrong name or a wrong spelling of the name, that in essence could cause a dismissal of the case. And so this is not only a time sensitive but a one...an occupation where accuracy is a top priority or else the victim would suffer. And so we are faced right now with crisis. If you look at the newspaper, you will hear that a lot of the kinds of crimes that we are facing here even on Kauai have changed the lifestyles that we have been experienced. We are used to feeling safe. You can go on the street now and talk to any of the local people who've lived here 20, 30, 40 years and they do not have that sense of security that they once had. We are now have...having home invasions when people are actually present in the home. That was not something, four years ago, that we experienced. I had been at the Prosecutor's Office as recent as four years ago, and so the type of violent crimes, the type of domestic abuses that are happening, the type of cases that had been dismissed in the past. Fredlynn Hoapili, a victim that sustained injuries leading to her death, she had five prior abuse cases that were all dismissed and which led finally to her murder that happened just two months ago. And so we are facing with...these kinds of crimes and very brutal crimes and exponential increase in the type of crimes. And so I implore you to look at the positions that we once had. If you look at the sheet that shows in...in 2009 the total attorneys 10.75, we had at that time 6.75 county funded and four grant funded. If you look at fiscal year 2010, that's the same amount of attorneys; however, there is only one attorney now that is supported by grant funding because we have no other money to support any other attorneys. And so we are requesting that 9089 and 9091 to be continued as grant funded...I mean that was once previously funded by grant to county attorneys. If we look at the types of cost that are associated, most of these costs have to do with fringe benefits. I believe we are up to 60+ percent now and all the fringe benefits are being required to come out of county funding and so if you look at the differences on page 2, that kind of shows you the OPEB for those positions that are being requested. We are gracious that the administration was able to provide the dollar-fund for those positions, but as the occupations go with attorneys and as we've seen with the recent county attorney, for attorneys, they develop attorney-client privileges. So it is almost impossible to get an attorney hired within two weeks or even a month. What happens, it'll take approximately at a minimum three months before an attorney can leave the clients and make sure that they go and file papers in front a court to get released from handling that case. And so it's not like any other occupation where if you had been a clerk you can easily leave your work and transfer to being a clerk in another position. That is not the case. Once you have anattorney-client privilege that has been established, it is something that has to be done by a court. So the attorney cannot just leave the case. They need to get that...granted that privileged in order to move to a different case or have that case load transferred to someone who is as competent as the attorney that was handling the case. And so, if you look at, again, we've...we have taken the opportunity to try to be as frugal as possible within these four months. However, in light of the crisis we're at and the conditions that we are facing, a lot of extra work that we had done...On Friday we had to inform the police department and other agencies that we are no longer going to be able to provide those services but must concentrate on the current workload that...workload that we have. For example, we had been providing an attorney 24/7 for the Kauai Police Department. Effective on Friday, we canceled that 59 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) until further notice. If we do not have any attorneys that are granted, we will not be able to provide that service at all. We have been getting approximately five...three to five new cases every weekend where there is consultation between...and conferral with the police department and the attorney regarding interpretations of law. That has stopped effective on Friday. We provided training to the police department. We did recruit training for a whole month. We sacrificed an attorney for a whole month, which was myself, to do the entire training for Kauai Police Department for a month. We also provided the detective training and conferral every hour on Friday, one hour on Friday at a minimum. We have suspended that. We are unable to provide that service in light of the budget cuts that we are facing. We also provided 24/7 review of 48-hour documents and all search warrants. We have suspended that. We only will be reviewing search warrants and 48-hour packets during normal business hours, which is 7:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. We provided appointments. Any time anyone wanted to make an appointment, they were free to do so and in fact, if we were present we dropped everything to handle that appointment. We no longer do that. We are requiring one week in advance appointments. So this is the level of service we had provided earlier that we no longer are going to be able to provide. I£..if these positions are not granted, we will not be able to provide this service that was, I believe, a great service to the community. We also provided all...conferral with victim witness. That we have stopped. We will cons...consider providing services with ongoing cases, which is what we have been doing in addition to pre-conferral cases. We have stopped that and will only be handling ongoing cases. So there's a lot of things that we provided in the past that we won't be able to do and will make...re-evaluate those decisions on July 1. Now, we have provided a list of all of the grant opportunities. So if you look at the second paragraph...I mean second...handout that consists of three pages, these are the amounts of moneys that we will be applying for. We have these Recovery Act moneys that we have not received any notification of when we will...when they will let us know i£..any dates on when they will let us know whether we have it or not. If you look at the ones that have asterisks, which is the...it begins with Recovery Act, Edward Byrne Memorial Comp. Grant, these are the total amounts. We are requesting a portion to fund that community prosecuting attorney as well as the crystal meth attorney that we lost. If we are able to provide that on the Recovery Act, those are...are two of the positions that we're requesting. We are also requesting continuation of the Domestic Violence Unit, which is DVPU. We have PCPU, which is Property Crimes Unit and we also have a career criminal which is a CCP program that we are requesting. The ones with the asterisks are based on competitive grant and that's why we've had our grant coordinator who is here Jamie Chong. We also have our departmental staff assistant, Cyndie Johnson, and my first deputy, Lori Wada, who originated from Oahu, present to answer any questions that the council may have. So we have aggressively pursued and continually to...continuing to aggressively pursue all of these opportunities for grant moneys. However, they will not note...we have not been any...basically it's to be determined as to when we will get notice once we fulfill the application and the due date. So, again, you see all of the moneys that we are trying to secure from the federal agencies. If we receive...are fortunate enough to receive any of these moneys, then clearly we will utilize federal funding before we touch any county money, which has been the policy under my administration which is why at this point we have basically exhausted the grant moneys for attorneys and have continued the attorn...the other attorney that was under grant under county funding. That in a nutshell is basically where we are at. Again, we are at a crisis and whatever questions that you may have, I'll be more than happy to answer them. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Questions, committee members? Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Shay, thank you very much for the presentation. Maybe you can give me some clarification so I can understand the...your statement here that your policy has been to use grant moneys before any county moneys. On the bottom of your grant application... Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah. Mr. Furfaro: ...there's this footnote and it says, grants are being submitted and will be part of a competitive grant application process. Is that grants that we need to be competitive with other counties on? 60 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Yes, yes. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: And the other ones that aren't are those that are determined by formula. And so these other ones...there's going to be an amount. We know a decreased amount, but we don't know until they let us know what that amount will be. But those moneys are determined, again, based on a formula that has been predetermined. So, if you see we had a...that $191,000 under the Edward Byrne Justice Grant for example. That money...we have to split with the police department and then the rest it just depends. Mr. Furfaro: And your grant writer she's here with us? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Yes, she's right here, Jamie. Mr. Furfaro: -_ Jamie? - _ .~~_ -__z_~ ,:. _.. ___,_ Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah. Mr. Furfaro: So... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Jamie, maybe you...come here...or here. Mr. Furfaro: You can go on this side Jamie so you can have a desk in front of you. So hi, Jamie. JAMIE CHONG, Grant Coordinator: Hi. Mr. Furfaro: You should introduce yourself for the record. Ms. Chong: Jamie Chong, Grant Coordinator for the Prosecuting Attorney's Office. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. So as I'm going to check off these items that do not have the asterisk next to them, as I'm reading the Edward Byrne Justice Grant, applying for continuing funding for VOCA, I guess, is the acronym for that and the VWP. Do you apply simultaneously with the other grant writers from the other counties? Ms. Chong: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, so it's kind of a packaged approach to this. Ms. Chong: Yes and we are aware of the amounts all at the same time. Mr. Furfaro: Okay and do you, when you write the grant, do you kind of have a formula that says, okay we're applying for this $186,000 and Kaua`i's share is 20%? Or how...how do you do that? Ms. Chong: Usually the AG's office gives us the amount that's available for the County of Kauai and with that amount we kind of work in the budget of what we can use that funding for. The victim witness program, which is the VWP, and the VOCA, can only be used for victim witness counselors. We can't use it for attorneys or clerks. They are very restricted with those two grants. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, so they're...they're for other skilled professional people. Ms. Chong: Yes, yes. Mr. Furfaro: No attorneys. 61 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Chong: No attorneys. Mr. Furfaro: And you said that the AG's office is the one that kind of determines the - I'm going to use the term even if we may not agree with it -they determine, the AG's Office, the fair share by counties? Ms. Chong: Right. Mr. Furfaro: Is there a standard formula, yeah? Ms. Chong: I think they go by population. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Population. Most of it is by population. Mr. Furfaro: Population, okay. So it's done by census. Ms. Chong: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, that's my two questions for right now to understand these charts better. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any other questions, councilmembers or... Ms. Kawahara: I... Mr. Kaneshiro: ...members of the committee? Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Hi Jamie. Ms. Chong: Hi. Mr. Bynum: So, we've had some of these (inaudible) grant sources for a long time, yeah? Ms. Chong: These...the Recovery Act grants are actually...were produced with the stimulus package. So these are new grants. Mr. Bynum: Right, so they're potential new funds. Ms. Chong: Yes, new funding. Mr. Bynum: But we've had positions funded by grants in the past. Ms. Chong: Yes. Mr. Bynum: So, let me start with VOCA. We have $186,840 for VOCA and if I read these budget documents correctly, we're asking for two positions that would be county funded and one position to be funded three-quarters by VOCA and one-quarter by the state. Is that correct? Ms. Chong: Hold on...but the VOCA funding, it's restricted to just victim witness counselors. So we're not... Mr. Bynum: So I'm focused on victim witness right now. So you have...in your budget you have three people in the victim witness program. Mr. Kawakami: Two. 62 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We have two victim witness advocates and one director. Mr. Bynum: Right. So the director's salary and the one advocate is funded by... Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: County. Mr. Bynum: County funds. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Yes. Mr. Bynum: And so the one counselor, if I read it correctly, is three- quarters from VOCA and one-quarter from state. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Okay, so what is the three-quarter amount for athree-quarter time victim witness person including benefits is how many dollars? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: It just depends on what step they are. So approximately $60,000 is the amount we pay for a victim witness counselor. Mr. Bynum: So three-quarters of that including benefits are going to be 65 or 70... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Plus and then you do the fiznge, which is about 40,000...40%. Mr. Bynum: So 75,000 then... Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah. Mr. Bynum: ...for athree-quarter position and a... Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me, I'm a little confused here. Forty percent of 60,000 would be roughly 24,000, so it would be 85. Mr. Bynum: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. I just want to make sure I'm getting the numbers right. Mr. Bynum: So, 85 for a fulltime position. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah. Mr. Bynum: And three-quarters of that is 62? 63? Roughly? Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Mm-hm. Mr. Bynum: 60? Okay, so 60 from the VOCA grant for that one position. But the VOCA grant's 186. So what happens to the other 120,000. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We provide services for the YWCA and other nonprofits that they work as sub-grantees to the prosecuting attorney's office. Mr. Bynum: Right, so last year's funding of the YWCA was how much? Ms. ISeri-Carvalho: 65,000. 63 • Mr. Bynum: And other sub-grantees? APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We had Hale `Opio too. Training and then we used money for training of our victim witness advocates. Mr. Bynum: Right, so 65 for YWCA, 60 for the position, and how much for Hale `Opio and those other things? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: About...plus the fringe, yeah, you said 60 for the salaries, you need to add, it's about $85,000 with the fringe. Mr. Bynum: Well, we...we...I'm sorry, we just went through that. 60, but you're doing three-quarters with VOCA. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Mm-hm. So, yes, and then...and then we have the...the fringe. That but...and then we also have for the YWCA. So YWCA, Hale `Opio and the salary of the victim witness advocate. We previously had three victim witness advocates. Mr. Bynum: Right and I'm trying to figure out where that 186 goes. How does that 186 get divided up. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Well, we don't spend it all in one time. It gets allocated and then if they have programs that they want to add on, then they would propose, you know, additional funds. So this money, if we get approval from the AG's office can be increased for sub-grantees. So they don't get...we don't spend the entire amount up front is what I'm saying. Mr. Furfaro: Can I kind of reconcile this so I...I understand it. The grant is 186,840. We take 85,000 of that for the one fulltime person, including benefits. Ms. Chong: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, then we take another 63,750 for the three-quarter victi...victim witness counselor and that's with benefits. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Mm-hm. Mr. Furfaro: Then that's 38,000 balance which...which is allocated to Hale `Opio and YWCA. Does that sound right? Ms. Chong: Yes. It's split up between YWCA and...and counselors, basically (inaudible). Mr. Bynum: What I'm trying to figure out... and I...I didn't follow that at all, Mr. Furfaro, because you said out of the VOCA grant three-quarters of one position, victim witness position is being funded. Correct? Ms. Chong: Mm-hm. Mr. Bynum: Okay, so that's around... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That's the 65. Mr. Bynum: 65,000. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Right. Ms. Chong: Plus (inaudible). 64 • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Mr. Bynum: Okay and 65 that goes to YWCA. Okay, that's 130. Where's the rest of that? Ms. Chong: Did you add...did you add the fringe, though because 65,000 is just salary and then you gotta add the fringe on top of that. Mr. Bynum: So you had the 60,000 for salary, 24,000 for fringe, comes to 84,000, but you're doing three-quarters of that position, right? Ms. Chong: Right. Mr. Bynum: So three-quarters of 84 is 60... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: So about 65, Councilmember Bynum. Mr. Bynum: That's, yeah, that's...so. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: And then 65 to the Y. Mr. Bynum: And then 65 for the position, 65 to the Y, and where's the rest of it? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: And then we have Hale `Opio. Mr. Bynum: Okay, how much is that? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Is...10...10. Mr. Bynum: 10. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah. Mr. Bynum: So now we're up to 140. Ms. Chong: Then we have training. Mr. Furfaro: Training. Ms. Chong: So, we (inaudible). Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Per diem. Ms. Chong: Training which is about another 2 (inaudible). Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: And then we also have the VOWA meetings that the...the state VOWA meetings that we fly to Oahu for too. So there's the meetings that we have during the entire year that they meet, all of the counselors on Oahu. We also have AG meetings. They're actually going up for a budget meeting. Mr. Bynum: So these meetings and trainings are $46,000. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: No, they're a portion of that. But we don't spend all of the money up front. Like I said the 186,000, we don't allocate up front because if there are programs that come up during mid-year that they would like, for example Crime Prevention, Crime Awareness, those kinds of things that they provide, then we'll go ask the AG's if it's okay to appropriate funding for those purposes. So even if we had $186,000, we wouldn't spend all of that money up front. We would put into other programs and the YWCA, in fact, they have also sought for funding for direct witness services on cases that the DHS are no longer going to cover. 65 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Mr. Bynum: Previous budget you had three vic...four victim witness advocates and now you have three. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We had four...we had five. Mr. Bynum: You had five and now you have three. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Not...we had four victim witness advocates and one director. We have two victim witness advocates at this point. Mr. Bynum: So two victim witness advocates have been cut. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Have been eliminated as positions. Yes, for the services that we were not able to provide for our office and one of those...two of those was for prevention and awareness of offenses. That was not something that was covered for in our current...well, in the past prosecutor's current mission. It is one of those programs that we'll...we will be addressing. Mr. Bynum: So services to victims have been reduced. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Services for victims that were needed have not been reduced. As you recall, we had approximately a thousand plus backlog in cases. On those uncharged cases, we don't need any victim witnesses because they aren't any cases for the victims to contact people on. And so what we had to do was restructure the office so that we would be...because we were bottom heavy, and so we had five, which is the most that we had had per ratio per person...per ratio...on Kauai, more than any other county has had. But because we do not have the amount of cases because cases weren't being charged, it was unnecessary to have five victim witness persons and not have attorneys or clerks who were actually charging cases or actually doing the legal paperwork for cases to be filed. So, had the cases been filed, potentially we could have used five of those victim witness people. But at this point when you have thousand plus cases on backlog, the services that are much needed at this point is in preparing the complaints, preparing the indictments, preparing the felony information charging and also taking these cases to trial, which we haven't been able to do and so, the victim witness counselors, basically, were there without sufficient work to do because the cases were not being charged. Mr. Bynum: So your argument is that the victim witness counselors didn't have anything to do? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Oh, I didn't...they...they have lots to do. It's just that the amount of work for that amount of salary and where the needs were not met is where we had to reallocate and ask for positions on. So, in fact, under one of those grant positions, we had to reallocate to get an investigator and a legal clerk to handle the 4,000 legal warrants that were outstanding. Mr. Bynum: Right. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: And that's why we have a special investigator and we have also a legal clerk position that was opened in order to handle the cases that were not being charged. So given the amount of victim witness people, we are now even higher than other counties still even after not fi...filling those two positions. Mr. Bynum: Well, we didn't just not fill those two positions, we let two people go. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We've...we had those positions...those funds reallocated to awareness and prevention and outreach. Mr. Bynum: And I guess I'm concerned that we have two long-term county employees that are providing victim services that are gone in two weeks when I believe there's funding for them to continue. 66 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: And if you want them...if you want them funded, I think you should fund them on the county and fund...and so these services can be...these funding can be allocated to... Mr. Bynum: I'm asking now about the VOCA funding. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: The funding that we have are for the missions of the prosecutor to do prevention and awareness. None of those goals have been addressed for the last eight years. That's where the resources are needed most. And that's where these moneys that were let up from those positions are going to be able to address those missions and goals. Mr. Bynum: So the YWCA and Hale `Opio would be seeing an increase in their funds. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Potentially with the programs that we have discussed with community diversion and other kinds of programs.` 'That's the fund'i`ng that will address preventiori ' - - and education and awareness. Mr. Bynum: So the two positions that were long-term in the prosecutor's office are gone and they're not coming back? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: It depends. If the county wants to fund those, that would be...I would be more than happy if that's where you wanted your resources to go. Mr. Bynum: When you get the...when you get the VOCA stimulus money that will be here forthcoming, where's that money going to go? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Where is the VOCA stimulus money? Mr. Bynum: $586,000 that's going to be distributed in April. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We don't have that in our budget. We have not gotten any word regarding that VOCA stimulus money. Mr. Bynum: Are you aware of $586,000 of VOCA funding coming down through the stimulus package. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: This is all the amount of money that we receive from the AG's office that potentially will come to this county. Mr. Bynum: Are you aware of $586,000... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: This is the money that we have...that we have been given by the Attorney General's Office of the money that will be coming to Kauai County. Mr. Bynum: Is there a meeting at the AG's Office in April to discuss distributing $586,000 of VOCA funding to the counties? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho and Ms. Chong: There is a meeting. Ms. Chong: We are aware that there is a meeting. Mr. Bynum: This is public information. There is $586,000 of additional VOCA funding. You have $186,000 of VOCA funding now and you...and you've laid off two long- term county employees. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Councilmember Bynum. 67 Mr. Bynum: As of April, next week, yeah? APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Councilmember Bynum, we have looked at the amount of services that are needed in our ofI`ice. There were thousands of cases that were uncharged. This is where the funding should go. It is unnecessary at this point to have victim witness counselors when there aren't thousands of cases that have not been charged. Victim witness services are put in at the back end to get restitution to talk to victims about their case charging, to talk to victims about their trials, to assist victims and show up in court. They are not necessary to charge a case. They are not necessary to actually file legal documents. They don't do that. They do that at the time of sentencing. But we do not get to sentencing or disposition until we charge a case and this is the dilemma because we've had for the past 8 years, in fact 12 years, we've had five victim witness counselors and yet we've had a backlog of 4,000 legal documents that have been pending. This is charges that have been filed and haven't been served. We also have approximately at least two thousand plus cases that are uncharged. So all this time we've had all this victim witness people waiting for cases that haven't been charged. So until the case gets to court, the victim witness person is unnecessary. Mr. Bynum: Of the 4,000 cases that you have, how many of those are traffic warrants? Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Oh, it would be...I would say of the 4,000 cases approximately...because at this point the Kauai Police Department, as you know when I met with you, told you that they do not track cases by misdemeanors or felonies. So at this point we are unable to say by KPD records which ones are traffic and which ones are not. Mr. Bynum: I'll go back to VOCA funding. VOCA funding, as you've said, is only available for victim services. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That's correct. Mr. Bynum: This...this funding is the same as last year. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: The funding is that same as last year's, yes. Mr. Bynum: In addition to that, there's additional funding coming. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Potentially. Mr. Bynum: These funds have been used for years to fund the victim witness program. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Which we have fully funded what we need at this point. We have fully funded the victim witness program at this point with the amount of cases that we have charged, yes. Mr. Bynum: So your choice is to take these funds that are only available for victim services to increase funding to the nonprofits at the expense of county workers. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: It's not at the expense of county workers. We're getting more bang for our buck by making sure that these cases do not appear in court, by making sure that these cases...these funds go towards education, prevention, go into training. This is where the money is needed desperately at the prosecuting attorney's office. Mr. Bynum: So the victim advocates that had been providing this service for the last two years, they've been twiddling their thumbs and not had any work... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: I have not been there the last two years. I started, as you know, December 1 and I can tell you from December 1 on, we have made the victim witness counselors contact every victim that a case is being declined on. So we have produced thousands of 68 APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) documents to victims to ensure that they are kept abreast of the cases that are presently being declined or not. That is something that they have taken on as a duty. We have also allocated, which victim witness never did do, every felony case has a victim witness advocate, which previously for the last twelve years they were not going to court. So we have maximized the use of the three staff at a benefit to the county in a savings. in a grant money of $130,000+ to assure that this funding will be used for direct prevention and education and outreach so that these cases do not end up in court. That was the reallocation and because of that decision, we are saving this county thousands of dollars. Mr. Bynum: Okay, so you're aware that the county general fund gives money to the YWCA, Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Am I aware of that? Yes. I advocated for that. Mr. Bynum: I know you did and if they're going to get all of this VOCA -funds. ,_, .~_~. _--- -- - __ .__-- --- -~_~ ,.,~Y_ Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Oh, we do not know that at this point. Right now we have allocated the same amount because they have provided a lengthy justification for how the money is spent, how much cases they have handled on crisis. They have provided the amount of services that...that...in...in not only the amount of people they have serviced but the amount of savings to the county. They have provided all of that in a statistical data report that I have that I fully am pleased that we were able to save so much money by having the services of the YWCA. And they are well deserving of the money they receive. (Inaudible) Mr. Kaneshiro: (Inaudible)...to get some other information. Let me...you have another question? Mr. Bynum: I have other questions on other topics. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, let me get to one of the other councilmembers and we'll come back again. Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. I just want to reconcile this again, Mr. Chairman. So, somewhere I may have misinterpreted what you were saying about the staffing. I want to go back and visit again on...on VOCA. We have...if...we don't have two people there. We have one person there who is fulltime...a three-quarter time. That's correct, right? So it's a...it's a $60,000 salary with approximately $24,000 worth of benefits... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Mm-hm. Mr. Furfaro: ...which comes out to $85,000. Three-quarters of that is $63,750. I think I deducted twice from there. Then we have from that $186,000 we currently have...that comes out...that leaves us about $120,000. How much of that $120,000 would you say in past went to Hale `Opio as one item, YMCA as another and other counseling services? Do you have rough numbers for me? Ms. Chong: Well, for 08-09, we did have two positions funded. Mr. Furfaro: Oh, okay. Ms. Chong: Two positions funded. The current projection for next year's with this amount of money is to have just one person... Mr. Furfaro: Okay, so in the previous year, this trend... 69 APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Chong: Right. Mr. Furfaro: There was a fulltimer and athree-quarter person. Ms. Chong: Right. There were two, yeah. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, okay. I'll just make that note for now that we're agreeing on that was approximately $85,000 with benefits. And did I get the list right? Hale `Opio benefits, YWCA benefits an d other counseling services. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Mm-hm. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Now going back to...I'm going to rephrase Mr. Bynum's question a...a little differently here. On the victim witness protection, I thought I heard Shay...of the 4,000 cases 400 of them were probably felony cases and of those you're saying they all have...they're all covered where needed on a...on advocates for victim witness programs? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: The...well, the 4,000 is...4,000 was the number... Mr. Furfaro: Total? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: No...of legal documents outstanding that have already been charged. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Okay. The 400 cases that I was referring to... Mr. Furfaro: Is part of that 4? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: No. This is in addition to. Mr. Furfaro: Is in addition to. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Okay, so we have cases that have already been charged. That's 4,000 cases that we have that have outstanding bench warrants, outstanding arrest warrants, and have outstanding penal summons. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That is cases have been charged, investigation has been done, a complaint has been filed. That is totally separate from the cases that are uncharged. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Uncharged cases, we have 400 plus defendants. Now each defendant...some defendants have 20 charges, some have 40 charges, some has 3 charges. So if you add up all the different charges per defendant, you're going to add up with thousand plus charges that was left over from the last administration just in felonies. And then we have three to four hundred in adult family court. And then we have another...we had approximately a thousand just in district court alone. These are just backlog cases that we haven't been able to address at all because we have kept current with the cases that since December 1, the cases that are charged from December 1 are all in court. There is absolutely no backlog on the December 1. The only backlog is in felonies, we have not char...I mean served 13 arrest warrants out of all of 140 cases, which means we have a 90% service rate from December 1 of the circuit court case and these are the felony type cases. But we have absolutely, Councilmember Furfaro, no backlog from December 1 to present in any court. 70 • Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: On charging. • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Mr. Furfaro: And then what I want to know is the people that are victims of these cases, are they...everyone that is necessary to have an advocate in a victim witness program, you are telling me right now they are covered. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Mm-hm. Mr. Furfaro: They are covered? Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: There's no one that's short-changed? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Oh, no. In fact, they are double covered because previously the victim witness people never went to court, rarely ever unless they were requested. We have mandatorily requested that they appear at every court. Remember now, we had no comprehensive database system. So nobody before December 1 would know when the court date was coming up. So nobody would appear in court. Mr. Furfaro: You...you understand where I'm coming from here because quite frankly we don't have jurisdiction over the structure or the personnel or the performances in your office. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Mm-hm. Mr. Furfaro: By charter, we are not engaged in that unless it turns out to be a formal grievance and comes through a personnel process. But on the flip side, I do want to make sure that if you have justified the reduction of these positions...you're justification that I heard was we haven't been able to process or I don't know how...what other legal term you do when you get them into the court system. At some point, all of this stuff has to be filed accordingly before you can offer the service. That's what I'm hearing from you. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That's correct. Mr. Furfaro: And that might be the discrepancy in this dialogue. But I do want to make sure that my question about making certain that people have outreach to have the appropriate advocate work for them as a...as a victim is in place. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That...they have a lot more services than they utilized in the four years that they ha...they were present there in the four months. And you can have...I mean that can be confirmed by any victim witness person that you talk to and any clerk at our office and any attorney that you talk to. Because they...we are now utilizing less employees that are able to maximize the use of that employee. Mr. Furfaro: I learned a long time ago it's not appropriate to micromanage somebody's department. As I've stated, the charter also prevents us from that. But the charter does not prevent us from making sure that we're providing citizens the entitlements that there are if they are victims. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That's correct. Mr. Furfaro: And you're assuring me that that is covered. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We, in fact, provide more victim witness services than many, in fact all of the other counties. And this I have gotten by attending...In fact, we had this discussion when we attended the Hawaii Prosecuting Attorneys Association where there were...we discussed 71 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) the amount of services that are being provided and clearly with the amount of proportionate attorneys to victim witness, we have one of the highest in the state, even after reducing it by two. And so...and...and we have again been able to provide a lot more services with the three victim witness persons that we have than they did with five. Mr. Furfaro: Okay and then I just want to reconfirm because I heard earlier from your grant assistant that these five grants that are not...do not have asterisks next to them, you are vigorously going to pursue this with other county agencies on these potential grant amounts that are available, either from the AG's Office...it looks like all from the AG's Office... Ms. Chong: Yeah. Mr. Furfaro: ...whether it's the Edward Byrne Justice Grant or Stop Violence Against Women... Ms. Chong: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: You are actively going to pursue that. Ms. Chong: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: And you do confirm that given the opportunity that we get these grant moneys, they will be used before any other county moneys will be requested. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Definitely. And I want to just add to that, Councilmember Furfaro, thank you for bringing up that question. The difference that we have...these moneys that are not by competitive bid, meaning by formula, they have a lot more stricter rules in the use of those funds. One of the problems with these kinds of funds were that they had restrictions on supplanting, meaning if you had an attorney that already was doing the work, we could not use federal funds to pay for the salaries of that attorney. You would have to hire another attorney to specialize. That's the difference with the Recovery Act in that the mission of the Recovery Act was to not only create jobs but to continue sustainability of those jobs and that's why we are able and are aggressively pursuing that those funding that we have lost, meaning that the county now is paying for our domestic violence attorney, that that and sexual attorney, that attorney we are asking for under the third entry on the grants that OPA will be applying for to continue funding of that DV, Domestic Violence Unit. Mr. Furfaro: It's that DVPU unit? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Yes and that's the .one that specializes in handling all domestic violence cases and sex assault cases. So, that's...you know, we're very happy with the opportunities of the Recovery Act because it allows us...there also used to be sustainability issues, meaning that if they provided funding for a period of time, like a year, you were required to continue that funding or the county funding in two or three years. That is not requirement. This money is just for infusion and they are not requiring us to put up any matches, number one, and number two, in requiring us to guarantee that we will continue this in funding for several years after the grant expires. Mr. Furfaro: Okay and will someone will be in yo...from your office, maybe your deputy...will someone be available to attend this April dates that Mr. Bynum... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We have in fact two people attending that meeting, our victim witness director as well as Jamie Chong, our Jamie...our grant coordinator. We also have met...law enforcement have met twice already. We've met two weeks ago in Honolulu where there were 60 people present including all the U.S. attorneys, the head U.S. attorneys, all the prosecuting attorneys from the neighbor islands as well as Oahu, all of the Attorney Generals, Department of Health and the Judiciary that were present and...and the jail. And we also met, the Hawaii Prosecuting Attorneys Association regarding funding and staffing on the Big Island just this past Tuesday. 72 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: So, we've been having a lot more meetings simply because we want to make sure and have been told by the AG's office that we need to have projects ready to go because, again, they're competitive bidding. So, even if you're a small county, if you have these applications ready, which of course we will have them ready, you are more likely to get yours granted if you turn it in as soon as the application process is...is finished. So, you know, we are aggressively pursuing those opportunities at this point and...and clearly, you know, the attorneys' position is where the work is needed the most and the clerk's. Mr. Furfaro: May I ask one final question? It is unfortunate any time and I don't know enough about the structure of this division within the county, but whenever it is potentially we find ourselves with very skilled employees, employees with longevity in a department and so forth, you know, we need to reach out with some compassion, and I...I certainly hope with what you're presenting to us in your plan, those names, those positions have been shared with the HR Department in the event that-we have some natural -attrition, retirement; -so forth: I think keeping loyal employees is important as part of retention and so, I...I would just reach out to you to say if it is at all possible and I know it's a, you know, very difficult department that you have with many moving parts in it in a downward economy. But just as important it is to see if we can't place employees that do get discharged, transferred or terminated that they know they're part of the family of county employees. I would encourage you to be talking to the HR Department. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah, we...we already have and so we've began discussions back in January...actually we were given better news in March and April than we had in December and January. Mr. Furfaro: Well, I'm hoping you're coming back with better news on Apri120 as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: I have a question for the grant writer. Are these grants just so happen all fell within this period or do you apply for these grants annually because I noticed one, two, three, four of them will be up in August or... Ms. Chong: The Recovery... Mr. Kaneshiro: So how does it work? Ms. Chong: The Recovery grants are new grants that just came about. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, so. Ms. Chong: And the other grants are yearly, continuous grants. Mr. Kaneshiro: So a lot of these...the top ones are new grants that we're going in for? Okay, all right. Lani, you had a question. Ms. Kawahara: I have three, actually. Mr. Kaneshiro: What's that? Ms. Kawahara: I have several questions. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, go ahead. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Hi, thanks. Did you...did you mean to say that you...that your budget had been cut earlier and that's why you're going to have a crisis? Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: No, we have a crisis regardless o£..it's the budget, everybody's budget, yeah. 73 • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Kawahara: Okay because I thought I heard you say that your budget had been cut and therefore that's why...that's why we're shifting around positions because:..because I've got original budget was $1.042 and the adjusted budget for the mayor is $1.356. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: If you look...if you look at the...when you talking about the budget one, remember there were increases in the salaries that were by Salary Commission, yeah. So that...that goes into effect during this period. So there was an increase in funding there. OPEB also increased. So if you look and...and we have the chart that the mayor had proposed on what they had given. You know the pie chart? Ms. Kawahara: Yes. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: And I'm not sure, yeah, if you got that. If you look at...salaries actually went down and the OPEB went up. So if you look at the budget comparison from last year to this year, salaries were at 7% of the...70% of the budget. The salaries went down to 60% of the budget. If you look at the operations cost, it went up 1%. The benefits, if you look at, it was in '09 $360,000 and if you look at 2010, it's $659,000. Ms. Kawahara: I'm...I'm trying to find my prosecuting attorney file. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: But, I understand. So, we're saying...you're saying that the $1.0 that was originally budgeted previous was increased to cover personnel and increases in benefits and other things. So, no positions were cut within the mayor's budget. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: I didn't say that. I'm saying that the position... Ms. Kawahara: No, I'm...I'm just...for me... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Oh, okay. Ms. Kawahara: ...clarifying for me. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: The positions, as we looked, that's where we provided the sheet. If you look at the positions on page 103 on the comparison of the number and the cost of attorneys, and you look at the second page, it will show you that the total attorneys that we are requesting is 10.75, which is what they had in '09. So, we're...we're not requesting any change as far as the request for attorneys. It's just that the funding mechanism where initially we had four attorneys on grant-funded, we only have one position now, but actually two positions at 50% for the fiscal year 2010. So, I...I don't know if you have that. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, I do...I do. So, we're talking about the shifting of funds. In relation to that, when those grants are granted, are they not coordinated so that they run the full fiscal year so that that position doesn't run out of funds before the fiscal year is up? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: In a normal economic situation, probably if they are recurring grants. Like sometimes you have grants that are only for four years. Ms. Kawahara: Right. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: And when that expires, you...you don't have that position and normally they require when we had grants that the county would have to commit towards hiring that on the county payroll after they provided the four years. Ms. Kawahara: The COPS, the COPS Program. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah, we had the DV grant that was like that, the sex assault grant. 74 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Kawahara: But the ones that we're talking about, like for VOCA, those are ongoing grants that should have... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: They are... Ms. Kawahara: ...should have been...should be going all the way through the end of the fiscal year, but that you're saying that they're short? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That...that...that wasn't...no, they go. I mean if you look at the chart that we provided, you know they're continuous. Ms. Kawahara: less... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Ms. Kawahara: Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: those funds for limited pers Okay because I had thought that that was why there were No, we had other grants. Less than five VOCA positions being brought up. VOCA is real different. Like I say VOCA you only can use ons, not attorneys. Ms. Kawahara: Right, right. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah, those are for victim services. So it seems like you're mixing up the VOCA funding, which is for direct victim services with attorney positions and those...The attorney positions, the ones that we have, were the domestic violence, the property crime unit, the criminal...career criminal unit. Domestic violence was also tied with sex assault. So there were four units that were funded under the grant which we have one that we expect, meaning one, two 50°10, that we expect, you know. Ms. Kawahara: That's very possible, very possible that I have it mixed up because of the different percentages of funding coming from the different grants. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: And that's what we've had to do... Ms. Kawahara: And I...I appreciated the handout that you did give us with the percentages. My question says for here though specifically is the two VW counselor positions, 1.5 grant funded and 0.5 county funded, have been eliminated, and this is according to what you had given us. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah, yeah. Ms. Kawahara: And...and temporary...a temporary legal clerk III and a temporary special investigator have been added. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Not added. That...that is not relative to that position...I mean that funding. Ms. Kawahara: Yes, but it's kind of like you're trading out these skilled counselors with legal clerk and special investigator. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Oh, that is inaccurate. No. Ms. Kawahara: No? Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Not...totally inaccurate. We are not trading out skilled counselors for legal clerks and investigators. Ms. Kawahara: Oh, okay. 75 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: They are two totally different mechanisms of funding that are utilizing those funds. Ms. Kawahara: You know, I mean but for your coverage of your whole...of all of your cases. You're...you're emphasizing now that you want to prosecute the cases that have been backlogged. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That's correct. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, so that's kind of what I'm saying. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Not...not only prosecute, but to serve the warrants, okay. So that's what the...the contract that we have are specifically for that. That special investigator is required to address the backlog in the arrest warrants. That's their primary function. Ms. Kawahara: Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Ms. Kawahara: Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Ms. Kawahara: Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Right. They are not there to assist in prosecuting cases... Right. ...and all of that. It's just to address the backlog. So...so it's a shift. The function is very limited. Yes, it's a shift. Ms. Kawahara: The shift is to go to more to getting all this backlog, all your cases documented and served and prosecuted, yeah? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Well, we need...we have to file it within six...I mean you have to charge it within six months. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: If you don't the case automatically by law gets dismissed. There is no option for the prosecutor. Ms. Kawahara: I can tell, I can tell that you're real passionate about getting those done and getting them into the courts. At some point because you're going to be so good at it obviously, you're going to have more people coming in with more victims. How are you going to deal with the more victims after you cut...take away the two victim witness and... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Because there is more than enough as far as the amount of services that these victim witness provide. Compared to every...any other county, we have...we have the highest amount of ratio between a victim witness advocate... Ms. Kawahara: Yes, I... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: ...and an attorney and the amount of cases. We always had, in fact we had double the amount. We had almost one-to-one victim witness services and we had no cases to prosecute, so. Ms. Kawahara: Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Right. Yeah, I heard...I heard that. We are reallocating... 76 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Kawahara: My...my question is with the load that you're going to be getting going through with your emphasis now on getting those through the system and into the courts and obviously some of them are going to have victims, you can...you can assure us that the three that are left and the two that are gone won't...won't be detrimental and...won't be detrimental to victims that are being victimized. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Definitely. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: Three are going to be able to do it. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Definitely. Mr. Kaneshiro: We heard that question from Mr. Furfaro. Ms. Kawahara: I...I think I was slightly different. Mr. Kaneshiro: Why? I thought Mr. Furfaro asked that question. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: It's the same question. Mr. Kaneshiro: She said she would be able to...to serve. Ms. Kawahara: He...he was asking...never mind. Mr. Kaneshiro: That he would be able to... Ms. Kawahara: I was asking about an extension of the time that she's going to be dealing with all of the new ones that are coming up. Not the present ones, the 400. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, okay. Ms. Kawahara: The ones that are obviously under her department are going to be seriously and dedicatedly going across these cases and getting them through court. Mr. Kaneshiro: because... Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: hate to have something a Oh, you know that's going be Shay's call at that point So, right. I'm just asking and I wanted to know... You know, Shay knows that that's...right. ...if that had been factored. Hopefully, you know, she has that well planned because you Mme back and bite us, you know. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that I was clear that that was going to be factored in. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. Ms. Kawahara: When all those do come through...through prosecution and through the courts that the victims will be taken care of. Thank you. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: It...it would have been nice for us if we inherited an ofI`ice that did not have 4,000 legal documents that were outstanding, that in fact we utilized the services of the victim witness advocates and utilize all of the skills that were there at the office and took care 77 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) of that backlog. As this current council knows the...the...one, two, three, four people that were here, every year that we came to council, there was 4,000 legal documents that were outstanding. Every year this was the story over and over and over again. And you know, we see it now that's coming to fruition. When you have a murder...person that has been murdered and had cases that were dismissed four prior times because cases weren't being looked at, that's a problem, that's a crisis and that's why resources in this budgetary times need to be reallocated to where it is needed most, which at that legal document stage because we have already paid all the overtime for the officers. We have already paid for the court clerks to file the complaints. We have already paid in talking to the victims and getting their statements. We have already done that and then we drop the ball two yards before the touchdown and there's no conviction. And the case in six months because it has not been filed gets automatically dismissed by law. And so that has been a pattern that we would like to intervene and stop because until we stop that pattern we are going to continually see the revolving door complex where a lot of people say, hey, I just saw that person getting arrested, why is he back on the street? I just got this person arrested. Why is he back on the street? It's because cases get continually dismissed because they are not being served in a timely manner and the court by law has to dismiss it within six months. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, you had one more question, Lani. Ms. Kawahara: I did and it's probably a naive question. So you specially have some asterisks here about the number of attorneys has not changed, but you're requesting that the funding source be changed to the county. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That's correct. Ms. Kawahara: Right. So, if the number of attorneys hasn't changed, if you could just tell me in your...of the stuff that you're talking about and not doing 24/7 anymore, if the same number of attorneys are there. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: No, right now we...we don't have. What has happened is that the amount of attorneys that they had, for example we now have one attorney who used to handle on1y...I mean there were two attorneys that handled district court. Currently we have only one attorney that is handling district court. We have more courts now. We have basically two jury trials that are going on and we also have two other cases on motions for revocation, sentencing, etc. So in circuit court we now need four attorneys to handle those cases. We also need one attorney in district court. We also started grand jury every other week. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: So we have increased the amount of workload that the attorneys are doing with cases because we are charging a hundred four...we charged more cases in four months than the prosecutor charged in the entire year last year, in four months. So, this is where all of the attorneys' work needs to be focused and that's where it is...it is being focused. And so all these extracurricular, Icall them, meaning the training, the twenty...The prosecutor's office never provided 24/7 attorneys. Ms. Kawahara: That was my next question. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We provided that from December 1. The prosecutor's office never met with ISB weekly where we were able to confer and give training. We provided that. The prosecutor's office never did do all the training for the recruit class. That was a whole month of training by taking away an attorney. So we...the prosecutor's office never did training with the planning department. We started a sweep that took place on December 3 that has never taken place ever, that we coordinated with the planning department. The prosecutor's office before that never planned or coordinated things with the parks & rec department. We have met with the park rangers and are providing training for...for the parks & recs department. So a lot of the things that we were providing, the prosecuting attorney's office in the past administration didn't provide it during the whole four years. We provided in...within this four...first four months, which at this point we need to concentrate on all those 140 cases that we had charged within the four months and that's where 78 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) the allocation of our resources are going to be. It's going to be on the current cases and so all these extracurricular things that we did for free at no cost to the county, at no overtime pay to the county, is now being invested in the jury trial setting in bringing the cases to court. Ms. Kawahara: So you're slowly going from crisis...crisis o£..or these services from 24/7 and training and signing search warrants, da, da, da, da, da and shifting it over to the... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Jury trials. Ms. Kawahara: Make sure the jury stuff and gets through and then after that you're going to shift to victims. You'll have enough... Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: No, while we're doing the trials we have victim witness counselors at every single felony case. So there is as I've shown you a structure that we currently have. Ms. Kawahara: I'm just...I'm just...I'm just trying to see how you're progressing with the...in your line, yeah. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: The progression...the progression will always stay with the current cases, which is where we're at. If we have time, we'd like to provide the service to the community. We get call...calls all the time to provide training and we've done a lot of those within the four months. But right now what is the immediate crisis is to take care of the current cases that are proceeding through the trial process. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum, you had a question. Mr. Bynum: So I'm a little confused because you said that the priority are these 4,000 backlog things. I understand that. You discussed that here when you were a councilmember. You wanted the police department to step up and do more of that service. Now I hear in this budget you're going to take that responsibility. You want positions to do that service that's...in the past been done by the police department. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: As this council knows, as you would know, that the police department hasn't been able to do that service because that's why every year we have 4,000+ documents to serve. They are not serving these penal summons cases. They have basically taken that out from their job description because they don't have the amount of time to do with the explosion of crime that has taken place. So what has happened is that the police department has focused on their current investigatory cases that come up, but all the prior ones on the penal summons they have not served that. Now, we have started a task force with the police department where they are currently now going out serving the penal summons, but...but that's only at our urging in collaboration with us. But it is more bang for your buck if you get a process server at the prosecutor's office that you pay $30,000+ as opposed to taking a person off the street with six months of training that we pay $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 with overtime as a police officer to serve these summons. So, if you look at the amount of cost savings you would have if you had the $30,000 versus paying somebody $80,000, I clearly would want to go with the $30,000 position. Mr. Bynum: Right, I understand what you're saying, but you are saying that you want your office to take over these responsibilities that were once at the police department. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: I...I do not want to take on that responsibility. It's just that if nobody does it, victims get hurt. Victims who are assaulted don't get their cases prosecuted because their documents don't get served. Mr. Bynum: So the answer's yes. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: I don't want to. 79 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Mr. Bynum: You're proposing to... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: If you want to give process service to the police department for them to take on, by all means I would be more than happy to entertain that thought. But when you have victims that are calling because their cases have not been served, that is a necessary part of the job. And that is at a cheaper cost if you had a civilian at $30,000 instead of paying somebody $60,000 to $80,000 to serve documents. Mr. Bynum: So in four months, you've been able to address this backlog. You're getting more cases into the system. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: It...I've...(inaudible) I've addressed the backlog, I would say that we have not been able to address the backlog. As I've said, we have...we still have 4,000 documents that are outstanding. I said from December 1 till April 1 of the 140 cases that we have charged our office, out of those we have been able to serve all of the arrest warrants in circuit court. We have been able to serve all of the warrants except for 13, which means that our office has taken on 90% of those services with the help of Kauai Police Department. Mr. Bynum: So these efforts will result in more cases being brought at the prosecutor's office. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Of course, crime is going up, Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Okay, so there will be more cases brought and they're going to be adequately served by the two victim witness counselors... Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Three. Mr. Bynum: ...you cut, a supervisor and two counselors, and you had a supervisor and four counselors. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Three. We will provide the services that...more services than every...any other county in this state provides with the three service...victim witness counselors that we have. Mr. Bynum: No, please get back to the budget. As you've said... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: I am on the budget. Mr. Bynum: As you've said, the VOCA funds can only be used for victim services. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Correct. Mr. Bynum: Right. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: I think I've said that about ten times. Mr. Bynum: And you're still asking us to fund two of these service...two of these positions with county funds but you're shifting... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: No. That is not true. The money that is being used by VOCA is not what we're asking for on the county. That is two separate funding. We could not fund an investigator or a process server under VOCA funding. That is for direct victim services only. It has a very special limitation. So, when you are bringing up apples and oranges, meaning you were talking about special investigator/process server and a clerk, those cannot be provided with VOCA funds. They cannot be paid with VOCA funds. Mr. Bynum: I know that and I'm...what... 80 • Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Well, that's not clear. • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Mr. Bynum: No it's not clear either in what you're saying because you're saying this is our priority. We're going to do this, so we don't need these victim counselors, but you're also saying but we can't shift these funds because they're for victims. So I'm trying to... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Councilmember Bynum, I'm not saying that we don't need them. I'm saying that we don't...it...I would love to have all of these positions. If you are willing to fund the victim witness positions and all of the five positions that were in the budget before, my attorneys and utilize the services that are much cheaper, I'm more than happy to have all of these positions. Then fund it. But when you are asking me and you dollar fund and oh the positions that have been provided to you are dollar-funded positions, then I think I have a fiscal responsibility and also an ethical and moral and legal responsibility to request for funding that is necessary and critical to the operations of the prosecuting attorney's office. These are essential workers that are necessary to address these cases. Victim witness, the two positions, that we currently have are not essential positions in the state of affairs that we are°at now. ~ Now, if we had. all-the°money°in the°would; we would love to have all of the positions that had been in place. Ah, but clearly that is not the case. Mr. Bynum: And I'm trying to stay focused on the VOCA funding. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: And we have talked about that over and over and over again. Mr. Bynum: Your VOCA funding has remained the same, you have more VOCA funding coming, you're funding three-quarters of one position with that funding, and the additional funds you intend to give to nonprofits. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We are intending to provide the mission that was in my statement when I took office which the people are holding me accountable for, is to focus on prevention and awareness and education. That aspect, that wheel of prosecution or the criminal justice system has not been addressed in the prior administration and that's where those fundings can be utilized for those purposes. Mr. Bynum: Can you...can you... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: ...instead of the county funds. Mr. Bynum: Can you please answer my question? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: I answered your question. You may not like the answer that I give you, but that is the answer. Mr. Bynum: But I haven't...So the three-quarters of one position with VOCA plus the $65,000 you've traditionally given to the YWCA does not add up to 186 and it doesn't deal with the is...with the additional funding that we all know is coming here shortly, right? Not...we know it's a formula grant, it's coming. How it's going to be distributed state-wide is going to be discussed later this month. So, I have a problem when you let two long-term victim witness advocates that have worked for many years in this county go and then ask us to fund us those positions with general fund when you're... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That is not...that is not accurate. I am not asking you to fund any positions that I let go with county funding. That is a totally inaccurate statement, Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: No, if you listen to what I'm saying. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: No, I heard you. You can play back the record. I heard you. Mr. Bynum: I can show you. You gave me the documents. You have two victim witness positions that are funded with general fund money. That's your proposal, right? 81 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Those already have been funded. Those two have already been funded by county. Mr. Bynum: I understand that. Mr. Kaneshiro: We a... Mr. Bynum: But you're going to have additional VOCA money that you're not going to use for victim witness positions. You're letting two people go. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Mr. Bynum, have I not articulated clearly enough... Mr. Bynum: No, you haven't. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: ...that the positions...if you feel you can run the prosecuting attorney's office better, then by all means go ahead. But as, Councilmember Bynum, you heard from Councilmember Furfaro, you are not here to micromanage the department. You can hire these two victim witness on county funding. I am more than pleased with that. If you want to provide...if you have enough to hire $187,000 for two employees, $187,000, then go ahead and fund it on the county budget. If you feel that that is imperative to get your point here across and to provide for the crisis that we are in, then by all means cover that in the county budget of $180,000. I have articulated my mission is to provide funding with those VOCA funds to agencies that are able to provide prevention, education, and awareness so that we do not get into the court system. That is not what a victim witness counselor can do. That is not part of their job. Their job is to handle the back end of crime, which is to handle restitution, criminal compensation, victim impact statements. That is after a case has been charged. When we have 4,000 legal documents that haven't been served, when we have thousands of cases that haven't been served, where do we need these victim witness advocates when cases aren't even in court because they do not come into play until a case is charged. And I...you may not know how the prosecuting office attorney is run but that personnel for $180,000, those personnel, we are saving this county $180,000 in essence because we are providing prevention and education and awareness with VOCA funds that will lessen the amount of cases that will be going through the court judicial system at a savings of more than $180,000 and that's why you...the county taxpayers are getting a great bang for their buck because of this reallocation and restructuring of the entire office from the last administration. We are clearly not neglecting any services of victim witnesses because we are still providing more victim witness services than any other county in this state including Oahu with the amount of victim witness counselors that we will have with three...with three counselors instead of five. Mr. Bynum: I'll put this to the head with one thing. The...the numbers speak for themselves. You are basically cutting two county... Gavel sounded twice by Council Chair Asing. Mr. Kaneshiro: I think...yeah, I think we need to cut our... Mr. Asing: I think we are getting away from our mission. Mr. Bynum: This is a budget question, Chair. Mr. Asing: It's not a budget question. Mr. Bynum: Yes, it is. Mr. Asing: If you don't agree with something that...that the prosecuting attorney's office wants to do, you don't agree, you don't agree, don't agree. But this is not the time to do it. You will have your time if you want to make a change, make that change at that particular time. But don't go try to manage somebody else's department. That's not your function. Your function is to work on the budget... 82 • • APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Mr. Bynum: My function is the budget. I asked a budget question. Mr. Asing: ...and you're not doing it. You're interfering with...with the operation that's not your...your responsibility. Mr. Kaneshiro: No, I think...let me...let me get in here right now. We've heard the questions asked several times. Mr. Bynum: We haven't heard the answer. Mr. Kaneshiro: And the answer is...I've heard her answer what her desire is to do with the money and that's fine. We may not agree, we may not agree on how she wants to use that money for this particular prevention program rather than to put the money there for personnel at this point. So, I've heard that and I'm...I'm...I'm satisfied with how she wants to run her office. That's her office, that's up to her, okay? So if you don't agree with that, I don't think we should continue with this dialogue as Mr. Chair -has said. You-know, we:::we-can simply when it-comes - time to budget and make budget decisions, we can open that up to discussions here with the committee members, okay. But how in the world you going to change what Shay's vision is for her office and I believe what she said that's where she wants to use the money at this point. And that's it. Mr. Bynum: Okay and I'll just close with a comment to you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: I don't need no comment. I just wanted to let you know that this is where we're at and we should move on. Lani, you had a question. Ms. Kawahara: I just have two more quest...just two and they're...they don't relate to the...I hope not. So, is there a communication, I guess I would want from you is could you show the increase or...yeah, the increase of moneys that will go to YWCA and Hale Opio and the other programs that will...will actually benefit because of the two...the two no longer victim witness positions because those are the only, you know, specified required things that that money can be used for. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: No, the specified things that the money can be used for is any direct witness...I mean direct victim services. It's not specified for prevention; it's not specified for education; it's not specified for awareness, but those kinds of missions and goals can be utilized as long as it's within the realm of direct victim services. So whatever program that they provide, we are still in the process of determining that. The YWCA has gotten a humungous cut in their funding. And so if there are services that they can provide on behalf of the prosecutor's office for juveniles, for juvenile delinquency programs, for any kind of diversion program, teenagers, those are the kinds of programs that we will utilize those funds for. But they haven't come up with any of those types. There's multiple programs that they have, but until they realize what their budget is, then we'll be able to figure out how much money they're going to ask from us. Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We'll come... So... We'll come with a communication on that. Okay. Yeah. Then that way whatever you have now, you can provide. All right. 83 APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Mr. Kaneshiro: And then as it comes along, you'll be able to provide some of that information to us, okay? So, we'll write a communication. Ms. Kawahara: And in the process of it, they have...do they come to us so we know what their requesting and if they're getting their funds? Mr. Kaneshiro: What's that again? Mr. Kawahara: With the YWCA requests... Mr. Kaneshiro: With the grant funding? Ms. Kawahara and Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, when the grants are approved or let's say they have some funding, they would have to come before us for approval and at that point, we can have some statistics and we can have some (inaudible) and where they're going to be using some of their programs for. Ms. Kawahara: When it comes out of prosecutor's. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Okay Mr. Kaneshiro: Because you remember, they...they...it comes before for us for approval. You know, we have the prosecutor's office, police office has a grant, who asking for council approval to move ahead and accept this grant. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: So at that point, we can have more discussions on that specific grant. Ms. Kawahara: That's great. I'm hoping then that...that they'll be able to come up with some really good programs to use the possible ec... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: They provided for services... Ms. Kawahara: Yes. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: ...in the past that have been excellent as far as results and the amount of justification that they provide for their programs are excellent. And again, we get a lot more bang for our buck by giving these nonprofits who are skilled at utilizing the least amount of funds to provide the greatest amount of services. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. And...and just one more thing. The Hoku Program that you guys got up and running and it sounds like it's really doing a great job of tracking and really giving you good reports on what the status is of your cases, do they...do they also capture victim...victim information if there are victims or victimless crimes? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We are, at this point, having the software developer, he's coming down in two weeks...in two weeks. I can tell you that there was absolutely no tracking system, so you could not really determine the success. of any unit prior to the Hoku System and I...you know, thanks for bring it up because that was another additional $100,000 that the prosecuting attorney's office saved by having a comprehensive data system. So, currently what we have now is all of the attorneys system. The victim witness system is still being utilized by this archaic paradox system which they are trying to transfer that information into the Hoku System. 84 APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Kawahara: (Inaudible) Okay. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah, so that they can interface with each other. Ms. Kawahara: Oh, okay, okay. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: But until the software developer comes down in two weeks, we won't know if that is somethin g that can occur or not. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: But currently, the assignments for all of the victim witness counselors for each type of case is done immediately at the time that the case comes in for screening. So there is a victim witness counselor initially on the case when it first comes in as opposed to waiting till the back end. Ms. Kawahara: Okay and I...I guess I would just like a communication then about the...those numbers... Mr. Kaneshiro: You got it. Ms. Kawahara: And then if they're able to make those compatible, the two databases compatible. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Yeah, thanks. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...(inaudible) everything. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That's fine. Yeah, we'll...we'll... Mr. Kaneshiro: Anyone else had a question? Mr. Furfaro: On a new subject? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes. Mr. Bynum: On a new subject, I have a question... Mr. Kaneshiro: I'm not going back to victim witness, people, let me tell you right now. Mr. Furfaro: I... Mr. Kaneshiro: Let's go. Mr. Furfaro: I have an understanding of where I'm at from my questions. Mr. Kaneshiro: All right. Mr. Furfaro: Shay, I'm trying to reconcile these two reports here. First of all... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: I'm talking in terms of salary for your staff. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: This number that's in here... 85 i ,r APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Which one are you looking at Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: I'm actually looking at the budget sheet. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: The salary that...that does reflect the blended salary group by the Salary Commission. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Five months and seven months. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Yes, yes, it does. Mr. Furfaro: Now this worksheet that you gave us which was in your handout... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: This is referencing savings. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: This is not referencing fulltime employ...fulltime equivalents. This is reflecting savings or... CYNDIE JOHNSON, Administrative Assistant: Staff. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Can somebody walk us through? Ms. Johnson: That is a comparison of the actual... Mr. Kaneshiro: Your name...your name for the record. Ms. Johnson: Cyndie Johnson, Administrative Assistant to the Prosecuting Attorney. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: Could you walk through this savings sheet for us? Ms. Johnson: Yes, Mr. Furfaro. Basically what this is, this is a comparison of the actual amount that was being paid, not the allotted salaries. So, as of November 1, the total that was being paid for attorneys at that point in time, both county funded and grant funded, was $70,698. That's not the allotted amount. The allotted amount would have been much greater than that. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, got it. Ms. Johnson: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: Got it now. Ms. Johnson: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: I got the whole thing now. 86 APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Johnson: I got it. Ms. Johnson: That was the key. Mr. Furfaro: That was the key, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mister...Mr. Bynum also has one question about the salaries. Go ahead, Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Currently the...the Salary Commission approved deputy county attorney range is what? Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: No. Ms. Johnson: Maximum is 94...94,000 something. Ms. Iseri-Carvallio: Yeah. It's not a range, it's just a ceiling. Ms. Johnson: It's a ceiling. Mr. Bynum: Okay, so the ceiling is 94... Ms. Johnson: The ceiling is $94,454 annually. Mr. Bynum: 454 and you've...you've shared with us that your deputies are being paid considerably less than that. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: At this current time, that's correct. Mr. Bynum: What is the current deputy salaries? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Well, we can tell you right here with the positions that we had on December 1, the amount that we paid was $45,090 in that first month and then the next month we paid $51,757, the next month $51,757, the next month $53,841 and then in April $58,840. Mr. Bynum: So you currently have eight and a half attorneys. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Right now...with...as of April 1, yes. Mr. Bynum: Okay and you have some new hires and you have some people who were retained from the previous administration. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We had two attorneys that were retained from the previous administration. Mr. Bynum: And those two attorneys, are they being paid the same salary they were being paid earlier? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: They were actually being paid less than what they were getting initially. Mr. Bynum: What is their hourly...what is their yearly rate? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: At this time, we have paid...one was at $75,000 and one at $80,000. Mr. Bynum: So, those two deputies took a cut in pay. Ms.Iseri-Carvalho: Correct. 87 ~ i APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Mr. Bynum: To stay in the office and the new deputies are being paid at what yearly? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: It varies depending upon the experience that they have and the amount of cases they handle as well as whether they are handling felony cases or misdemeanor cases. Ms. Johnson: The brand new attorney that was just hired, that's at $55,000. Mr. Bynum: $55,000. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: And is getting paid less than the investigate...less than a victim witness counselor. Our ...that...two attorneys were hired at funds that were less than victim witness. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: One... Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? Ms. Kawahara: One thing...one thing about the...the two attorneys that took the pay cut, yeah? Those are... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That is not the only attorneys that took pay cuts. I mean, everybody took a pay cut by coming to work under my administration. My first deputy took a $30,000 pay cut. Another felony attorney took $40,000 pay cut. So, basically, everybody took pay cuts in coming in our administration because these positions were anticipated that we wanted to change the focus to community prosecution and to assure that the crystal meth attorney would be funded and that was hopeful...we were hopeful that by saving $100,000 that we could utilize those savings towards new positions that we felt was where the direction of the office was headed. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, okay, and they...just because I work with unions, they're ordinance so that's why legal... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: We have no sala...right. But we have no control over the amount that they allocate. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, okay and then the morale is okay with them taking their cuts? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: I...you can ask them. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: But they're still working and they've done twice as much work and they've been on duty 24/7. Mr. Asing: Who's going to say, okay, cut my pay? Who's going to say that? Ms. Kawahara: No, I mean if it's... Ms. Asing: Who's going to say that, thank you for cutting my pay? Ms. Kawahara: So I'm asking about the morale. They're...they're...they're overjoyed? 88 ~ ~ APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Mr. Asing: (Inaudible) Ms. Johnson: But they're working very hard. Ms. Kawahara: So they're... Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: They enjoy working for the quality of staff that they have, that we've been able to utilize. People are very conscientious of the budget and the crisis that we are in. I applaud all the attorneys that we've had because they have been working 24/7. I applaud the clerks and applaud all the staff because we have been able to achieve this phenomenal amount of cases being charged in this short time frame with staff not taking a single overtime or comp. time, except for the times that we spend on the budget, which Cyndie had to do. That was the only overtime that we spent and we've been able to provide you more than, I hope, enough documentation. By all means provide me whatever communication Mr. Budget Chair Kaneshiro and we especially enjoy all of the time that we're here. So whatever information we can share, we're more than haPPY to. - - __ ~t ~ ; __ .- - _._ .. - _ _, s . . Ms. Kawahara: So more work for less pay, yeah? Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: You can see it $100,0001ess pay in four months. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thanks, thank you. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: If we could just have one more comment from my first deputy since she (inaudible)... Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, sure since...go right ahead. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: So that she could at least be introduced to you all. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, go ahead. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: I just...while we have the time. Lori Wada, she's my first deputy who took, you know, one of those pay cuts, $30,000 pay cut, who had been a practicing prosecuting attorney and handled murder trials, sex assaults, domestic violence for the past 18 years and one of the highest paid attorneys over at Peter Carlisle to come to our lovely, beautiful Kauai. LORI WADA, First Deputy Prosecuting Attorney: You know it's interesting you asked that question, Lan...Councilman. Ms. Kawahara: I guess I take it back. Ms. Wada: No, no, no, no... Ms. Kawahara: I didn't mean for it to be funny. Ms. Wada: No...no...it's... Ms. Kawahara: I'm worried about morale and whether they're going to be able to do their work. Ms. Wada: Okay and I can address that. Ms. Kawahara: And not resent it. Mr. Kaneshiro: She's... she's here to address that, so let her go. Ms. Wada: Yeah, I...I can address that, Councilwoman. 89 ~ ~ APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Kawahara: I didn't think it was funny, I'm sorry. Ms. Wada: Sor...no and then..I don't mean funny in a sense where it...it's...well, Imean kind of is funny, but I mean hilarious-wise, but it's also common sense in the sense where as Councilman Kaneshiro has said, who would say thank you for cutting my pay? My personal experience has been...I have done and been participated through Peter Carlisle and a lot of good in the community on Oahu. And I've seen crime stats come down. I've seen the public trust and the confidence that Peter Carlisle has and he has been kind enough during his administration to take me under his wing so that I have had administrative background. I have had supervisory background and when I consulted with Mr. Carlisle in coming to Kauai, he was very sad to lose me. And he wanted to do whatever he could to keep me. But I said, Peter, it's time to share the mana`o and the aloha that you have fostered on Oahu with Kauai and start the seeds from Honolulu here so that the people of Kauai could be and feel safe with trust, not only in KPD but with the prosecutor's office that work jointly together. I'm also familiar with Chief Darryl Perry and he as well was one of the reasons that I decided to come because we do work well together. And I can tell you, I've worked harder in the last four months than I've worked in 18 years under Peter Carlisle and I'm loving every minute. I haven't denied or I haven't regretted it and I think if you have a positive attitude with the outlook, it becomes infectious and it goes towards our attorneys working hard, our staff. I mean, you know no offense to the staff, but when do you have civil service government employees working overtime on Saturdays without requesting CT or OT? It's because they're excited with the change, they want to be part of the move, and I think that, to answer your question, is why people took not only the pay cut but we don't have a morale problem. And I think a lot of it has to do with Shaylene. Ms. Kawahara: But I can see that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you, thank you for that summary. It's almost the same reason why we take this council position. No, but I think you know at times we're (inaudible). I think about things like that, but Mr. Furfaro, your last comment. (Inaudible.) Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, I just want to say that...to the first deputy, we're very...very happy you're here. I have family members that have worked with you at the prosecutor's office, but I do want to make a very clear business statement here. We need to make sure that we are recognizing our obligation to those employees that are non-exempt and those that are exempt when it comes to compensation for time...time earned. And it certainly sounds like, to me, that you have done that, but we all need to know that the compassion that comes with doing a good job in the very beginning also needs to be perpetuated for the future and we're very glad to have you on-board. Ms. Wada: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Mr. Dickie Chang. Mr. Chang: Yeah, I...I'd just like to echo Councilmember Furfaro to all of you in the...I know it's a difficult, difficult job, sometimes maybe thankless, sometimes behind the scenes, but I had an opportunity to chat with Shaylene at NACo and she shared, you know, a lot of her challenges and it's tough because, you know, her previous life here as a councilmember, for the most part everything was good and fun and peachy. But, you know, she shared that, you know, when she's now in the court system, it's very difficult to see childhood friends or buddies or family members when you see on the other side in court and it's like, wow, this person changed or I didn't realize this person had this problem or that problem and...and I can just imagine the tough work that you guys went through this past couple of months under this new administration, under your watch, Shay, so sincerely, you know, congratulations to all of folks and Lori, welcome to Kauai, and thank you very much because it was very enlightening to see this, but we all know that with the recession and the tough times, you know, crime obviously is going up and we got a big concern in our community. So, I just hope we can be as supportive as we can because your department is one of the most important on our island of Kauai. So best wishes and success and keep up that morale and keep up the pace because you know I'm sure that...I hope you know that we got your back also. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. 90 ~ ~ APRIL 6, 2009 PROSECUTING ATTORNEY (4) Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Thank you, Councilmember Chang. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you again. Shay, nice to see you on that side. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Thank you, on this side? It seems so funny seeing Dickie over there. Mr. Kaneshiro: So and thanks for all the hard work too. Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Thank you, thanks. Mr. Kaneshiro: With that we will recess. We have anyone here that wanted to give public testimony...for this office? No? Okay. With that we're going to recess till 9 o'clock tomorrow morning and we'll start with the Fire Department tomorrow morning. Okay? This budget review session is now in recess. There being no objections, the budget reviews recessed at 4:01 p.m. 91 • • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT The departmental budget review reconvened on April 7, 2009 at 9:06 a.m., and proceeded as follows: FIRE DEPARTMENT Mr. Kaneshiro: Good morning. By coincidence, we have the Fire Chief here today. Must be after you have seen the Garden Island, where it says, sparks fly. ROBERT WESTERMAN, FIRE CHIEF: Yea, we brought some additional support with us this morning. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, I haven't seen it yet, but I just heard about it, so I said, wow, at least we have the Chief here today, maybe we are ready to put out some fire if anything goes further than the sparks. How are you doing Chief? Give us a brief overview and some highlights of your budget. We have a couple of hours to go over the budget. We will start off with you to give us the highlights. Chief Westerman: Thank you Chair. First, I apologize for getting this to you late this morning. What you have in front of you is the report that I have assembled. It is kind of brief and then, in detail, discussion can follow up. I won't read it in its entirety, but I do want to read some items. You know, decreases in revenues and resulting... reduced budgets combined with already lagging infrastructure has widened the gap and the ability to provide adequate services and our continued preparation for the future. The eventual return of large scale building and large tourism numbers will have its effect as we move forward looking optimistically into the future. We continue to work and adjust our long range strategic plan and our short term goals and objectives to adapt to the dramatic swing in the economy. Our plan is work smartly as possible within the budget and the line items and transfer between funds only as necessary as we move through the budget year. Our entire budget this year is an absolute minimum and all areas of the budget have been reduced and in some cases, eliminated. Even after adding the 15 SAFER (Staffing for Adequate Emergency and Fire Response) firefighters and that is the staffing for adequate emergency and fire response grant. The burden of 7% pay increase and the addition of the OPED (Other Post Employee Benefit) , we have reduced our budget to 1% less than the previous years if you discount the OPED. We have no large scale equipment items in our budget and we have $1 funded w firefighters and 1 senior clerk position... these will have little affects on overtime. We have worked diligently to improve and maintain our ISO rating and will work as smartly as we can to maintain staffing minimums, so as not to hinder those ratings. We have tasked all Bureaus to reduce all consumables without effecting public safety and asked all employees to save, reduce, and reuse where it does not create a public health issue. Anew energy conservation policy has been issued and as you look in the graph there as I go through this, it has already had its effect. We had a slowdown in kilowatt hour use and that is what this chart reflects in actuality. If you look at the cost chart that runs along with this, you would see both the cost and the energy adjustments pretty much go up and down, and slide along with the kilowatt hour usage, really, the comparison to those is really not sensible. What so I did was, I just pulled out the kilowatt hour usage. The reason for that is, after we started our campaign and if you look at this particular graph, you will notice that in January of this year, we had less kilowatt hours use for that month, than we've had since January of 2006 and a very significant reduction. That combined with the decrease in the adjusted energy cost has had a tremendous effect to the tune of almost $6,000 a month for the last 2 months in savings to our budget. Also, we are working to help lower our electric cost by... we are going to replace 4 more refrigerators and freezers this year with new energy efficient items. We have been working on that project for the last couple of years... a couple each year and we know the effects that that has... a couple of them in particular, over 10 or 15 years old, 92 • • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT so they know that just replacing the refrigerator alone is going to create some energy savings, so we have 4 scheduled to that and those items are in the budget. In the coming year, we plan on working with KIUC in hopes that there might be some rebates for this equipment purchases and also for some air conditioning units. Again, our most significant impact for us is the aging of America and the call load increase due to our in-home care where we respond more routinely to in-home calls that will be handled by nurser's staff versus 911. And that gets us into our call responses. As you know, that year-to-date in March 2009, the Fire Department has responded to 3,099 calls for assistance. That call load is 4331ess than the same time the previous year. As you see, we were on a steady climb up until last year. A couple of things happened. One of the things we did in early last year around budget time was we took a look at all the calls that we were responding down to the cruise ships... if you remember, the cruise ships were coming pretty routinely (3 a week) and that created a significant call increase in our responding an engine down to the harbors. In reality, those are just a transfer of care from a doctor aboard ship to the doctor in the hospitals. So we work with dispatchers and AMR to insure that is what the call was and then they no longer dispatch us on those calls that (inaudible). If they did have a need in the call like a particularly heavy person or they needed firefighters to help them move somebody out of the ship and into the ambulance, then we would go down there, so that significantly reduced our calls. Of course, now, the quantity of ships coming in has reduced and the call loads continue to reduce for the response to the ships. We also are working with our dispatchers and we have some new dispatchers to ensure that we get the cards cut right and that the counts are correct. In some cases, they might not cut a card for fire, but they will cut it for police, therefore, our call load goes down, and we are working with them to ensure that those are counted because they are critical that we count them, and it would be part of our self assessment accreditation insuring that we do account for all the calls that we responded to. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, can I ask the Chief a broader question regarding to self assessment? Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: Chief, can you expand on that self assessment program? Chief Westerman: Yes Sir. What the self assessment does really is kind of like it says. It is an evaluation of our services. It is an in depth look at what we do and how we do it. Apparently, we have an executive committee doing the self assessment, and in this last year, we also sent Battalion Chief Russell Yee to be our accreditation manager training. One of the most, I guess... I don't know if you want to call it the best or the most critical things that come out of that process is the real in depth look of how we are doing business and making sure that we are providing the service that the community expects... providing it at a level that they expect and that we are doing this based on some national standards, and not just something that we kind of pull out of the sky, and said that we should be doing it. Some of the things that I discuss later on will talk to that. Mr. Furfaro: But does this self assessment program that you document that routine standards are being checked on and so forth. Does that basically help, for example, when they make assessments about home insurance for homeowners? Chief Westerman: Yes Sir. Mr. Furfaro: It will. 93 • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT Chief Westerman: Mr. Furfaro: now. Chief Westerman: Thank you. It will. Thank you Mr. Chair. I have no more questions on that right And please feel free at anytime if you have any questions. Mr. Furfaro: I have no shame and I know you can handle the heat and have the appropriate extinguishers available. Chief Westerman: We don't want sparks to fly today. Of course, you know, with the associated call increase, there is the associating increased cost of gasoline, diesel, and medical supply from equipment, overtime (inaudible)... and we try to hold those to a minimum as best as we can. Again, part of our reuse campaign. And our overtime monitoring, we had discussed last year and what we have done this year is... using the project code system in our AS400, we have actually got the staff acclimated to routinely asking for what they think might be charges that could be recovered from some other... when we do special projects or certain types of overtime, so they generate a project code and as long as they put it in routinely, they have gotten used to putting it in routinely, yet, it is very small increments of time and don't really add to the time. But when it comes time for us to assembling all of that data and to send a request for somebody to pay us with that overtime... an example of that might be the U.S. Fish & Wildlife because we have an MOA with them to fight fires on their reserves. By having those project codes already and already tracking those costs, when it comes time to sending them a bill, they are going to say, well, show us all of these, we can pull that project, go out and find the documentation real quick versus going back, checking log books, making sure that the firefighter did or didn't go. We have already gotten a little... kind of like a little place holder to indicate that that is something that we might be able to recover some moneys on. We don't generate revenues, but when we spend overtime working for somebody else, we want to try and recover it if we can. So in the aggregate in 2008, we responded 51% of the time in less than 5 minutes to all fire calls. That is kind of what this picture shows and it goes to what Vice-Chair Furfaro had eluded to earlier measuring what it is that we do. Our response calls for medical, as you can see, where 94% of the time in less than 10 minutes and our response criteria to fire calls is less time than our response calls to medics. And then our rescue calls, we responded 65% of the time or less in 15 minutes. We do have some significant back to back and out of district calls right now in Hanalei District. This puts firefighters and some of the community iri danger by responding with only partial crews to a call or waiting for an out of district engine. In this case, the out of district engine is Kapa`a which is quite a distance from Hanalei. So what we have instituted in that district is a minimum staffing to 5 firefighters in Hanalei... whenever possible to help reduce this risk and liability. We have accomplished this by adjusting our staffing islandwide, so if we have the extra firefighter in Kapa`a, for example, we would ship the firefighter from Kapa`a down to Hanalei to increase that staffing for the day. Mr. Furfaro: Chief, I am going to ask a question on that. For the benefit of my colleagues at the table that are not used to your staffing guides... typically for the insurance... appropriate insurance coverage, we typically have 2 firefighters, 1 driver, and 1 fire captain is a typical crew for an engine? Chief Westerman: Yes Sir. Mr. Furfaro: That is correct right? Chief Westerman: Yes. 94 APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT Mr. Furfaro: So what you are sharing with us now, you have the redundant truck in Kapa`a and you have 1 additional man at times in Kapa`a? Is that what you are saying? Chief Westerman: Well, pretty much any station we could additional person for the day. Mr. Furfaro: A fifth person. Chief Westerman: Right. Every station is staffed with 5 and that allows us to have somebody off sick laying lazy for the day. When they are not, that extra staffing person can me moved to adjust the station that might have 2 firefighters sick for the day. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Chief Westerman: And then when we have the additional firefighter on because we have 2 or 3 stations that are all fully staffed and I have to admit that, you know, the morale is just great right now. The firefighters come to work'routinely, nobody is abusing sYck'leave; nobody'is ~'-° abusing their vacation time, so we actually are doing very good in our staffing notes. The main thing that 4 per station, per day, our minimum staffing. Mr. Furfaro: Well, it was important for me to revisit that because it has been some that we have been doing for the last 3 years in your staffing and it really has helped with leveling out insurance premiums for fire based on the fact the stations are now appropriately staffed. The key, I think, was your goal to get more than one station with a fifth or shall I say a floating guy. Chief Westerman: Mr. Furfaro: Chief Westerman: Mr. Furfaro: Right. That is still your goal? Yes. Thank you: Thank you Mr. Chair. Chief Westerman: Thank you for bringing that up. As you can see, the standard is 80% and we are trying to achieve that standard, but that comes in different forms and as you will see, we will talk about how we are measuring that... that, then again, part of the evaluation program, that self assessment and accreditation how we measure everything that we do, so we can put a standard, and kind of find the pukas, so we can balance this out. Mr. Bynum: So what you are trying to do is always have 5 in Hanalei because of the challenge? Chief Westerman: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you. Chief Westerman: So right now, you were still averaging about 65% of our call load to EMS calls and a comparison to the last 2 years are (inaudible)... it seems to be tracking about the same. Our average response time is slightly highly this year for medical calls. And it is only until we get Kealia built in staff and Kapa`a station relocated will remain about the same especially in the Kapa`a District... we continue to lose ground with the large increase in call load as population spreads. We continue to monitor and inspect the dams and reservoirs. If you remember me talking about this several times last year... due to their critical support for our firefighting operations and 95 r~ U ~~ APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT the corresponding dangers to our community. All of the updates to the GIS for our response and dams are being performed by our firefighters. They have taken on the task to speed up the process and put a firefighter spin on our (inaudible). We have worked diligently with the State to identify all the previously unidentified dams and reservoirs which, by the way is up to 102. It is no longer 52. We have started to actually receive some of the dams and safety guides that is required by the private landowners... after Ka Loko, you remember that they had the dam safety legislation and part of that was that the dam owners were responsible for insuring the safety of their dams. So the State went out and inspected all of the dams and reservoirs that they could find. They had identified all the owners and now the owners are responsible for creating an inspection guide for their dams and reservoirs in creating an emergency response guide for their dams and reservoirs. One of the first ones to turn that in, of course, was the Kauai coffee group, A&B...theirs was 2, 3 inch binders and they have 16 dams and reservoirs on their property. They are doing a very good job of identifying every one of them, identifying the critical failure points in their dams, and identifying who their emergency points of contact are... identifying where all their emergency resources are located should they have a problem with one, identifying how they empty them all out. You know, that is pretty easy when. that is part of your visits. You need to maintain that and that becomes part of your business. What is becoming critical is private landowners who happen to buy a piece of property and now have a dam reservoir on their property and they really have no need for it. It has served its purpose in its day, so that is becoming an issue and that is why a lot of our dams and reservoirs are going dry. I just had a comment the other day about... remember Jurassic Park and the picture where all of the dinosaurs were all drinking all through that? Well, that reservoir is no longer for water, so for agriculture, it is significant that we are not preserving this water and for firefighting purposes. Mr. Furfaro: Chief, just for your information, this is a point that I have been trying to drive to the Planning Department. I will say it again to you as well as to the Administration that is present. The reality in our important ag land study, we have to identify water source. No water, no agriculture. Also, no water, no firefighting resources to refill your tankers and so forth. So as we move forward, I want you to know that the focus in Planning is going to be an identifying water sources for agriculture and for firefighting. Thank you. Chief Westerman: Last year, through the hard work, the tremendous (inaudible) and steadfast determination of our firefighters, we wrote and we were awarded over $2.5 million in various grants that supported the Department directly in assisting things like vehicle and equipment replacement. You are very aware that we received the SAFER grant worth $1.6 million and over the 4 years, it adds 15 firefighters to our Department. The Driver Simulator was awarded through the AFG grant which will be a collaborative effort using the AFG moneys to also provide a benefit to the bus, to Public Works, and Kauai Police... even though it is a fire grant, that particular piece of equipment that we are buying to help train our firefighters in emergency vehicle operations can be... consoles can be put in and software can be put in, so bus drivers can use it for the bus, training for them, gets them off the road, and into a more secluded training environment. That is the same thing for firefighters. We can make them react to dogs jumping out in front of us and cars stopping fast in front of us. The same thing with Public Works for their semi-drivers and PD for their Police Officers, so that is a very good collaborative effort that we are able to put together with them. The last years burn trailer has finally arrived and is now operational with the 20th recruit class. This class will be the first to receive the benefits of this trail. It provides us with tremendous training opportunity, unprecedented in the history of the Kauai Fire Department. These young firefighters will be able to run through fire training scenarios over and over and over and over again, an opportunity that they never had as a recruit firefighter in this Fire Department before. What is critical about that is that because our fire call load is not 20-30 a day, it is 1 or 2 a month. It is critical that we prepare them for that occasion worst case for them which is the number 1 reason we have our firefighters (inaudible). So by having this control burning environment, we can put them deep into the hazard and if anything goes wrong, immediately push a button, everything stops, it is 96 • • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT propane, everything comes to a stop, all the smoke evacuates, the doors open, and then we can say, okay, here is what happened. Here is why the room flashed over on me which is the number 1 killer of firefighters today. Again, trying to get there and make the standard and get to a firefighter... get to a fire within 5 or 6 minutes, we have actually put ourselves in a little more dangerous environment trying to save that house because we now get into a flash over scenario where in about 9 or 10 minutes of a fire burning, that is when room flashes over. What that means is that as a room catches on fire and all the super heated gases build up into a room to a little over 2,500 degrees which will melt cooper, by the way, and you put the firefighter in there, and they pop the door open as they go into that burning room and add all of that oxygen and the whole room flashes over. It brings that 2,500 degrees down from the ceiling right down onto their knees. So by putting them in this training environment, we are able to show them what is going to happen if they make the mistake and allow them to make the mistake because we can't get our burn train (inaudible)... it actually got sensors in it that will actually pop the doors open and turn the fuel off, and all those kinds of things, so we can get it pretty close. And we are going to provide everybody on the Council an opportunity when we do the burn trailer to actually come and experience that. We will put you in a set of turnouts, we will put an SCBA on your back if that is what you choose, and we will put you in there with a hose with a firefighting crew, and let you-see what a:.: (inaudible).:. if you choose not to, you can stand back and the (inaudible) you can watch from a distance, but you could still see what is like in a smoke filled room what the dangers are for firefighters as they go through during the job on a routine basis. Next, we talk about our SCBA's which we have just awarded the contract of over $275,000. This also comes from the State Home Land Security Grant. The opportunity that we have in the State Home Land Security Grant from the Federal government is, it was the terrorism grant, but they realize that if we just continue to buy stuff for terrorism, we just have a room full of stuff that we will probably never use. Most of the stuff that we buy for terrorism actually has multiple purposes. It is an all hazards approach which is what they are saying. So, you know, if they let off sting bomb in Kapa`a School, we can probably lend you the mask, but if they let off a muster gas from the airport, we are going to need (inaudible)... along with our firefighting gear. But it just so happens that we need the same onsombo when we go fight a fire. So we uses the all hazard approach in this grant to purchase things that provides service to the Department as a whole and, yet, still provide service should we have a terrorist incident on Kauai. The self contained breathing apparatus is the latest addition in the last 4 years of using that grant to put our firefighters in the latest and greatest most up to date NFPA compliant firefighting onsombo. That includes their boots, their turn out pants, their helmet, their gloves, the communication system, the SCBA's for fighting a fire. Also, in the next 30 to 40 days, we will probably complete our mobile data terminal purchase. Those are the MDT's that will be in the fire engines. Those will go a long way to help us with our accreditation because it will help us more realistically monitor exactly what we are doing... the time we leave the station, the time we get on scene, to the time we clear, come back home, and punch a button on the computer in the fire truck... along with the CADS system, once PD updates the CADS, it will be very easy for the firefighters to basically punch a button, and record all of those times. It also improves the safety for the firefighters responding and our Police Officers. As you know, we share the dispatch site. So the less communicating that a single dispatcher has to do on the radio, the more that could be done electronically. That allows the dispatcher more time to concentrate on other things. If they have. to concentrate talking to the fire crew responding to a fire call and Police Officers responding to the fire call, and the medics responding to a fire call, and answering 8, 9, 10, 15 times the same thing over and over and over, that presents a lot of work on the dispatcher. At the same time, there are 4, 5 other police calls going on and a couple other medicals going on around the island. So by doing this electronically, i.e., the firefighter gets in his engine, on his computer screen, there is a call and, again, the dispatcher doesn't have to repeat it. They will look right on the screen and it gets them the address and the call (inaudible)... that we are leaving the station (inaudible)... 97 • • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT doesn't even have to call the dispatcher. It pops up on the screen and that engine is responding. The dispatcher is at the call back or are you responding or did you respond yet, so it will have some significant impact on providing extra time for the dispatchers and safety for our firefighters. And that kind of led into the self assessment accreditation program is continuing to work with 2 teams. Actually, the second team will be the operations team. There will be a fire captain and 2 firefighter three's... they will be tasked with just what you had discussed earlier with me Councilmember Furfaro where they actually get into the weeds, into the details of everything that we are doing, evaluating what we are doing, how we are doing it, and find the puka, so that we can have some (inaudible). We have held back staffing request realizing that the shortfalls in the County budget, the current state of the State and the state of the Nation. While we are not asking for additional staffing at this time, we need to ensure that we continue to identify needs for future budgets. We still have a need for an additional fire mechanic as we stretch our minimum time between oil and filter changes to the maximum on all 26 pieces of fire rescue apparatus. As identified in our strategic plan and to fully comply with NFPA 1710, we are still short 3 Operational Battalion Chiefs, Drivers Aids, 1 Special Operations Battalion Chief, and a Public Information/Education Captain. To improve the level of safety for our Water Safety Officers operating the jet skis, we require additional WSO's in each of the 3 jet ski towers to ensure minimum daily staffing of 3 WSOs. The conditions of facilities worsen and relocation of the Kapa`a Station is upon us as we start construction of the District 2 Kealia station. The training center is needed to provide adequate space for classroom for recruits and season firefighters, and provide acreage to collocate the fire burn trailer, the driver simulator that we talked about, and the emergency vehicle operations course. The headquarters space is inadequate for the staff to operate together at full efficiency. That is an overview of the year and I will now just get right in to the direct budget discussion... kind of give you what the numbers says, and then I think we will be ready for any questions that you might have. Mr. Kaneshiro: Before we do that, some of my members have some questions, so let's go ahead and get those questions out. Mr. Bynum: Regarding the driver simulator, are the other departments moving forward with their availability to use this equipment and do you know if they have an intent to use it in their training? Chief Westerman: Yes, absolutely. Transportation, Public Works, and the Fire Department and the Police Department have been working closely on the grant even before we applied for the grant. They are actually going to be helping us as far as the matching and the software as we do the purchases because it is different software. The software required for the fire engine, the software for the buses, and the software for the tractor trailer trucks are different, and, yes, they are on board (inaudible). Mr. Bynum: So Public Works and Transportation. Chief Westerman: Yes. Mr. Bynum: And tell me what CADS is? Chief Westerman: Computer Aided Dispatch System. I am sorry about that. Mr. Bynum: I thought, but I didn't know the exact words. So just a general question (inaudible)... right now, the Fire Department has the appropriate (inaudible) to do their job appropriately and (inaudible)... that is not an issue right now? 98 • • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT Mr. Furfaro: If I could add to... you know, we have over the last few years been pretty aggressive about equipment. One of the accomplishments Ican say, you know, for your information, we do have a second engine at Kapa`a now and part of that is based on the plan that the Chief is trying to have with some redundancy. If there is any short equipment, I do believe I will query a little later about our efforts to acquire the Hanalei Courthouse for both public safety for Police and Fire when we are in a situation that the bridge is closed, residents have needs on the other side, but we have been and I have asked the ladies to reconcile the equipment purchases over the last 3 years. But on the flip side, I was concerned with your comment and your narrative where oil changes are going to the maximum, and when we get to your budget item, I feel that there is not enough repair and maintenance money in your budget, Chief, for equipment, so maybe we will get to that later. But we have been pretty aggressive Mr. Bynum in getting him up to par with equipment and I think we will have a number to share with you shortly. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any other questions for the Chief? Chair Asing: Yes, I have. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Asing, go ahead. Chair Asing: Chief, on the second page of your mission statement, the bottom of the page the third paragraph up. Our entire budget this year is an absolute minimum and in all areas of the budget have been reduced and this is the one question that I wanted to ask. In some cases, eliminate it. What are you making reference to that was eliminated? Chief Westerman: A couple of different things have been eliminated in the sense that they weren't added and that is equipment is one major capital equipment purchases. There is no major capital equipment purchases. We have one position that we are going to removed from the budget and I will get to that in the personnel section and those cases, everything else has been reduced... reduce the travel cost, reduce equipment cost... Chair Asing: Is going to be one person that is going to be eliminated? Chief Westerman: 3 positions are going to be dollar funded and 1 position is going to be removed. Chair Asing: Okay, and you will cover that at a later point? Chief Westerman: Yes. Chair Asing: Okay, and also your statement about the old refrigerators, do you still have some old refrigerators that are 15 years old? How many of those do you have? Chief Westerman: 4 stations. Chair Asing: So you have 4 more? Did you try to find some... get some reasoning on why you would not want to change that out also? Chief Westerman: Oh, this 4 will change up all of the stations. I am sorry, the 4 that is in the budget this year will be the last 4, yes. Chair Asing: That is it yet. I thought you still had more. I will hold the question until we get further. Thank you. 99 • . APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT Ms. Kawahara: Can I ask a question on this one? Mr. Kaneshiro: On just the previous... up to what he discussed so far and then we are going to get into the budget discussion next. Ms. Kawahara: I wanted to say that I was very pleased to see... so far, you are the only department to actually think of cost savings in an energy efficient way and (inaudible) from the departments saying how they feel how important it is to save money by reducing their use on energy here. With your kilowatt hour per hour graph, I was just curious about the April to October jumps each year. Chief Westerman: Summer time. I wish I had a better explanation, but it is simply just Summer time. You know, and we have worked... I have had several discussions with the Administration and we are trying to find even more ways to try and reduce that Summer time cost. You know, our facilities sometimes are not really the best for air conditioning, and yet, these are homes that firefighters live in for a whole 24-hour period and we try to acclimate as best as we can for them and that does cost us a little bit extra sometimes on energy. So we have been trying to find maybe facilities where we could change the windows to a different type of window, so we lose less of the cooling. We have air conditioners in to replace air conditioners... again, same time as the refrigerators. We have several air conditioning units that we are going to replace to newer units to help reduce the cost of the air conditioning cost. Ms. Kawahara: And is it $6,000 a month for a monthly savings you said? Chief Westerman: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Yea. Chief Westerman: My electric bill for the whole year is about... running right now at about $145,000 a year, so we are trying drastically to reduce and I have only budgeted $112,000, so we are trying to... Ms. Kawahara: That is what I like to hear is that they are looking at every aspect of your spending and I do want to say that I am really pleased with that. Thank you. Chief Westerman: And it (inaudible)... like I said, the only thing we can do is try and make it a little more energy efficient in those (inaudible). Ms. Kawahara: When you get the 4 refrigerators and you were going to ask for a rebate for or work out something, is that something the County can help with? Chief Westerman: Oh yes. We have person on staff that... Mr. Furfaro: Our Procurement Officer would... Chief Westerman: The energy efficiency guy because he has done survey on the buildings. Mr. Furfaro: Just for all intentions purposes, I asked them to have Glenn to continue to reconcile all utility bills by departments, so we can have some measurement. Ms. Kawahara: (Inaudible). 100 • • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT Chief Westerman: And they have come out and they have done an evaluation of every one of our stations and have made recommendations, so as we can, we are trying to make those changes. Ms. Kawahara: How (inaudible). Chief Westerman; (Inaudible) campaign this year (inaudible)... if we don't need them, turn it out... you would be surprised how much you can save by just turning lights off. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Chief Westerman: As we move forward and as stated earlier, many of our budget decisions were based on our strategic plan and past efforts like our vehicle replacement schedule, like Councilmember Furfaro had alluded to, I am proud to say that we have no major pieces of apparatus or light vehicles included in this budget... an indication that our apparatus replacement plan is working. Getting back to that about:.. the meantime between failure for 'our oil' changes that Councilmember Furfaro is... with our newer pieces of equipment too, one of the things that happens actually with new technologies and new vehicles is... you know, it used to be, you change your oil every 3,000 miles and now with new oils, new synthetics, new engines, some of them are routinely up to 10,000 miles, so that has actually helped us. Of course, as we spread that maximum, we still monitor it and try to get done everything that we can in that. Mr. Furfaro: Chief, I am very confident that the technology and the type of equipment that we have gotten will red flag when we need to do oil changes and so forth. Chief Westerman: Right. Mr. Furfaro: I am going to be very direct now. Your budget has zero in it. Somewhere you are going to change oil... try and look under vehicle maintenance when you get a chance. Chief Westerman: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: You must have missed something... Chief Westerman: Misidentified... as you can see in our budget request for this year is $18.985 million. This includes the increase in negotiated wage and the associated items, plus the OPEB funding being transferred to departments to better line cost by cost centers. Remember we have been doing this over the last 2 or 3 years to move all of those additional cost into each department, so that we have a true cost on the cost centers. But if you take out of OPEB increase in our budget. Our budget is $16,758,000 or a 1% decrease over the previous year. This means that we absorb the increase by reducing cost in other areas. Decreases in the Operating Budget include a $10,000 decrease in overtime, $20,000 decrease in travel, and a $38,000 increase... decrease in equipment purchases. The budget distribution shows a significant downward swing in operations from the 2009 intent. A reduction of 3.3 might not seem a lot, but it has its effects and our ability to perform daily operations... significantly, there is a loss of $356,000 in operating cost and, again, Chair Awing, that is kind of what we were talking about. Part of that $365,000 is, though, items that we are not purchasing this year... capital items, i.e., fire engines and fire rescue trucks, and the individual trucks for the year. Luckily, all those purchases are caught up. The loss of the $356,000 is a 16% reduction in operations over 2009. Again, a good significant portion of that is not purchasing heavy equipment (big equipment). As we continue to try and save, the impacts on services will become more and more critical as we have less funds to think for things like bandages, gasoline, and 101 • • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT toilet paper. Even with dollar funding positions, any next steps towards further reductions could have a significant impact on services. Therefore, going back to my earlier statements on what we are going to try and do to overcome this is: 1) energy savings, 2) make sure that we monitor all of our usage of things like Band-Aids and toilet paper and we are effectively using it as long as don't hinder public safety. The department equipment request include some areas identified in the strategic plan. Again, the condition of the existing fire station refi-igerators, our replacement will also aide in our power consumption. The Department has also worked hard to augment budgets where possible without supplanting budgets. An example is the VA, voluntary assistance grant provided as (inaudible) from the State to assist in wildfire protection. This year $50,000 will be used to replace wild land firefighting booths for our firefighters and other fire line equipment. Next year, we will also use it to provide personal protective equipment. We will continue the WAVE program, the KauaiExplore.com program, the Junior Lifeguard program; and the CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) program this year. Funding for these programs is critical to providing our citizenry the opportunity to work together with the department in support life saving and educational and disaster preparedness programs. Again, our apparatus committee continues to work off our replacement schedule to provide a constant in the budget process and avoid large last minute request of future year multi-million dollar additions. This year, we are not budgeting for any major apparatus. Actually, we are not budgeting for any moving apparatus at all, no trucks. Mr. Furfaro: Just for clarification now, you have a grant writer that you share with the Police Department and with Civil Defense, am I correct? Chief Westerman: You are talking about Elton? Mr. Furfaro: Yes, you do share... Chief Westerman: The State Home Land Security. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, so we have been successful in the past when money has become available to pursue through grants certain equipment purchases. Chief Westerman: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: And I would assume that Elton is... you know, every morning when he has his first cup of coffee, he is looking at the Federal grant moneys available to see if there is anything that we might be able to piggyback on through spending by the Federal government. Chief Westerman: Elton does the State Home Land Security grant. All the other grants that I have which is about 6, are done by firefighters in the Department. Mr. Furfaro: By your own department. Chief Westerman: Captain Netivier works with Elton on the State Home Land Security Grants which is significant. It is about a million to a million and a half a year for Fire. It is the volunteer assistance grant is done by a firefighter within the Department and we kind of move that from person to person to give them the experience because they know it is coming. They just have to work on writing the grant and making sure the right material is,coming. 102 APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT Mr. Furfaro: If I send over a question Chief that ask for the 6 names of those firefighters that are capable, qualified, and willing with their skills to apply and do grant writing, would you be able to comply to give me those names? Chief Westerman: I can give you the last ones that did the last grants. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, I will send that over. We would like to know those individuals. Chief Westerman: And CDBG... we apply for CDBG every year. We have... Mr. Furfaro: I don't need the names verbally now. I will send it over in written format. Thank you. Chair Asing: Let me ask a follow up to that. You have more than one person looking into grants? Chief Westerman: Do we have more than orie person'1'ooking into grants?'`""' Chair Asing: Yes. Chief Westerman: Yes, we do. Chair Asing: And how many are we talking about? Chief Westerman: Well, all of the firefighters that are working in their programs continue to work. Kalapaki I(??) does the assistance to the firefighters grant along with Captain Dean Lake, so they constantly look at those grants. Part of that is... another part of that grant is the SAFER grant. Another part of that is the one for fire prevention and Captain Bukoski in his group constantly look at where that grant is, when can we apply the next time for those grants. We also have one for the State DOT and Captain Yamada is responsible for that grant and he constantly looks at... and that grant, every year, when it comes up, we are actually going to apply for Kealia equipment, but we are going to wait a year and buy stuff for the new recruits out of that grant. So we are constantly looking at every grant that we possibly can, plus we get assistance from the County Grant Manager and it also happens to be my wife keeps me very well informed of grants that are coming around. So if we have the ability to apply for them, we do through the Administration. They tell us that grants are available and we want you to apply for them and we just find a Fire Captain, and say, here it is, 3 bags full, read the documents, and let's get going. So I don't have anybody, you know, that is not their job. It is all part-time work, you know, and CDBG is an example. Every year, I grab a different station and a different Captain and I say, here is CDBG, figure out. They go to the Captains that did it the year before, get some of the basic help and information, and then they go on and get the grant. Captain Jimenez just got a CDBG truck for his station, station 6. The year before that was Kapa`a and the year before that was Hanalei. Chair Asing: Yea, so you don't have a specific individual. The grants that you are making reference to are grants that is being followed through by these individuals, am I correct? Chief Westerman: Yes. grants. Chair Asing: Okay, so what I was making reference to was looking for new 103 APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT don't. asked. Chief Westerman: I don't have anybody on staff just dedicated to do that. No I Chair Asing: And that was a question, I believe, Councilmember Furfaro Mr. Furfaro: I think, Chief, you need to recall that in previous budgets, we had hired some grant writers, and I thought certain grant writers fell under an umbrella... whether it is individual firefighters that are helping to apply or getting the technical skills, I was of the impression that we had, per say, a grant writer for Transportation and Housing, a grant writer for Civil Defense, Police, and Fire, you know, because those are public safety issues. I did not realize that the grant writer in Civil Defense is only working on Home Land Security. I thought he was working on... Chief Westerman: Well, Elton does help us with some of the other grants that they get stuck because of his expertise. I will admit that. There are plenty of times when the documents might go from the Captain to Elton to review for technicalities because he really understands the intricacies of different grants, and then comes back to my office, so he does assist us greatly. Mr. Furfaro: But you also answered a question I was going to ask later. Your intent is for the new Kealia Station, your intent is to really start submitting grant request and so forth next year that would apply to the new station at Kealia. Chief Westerman: Right. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: The other point that I wanted to make is that we will be having Civil Defense up here later this afternoon and Elton is part of the Civil Defense side. Mr. Furfaro: I know everybody realizes where I am going with that because everyday, Federal money seems to be available. It is almost like everybody who is a grant writer in the County, their first cup of coffee should be looking at the screen man. What is available today? Let's go shopping, you know. Chief Westerman: The Administration, in particular for me, has kept us very well informed of everything that has happened with the stimulus package. I have read every piece of legislation that has come through that I could and see whether or not we are eligible. There is not too much for Fire that is new eligible in any of the stimulus fund. There is one now, part of SAFER is available and it will allow us to hire more firefighters without the matching. There is one for facilities that is a possibility with the caveat that you don't have to worry about supplanting budgets which is significant now in some of the grant applications is whether or not you are supplanting budgets. In some cases, they say you can and in some cases they say that you can't. Mr. Furfaro: But you answered my question when you said, I am reviewing every possible grant that I can. My point is, you can't read them all. I can't read them all. We had everybody reading it to hit some possible funding. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Tim, you had a question? Mr. Bynum: You just said something really critical about some planting and I am really pleased that you have that awareness because as Councilmember Furfaro is saying, we have this extraordinary opportunity and want to make sure that we have (inaudible)... if I 104 • • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT understand you correctly, the Fire Captains writing their own grants is a really... I didn't know that and I think that is interesting because it gives them that kind of expertise and knowledge and awareness... like you said, you pass it around, is that like CDBG... because it is like, okay, this station this year gets to try to get equipment with that or is it for having that expertise or just spreading the workload or what is the rationale behind it? Chief Westerman: All of the above. Absolutely all of the above, yes. In some cases, it might be... CDBG is a good example. If it is going to benefit their station , then I feel that the Captain would put a little bit more effort into it because it is going to be a direct benefit to him and his crew. In some cases, CDBG doesn't apply to every district, but you are right, it then provides the Captains an opportunity to (inaudible) a little bit more than fighting fires, you know. There is a possibility someday that they could be Battalion Chiefs or Deputy Chief or Fire Chief, so it gets them into the weeds of other things that we do at the Department besides running medical calls and fighting fires. So, again, I will talk a little bit about that as we talk about personnel in the next section of what we are trying to do to round out the firefighters so to speak. Mr. Bynum: No, I think that is excellent because they are station Chiefs, so they are in charge of their station, but they are also administrators that are doing other responsibilities, so there is a training element for that kind of like the way the Police rotate assignments, so that is cool stuff Chief. Mr. Kaneshiro: Derek, go ahead. Mr. Kawakami: Chief, have you concluded your presentation or... Chief Westerman: No, I just have the staffing. Mr. Kawakami: I will save my questions until... Mr. Kaneshiro: He is going over some personnel side right now. Do you have a question before we get into that? Go ahead Dickie? Mr. Chang: Chief, did you see that your electric bill last year was $128,600 and you are cutting it down... you want to cut it down to $112,000? Chief Westerman: Well, that is what we are budgeting. Mr. Chang: In your budget, I noticed that the electric bill says, excluding Hanalei (electricity and water). Chief Westerman: Yes. Police pay for Hanalei and we pay for Waimea. We have Fire and Police in both buildings, so Police pay for Hanalei and we pay for Waimea. Mr. Chang: Thank you. Chief Westerman: Let me go with submittal (inaudible)... questions. As you can see, we've had some changes in our positions that is page 9 of 10. I will start from the bottom up and the bottom 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, it looks like there might be significant changes here. But what we have done is, we reclassified our firefighters from Fire Apparatus Operator down to a Firefighter 1, 2, 3, instead of firefighter... Fire Rescue Specialist and a Fire Apparatus Operator, we call them Firefighter 1, Firefighter 2, Firefighter 3. So even though all of this looks like we might have moved, changed positions, it is actually reclassifying them. We did this for a couple of reasons. One, it is more typical on what is happening in the rest of the (inaudible) in Hawai`i... it is what they do in Honolulu and what they do in Maui. What it also provides for is the opportunity... like Councilmember Bynum 105 • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT had said... to move our firefighters from place to place as a Firefighter 3, so if there is a Fire Apparatus Operator, they are not a fire service trainer in the training bureau or they are not a Firefighter 3 as a Fire Inspector, then we can make them... by making them all Firefighter 3, the same class, we can move them from a Fire Apparatus Operator, bring them into the 40 hour work week, put them in the training bureau, get them some experience as a trainer, upgrade their skills, give them a little more knowledge base, move them over the fire prevention, give them more knowledge and skill base, move them back up the line which gives us a little better qualified Captain in my view because then the have a little bit better view of what has happened. We can do that also in Captain ranks where we can now move Captains... we could move Captains from pretty much anywhere from a line to the Captain that is in charge of the bureau for fire prevention... so it gives them a little more rounded education so to speak, a little more experience other than just putting (inaudible)... that is why this major group is in... nobody is coming, nobody is going, it just changes their classification. The Senior Clerk is going to be dollar funded that is in the Administration bureau and the Deputy... and the Department Public Resource Coordinator is going to be eliminated. That is the one that was doing our CERT program and it is the only program that is being done by that position, so we are going to absorb that in the training bureau... certain programs in the training bureau... it just couldn't justify the salary for just that one piece of operation on this island. Mr. Furfaro: Give me some history on that. Originally, the CERT funding came out of Civil Defense. Chief Westerman: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Has that changed? Chief Westerman: The CERT funding still comes out of State Civil Defense. Mr. Furfaro: So how did the position get into the Fire Department? Chief Westerman: The management of the CERT program... the previous Administration had asked me to take control of the program and improve... it was kind of (inaudible)... They had had a person in Civil Defense that was n~nn;ng the CERT program and that person had left, so there was apart-time person up there that really just managed the budget... bought the equipment and that kind of stuff. So there was nobody really doing the training and managing the program. So the previous Administration asked me if I would take over the program. As part of that, that person that I received to do that was also doing other things for the Administration. So it came to the Fire Department and we have, we have made some significant strides in the program, we've added over 250 people to the CERT training list, we've created a good... I think a routine training event quarter bringing members of the community together in the CERT program up to Lihu`e where we hold training events for them. We continue to train people and we continue to grow the program. The other function that person was doing besides CERT have gone away, so that left me a person that is only doing really quarter work for the salary that was being paid, and there was no other function for that person in my department, so that is why I eliminated that position. But moved CERT into my training bureau which better lines CERT the way that it is managed in Maui and Big Island. In Maui and Big Island, CERT is run by the Fire Department and it is managed out of the training bureau and the training firefighter 3 is the head of the CERT program with Maui and Big Island. It is a lot different in Oahu because it is managed by the State. They have a person paid full-time to manage their program. Mr. Furfaro: And are we... we are not jeopardizing any compliance with the money being channeled through Civil Defense and then onto the Fire Department? 106 • • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT Chief Westerman: Not that I am aware of Sir. Mr. Furfaro: I just want to make sure because I think as we hear on many messages today, the accountability of funds and grants and the documentation seems to be on everybody's radar screen. You feel comfortable, Chief, because I have to tell you, you know, that I have participated in the CERT on the northshore whether it is me acting as the airport manager in an emergency and/or working with the Fire Department to have, you know, have people get to the other side based on, you know, they need kidney dialysis and so forth. I think it has been a very successful program... I want to make certain that we don't hurt it with any funding, so you are confident that this works? Everybody accepts how we are doing this to the Fire Department? Chief Westerman: And so, you know, the Federal funding that we do get doesn't pay salaries, you can't pay salaries. It is really only for equipment and training, so that is why we have the money in my budget to help stimulate the program. Mr. Bynum: I want to stick with this for a couple minutes. I have to ask these questions. Who is in charge of CERT in the Fire Department? Chief Westerman: Shawn Smith. Mr. Bynum: And he is going to be the identified contact point and the coordinator of CERT in the Fire Department? Chief Westerman: I am sorry, what? Mr. Bynum: He will be the identified contact person and the coordinator of CERT in the Fire Department? Chief Westerman: Yes. CERT? Mr. Bynum: And who else in the Fire Department will be involved in the Chief Westerman: Well, right now, we are asking for volunteers out of the stations to be coordinators in their station. I don't want to just assign a firefighter, I wanted a firefighter that lived in that community to be the point of contact in each of the 7 station districts. Mr. Bynum: Is CERT a valuable program for our community? Chief Westerman: I think it is. You know, the very basic concept of CERT is probably one of the most critical aspects of the program and that is being self aware of being able to take care of yourself in a disaster. That is the very basics of the program and when you are taken cared of, then you can look to your neighbor and say, you know, maybe I can help my neighbor, maybe your neighbor (inaudible) brought up into the CERT program. So then you got 2 people in your town and then as you are going through the disaster mode in the first 24 to 48 hours when you are assembling your CERT team in your town and helping out what you can because we all know that in a disaster are emergency response resources... they are going to be overwhelmed and that is the basic concept of CERT is to take care of yourself and be able to take care of your town. And as time goes on when you assemble those folks as you have been through the training, they can then help the person responding. Mr. Bynum: So our CERT team members... in the case of a disaster, are they... will they provide a contribution? How will that operationalize and when firefighters obviously are going to be busy with other things, you know, how will our CERT team members going 107 • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT to be coordinated in the cases of, you know, what is actually a disaster or is it just a self awareness kind o£.. and a way to bring this kind of safety training to a larger... is my question clear? It is like... are we really a team that is going to operationalize during a disaster or is it really just a training and awareness component? Chief Westerman: Well, it is both and the reason I say that is, you know, I would love to have the entire island CERT training, absolutely everybody. Everybody on the Council, everybody in the County, everybody in the State, every resident be CERT trained because the basic concept is being aired for the overwhelming disaster. For us, in this case and in most cases, it (inaudible)... so that you are aware of what you can do to help yourself because that is the number 1 thing that you can do to help emergency responders is truly understand how you can help yourself. Some people, I hate to say, just, you know, whether they don't have the time, their life is too busy, you know, they just haven't thought about the process of being fair. The other side of that is we... by institutionalizing it in the department, I feel we can get to that point. Are we there today? Probably not in the last bunch, but there are a couple of teams out there as Councilmember Furfaro mentioned in on the northshore because they have been at it a long time. You could get that Kilauea CERT together and say, hey, I need you guys to go here and I need you guys to do this. One of the biggest things that we have to understand about CERT is and this just came out of the national meeting when I went last year... a plug for travel... one of the good reasons that we need to travel the right places and attend the right meetings. The standard nationally is 5%, so is we train 300 people, only 5% are going to show up? How many people are actually going to show up? Mr. Bynum: Right. Chief Westerman: In any CERT team, that might mean the CERT team in Kekaha gets one person. How functional can they be as a CERT team to provide service? Well, maybe not much, but they do know that there are certain members in their town and they (inaudible) how to do their town inventory and take account of all the resources and then maybe go down to the fire station in Waimea and say, this is what Kekaha looks like. That is something. That is something that we don't have today. So the other part is, some of the community look at CERT a little differently. We know that we are trying to set the cap and what I mean by a good example is the Hyatt. I am sure that some of the other hotels might have the same philosophy. They wanted CERT, they provided us the place to train, they provided the food and drinks for the people to train the class. Low and behold when it is all said and done, we say, you got your CERT team, you come to certain meetings (inaudible)... Well, they see in the program that if they took their hotel staff and they made them all CERT members, they went home, they did their preparations at home, they prepared their family, so when a disaster comes, guess who can come to work? Their hotel employees and they are CERT members and they took that training from us. But you know what, that is okay with me because all of those people that got that training, their families are prepared, they are prepared, they are able to go to the hotel, and help the visitors that were there stuck in the hotel, and they continue to come to work. So that is kind of... you know what I mean, the basic premise of what CERT is all about. Are we going to have volunteer fire teams or police teams and rescue teams and everything around the islands for CERT, nothing. That is not what CERT is intended to be. It is intended to help your community in the disaster. In the meantime, they do a lot of good things. They help with the parade, they show up their vest and lights, and they help do the traffic and parade. They help do the school evacuations, the tsunami drills, and all those things. The other part of this is, they are also... all the American Red Cross Shelter Managers, you know, they are the service providers from the Salvation Army. If you took our list of our 300 some CERT volunteers, you are probably going to find that 50% of them are also volunteers somewhere else. Mr. Bynum: And I don't want to belabor this because I like the answer that you are giving and I just don't want to raise false expectation among future CERT members about what their role is and you are giving a great explanation. Also, you touched on my next 108 • • APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT question which is when it is not disaster time, of course, you can mobilize for education and community service and other things as well. Chief Westerman: Sure. Mr. Bynum: You know, the bottom line is, are you personally and is the Fire Department committed to serve and without a coordinator's position, is it going to die a slow death or is it going to continued to expand? Chief Westerman: No, it is not going to die a slow death. There is a coordinator, it is just that it is a firefighter. Mr. Bynum: And those are the concerns that are coming from the community. The other thing I just appreciate always your straight talk. You have mentioned that the Deputy Public Relations Coordinator position that you are eliminating was put there by the previous administration and we all know here that it was intent to preserve Ka Leo. It was an attempt to integrate and imbed... you mentioned, that is a person... it is a previous administration wanted them to do additional things beyond CERT which is basically maintain Ka Leo, so the 2 Ka Leo positions, one got embedded in Parks and one got embedded here. The Parks one remains, but I don't think that person... I think that person is doing park stuff and I don't think they are doing... it happens to be a same individual, right? So the other thing that this, you know, says to me, and just being straight talk is, this is also about the end of that concerted effort to do Ka Leo meetings in the community. Chief Westerman: I don't know, you would have to ask the Administration. Mr. Bynum: And I will because I recognize that. If it was still the previous Administration, this position probably would be funded and it probably would be doing part Ka Leo and part CERT. So, you know, I do disclosure that I worked in Ka Leo and so I have some investment. I obviously read... I appreciate the straight discussion about this position because there are many people in the community are unhappy that this position is going away, right? But I understand from the Fire Department's perspective... the key question for me is, does CERT continue to get its commitment and energy from the Fire Department and I appreciate your answer. Chief Westerman: The next section about positions... Mr. Kaneshiro: One more question before... the Chair has a question before we go to the next section. Chair Asing: With the increase o£.. there are associated cost increases... gasoline, diesel, medical supplies, (inaudible), more equipment, (inaudible), and overtime. Overtime... monitoring system to include any possible reimbursement should they become available. How or has the issues with FLSA been resolved or do we still have those problems lingering? Chief Westerman: We are paying FLSA (inaudible). In my department from the very beginning while I took over... when we had the FLSA issue, I created an overtime policy that no firefighter works overtime without pay, so that took care of whether or not they get paid or not. The other aspect of FLSA was making payment and I see it when I certify my payroll every 2 weeks. Not every 2 weeks do we pay somebody FLSA, but occasionally, we are paying FLSA, so they are calculating FLSA. Now that is not done in my department. That is done in Finance, but I do know that we are paying FLSA. Chair Asing: Then I would like to have, you know, a run down of exactly how much we are expending in that account. 109 APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT Chief Westerman: In FLSA? Chair Asing: Yes. Chief Westerman: Sure we can go that. Chair Asing: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any questions or... Chief Westerman: Just that last section. If you wanted to review it, that... Mr. Kaneshiro: That vacant positions and current. Chief Westerman: Now these are anticipated vacancies and it is usually not this big is because of the... we have to put in the Kealia station because we are doing the hiring of the Kealia firefighters. We do have a Waimea firefighter. One position that will be dollar funded. The Hanapepe firefighter position that will be dollar funded on July 1 and then the rest of it is for the positions for the Kealia and the SAFER grant firefighters. The next page, the anticipated vacancies, the firefighter 3, the Fire Captain retired on-June 1 and at the end of year, a Battalion Chief and 2 Fire Captains are retiring at the end of the year. Those are all anticipated because of retirements. Mr. Furfaro: So that is natural attrition. Chief Westerman: So that is natural attrition. That page is natural attrition and then number 3, that is the State contract position for Ke`e Beach. Mr. Furfaro: And what do we hear on those positions to have lifeguards at the end of the road. Chief Westerman: So far it is still in the State budget. It is moving to a different department in the Department of Land & Natural Resources, but it is still in the budget. Mr. Kaneshiro: I will open it up for questions now. Derek, did you have a question for the Chief? Mr. Kawakami: Chief, thank you for the presentation. I just want to touch on your presentation and also the budget review section. You identified 3 challenges and I think these 3 challenges are going to be pretty consistent with all the departments, but one is decrease in revenues, reduce budgets, and lagging infrastructure. These are all going to be challenges for your department and, yet, you guys continually strive to reach national standards which I applaud you for, so thank you very much. It tells us a lot about your commitment, yet, you also say that this year's budget is at an absolute minimum and all areas of your budget has been reduced. I only can speak for 1 of 7, but I am pretty sure that everyone at this table considers public safety as a paramount concern for our community and as a County function. So I just want assurance and these are all "yes" or "no" questions, but does this budget address firefighter safety and also does it address your mission statement to keep our people safe? Chief Westerman: Yes, I think it does. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you. 110 APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT Mr. Furfaro: I want to thank Councilmember Kawakami for addressing that because as you replayed in here, these are minimums... the reality is, in my dialogue, over... we have reconfirmed that you have gotten truck and engine levels up to 4 people which I would have preferred to use the word, we are meeting the standard. We are meeting the standard and thank you for summarizing that Councilman. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: As we anticipate the Kealia Fire Station, help me refresh my memory. Does the Kapa`a station close after Kealia is fully staffed, so it remains as fire station as well for a long time or... Chief Westerman: It needs to move. It needs to be relocated and that is addressed in here, but, again that is... Mr. Bynum: And is there a site determined? Chief Westerman: There is not a site determined. Mr. Bynum: That homesteads is a possibility or... Mr. Kaneshiro: Anyplace is a possibility. He hasn't decided that. Chief Westerman: It is not a good option, but anything is possibility. Mr. Bynum: But we can talk about that off-line. I just want to know a little more about that. It doesn't have to be here now and I have another question, but it just escaped. It will come to me in a minute. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any other questions by Committee members? Mr. Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: And we are investing in the staffing goals for that department now with the previous grants that we have applied for. Chief Westerman: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: And I do want to point out that we have, over the last 3 years, put in about $1.6 million into equipment, but as the Chie£.. equipment upgrades, but as the Chief pointed out, we are going to start pursuing acquisitions really next year for the Kealia station through grants and so forth. And are you making the Administration aware of what those future potential needs are going to be for equipment? Chief Westerman: And so you know, the acquisition for the fire engine is already made and it will arrive late next year, so it might be 6 months ahead of opening the doors, but that major purchase is already made. Mr. Furfaro: And that is why I wanted to summarize the CIP items and other purchases that we have made in the last few years and a truck if I recall is about $380,000? Chief Westerman: They are a little more than that. 111 ! ~ APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT other... million. Mr. Furfaro: And this is the basic truck, right? And then you have all the Chief Westerman: Yes, when you add everything to it, it is pretty close to half a Mr. Kaneshiro: Tim? Mr. Bynum: I just want to know that some of the decisions that we make about planning in the community that impact fire fighting... where we locate housing and apparatus and status, is that something that the Fire Department is aware of or contributes to the community discussion about how we build communities in the future and there are issues like densities and street widths. You know, is that something that the Fire Department is aware of or engaged in the dialogue at all? Chief Westerman: As the documents all go through Planning, they send them out to all the departments for review and we do make comments on all of them. We do review things like density and street widths, especially when they do the neighborhoods and they do the planning for the neighborhoods, and they talk about what type of roads are going to be there... the Fire Inspectors all review those documents. Again, the challenge is always, for us, it is an in aggregate that eventually catches up to us at some time. So where do you say someone is going to start buying the land for the new station or someone is going to start paying for the people (inaudible)... as you build or enlarge a community, it usually comes down to the fact, like we did Kealia, after-the-fact when the community is built, we are starting to collect (inaudible)... we now realize that we have to build a station. We try and actively provide information to Planning on the possibility of where a station should go. They obviously know as we did the east sign plan with that group, some locations for the new Kapa`a station to be moved to. They know that our strategic plan does say that Kilauea is in need and should be the next fire station built. And, you know, like I said, if you just kind of look at each one little project as it comes down the pipe, you know, it might not have the impact, but, you know, when you finally start to build up the whole community. Mr. Bynum: I guess that is my... the bigger question is whether you look at the big picture. I mean, our General Plan, for instance says, let's do our housing development around our town cores which I think is easier to serve for firefighting. Chief Westerman: Yes, exactly. Mr. Bynum: Versus, say, Kalihiwai Ridge... I mean if you have a home at Kalihiwai Ridge, the response time... spreading out our housing, spreads out our fire response. So those are issues to discuss in community development plans, so like we are doing (inaudible) east now... we are contemplating Liliu`e and Koloa. You know, is the Fire Department involved in those bigger pictures. Chief Westerman: Yes, we are usually invited to... Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any other questions? Mr. Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Yes, as it relates to stations and your comments about Kilauea, you and I have had discussions in the past. I think we bought the smaller vehicle for Hanalei to get across the bridges and so forth, but I was of the impression that to fight fires in their incipit stages, you would find us maybe having a satellite station in Kilauea and a satellite station in Ha`ena and/or even the old County baseyard in Hanalei. This... and especially that one being used 112 APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT for support for the Police Department when the bridge closes, offices get on that side, they need to respond to something. Did I just hear you say that another station in Kilauea versus what we saw us a hub station in Hanalei with 2 satellites? One in Ha`ena area and one in Kilauea? Is that not a concept that we are going to pursue? Chief Westerman: It is a concept that could pursued, yes. I wasn't aware of that. It must have been a plan that was thought up before I came on board. Mr. Furfaro: How about the Hanalei Courthouse? Do we know where we are at because Representative Morita and I, through her office, have had several discussion about a satellite station on the other side of the black bridge, Hanalei Bridge for the purpose of retaining firefighters and Police Officers in the event of, you know... I mean there seems to be maybe a need to have some discussion about this. It is like going back to CERTS, you know. The Chair just gave me a picture a couple of years ago of our Grandpa being the Civil Defense Coordinator in Ha`ena in a Jeep and Mr. Asing had that photo. Thank you for sharing it with us. But people get confused between CERTS and Civil Defense. There is a.,. I also want to progressively when we talked about a satellite station in Hanalei and I know that I have had this discussion with you and the old courthouse. Are we not pursuing that anymore? And -could not spin off to a satellite station in Kilauea? Chief Westerman: Yea, we are still discussing the courthouse or any option down there in its capacity. There was the move when they... when the rotary was assisting us with the jet ski in Hanalei to do something a little bit bigger there, and kind of got way out of control and was brought back to just the jet ski. But it does not stop us from doing something else down there. I mean because we do, just what you say, when the bridge closes, we staff up Hanalei. We have to either bring in overtime firefighters where we bring them around from other stations... maybe run Hanalei short or Hanapepe short to 3, and bring a firefighter around to Hanalei, so we can actually split the crew and have some semblance of a response team on each side of the island... (inaudible) each side of the bridge. In most cases, they stay a friends house. There is no facility... Mr. Furfaro: I understand. You know, I have walked the river myself with officers on the other side, but I guess there is a concept of a plan to work on the westside as well... that, you know, there is a satellite station in Kekaha or a satellite station between Hanapepe and Waimea. I mean do we have to build full fledged fire stations or could we look at this quick response in some of the communities until the larger station is able to respond with more manpower or personnel, and equipment. Is that not possible? Chief Westerman: We are good. Mr. Kaneshiro: We will send a communication on that because... and the only reason is that we don't see any of that in this budget at this point. Mr. Furfaro: But I wanted to know the thinking going forward because Hanalei as a satellite station has been on the radar screen for a long time. Mr. Kaneshiro: And the communication can be specific to address those concerns. Mr. Furfaro: To the Fire Department and Planning. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thanks. Any other questions for the Fire Chief? Chair Asing: Yes, I have one question. Chief, did we resolve the problems on the 3 fire trucks that we ordered? 113 APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT Chief Westerman: No Sir, not yet. We are still working with Senator Inouye's Office. We have the draft letters to go from his office to Secretary Napolitano asking for the relief of the funds and that has not yet going from Senator Inouye to Secretary Napolitano. Chair Asing: Okay, that is still being worked on then? Chief Westerman: Yes Sir. It is still being worked on. Chair Asing: Does it have an effect on you presently? When do we need to try to see if we can resolve this? Chief Westerman: It doesn't have an effect on our ability to perform. We were able to replace 2 of those vehicles with other grants. It will have an effect, I guess, if I have to pay the bill. That is what we are hoping to get relief from. That will be the only effect is that we will have to pay the bill eventually if we don't get relief. Chair Asing: Yea, but you need the engine though? Chief Westerman: We have them replaced Chair Asing: Okay, thank you. Can I follow up on Chairman Asing's question? Mr. Furfaro: Is the County of Maui still in the same predicament with that company? Chief Westerman: Well, their middle man is in the same predicament. They actually have a buyer in between them and the manufacturer. He is still in that same predicament. Mr. Kaneshiro: I don't want to get too much into this conversation because there might be some legal issues involved. Just be careful, but I think we got the information that we needed. Any other things that we wanted to discuss or have questions for the Chief while he is here on the budget? Anything else? Any other questions? Chief Westerman: I would like to respond to Councilmember Furfaro about the (inaudible) change is... actually, the old changes is in our R&M of our vehicles. The oil line item is zero. Mr. Kaneshiro: Specifically just for your offiice. Chief Westerman: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: Because you have all the different categories. Mr. Furfaro: So I was only looking at your vehicle? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes. Chief Westerman: Right. Mr. Furfaro: So you won't (inaudible)... Mr. Kaneshiro: Cost savings. 114 APRIL 7, 2009 FIRE DEPARTMENT Chief Westerman: We have too many line items in this budget. Mr. Furfaro: If we see that red truck on the side of the road... Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thank you. Any other questions? We have the Water Safety Officers here also. If not, Chief, thank you very much and thank you all for coming. We appreciate you bringing the whole crew over. So at this time, I am going to just call this review back to order and recess. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 10:33 a.m. 115 • APRIL 7, 2009 LIQUOR CONTROL (2) The departmental budget review reconvened at 1:32 p.m., and proceeded as follows: DEPARTMENT OF LIQUOR CONTROL ERIC HONMA: Good afternoon Councilmembers. For the record, my name is Eric Houma. I'm the director and chief investigator for the liquor department. I believe the Councilmembers have my budget before you. I don't have anything elaborate. I'm basically going to answer questions, but before I do that, I'd like to give you an update on some of the programs that we started last year and their status. The first would be our website. We've just completed updating our website, as well as posting our new forms. By new forms, I mean that the forms on the website now are all 8-1/2 by 11 format. We had several forms that were in legal size, but we came to realize that not everybody, you know, with a home PC has a legal size tray to print out forms. So we reduced everything to the standard 8-1/2 by 11. So that's on our website now. All of our forms, as well as our rules, the State laws are all there. So we basically completed our website update. Next. Last year we started with the purchase of a laserfiche printer, and we are continuing. That project is going to start this coming summer where we hope to be able to transfer all of our documents to our server. That way it will help our investigators to have wireless to them from the field, because as most of you know, you know, their primary job is all in the field. You know, they're out there from basically 7 to 2 a.m. in the morning. So it's going to be necessary for them to get access to our documents. Generally what they do now is if they come across a potential violation, they have to come back to the office and then verify the information according to the licensee's folder. But once we laserfiche everything, we'll be able to have the investigators carry their own laptops and be able to access that information from the field so that they conclude their investigation while they're out there. Finally, last year I talked about succession planning within our office with the potential that our senior investigator will be retiring. And so we're in the process of doing that...also for myself, not that I'm in a position of retiring anytime soon, but you know, just in case something happens, I'm incapacitated or for some reason, the deputy... senior investigator will be able to oversee the day to day operations. Okay? With that, I believe the only highlight I'd like to point out in the difference of my budget- there is an increase of over approximately $100,000, and that is primarily a financing, financing if you will, accounting situation whereby I believe it was explained yesterday that the other post employment benefits are now reflected in the individual budgets, the departments, and it's not housed in the finance anymore. So it's primarily that. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, a perfect example, and we try to point that to all departments. We have the benefit, the total benefit package, roughly running about 43% of the department's payroll. In the past, they only allocated about 28% of that to you, and the balance is sticking in finance. So that's kind of a shift that we all have to be aware of, and it was really for more accountability by department in controlling their cost that are related to their operations. Mr. Houma: Right, and it was explained to us by Wally that it's also a format that GASB, this general accounting practices, recommended that account they do. Mr. Furfaro: Through the audit over the last couple of years, we've been evolving to a point that we can comply to the GASB rules on accounting in having these costs reflected by operating entities. 116 • APRIL 7, 2009 LIQUOR CONTROL (2) Mr. Honma: Right. And the only other increase I have is in the salaries account, which is basically a function of collective bargaining types of increases that we're mandated to follow. Okay? Other than that, I'm here to entertain any questions that the Councilmembers have. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead Jay. Mr. Furfaro: Yes Mr. Chair, I have one question for the... First of all I want to compliment you and the Liquor Commission on a fine job I think your department does. Mr. Honma: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: And I know it's going to be rather difficult moving forward in this economy, but I do want to share with you one concern I have. You projected last year business license fees and so forth of revenue coming in about $980,000. Mr. Honma: Right. _ _. _ _ ,p_ ~ y _ >,.. _~. Mr. Furfaro: Since about mid-October, as we know occu anc ~~~started to deteriorate in certain areas for our hotels and so forth. But you are showing your business license fees a little higher...53,000 higher than last year, and could you explain, is that based on some actual changes in the percentage of the fees, or do we feel that, you know, the revenue that generates the fee for you will relatively stay strong? Mr. Honma: It is not a change in the percentage that we assess (inaudible) the increase. We're hoping that the recession didn't impact the licensees as much as other segments, such as housing and so forth, and that's why we also kept our budget basically flat-same as last year. Mr. Furfaro: So there would...there probably be more...maybe people won't be traveling abroad as so much as local people, there'll be more homes... It's not that it's a large amount, Eric. It's only 53,000, but I just want to make sure you're feeling comfortable with it. Mr. Honma: Well, nationwide, the feeling is generally that for whatever reason, alcoholic beverages are pretty much (quote/unquote) recession proof as a commodity, and they don't necessarily give up consumption as opposed to switching to something cheaper, but it still occurs. So we're hoping that, you know, we'll be insulated as much as possible. But again, we will take into consideration any pending restrictions should the revenues not come in at the level that we expect. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you for that answer, but I guess that is not a big amount, but it is over what you actually did last year. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? Lani. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Hi. It's good to see you, and I want to thank you for the time you took to go over with your department with me earlier when we first came on. Mr. Honma: My pleasure. Ms. Kawahara: And it is still accurate that all the revenues that you come and you get is covering all of your expenditures this year? Mr. Honma: Yes. By State statute, we are allowed to collect 100% of our budget. 117 Ms. Kawahara: Great. • APRIL 7, 2009 LIQUOR CONTROL (2) Mr. Honma: That we do, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we spend everything. In fact, last year we returned to the licensees a substantial amount. Ms. Kawahara; Okay. Just last year... I have a question. Your investigators they go out in the evening most of the time. Mr. Honma: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: And are they driving their own cars? Mr. Honma: Yes they are. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, because there was discussion I think last year of looking at hybrids for them. Mr. Honma: There was. Ms. Kawahara: I was wondering how that went. Mr. Honma: We did a cost analysis, and it would be pretty much break even, meaning that the current operating method is about the same cost as if we were to convert to hybrid. The difficulty with converting to fleet vehicles would be, for us, storage. We don't have a secured storage area like a Baseyard, and I think from time to time, unfortunately county vehicles that are stored in the parking lot, they are vandalized. We've seen some with missing tires, tailgates, and some other... I think batteries are missing a couple of times too. So that would be our primary concern. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, but you did look into it. I appreciate it. Mr. Honma: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. That's all I have. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions for... Question? Mr. Bynum: It's a question. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: I apologize for coming in late, and this may not be an appropriate question. If it isn't, just tell me. Does the liquor commission have the responsibility or say over the offsite billboards that are occurring for...that have beer logos for liquor establishments? Mr. Honma: No, I believe that's covered under the sign ordinance, which is enforced by the building division. Mr. Bynum: Okay. So in terms of displaying billboards and signs, that's not the responsibility of the liquor commission. Mr. Honma: No. 118 U Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay Eric. Mr. Honma: Okay, thank you Councilmembers. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's it. We're done with you. M APRIL 7, 2009 LIQUOR CONTROL (2) There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 1:43 p.m. 119 • • APRIL ?, 2009 CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY (3) The departmental budget review reconvened at 1:54 p.m., and proceeded as follows: CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY MARK MARSHALL: Thank you folks. You got my handouts. Mark Marshall for the record. Mr. Furfaro: Could I just get some clarification on your headers here on the account descriptions? For the year 2009-2010, for the year 2010-2011? Or is it for the year 2008 and 9? Mr. Marshall: 2009/2010. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, so this is your new budget? So why are you comparing it with a future future budget? Mr. Marshall: I don't understand the question. Mr. Bynum: First column is fiscal year 09, so 08-09 right? Mr. Kaneshiro: Fiscal year. Mr. Marshall: And then the 2010... Mr. Furfaro: There was my question answered; it's 08-09. Mr. Kaneshiro: We go by fiscal year, so 08-09, and 09-10. So same thing if you look at the end results. Okay, you may proceed. Mr. Marshall: Unlike probably other departments only have cone-page budget, so I included that in the handout to you. Mr. Furfaro: We just did a department with no page. Mr. Kaneshiro: Give us the highlights. Mr. Marshall: If you'll look at the second page where it's titled Kauai Civil Defense Agency council budget review, I've... After the 09010 increases, salaries and wages $11,545; other post employment benefits, and you folks realize the new source accounting on that, $53,000; the other thing that I begged and pleaded the administration and they granted was actually a $50,000 notification service that was given to us the first year by State Civil Defense in the form of a contract. They did several for different counties. We selected Blackboard Connect CTY and we want to launch that as a public service May 1. You'll see only $33,500 because I reduced other portions of that same category, and then received $50,000 from the administration, so that shows the balance off there. And then on some very expensive radio site leases my agency administers an additional $2,000 in projected increases on that, and I also have to caveat that we've got several contracts coming up for renewal in this fiscal year. Overall reduction on the budget from 08-09 to 09-10 reduced by $40,080, the difference being $59,965. If you go back to the budget sheet, the top sheet that you were given, you'll notice that several things were in the variance category, or in the minus: electricity, and that's actually to support the alternate emergency operations center in this building in the basement. We also pay the electric for the old mayor's office for the Historical Society account. 120 • • APRIL 7, 2009 CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY (3) Mr. Furfaro: May I make a note on that please? We reviewed the contract for that office, and they are entitled to an annual increase of which no one has charged them the recovery cost that's allowed in their contract. Could I ask you to make a visit with Finance on that? Mr. Marshall: Will do. We've not really found a way to break out the utilities on that. It's been one of our challenges since I've been here. Mr. Furfaro: I think there was an initiated flat fee negotiation that did allow a four and half percent increase each year that the lease was in place. But there is a reference point in the lease for this building. Mr. Marshall: Duly noted. I'll take a closer look at that. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mark. Mr. Marshall: Training we reduced by $2,000, dues and subscription by $2,000, special projects by $15,680-that's Civil Air Patrol. Last year the council gave them $30,000. After administering that for...I want to 6...5 months now, realize that they're not going draw down that'` type of amount, so we cut that in half, is what that's reflected cost. Mr. Furfaro: May I make a commentary on that for the other... Just so that you all know, the Civil Air Patrol actually used to get grant moneys from the State, and then it discontinued, and the council put money in for them through Civil Defense, because these are the people you depend on in a natural disaster to actually go along the NaPali and Waimea to broadcast information and so forth. Am I correct? Mr. Marshall: Right, that's correct. We also... There's on plane dedicated for Niihau. There's one for Kauai. They did get their funding eventually from the State. It was the governor had held it back for a long time that put them in...such in peril that without these training sorties or flights, they wouldn't be mission-ready for us, and I applaud the Council's putting money in last year's budget to sustain them so that we have those services. Our repair and maintenance building, $1500, excuse me. For our R&M and equipment $5,000, vehicle 500, air fare we cut by 3500 along with the per diem for travel, car rental by 700, other travel-general (that would be like taxicabs and probably parking for training and stuff) 800, goes down to office supplies cut by 500, other supplies by 400 bucks, and that's our submitted budget at $594,216. Then you'll see a graph which is getting to be real familiar to you since Finance has generated them for all agencies and departments showing salaries, benefits, operations, and then our total. And then the last one is a pie chart of a very similar nature...different configurations. I want to also add that we get a reoccurring State and local assistance from State Civil Defense of about $70,000 a year to run our Civil Defense office. So I hold up that the kind of moneys that we're bringing in averaging about $2million in grant funds a year administered by 4 permanent county employees and 2 contract hires that are federally funded is probably the best deal you have in all of your departments and agencies. How's that for tooting my own horn? That's all I have for today. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Questions? Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Go back to some of your sheets here. Thank you very much for the detail here and by account numbers. Appreciate that Mark. Mr. Marshall: Sure. Mr. Furfaro: Your travel, you're going from 12,000 annually, you're cutting that by almost 8,800. Is that too deep? I mean don't you have a number of State requirements? I mean I 121 • • APRIL 7, 2009 CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY (3) heard we went as far as 50% from the administration early on here, but you know, this is almost 65% in your department. Mr. Marshall: Well, we've been fortunate that most of our mandatory travel that would be for grant funds with department of homeland security... Mr. Furfaro: You would get money in there? Mr. Marshall: ...is paid by those grant sources. We saw that over the last couple of years and tried to be really frugal on this. Mr. Furfaro: Well, I don't want the administration to think in some cases, you know, we're not sympathetic to what we need to do to comply to certain pieces. But if you feel comfortable with an $8,800 reduction on a $12,000 budget, you know, that's fine with me. I mean I was even worried about oil for the chief's fire car. Mr. Marshall: We've taken it seriously the administration's request. Mr. Furfaro: No, you answered my question. A lot of your travel would be in grant money. So that answers. Mr. Kaneshiro: And the other issue is that you guys been using a lot of videoconferencing too. Mr. Marshall: That's helped immensely, immensely, and we've just installed the third unit in the media room in front as you first walk into our doors. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, none of these questions are personal, Mark. Mr. Marshall: No, I'm not taking it personally. Mr. Furfaro: No, no, I want to make sure we understand that. This is our one chance to look at how you operate, and yet year after year we seem to see a reasonably and sizable surplus, and some of that could be deriven(sic) from perhaps not paying the kind of detail we should to examine some of these expenses, and this is our only opportunity. I said to the administration early on when we started, Mark, when it comes to utilities, I'd like to see the dollars, but I'd also like to see the dollars translated into kilowatt hours, because saving $4,000 in energy doesn't necessarily say all the parts for us, when the fact that we know a year ago, energy costs were twice what they are now, and the fact that most of your energy bill from your actuals were driven by the cost associated with them adjusting fuel cost. Do you know what this might compare as far as kilowatt hours, and that was an early statement I made in a... Mr. Marshall: Sorry, I don't. I know in this building we stopped running the central air conditioning to feed your folks mold and mildew problems, and that was Greg Morishige who installed two dehumidifiers. They paid for themselves in electrical .cost in the first month of operation. Went from about 15...$1600 to about $700. Now, again we still support other offices in this complex, but that was a dramatic savings in terms of something fairly simple that could be done to, you know, be a little wiser in the way we spend our money. Mr. Furfaro: But I would like to measure by kilowatt hours. Mr. Marshall: Yeah, I have no clue what one costs or what that would equate to for $25,000. 122 • • APRIL 7, 2009 CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY (3) Mr. Furfaro: Okay, I'm just speaking as someone who lives, walks, and talks all of these opportunities. I think you know, as a hotelier, from energy circulating pumps, lights, you know, there is savings there. Mr. Marshall: Can you tell me what a kilowatt hour costs, and I can run the math? Mr. Furfaro: I think... You know, if you want to test my memory right now, I would say I can't tell you right off. At point it was almost twice the national average. But I guess the first thing we want to find is kilowatt hours total consumption compared to what we're projecting. The net difference would be the savings, then use that index to multiply it against the charge of the kilowatt hours will give us the dollar. Mr. Marshall: Give the dollar. Okay. do that. Mr. Furfaro: But you know, if you asking me to commit to 37¢, 41¢, 47¢, I couldn't Mr. Marshall: I was just curious. I'm sure KIUC (inaudible). Mr. Furfaro: No, but that's how you do that. We had this discussion. So if you could... Well, it's on the bill every month for everybody, but there's different rate factors depending on what kind of operation you have. So he's asking me. I'm not sure if they're charging us a commercial rate, a government rate, a residential rate, you know. Mr. Marshall: If it's on the bill, I can... Mr. Furfaro: But if you look at the kilowatt hours, it can justify us, just rather than just saying you know, we're looking at, in your case, about a 10%...12% saving in dollars. I'd like to know the savings in kilowatts. Mr. Marshall: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: And I posed that question to others as well. And the post employee benefits, this request in the graph that's coming over to us from Wally, that in fact is something that this council wanted to do across the board. It was initiated by the Council so that we can be in compliance with GASB, the government reporting systems for upcoming audits. And the last question, we had quite a bit of a discussion with the fire chief about the CERTS program, and one of my concerns is people get CERTS mixed up with civil defense, you know. I mean it...across the island, I mean. We understand the CERTS program to be one where people prepare for themselves to be ready, making sure they have the appropriate first aid, bedding, water, food, you know, that they know how to protect their own wellbeing during an emergency versus a response team that's set up, such as volunteer civil defense people. Could you tell us a little bit about our civil defense volunteers that work your offiice? Mr. Marshall: Okay. I have very few of them. By the nature of the size of us, I have a former fire chief, David Sproat, is one. The other is Jan Tenbruggencate who helps me with public relations types of problems that we have. I have one other fellow, Charles Tapua(sp?), who is a weapons of mass destruction retired military expert from the Northshore, who helps me, and that pretty much is...rounds out my current volunteers, other than of course civil air patrol, and I can't clout American Red Cross as anon-governmental agency that obviously has strong ties to us. Now we still do administer all of the funding for the CERTS program, the community emergency response team, under a grant from DHS, the department of homeland security, in the citizens corps. Citizens 123 • • APRIL 7, 2009 CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY (3) corps umbrella includes neighborhood watch, volunteers in police service, several other worthy programs, the only of which is earmarked funded is the community emergency response team. So we still pay the instructors, buy all the backpacks, hard hats, fallout gear, radios, administer pretty much A to Z that funding source with them. We've been exploring having possibly a nonprofit take over some of the training for us on an RFP, and we've had both Salvation Army and the Red Cross approach and say we'd really like to take this over and do your training. Your point is very saline in it's aself--help course, and it would never replace our first responders particularly with a 24-hour course. I mean you can imagine the depth of that. Excellent of course for people and their neighbors to get organized on a grassroots level. The only time I ever envisioned activating them as far as being civil defense volunteers, which solves our legal liabilities and those types of problems is when we were so overwhelmed that our first responders couldn't respond adequately. They would be placeholders or sitters, if you will, to stabilize the situation `till a professional first responder could respond to that individual incident. Now this would have to be something catastrophic like an Iniki or a tsunami. Mr. Furfaro: Understood. I think you've satisfied, for me, the clarity between CERTS and civil defense. And again, I just want to point out, you know through the budget process, these are critical questions that we need to ask so that we understand how government functions, and we also understand our responsibility whether it's looking at a $4,000 electric savings or, you know, $50,000 in the shelter repair so that we have redundancy. It is questions that we ask that don't necessarily portray our opinion, but they do portray our need to understand. Mr. Marshall: I totally understand. This is about my 24+~ budget in various counties. I understand the process, and I welcome the question. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: I don't have a...follow-up on something Councilmember Furfaro was talking about, and because we're ahead of schedule, I will ask the Chair's indulgence that it isn't so much for you, Mark, as it is for Wally and Gary who are in the room. I got their attention. I think this is where Mr. Furfaro was going about travel. You know, there's a lot of sensitivity all over the country about travel and budgets right now with the, you know, AIG and all of that stuff, and you know, a lot of departments are showing reductions in travel. And I applaud that in use of video conferencing and...but there's times where you really want to be present at a meeting and not miss the opportunity. So I hope we not going overboard with that, because it's also what's helping kill our economy here on Kauai that people over the country are doing that, and we're losing conventions and travel that we normally would get, which is a legitimate business. And so it's a legitimate part of doing business, is to meet in person with individuals. We're an island State, that means flying sometimes. So I hope we're not being too reactive, and I think Mr. Furfaro's going the same place when you see such a big reduction, you question whether it's a over reaction to that sensitivity or to our budget constraints. Mr. Furfaro: Well if you remember earlier in the week, the comment that we got back from the administration was, I asked specifically for travel policies and how they...and to my admiration, the administration said the individual departments will set their own missions and reductions. Mr. Marshall: That's very much true in our case. Mr. Furfaro: That's what the administration told us. But I just wanted to make sure when I saw that much of a reduction, and it was my fault not realizing that many grants you get would include getting you there. But it was consistent with what the administration told us. But thank you Mr. Bynum for bringing that up again. 124 • • APRIL 7, 2009 CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY (3) Mr. Marshall: The other thing is is that most of my staff are senior staff, meaning that they've been with the County...my plans and operations guy 35 years, I've got 25 years in, Karleen's a little ahead of me, and Elton my grants writer been in county work for almost 18 years now. So that learning curve has already been establish for a lot of the mainland travel. And like you said, most of the vital travel that we do, and a lot of things would be nice to go to, but we've curtailed. The vital ones, however, are met under our grant appropriation. Mr. Bynum: Thanks for that response. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? Go ahead Derek. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Mr. Chair. My question is real simple. With this budget, will this budget allow you to accomplish the mission and goals of the civil defense department in keeping the people safe? Mr. Marshall: I feel that it will. Remember, whenever we have an activation, every county employee becomes a civil defense worker, then we categorize either""essentiaY or nonessential workers. So my little 4 staff can grow to 40 staff in a half an hour, and I get excellent support and buy-in. I think one of the benefits of being an administrator of the federal grants is I get to kind of like Santa Claus sometimes when fire and police chiefs come in and want certain things to happen. I've got to say that the cooperation between all the public safety departments is stellar in that you'll notice now, if you look at our detailed budget worksheets for the federal grants, we've moving into radio system upgrades that lifts all the boats, including public works and water and everybody that's on our 800 megahertz system, and I see this tremendous cooperation, and they certainly appreciate our hard work in delivering a lot of these things. We've a few stumbles and bumbles, but I think by and large, people are really happy with our agency and the type of things we've been able to deliver that general fund would have never funded in some of these capabilities trainings and equipment that we've acquired. Mr. Kawakami, I thank you for that question. That was an excellent question. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Mr. Bynum: And judging by the hair, you know, the Santa Claus analogy, if you were to grow the beard, that'll be right in there. Mr. Marshall: Well, I've got the opu to match, so you know. Mr. Kaneshiro: Lani. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. I understand that probably most of the members, or the incumbents, know about this, but I was curious about the Kukuiolono 800 megahertz radio on lease rents. Mr. Furfaro: I asked that question last year. Ms. Kawahara: I understand that that was a contract that went into effect a long time ago and that we're still paying on it. I want to know when it's going to expire, because it went up 2,000 this year. Mr. Marshall: Yeah, it expires... 125 • APRIL 7, 2009 CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY (3) Mr. Furfaro: 2012? (Inaudible) Ms. Kawahara: June 30 this year? Mr. Marshall: Correct, and we're already starting to have internal meetings to try to figure the strategy. It's administered by Bank of Hawaii trust services, and some of you know who the principle of those are. And that's not the only one. We have that's expired last June that I'm working on, and I've been working about a year and a half on Pinnacle Towers, which is crown castle contract that we finally got inked. So I'm ready to do business with Grove Farm, and then the next one will be the Bank of Hawaii trust services. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, so the 40,000 will get us through to the end of the contract, and you can dump it. Mr. Furfaro: No, I think what I heard him say is that was a very... I heard him say that was a very important site, and the reality, I think he's covering the worst case scenario for the year, but the contract will terminate soon. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Marshall: Or it's got to be re-negotiated, because that is a vital public safety 800 megahertz radio system. Ms. Kawahara: And do you think it would be more in line with what the others are charging, considering that it's still 800 megahertz along with all the other sites that are 800? Mr. Marshall: Do I think that they're...? Ms. Kawahara: With a re-negotiation it'll come into line with whatever these other 800 megahertz which are vitally important also that's the same megahertz? Is that a factor? Mr. Marshall: It's pretty much the same site physical makeup, obviously in different locations. 1VIy least expensive one is in the $250 a month range. This one is $3100 a month. Now there's some history behind all of that. Ms. Kawahara: So the megahertz and what the output is not necessarily... Mr. Marshall: That's the backbone of our radio system. There's 800, 700 megahertz radio systems. These sites all support that one radio system that does our police, fire, EMS, public works...actually all the county agencies and a few State partners that are on that system with us. And part of the things that we're doing to add channels and to build that radio system out is to make it more robust, and also to have interoperability if other first responders or other folks with radios come in to our county to assist us, we'll have interoperability to where we can communicate with our radios with them. We've also just recently had a solicitation from Senator Inouye's office to look at a State package of upgrading...I don't know if you know about Hawaii County's plight, but I worked there for 16 years, and they are still on VHF, which is a different type of frequency for radios, wanting to switch to an 800 system like hours. They're looking at somewhere between 75 and 90 million dollar cost of doing that. We were also asked what enhancements or what added things we would, in our wish list, would like to see for here, and they're doing the same for Oahu and Maui. Senator wants to make one appropriation or one funding to do all four of the counties at once, rather than piecemeal. So the meeting that we had was a fact finding mission by his staff, and then also 126 • ~ APRIL 7, 2009 CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY (3) Raytheon, who's the technical expert, who has come in and knows how to blend systems and has a lot of experience nationally with these types of radio systems. Did that answer your question? Ms. Kawahara: I'll talk to you later, but mostly, mostly. A few other questions. You referred briefly to the blackboard connect service. Mr. Marshall: Correct, yes. Ms. Kawahara: That's a new service from last year. I just needed to know a little bit about what that was. Mr. Marshall: Okay. I've been harping on the State for quite a while to try to use some of our technologies in a way to benefit the population that we serve. And as unreliable as outdoor warning sirens are for a myriad reasons, mostly that it's like 50 year old technology, and. then you have a limited amount of coverage with outdoor warning sirens, and then it's interpreting what those sirens mean, and can you hear them, and are they coordinated with public announcements and emergency alert signals. We looked at this new system, quite frankly, that was championed in Florida andin the Panhandle of Texas where they have- hurricane Inikis every other year, Katrina notwithstanding the most recent. The way to notify all of their citizenry, they, unlike us, have a mandatory evacuation order that can go out and you can be arrested if you don't comply with that order. We don't have that in this State. So more and more important for us to notify the general public of things that are going on. So I had been harping both on administration and staff for a number of years since I took this job to try to get us to use some of these new technologies, and in fact, State finally got a federal grant to do just that. And so what they did was they allowed us to preview 4 or 5 different vendors, I made a selection with police and fire input, I thought that it would best serve our population size, and they sponsored that for a little over...a little under $50,000 for the first year. That contract will come due in a year's time, and the understanding was that the county general fund would pick up that service if we thought in fact that it was a valuable service. And that's what you're seeing reflected here, is the $50,000 for the renewal of that service. It will be a sole source since the selection and procurement has been done. And what it will allow us to do is to send out a text and verbal message to every listed telephone in the county, both business, residential, wherever it is, as long as it a listed number, and we've looked at the privacy issues and things like that, we'll have the ability to give these folks a call. You can also go on to the website. If you go to the county's website and you'll see on the front page, connect CTY icon. If you click on that, it'll allow you to register now up to 3 telephone numbers per person. So like for me, my cell phone, my home...hard line phone or corded phone they call them, and my county phone number could be inputted in there, along with my email address, and if I had a TDY or TDD special device, it'll work on that, or a digital pod or pad...they call those digital devices. It has a way of signaling all of those with either a text message or a voice message to go out. And that would simply be, head for high ground, 100 foot elevation, we're expecting a tsunami in 3 hours, for an example for the worst case scenario. The other side of that, the backside of that that will be invisible to the public is it's a way for us to recall our employees. So the employees that are essential and have been identified by their department and agency heads have been installed into the system so that we can call them by groups or by individuals or call them all at once, and the service touts that they can do 10,000 calls a minute, so in 6 minutes we can do the entire population out there. There's 60,000 phone sets here. The only thing about that is that we don't want to overwhelm the switch at Hawaiian Tel, so they're working to see how many calls we can actually launch a minute, and some of that is preparatory information, but we feel that very rapidly we can hit all of those phones. They bought the database for the listed numbers, and worked the database to get out SCADA, fax machines, other analog uses out of that, and that's really where the money comes in-is managing that database. We have a little over 22,000 corded lines in our database, and they're constantly refining those, trying numbers and cuddling up the ones that are faxes or SCADAs or have some other function besides voice. And then there are no cell phones in there, so those have to be inputted by public or by individuals like 127 ~ i APRIL 7, 2009 CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY (3) yourself on that page. We're also going to have a way for people that do not have access to the Internet to where they call our office and we subscribe them on to the database list. Ms. Kawahara: That's great. Mr. Marshall: Probably more than you wanted to know. Ms. Kawahara: I want to sign up for that. One more. We only used half of the air patrol money, the 30,000, right, because they're not drawing on it that much. Mr. Marshall: Correct. Ms. Kawahara: So it just...you just keep it and it rolls over for the next time for the 30,000, the last 15,000? Mr. Marshall: That's a finance question, but none of my budget surpluses get retained by me. Mr. Kaneshiro: No, it lapsed back into the general fund. Mr. Furfaro: That's what makes up the... Mr. Kaneshiro: Unappropriated surplus, correct. Nobody retains in their account. Mr. Furfaro: Nobody retains what they don't encumber. Mr. Marshall: But I like that thought. Ms. Kawahara: So that's what this 14-3 back is in for, civil air patrol, right, that's what it's for. Okay thank you. That's it. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, that's it Mr. Marshall. Mr. Furfaro: Oh no. The biggest question of the day. Explain to us in the day when we're all looking for, and I've addressed this with the fire department as well, explain to us a little bit about our grant writing capabilities for public safety. It's been my past understanding that fire, police, and civil defense had an opportunity with a grant writer that was not solely earmarked for the purpose of homeland security, but that that grant writer would be able to work with the public safety. Mr. Marshall: That's correct. Mr. Furfaro: Now, the chie£..the fire chief, in all fairness, told us that he is cross training, which I give him great applaud for, he's cross training certain battalion chiefs and so forth to write and look for grants. But am I of the right assumption that that grant write that you have in civil defense is truly the public safety grant writer, and not just earmarked for homeland security. Mr. Marshall: No, that's absolutely correct. Mr. Furfaro: Good, so I'm correct in my... Mr. Marshall: You are correct, and we often review their proposals. He's only one fella and can only do so much, but he has a...actually a myriad of people coming in and reviewing 128 APRIL 7, 2009 CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY (3) smaller grants and getting applications up for that. In that, we tend not to administer those funds, however. We push it back to the department that acquired those, because there is a (inaudible) to, if you get the grant, then it's your from cradle to grave. A lot of times we like to find grants and let somebody else run the project, now which is real important when you got 4 people to administer $2 million worth of grant moneys. We've got to have partners to pick up, give us good specifications... Mr. Furfaro: No, I don't disagree. I just wanted to recap what I understood last year... Mr. Marshall: That's very true. Mr. Furfaro: ...and I applaud the chief for getting some cross training using other people, because we need to be looking for every money source. Mr. Marshall: Right. We do that very well with both police and fire. We have individuals that are earmarked for certain projects that we're pulling moneys down for for them to run with it, and then we have a tendency to do the accounting for-all the moneys that'flow'through civil defense. But if it's a direct source back to KPD or KFD, then we don't get into the accounting side, but we still are very active in procurement and making sure that we've satisfied grant requirements, and that a lot of times means writing the god-awful reports and all the other requirements and hoops that we have to jump through for federal money. Mr. Furfaro: And I'm going to share with you. When the chairman closes this meeting, the rate data sheet, there are 5 categories of rates for utilities, and they do...there is one here that falls in small commercial, large commercial, neighborhood commercial. So they've give you a (inaudible)? Mr. Marshall: They have. I think with this and looking at the county's electric bill, I can get you a kilowatt hour converted to dollar. Mr. Furfaro: Again, I will restate it from I did yesterday. My goal is not to look at the dollar savings. My goal is to look at people who can manage their kilowatt hours, because the way our public utility rates are set up, depending on what is allowed by adjustments for fuel charges, the dollar amount of your electric bill can change drastically. Mr. Marshall: I hear you. Mr. Furfaro: What I'm looking is how we're conserving kilowatt hours, and then you can calculate them against those rates. And that's for you, Mr. Chang. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. No more questions for Mark. Thank you very much Mark. Appreciate it. Mr. Marshall: That was painless. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 2:32 p.m. 129 • • APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) The departmental budget review reconvened at 2:32 p.m., and proceeded as follows: KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY Mr. Kaneshiro: If you are ready, you can do your presentation. Introduce yourself for the record and you can start. LAURA WILEY: Aloha, good afternoon. I'm Laura Wiley, and I'm the president of the Kauai Humane Society, and thank you for allowing me to be here. REBECCA RHOADES:Hi, Dr. Becky Rhoades, the executive director of the Kauai Humane Society, and also, thanks for letting us be here to testify on our behalf. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any highlights of your budgets that you wanted to point out for our members of this committee, or anything you wanted to say on your budget? Mr. Furfaro: We did receive written testimony earlier from the Humane Society. Thank you very much. Ms. Wiley: Right. Well, thank you very much. We apologize for the last minute nature of the letter that we delivered last Friday. But in a nutshell, it basically said that the mayor's proposed budget represents a decrease in our contract amount to the tune of about $64,000, and it's probably easier...easy to say, but we truly understand the magnitude and the enormity of the challenges that the County is facing with the budget, and I'm sure every department gets up here and says, don't cut us, don't cut us, we're so important, and we really are hoping that you will reconsider that proposal and at least reinstate the budget to what it was for last year's contract. For those new members who might not be familiar with the Humane Society, we're very blessed to have a positive relationship with the county that we've always enjoyed and look forward to enjoying, and we have this sort of win-win situation. I know that's an overused phrase, but awin-win situation where the Kauai Humane Society provides vital public health and safety services for the county. And we do have the contract for animal care and control with the county, and we run that contract at a significant deficit from year to year, and the reason we're able to do that is because as a nonprofit 501C3 organization, we can get donations from our donors, and we can have fundraisers and, you know, charge some fees for our services, and that helps make up the gap, so to speak. Unfortunately, over the last couple of fiscal years our total operations have resulted in net losses, and we really feel like we just can't sustain, you know, a further deficit with the contract. And so we're hoping against all odds that there's some way to hopefully make it all work with the county's pieces that they need to work with and what we have to work with as well. So I don't know that we have any brilliant solutions or answers, but we certainly are hoping, like I said, that the budget will at least be reinstated to the previous year's level. Ms. Kawahara: What was the difference between the mayor's and your request? Ms. Wiley: Well, I'll leave our request out of it. The mayor's proposal is to cut our contract from last year's contract of $64,000. Our request to the mayor was actually higher than our last year's, but we won't go there now, in light of the things. I know you guys are struggling with huge TAT issues and all kinds of issues. So if we can at least remain intact from the previous year, that would be huge. Our costs, of course, are increasing like everybody else's costs. And so we were originally had submitted a proposal to the mayor for an increase in our contract amount, you know, and we won't ask for that now, considering all of the circumstances. However, you know, as the written testimony, the letter that we sent on Friday, as of the first six months of the fiscal year, we were running a deficit of $135,000. So you know, double that you know, in the neighborhood of a 130 • • APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) couple of hundred thousand dollars for fiscal year end, and we're certainly hoping that it's, you know, not greater than that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Derek had a question. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Mr. Chair. And thanks to the Kauai Humane Society for the work that you do for our island. But my question is, if you guys operating at a net loss, what steps have you guys taken to generate more revenue? Have you increased fees, or have you done any of this to kind of cover the balance of this net loss that you guys have been suffering from over the last few years? DR. BECKY RHOADES: Yes. We... I have to go back a little bit, because we've been in kind a growth phase with this new building that we got several years ago, and you know, with the recession and depression hitting, it hit us at a bad time because we hadn't put a lot away. But we are in very much of a stop growth phase now of just trying to maintain, with a wage and hiring freeze, we also did an assessment, hired a consultant to go through our energy and energy use, and we've reduced our kilowatt hours...or kilowatts per hours... Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Doctor, kilowatt hours. I love it. Dr. Rhoades: You're welcome. Thanks to Ben Sullivan, he really assisted us, and we had a bill of almost $7,000 and we just had a bill of under $2,000. So we were thrilled to have that. It'll go back up when it gets hot, but right now we're really happy with that. There's no raises. The staff were all informed we're not giving any raises, we're not adding any positions. We did increase... We've increased our fees routinely regularly. We just did a big...another increase in August/September of this year, and that's also where we put a fee in for picking up chickens. If you haven't heard about it, that was something that we did. Yes, we're regularly looking at our fees and adjusting them as can be. Ms. Wiley: Can I throw something in in response? I think one of the great things that Dr. Becky has brought to the Humane Society is her ability to think outside...what we say think outside the litter box, and she has instituted a lot of programs that has brought us in a lot of money. We do have fees for adoptions. We have now the quarantine service, which is through the State, and that makes money. We have private boarding. We have the thrift shop. We have our fundraisers. We've been very good at thinking of ways to get revenue, and I don't want to say we're out of ideas, because you know, there's always something new and different out there. However, I think we really have exhausted a lot, and we look forward to the next idea, and we've had a lot of ideas, but we really have been...our focus has been on increasing revenue, and we have increased revenue. In addition to some of the cost savings that Dr. Becky was talking about, you know in general, of course the bulk of our contract is to cover payroll, and our payroll is very efficient. You know, our employees are not union, we don't have fabulous benefit packages and fabulous this, that, and the other thing, so I think we're very cost effective. We run a tight ship and we're able to do it because of, you know, again because of the position that we're in. So I think that's part of why it's such a win-win. Mr. Furfaro: Could we ask, your payroll...your PT&E, your payroll benefits, is what percentage of your total package? Do you know that? Ms. Wiley: I'm sorry, I don't. Dr. Rhoades: No, I do. It's... I want to say 65%, around there. 131 • • APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) Mr. Furfaro: Okay, that sounds about right. I mean that's on the low end of sounding about right. Dr. Rhoades: Yeah, and I think that's... I'm talking our overall budget versus just the county budget. I want to say it's right about there, and I will just mention something that Councilman Kawakami might be knowledgeable. But we did take over the SOS program this year for KIUC, and that's been a huge effort with a significant cost, which they did fund right at what it cost us. But it's been a great partnership, and I think that we're hoping to build on that. When Laura talks about our quarantine program our that program, we receive no funds from the State, we receive no funds from the federal government, the quarantine program is paid for by pet owners directly to us, not anything through the State, and we don't receive any funds from any national organization, other State organizations; we are a local humane society supporting Kauai. We're Kauai, all about Kauai, money raised stays here. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, go ahead, Dickie. Mr. Chang: You know, I was wondering, because having sat here all day with Jay Furfaro, he's been asking about stimulus packages. Are there stimulus packages for animals? Ms. Wiley: Hey sure. June is buy 2, get one free...cats. Mr. Chang: Seriously, because we were talking from department to department, and there were people within the county and people within their own departments that are just looking for any... I just thought that... Dr. Rhoades: I can speak to that. Ms. Wiley: I know. I'm sorry. Dr. Rhoades: I think that... The big thing on our plate with Mark Marshall, and the county as well as the State, is communities can no longer... If we get a federal disaster, communities can no longer apply for FEMA funding without providing for pets, and whether it's pet sheltering, pet rescue, pet transport, and all of that. This is a new thing for us here in the State of Hawaii, and we have a lot of work to do on preparing for the next storm. And we work closely with Mark's department as well as the State in helping to train, but we have a long way to go. If I were to say stimulus money, the government's stimulus money, to come down to assist with our community in providing public safety and health and safety, it would be...that's one of the key things that needs to be funded better for us to be able to prepare better for when the event happens, because right now we're not there. Mr. Chang: Because the Humane Society is a certified... Dr. Rhoades: We're one. Right. Mr. Chang: But it's somewhere animals can go for shelter. Dr. Rhoades: Right. But now all public shelters have to accept animals...that are pets, household pets, not horses and all that...common household pets, and that's something that we have a lot of work to do on, and that may qualify for some of the stimulus funding in helping us develop that resource, which needs to happen for us to qualify for FEMA funding. Mr. Chang: You know, another question for Laura Wiley. Can you give us an example? You said you were running out of ideas as far as your fundraisings...your fundraisers were 132 • • APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) concerned, because I know that there's been probably some of the best parties that was hosted by the Humane Society, and it always seems as though you get a big crowd. I mean can you tell us, do you net 20 grand? 25? 30? Ms. Wiley: What did we net last year? Was it about 60? Dr. Rhoades: Most important is what you look at is what it cost you and your expenses related to your income, and we commonly ran about 60%. So we were making 40~ for every dollar raised. Last year we had it, it was just under 40%. So we made 6¢ per dollar. We actually netted 100,000...just under $100,000 last year. But when you look at our overall budget, that is our annual...our only fundraiser of the year. Mr. Kaneshiro: 96,658. Ms. Wiley: 96,658, thank you. What I meant, Dickie, was, you know, there was a time when we didn't have private boarding, and that idea was thought of and brought to fruition, and there was a time when we didn't have quarantine, that idea was thought of and... So we've been thinking of ways to expand our revenue, and ~I didn't mean specifically a fundraiser gala: "Does that make sense? Mr. Chang: Yeah...no, because I was just... You know, as you identified, this is a different...pardon the pun, but this is a different animal that we're dealing with right now. And I think everybody needs to step outside of the litter box and think about creative ways or new ideas, and the reason that I say that is I think the Humane Society is totally different, because so many people own pets here, you know, they own pets, they have pets, they love pets, and maybe if there could be like a different niche or a different idea, I think of any not for profit, the Humane Society has the best opportunities to raise money. Dr. Rhoades: We do raise money, and that goes towards a whole lot of other programs that we do besides animal control for the county. We have dog training. We have pets (inaudible) support program. We have humane education. We do a lot of outreach and a lot of other programs that cost us significant funds. I think that the basic public health and safety related to disease and dangerous animals is a responsibility of the county. And donor dollars have been used to supplement our work, and used in a way to help us do better in saving animal's lives by providing them with healthcare, and longer time in the shelter to make them available for adoption, and training, a clean and healthy environment, a beautiful building... I mean I think there's a whole lot of things that we do, but I think all our communities need to recognize the importance of the critical services of public health and safety with animals when 2 out of 3 households do have animals. And our goal is to maintain harmony, our goal is to continue our great relationship with the county, and really maintain the great quality of life we have with animals here on Kauai. And that is our role, and I think an important role. But donor dollars towards all the other work we want to do, I don't think belong continuously in trying to provide a function that needs to be done by the government. Believe me, we more than happy to, it's a small town, and work best we can with making this work, especially during these difficult times. But it's hard for us to afford a decrease this year, and that's why we're asking if you would consider to keep our budget the same. Mr. Kaneshiro: Derek, you had a question? Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Mr. Chair. You guys are doing the enforcement of the bike path. Correct? Dr. Rhoades: Yes. 133 • • APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) Mr. Kawakami: And you guys are writing tickets. Dr. Rhoades: Yes we are. Mr. Kawakami: writing out? Dr. Rhoades: Mr. Kawakami: Dr. Rhoades: Mr. Kawakami: That money goes to the g~ You guys receive any money from the tickets that you guys are No. How much are the violations? How much do they cost? If it gets charged, it's $100 now, minimum, first offense. Since we got the right guys in the room, where does the money go to? mineral fund? Mr. Kaneshiro: No, the State. Mr. Kawakami: Oh, it goes to the State? But the State doesn't give you any money? Dr. Rhoades: No, we get no funding from the State. Mr. Kaneshiro: We've been fighting for that for years. That's one of the issues we've been fighting for years. Dr. Rhoades: We have been talking, and I think that one way that we can increase the revenue for animal management services for the county is to consider looking at dog licensing fees, and I think that's something that would help some. And the plan on trying to get that in place, if we could try and go after new ordinance and increase our dog licensing fees, I don't think they've ever been increased, they're overdue to be increased, and that would help if we could get those fees increased. They're a dollar a year... Mr. Bynum: But it's $5,000. Mr. Kaneshiro: The other thing I noted is that on your annual report, surprisingly, you know, for 2008 you did a little better though in fundraising as compared to 2007. You know, we always say that 2008 is a bad year, a recession year, and so forth, but I know your dinner and auction, you actually showed an increase over 2007. So that's a positive sign, manner, that shows, you know, the contribution to the Humane Society and the people concerned. I just wanted to point that out. Tim? Mr. Bynum: You have a mass operation, part of which is meeting the county's responsibility for animal control. Dr. Rhoades: Yes. Mr. Bynum: And we do that on a contract basis, but you're basically telling us the amount of money we give you doesn't cover that. So if I was a donor to the Humane Society, I may want to say to you, hey I want that money to go to animal welfare and shelter and the other programs you're talking about. I don't want you subsidizing a responsibility that belongs to the county of Kauai. Is that? 134 • • APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) Ms. Wiley: There's all kinds of donors that give all kinds of money to all kinds of nonprofits, and they are always allowed to make it (quote) a restricted donation, which means they give it to us with the understanding that it'll be spent on x, y and z, and we take it and we spend it on x, y and z. Mr. Bynum: But if we didn't have a humane society, we'd still have the responsibility of animal control. Dr. Rhoades: Yes. Mr. Bynum: And how do other municipalities cover that responsibility? Are you aware of that? Dr. Rhoades: Yes. Partially it's done through taxpayer dollars. Partially it's done through fees for reclaiming animals, the adoption fees, the license fees, fees for inspecting establishments that deal with animals. It all depends on every community as to how they fund their animal control program, but the bulk of it is funded through general fund. Mr. Bynum: Do most communities do that with nonprofits like Humane Society? Or do they do it on their own? Dr. Rhoades: Historically, it changed over to where some of the humane societies started contracting with county animal control agencies between the 50s and 70s, and partially it was due to the public outcry that the counties weren't doing a very good job. They felt that it could be done better under the hat of the humane societies whose mission is to protect animals, as well as taking on the mission to protect people by doing animal control. Now that's kind of switching some, because a lot of communities can't fund the humane societies adequately, and it's always a question of do you do continue to fund using donor dollars to supplement county budgets. Some have split off. A big example of the U.S. of that happening there's 2. There's San Francisco...the city of San Francisco and the city of New York. Hundreds of years the San Francisco SPCA did animal control for the city of San Francisco. Hundreds of years the ASPCA New York City did animal control for the city of New York. Last 15 years, they've both given that up because the government wouldn't give them the adequate amount of funding, so they had to build their own program. Government had to build their own program, and humane society or SPCA is still in the same town, and they've partnered really, really well. So now the SPCA can do a lot of the prevention of cruelty, still enforcing cruelty, but they no longer deal with animal control of the pit-bull fighting and the stray animals and that. Mr. Bynum: They tend to have a hybrid program. Dr. Rhoades: Right, and it can be a good partnership. Kauai is a really small town, and I think we all want animals to be cared for properly in our community, and we also want laws enforced and people protected from animals. And I think that our community, including our donors, are committed to seeing that and doing that and working together to do that. It's just we need to just continue to be responsible, and that's what we're trying to do for the organization. Mr. Bynum: So the budget you have from the mayor's office was roughly 64,000 less than what you received last year? Dr. Rhoades: Correct. Mr. Bynum: What is the cost of providing the service that you provide for the county? What's the difference between what we give you and what it costs? 135 • • APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) Mr. Furfaro: It might be better for us to ask Mr. Kaneshiro to send that over in written form, rather than trying to discuss all the moving parts of you know, what the actual payroll dollars are, cages, nets, all... you know. Mr. Kaneshiro: The other part is that we have this coming out in tomorrow's meeting. We have a report in tomorrow's meeting. So a lot of the information I have is actually coming out from that meeting. Dr. Rhoades: What report? Mr. Kaneshiro: We have you on the agenda tomorrow. Dr. Rhoades: You do? Mr. Kaneshiro: It's a quarterly report. Dr. Rhoades: Oh oh oh, yeah yeah. Right, right. Mr. Kaneshiro: It has nothing to do with what we're talking here, but I get a lot of the information from the quarterly report when I'm reviewing my council agenda for tomorrow. And that's how I got a lot of this information about, you know, how your revenues were coming in and how you're doing in revenues and so forth. But I had one specific question. In this chart you passed out, it shows a significant increase in bank fees. Ms. Kawahara: I was going to ask who is your bank. Mr. Kaneshiro: What do you mean by that? Dr. Rhoades: Credit cards. Mr. Kaneshiro: I don't understand. Significant increase in bank fees. Dr. Rhoades: Bank fees, credit card fees. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, your charge card increase. Dr. Rhoades: It's charge cards, and also what happened was if we carried so much money in the bank, we had a rollover in a sweep account and the interest...everything's come down and we're not making any money on that anymore, and so as a result, that used to cover our fees, a lot of our fees... Mr. Furfaro: But that's nationally. That's what's happening with credit in general nationally. Mr. Kaneshiro: And how are we doing with our spay/neuter program? Dr. Rhoades: Good. Mr. Kaneshiro: Because the county also subsidizes that. Dr. Rhoades: Yes. I think we're very busy, and new this year, we kicked it off last month, we're doing some mobile spay/neuter we got a couple of grants for out in the community for 136 • APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) cats. We're going to 8 different locations on the island to try and get more cats spayed and neutered because we get about 2 cats for every dog at the humane society. Mr. Kaneshiro: So has that been helping in bringing the numbers down somehow? Dr. Rhoades: It's not something we're probably going to see short term. It's a long term. Dogs, I think is doing... Dogs intake varies very little year to year. Pretty flat on the dog overpopulation. We still have homeless dogs. I don't want to make it sound like we don't have homeless dogs, but it's not growing at the rate that feral cats or free roaming cats... Mr. Kaneshiro: So the program is working. Dr. Rhoades: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: I remember when we had some contentious debates on this issue, I guess, when we first came out with the program. Ms. Wiley: _ ..Right, right. ~ __ _. ~ - _ Mr. Kaneshiro: That's great...for the different veterinarians and different... Ms. Wiley: One of my clients a couple weeks ago called me anal, and it's true. As a CPA, I mean you can't fight the numbers. If you have an unaltered cat, it breeds...there's 7 cats, they breed, there's...you know, the multiplier effect is phenomenal, so it has to be helping to some degree. Dr. Rhoades: And that's the program we do not want to cut, because investment upfront is huge. That and I.D. You know, we do a lot of micro-chipping and a lot of I.D. Both of those save lives. Mr. Kaneshiro: And that's the reason why I asked the question too, because it's been several years now since, you know, we initiated that budgeted program. Okay. Any other questions? Mr. Chang. Mr. Chang: I think I heard you say that there's a county chicken or rooster pickup like a dollar? What did we say? Is there apick-up fee? Dr. Rhoades: Yes, we charge $5 to pick up a chicken. Mr. Chang: "A" chicken. What if you got 3? Dr. Rhoades: We'll probably just charge $5, but what we wanted to avoid was a person gathering chickens for 2 weeks and when we had to pick up 200 chickens. The point... I started the chicken humane trapping/pick up program back when I came over here because there was a lot of demand, and people were doing really inhumane things to the chickens. So we started to offer something, and it really exploded where most of my officers on the road were taking a lot of time handling chickens, when we had a lot of other things that we needed to be doing. So we felt that we'll accept chickens 7 days a week during our open hours. We're open 7 days a week. They can bring them in, no fee, and we'll euthanize the chickens, that's what we do. But if they wanted the convenience of us picking them up, we do charge a $5 fee. Mr. Chang: So it's not inhumane to euthanize the healthy chickens? 137 APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) Dr. Rhoades: We provide euthanasia, which is what we consider a humane death. They're handled by professionals and given an injection versus them being poisoned or darted or shot. We feel it is more humane. As to what you do with them... I mean some people actually trap and relocate chickens. We don't feel that's the responsible thing for us to do and just relocating the problem. So if we do receive chickens, we do euthanize game fowl. If we do receive unusual chickens, like Rhode Island Reds or Leg...you know, we'll adopt those out. But the game fowls we don't adopt out and we don't try to find homes. Mr. Chang: You know how many chickens you pick up a month that you can charge 5 bucks? Dr. Rhoades: Well, it's really slowed down since we charged the $5. Mr. Furfaro: She doesn't charge, she pays. It's a bounty. Mr. Chang: No, they pay... Dr. Rhoades: No, we don't pay. They pay us to pick them up, and it's to help cover (inaudible). Mr. Chang: Wouldn't that be a...I don't want to say a fundraising opportunity, but can that not generate some money? Dr. Rhoades: It hasn't. People are bringing them in on their own. Mr. Kaneshiro: Might be easier we just neuter the roosters. Dr. Rhoades: It's not easy. Mr. Kaneshiro: We can put them under the spay program too. Dr. Rhoades: And then there's some new companies out there, you know, that help fill the void. There's rooster traps dot com, and now there's royal chicken chasers dot com. Mr. Furfaro: Becky, where is all that information, because you know, we're now appearing on the Wall Street Journal as well, and I think there are people that are writing to us and portraying this as, you know, there is no alternative. But the reality, what you're telling us right now... Dr. Rhoades: Oh yea, there's options out there. Mr. Furfaro: Where can people find that? Is it on your website? Dr. Rhoades: It is on our website. Mr. Furfaro: Is it possible we could get some of that information over to the county's website as well, because there is this opinion that, you know, the chickens are...they're in roost in paradise, is what the article said on Wall Street. And yet, you know, we want to do the right thing, and I also wonder if there isn't, in your opinion, the possibility of some money as this is a remnant of what happened from the hurricane. Dr. Rhoades: Well, I don't think it's a... I don't think a nuisance control or maintenance program on the chickens is probably appropriate for the Humane Society. I think it's 138 • • APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) more appropriate for possibly health department or fish and wildlife as to the effect or whatever's happening with it, what the chickens are causing. Mr. Furfaro: But see, if you could let us know what is available, the reality, it hasn't been successful to the degree that we want it to be. We can bring it to other agencies, like health, like fish and game, and try and look about the possibility of gaining an opportunity to do something. Now I know that's not part of today's immediate problem with your budget, but I'm going to ask you a very strong question now. If this council reinstates the $64,000 because your budget went from 651 or 650 down to 591, are we going to be assured that you're not going to cut any other services? Dr. Rhoades: Absolutely. Ms. Wiley: So absolutely. Dr. Rhoades: We'll maintain the same amount of the service we have today. Mr. Furfaro: So..:because I` mean if' you°-don't get "it, the othei alternative is° you have to make some cuts. Ms. Wiley: Right. Mr. Furfaro: But if we are able to restore it... Because you know, May 2 is when we're going to start certifying revenues and so forth, they'll be able...a time for us to have a second look at this. And you know, the question for me is if we do restore it, are we going to maintain the level of service we have right now. Dr. Rhoades: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: For the chickens, we can look at other potential opportunities, because it has become a nuisance. Mr. Chang: Is there... Excuse me Jay. Mr. Furfaro: I'm pau. Mr. Kaneshiro: You have a question? Not about the chickens is it? Mr. Chang: No. Mr. Kaneshiro: About the budget? Mr. Chang: Yeah. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Chang: So you know, taking over the program Save Our Shearwaters from KIUC, is there a way to get, you know, perhaps some federal funding for that program? Dr. Rhoades: Maybe...down the road. We may go into that. Well, we've never received federal funding, and I'm not sure exactly what KIUC's...if all their funding is KIUC funding or if they... I'm not sure where their money comes from for this program, but that's a possibility. 139 APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) Mr. Kawakami: Yeah, we pay. The members pay for that program. Dr. Rhoades: Right. So as to additional funding, I'm not sure, but I think it's... As we're all looking at the habitat...the HCP plan for the different businesses, as well as making an HCP plan for the island, I think that the services regarding the shearwaters is something that we're wanting to partner with in a variety of ways that we can. So we're keeping our options open. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Asing had a question. Council Chair Asing: Yeah. My apologies for... Well, I'm going to ask about the chickens again, only because I thought that there was a State law against killing chickens. Am I wrong? Dr. Rhoades: There's a State law against being cruel to animals, no matter what type of animal it is. If it's not considered... Council Chair Asing: Would killing be against the law then? Dr. Rhoades: It would depend how it's killed. Council Chair Asing: How it's killed. Dr. Rhoades: Correct. Council Chair Asing: You know, and that would be an interesting case if it were ever presented. But if it's a cruel killing, if it's an act of cruelty, and shooting b-b guns at chickens or cats or dogs is fairly cruel, and so...because you don't kill them, you maim them. If you shot a chicken and killed it instantly, as shooting a horse or even shooting a dog, and you killed it instantly, that might be considered humane...if it's done properly. But I... Poisoning is not considered humane. There's a variety of issues with it, and so that's why when you asked the question is there a law against it, there's a law against cruelty to animals, and that's the judgment on each case. Council Chair Asing: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: The other thing about the chicken, as long as you kill it we can eat it, so not too bad. That wouldn't be considered under the cruelty if you do that. Dr. Rhoades: I wondered if the economy might affect the chickens. Mr. Kaneshiro: It's not that bad, you know, really. Mr. Kawakami: No, with green papaya. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, it's great. You can make some good dishes. Ms. Kawahara: Wild chicken? Mr. Kawahara: Papaya chicken. Mr. Kaneshiro: I think that would be a great idea for fundraising, Humane Society. Do a chicken recipe. Ms. Wiley: I can hear it now. 140 ~~ Dr. Rhoades: No, no. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, okay. Dr. Rhoades: Let somebody else do that. APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) Mr. Kaneshiro: Lani had a question, then we'll close up. Ms. Kawahara: Councilmember Furfaro was talking about the funds that you needed to maintain the current services, and this is a format question, because I got the requested budget sheet. These that are listed here, are they broken out by the current services are specifically provided by the Humane Society just for the County. Ms. Wiley: That's correct. Ms. Kawahara: So anything on this list would be somehow something could be cut from if you don't get that 64,000 (inaudible). Dr. Rhoades: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, that's what I wanted to know. Mr. Furfaro: I think that led into Mr. Bynum's question. Mr. Bynum: Does it? Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: I want to be absolutely clear on this. You are equipped through your facilities for a euthanasia program for chickens. Dr. Rhoades: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: So if we are able to find funds through other sources, health department and so forth, is that something that the Humane Society is willing to take on? Dr. Rhoades: I don't know. Mr. Furfaro: I think it's a question maybe ... Dr. Rhoades: If the volume went up to...say the volume... It would depend on the volume of chickens. Right now we probably handle on average of 6 chickens a day, and if the volume went up to 100 chickens a day, we would need to be have funded, you know. It wouldn't be a part of our... Mr. Furfaro: I meant about finding funding. If we found funding and this was done humanely and for a fee, it is a program that you could participate in. Dr. Rhoades: Absolutely. Ms. Wiley: You think, really? 141 APRIL 7, 2009 KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY (4) Dr. Rhoades: I think that... I don't know who... I don't know where else you would go. I'm going to say that. Mr. Furfaro: I don't know where else we would go too, and I don't know enough about these other things that we're dealing with, you know, bird flu and, you know, things like that that I mean... Dr. Rhoades: The federal government has a program called wildlife services, and they remove birds from private landowners, the mall, they do the airport, they do some...there are other areas. Some animals they bring to us, and some animals they euthanize on their own. And we know them well. We'd be happy to talk with them if there was a chicken program to be developed as to how we could possibly assist. Mr. Furfaro: And again, Dr. Becky, I'm just kind of querying if we pursued some of that information. You've answer my question. For the budget, if we gave you the $64,000 back, the reality is we're not going to lose any services. Dr. Rhoades: No, that is real. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thank you very much. There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 3:10 p.m. 142 • • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) The departmental budget review reconvened at 9:07 a.m., and proceeded as follows: POLICE DEPARTMENT Mr. Kaneshiro: Members of the committee, we have the police department this morning. Welcome Chief, Deputy. You can start by introducing yourself for the record, just for our records here, and do a brief overview of your budget, or any highlights that you wanted to point out about your budget. So you may start, Chief. DARRYL PERRY, Chief of Police: For the record, I'm Police Chief Darryl Perry with the Kauai Police Department, and I'm here with Deputy Chief Mark Begley, and we are discussing the Kauai Police Department budget for fiscal year 2009 and 2010. The proposed budget by the mayor's office and by KPD is approximately 15.5% of the county's overall budget, or $24,400,765. This is an increase of 19.4% or $3,990,813 from the 2008 and 2009 budget, which was $20,409,952. The variances are as such: the salaries, we had an increase of $538,634, and this is attributed to collective bargaining agreements and the increase in premium pay. This is in regards to SHOPO pay increases of 6% and uniform and gun allowance of $720 per officer. That's the majority of the raises. There's also benefits where there was an increase of $3,506,293 and this is attributed to the health fund, the retirement compensation, workmen's compensation, and other post employment benefits, and that equal to approximately...the other post employment benefits is $2.5million that was placed in our budget. So that's where the majority of the increase took place. In terms of operations we had a decrease of $54,114, and this was attributed to travel. We cut our travel by 50%, and we also cut nonessential training, training that we don't need to be certified with we cut back on that another 50%, and also equipment that we can hold off for the future. So those are the major areas where we put our budget together. Now in terms of vacancy, (inaudible) asked us about the vacancy, so I went ahead and did some research on that. We have, for sworn positions we have 148. Currently we have 13 recruits in recruit class, and we have 16 vacancies. We have recently had 91... Mr. Kaneshiro: Hold on one second Chief. Council Chair Asing: Is there any reason why we don't have that portion down here, the portion that you make reference to? Chief Perry: That's my talking points, and if you have any questions to that, I can get you that information. - Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Right now we don't have a handout on that, so... Council Chair Asing: Yeah, and that's what...because I was following you, and we got all the way to equipment, and then all of a sudden it disappeared, there was nothing here, and you are talking, and I'm saying where is it. So anyway, that's the reason. Chief Perry: What I'll do is I'll wait for your questions. That's my overview. Mr. Kaneshiro: Can you go over it again once more on the...on your staffing. Since most of the time we were looking for that here, so we can at least write it down. Chief Perry: Sure okay. On the staffing, we have... I'm talking about sworn positions now. We have 148 sworn officers and 2 appointees, which would be myself and the deputy chief. We currently have 13 recruits in recruit training right now, and we have 16 vacancies. 143 • Mr. Kaneshiro: Any questions on that at this point? • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) Mr. Furfaro: I just want to make sure it's 148 plus the 16. It's 148 positions of which 16 are vacant? Chief Perry: No, the 16... Within that 148 there is 16 vacancies. So our maximum strength is 148. Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, okay, plus the 2 of you. Mr. Furfaro: And the 16 vacancies are in the 148, of which you currently have 13 recruits. Chief Perry: Correct. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Chief. Thank you Chairman. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay', you cari proceed. '- T ' ~" ~' Chief Perry: We had 91 applicants for our vacancies, but currently, as we whittled down the list, we currently have about 75 individuals that are interested in becoming police officers. So we feel very confident by the end of the year we'll be filling those 16 vacancies. Mr. Kaneshiro: Do we have a friendly lunch bet? Council Chair Asing: (Inaudible) in all the years that I've been on this council, that has never, never happened. I mean I just want to give you a little bit history, and of course I had a little side bet (inaudible) because he made the same type of statement that it was going to be filled, and I (inaudible). I don't know whether it was 6 months or 4 months. I said I'm going to bet you a lunch. Mr. Kawakami: Is that a bet? Mr. Kaneshiro: You might have to buy the lunch this time. Council Chair Asing: I sense you're trying real hard, and you have a plan, and you're moving, so I applaud you. I give you a lot of credit for it. You're trying hard, and if you do achieve it, that's great. That's great. But I want to tell you that in my experience here, it's been a tough road, and you know, my experience here also, you know, I can remember the first few years being here not knowing at all the function of the police department and the kinds of things they get involved with and their responsibilities. You know, I've picked up over the years that it's a tough, tough job. It wears on you, you know, your body, your spirit, you know, it's every day, you know, I'm on the road and I'm arresting people, and I'm...some people call it harassing people, but that's my job, you know, and I have to do my job. But it just wears on you and it wears you down, and it's not an easy job. So I recognize that, you know, that it's a real tough job. So I can understand why it's so tough to fill those vacancies and get it up to par and running. So thank you very much for trying. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro, you have something? Mr. Furfaro: Chief, you ever remember a time where in recent record that we had a potentially a pool of 70 plus applicants being available to us? Chief Perry: I haven't, but perhaps the deputy chief maybe. 144 • • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) MARK BEGLEY: Around 1989. Mr. Furfaro: That long ago? Deputy Chief Begley: Just a rough guess. Mr. Furfaro: Would you say that the recruitment effort and the current economic condition has had many people considering more regular work by applying, because the same is true in the military right now. The military seems to have gone through a pretty robust process of people trying to get back in. Would you see the economy has cultivated these possibilities? Chief Perry: I would say that's part of it. But actually, the applicants we've received were a little bit prior to that...to the economic downturn, because it takes a long time for the processing to begin. So it kind of pushed it forward. But I believe through the help of the community and of course the council and the police commission, we were able to get the word out that KPD is moving in another direction. So we've had an increase in applicants exponentially, and now we have this number 75. Mr. Furfaro: Would I understand that that pool of resources, this 70 plus whatever that number was, these are people who have passed the test? Chief Perry: They have passed the test and they have passed a portion of our background. Mr. Furfaro: And a portion of the background check. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Chang? Mr. Chang: Thank you. Chief, of the 75, can you tell us percentage-wise how many are from Kauai? Like from Kauai instead of coming in from maybe the mainland or other islands. Deputy Chief Begley: Applicants that are currently living on the mainland, I believe we have 7 applicants that are currently living on the mainland. But I wouldn't be able to tell you how many are transplants that have been on Kauai for a number of years prior to applying. Mr. Chang: And is it appropriate time to ask you now if you know how many you think you're going to lose to retirement this year, how many officers? Chief Perry: We haven't had any indication. We have about 11 that are eligible for retirement, and we were concerned about the bills that were going through legislature concerning cutbacks and the rest on benefits. But as of yet, we haven't received any information of the 11 that are intending to retire. But I anticipate within the next 3 to 4 years we'll have retirements, not in large numbers, but we'll have retirements along the line. Mr. Bynum: I just want to say briefly, the day you walk in your office and you're fully staffed, please give us a call, we're all...everybody at this table is going to want to have a big party and invite as many police officers as possible. So this is great to hear. Mr. Furfaro: I got one more question. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead. 145 • • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) Mr. Furfaro: Maybe more for the deputy chief. We're hearing many municipalities across the U.S. actually laying off because of budgetary constraints, reducing staff, not out of any requirement that they're overstaffed, but simply their tax base is not providing them opportunity to carry a full police department staffing. Have you had any queries from other departments across the nation where they are looking for ways to bring vacancies to the attention of people in their department, given the fact that they know they may be laying off officers? Deputy Chief Begley: I can respond to the first part of your statement. I'm not sure I understand your question though. Mr. Furfaro: Well, just out of compassion, I'm sure within police departments across the nation, when they have to reduce staffing because of these budgetary efforts, they sometimes go the extra mile and reach out sending out information about trained officers in their department that are looking to stay within public safety, but don't know where availability of jobs are. Are you hearing from any? Deputy Chief Begley: Actually, that has actually been occurring before this tremendous downturn in the economy. Because in the mainland you have a much different dyn'ama "You have sheriffs, police departments, all enforcement working hand-in-hand, and departments surrounded by many other smaller departments. So when a department shuts down because their individual city or county can no longer afford based on tax base, based on people moving away, those individuals are normally absorbed by the surrounding departments. And we have seen some of that. Some of that continues. Eastern seaboard has had layoffs in certain areas which are absorbed by surrounding departments. Mr. Furfaro: So the response to that is the tendency is they try to stay in their geographic areas first. Deputy Chief Begley: Generally that's correct. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Chief, you may proceed or continue if you have anything else. Chief Perry: On that line too, we've had one officer that left and came back. So he's...right now we have to do background checks on him again during the interim, so he's back. And we also had an applicant from the Maui PD that wants to come over here, and so far he'.s a...we find out that he's a very outstanding officer, and Chief Phillips doesn't want to lose him, but too bad, he's coming. That's the plan anyway. We also have 10 public safety worker positions currently. There are 4 fulltime, and these are the individuals that work in the cellblocks downstairs, and we made job conditional offers to 4 others, so right now we still have 2 vacancies, and we're looking at filling those vacancies, because we have incurred a large number of overtime, because that place has to be staffed 24 hours a day, and to fill those time gaps, we have to use police officers. So we feel that in the future that may bring down our overtime costs. Mr. Kaneshiro: So let me just ask you this. So you have 10 public safety worker positions, and currently there's several of them that you still need to fill out of the 10...for the 10 positions. Chief Perry: Right. We have 4 fulltime right now. We just brought on 4; they'll be going through training, so that'll leave 2 vacancies. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. 146 • • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) Chief Perry: In regards to civilian positions, we understand that there's a economic situation going on now, and although we need support staff, we understand and we'll do whatever is possible to keep the department going with the support staff we have. But in this budget, 2 positions were removed and that would include the community relations assistant position, and also the legal analyst position was transferred to the county attorney's office. Mr. Furfaro: Chief, you know the legal assistants that was placed in your budget was an initiative to help with loss prevention on behalf of the council. We have already done the county attorney's review, and we have identified that position being transferred to Mr. Castillo. Mr. Castillo made a very good presentation on his intent to make sure that that position, even if it's a matter of going to the police department on a daily basis, that the premiere duty of that individual has not changed from what we intended it to do-that he intends to use that position for ongoing training, support for the police department, interpretations of process on subpoenas and so forth, and he did led me to believe that he's committed to do that, and that he's had a pretty complete discussion with you on handling it that way. Would you concur with the county attorney that... Chief Perry: We've had a meeting concerning...with the mayor and the rest of the administrators, and we discussed the issue, and I can see the point of having the position consolidated, and assist us in that regard. As you know, historically the department has had a number of lawsuits, and that's why... Mr. Furfaro: That's why the council moved in that direction. Chief Perry: That's why it moved in that direction. The concerns that I had, and I relayed that to the mayor's office, is that the... First of all, the placement... First of all, the individual (him or herself), the police department historically has been a paramilitary organization, and you need somebody in there that has the know it all or the ability to think along those lines. We cannot have somebody there that is...that would be...not not aggressive, somebody's who's able to be assertive in their personality. You need that. You need some type of a leadership type of personality in there. So that's one. First the selection of the individual. Then we also have to do background checks, make sure this individual can be afforded the ability to review our confidential and sensitive information; that's another thing that we have to consider. The placement of the legal analyst, would the person be here in the police department, or will it be there in the county attorney's office. That was another issue that was discussed. In the Kauai Police Department, we are a paramilitary organization, and as you know, we have a rank structure, and within that, if you've been in the military, what we have what we call unity of command-one boss, one employee. An employee cannot have 2 bosses; either they're going to report to one individual or-the other. You cannot have both, or you'll have confusion along the way. That's another issue. We're also dealing about historical information. From time to time, we call deputy chief Kenny Robinson, because we don't have a real solid foundation of issues that have gone on prior to this administration so we have a good background we make our decision. In the department now we have no historical...that nobody there to say this is what happened before. Now Honolulu Police Department we have Tim Lea, we have Patrick Aloo, they've been there for 20 plus years, so if there's any issues concerning the legality of this or that, they'll be able to give you a history; we don't have that. And as you know, in the next 10 years or so or 5 years, we won't be here, some of us won't be here. The county attorney may not be here when they have a new mayor; I don't know. But so all of that may change again, and then the next person that comes in they'll say, well you know, we don't want this, we want to do our own thing, you don't need the individual there. So what I'm saying that it's too iffy. What we would want, and this is from my professional point of view, we need somebody there in the department. I support what the county attorney wants to do, but also, I was given the task to move this department forward, and a legal adviser would be a great assistance 147 • • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) to us. Many of the issues that come up that come up, the deputy and I are tackling by ourselves, because these...some of these issues are time sensitive and security sensitive, and we need somebody in there. Mr. Furfaro: So there's still room for discussion on that point. I do want you to know that I voiced my concern, because I felt also that the way we had presented what we wanted to accomplish at the council was also based on the fact that your goal of getting the department certified, accredited. Okay. Well thank you for that answer, Chief. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Chief. Mr. Chang? Mr. Chang: I was just... If I heard the county attorney correctly, he would love to assist you, and I think the question was, if you folks had room at your department for the legal analyst. I mean do you have a space for this person? Chief Perry: Yes we do. Mr.Kaneshiro: nOkay':`. _ _- -- _ .,_._. ,,_ __.~_ __~ Mr. Furfaro: I don't think the question was the space. I think what we have is a need for more discussion. I'm hearing from the chief that in an effort to be unified in process, it would be preferable that that analyst is there and reporting to you. I think what we saw in the budget was the analyst in the county attorney's office with kind of a dotted line, and that doesn't necessarily work. Mr. Kaneshiro: You had a question Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: I really appreciate this discussion both from you and the county attorney being so frank and open with it, and you know, because the county attorney, I thought, made a pretty compelling argument because of his background being in the prosecutor's office and his involvement with criminal law and his commitment to service the police department that, you know, that was a good location. But I also hear your...the departments are structured differently. You answer to a police commission, you know mayors get elected, you know county attorneys get appointed. So I hear... Do I hear correctly that part of your argument is longevity-getting the right person into that structure where you're not going to be worried about changes of administration and... Chief Perry: And changes with us. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, you talking about continuity, Chief. Mr. Bynum: Right, continuity. And so...but you know, I want to commend both you and the county attorney for having this kind of open dialogue about it. So it's a very interesting... I'm not sure how we'll deal with it yet, but...you know, but if right now that position's dollar funded, I mean so...you know where we house it is one question, but whether we fund it is... Mr. Kaneshiro: Where we find the money. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, if we can find money. Mr. Kaneshiro: But we hear both sides, so we appreciate that. We appreciate, and I think, you know, as we move forward with the budget, when we come to the point of supplemental budget, we'll probably be able to compromise and hopefully be able to get that position at least from 148 • • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) the dollar funded to a full funded position. So that's one goal we still got to work on. Thank you. Mr. Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: So we'll move on from that. Can we talk about these other administrative positions that are dollar funded? Mr. Kaneshiro: Did you have a little bit more to add before we go into that, or... Chief Perry: Oh no. I was going to talk about some of the grants. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, why don't we take the positions up first, and then we can go into... Mr. Furfaro, you had a question about personnel? Mr. Furfaro: Can you tell us a little bit more about the 2 positions that are dollar funded that show up in your budget? One is a personnel clerk, and the other is a SR16 secretary. Deputy Chief Begley: This was a decision that we made in an effort to reduce our budget to contribute to the overall finance department's concern with reducing budget. So we made a decision to dollar fund one of our secretaries in the chief's office, as well as the personnel clerk II position. We were just all going to pitch in and cover the things that we've been covering for the last several years. We hope that those dollar funded positions will remain in our budget so that when the economy turns around, we'd be able to fill them. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. That's the whole purpose of putting a dollar there. Thank you for the answer. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum, you had a question? Mr. Bynum: Last budget we added that position in the chief's office, is that correct? I don't remember all the details of the discussion, but I thought you made a pretty compelling argument that it was going to service critical needs in the police department, and that's why we put it there. I assume those reasons haven't changed. Chief Perry: Hasn't changed. Mr. Bynum: Because I remember talking...being over at the police department saying, is that person onboard yet? So it's been a year that that's been in. Is there a reason that wasn't filled sooner? Deputy Chief Begley: We wrote the position. The position was approved by the prior administration. We went out to recruitment. We actually had a large list of eligible applicants for the secretary's position. That's when positions were frozen by the administration. In going into the 2010 budget, we just made the decision to dollar fund it realizing there is bad economies, and...which means I'm going to continue to have to work harder, and the other staff in our office, the chief, and Gayle, and everyone else are going to continue to have to work... Mr. Bynum: You concurred with that decision. It wasn't imposed on you? Deputy Chief Begley: I'm sorry. Mr. Bynum: You concurred with that decision? It wasn't imposed on you? 149 • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) Deputy Chief Begley: No, it was not imposed on us. We made an initial argument to keep it, and we understand the philosophy by...you know, which we're currently operating. Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you. Lani. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any other questions regarding personnel? Go ahead Ms. Kawahara: So it's a great thing that you got 13 more recruits moving on, and also sounds like you have 2 left to fill for your public safety workers. With the new people coming on, do you think that there's going to be the same overtime needs that you have listed here? Chief Perry: No, we looked at... Well, of course we don't know. Our work is dynamic and it changes from time to time. We also have grants that will cover some of the overtime costs for narcotics/vice and traffic. But we anticipate, especially at the cellblock area, that we'll be cutting our overtime. I can't say how much, but we'll be significant cuts in that area. 1VIs. Kawahara: Because Isee -that last year that that was a significant issue with'the ' -~ cellblocks. And did you actually institute a policy about what types of workers will be monitoring the cellblocks, or is it just word of mouth policy? Chief Perry: No. We have a procedure in place on who do we call based on their availability and based on our needs. We have a procedure. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, so we're not going to have captains and chiefs at the top of that list accruing that money in overtime. Chief Perry: No. We have our pecking order. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? Derek. Mr. Kawakami: Hi Chief. You know, just on a personal note, the school crossing guards, the positions here that are funded, does that cover all the schools on the island, and if so, are they all filled? Chief Perry: No, it doesn't cover all the schools on the islands. In fact, we have several vacancies. I don't have the names off...the number off the top of my head, but I think of those numbers, we have maybe about 6, and they're located at like Wilcox and Koloa...I'm sorry, I don't have those areas, but they're not all filled. Mr. Kawakami: When you refer to Wilcox and Koloa, that's the schools with vacancies now, or... Chief Perry: No, we have a crossing guard over there now. I can get you that information. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll send a communication to that, then you can show us what schools are covered and which one. Chief Perry: Those positions were initially at the...I believe Personnel, and we took...Finance. We took over those positions because it was mandated in the statutes it covers under chief of police. So we just took it over last year. 150 • ~ APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. We'll send a communication to that...to Mr. Kawakami's question. Thank you. Any other questions that we have regarding personnel? Ms. Kawahara: Maybe I can ask. Is the time and attendance system type thing I can ask about now? Mr. Kaneshiro: What's that again? Ms. Kawahara: Time and attendance. They were talking about time and attendance database to help track...if they put one in place. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, we're going to start to talk about the grants and so forth, but I just wanted to cover personnel side now. If you had any questions on the personnel side that the chief had talked about regarding it's 148...vacancies, public safeties, and so forth. So do we have anymore questions in that area? Mr. Furfaro: I just have a statement. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. Chief, I want to sincerely thank you for breaking your expected overtime down by units. It is a very nice tool to have. And can I assume that whether it came from patrol or so forth, those expected costs because they are variables that we can't control, are they in trend with the past year? Chief Perry: Yes. In fact, I believe we're either on track or below that. What we've required from each bureau is to submit to us a running log of their overtime expenditures, and if any and all projects, with the explanation as to why these moneys are being spent. So we're trying to be more fiscally responsible, and like you said, some things are out of our control. But that's the methodology we're using right now. Mr. Furfaro: Well, I appreciate that. You could actually reconcile that number based on trends and some expectation of personnel. So thank you so much. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? Mr. Asing, go ahead. Council Chair Asing: I have a question, Chief. Under operations, I noticed that you have nonessential training cut by 50%, and my question is, you know anytime we talk about training, and I'm not sure why you put nonessential training, you know, training to me is training, and the reason you put training is because you're looking for an end result. And to say nonessential, I hope you're not cutting your training and took the whole training line and tried to figure out maybe something in there that is nonessential, and it bothers me a little bit, you know. Anytime you cut training by 50%, it's a lot, so a little concern. Chief Perry: Let me explain just a little. All training, in my opinion, is very important. I believe HPD and this department, besides patrol division, training would be the most cost for the department. By that, I mean nonessential meaning when officers need to be certified, by that certified I mean SWAT members, do you have to be certified at a certain times...maybe once a year, our first aid, all of those essential type of certifications, those are essential. So by using nonessential, I didn't mean that it's not important. It is important, but it's not to the level of our officers that need certified for say CPR and the rest. You have to be certified, you have to be certified with your weapon, you have to be certified with other parts of our equipment that we carry, and that's a must because of risk management and liability factors. But I'm saying in training, 151 • • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) nonessential, say for example if they have a homicide training and they're going to talk about the certain type of investigation. If we can get that information by other means, then we'll go ahead and do that, and maybe we can delay it for the next year. That's what I meant by nonessential. What I meant was not right away, we don't need it right away, except for certified type of training. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum you had a question? Mr. Bynum: I had a couple other just quite...and maybe we could do them briefly. The rank officers, captain, lieutenant, are they all filled now, or...I mean are you guys where you need to...am I answering this question clearly? Chief Perry: We have vacancies at the assistant chief level. Clayton Arinaga retired. And we also have vacancies, a lieutenant, administrative lieutenant, and in the training, training area we have a vacancy there for lieutenant. So what we're looking to do is when the recruits graduate July 31, they'll have like a two and half month FTO training program, a field training program. At that time we're looking at promotions and transfers and moving everyone up at the same...filling in the... Mr. Bynum: (Inaudible) at this level or you're going to make those kind of movements. Chief Perry: Correct. We can't do it right now. We can't fill those positions, sergeant positions, because if we do, then we'll have all these pukas on the bottom, and we don't want to touch the patrol level. Mr. Bynum: Right. In the last session that we had here, the last council, there was a big issue about a warrants officer, and is there currently somebody assigned to warrants? Chief Perry: Right now it's in...the responsibilities lies with our patrol division. We're also having special projects within patrol. For example, last month we served a hundred...last quarter we served a hundred and something, about 20, bench warrants, but this is at the patrol level, and we still keep getting new documents come in. And we're also looking at working with the prosecutor's office to form a task force, but that's still in the works. When our officers are available, for example when YSS, youth services section, are available and they're not in school, then they go out on a...take a number of warrants and go out and serve them. So we've been addressing, not as effectively. To answer your question, no, we don't have anybody assigned to that specifically right now. Mr. Bynum: And the current status is, the service of these papers and warrants, is it in a crisis state right now, or is it similar to what would be in other departments and other parts of the State? Chief Perry: It's manageable right now, but we really have to stay on top of it, because especially the warrants, because if we have a felony warrant, we don't want that to lapse and we want to make sure that we go ahead and do it. So our priority has been focused on felony warrants. The last thing we want to do is have the warrant recalled because we didn't make any attempt to serve them. Mr. Furfaro: Is it a right assumption that that's approximately 400 units... Chief Perry: 4,000. We have 4,000 documents altogether. 152 • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) Mr. Furfaro: I want to say for felonies. Chief, I'm talking only felonies, is it about 400? (inaudible) Mr. Furfaro: Not the total. Chief Perry: No. All the documents included is 4,000. Ms. Kawahara: I'm sure you're aware we're talking about warrants and stuff for processing. So the prosecuting attorney put in for a position for a process server. Would that be a duplication of services that you already ride as a police? Does that put you in a bad place to ask? Deputy Chief Begley: We are currently responsible for all legal documents that come out of the courthouse-warrants, subpoenas, complaining summonses. The sheriff's office also has the authority to serve these documents. I believe as both agencies become more fully staffed, we'll be more capable of efficiently processing those documents for service. The district court recently issued a new rule in this regard regarding contempt of court warrants, which is a large margin of our warrants need to be served, contempt of court. People don't show up in court, the judge issues a warrant for their arrest. This is a large number of our warrants. District court recently started a new rule where these people will no longer be charged with a secondary offense, contempt of court, but we have the authority to arrest them, process them, bring them into the court. So the court is also looking at ways of reducing the seriousness, but still making sure these people come in and report for their prior offense that they were arrested for. I think as we become fully staffed, more fully staffed, we'll be more efficient in this. The short answer to your question is yes. If you give the position to another...an additional position for serving these documents to another agency, yes it will be a duplication of a particular service. Whether it's in the best interest of everybody at this particular time, I don't know. I don't know what kind of screening or what kind of procedures they're going to require, what kind of policies they're going to have in place for somebody doing these essentially the same functions as a police officer or a sheriffs deputy. So it wouldn't be prudent for us to comment on whether this is a smart move or not. Ms. Kawahara: So I'm hearing that... You just don't pick up these papers from the court and go willy Hilly out to get people. You have a screening process about...on that warrants right. So you already have a procedure in place about how you go about processing and going out and getting these sent out, right? Deputy Chief Begley: The court sends us all documents. TROs have the number one priority...protective orders and TROs. Second to that would be bench warrants. Then the Chief I think just mentioned that we're prioritizing the warrants, felony warrants, sex assaults, offenses that result in warrants, those take priority and our officers have been working in task forces. So there is a priority of service, but... Ms. Kawahara: So you do have a system in place already to deal with it. Deputy Chief Begley: Yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Whereas a new position somewhere else they would have to recreate something on their own. Deputy Chief Begley: I think that these are things that you should consider. What kind of minimum qualifications, what kind of screening process you're going to have for the individuals that 153 • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) you're going to give the same authority as a police officer or a deputy sheriff has in regards to serving warrants, subpoenas, and (inaudible). Mr. Bynum: Making that move would be... It be a new precedent? Deputy Chief Begley: In regards to warrants? To my knowledge it would be. Mr. Bynum: And that was my previous question about, you know, how...is the situation...how serious is it? It is crisis, you know, the bad guys are getting away scot-free right and left, or is it, you know, difficulty but being managed. Because some of the things you just said were things that came out of hearing last session that how to...was how to address it with the school resource officers doing it in downtimes, and those things are still occurring. Mr. Furfaro: Is your mike on Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Sorry. They can never hear me, so... So I'm just trying to get a sense of what the status is. Is it like a serious challenge, or is it crisis time? Chief Perry: Right now it's manageable, but as the deputy said, as we become full staffed, we'll be able to better address those issues. Mr. Bynum: So like other priority issues, with the staffing, you see things improving. Chief Perry: Oh yes. Mr. Bynum: Thank you very much. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Asing, go ahead. Council Chair Asing: I was just going to follow up with... You mentioned earlier that you are working with the prosecuting attorney's office in forming a task force to look at this problem. Am I correct? Chief Perry: Yes. We had... Council Chair Asing: Then, you know, that being the case, then we should just wait for you to finish the work with the task force before doing anything, because that's the reason for doing it. The task force is designed to look at the problems and try to come up with recommendations to resolve the problems. Am I correct? Is that the intent of the task force, or am I wrong? Chief Perry: No, that's correct. We've been... We've discussed this about 3 weeks ago, and we've been having a difficult time setting a secondary meeting, afollow-up meeting to this. So that's why I said we were in the process. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, that's fine. Anything else before we continue, on personnel, that chief has already spoken about and deputy have talked about? If not, Chief go ahead. Chief Perry: I'd like to just talk briefly about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. What we're looking at is initially when this COPS grant was proposed, it was over a billion dollars for new officers throughout the United States, so it's a competitive grant. And I wanted to put in for 35 new officers, which they said no, you're not going to do that. So what we did is we submitted a grant for 4 new officers, and it's for 3 years, and the total cost would be 154 • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) about $1.1 million, and the county's cost would be for $128,000 for benefits and the rest. So we have... I just signed off the paperwork, and you guys know about it. It's coming through the process. We're also looking at in other justices system a JAG grant and working in coordination with the prosecutor's office, and that's for another $191,000. And so Lt. Dan Miyamoto is working with the prosecutors on that grant. And recently we had the... A flyer came out. I don't have all the information on that. It's just in the preliminary stage, but it's a broadband grant for our radio system, and it's a...it's by the department of commerce, and they have $270million, and of that it's a competitive grant again. So we're looking at submitting that through Senator Inouye's office for our radio system. So those are the areas that we're looking for the stimulus package. We tried to get stimulus money for substations, but because we didn't meet the criteria being able to start those projects right away, we did not qualify. So these are the only areas in which we're looking at for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act right now. We have other grants in place, like the domestic cannabis eradication program. Mostly drug and prevention program, and also traffic grants that we're...we have right now, and we're continuing to use. But the biggee, the big one is... Well, a letter of commitment from the wireless E-911 board, which will help us with our mobile CAD system and RMS, and that's for about $5million. It was a letter of commitment was given to us. We also have a...looking at the homeland security grant of about $500,000 for the alternate dispatch center, and also MDTs, mobile data terminals. We're looking at other areas for getting moneys for the department so that we realize the county cannot foot all the bills. That's our attempt to be, again, fiscally responsible. Mr. Kaneshiro: Great. Questions? Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: I apologize if I missed something when I stepped out here. But you mentioned MDTs, and you know, again in the past we talked a lot about off'icers' frustration about being able to...needing to go into stations to be off the street to file. Where are we at with that? Are we in a better place than we were? Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Deputy Chief Begley: We expected we'll start making equipment purchases before the end of the year, one of our grants expires at the end of the year, so we'll have to begin making equipment purchases before the end of the year. Part of the holdup and the concern was that we did not have a system that was operating...functioning properly-CAD/R,MS interfaces. To tie MDTs into a system that is not working properly would have been a waste of time, in my opinion. The other concern is what type of antenna we were going to put into the MDTs, which is difficult to determine before we have other things in place. But at this stage, we're going to have to realign some of the minor priorities in being that we're going to have to start purchasing equipment. It will not be fully online most likely before the end of the year, but officers will probably have laptops that they can start working on their reports on laptops that will be issued to them so they can start at least working on the...electronicallytyorking on their reports at their convenience. Mr. Bynum: So the software issues have been addressed and now you're looking at equipment, or... Deputy Chief Begley: CAD, no. CAD interfaces with the RMS. We're still having problems with that, and IT has been working with us in trying to resolve some of those issues. But it'll never be what we need until we are able to upgrade the system. That's a work in progress. Mr. Bynum: Okay. Deputy Chief Begley: Avery extensive and complex work in progress. Mr. Bynum: Right, and something we've been talking about for 3 years. 155 • • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) Deputy Chief Begley: Yeah, and if we had a legal analyst and if we had a secretary and if we had all the civilian staff that we need, we'd be able to get right on this stuff and finish it. Mr. Furfaro: Touche, deputy. Mr. Bynum: I'm not being critical. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. I'm going to ask the chairman of the committee to send over a couple questions to you that I would like a written response to. Number one dealing with the police substation. Did I just hear that we're perhaps not pursuing any federal moneys on that at this point, because I was of the impression that I believe we have something temporary like in Po`ipu, right? Chief Perry: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: But wasn't it our goal to get a facility for the southslioe; and wouldn't taking advantage of applying for some of this money be to our benefit? Chief Perry: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, I'll send over that question about the (inaudible) substation. Secondly, this manpower training that's available to us, you're only applying for 4 positions. But is it for us to qualify or get the department accredited? One of the things that you were pushing for, Chief, was to eventually invest in training so that we could put out another beat, especially on the east side? Chief Perry: We actually looking at in the future to... We're realigning all our beats right now and should be coming out within the next couple of months, and we're actually adding 11 new beats, but we won't be able to fill all of those beats. Mr. Furfaro: I'm talking about the staffing of those beats. Chief Perry: The staffing of those beats. I'm just... We put in for 4 positions, and the reason is because of the fiscal concerns right now. My understanding was that the county would not be able to absorb the numbers I was looking, and that would... For us to fill at least 2 beats, we were looking at about 14 new officers. Mr. Furfaro: So first phase of that then is, the question is, when you realign the beats, could we have some conceptual idea of what kind of alignment you're talking about, and once you realign those beats, what would be the projected long term addition of personnel to kind of complete that? And thank you, the last one is referencing the dollar budget funded positions that administratively handicap you in moving forward with some of the particular software and training that Mr. Bynum so eloquently followed up on. I would like to see a question that poses what contributions will those 2 dollar funded positions make to expedite this particular need. Thank you. Council Chair Asing: I think they tried on that side and they weren't successful Mr. Kaneshiro: Chairman Asing, you also had a question that you wanted to ask. 156 i • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) Council Chair Asing: Yes I had a... My question is more, you know, I started with the COPS program, recovery act, and you went through a couple of grants, and then I lost track. So could you send all of that information over to us? Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll come with a communication requesting that, Chief. Thank you. Council Chair Asing: Because you were up to about the fifth grant, and then I... I said, what am I trying to do? Mr. Kaneshiro: We were trying to write them all down. Chief Perry: Oh I see. I apologize. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll get a communication to you so you can send that to us. Chief Perry: We'll get that information over. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any questions? Mr. Kawakami go ahead. Mr. Kawakami: Mr. Chair, I don't have a specific question, but I do have a point that I feel is important. Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Mr. Kawakami: If I can be afforded the opportunity. Chief, you know, we recently came back from a NACo conference, and while up in NACo, we have the opportunity to visit with our representatives up in Washington, DC. And I guess in the spirit of together we can, we also, prior to the meeting we went over to the administration to see what projects they were pushing for, and so that we could focus our efforts towards one common goal. And I just wanted to bring to your attention that one of the things that we're pushing for was a Kauai County law enforcement technology improvements, and that has to do with your telecommunication system, and the requested funding that we requested was for $975,000, and that account would be from the department of justice law enforcement technology and interoperability community oriented policing services. So just keep in mind that while you're out there searching for grants, we are on this side of the fence also pushing hard for your department. So thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Derek for that information. Any other questions regarding grants for the Chief or Deputy? If not, you had anything else that you wanted to continue to add? Chief Perry: I just wanted to talk briefly about the energy cost. I know several months ago the fuel prices have come... Well it went way up and it came down, and we were looking at ways of cutting back, which included actually modifying the take home care program by having administrative and noness...I should say nonessential, first responders still be able to use their car, but administrative staff leaving their cars at the station and driving, using their person vehicle. The reason why we have that, the cars, is because in some situations if emergency pops up I can respond straight from home to the scene. But what we're doing right now is we're looking at ways of cutting back. Simple things like we have memos going out in the office turning off the lights and the rest. So we take that very seriously. One of the things that we decided to do in anticipation of the costs involving our vehicles is to do a cost benefit of having a subsidized fleet program, and the study was just completed by Dr. Lawrence Boyd, and Masters of Arts Paul Briggs. They just finished the study and there appears to be some savings with respect to vehicles if we use the subsidized program on an incremental basis. Slow transition towards subsidized vehicles. It's still in its infancy stages in 157 APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) reviewing this. But what I wanted to do is bring the 2 researchers to Kauai to give a presentation to the council and to the mayor's office, and so that we all can get a better understanding of how we can save some money and still be effective to our communities. So we've taken that step forward, and I'll be sending out that memo. Mr. Furfaro: You'll be sending something to Councilman Kawakami who chairs our public safety committee and get it on the agenda? Chief Perry: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Good. Thank you. Mr. Bynum, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: Very briefly. Subsidized meaning officers would provide their own vehicles and be subsidized, like the Big Island does? Chief Perry: ~ Like 'Big Island and Honolulu. 'The officer goes out:.. "Because T've been under that program for my entire career, HPD. What you do is you go out and you purchase a vehicle, you purchase the vehicle, and you get insurance...comprehensive insurance, the department covers the liability portion, and you use the car 24 hours a day, you have the equipment in your car, and the rest, and you're subsidized to a tune of...well I'm not sure what it is now, I forget. (Inaudible) Chief Perry: It might be more now a month. Mr. Furfaro: I think we saw that once a few years ago, but it was a monthly subsidy. Chief Perry: The vehicles last a long time. The officers take care of it. It's more fuel eflicient. And we are able to respond to the scene similar to the take home car program that we have now. Mr. Bynum: I'll be interested to hear that presentation. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, good. Okay. Anything else you wanted to add in regards to the budget review? Chief Perry: Well, the bottom line is I know we're all cutting back on... We trying to do our best to hold the line on finances, but the bottom line is that the community is still safe, we're still out there working, so you need not worry about that. So that's (inaudible). Mr. Kaneshiro: You were prepared for Derek's question then. You've seen some of these reviews before, some of the review questions. Okay Chie£ Any other questions or comments for the chief, members of the committee? Mr. Furfaro: Actually, I'm going to send this question over to you, committee chairman. You know, it's hard to go through the police budget and understand how much training was actually taken up, because it appears in several areas. So I would like to get that more reconciled other than the 50 percentile they put in the narrative. I would like to get a better idea. 158 • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, so we'll send a communication over to you and then you can respond as to show us the different areas that perhaps the 50% takes place. Mr. Furfaro: And then the other one, the administration has told us the directive went out about saving travel. But they did not particularly get involved with what was cut, and where it was left to the individual divisions. And may I assume that you scrutinized how much you could reduce your travel? That was actually done in the department? Chief Perry: travel. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Kaneshiro: deputy? Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Kaneshiro: Correct. The deputy and I sat down one night and went over all the Thank you. Thank you Mr. Chair. Anyone has any other questions or comments for the chief and I do. Okay Jay. Mr. Furfaro: Grant writing. We've had some various... But for the entire scope of public safety, there is one grant writer who's in civil defense. It is my understanding that you have access to him, as well as the fire department. Is that correct? Deputy Chief Begley: Yes. Elton. Yes. Mr. Furfaro: And do you have people that initiate... Like the fire department had about 5 or 6 captains and battalion chiefs then shop, and I hate to use that term, because The Garden Island doesn't give it justice when I try to use it, so you view, you evaluate what we might align ourselves up with pursuing a grant? You have similar officers in the police department that also, and here's that term again, shop for grants? Chief Perry: We usually get referrals...information that comes in sometimes from the mayor's office and sometimes from our partners in Honolulu and on the federal side, and then we take a look at those types of grants. Basically our administration and technical bureau are assigned to research that, and we funnel it out to the various bureaus where they apply and they work on that. Mr. Furfaro: So (inaudible) you kind of have a evaluation team that looks at the pros and cons of pursuing those grants. Chief Perry: Correct. His name is Captain Yagihara. That's who it is. And of course Lt. Miyamoto. Mr. Furfaro: On the energy piece, Chief, I had gone over to the courthouse and actually went down in the computer room to look at your (inaudible) air conditioning system, and we have some capable people over in building that knows how to set speeds and set points for chill water and so forth. But it's the same system I have with...I was an active hotel manager at the Kauai Hilton. So it wouldn't hurt if in managing your energy if you didn't get a few people to get just an overall briefing on how that system works, because there's some set points and things that you can look at that tell you, depending on the various conditions, if it's set right. It does handle all the circulating pumps and the chill water and so. Thank you. 159 • APRIL 9, 2009 POLICE DEPARTMENT (1) Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Thank you Chief and Deputy Chief for the presentation. Is there anyone in here, in the Chambers, that wanted to speak? This is the opportunity for you to speak in regards to the police department's budget. No one? With that, we're going to recess this until... Let's see. 1:30 is our next. We'll recess until 1:30. There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 10:10 a.m. 160 • • APRIL 9, 2009 PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT (2) The departmental budget review reconvened at 1:34 p.m., and proceeded as follows: PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT Mr. Kaneshiro: At this time we have the personnel department. Since I don't see anyone in the Chambers to make testimony, you're up Mr. Tom. Okay Councilmembers, committee members, you have the handout from personnel department in front of you, and some charts and comparisons. Everybody got it? Okay Tom, you can go ahead and summarize for us. TOM TAKATSUKI: Afternoon Council. I'm here on behalf of my boss who was called away to Honolulu, so I'm going to try and see if I can summarize some of the things that we talked about. In comparison with the previous 2009 budget and the 2010 budget, we were asked to reduce by at least 10%. So in our review of the previous budget, we looked at various things, and I noticed the...I mean and with...as far as salaries is concerned, we did not touch salaries. Salaries is pretty much the same. Originally when we look at... Basically we looked at costs and operations. Basically operating costs. We had training moneys that we took away, travel moneys that we took away, we look at the employee assistance program and reduce it by I think 10,000, and there were a couple other projects that were funded in the previous budget we did not continue to ask to re-fund those projects. So in essence, the final budget line is that we reduced our budget by $303,000, approximately 11%. However, if you look at the budget comparison for our department, and I think every other department may have gone through this to say that, you know, as far as the benefits was concerned, it went from finance to our budget. So in essence, when we really look at it, our budget really didn't reflect a 10% decrease, but in essence it did reduce by at least 10%. Basically that's what happened. I'm willing to answer any questions specifically to the budget. Mr. Kaneshiro: The other post employment benefits was the one that...the 106,000. Mr. Takatsuki: Correct. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Mr. Chair. I'm looking at...I guess this is under your operations budget, yeah, because there's a big decrease in your budget, significant. And I'm just picking out, because I'm just...this is the one that caught my eye, but I see the travel has been cut to zero. Mr. Takatsuki: Correct. Mr. Kawakami: Is that reasonable, because I understand that part of conducting business is some travel. So that's where it's at, just zero. You'll be able to accomplish your goals with a zero travel kind of budget. Mr. Takatsuki: We looked at the budget and there was certain things that was very hard for us to cut. There were certain things that we could cut, and eventually, for travel we may have to look. at other means, telecommunications, and some of the other methodologies that we can do to say jurisdictionally meet. So first thought came, we cut most of those...in fact, we cut basically all those, and then we also reduced our collective bargaining budget by half. I understand... It's going to be hard for us to operate, but we're going to have to look at other means of meeting with the other jurisdictions at this point in time, unless moneys are restored. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you, and then I'll... Can I do just one more follow-up? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, go ahead. Of course. 161 • APRIL 9, 2009 PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT (2) Mr. Kawakami: Because I'm trying to identify all the zeros, and another significant amount was under... Council Chair Asing: Maybe before you leave off of that travel... Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, you need to talk about that? Council Chair Asing: Yeah, I mean, you know, let's finish that up. And I... Wow, I have a difficult time with zero. I mean that's not...I was going to say reasonable, but wow, zero is...how do you operate with zero. To me, it is not reasonable and to the point where I feel it's unreasonable to do what you're doing. And if it's doing something for the sake of doing it because you were told to cut, I just don't see how you can live with a budget that is real. With that said, the question is for me how much did you expend in the last 3 years on travel. We'll send that question over. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll send a communication to your office in regards to travel. Especially you're showing a zero budget at this time. Because we do see the amount that you had for the last budget, you know, so it s dust a concern that we have: _ `T' Ms. Kawahara: For clarification, the travel one, what page is it on? Mr. Kaneshiro: 57. Ms. Kawahara: Because I'm seeing... Oh yea. Okay, got it. But it's under advertising... Mr. Kaneshiro: No it's under air fare, per diem, car rental, all zero. Go ahead. Ms. Kawahara: My question was I just clarifying for my sake, it's not just for advertising, it's a whole separate section now that we're in over here. Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: You got it? travel. Ms. Kawahara: Yes, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Right on. Okay Derek, go ahead. Mr. Kawakami: You know, I was going to bring up something totally opposite of Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Are we done with the travel, on the questions? Okay yeah, we're going to come up with afollow-up on that, so... Go ahead Derek. Mr. Kawakami: I'm also looking at a decrease of 40,000, which bring it to zero, on special projects. So can we send a communication over on some of the special projects items, because you know, that is another significant amount. So I'm just curious. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, just for some clarification purposes, staff pointed out to me that if you go to page 58 and you look at other commodities, there are some collective bargaining and so forth that they need to do in that area, right? Mr. Takatsuki: The collective bargaining and contract administration meetings are within that budget section. 162 • APRIL 9, 2009 PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT (2) Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, just for some clarification purposes. The collective bargaining negotiations and so forth are under there...under the...on page 58. So just for clarification, but at the same time we'll come with a communication regarding the other travel. Mr. Bynum: Sticking with travel for a second. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Bynum: I mean this year to date encumbrances gives us an idea of some of the funds that have expended this year, in this fiscal year, right, and that's Iike 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 or $6,000. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, but at the same time, if you look at page 58, if you use that as comparison, from 20,000 they only spent 2,991. So that's why I'm coming with a communication to that. You see, so it shows that there may be some. But anyway, we're going to follow that up with a communication. Derek, I didn't mean to... Do you have anything else? Mr. Kawakami: No, no. Just my other thing was just send a communication over for special projects, because that also zeros out too, and that's at the tune of 40,000. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. We'll get those communications out to you from me. Committee members, any other questions you have you want to ask? Go ahead Mr. Bynum, floor.is yours. Mr. Bynum: Some questions about the EAP program. That's on a contract yeah? Mr. Takatsuki: Correct. Mr. Bynum: And is that contract that is by usage, like you get billable hours, or is it a flat fee, or... Mr. Takatsuki: There is a flat fee. Mr. Bynum: And so the flat fee is being reduced by 25%? Mr. Takatsuki: No, flat fee is not being reduced. It's still going be the same amount. There is a flexibility in that. The individual can utilize moneys within that account to conduct trainings, do promotional things, that moneys can come out of there and she can use that. But it has always been averaging about 20 something, 25... Mr. Bynum: So there's no reduction in the (inaudible). Mr. Takatsuki: When we looked at it there's the possible... Until the usage goes higher and more of the money is used for promotional purposes to let the employees know, it has been about 25 to (inaudible). Mr. Bynum: And so historically... Mr. Takatsuki: Historically yeah, it has been about that amount. Mr. Bynum: And it doesn't involve any reduction of benefits to employees. Mr. Takatsuki: No. (inaudible) 163 • ~ APRIL 9, 2009 PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT (2) Mr. Bynum: Great answer. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: I'm going to shift gears here a little bit if I can. When the campus for the county of Kauai ended up getting spread out, prior to the acquisition of the Piikoi building, it was understood that there were personnel needs by different functioning divisions that might...may not be in a central location. So we had subsequently personnel managers for different divisions, and we're getting ready to deal with the space planner that's going to hopefully participate, and this was a space planner that was budgeted a while back at the encouragement of this council, so that some of these personnel services could be centralized again. And we created several policies during the interim, and I'll read you one here, pursuant to the rules and regulation of the director of personnel services, the head of each department shall be responsible for personnel management within each department. Each employing department shall be responsible for establishing and maintaining written personnel policies which conform to the applicable, rules, policies, guidelines, procedures and standards of the civil service system. I have asked last year that we kind of consolidate some of these policies, because I don't think these field representatives truly recognize the continuity necessary when we're going through disciplinary actions and so forth. But based on the nature that we haven't recentralized yet, are you people participating with the administration in the space planning program so that we can recover some payroll administration and not be with so many satellite personnel offices. Have you folks been invited to participate in the planning of the .space in the Piikoi building for the purposes of re-centralizing all personnel activities, which will eventually save us on payroll. Mr. Takatsuki: I personally have not. I'm not sure whether or not Malcolm has been invited. Mr. Furfaro: So that is on the radar screen, I assume, by looking at Mr. Heu in the audience. Okay. So until that piece is done, do I interpret this memorandum that every personnel manager that's out in the field in fact knows the standard disciplinary practices, and is that yet in a manual? Mr. Takatsuki: Disciplinary practice. Mr. Furfaro: That could lead to termination. Mr. Takatsuki: Right, but...we have...it's in our rules and regs, and also majority of the bargaining unit employees are covered under bargaining unit contracts. Mr. Furfaro: Understood. Mr. Takatsuki: And they will be subject to the disciplinary procedures within that certain...that particular bargaining unit. We have rules that take care of those that are in the excluded bargaining units. Those are excluded. Mr. Furfaro: That's the one I'm looking for, because I was told last year we are working to put that policy together. I should read on from this document that I have that it says exactly what you have, that the bargaining unit people have policies that's in the labor negotiation, but those that are exempt or non-bargaining unit... 164 • • APRIL 9, 2009 PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT (2) Mr. Takatsuki: We are working and debating whether to include the disciplinary process within the rules, civil services rules, so that it will cover exempt, excluded employees, or to specifically have a policy for excluded. Mr. Furfaro: You know, it's difficult to manage a campus that's so spread out. And yet the goal is eventually to recentralize everything. I'm glad to hear you're involved in the space planning, or at least your boss is. And I'm glad to hear that you're working on a, for the non-exempt and other administrative type employees, a consistent policy that will be, whether it's in the police department or the fire department, it will be implemented on a level playing field. Mr. Takatsuki: It has to be consistent; same for everybody. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah. Okay. Thank you Mr. Chair. Council Chair Asing: Can Ifollow-up on that question? Mr. Kaneshiro: Sure. Mr. Asing, go ahead. Council Chair Asing: Councilmember Furfaro, is it your understanding that there will be a time where it'll be centralized? Mr. Furfaro: That's what I understood from conversations that were along the lines of my memorandum last year. Council Chair Asing: You have that in writing? Mr. Furfaro: Oh, I have it downstairs somewhere. I sent it over. It was on agenda at least 2 or 3 times, and then finally we moved to receive it because they had not worked on the policies. Council Chair Asing: Okay, then I think maybe we need to revisit that again, because I'm not sure about that. I agree with you, first of all. I don't have any disagreement. Mr. Furfaro: I'm more asking the question about future savings, if there is any. Council Chair Asing: Well, because tied to that, you know, you bring up the space planner and I believe that today we have some disconnect between maybe your understanding, my understanding, and the administration's understanding. Because when you make reference to the space planner that we agreed to, I do not believe that the administration has hired the space planner maybe in the same context as you envision we have a space planner. Because I believe they have a consulting firm, and that is your... Is that your understanding? Mr. Furfaro: That's my understanding. We have a consulting firm. And so it is also my understanding, with the administration in the audience, if my assumption is completely wrong, well they should come to the mike and tell me my assumption is completely wrong. If they continue to sit and not address the problem, then I assume my assumption is correct. Especially after they confirm to me that personnel is participating in it. Council Chair Asing: Okay, and that's tine. Then we're in agreement. Okay, good. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Lani, you had a question for personnel? 165 • APRIL 9, 2009 PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT (2) Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, in relation to the disciplinary policy. So are you saying that your...every employee that's in a bargaining unit, your disciplinary policy is in conjunction and duplicate, meaning the same as the union disciplinary policy? Mr. Takatsuki: You have to understand that the bargaining unit employees all covered under the collective bargaining unit agreement. Ms. Kawahara: I'm very familiar with the bargaining units and how that works. Mr. Takatsuki: What's been asked is are certain kinds of employees, included employees, excluded employees. A lot of the excluded employees are not covered under a collective bargaining agreement. So if there is no collective bargaining agreement to cover these employees, you have to look at whether or not you have rules and regulations to address the disciplinary policy and/or develop policies and procedures that we looking at as Councilman Furfaro is indicating that it has to be consistent, it has to be same, you know, for every employee, and every department has to utilize that procedure, so that any time there's any action taken, one department cannot be taking this action this way, and this department taking this one. Eventually when it comes to us for a final decision on any type of grievances, we will need to overturn it or we'll°have to sustain it. So if we have something that's consistent and when it comes to us and there's no ifs, ands, or you know, buts to decide afterwards. So that's what we're working on, and I know I put something together, but it's just a matter of tweaking here and there, and then getting it out to department agencies for review, and then to the unions for review, and then it comes back to us. . Ms. Kawahara: Okay, but in the interim there's not one? Mr. Takatsuki: But in the interim, we've been basically... because a lot of excluded employees get similar rights and benefits as the included employees, we've been basically making sure that they get the proper treatment when it comes to discipline, grievances, and anything else. And we've been working with the department and agencies to make sure that this thing do not go to the left or to the right, and they follow basically what is supposed to be followed. Ms. Kawahara: So I am, I'm hearing that there isn't one now, but they're going to have one for the county side themselves and not... Mr. Furfaro: You're at somewhat of a disadvantage. This is an item that I brought on to the table last year. I just want to make sure that they are focused on developing a policy, but what I'm hearing in the meantime, while they're working on that, they're staying within the civil service boundaries and the collective bargaining unit and applying everybody equal at this time. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Yeah, because I work for the State, so I know about the bargaining units, and we have developed our own for, you know, administration side, and not...we don't... Yeah, going by the unit side, but we have our own too. So that's what they're working on. Mr. Furfaro: That's what I'm asking them to continue to work on. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, great. That'll be good to see. And then the other thing I just wanted to see because it seemed amazing to me, are you how far backlogged are you now in personnel data? You were 3 years behind last year. Mr. Takatsuki: Very far. We're still far behind. We haven't been able to input. Maybe Karen can answer a little bit more about how that is hampering the...on the computer side. 166 APRIL 9, 2009 PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT (2) KAREN MATSUMOTO: Well, we haven't been keeping employee history on our computers anymore. Ms. Kawahara: So all paper files? Ms. Matsumoto: Paper files and the personnel files have been delegated to the departments and agencies to maintain. So for us to get information on current information or even historic information on employees, it's been really difficult. So we've been trying to work on getting out an HRIS system, human resource system, that can help us on that end. And I think it's in finance. We've been working with finance to work that into their budget. Mr. Furfaro: But in the meantime, didn't we authorize some temporary help to work on the backlog? We did, yeah? Okay. Ms. Kawahara: Clarify for me. You no longer... Are you still inputting stuff into computers, or now it's just paper files that you've gone back to, and decentralizing it into each department. Ms. Matsumoto: As far as employee history, that's paper files right now. But there are other types of personnel information that is being maintained on the payroll system. Mr. Furfaro: That was actually an item that showed up in the audit, based on the fact that the system that there is antiquated and manual, but the reality, to automate as quickly possible would give us a better and more accurate idea of county liability towards PT&E and benefits. Ms. Matsumoto: Right now the accruals are all on paper. We haven't been able to work out the bugs on the payroll system because of the 2-week lag, payroll lag. So we don't have current information. If we had the human resource system, that would be...provide for current information. Ms. Kawahara: So everybody that is in a department (inaudible). Ms. Matsumoto: Right. Ms. Kawahara: So help me. (inaudible) Mr. Takatsuki: Vacation/sick leave accruals is all under the control of the department. They under control of the personnel files. (Inaudible) any documents that goes in there. Once the employee retires or terminates or leaves, after the end of the year, the documents come back to us and we file. But all papers as far as payroll and everything that's originated from the department comes to our office for review and signature and then disbursed back to the department. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Derek. Mr. Kawakami: No, my apologies, Mr. Chair. I was just trying to figure out what budget line item we were referring to with this past conversation with the inputting of employee's data. Ms. Kawahara: Because I don't see anything in here... 167 APRIL 9, 2009 PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT (2) Mr. Furfaro: Actually, it is not so much a line item as it is a vision of the direction that we would go to that eventually will lead to cost savings. So I think I owe you an apology that I didn't explain that more. It's kind of like a tracking of where we could be in a few years and what kind of cost savings that will be. Mr. Kawakami: Okay. No I apologize. Ms. Kawahara: And it's not on here. Mr. Kawakami: I just say software maintenance, so I thought was under there. Ms. Kawahara: It's not on here, but I thought that maybe they had...they were... They didn't put an expense in here for the system that they wanted to get that financing I guess has it. Ms. Matsumoto: Right. Ms. Kawahara: So I can follow-up with finance, yeah. Mr. Furfaro: Yes you can. Mr. Kaneshiro: Next week. Anything else on personnel, members? If not, Tom that's it. Thank you very much. There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 2:01 p.m. 168 • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) The departmental budget review reconvened at 2:07 p.m., and proceeded as follows: Mr. Kaneshiro: Committee members, before I bring Gary up, I think Gary wanted to come up and speak. I wanted to bring this up because finance won't be able to make it here for the Monday meeting at 1:30; they're going to be in Honolulu with the mayors and the governor, so Wally has to go for that trip. So the... What we go do, we can bring Planning up earlier and have Planning come up at that time when finance was supposed to be here, and the other option is to bring finance up on Thursday, because on Thursday afternoon we don't have any review scheduled for the afternoon after we do public works and so forth. So is that the choice you want to make, or we can... Mr. Furfaro: My preference would be to have finance come on Thursday. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thursday. Everybody, is that okay with everybody else for finance to come on Thursday for their budget review in the afternoon, or after lunch? So that will be about what time? 1:30 on Thursday after we do public works. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, so I can add, if we just take them and move them, what break does that give us for our own personal things? They were what? They were supposed to be? Mr. Kaneshiro: They were supposed to be scheduled on 1:30 on Monday... Mr. Furfaro: So we won't have anything... Mr. Kaneshiro: No, we'll move planning up, because planning was 2:30. Mr. Furfaro: Oh, planning will be at 1:30. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, and that way we can go home an hour earlier. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, got it. So we'll have planning at 1:30. Mr. Kaneshiro: Right. Mr. Furfaro: The option is to have finance Thursday afternoon. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thursday afternoon after lunch at 1:30 and take that up. Mr. Furfaro: I like that. Mr. Bynum: A week from today. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes. Is that okay? Okay, because we need to post that, and that's why I wanted to bring this up. Mr. Nakamura: Budget Chair, we'll be posting today for that Thursday session. We'll meet the 6-day sunshine requirement. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, with that, rules are now suspended. Gary, can you come up for a second please? GARY HEU: Good afternoon Councilmembers. For the record, Gary Heu. Yeah, I wanted to come up and clarify the issue regarding the space planning and the consolidation of functions. Maybe I wasn't paying attention when the discussion was going on, but the question that 169 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) I did hear was that...was the planning depart...no, not planning, personnel services department consulted during the process of the space planner. Mr. Furfaro: Let me make sure I state it very clear, so you know where I'm going before the press some in. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, go ahead and state it. Mr. Furfaro: I'm very concerned of the personnel performance level of all of our personnel departments. There's no reason it should take 2, 3, 4 months in this county to fill a position. I personally believe that as they get more centralized, they can move more expeditiously in handling the needs of our county, as we get more and more sophisticated about skills, testing, policies, all of those things. I think there is some attempts, but you know of a couple recent cases where I have gone into county offices and the individual has perceived that action was not necessarily (inaudible) taken. I think there's an opportunity in having a central system that we can improve our efficiencies. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, there was some clarification. - ' ~ ~` Mr. Heu: And the only clarification that I wanted to make was that when I was sitting back there and was asked the question was the director or was personnel services consulted during the process of the space planning, the answer was yes, because part of the drill was that each department had...was surveyed relative to its needs and those sorts of things. I guess I wasn't paying attention to the other part of the discussion which I think is where Councilmember...Vice Chair was going relative to consolidating of functions. Mr. Furfaro: Consolidate and they need space for specific civil service testing, you now, things of that that should be more coordinated. Because we will get out of this economic recession, and we will be back into a situation where this island will enjoy a much smaller unemployment figure, and quality employees will be in demand. Whether they're applying now in one area and being interviewed for planning or building or...you know, there's certain applicants that will have multi talents in their application, multi skill levels. And I think it could be reviewed more central. Mr. Heu: And I would agree with you, and I think that takes us back to one of those central philosophical questions that we always find ourselves wrestling with, which is do we centralize or do we decentralize certain functions. And you folks were discussing that this morning during KPD relative to the attorney functions. Do we centralize them or do we start to provide each department embedded in a department its own (quote/unquote) legal analyst. Mr. Furfaro: I don't... I want to make very clear here. There's those 2 options that you just spoke about, but in my management experience, there is also another option, and it's called right-sizing for what works for you. To me, this quick synopsis of attorneys in each area, you know that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about the highest demand is in public safety and in the police department, and we have this...you know, I think we're at 1,642,000 in special legal fees this past year when we budget one million two. Part of that is related to managing some of the lawsuits, and a lot of those lawsuits are triggered by, you know, perhaps our approach to some, a subpoena delivery, an arrest could have some better legal analyst looking over the standard operating procedure and making some recommendations to the chief. So you know, I don't mix the question the same, but when we have at least 7 departments that have asub-personnel department in them, and then we have a central personnel department, I think there's opportunities. Mr. Heu: I agree. So are we clear? Clear enough? 170 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Council Chair Asing: So is that where you're headed? Mr. Heu: Well, I...you know, I can tell you what... Council Chair Asing: Now we're getting to the meat. This is the meat now. Mr. Heu: Yeah. I think, you know, again we have had this discussion, you know, probably numerous times over the...at least the past 6 years that I've been here. My own personal preference would be, to the extent that it's reasonable and possible, I would advocate for centralizing of the functions of personnel services, and I feel strongly about that because I think that when we start to...when we start to allocate out and embed specialists in the departments, I think what it leaves us is exposed to is creating inconsistencies in the way we make and deal with policy issues, and I think that creates exposure. So for me, I always feel...have felt like the way to do it, and I think I've had discussions one on one with some of you about this is that if we're going to add resources into the overall organization, I would rather see the resources added into the functional department that is responsible for that particular area of concern, rather than putting in resources out in the departments. Because again, we just start to build into the system potential for inconsistencies. Mr. Furfaro: I think you summarized my remarks about future opportunities very well. Council Chair Asing: You know, I hate to say it, but let me try to make it as clear as possible. Is the space planning process that you are currently doing addressing the concerns raised by Councilmember Furfaro? The process that you have currently, does it address Councilmember Furfaro's problem? I do not believe that it does, and I want to make that plain.. If there is a disconnect, let's get it on the floor. There is a disconnect, or there isn't a disconnect. Yes... If you say yes it does, then there is no disconnect, we're okay. So I want to make that plain. Mr. Heu: Yeah. I think there's 2 things in play here, and number one is the policy decision to consolidate certain functions under a functional department. And here we're talking about personnel services. That policy decision in my mind has not been made. I think it's been discussed. I think it's something that again in my mind makes sense, but the bottom line is that specific call has not been made. Now, on the other hand, we have the space planning process, and that process is in independent in the sense that it looks at current and future needs. So if the policy decision hasn't been made yet, then it doesn't account for an increased space of within DPS alone to accommodate additional bodies. But having said that, I don't think that in and of itself.. Let's say we didn't have Piikoi, and let's just say that, you know, we needed to live with the current space that we have right now. I don't think that that precludes us from making the policy decision to consolidate the function under the functional department. We've talked about this even relative to accounting, and again, looking at centralizing that function all back under finance. Now, does that mean that physically they need to be located within the 4 walls, the confines of the finance department? Not necessarily. But they become part of the finance department, they take...they are solid line reporting to finance department and the finance director, with perhaps dotted line responsibility to the agency that they support. So again, I think there's 2 issues at play here. Number one is making the policy issue as to whether to consolidate job functions under the functional department. And then as space provides, as opportunity provides, do you want to actually physically relocate them? I think that becomes maybe the next question, because in some cases, the determination may be not to. But their accountability and their responsibility is back to the functional department. So I'm not sure if that clears things up or... 171 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Furfaro: But Mr. Heu, you do, and I heard it earlier, you do concur with me, as long as we stay spread out on the campus, the reality is we really need to have a consistency in policies. Mr. Heu: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: In this particular case, there's more urgency on framing personnel policies dealing with termination practices and so forth. As long as we are spread out, there has to be this kind of in-house understanding so we don't have, as you use the word I think, we don't have these inaccuracies. Mr. Heu: Agreed. Mr. Furfaro: And the same would apply to finance, until we centralize. Mr. Heu: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, so I think we're in agreement. I understand he's saying. They still haven't come to that policy decision. I understand where they're at. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Gary. Okay, while the rules are still suspended, we will take up our next department, which is our department. Mr. Clerk? We have a handout here. Everyone received the handout? OFFICE OF THE COUNTY CLERK PETER NAKAMURA: Budget Chair Kaneshiro and members of the budget/finance committee. The handout is just a real short review of... Mr. Chang: Can you state your name for the record please? Mr. Nakamura: Thank you Councilmember Chang. Peter Nakamura, County Clerk. The handout is just a real quick overview of some of the highlights of the office of the county clerk and office of the county auditor's budgets. And just a short explanation of the Chinese character that's on the handout. Originally someone once told me, and I cannot remember when, that the Chinese character for crisis had two facets. One was crisis, and the other...second character was opportunity. And so while I was kind of proceeding along this theme for the...our departmental budget review, a friend of mine who is of Chinese ethnicity and I was discussing this with her told me, well that's really wrong. That's just a folk myth, and actually, what the Chinese character for crisis means is it's a crisis. It's a deep crisis and it's a time not to go looking for opportunities, but just to be aware of what is going around you and it's a very dangerous situation. So the message that I originally intended to convey by the Chinese character for crisis kind of turned on its head a little bit. Mr. Furfaro: Well Mr. Nakamura, I can tell you that the first two words in this, is this a weejee or a wedgie, because a wedgie is a crisis. What is that word? How do you say that word? Mr. Nakamura: Way-zhee, I think. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Chang, you would be able to know how to pronounce that. 172 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Nakamura: That being said, as far as the overview of the 2009/2010 operating budget for our office, I think the overall state of the economy provides the context for fiscal year 2009/2010 operating budget. And just as the office is constituted now, there's an overall decrease in the office of the county clerk of about 19.29% over about...translated into dollars about $822,938. However, for the overall council operations, this decrease has been offset by an overall increase in the county council's office because of the cost necessary to establish a new office of the county auditor as approved by the 2008 charter amendment, and is projected to cost a little over $lmillion in the upcoming fiscal year of 2009 and 2010. Taken as a whole, the operations of the county council, which now includes both the office of the county clerk and the office of the county auditor, we project a fiscal year 09/10 operating budget increase of approximately 4.64% or about $197,994. Just in terms of some of the variances in the budget, the office of the county clerk's budget from last fiscal year to this fiscal year, as with other administrative agencies and departments, we have been allocated a share of the other post employment benefits cost, and that has added over $370,000 to our operating budget, and this is, I think as was explained before by I believe Vice Chair Furfaro, this is because of changes in the way the government accounting standards board established new ways to report other post employment benefits, which translate to retirement benefits...accounting for retirement benefits. And recognizing that there was a...the current environment and fiscal austerity, I think while we were not able to achieve similar to some of the other administrative departments a 10% decrease, what we tried to do is we tried to look for cost savings and targeted specific line items within the budget, and within both the council services and the elections division budget. And so we looked at individual lines and tried to see where we could bring those numbers back, and the second thing we did was looked at cost items, I think as other departments have talked about, that could be deferred until when there's more stabilization of the revenue stream to the county. So between those 2 areas, my appreciation goes out to the council services budget staff who went through it and tried to, as best as they could, target areas where we could figure out some reductions to our operating budget. We were also able to, in this fiscal year, fiscal year OS-09, we were also able to shed some operating budget costs, some large operating budget costs, which we had in the current budget, such as encumbering our office's cost share for the countywide digital imaging initiative, and there were improvements that were also effected this fiscal year which were one-time costs, so it caused the operating budget to the council services and county clerk's office to drop. In terms of just kind of looking forward, what we tried to do is we tried to look at...or I tried to look at this budget as a 2-year cycle, and there was some things that... There was some advantages and some mini characteristics of our budget that kind of caused us...caused me to look at it as a 2-year cycle, I think. For one, and as far as we can tell, there are no clear projections of when the current economic crisis will abate or when the trends will reverse. So that being said, we kind of kept an eye on next year's fiscal year operating budget also. The second thing is, as always, the...for our office of the county clerk, there's a cyclical nature of the election cost that come in every even number year. So what...even though there's a decrease in this year's budget, you know, there will be an increase in next year's budget because of the requirements for us to wrap for the election, the 2010 election, both in cost and in temporary election staff. So our overall budget kind of runs in that 2-year cycle where you will see drop in cost in the odd numbered years and increases in the even numbered years because of our election cost. The other thing that's occurring right now is that we haven't quite locked down statewide the cost of the election system that's going to be used. The system that was used in this previous 2008 election was aone-shot contract, was aone-time contract. So currently there'll be... I'm hoping soon there will be negotiations for a new statewide contract for a voting system, and I believe that hasn't...will not conclude prior to us being...the end of this fiscal year. So we're anticipating some increase in costs there. And with the increase... With the possibility of a new type of election system, training cost, other types of costs tend to go up, because we'd have to spend more time doing that. The last thing as to why we're kind of keeping an eye on a 2-year cycle is that the major renovations to the historic county building, I believe there's a potential for there to be major costs and hits to the operating budget, which may not show up in this fiscal year, in this upcoming fiscal year 09-10, but the strong possibility of incurring cost in the fiscal 173 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) year 2010 to 2011 budget. So given these kind of factors and the clear possibility of other unforeseen economic impacts facing the county, the state, the nation, and the world, it will be prudent I think to look at our budget, our office's budget, in a 2-year cycle, and that's basically our statement, Mr. Budget Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Peter, thanks for the report. I just want to talk about a couple things in general. First of all, under the mandate of the charter amendment, we are going to set up a audit department within the council. First of all, I saw the budget that's allotted for that staff, and I think it is probably about $100,000 short in my thinking of an audit department. The reason I bring that up is because we have $700,000 budgeted for audit. I'm thinking that...I think we'll get more to the pluses and minuses on this a little later, but I would think that we took 200,000 of that and we use that for, you know, our regular annual audit, we left another 100,000 in there for, you know, in case of performance audit somewhere else comes up, and kept a little extra money for...on the audit department that we're setting up, we might be able to free up about 400,000, $300,000 in that line. Again, that leaves us with our $200,000 audit, leave 100,000 for a specific performance audit if one comes up, and now we have staff doing audits, we`inight have to'shift maybe another 100,000. 'But ~' that leaves a sizable balance in there, 3 or $400,000. When will we find out election costs? I mean when does the State tell us what system we using and how to budget that? I mean will we know that before May 2? Mr. Nakamura: This year May 2? Mr. Furfaro: Yes. Mr. Nakamura: No. Mr. Furfaro: When will we? Mr. Nakamura: I think it depends on when the RFP is prepared and that is actually the start of the whole cycle. There was an RFP that was prepared for the previous...last year, and that went out. There was actually a contract... I believe it was a 4 election cycle contract. Four election cycle 8-year contract that was awarded, but was contested by one of the bidders that did not win. I believe that that contest of the award of that system is still in play, and in fact may soon...and I haven't checked for a while, Vice Chair, so what I'll do is I'll go and get back to you on it. But as a result of that contest and the time to... Yeah. What the State and the counties did for last election was we in fact worked aone-year...almost an emergency contract to...for election system for one time. But the looking forward was always to procure a contract for the next 3 or 4 election cycle so you can spread the cost out more. Hopefully before the end of this year we'll get a cost and a prorated cost on that. Mr. Furfaro: Now, the other item, I have to be very honest. I remember when I first got elected in 2002 and I met the Chair and we were talking and he was telling me about the renovation of this building and he says, and Jay in 2 years you'll be in a new building. I'm now in my 7th year and we haven't started yet. But let me ask you. The annex next door. What I remember, we're supposed to be done with that. Mr. Nakamura: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Where are we with the overruns on that, and when will that be completed for elections? 174 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Nakamura: I believe some of the initial timelines that we were given on the completion of that building, we were supposed to have...and deputy county clerk can correct me if I'm wrong, we were supposed to have been in the basement area, which we used... Mr. Furfaro: In there about election time. Mr. Nakamura: By about...if I remember correctly, about July we were supposed to be in just the basement section. That was supposed to be finished. Mr. Furfaro: Right before the election. Mr. Nakamura: Correct. Last year, and that was with the understanding that the top ofI`ices would not be finished until I believe was December...end of December of last year. What happened instead, .they seemed to have run into some issues during construction. I think there were issues with the finish on the floors. Cracks started to appear. There are cement floors in both the bottom floor and the top floor. Mr. Furfaro: They have water stalls in the window sills. Mr. Nakamura: Yes, there was water ponding in the basement. Because of the fact that what they were trying to do is restore the building to a certain historic look, the windows, which we thought were going to be there in the basement, if you noticed, what happened during election time, there's basically plywood and tyvek I think plugging that up. It took longer than expected to fabricate the windows for the building, because they didn't cut out new sides or size. They just sized...custom-sized windows for that building. So after December, my understanding was we were supposed to have finished the punch list by March, I believe. In March, and then now we're being told it's the end of April. And that... Mr. Furfaro: I want to ask you, and we'll send it over in a question. We need to really know about that completion, because that completion will allow us to move the FF&E we have downstairs, will allow us to relocate staff, and you know, it's something I bring up and it's something that I think I need to raise as a concern. For example, we're doing a space planner across the street, but we're quite a few years behind over there. But over there we're dealing with tenants, and if I was the administration, Iwould almost immediately figure out how far we're behind and give Big Save an extension in there. I'm serious. It's money. Oh, I'm sorry. But they pay rent. You know, they're income to us, and you know, they're kind of figuring out, okay, what am I doing, what am I doing. If we come up with a critical space schedule here, and when we say... I mean we might be talking about (close your ears)...we might be talking about giving Big Save upfront another 2 year extension. It's money now guys. Mr. Nakamura: I think one thing watching the process on the historic county building annex next door has given us forewarning of is that cost and time for the renovation of this building, and that's why we're looking at it as a multi-year kind of fiscal year kind of budget is the potential for hidden cost or unexpected cost. With this building, I think, which is I believe almost 30 to 40 years older than the building next door, the potential to run into problems in this building I believe is greater than next door. So the cost...the potential impact to the operating budget cost of the council I think there's a high probability of seeing that. Mr. Furfaro: Because these are not reconstruction building, and I have had the privilege in my career to deal with some very historic buildings like the Moana Surfrider. I was on the project management team. I mean the windowsills, the light fixtures, the door closures, I mean they go back to historic photographs to reproduce these things, and I don't think that we've given this building all the justice that it needs, and so it could be prolonged for a long time. I just want to 175 • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) add those comments. We need to think that empty space today is potentially revenue. That's how we need to think. The longer it's procrastinating over there, it's money. Mr. Nakamura: And I think, budget chair, that's why when we were looking at the budget, the potential for not knowing what the economic climate will be in the next fiscal year, experience with the historic county building annex, and facing the potential renovation of this building, I am very concerned that there are going to be hidden costs, and fairly substantial costs that may accrue to the operating budget of the council for next year. Council Chair Asing: Let me make a little side comment on the historical aspect of this building, and I'm not going to say it's because of me, or I want to take the credit, or anything like that. But I can tell you that I made the decision on what kind of chairs you sit on today. If I had not made that decision, today you would be sitting on those chairs. That's exactly what you would have been sitting on, and it was, you know, trying to work together with the historic group, because the historic group was just adamant on, you know, the chairs. Yes, those chairs that Peter is sitting on is the chairs that you're supposed to be sitting on. Mr. Kaneshiro: We had to put cushion on them. ~ --_ Council Chair Asing: Historically, that's the way the group wanted it. Mr. Kaneshiro: We had to put cushion on our seat. Man was so uncomfortable sitting in these council meetings. Mr. Kawakami: How old are these chairs now? Council Chair Asing: I don't know, about 3...4 years. Anyway, that's just a side light. Mr. Chang: I thought you was going bet us lunch that the place wasn't going get renovated before you retire. Mr. Nakamura: Budget Chair, if I may, I think that the council chair brings up a good point. I think you know, while the council chair said that he had a major role in having at least semi-modern chairs, I think what he's also done, though, he's also told us to work closely with the historic architects of this building to bring back the character, because I think there's a real... If you talk to people like Randy Wickman down at the historical society, he told me something yesterday that is really...that really stuck in my mind. He basically said, this is the oldest functioning government building west of the Rockies. I mean this building was established in 1913. Most buildings that were built in that time, the agencies or the functions outgrew them and they were off to new buildings. And this is the.. Apparently, he's going to check if it goes farther than the Rockies, but he knows this is the oldest functioning government building this side of the Rockies. It was established in 1913, this building was built, and it's always been used for government, and he's very... He just said it does him, who as chair of the Kauai Historical Society, it does him proud that this will still be a functioning government building after the renovations and still be... Mr. Furfaro: All I'm trying to share with everybody, Moana Surfrider was built in 1902, put on the historic register, and it was 3 years overdue for completion. Mr. Nakamura: We're anticipating time and cost in the future on this one, though. Mr. Chang: I got 2 questions. Does it cost more, you know, anticipating next year's election you will have a gubernatorial election, maybe a mayoral election, State house, council, senate. Does it cost more because there's more active races? 176 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Nakamura: Not necessarily, Councilmember. The thing that contributes to the overall cost is that if there are...if the number of races increase, then the number of ballots that we have to print will increase. I think it also affects the ballot printing if there are a number of charter amendments, and we anticipate that because we have a sitting charter commission, instead of a charter commission once every 10 years. The major... One of the major costs is the printing of the ballots, because there's special paper, there's a special design that has to go into them. So when you go from like a number of races that possibly could fit on the back and front of one ballot to having to go to a ballot and a half, that truly increases the cost, because then you have down the line increases of mail out ballots, and the cost of postage increases. So what we really watch is a number of ballots it takes to run an election, as opposed to number of races. Mr. Furfaro: Along the line of Mr. Chang's question, let me ask in our office. Due to certain possibilities, will we have to budget extra for a special election in case somebody decides to run for another office in mid-term? Mr. Nakamura: Probably not. I think the way we were able to lay out the ballot... I think this past election was kind of instructive, because we had a mayor's race that was unanticipated due to the unfortunate passing of Mayor Baptiste. But we were able to still keep it within the confines of the number of ballot cards that we ordered for printing. The kinds of times when we run into extraordinary expenses for special election would be similar to the election that the City & County is running now for the late Councilmember Marshall seat, which is truly just a...it's truly a special election. They have deadlines in which they have to run it, and that's when the extraordinary cost would kick in. Mr. Furfaro: So you don't sense there could be an extra election based on the senate race. Mr. Nakamura: No. I think we can absorb it within the context. It all kind of hinges on when people resign or when people file for... Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, that's why... It's not a definite no. it's dependent on when people actually decide to file. Mr. Nakamura: But I think just as far as the race and the cost, I think we'll be able to fit it within the schedule of the 2010 election. Mr. Chang: The second part of my question is, we talk about the new office of the county auditor. What is the status of the county auditor? Mr. Nakamura: That's a little bit complicated to answer, Councilmember, because I think... The way the charter amendment that was approved at the 2008 general election was approved, is the office of the county auditor, it exists as a separate entity under the council; it's not under the office of the county clerk. So what it is is you have the office of the county clerk, and it's like having a second department under the council the office of the county auditor. So our office has no...there's no solid line between our office and the office of the county auditor. The solid lines, if you think about it that way, there's a council, office of the county clerk, office of the county auditor. There's no lines that go across. It'll be like department of public works and department of parks & rec, 2 separate departments, one not having the say over the other except for mutual cooperation on a case by case basis. So it's a totally separate function not under our office. auditor. Mr. Chang: Because there is a... There has been a position open for the county 177 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Nakamura: Well, there was a position under our previous budget for a legislative audit position that was under our office. In this case, what the charter amendment did was it created a second office under the council. Mr. Furfaro: And that charter amendment was initiated by the council. We have a draft of an organizational chart, Mr. Nakamura (inaudible). But what I'm saying is that's one of the reasons I think possibly we might have $300,000 that could be used elsewhere, and only budget for perhaps, you know, in case we have a performance audit of someone, and our regular annual audit. Mr. Nakamura: That would be the council's decision, I think, because as I said that those functions transferred off to a different department and no longer under the office of the county clerk. Mr. Chang: Yeah, and the reason... Well, the reason I ask that is if there's a new office of the county auditor with a projected cost of a million twenty thousand dollars, is that...I mean whose budget is that? Mr. Nakamura: The office of the county auditor's. It's the county auditor's budget. RICKY WATANABE: Councilmember Chang, the office of the county auditor, we had prepared the budget just by an estimate for that office. With the charter amendment, when the passage of the budget, then the office is established. Until you pass the budget, the office of the county auditor is not established. It has to be established by ordinance, and this is the ordinance, the budget ordinance. Mr. Kaneshiro: By appropriating the positions... Mr. Watanabe: Correct. So once you approve the budget, then the office of the auditor is formed. Mr. Kaneshiro: Then the process starts. Mr. Chang: Thank you Ricky. Mr. Furfaro: But also you should note on page 16 of your book you'll find all the numbers that I'm talking about. There's 111,000 for an auditor. There's 60,000 for a program evaluation analyst. And there's 28,000 for a program support tech. I'm saying I think that's light, but if you go down further, you'll see on this particular line item is consulting services of $700,000. In there is $200,000 for our regular audit, and another $500,000 for any audits we want to do in the future. And what I'm saying to clarify myself, of that $700,000, we earmarked $200,000 to do our regular annual audit. We keep $100,000 in case we have to do a performance audit of something, and we beef up lines that I read to you, that might save us $300,000. Mr. Bynum: Beef up the lines in terms of the salary amounts, or additional positions. Mr. Furfaro: That looks a little light to me. I'm not prepared to discuss it yet. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. When we get into the... Mr. Furfaro: When we get to that, we'll have that discussion. 178 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Kaneshiro: Decision making, then we can get into that process. Mr. Furfaro: That's right. But I just wanted to throw that out on the table right now that if we beef up the auditor staffing, we might be able to save $300,000 in the other line. Mr. Kaneshiro: Those are discussions we'll take up during in decision making process. Go ahead Peter. Mr. Nakamura: Just a quick clarification, a little...just a little bit more. For the office of the county auditor, in the charter amendment itself there were some transitional provisions that moved the 2 positions that were previously under the office of the county clerk to the office of the county auditor. It also moved the functions of the annual financial audit from our office of the county clerk to the office of the county auditor. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright. Thank you for that clarification. Any other questions for Mr. Peter Nakamura? Mr. Furfaro: So I just wanted to do that, Mr. Chairman, so that people can summarize that one million 29, where it's coming from, so that we know. Mr. Kaneshiro: No problem. Lani, you had a question? Oh Tim, you had a question? Well, either one of you. Do you have a question? You have a question Tim? Mr. Bynum: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, floor is yours. Mr. Bynum: My question's about unfilled positions. We have 3 unfilled positions. Mr. Nakamura: Correct. Mr. Bynum: What efforts are being made to fill those positions? Mr. Nakamura: Actually, rather than 3, just a real quick clarification. There are 3 vacant positions, plus there's a position where an employee is on leave without pay, actually. So there's actually 3 vacant plus one position where an employee is on leave without pay. The efforts to fill the positions, one of the things that we wanted to do, or what I wanted to do, is I wanted to take a look at the overall budget first and how it was looking for next fiscal year before we move forward on the filling of the positions. Unlike the administration, we didn't dollar fund the vacant positions; we fully funded them in the budget. As far as recruitment for the positions, I believe we were looking at one of the positions, the one that I think Cyndi Ayonon who recently vacated a position to move over to the administration and the office of boards and commissions, that was the one we were looking at filling because we have a space there. For the other positions, we were, like Vice Chair Furfaro was talking about, at some point we were counting on the bottom floor where Vice Chair Furfaro's office and where Lianne Parongao and Stephanie Iwasaki are currently located. We had anticipated some vacancy in that area, but with the delays in the construction for the historical county building, we haven't been able to free up space in there, and it's just...unfortunately it's... It's not just the new FF&E for the new historic county building, but it's also the election equipment that we needed to store and take over there. So the short answer, Councilmember Bynum, is that there's some space concerns. We are looking at in the future filling out the...Cyndi Ayonon's former position. We're kind of looking at the renovation in terms o£..as kind of a outside timeline for filling those, because we're providing some temporary space, so that when we go through the renovations and relocation of council services. 179 • ~ APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Bynum: I'm sorry. Regarding space, you're looking at filling the positions when we return from the temporary... Mr. Nakamura: No, when we go there. Except for Cyndi's position, I think. Mr. Bynum: Just for the benefit of the councilmembers that weren't here, 2 budgets ago, 2 years ago we added a position, a clerk's position, to support councilmembers. At 6 months I asked why we weren't filling that position, and it's like, oh we'll get on it. Last year in budget I asked why that position hadn't been filled, and it was...there wasn't a satisfactory answer. Now we're 2 years with that position, and I said 6 months in to my tenure at the council, you can put that person in my office, you can put that desk there. The space issue doesn't cut it with me. Right outside my office is a desk and a computer that never gets used, right there. But...and I will reiterate that for the umpteenth time. You can put that person in my office. I will work around it. I have sought that position, I want that support, and I think other councilmembers will as well, and the answers I've gotten, I don't get it. And so I was told several times we were going to recruit. I checked with personnel, one time in 2 years we have asked personnel to recruit in 08. In 2-14-OS they got a request to recruit, but they never got and asked to certify that list to actually send the names over here. I asked in the last budget, if somebody walked into personnel today and said I want to fill that open position, could they get it, and the answer was yes. But that's not accurate, because they never... Personnel told me, until you ask...only once, on 2-14-08, has the clerk's office asked for personnel to recruit, and that...if they generated a list, nobody asked for the certification, which actually physically gets you the names in order to talk to the people. So I'm very... I'm very unhappy that for 2 years I've been on the council this council voted to put that position in to support councilmembers, and it hasn't happened. I'm also unhappy that virtually the whole time I've been here positions have been vacant, and we have this really hard working staff that I know could use the help. That we would be more efficient as a body if we had the staffing that has been authorized by this council. So I just...you know, and so now...and every time... And now I'm hearing, well when we move. We might move in September I heard is the latest, and this is March. I think we should hire that position and the other 2 positions. We can work around...this is a great work around staff. They make things work. We're already pretty squeezed in here, you know. I will give up my office completely and you can move staff in there, and I'll work out of my car and a laptop. So the space issue doesn't cut it for me, and I would like you to tell me, will you recruit this position. Will you get this support that this council authorized 2 years ago? Mr. Nakamura: Mr. Chair, if I could, if I could get back to the council on that question. It's entirely my fault in terms of what Councilmember Bynum said. My responsibility, my fault. I think we may have some differences in terms of when Councilmember Bynum says put them anywhere, there's space here, there's space there. I think just from a management perspective, in terms of training and management, when we try to do when we bring new people in is bring them into a situation where they're not separated from the other supervisory functions of the office, and so they can get those kinds of things. But those are just my personal kinds of preferences. I don't want people separated out if they're brand new, and for training purposes, but that's just a difference of opinion on that one. So my apologies on that. Mr. Furfaro: (Inaudible) is because I was a member of the council, and the compromise was to get the one person. Mr. Nakamura: Correct. Mr. Furfaro: Am I hearing you saying that you're going to get back to us and that possibility still exists. And I want to make sure, and I will say this to Mr. Bynum, he may be 180 • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) unhappy, I'm sympathetic. The reality though is, Peter, you do have an obligation to get to us. When we mandate something to happen in the budget and it doesn't happen... Mr. Nakamura: Understood. Mr. Furfaro: I'm going to just say, you are obligated as the county clerk, not just to get back to the chairman, but get back to the council. And I can accept you telling us you'll get back to us. Mr. Nakamura: I wasn't meaning just to the budget chair. I meant to the budget chair and to go to the entire committee, Vice Chair. Mr. Furfaro: But I can accept you'll research this and get back to us. Mr. Kaneshiro: I want to follow-up with a communication with that, and then have you respond with the communication like every department, okay? Because at certain point, it could be unfair for some of us, because we weren't here during that budget discussions that you've had. So I know what you're trying to point out, but I would rather come with a communication, get a communication back, than rather having this discussion keep on the floor at this point. Lani, you had something you wanted to ask? Ms. Kawahara: As somebody that's new here and doesn't have the history that they do about the request, I guess I do have a question about once a council requests a position and the county clerk I hear is now is required to fill it... Mr. Furfaro: No, no, no. First of all, when the budget was .approved, it was a budget ordinance that had a position in. And so it wasn't a discussion item. That ordinance for the budget was approved. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. So the council has asked for a body. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. Ms. Kawahara; And we have never gotten it. Mr. Furfaro: We have not been able to do it, but Mister... Mr. Kaneshiro: Peter will get back to us. Mr. Furfaro: Peter will get back to us. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's the communication I'm sending. Ms. Kawahara: I just wanted... I guess if you could put the timeline in there about that on the communication that we want a timeline about when the request was put in, when the ordinance passed, what the amount was... Mr. Kaneshiro: Last year's budget. Oh 2 years. What budget was? Mr. Bynum: 2 years. Ms. Kawahara: 2 years ago. So I need a timeline, please, if I could get it on that? 181 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Kaneshiro: I wasn't here 2 years ago. Ms. Kawahara: I know. So but... Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll get it. Ms. Kawahara: I want a timeline as to exactly how long it's been since we...the council asked for one. I want it on paper, the communication. Mr. Furfaro: You have it in your office. It was the budget that was approved 2 years ago had that position in it. Mr. Kaneshiro: It's in there. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: But I'll come' out wtli a communication. `°' ` ' ` ~ ' " Ms. Kawahara: My thing is, I hope that you haven't waited on hiring somebody just due to the constraints of where the person sits and how you want to train them. Mr. Kaneshiro: No, he's going to... We're coming with a communication Lani, and that question was already... Ms. Kawahara: No, that's a yes or no. Mr. Kaneshiro: She already asked the question, and then we're going to come with a communication that I'm sending to him. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. I just want to say then that when I came here as a new member, I was amazed that we our duties to do as elected officials, but we are not given the tools to do them, or the help to do them. I think the staff here is wonderful. They are totally overstretched. I have worked in a place that is...there are staff and our staff has been doing everything and everything possible, and they do it well. Mr. Furfaro: I think we all agree with you. Ms. Kawahara: I think everybody agrees that this staff is a good staff. Mr. Furfaro: But Lani, if you go back to my original comments, it's summed up in this. Mr. Clerk, if we have authorized that in an ordinance which is called the budget bill, you are obligated to get back to us when that doesn't happen. Ms. Kawahara: Yes. My question is, is there anything that we as individual councilmembers can do to help you to hire this person? Mr. Nakamura: No. I don't think it's a matter of for individuals of the council. I think the way the rules are set up is that we work with the chair in terms of administrative matters for the council... Ms. Kawahara: Is there any way we can help the chairman? 182 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Nakamura: The only thing I want to say is that when it... It's difficult for us to discern individual members' request as opposed to a council request. I think Vice Chair Furfaro is correct. The council expresses its intent in terms of when it funds a position in the budget, and it's my fault that that hasn't been filled. Ms. Kawahara: Because I know in the past, Councilman Furfaro has actually had 2 people submit things for different positions. I've had 2 people come in to submit resumes, because as I understand and I've heard the issues that, you know, we're understaffed, we can't do this, and we can't do that, and I'm happy I can do this myself, okay. But the fact is, I could have had 2 eligible people...eligible people walk in here that could have been hired, they dropped their resumes, and nothing happened. And I understand that this has been the history o£..so far, with getting these positions hired. And I...just being in a management position and having turnover a lot just because of where I work, I understand the difficulty in hiring people, finding them, and taking the time to train them, but that has never precluded me from having to hire a person, training them, and getting help to the staff that needs help, regardless of... Especially with the goals that are needed by the Council. So not only do the staff need the help with the work that they're getting too much of. We are...we are trying to do the work of the people. So for it to come down to training, space, difficult in training, we're going to be moving, that to me, I understand the concerns, but the fact is the position is needed for many myriad of reasons that override any of those. Mr. Nakamura: Thank you. Ms. Kawahara: I just wanted to be clear. Mr. Kaneshiro: Derek. Mr. Kawakami: I got a spring chicken question since I wasn't around 2 years ago. I don't know how...if we got to send a communication to fellow councilmembers in the spirit of the sunshine law or whatnot, but I'm interested to know what brought us to this point where we felt that we needed to hire an additional staff member, for one. Two, I've heard a couple things. One that by ordinance we put in this position and Peter is obligated to fill this position, even though he didn't ask for it. So my question is, if we start putting positions in other department's budget, are they indeed obligated to fill those positions? And this is a spring chicken kind of question, because that answer could easily be answered now by a yes or a no. Mr. Furfaro: Oh, I'll answer a113 of them (inaudible). Mr. Kawakami: Okay. And third, Lani I understand the frustration that you had 2 people that you knew of that turned in their application that you felt were eligible... Ms. Kawahara: It doesn't matter who they were. Mr. Kawakami: But I think... I know it doesn't matter, but let me finish, I have the floor now. But I think in... Just the spirit that the discussion can be open that just because you thought it was eligible to you may not have been the case for the guy that's actually going to be doing the hiring. So I mean, in all fairness, I think there are those that make the swords, and those that swing the sword, and these guys are the sword makers and we're the ones that swing the sword. So it's 2 different side of the fence of what we feel is qualified or not. Mr. Furfaro: Could I attempt to answer your questions? Mr. Kawakami: Sure. 183 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Furfaro: Which were good, and Lani's were good as well. First of all, there's no reason to have this worry about sunshine law because our budget is posted, discussed it, and it deals with personnel matters, and that's what we're on now. I have, and this is absolutely important for me to state, I have in my 36 years of management not worked with a finer staff. There's really great people here, people that go out of their way, they try to find information for you, and so forth. But part of that, I also have to share with you, in my 6 years on the council, and I keep track of them, and I think Stephanie and others, Jade, know, I have actually put together 17 of my own PowerPoints. I do my own PowerPoint. I keep track of this. I have 37 pieces of correspondence downstairs that I initiated at home, because I have the template of this county stationery and so forth that still have gone unanswered. So you know... I do my own filing. I keep a lot of those pieces. And when we first started out, the question was, is there any way depending on who got what committee, if Dickie got economic development, Dickie could work with the council agent that dealt with his committee, and we started out saying that was one way. I can also state, I remember Mr. Rapozo saying he wanted everyone to have their own staff, and then I offered the compromise that said, maybe we only get 2 clerical people and we divide it 3 committees to one and 3 committees to the other, and that's how (inaudible). But we settled on one. That's the first part. Second part of that hiringpractice is, I want to share with you, every time I get a resume of interest, I send it to personnel, and I have already viewed my opinion earlier today on, you know, they're not the fastest rabbit in the hat. They move slowly, but that is the correct hiring practice, it goes through them. And then ultimately, whoever we hire, I have no problem that that person is chosen by the county clerk. The problem I have is, quite frankly is, when I put something in the budget like we did with the police legal analyst as an initiative by the council and we put it in the budget like you just said, and then I get the budget back and the administration has established changing where that position goes, and I have never had anybody have any discussion with me, well, the administration obviously feels they have the autonomy to do that. But that is contrary to the wishes of this council. But when I put something in the council budget and it is passed by a budget ordinance, I expect to be informed, and I expect the clerk to take action, and I expect the clerk to have the total autonomy on that decision, because in a year from now, I'm going to be able to review Peter again, and I'm going to put those kind of comments in my comment card. But I can tell you, I don't think my colleagues have been doing their reviews to express themselves as strongly as I have, and it isn't about Peter, it is about the urgency of communicating that need. It's following procurement and recruitment policies that exist in the county, that's why we have purchasing, that's why we have human resources. And I'm feeling... I've given you enough background to understand hey, we can go forward from here. And I would like to hear from the county clerk in writing to the budget chairman is he going to pursue that, because quite frankly, it will be in my review next year of him. Okay? Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: I think if you read the transcripts of the budget last year, you would hear the same thing-the clerk saying it's my fault. You'd see that the chair said we're going to hire, and he's our representative, and you know, he gives instruction. And as Mr. Furfaro has said, if the administration does whatever they do, they have a, lot, you know, but this is our house. And you know, in terms of the history, we are directors of a huge organization. I've never in my life seen an organization to have directors like this with no staff...personal staff support. This is not a reflection of the staff, because I totally concur that the staff here is outstanding. Since I've been here, they hired Yvette, Wilma, JC, Lianne, all outstanding employees; they have the ability to...and Peter recently, to hire outstanding people, and that's their prerogative, I think you were saying, to hire... Mr. Furfaro: That's their prerogative-to hire the best possible people. 184 APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Bynum: But I'm saying personnel has said that they have not...they've only once been asked to recruit. So they haven't been going through personnel. Those folks have been selected somehow else, and when they did seek names, they never got them because they never went through the process of certification. I think... And so you can look at the same statements from me last year. It's my fault, we need to do this, the chair made it clear that he would be supportive and was instructing that these folks be hired, and it hasn't happened again now for 2 full years. And for us to be at the level we are and not have somebody who can assist us in our operations is absurd. I think you got to be real patient to be in this job, and all of you exercise patience, as I think...as do I, but 2 years? Mr. Kaneshiro: You got a question? Ms. Kawahara: I wanted to respond and continue. Mr. Kaneshiro: Respond to who? Ms. Kawahara: To Councilmember Kawakami. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: And then on more of the issue. I just wanted to say that I am clear that we are not...I'm not telling anybody who to hire, and it is the prerogative. But I am of a personality that likes to give help when it's needed and when it's asked for. I was asked to see if I could find anybody that...anybody that would be interested to help out the staff. Staff, again, does the greatest job here. Where I'm seeing a disconnect, though, is...and I think just like you, spring...I'm brand new, and I wanted to know what exactly is the county clerk's responsibility to the county council and getting us stuff and making sure that the council runs well. It is. It's the county council services division's duties and functions to provide staff and support services to Kauai County Council in preparation for its county and committee meetings, to do follow up as requested. It is the mission to serve... The county clerk's mission is to serve the Kauai County Council in its legislative function to carry out voter registration, related election responsibilities, and that's mostly what...Ernie's section, and to service public requests for information and documents relating to the legislative function. Where we are seriously falling down is we are not getting the help that we need to do our job as a county council, which does fall on the county clerk, and it's not... Mr. Kaneshiro: It's in your opinion. Ms. Kawahara: What? That is a mission statement. Mr. Kaneshiro: What I'm saying, that's your opinion you're not getting the help... To me I think we're doing a hell of a job. Ms. Kawahara: I think the staff here is doing an incredible job. Mr. Kaneshiro: No, but you saying that... You know, what I'm saying is that in my opinion, you know, I think we're doing a hell of a job, regardless with what the staff we have right now. With the staff we have right now, we doing a hell of a job, and if we get extra staff that can help, that's great. But for me, you know, for me personally, I do a lot of my research. I do my own. Ms. Kawahara: I do all of my research too. Mr. Kaneshiro: And I've done that for the 10 years I've been here, so I don't try to depend too much on the staff to do it, but at times when if I need something, they're there to get it. 185 • ~ APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) So I'm fine with, you know, with the leverage of service we're getting and giving to the public from the staff and what we're doing. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, you're fine. Mr. Kaneshiro: And that's why I say, we all have different opinions, and I wasn't here when they voted on that positions 2 years ago. Ms. Kawahara: Let me clarify then. You're right. You're right. If you think you get enough service to provide what you want to provide to...as a...to the people. Mr. Kaneshiro: So if you're going to speak, you should speak about yourself, if you feel that you're not getting, then (inaudible). Ms. Kawahara: Okay, for me, I don't feel that I am... Perfect, you're absolutely right. My concern is I do not feel... Mr. Kaneshiro: And ~ I understand his side; 'because we have different ways of •doing _ °-- things, and you said HE felt that he, you know, (inaudible). But I don't think you should say as a whole council. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Individually, I'll say that I feel this staff does everything it can. I feel that it does provide us... We get enough service to be... For me, I feel we do okay. But if there's a position funded, why are we doing just okay? Mr. Kaneshiro: You want to do better, then? In your opinion. Ms. Kawahara: I would like of always to be able to serve the public better. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: That is what I want. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright. Ms. Kawahara: minimally doing now. Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: There is a big difference. Mr. Kaneshiro: I don't feel that I can serve the public better with what we are Okay. Thank you. And I'm glad you asked for clarification, because it is, it's a difference. You're right. Thank you. Derek. Mr. Kawakami: Councilmember Kawahara, I wasn't implying that you were trying to push for an individual. All I was trying to do was draw the line kind of where we are and what our duties are and the duties and responsibilities of the county clerk. So by no means was I implying that, and if I did come across, I apologize. I have too much respect for you to imply something like that. I have a question specifically for the county clerk, since we're on the budget and we're specifically speaking of this one position that was a compromise. In your honest opinion, how effective is that going to be to get us the services that we've talking about, because I have one concern is that we're going to have one positions, yea, and everybody here...well, not everybody here, 186 APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) me, the way I'm seeing things, is that the perception may be that this position would be specifically for councilmembers assistance, and you're going to have one guy dealing with 7 councilmembers. To me, that's going to be a logistical nightmare for this individual to have 7 people lined up expecting that all of their priorities is THE top priority. How do you plan to deal with this kind of action? Mr. Nakamura: I don't know, actually. Mr. Furfaro: I would like to answer that. The discussion was about allocating time. That's exactly what the discussion was about. Mr. Kawakami: Okay, just to committees. Mr. Furfaro: If Mr. Bynum could recall, I think there was even discussion if he got one hour a day of this person's time, you know, those things we can massage and so forth. But ladies and gentlemen, the point here is we are all committed to constantly improving on what we're doing, we're all committed. And this basically boils down to all of us being mature enough to say, (inaudible), I think I mentioned it in the review, we need to pursue getting all the staff positions filled, and I put that in writing, and that is what we all have an opportunity to do, is to share those opinions with Mr. Nakamura. And I think he's going to get back to us, but there's not one of us at the table that isn't committed to constantly improving on the job, and perhaps when the... You know, I mean we were fat then 2 years ago, and we compromised on one person, you know. And hopefully, if we get a new building with all these fine support peoples having their cubbyholes and their desks and their credenzas and so forth, we're actually going to fill those positions. If not, I going tell you right now, business tells me don't spend the money if we not going fill those spaces. Council Chair Asing: Let me comment on that comment that you just made, Councilmember Furfaro. In the proposal for the renovation of this building, there are positions and spaces allocated for a support individual for each councilmember. So the space allocation is there. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, that's why I brought it up. Council Chair Asing: So each councilmember will have... Mr. Furfaro: But what I'm saying, if we going sit here and have this argument about one people, two people, six people, and if we're not going to fill those, if there's no intention, why design it? So there is a commitment, I think. Mr. Kaneshiro: Dickie, you had a question? Mr. Chang: Maybe more so of a comment. Thinking on the lines what Councilmember Kawakami had brought up, you know for myself personally, I think of all of us here, I'm probably the most delinquent in electronic email and... Mr. Kaneshiro: You looking at another guy here too. Mr. Chang: Text messaging and everything else, and I think the staff realizes that and has been extremely patient. But what I wanted to say was, you know in the lines of getting some support, county clerk, is... You know, when I got here, honestly, I don't think I was briefed enough to know what people's job descriptions were. So consequently being embarrassed with the lack of my electronic skills, you know, I really felt shame to ask for help, and it's almost like, okay you no like be dantaran because you're an elected official that you can be telling people what to do. And the point that Councilmember Kawakami was saying, like for myself, having that person, knowing that that's their job description, I wouldn't feel as bad as going up to that person and says, 187 APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) hey I need this, I need that, I need that, can you follow up with this correspondence, and so I'll know from the time that I come in. Because you know, I try to come to the council office at least 3 or 4 times a week for one or two hours a day or what have you, but then I can have somebody responding. So in my, you know, honest opinion, that would help me do my work 100% better, because it's... Like I have an administrator for my own personal business, and a lot of what I do is ask him, hey can you do this, do this, do this, so at least when I come in I'm a little bit more prepared so I know how to ask a question. So I think, you know, the clerk as he mentioned, he needs the time to give us his, you know, his answers and his plans. But I just, you know, I really wanted to just say, if and when that one person, two, six people, what have you, for myself personally, I know I can be a lot more effective, because I wouldn't feel bad about asking to research this, type this, email this, or email that, and you know, that's probably some of the things that I need to work on for myself personally to better myself during this time of short transition. Just a comment on that. Mr. Bynum: Just to give a little background, and this is all in transcripts from the previous 2 budget hearings, but it was councilmember Rapozo who, with quite a flourish my first budget, said we need personal staff. Maui, for instance, I know we're not Maui, but each councilmember has a budget of over $110,000. You guys when you meet the other councilmembers, they all have personal staff, and they're high level, legislative analyst, because they decide with their - - budget. The proposal was about 265 to get this started by having each councilmember, if they chose, budgeted for ahalf--time legislative analyst level kind of person. And you know, my recollection, it was a 4 to 3 decision to not do that...oh no, it was 4 to 3 to do it, but you need 5 votes to add to the budget, right? So we're 4 councilmembers who...and Mel, and this is public record, voted against his own proposal, okay? So in that discussion, because it's not the job description of our current staff to do the kind of things that you are talking about that I would like. My fantasy is that one hour a day just to keep files organized, because I have a difficult time keeping track of papers and accessing that, and that's my problem, but that's the kind of thing...support Iwould like, you know. And so the decision was, you know what, and we had this whole discussion, it's in the transcripts of like, well if we only have one person for 7, you know, aren't you going to get into conflicts? And I think most of us felt like, no we're adults, we'll handle that, we'll work it out, and that was the final decision that there would be this one, not as an administrative assistant level to research and write and do the kind of things our administrative people can do, but an entry level position to just do clerical stuff, right. And that's the position we haven't hired for 2 years, and I'm very frustrated about it, obviously. So I wanted to give that background. But I think that...what our goal should be is similar to Maui, because then it's not the clerk's responsibility or the other staff's responsibility that we have a sufficient budget that we handle our own staff. We are all adults too, and we...and then that person is employed by us, right? But in the meantime, I think if we had one clerk position, we could work out the details. Mr. Chang: Yeah, and...Councilmember Bynum, just for the record, as we attended the NACo conference, I think I mentioned I was a little bit surprised that I believed that there were aides from, you know...I know for sure Big Island, you know. I'm not sure if Maui was over there, and I just went, whoa, that's... Ms. Kawahara: They each have their own person. Mr. Chang: So I was actually kind of shocked and said, whoa. Mr. Bynum: The first HSAC conference I went to, I met all of these fine people. It was like, oh this is my administrative aide, right, and we were hosted in Maui, and then Maui staff has both, you know, they have people who are like in a pool like we have now, and they have individual members, and I think the Big Island, they don't have their own individual budgets, but they have people assigned to them, and... 188 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Kaneshiro: Tim, as the budget chair, you can dream about it for now, because let me tell you, we're going into some very difficult financial times. But we'll stick to that one position, and Peter's going to get back to us on that, so, at this point, because... It seems like now we're starting to add one position to every councilmember. I don't even want to go there as a budget chair. Ms. Kawahara: I want to discuss this actually a little more. How many positions are actually empty right now? Three? Mr. Nakamura: Three and one leave without pay. Ms. Kawahara: What types are they? Mr. Kaneshiro: One because of Cyndi's position. Mr. Nakamura: The 2 legislative analyst and 1 clerical. Mr. Bynum: Of course, you know, even our clerks in this office are professionals. It's amazing. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright, let's move on. Ms. Kawahara: I would just like to put in a word for yes, somehow maybe allocating moneys so that we do get to hire our own person, so we don't have to... Mr. Kaneshiro: There's not time to talk about... You know, you can talk all you like about it, but you go find the money. We got to cut someplace. Ms. Kawahara: Well, there's 3 positions that nobody's bothered to fill. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, not nobody bothered to fill. I guess we still got to fill. Cyndi just left. Ms. Kawahara: Actually, one other thing. So from coming from what Chair Asing had said, is it...can we... I guess we'll hear back, but was it the intention that we just should not expect anything until after the move, before our back? Mr. Furfaro: I think what we settled in is we're not going to expect anything until Mr. Nakamura's response to... Mr. Kaneshiro: That's correct. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: Which will be a reasonable time, I believe. Mr. Kaneshiro: Because we are going to send a communication to him. Alright? Anything else on the budget? We're taking the longest time on our budget. Ms. Kawahara: I just want to say it's not a personal thing... Mr. Kaneshiro: We understand. 189 • • APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Ms. Kawahara: But I do believe it's something we need to do to provide the service that we need to the public, for us to do our jobs. Council Chair Asing: And apparently you don't feel that you're getting that service. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's what she said. Council Chair Asing: That's your interpretation. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's right. She clarified that by saying that's her interpretation, because I said I feel that (inaudible). Mr. Bynum: And I'm clarifying that I'm not, in my opinion, I'm not provided the support that's appropriate for this position, not because... Because we're not structured that way. It's not about the folks we already have. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, yeah, yea. We understand. That's why I said, like you said... Mr. Kawakami: We all want to clarify. So Mr. Chair, I want to clarify that I think I'm doing an excellent job serving the public with the staff I have now. Mr. Kaneshiro: And that's great, and that's why I said that's your opinion. But when you say we feel this, then I get little, you know... Ms. Kawahara: I will be more careful with the pronouns. Mr. Kaneshiro: Because it could be because of you, but that not necessary. We all feel that. Alright, so we're okay, we're all on the track. Anything else before I call this budget session back to order and have it... Ms. Kawahara: There is a line. I have a line here about the county code and printing. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, ask the question. Ms. Kawahara: County code and printing, if you could explain it to me. It was in last year's and this year's, and has there been county code printing? Mr. Nakamura: It should be in every year's budget, because we do a codification every year. It is a contract to send out. The codification contract goes out to print the inserts for the county code, and that...it should be in every year's budget. Ms. Kawahara: Oh, those are just for the inserts? Mr. Nakamura: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. And then my other question related to that then is, we now have the...Peter Morimoto, yeah. We have Peter Morimoto now. Mr. Nakamura: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: And so will that help along actually getting our codes that are not...that we are inserting actually codified? 190 APRIL 9, 2009 COUNTY CLERK (3) Mr. Nakamura: Yes. That's my hope. And then the other thing I think that we're also doing is we are checking with Maui in terms o£.. They have a contract with, I believe Lexis Nexis, I think, that does their codification for them. And I think it also...would host...not on the county of Maui's site, but on the Lexis Nexis site a copy of the code. So we're trying to get some cost estimates from them of how that works. Ms. Kawahara: And then would that not be in this budget? Mr. Nakamura: No, it would be in this budget, because we weren't able to get costs or... Depending on the money situation, maybe in the mid-term...during the term, like how the admin comes in for money bills. Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Nakamura: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Nakamura: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Nakamura: Ms. Kawahara: Because it's been how long since we've codified it? Three years, I believe. Three years? Yes. Okay, so we have 3 years of stuff that's not codified. At least, yes. Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. I'll call the meeting back to order, and we're going to recess until Monday, and Monday 9 o'clock we'll take up Housing. Is there any other discussions? There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 3:33 p.m. 191 • • APRIL 13, 2009 • HOUSING AGENCY (1) The departmental budget review reconvened on April 13, 2009 at 9:07 a.m., and proceeded as follows: HOUSING AGENCY: Mr. Kaneshiro: Budget review is called to order. Let the record reflect that all members are present. We will have the Housing Agency up. Anyone in here wanting to speak on this particular item. If not, Mr. Jimenez? There being no objections, the rules were suspended. EUGENE JIMENEZ, HOUSING DIRECTOR: Chairman Kaneshiro and members of the Committee and other Councilmembers, thank you. Before I begin, I had wanted to make sure that you did receive our operating budget forms dated March 5, 2009. Mr. Kaneshiro: Those are located in the back of the pamphlet. Mr. Jimenez: Just for your information, this morning I submitted 3 different sheets. One is a budget summary which replaces the first page of the May 5 transmittal. What happened was on Friday when we reviewed our budget, we found out there was an extension error and some addition errors, so we did make a revision, and the revision is dated April 13, 2009. Mr. Kaneshiro: So that would replace your March 5? Mr. Jimenez: That would replace the first page of the transmittal of March 5. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright. Mr. Jimenez: Before I begin, Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to acknowledge, you know, 2 of my staff who has spent countless and countless hours preparing this budget... namely my accountant Avis Hirahara, please raise your hand and Fay Kimura. You know, they have done a lot to put this together. As you may recall or as you have seen, you know, we have a 21 page budget. What we have done is tried to include all sources of funding, not only General Fund, but I think there are 7 different funding sources which we are presently implementing. Also, I would like to just recognize... I did recognize the accountants, but I want you to know, you know, they are not just accountants. They also function as the H.R. people in my office being in charge of the payroll certifications, the timesheets, and as you go through the budget, you will notice that they are personnel that are funded from different sources. You know, we have to track that. We do some monthly expenditure reports, we do quarterly reports, we have program audits, you know, so they are the ones that are keeping us out of jail and are totally knowledgeable as to what the allowable cost are per the different programs. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Jimenez, may I just say that I concur with your summary and I would have the 2 ladies take a bow rather than raise their hand. Avis, we know of her talents for a very long time and Fay was my cost controller for many years in the Sheraton system and probably one of the best cost controllers in the entire... Mr. Jimenez: Fantastic. Please stand to be recognized. Mr. Furfaro:. I just had to add to your fine commentary. Mr. Chang: Is it of the 2, Avis tries harder? 192 • • APRIL 13, 2009 HOUSING AGENCY (1) Mr. Jimenez: Okay, I just like to go through... before we go through the summary page, I would just like to go through some budget highlights as to how we reach this budge which was submitted to you. Number 1, prior to submittal of this budget to the Council, we have been working very closely with the Department of Finance and also with the Budget Officer Alvin Honda who has provided us guidance as to how, you know, the Administration had wanted to present not only the departmental budgets, but the whole budget as a whole. Before this, we had... we were asked to cut our travel budget to 50% and initially, it was for travel under the General Fund account; however, we took the initiative, and cut travel 50% across all program areas including the Federal funds. We were instructed and advised not to include any equipment purchases. Several months ago, we did receive an e-mail from the automotive section of the Department of Public Works where they requested that we put in moneys for a new vehicle. We have some old vehicles and there was one that was 9 years old. What we did was to forego adding any equipment purchases for the next fiscal year, and we have tried to be more efficient in scheduling our inspections and the staff that has to go out in trying to make them... just plan their trips out, so we would need a new vehicle. As you are all aware, we had a hiring freeze. It is still in effect now. What we have done, we have carried that into the next fiscal year where in a housing specialist under the Section 8 program is not slated to be hired although we had' 56 appl'icarits. We were able'to...with the advice of the °'- program manager for the Section 8 program, Sandy Kaauwai, we reorganized, we are trying out some new staffing requirements within the Section 8 program, and by June 30, we will have a follow up meeting to see whether or not some of our reorganization is working or not. As you have heard from other departments, there has been a reallocation of what they call the other post employment benefits which equates to 19%. So when we discuss the summary sheet, you will see that we have included that 19% over and above the fringe benefit rates, so now it is coming out approximately 55% of the salaries which constitutes the fringe benefit rate. Okay, I call your attention to the handout which I gave you which hopefully I will be able to find it here. Okay, it is just a pie chart. I realize that you all receive pie charts from the other departments, but I had wanted to submit only one not to confuse the issue and to just show you... this is County General Funds... a comparison between fiscal year 2009 and fiscal year 2010. As the charts indicate, the salaries were cut from 67% to 58%. Benefits was increased because of some of the post employment benefits, but other benefits that did increase. So it increased from 20% to 29% from 2009 to 2010. Operations has been decreased by 98,202 from 107,179. You can look at that at your leisure, but what it indicates is that we have taken a really hard look into trying to make the operation more efficient, not at the expense, of course, of cutting services. But we have taken it very serious and our budget indicates although you may see a large increase... by and large what has happened is that we were successful in getting additional moneys from the Federal government, so that shows the increase. I'd like to call your attention now to the budget summary sheet dated today. I think there are some yellow lines on it. Okay, what this operating budget summary indicates is that it shows the total of all funds that are received by the County Housing Agency. If you look at the first column which is the total of all funds, you will note that for the next year, we anticipate funding in the sum of $20,464,830. The figure is so large, I have a hard time. It is $20,464,830 and this is what we are talking about when we talk about our budget. Out of that, the General Fund is a total of $762,000 and that equates out to 3.7%. So of our total budget, the General Fund constitutes 3.7%. Last year... so just in the General Fund alone from 2009 to 2010, we see that we have decreased the budget by $90,523. Moving on... the next one is the HCDRF which is the revolving fund and, you know, I will just go briefly. If you look at the budget submittal, we can go line (inaudible), but I would just like to touch on the gross figures here for you. We have the HCDRF in the grant total of $2,132,000. The Kalepa I and 1V, $944,326; Pa`anau, $914,595; the HOME funds, $1.9 million; Block Grant, $1.3 million; NSP, $5.2 million; and the Section 8 program is... total program budget for that is estimated at $7,161,304. Last week, I also mentioned that we average 193 • APRIL 13, 2009 HOUSING AGENCY (1) about a half a million dollars per month in rental assistant payments to landlords. We presently are nearing 700 people on our list of recipients that are under the program. Okay, if I may call your attention to this very short piece. It is untitled, but it says, Kauai County Housing Agency 2009-2010 Operating Budget and what we have done is to just look at a comparison between the 2008-2009 fiscal year to the next fiscal year. Under the first one, we had the General Fund which is a difference of $90,523 less. HCDRF, there is an increase of $945,993. You have Kalepa Village, $19,000; Pa`anau, the variance is $32,000 less; and HOME funds are increased by $303,173; Block Grant has a slight decrease of $45,000; and the NSP $5.29 million. Okay, when you look at the total amounts that are slated for the 2009 (inaudible), you will see that our budget is $20,464,000 which you can find on this sheet...which corresponds with this sheet and in year 2008-2009, our total budgets was $13.9 million, so there is almost a $7 million difference. So you might wonder what is the difference. Primarily, the difference has been in the NSP program with $5.2 million. Mr. Furfaro: Could you explain the NSP program? Mr. Jimenez: The NSP program is called the neighborhood stabilization program and under this program, it is... we did receive $4.7 million and its primary use is to purchase foreclosed properties... it will be anywhere from 16 to 20 properties and we will be also building on 3 lots that the County owns. There are 2 in Hanapepe and one in Waimea, and we will selling these homes to eligible families meeting a certain income criteria. So it is called a neighborhood stabilization program in the sum of $4.7 million. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Jimenez, may I ask a question Mr. Chair? This money is actually part of the moneys that the President has earmarked to... Mr. Jimenez: No, it is not. We are looking at an additional... there is $2 billion nationwide which is being slated for competitive and we did receive the program guidelines and there is a good likelihood that we will be applying for that. So it will be open competition, but I note that we have... one of the allowable cost will be for acquisition, so we are looking toward that maybe... you know, acquiring some property for future housing development. Mr. Furfaro: I remember last year, we acquired 3 homes. Mr. Jimenez: 31ots. Mr. Furfaro: No homes? Mr. Jimenez: No, we are planning on building 3 houses on that and 16 to 20 foreclosed properties to sell to (inaudible). Mr. Furfaro: Accordingly on your sheet, we received no NSP money last year, but we were able to acquire 31ots? Mr. Jimenez: Yes, those lots were... Mr. Furfaro: I wanted to ask that question because that is where my confusion lies in the new Federal programs that deal with stabilizing neighborhoods. I knew we had done something, but the report indicates that we really had no special funds for that. GARY MACKLER, HOUSING AGENCY: The lots that you are referring to have been owned by the County for some time now, many years, and in the application for neighborhood stabilization program funds, one of the proposed uses was for construction financing to actually build 194 • • APRIL 13, 2009 HOUSING AGENCY (1) out the homes on those lots. We have the homes designed, permitted, and we have construction bid documents ready to issue once the neighborhood stabilization program contracts are signed with the State, and that is being processed at this time. Mr. Chang: Gary, can you state your name? Mr. Mackler: Oh, I am sorry. Good morning Councilmembers, Gary Mackler for the record. Mr. Furfaro: So may I say that the... since those 3 units were planned, identified, designed, and cost, is that going to initially come out of the $5.2 million? Mr. Mackler: None of the expenses that have been incurred to this point will come out of the NSP money. Only the construction dollars will come out of the NSP money. Mr. Furfaro: So the money that we spent for design, planning, and so forth, came from where? Mr. Mackler: It came from program income source. HOME disaster program income which is an unrestricted source and we were able to utilize the funding from that grant. Mr. Furfaro: So to make this happen, the only thing we are going to see come out of this $5.2 million at this point is the actual construction cost and materials. Mr. Mackler: Correct. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Sir. Mr. Jimenez: For the 3 homes, but also the 16 and 20 foreclosed properties will also... Sir. Mr. Furfaro: I am just trying to clean up some housekeeping from last year Mr. Jimenez: Mr. Chairman, that has been a really brief summary as to, you know, what we are looking at for our 2009-2010 budget. As I mentioned earlier, I have my staff ready to answer any questions which you may have. Thank you for your attention. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Mr. Jimenez. Mr. Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Maybe your accounting people should help me on this one here or however you want to handle that. I want to look at your revised total funds available. First of all, my compliments in previous years, our PT&E... our payroll, etc. was running about 15% of the grant money. This sheet reworks with these extra moneys: We are somewhere around 11.8. My compliments, but why would we have left out in the calculating of administrative cost, why would we have left off... are these $255,799 of other expenses related to personnel and payroll? What is that related to? You are calculating $2.4 million as personnel cost associated with managing the $20 million, but there is that one line after personnel cost, is that associated to... that is associated to what? Mr. Kaneshiro: .You can come up. Mr. Furfaro: You need to be on the mike, Avis, I am sorry. 195 i ~ APRIL 13, 2009 HOUSING AGENCY (1) Mr. Kaneshiro: For the record, just introduce yourself. AVIS HIRAHARA, HOUSING AGENCY: Avis Hirahara. Mr. Furfaro: Do you see the number that I am talking about right after your... Ms. Hirahara: The 255... Mr. Furfaro: The $2.4 million for personnel cost is the 255? Ms. Hirahara: The 255 is broken down on all pages. It is basically for travel, supplies, any other cost to run the office such as copier. Mr. Furfaro: So those are other operating expenses associated. They are not... none of them are associated with personnel cost? Ms. Hirahara: No. Mr. Furfaro: Well then my compliments. You are going from 15.08% of personnel cost down to 11.8%. That is very favorable in these times. Thank you. Thank you Avis. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Chair, did you have a question? Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Mr. Chair. You know, I think I will reserve my question in a form of a communication sent over requesting more information on the NSP specifically criteria on how we determine what foreclosures we go after. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. We will write a communication over to the Housing in that regards. Mr. Jimenez: Generally, if I could just make a statement. You know, these foreclosed properties will be purchased from the banks, so not from agents or anything else. So, you know, we would have gone through whatever processes that they go through to foreclose on properties, but I look forward to receiving your communication and we will be answering right away. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Furfaro: May I just say that I thought that Mr. Kawakami's question was excellent seeing that these moneys need to be spent almost the minute that we get them. Mr. Kaneshiro: Committee members, anymore questions? If not, thank you very much Mr. Jimenez. Mr. Jimenez: Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Kaneshiro: At this time, do we have anyone in here that wanting to speak? I did announce it before you came in. Not at this point. If not, this budget hearing is now in recess. We will have the next department up. There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 9:27 a.m. 196 s • APRIL 13, 2009 AGENCY ON ELDERLY AFFAIRS(2) The departmental budget review reconvened on April 13, 2009 at 9:39 a.m., and proceeded as follows: AGENCY ON ELDERLY AFFAIRS: Mr. Kaneshiro: The next department that we have is Agency on Elderly Affairs. With that, the rules are suspended. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Mr. Kaneshiro: You can just do a brief highlight on your current budget that you are coming before us for. KEALOHA TAKAHASHI, AGENCY ON ELDERLY AFFAIRS: Thank you for having us and with me is my accountant, Azi Turturici. What you have before you is plain and simple. There are increases in the budget due to like the other departments... the other post employee benefits and slight decrease in our operations. Then we came out with a total of... for 2010, $1,088,223. Gary and Wally was really lenient in our office. We didn't have to take the full 10% of the cuts, so... Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. On budget spreadsheet, it is page 174 and 175, basically 2 pages and the handout that she has here for the budget comparison for fiscal year 2009 to 2010. With that, I will open it up for questions. Does anyone have any questions on the Elderly Affairs budget? Go ahead Lani? Ms. Kawahara: The (inaudible) home meals and in-home services... Ms. Takahashi: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: I am just... is there not a Mayor's request for that or am I just not reading this right? There is a year to date expenditure and encumbrances, but I don't see a line coming out from that to make sure that you guys can still do it. RICKY WATANABE, COUNCIL SERVICES: There is a consultant services on the page before. It is on 174. Ms. Kawahara: Is that at least maintaining your services at that level? Ms. Takahashi: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Great, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: I see it. It was the page before. Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Good morning ladies. It is always nice to see the 2 of you and especially my compliments on the program that you do run. Very small increase this year. Kealoha, do you know in all programs that we touch on, senior programs, elderly, (inaudible), and so forth, about how many people do you touch in our community? Ms. Takahashi: I am estimate it at close to 3,000. Mr. Furfaro: 3,000? Ms. Takahashi: Yes. 197 • APRIL 13, 2009 AGENCY ON ELDERLY AFFAIRS(2) Mr. Furfaro: What do you contribute to this very small increase in revenues available to you? I guess I want to say budgeted revenues. Only an $86,000 increase? Ms. Takahashi: Again, that was basically for the post employment benefits. Mr. Furfaro: Is this RSVP recognition day that 14,000 I think is there. Ms. Takahashi: That is correct. Mr. Furfaro: Is that the same as last year? Ms. Takahashi: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: And the senior day program as well, is that... Ms. Takahashi: That increased to 2,000. Mr. Furfaro: It did. Ms. Takahashi: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you ladies. Ms. Takahashi: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: I have no further questions Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Anyone else of the Committee have any questions for Elderly Affairs? No questio ns? Okay, we are done. Ms. Takahashi: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: We will be in recess for another, I guess 10 minutes as we get to Transportation Agency over. At this time, we are in recess. There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 9:44 a.m. 198 • • APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) The departmental budget review reconvened on April 13, 2009 at 9:55 a.m., and proceeded as follows: TRANSPORTATION AGENCY Mr. Kaneshiro: We have the next department which is Transportation Agency. Anyone in here wanted to testify before I call the agency up or make testimony? No, alright. With that, rules are suspended. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Mr. Kaneshiro: You can start. JANINE RAPOZO, EXECUTIVE ON TRANSPORTATION: Aloha Councilmembers, Janine Rapozo, Executive on Transportation for the Transportation Agency. With me is Celia Mahikoa, our Program Specialist. Mr. Kaneshiro: Good morning. Ms. Rapozo: I have one handout that I think Peter distributed to you which has 3 different charts on it and I would just like to go over it really quickly. The chart on the left is our overall budget which includes our Federal moneys. So the General Fund is showing in the blue. outside. Mr. Furfaro: Gentlemen, if you like, you can take your conversation Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, continue. Ms. Rapozo: Okay, so the blue portion is the General Fund amount there and the purple portion is our Federal grants which is about $1.1 million and it represents about 22% of our budget, so we did want to make note of that. For the General Fund, we are requesting $4.2 million which is about 78% of the budget. We do have a little dotted line there that shows our revenues coming into the General Fund which is about $525,000 anticipated there. So we just wanted to make a note that, you know, that we are contributing (inaudible)... the blue portion, the General Fund, about 10%, so what we are asking for is not really $4.2 million. What we did then is... to the right side, we did a pie chart which basically highlights the blue portion which is only the General Fund portion and just show you where the expenses are into 3 categories. Our salaries and wages, our operations, and our benefits. The final chart on the bottom basically gives a comparison from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2010 and the bar graph at the far right side is showing the total budget. You see that there is an increase in the yellow bar graph to $4.2 million from our FY 09 from $3.9 million, and the variance to the left of that is showing is $366,467 that we increased for the upcoming year. And what we wanted to show on the other bar graph on the second bar graph there highlighting is the benefits. I think every department has been coming up and explaining that the OPEB benefit that was previously budgeted in Finance is now being budgeted in each department. And our OPEB benefit amounted to $380,268 over next fiscal year. So that pretty much takes care of where our variance lies for next fiscal year's budget. If you look at the other 2 bar graphs. The salaries and operations, you will see that operations has gone down for next year and salaries have gone up. Basically, that entails... if you look on the bullet at the bottom, the last bullet, the decrease in operations is due to the reallocation to salaries benefits for service expansion staffing. In our current fiscal year's budget, we have a line 199 u • APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) item for special projects which was used for expansion and what we are doing is just putting it in the appropriate line item category for next year. So if there is any questions, that is basically our budget for 2010. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, members? Mr. Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Thank you for a very nice explanation. Should I read this pie graph being... I would add your total budget of $5,455,457 to the $1,178,000 to give me the total? Ms. Rapozo: No, that is the total including the $1.178. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. It is just a little deceiving in the grant, so the total is the $5.4 million? Ms. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. And then the 22% then represents the $1.1 million as 22% of your total budget? _N ~` Ms. Rapozo: Correct. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Do you have a question Lani? Ms. Kawahara: What was the special programs budget line? Mr. Kaneshiro: Page 178. Ms. Kawahara: And that would be to expand services? Ms. Rapozo: That is correct. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: May I... Mr. Kaneshiro: I thought you were done. Mr. Furfaro: I am just trying to make sure I understood her pie graph and now that I do... Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Under salaries, could you tell me the increase between the $2.2 million and the $1.9 million Janine? Ms. Rapozo: Where? I mean you want to know where it went to? Mr. Furfaro: No, I want to know how much more... how many, how much service we added that caused that increase. I think that is very justifiable when you look at it. Ms. Rapozo: Okay, our current year... this current fiscal year, what we have added so far is we did add one route coming in from Kekaha in the morning and one going back 200 • APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) in the afternoon. Mostly arriving in Lihu`e at the seven thirtyish time... that is our commuter run which was basically overflowing. That is attracting some riders, but we have noticed that most people still want to stay on the one that arrives at 7:30 versus a half an hour earlier. So we are looking at a different method maybe of doing the expansion there and maybe starting in Kekaha and one starting in `Ele`ele and same time arrival, so kind of moving it that way. What we did on the north side is we moved it to hourly service. It was every other hour and then we changed that to hourly service this fiscal year. Mr. Furfaro: So that~gave us how many new trips? Ms. Rapozo: Trips or routes? Mr. Furfaro: Routes. Ms. Rapozo: There are 4 more added. I am sorry, 5 more. 5 more in the morning and I think 4 more in the afternoon. We added 2 additional routes into Koloa and out of Koloa and Po`ipu for commuters from the Lihu`e side going into that area. We added one leaving here at 6:20 and 7:20 I believe... I am sorry, 6 o'clock and 7 o'clock and coming out of there at about 3:30 and 4:30 for commuters. It is not doing as well as we expected partly due to a bus stop that we are anticipating adding at the Hyatt Hotel that has run into some snags with the right-of-entry. So we are still working on it. In fact, it is near signature now with them, so hopefully, the Hyatt will be allowing us to stop right on property, so hopefully we will attract more going into that area. Mr. Furfaro: So the right-of--entry is being worked on between the Hyatt's attorneys and our legal department? Ms. Rapozo: Correct. We have been working on that from like the Summer time, so that is... unfortunate, we were hoping to add those routes at the same time that we could open the Hyatt bus stop, but that didn't quite work, but we are still working on that. And then more recently, we added the PMRF bus stop and that has been attracting riders... workers, basically, going out to PMRF in the morning and coming home in the afternoon. That has been pretty successful. We are really fortunate that the base has actually granted us the opportunity to allow our drivers to go on the base with just their I.D. to be able to do the bus service, so they have been very, very supportive. So that is what we have done so far and we are looking at... based on community needs and our needs o£.. the feedback from our Transit Advisory Committee where we are going to be adding next. Mr. Furfaro: Would I make the interpretation on these 2 Kekaha routes that you talked about and because it seems like more people are wanting to arrive at the same time. So you went Kekaha to `Ele`ele and then starting the new route from `Ele`ele? Do I assume that when the first one gets to `Ele`ele, it then becomes an express? Ms. Rapozo: That is correct. It would be just drop offs. We would only stop where someone would be getting ofl: Mr. Furfaro: Getting off, so basically, from after `Ele`ele, that one is an express ride into town? Ms. Rapozo: Correct. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. It seems... Chair Asing: How long have you been working on the Hyatt route? 201 • • APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) Ms. Rapozo: From the Summer and we have actually... Chair Asing: What is the major problem? Ms. Rapozo: Their attorneys wanted us to indemnify not only the Hyatt, but couple of parent companies. So our attorneys didn't feel it was necessary, so the Hyatt has finally agreed that we would just be indemnifying the Hyatt Hotel. Chair Asing: So there is an agreement? Ms. Rapozo: Uh huh. We finally got to that point. Chair Asing: Thank you Mr. Chair. I am finished. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Expansion into. the evening hours and on Sundays, is that anticipated or contemplated? - ` " ~ -° Ms. Rapozo: That is where we are looking at next. Mr. Bynum: My concern is that we have folks who are dependent on the bus. They have no other means of transportation, so they can access a community service, but can't get home, right? They can go to an evening event, but they can't get home or they can't access the communities on Sundays at all. Ms. Rapozo: Actually, our Transit Advisory Committee, at our last meeting, put forth a recommendation that they wanted to see the late night service before Sunday, so we are working toward that first. Mr. Bynum: I know we look at ridership in terms of need and wanting to fill the bus and probably if we do those late nights, they won't be full buses. But, you know, it is about providing the service for these folks that are increasingly dependent and don't have other transportation means at all. Ms. Rapozo: Correct. Mr. Bynum: I would never expect those to be high numbers, but I still think it is something that we need to look at the whole system. Ms. Rapozo: That is correct. As part of the overall service, it would be something that you would want to provide, so that someone will become a rider possibly. Mr. Bynum: So it won't need numbers to justify it. It is just part of giving a comprehensive alternative for transportation. Ms. Rapozo: Correct. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Anyone else? Mr. Chang? Mr. Chang: Thank you. Several questions. Number 1, how do we educate the public about the bus routes? 202 • • APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) Ms. Rapozo: We do several things. When there are opportunities for different fares or anything like that, we do make ourselves known out there and provide information, bus schedules, and, you know, little goodies and things like that. That is one way. We also have our schedules available online... on the County website. We have not done... we have done a few ads here and there in the paper, but that is basically our method right now. It is not a really... it is kind of more... we react to when there is a particular fare especially to certain target groups that we know are high bus users, so we go to all the more senior center fairs, we go out to the different neighborhood centers and do presentations. We have gone out to different social service agencies and do presentations to these types of groups. Mr. Chang: Are there bus schedules on the bus? Ms. Rapozo: iTh huh and we do have bus schedules on the bus and we do have them at various locations around the island. The libraries, at different... wherever we have bus stops, Kuku`i Grove. Mr. Chang: You mentioned the Hyatt, but what is the route into the southshore? Does that also service like maybe Lawa`i Beach Resort, Kukui`ula, Sheraton, Kiahuna, etc.? Ms. Rapozo: Uh huh. There are stops along the way. It is not just at the Hyatt. Right now, we go to the bypass, so that would be the closes for the Hyatt workers, so we wanted to extend a little further, but we do have one by Kiahuna, we have one by Kukui`ula Store right now. We were working with the Sheraton too to kind of go in the back road and try to stop in there. That might be another alternative. Mr. Chang: Do you have any idea how many tourist might take advantage of the bus system? Ms. Rapozo: Just a guesstimate. You know, just from what the drivers say. Right now, maybe I would say, they maybe make up maybe 5% to 10% of the ridership. We don't service a lot of the hotel areas yet. You know, the first priority was to the community and just to the workers to get them to and from. But we have gotten some request even from... for the workers and I guess the hotel guest like the Hilton or kind of routes... or hotels that are kind of off the cuff kind of areas and to try to do bus stops in those areas too. Mr. Chang: I just wanted to add that I think it is a tremendous service and education and communication is the key for, you know, a lot of the success because especially with these expresses, you know, these non-stops, it is so much convenience and I think a lot more people would like to try the transportation and there might also be another revenue source by... a lot of people don't want to drive. Visitors, they don't mind just for a very cheap price just get on and cruise, so that would be my suggestion as communication and maybe a little bit more education. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Maybe Walaau might do a public service announcement whoever that person is, but we will find out. Lani? Ms. Kawahara: I wanted to... I have noticed that you have been increasing the routes and I really appreciate it. It always is... you always do a good job of also advertising and doing a public service announcement about that, so I am really glad about that. I would also like to echo Councilmember Bynum's urging of the evening hours and Sunday definitely hours. I do, as a librarian, I run into the people that come into the library and do talk about weekend and Sunday 203 • • APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) hours especially and a woman in K-Mart too... that they can't get there on the weekend. I had several questions. One was, how was the employee program going with the bus? Ms. Rapozo: The free employee bus pass program? Ms. Kawahara: Yes. Ms. Rapozo: We started that in December and we have over 200 employees that signed up to use that. We don't... the ridership is not as high as we want with all of those passes out there, but I think there is certainly... we are doing an evaluation, you know, a monthly evaluation to see if there is anything that we can do. So we are looking at, you know, a lot of them are single. We don't stop at the baseyards. We don't stop at certain County facilities, so we are looking at, you know, whether or not our routes can do that, so that we can increase those numbers. So it is, you know, we are... it is kind of a program that we are going to keep developing as we go along. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, great. And Councilmember Chang was asking about the education and information about the bus services and 'the- routes and°the'°times: I have noticed - _ --- the pillars that you guys have put up at some places. Do you... are you planning to put more up and are they in this budget because I think they are really useful and they are very, very good because they are stationary and they are there, right, when the people will be needing them. Ms. Rapozo: Actually, we do have more that we need to install. We just need to work with the landowners on certain ones if it is private property, but I think we have installed 8 so far at the major stops because that has all the schedules. Ms. Kawahara: Right. Ms. Rapozo: At all of the other bus stops, I don't know if you have noticed, but we are doing ADA bus pads. At the same time, our construction contractor is doing that. If you will notice, when you look at the sign, there will be another schedule holder which is just a flat schedule holder that is up against the sign. Ms. Kawahara: Right. Ms. Rapozo: And it will service that particular stop, so every single stop will have a schedule. If it is highly utilized, it will have the circular one. If it is not as highly utilized, it is more within the route, then it will have one of those flat (inaudible). Ms. Kawahara: Right, and then do you already have them? Ms. Rapozo: We have those, yes. Ms. Kawahara: So you are just waiting to install them? (Inaudible) ADA bus pads did you say. Ms. Rapozo: I am sorry. Yea, every bus stop has to be ADA compliant, so it has to have a concrete pad 8 x 5, so while the contractor was doing construction for those pads, we had them install the schedule at the same time. I am sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you. Ms. Kawahara: No, I am sorry. This is my first budget, so thanks for that. I was wondering also about the $250,000 for the automobiles? Is that the match or buses, vans, wheelchair access? Is that 20% match? 204 • • APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) Ms. Rapozo: That is correct. Ms. Kawahara: Was there something that I had read about you guys getting money for that from stimulus or anything? Ms. Rapozo: Yes, that we are going to use in the current fiscal year. We are going to get that done. We need to move on that within this fiscal year, so we are going to get that done. That one has no match. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, and then this is on top of the ones that you are going to get this fiscal year. Is this replacement? Ms. Rapozo: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: So how many are you going to get for this fiscal year replacement buses are we talking? Ms. Rapozo: Are you talking 2010? Ms. Kawahara: This one that you are getting the new money for this fiscal year you said it was for, yea? Ms. Rapozo: The stimulus money? Ms. Kawahara: Yes. Ms. Rapozo: We are looking at getting 9. It would be for expansion and replacement, about half. Ms. Kawahara: Expansion and replacement, and then the 250 for the upcoming is for? Ms. Rapozo: Replacement. We have to replace about 10 buses a year just in order to stay on track. Ms. Kawahara: (Inaudible) buses then from the stimulus? Ms. Rapozo: Well, if you call it free. Ms. Kawahara: It extended our... Ms. Rapozo: Extra. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, correct. So there is a good chance that we could expand the services because we are having more buses from that. Ms. Rapozo: That is part of the reason that we expand the way we do. We have to make sure that we have enough resources as far as buses. Ms. Kawahara: And just one more question because, again, I am new to the budget. The on-call drivers and dispatchers, can you explain to me the $200,000 and how it is that you do the on-call dispatchers and drivers? 205 • • APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) Ms. Rapozo: Unlike some services, whenever a driver is out, we have to replace them. It is not like you can go without them, so we have a pool of drivers that is like substitute or on-call. They are less than a full timer, so we bring those people in, in order to replace our drivers, and that is the pool of money that you see there. It is about 30 drivers that we have in the pool right now. Ms. Kawahara: That is the standard level? Your $200,000 keeps you good? Ms. Rapozo: That is part of it. I think we moved it over as part of the expansion money that I had spoke about earlier went into those salaries. In order to expand services, we increased that pool. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Mr. Chair. Hi Janine. You know, my question is on page 178 of the budget under construction. We have the Mayor's request at $20,000 and then the adjusted budget at $361,000, can you explain a little bit about that? Ms. Rapozo: Okay. What happens is, in fiscal year 2008, we encumbered money for a construction contract which was for the ADA bus pads and it did not... the contract is still ongoing in this current year, so they roll over that encumbrance into 2009 budget. So it is in our current budget, but that contract will end this year, so there is no request for that in the upcoming fiscal. Mr. Kawakami: You know what, we went up for NACo and they just... you can send this over as a communication too, but we have 9 projects and one of them that was a project, but didn't get on the list from conversation with Roger Gwinn from the Ferguson Group was dealing with buses, the projects, so he did say that they were contemplating whether the (inaudible) areas from the counties were going to come together with a proposal, with a package proposal. I just wanted to kind of follow up as to what the progress was on that side, so send something over. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, we will send a communication to that effect. Tim had a question. Mr. Bynum: Just a couple of questions about stops... sometimes people request a stop between stops, and we don't allow that or... Ms. Rapozo: No, there is an application form at our office that they can fill out and I believe we put it online as well. Mr. Bynum: So I talked to a commuter who works near the landfill and I thought that they would ride the bus now that it extends to PMRF, but they won't stop at the landfill. Ms. Rapozo: I did not get a request from the landfill. I got one from Syngenta Seeds that we are looking at. Mr. Bynum: I am just curious how that works. Ms. Rapozo: Well, it depends where the stop would be. If it is on a State highway, we need to get approval from the District Engineer in order for him to allow us to have a stop on the State highway. If it is on a County road, then we would have to do a resolution that 206 APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) comes up through the County Council for you folks to approve as a bus stop. It would have to... engineering would have to draft a traffic resolution first. If it is on private property like the Hyatt, it goes through right-of-entry, so it all depends where it is. Mr. Bynum: So bottom line is if individuals make that request, we try to be responsible? Ms. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Bynum: But it is a big deal to create a whole new stop, right? I mean, we make stops (inaudible)... I mean like aren't on the schedule like somebody just says, hey, you are driving right by my work. Ms. Rapozo: No, we don't. Mr. Bynum: So it has to be an official stop, right? The other question was I think your office was involved in discussions about a potential of a resort shuttle in the Po`ipu area? Were you involved in that? Ms. Rapozo: Somewhat. Actually, the Po`ipu Beach Resort Association was looking at creating that on their own. Mr. Bynum: Right, so is that... Ms. Rapozo: So we were in the discussions, but we were more involved in trying to get the commuters, the workers into work. Mr. Bynum: Right. You don't know the status of that? Ms. Rapozo: I am not sure. Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Lani, you had something? Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. I did have a question. I haven't seen an official communication, but was there... are you guys looking at fares? Was there some kind of increase in fares? I think something came in, but I haven't seen it. Ms. Rapozo: The Cost Control Commission was looking at our fares and they recommended... they had some recommendations for some increases which I believe has been transmitted over to Council. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: But they are not reflected in your budget? Ms. Rapozo: No. Ms. Kawahara: And we are not looking at them for this fiscal year coming up? Ms. Rapozo: It is not reflected in my budget. Mr. Furfaro: It is not reflected in the budget. We would make the decision. 207 APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) Ms. Kawahara: Okay. I don't think I have gotten that communication, so I just want to be sure to get that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Do you want to get a communication out to that regards? Ms. Kawahara: Whatever they sent us that I haven't got yet about fares. Mr. Kawakami: Is that the Cost Control report? Ms. Kawahara: Yea. Mr. Kawakami: I think we received the report. I might have a copy that you can look at. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, and then the other question was park and rides. I see that there was some emphasis on park and rides and I was wondering if there is a cost to park and rides, and is there anything in here that would cover that? _'-'-` ` '_~"" `° ' `` ` "~ Ms. Rapozo: There is... correct, if we are looking at property. We are looking at trying to get property that is either County owned or somewhere that we can get aright- of-entry kind o£.. or an agreement with the landowner with no cost first. So we are looking at some areas at the Kapa`a area, the Kapa`a home field area where there is a parking lot that they use for the football games, but that is it. And then working with Parks & Recreation, if there is any facilities or neighborhood centers with some area that maybe we can designate certain stops for park and rides. We are still trying to do some research with the other counties on signage and if there is any liability issues. Ms. Kawahara: So maybe we might be seeing something in that (inaudible) towards that. Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Mr. Chair. Just one more question. You know, in your budget, does it address the construction of any new bus shelters for bus stops? Ms. Rapozo: We do have some Federal capital money for some bus shelters, so the construction budget that we have here is like the match, the 20% match, so we would be able to get some funding that way. The current contract with our ADA bus stops actually has a shelter for Kalepa Village and for Kapa`a Neighborhood Center. And Kilauea and Princeville, the Lions Club will be doing a project for us at those 2 areas. Those are already... I mean, they are all budgeted for already. Mr. Kawakami: Mr. Chair, can I ask that maybe... if you can answer it now, that will be fine, and if not, if you can send a communication over... I am just curious to see what the criterias and trying to justify what bus stops qualify for a shelter. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: We will get that communication over. Mr. Furfaro, did you have a question? 208 APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) Mr. Furfaro: And a follow up. As a member of the Northshore Lions, the cost of building the Princeville convenient shelter is, in fact, going to be by the Lion's Club. be... Ms. Rapozo: I believe we are providing the materials and the labor will Mr. Furfaro: One of the last carryovers that material provided by the County labor. I guess in a follow up to Mr. Kawakami's question, it would be nice to find out (inaudible)..., shelters... which ones we just provided material for. Mr. Kaneshiro: over in that regards. Okay, we will do that. We will have a communication coming Mr. Furfaro: I just have a couple follow up and this is more just the kind of Witty-gritty stuff, so... the current fuel expenditure represents about 70% of your budget, but we are only about 65% of the year complete, so it looks like your fuel cost might be a little higher than what you are projecting in the budget. I understand nationally, they have indicated that fuel cost will start creeping up maybe as much as 6% through the Summer? It does not look like we considered what that fuel impact might be on your buses. Can you give me a better idea on how you arrived at your projected total for next year? Ms. Rapozo: What we did is... and, you know, fuel has been jumping all over the place. We looked at a year's worth... actually over a year's worth from January 2008 and we just kind of did a projection based on an average because what happened is, early in the fiscal year when we were budgeting for 2009 which would have been January 2008, prices were not good, but they were like about $3.59 a gallon. When we started the fiscal year in July, it was $4.93 a gallon: When we go down to January 2009, it was down to $2.37 a gallon, so we basically took an average of the whole year because what has happened is, from July 2008, it was at its peak at $4.93 at this point. March 2009, it is at $2.20, so we just took an average knowing that is kind of a moving target right now, and I think we should be okay at this point because it is down to... I mean our bill was at $57,000 a month in July and last month it was at $24,000. Mr. Furfaro: In my observation of this, you are about... you are going to be about $32,000 short for the year. Ms. Rapozo: Yea, if we were running from the July figures, but it has been skewed from the earlier months. Mr. Furfaro: But then in the Summer, the projections are the fuel cost are going to go up. I am just going to make a personal note for myself when we go to review. I think this might be about $40,000 plus, soft than what we got in the budget. Ms. Rapozo: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: Also, in a communication... if I ask the Chairman to send over here... could you give us like last year I requested an aging of your bus fleet. How many total buses you have because our replacement schedule was, we planned no more than 5 years of use I think last year, and we had "x" amount of buses that we naturally had to replace due to wear and tear and maintenance and replacement. Ms. Rapozo: Uh huh. Mr. Furfaro: Let alone on what we needed for any potential expansion, but I don't need it now, but you could send that over in a communication, an aging of the bus fleets? 209 APRIL 13, 2009 TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (3) Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: Are there any numbers that we should be aware of that have not been encumbered in your budget from the current year... that need to be encumbered to make sure that anything that budgeted that was planned to be contract that hasn't been out in contract yet? Ms. Rapozo: No. Mr. Furfaro: That is it Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Mr. Chairman? Mr. Asing? Chair Asing: I wanted to follow up on Councilmember Furfaro's question regarding fueling. How are we fueling our buses and where? Are we doing anything on a County level or is it Senter Petroleum that we deal with or who do we deal with? How did we come out to that? Maybe briefly you can toucH on that only because you are making reference to 'the different prices, so I am curious as to what the practice is and policy on fueling. Ms. Rapozo: All of our smaller vehicles, we do use the County Gas Boy System because it is available, you know, from 6:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. where those vehicles can access the County Gas Boy System. The fuel prices that I was referencing is our Senter Petroleum contract which is on bid countywide for that. We do use diesel fuel on all of our buses, so those prices that I was talking about was for diesel, and it is through the contract with Senter Petroleum. Chair Asing: Again, what was that you said? What type of gas? Ms. Rapozo: Diesel. It is diesel. All of our buses are diesel, so the prices that I mentioned were for diesel from Senter Petroleum. It is the countywide contract that I believe services our buses and the Police Department. Chair Asing: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? Lani, do you have a question? Ms. Kawahara: I am just making sure her mechanic positions were fully staffed and they are. Ms. Rapozo: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: And they are. Okay, thanks. Mr. Kaneshiro: If not, Committee members, I will end this session at this point for Transportation. I want to call the meeting back to order. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 10:30 a.m. 210 • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) The departmental budget review reconvened on April 13, 2009 at 1:35 p.m., and proceeded as follows: PLANNING DEPARTMENT: Mr. Kaneshiro: Budget review session is now called back to order The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Mr. Kaneshiro: Let the record reflect that we have all members here present. Lani Kawahara will be here shortly. She is in the building. The next Department that we have is the Planning Department. Before I call the Planning Department up, I am going to suspend the rules. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Mr. Kaneshiro: Is there anyone here that wanted to give testimony before I start this budget review hearing? Anybody here that wanted to speak? Seeing no one. Mr. Costa, you can proceed with your budget review hearing. IAN COSTA, PLANNING DIRECTOR: Thank you. Good afternoon Councilmembers. I believe we asked staff to distribute a handout that has numerous sheets, but the cover sheet should be titled 2009-2010 Planning Department Budget Summary. You have it? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes we do. Mr. Costa: I would like to go over that first sheet first. Number 1, overview. In order to meet administrative budget preparation guidelines which essentially was a directive to reduce our current year's budget by 10% and it reflects a reduction of 10% from the '08- '09 budget and a 50% reduction in travel, training, and which did not include or did not count $286,000 in post employee benefits which is shown in the overall budget now. The Planning Department reduced its proposa12009-2010 budget by nearly $250,000 or to meet our 10% reduction. Further adjustments were made such that our current budget reflects a 15.2% reduction from the current year's budget. Secondly, if refer to attach... second sheet and the third and fourth sheets, other than for mandatory fringe cost, note that the variance column on the third sheet... third and fourth sheet contains essentially all reductions or no change. Despite the overall cuts, we maintained a U.H. Sea Grant program which funds one position and the funding is $97,000 for that which is up $27,000 from last year's line item. That was a change that the proposal came from U.H. for. And then in summary, we have few grants..: State, Federal, other programs... first of all, the Coastal Zone Management Program which is a continuous grant program based on the fiscal period or State/County fiscal period has been ongoing since the 70's. It is 100% State/Federally funded and provides funding for 4 positions to implement the CZM and SMA as well as the Shoreline Setback policies. Our proposed budget request is to the grantor for $287,000. I believe that sheet is attached, I believe that is sheet 5. I am sorry, 6. Our grant for the certified local government program, our historic program, this program does not entail any positions, and has been ongoing since the late 1980's. It is a Federal program passed through the State Department of Land & Natural Resources Historic Preservation Division. And from time to time, provides funds plus or minus $45,000 for preservation projects in consultation with the Kauai Historic Preservation Review Commission (SHPD) and the National Park Service. Projects under consideration including updating the County's Historic Resource Listing, preparing nomination forms for the State or National Historic Register, and then conditional evaluations for selected sites as well as expanding the preservation website and training in addition to resource and reference materials. 211 • ~ APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Also, then we have the Open Space Public Access Fund program. In the 2002, the Charter was amended by creating the Public Access, Open Space & Natural Resources Preservation Fund which receives a minimum of 1/2% of the certified real property tax each year. Ordinance No. 812 was passed which established a new Commission and provided 5% of that fund which could be used for administrative cost which is estimated at $22,000 and attached... I think that is sheet 5. Mr. Furfaro: Ian, it should be noted and for the other Councilmembers that last year's Council, we provided an additional position to administer the Open Space Commission. Is that position currently one of your vacant positions? You had a Planner in there (inaudible). Mr. Costa: Yes. Mr. Costa: It is vacant. Our previous employee in that position has moved to the Parks Department and we are in the process of filling that position. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, because the rationale for not freezing that based on the fact that it was an internal transfer? Mr. Costa: No. Mr. Furfaro: Is that position is still in the budget, but is vacant? Mr. Furfaro: The Mayor`has not frozen~that position has-he? - -= _ -° Mr. Costa: No. Mr. Furfaro: I am trying to get some reason. It seems that some positions is moved and then froze, and others he has moved, but we are still recruiting. As far as we are concerned... moved. Mr. Kaneshiro: He had to move that position. The person is that position Mr. Costa: that is what you are asking. And we don't... we are not processing an internal movement if Mr. Furfaro: We moved the Planner that the Council put in for the Open Space administration. We moved him to Park Planning, the gentleman that was there. Mr. Costa: Just the body. Mr. Furfaro: Well, let's put it... for that body, we created new responsibilities for him. He is in Parks. Mr. Costa: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: And the position that we have is still there. Mr. Costa: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: And it is vacant and not frozen. Mr. Costa: That is correct. 212 • • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Furfaro: Are we recruiting? Mr. Costa: Yes we are. We are working with DPS and we are in the middle of recruitment. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Costa: We just recently got that approval, so we are in the process of advertising I believe or DPS is in the process o£.. And then just as a summary... as in previous years, approval of these programs, these 3 grants are requested to continue... County participation in these grant programs and to expand such funds to fulfill the objectives and purposes set forth in the grant program. Just a little side note on that. I think in recent years past, we did not... in the Council's approval of the budget, we did not specifically note these grants, so we have had to work with staff to actually begin expending it once we implement the new budget because we have not come in as other grants may, for separate approval, to apply, receive, and expend these grants. So we have worked with staff and hopefully in the approval of the budget, we can reflect these grants. Currently, we do have 6 vacant positions and I can touch upon those. I believe they are reflected in the line item. Mr. Furfaro: Could you reflect them on please Ian and let us know if any of them are frozen? Mr. Costa: We have 6 vacant positions. I guess I will try and cross reference them with the line item budget. But first of all, Land Use Permit Clerk which I believe in the current budget is dollar funded. That would be... I am sorry, Land Use Permit Technician and I believe that is position 2002. Wait. I am sorry. I believe it is 2002, Land Use Permit Technician. Mr. Kaneshiro: what you are saying? Mr. Costa: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Costa: currently... that person i that is not dollar funded. But it is not dollar funded, but it is a vacant position. Is that It is vacant position. But it is not dollar funded under the budget? Sorry and I think the reason for that is the person that s temporarily assigned to do the vacation rental processing, so that is why Mr. Furfaro: So you actually have 4 dollar funded positions and not 6. Mr. Costa: Right, out of the 6 vacancies. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. Mr. Costa: The second vacancy is our Planning Inspector. Mr. Kaneshiro: You have several there Ian (Planning Inspectors), which ones... Mr. Furfaro: Planning Inspector 3? Mr. Kaneshiro: Or 2? 213 • Mr. Costa: 2. • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Kaneshiro: 2, so you have a Planning Inspector... Mr. Costa: It is the existing Planning Inspector 2022. Chair Asing: Why don't you give the number. Mr. Kaneshiro: 2022. Chair Asing: So why don't you, Ian, give the numbers of all the vacancies. I think that would be easier, yea? Mr. Costa: Okay. The next position is the Staff Services Assistant which is 2006. Then the Open Space Specialist that we just touched on 9754. The next drafting technician is... Mr. Kaneshiro: 2001? ~' Mr. Costa: Yes, sorry. And then our Planner 5 position I believe... Mr. Furfaro: That one is dollar funded. Mr. Kaneshiro: You have it dollar funded in there, so besides the dollar funded, you also have a Planner 5 vacant? You looking at the vacancies. We are looking at the vacancy positions. Mr. Costa: A Planner 5 position is vacant. Mr. Kaneshiro: Besides the dollar funded position. Chair Asing: What number is that? Mr. Costa: No. Chair Asing: Give us numbers. Mr. Costa: I believe that is 2009. Mr. Furfaro: 2009 is the dollar funded. Ms. Kawahara: (Inaudible). Mr. Costa: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: So quick summary of this. We have 4 dollar funded positions. They are 2009, Planner 5. They are Land Use Planner Checker 2031, and 2 Project Managers that are dollar funded. We have vacancies with salaries in the budget of 2001, a Planning Drafting Technician, we have 2006, a Staff Services Assistant which you said was currently helping on the TVRs. Mr. Costa: No, not the Staff Services Assistant. 214 • • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Furfaro: We have vacant 2006, Staff Services Assistant, 2022 Planning Inspector and 9754 Open Space Public Access Specialist, those 4 are vacant, but moneys are in the budget. Mr. Costa: Yes. Chair Asing: Is that a total of 9? Mr. Furfaro: Eight. Four dollar funded and 4 with salaries that are vacant. Mr. Kaneshiro: I actually counted 5 with salary and vacancies. Five with salary vacant and 4 dollar funded positions. Okay, we will take the advice of staff. We are going to send you a communication Ian, in writing, and specifically show us what positions are now vacant including the dollar funded positions. So you have some different positions right now with different, you know, text, but what I am saying is, besides the dollar funded, we have some Project Managers here and so forth that are dollar funded. What are the positions that are vacant currently in your department? dollar... Mr. Costa: Part of my difficulty... I don't have the sheet that reflects the Mr. Kaneshiro: Funded, but it is in your budget that you send us on page 60. Mr. Costa: Okay, maybe to help clarify the 2 positions that are listed as Project Managers. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, those are dollar funded. Mr. Costa: Yes. I am sorry I didn't include those, so I guess it would be 8. Mr. Kaneshiro: We are going to send you a communication and then just... I am going to send you a communication before we start really doing budget deliberation, show us what are the positions that are currently open, and what, you know... Mr. Costa: I believe those 2 last positions... the 2 Project Managers were put in this current year's budget and were never filled. Mr. Kaneshiro: Right, so just give us your vacant positions. Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me Mr. Chair. So we wanted vacant positions with the ones that are dollar funded and his vacant positions... the one that actually reflect salaries. Mr. Kaneshiro: You could do that because my assumption is the ones that are dollar funded that are vacant right now. Ms. Kawahara: But he has both. Mr. Kaneshiro: I know that he has both and that is why I said, the positions that you have salary funded for, that whatever ones are vacant, send us what positions those are, but I see the dollar funded one here, but I am assuming that those are probably vacant right now, but you can also send us a reply on those. We will come with a communication. Mr. Costa: Okay. As far as the presentation, that is all that I had. I am open to answer any questions and give you any other information that you need. 215 • • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Mr. Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. I want to say this for the benefit of some of the members here. I met Wednesday with Mr. Costa and raised the following concerns, and I will be piggybacking that memo to your attachments Mr. Chair and the questions were as follows: Are we and if we are, when are we funding for a General Plan Update? The verbal answer that I got was, year 2010-2011. I also asked if we could get a status of the important ag land contracts and how much we have spent on that. I might reflect back on that question Ian after I go through this list. I also wanted to find out exactly where we are on a presentation to the Council on the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance Study, and I was told that would be Fall of 2009. On those 4 particular items that I just summarized right now, but we will put writing, could you give us a little bit of an idea of where we stand on the important ag lands and the CZO? Mr. Costa: Sure. At the end of last year, we had drafted a contract that we got comments back from the County Attorney to make some revisions to address updated procurement laws. We had U.H. work on those and we received a contract back and we submitted it to the Purchasing Division 'for processing" of execution. -- That~-is where we ~ currently-'are: _'My - ~ -= understanding is, it has been sent to, by Purchasing Division, to the University of Hawaii for their execution of that contract, and they have not received it back. But our intent is, once we get that fully executed by both the University of Hawaii and the County to immediately issue a notice to proceed, that contract is a proposal of a timeframe of 2 years to complete the study and provide us the recommendations for not only going to the Land Use Commission with proposed map designation for important ag lands, but also recommendations on amendments that we should consider both... well, to enact standards for those new designations which would be revisions to the CZO. Mr. Furfaro: And do I assume when this comes back from the University of Hawaii in their review, there will be an opportunity for you to brief this Council. Mr. Costa: Sure. Mr. Furfaro: Can you then update us on the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance. My last notes when I was Vice-Chair of the Committee, indicated that we would see something in the Fall of'09. And that is like September, October, is that still the target date? Chair Asing: Councilmember Furfaro, maybe we can get a... let's finish up on your question regarding the ag land study, and let's kind of finish up on that one because what is your projected timetable to start? Some idea... is it like March, you know, today is the 13th, what do you... Mr. Costa: The important ag land study? Chair Asing: Yea, what are you anticipating the start because you are saying 2 years and all I want to do is put down anticipated start time whether it is going to be... Mr. Furfaro: So that is a follow up to the question asked. You will come back to brief the Council approximately when? Mr. Costa: I would say approximately in May. Let's say that it is being executed. We don't really have control over that. Purchasing Division is administering that if you will. 216 • • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Chair Asing: And (inaudible)... I wanted to project 2 years out and say, okay, it looks like it is going to be 11, then May 11 would be the targeted completion date, the ag land study. Mr. Costa: So I am intending to issue notice to proceed probably in May, assuming that we can get that execution phase done by the end of the month, so that would be May 2011. Chair Asing: I am sorry Councilmember Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: No, no. It was an incomplete question. I wanted to know if he is planning to make a presentation to us and I should have added with a target date of, so thank you for that Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? Ms. Kawahara: If you could just help me, just anybody. For this IAL plan, contract, is the cost in this fiscal year budget? Was it funded already? Mr. Costa: No, the cost was last year's budget. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, so it is already expended. I mean it is going to be expended this year. Mr. Costa: So for all intention purposes, it has been encumbered by virtue of issuing our... Finance having issued an approval for us to draft the contract and have it in the process of being executed. Ms. Kawahara: And there is nothing pending from that contract that comes through? award. Mr. Costa: Actually, that was encumbered, I believe, with the notice of Ms. Kawahara: Something ongoing in this fiscal year. Mr. Furfaro: But that was a very good question and it will be one like the' Transportation question. We should ask after we get an update on all of these to be assured that the funds had already been encumbered, if not, they should be reflected in here, so that was a very good question. Ms. Kawahara: (Inaudible). For that line, I am okay right now, the discussion part. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions on that? Mr. Furfaro: And then we will go to the notes from my last briefing. Ian, you implied that we will have the CZO complete in the Fall of '09 and I am saying that is either September or October of this year, is that still your goal? Mr. Costa: Yes. If I can get a little bit of background on that. We did get a draft of the CZO update. I believe it was in November. We have gone through couple months of not only reviewed by our staff, but we also asked the County Attorneys, we distributed it to other agencies such as Public Works, Transportation, and other agencies that we often times coordinate in 217 • • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) permitting. We sent that back to the consultants are they are... as I understand it, we should be receiving the final draft at about September or October. Mr. Furfaro: This year, '09, right? Mr. Kaneshiro: Question Tim? Do you have any other questions? Mr. Furfaro: I am trying to just target some dates like the Chair suggested. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright, question Tim? Mr. Bynum: Is there a technical advisory committee? Mr. Costa: No, not currently. Mr. Bynum: So I am looking at this timeline, proposed timeline that said, we select a technical advisory committee in May of'07. So on this timeline that was presented here before were... I'd like to know where we are on this"timeline because in this timeline; it says; public - ~- workshop, December '07. Council workshops March '08, so... Mr. Costa: We did not put together a technical advisory committee. We are anticipating that once we do get the final draft, that we would hold a series of public meetings to get... at least advise the public as to the revisions and after that, we are intending to take that to the Planning Commission and have a formal public hearing. Mr. Bynum: So I guess I will ask staff to ask you to send a written update of this document because this is a scope of services and timeline that was presented sometime ago and I would like to know... Mr. Costa: So when was that? Mr. Bynum: Well, it started in March of 2007, 2 years ago. This timeline that we got from the Planning Department and it would have us conducting Council workshops a year ago. Mr. Costa: I know that there has been a lot o£ .. part of the concern with the CZO update I think initially at least when I... I think the CZO update was funded back in 2003, 2004 initially, and if I recall correctly, I think that was $70,000. At the convincing of Council at that time, that budgeted amount was used for and in production of the transient... vacation rental study. And I believe in that timeframe, about 2007 is when we came in for, again, moneys for the CZO update, but I just want to make sure that, you know, people understand that this CZO... Mr. Bynum: We will send you this and ask you to update the timeline (inaudible) according to the current schedule. Mr. Costa: Okay. The good news is we have a draft that is from cover to cover. It is a great improvement and anxious to get the final draft out and circulated. Mr. Bynum: Part of that is a technical advisory committee that some... that is the way it was framed here. Mr. Kaneshiro: We will wait until we get the response. We are going to send over the communication. Lani, you had a question for... 218 • • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Ms. Kawahara: So along with that, I guess with the important ag land encumbered amounts that you are going to send over to us, can you also send over the encumbered amounts that we have used for the TVR you just said, and also the encumbered amounts right now for the CZO. Is that also, I don't find in here. Mr. Costa: When those moneys were appropriated. Ms. Kawahara Appropriated and where they are in the expenditures. Mr. Costa: Encumbered and then the status of expending. Ms. Kawahara: I guess my question is with the technical advisory commission and whether that is a budgetary item if there was one established. Mr. Furfaro: I can answer that. They were under a budget item. I was on the Council in 2003. Ms. Kawahara: So I can ask the question? Mr. Furfaro: You can ask that question and they should be able to tell you what was budgeted and actually give you a detail of the invoices that were reconciled to that budgeted amount. Ms. Kawahara: So specifically for the technical advisory commission and the money that was budgeted for and why we don't... why we may not have one or to get one. Mr. Costa: To my knowledge, there was no separate money appropriated for that. Mr. Kaneshiro: We are talking about several contracts. Mr. Costa: I believe you might be speaking to the proposed scope of work. Mr. Kaneshiro: We will come over with a communication specifically to those 2 contracts, is that what you are asking for? CZO and the IAG (important ag lands) and we will get a... give us what was spent and where you are at or where is the money encumbered and we are at. Mr. Costa: As well as the copy of the contract. Mr. Kaneshiro: All the money side as we go through the budget process, so we will send a communication in that regards, okay. Mr. Furfaro: For the record Mr. Chair, I think she also wanted to know the first money that we spent on the transient accomoda... the TVR,. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Costa: Okay, I got that. Mr. Kaneshiro: All the money you spent on that, so we can go over your budget. Are we done with the CZO? Any other questions regarding the CZO? Mr. Furfaro: You can go to other members. 219 • • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum, you had a question? Mr. Bynum: The Council also funded some time ago and I don't remember the exact time, but an impact fee study. Can you tell me the status of that? Mr. Costa: That, I believe, was funded in the current year's budget. I believe that might be in CIP or... I believe CIP. I don't believe you have received yet, but it will be transmitted and you should be receiving because I believe we go over that CIP budget is Thursday, but it is reflected in the 6-year CIP. What is noted is a General Plan funding for next fiscal year as Councilmember Furfaro noted. It will also reflect that we... I am sorry, I got side tracked there. We have not put that out yet for a request for qualifications or an RFP. We intend to do that... well, as I explained to the Administration, that is a project that we are looking to take on in this upcoming year in terms of working with other agencies... mainly those agencies that are directly impacted or who services will be addressed in that impact fee study such as parks, sewers, fire, police, roads. We will be working with those agencies to put together a RFQ if you will. So in short, we are looking at doing that within the next year trying to secure a contract for that. Mr. Furfaro: ` ' `May I`expand'on tliat question before-we `move°on?` ' ° - "°"- Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. from... Mr. Costa: And I believe that it was funded through CIP. Mr. Bynum: I thought it was a money bill that we funded here separate Mr. Furfaro: I guess for me, just go back to refreshing. I brought to the table an impact fee study for the County of Kauai. The study was completed, I believe, under JoAnn Yukimura's administration, okay. Then we were involved in reconstruction from the hurricane and although the study was done for the County of Kauai under her time as Mayor, we used that as an example of what we needed for roads, sewer, parks, etc. Mr. Costa: Sure. Mr. Furfaro: At the same time, I brought to the table a new impact fee study that was done for the Big Island, very complete, and more recent almost 10 years more current. I was of the impression that we did pass a money bill for that to see if we could update the impact fee, but more importantly, it leads me to this question about this $122,000 that was taken out of consultant services, it is on your summary sheet number 3. It says page 1 on it, but it is actually page 3. Do you know what you might have... your department might have taken out of that? I know you were mandated for some reductions, but consultant services $97,958 were left in there, and I believe you told me that was the Sea Grant. Mr. Costa: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: So of the $122,042, do you know what was taken out from the '08-'09... Mr. Costa: I am sorry, I need to locate that. Mr. Furfaro: We will send that over as a question Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, got it. Staff, can you note that please? 220 • • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Furfaro: We will send that over as a question Ian. Mr. Kaneshiro: Also, I did get a copy of the CIP and we are going to be discussing that later on and there is a County impact fee and a needs assessment study on the CIP just to let you know. Mr. Furfaro: Well, I am relieved that it is not in the 122. Mr. Bynum: If it is a planning CIP... Mr. Kaneshiro: We are going to take that up in CIP. Mr. Bynum: So Planning is going to come back? Mr. Furfaro: They could come back. Mr. Costa: If we have to. Mr. Bynum: And part of my concern... I wanted to ask about these positions because the impact fee study, I thought, this Council passed because we felt the sense of urgency about it that our current impact fee is $1,000 or $1,200 and it is fully in adequate. There is no nexus established. We are involved in lawsuits because of big debates about how we come up with conditions for Planning and this was an attempt to standardize it. So whose role is it in the Planning Department to put out these RFPs, to put out the (inaudible). Mr. Costa: That has been primarily assigned to or supplemented by a long range section. We now have 3 Planners and I believe a year ago we had 1, with 2 vacancies. So we did get to fill those positions and they will be primarily the ones to develop that scope of work as well as that procurement... administer that procurement process, but they also are the primary bodies that administer our contracts. plan... Mr. Bynum: But when it comes to the General Plan Updates, development Mr. Costa: Development plans... Mr. Bynum: That are upcoming in the budget and CZO updates, impact fee study, all of that comes with (inaudible)... and they are fully staffed, right? Mr. Costa: Yes, we have 3 people. Mr. Bynum: (Inaudible) Planner and (inaudible)... Mr. Costa: Leah and Marie. Mr. Bynum: So that is good news because I was concerned about these positions that are vacant whether it would impact us proceeding (inaudible)... so it sounds like not. Mr. Costa: Not supposed to. So let me just touch upon that again. We are committed to that. We didn't get around to getting an RFQ out obviously, but that is one of our priorities at least to get started as soon as possible. So we will be having... meeting with the other agencies and basically developing a scope of work for that, so that we can put out a notice for recruitment of a consultant and move towards a contract for that. So I think earlier I might have implied that we are going to do that next year, but we are looking to do that as soon as we can. 221 • Mr. Bynum: As soon as possible. Mr. Costa: Yea. APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Bynum: And then the Program Manager positions here that are dollar funded, what was the intent of those positions. If we could hire them, what would they be doing? Mr. Costa: The 2 positions that are at the end, those positions were put in to help manage particularly those new updates that we had requested funding for I believe last year which included Lihu`e Development Plan. In fact, and we have also included the impact fee study. Mr. Bynum: Mr. Costa: some of our contracts. Mr. Bynum: in Planning is full, right? Mr. Costa: But these projects... But those are to supplement our positions to help administer So these were project managers because... our planning plate Yes. Mr. Bynum: With community development plans, General Plan, impact fee, IAL, it is a lot and it is all pretty important in my view. So these 2 positions were the supplement (inaudible)... the long range planning staff has helped manage those contracts? Mr. Costa: Yes. Mr. Bynum: But we are not funding them, so is that going to be a problem? Mr. Costa: No, I think it is okay at the dollar funding still. We have, like I said, about a year ago, we have one person in long range and we have since been lucky enough to get Leah as well as Marie who have been doing a lot of work with Myles, but are now in a position to begin directly managing contracts where up to this point, primarily Myles, was doing that himself. So we did, I believe, the last month, we have actually assigned some contracts... in other words, they have picked up some of the work of just administering those contracts. You know, it is my opinion that each person should be able to manage 2 or 3 contracts, so I don't think we are at a point yet where we would be in a position to ask for more staffing other than those that may come directly with the project as a project administrator through the dollar funded position. Mr. Bynum: I hear that answer, but I am still confused about why these positions (inaudible)... because you are going to need them later or... Mr. Costa: I believe they went hand in hand with specifically the Lihu`e Development and if I am not mistaken (inaudible) the impact fee study as well. I am trying to think back what other... I don't know if we asked for it specifically also to help administer the Koloa/Po`ipu Development Plan, but that is why those are still there. We haven't procured... we haven't filled them, but we anticipate... well, let me say that last year's budget, it was put in to help administer those specific contracts. Mr. Furfaro: To better help Mr. Bynum, in my meeting with you yesterday... no, Wednesday of last week... oh Friday, I am sorry. 222 • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Costa: Thursday. Mr. Furfaro: Thursday, I plan to put that on as an agenda item. You know, we have all worked very long and hard to get Myles a staff that would be able to handle long range planning. Now that we are fully staffed there with either people that have returned to the department and people that have been involved in other planning around the island, I think it behooves us, Mr. Bynum, to actually have a presentation that gives us the framework of what the long range Planning Department will do and is expected to do, and if it meets the goals of the Council who funded those positions. As I am understanding as we move forward on these other plans being... coming out in September and October, they will require people to administer them when they are presented. And at that time, you will be before the Council to request money for the positions that you are holding with the one dollar. But I do want you to anticipate, you know, as we talked about the CZO and the important ag lands, and so forth, we will be sending over a communication to get a presentation from Myles and his staff on the long range strategic thinking for our island. Mr. Costa: And the communication that is coming over that was mentioned to addressed some of the previous questions. I will try and clarify that as well which specific projects, those dollar funded positions because I believe in budget last year, they were directly related to a specific project. Mr. Bynum: Right, you know, and I appreciate Councilmember Furfaro's... because that is exactly what I want to see is... as I mentioned before, our planning... we have funded a very significant and serious amount of planning and how that all integrates, and what the priorities are, I really would value seeing the presentation on because I certainly felt like the CZO update would be further along than it is right now that the impact fee study... when I was on the Council when we funded it, I thought, you know, similar to say the energy sustainability plan that we funded and a couple of months later, it is accurate, right. You know, we had very significant funding for the Lihu`e Development Plan, so that is in this fiscal year, right? So is that person... are we going to encumber that during this fiscal year and hire a consultant? Mr. Costa: I believe we have actually begun encumbering it by way of our... the stat study. We did provide some moneys to the Kauai Planning & Action Alliance, so in effect, we did begin to encumber that. Mr. Bynum: The (inaudible) study was a... we paid funds for the SDAT (Sustainable Design Assessment Team) study? Mr. Costa: Yes. Mr. Bynum: I thought that was... Mr. Costa: AIA was free, not Kauai Planning & Action Alliance. I think all along that is how that program was painted. Mr. Bynum: So the SDAT study is like (inaudible). Mr. Costa: Kauai Planning & Action Alliance basically coordinated... provided the forums and the manpower for doing that... the participation directly from AIA (American Institute of Architects) was free. Mr. Bynum: So that was tied to the Lihu`e Development Plan. That .was like precursor or... 223 • • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Costa: Well, I think going in, we anticipated... I believe it was 10,000 before we even appropriated that money. I believe we ended up granting 15,000 I believe. Mr. Bynum: So what would be a reasonable timeframe for this long range planning integration presentation? I mean how we can look at all these budgeted items and how they fit... Mr. Furfaro: I think what I would like to beg of you Mr. Bynum is I hope to get that communication to all of the Councilmembers. Last week, whatever day it was that they had the planning session up on the northshore for the bikepath... I told you folks that I couldn't participate because I went over a number of things with Mr. Costa including some expectations and I have no problem saying that when we mutually agree on these deadlines, they are deadlines that he has committed to. I hope to lay out... do you know the impact fee is very important to me. I was somewhat imposing that on Planning and I would like to do that in the way of a communication, but it was a... it was a good meeting and I think we came to some understandings as Planning Chair what we need to get accomplished and we need to commit to some dates and I will get that all to you within a week. Ms. Kawahara: I appreciate it Councilmember Furfaro. I think it will be a good thing to bring up... put them altogether and integrate them all because we do have a lot of them pending. Mr. Furfaro: We have a very full plate, but I do want to conclude by saying that we have reached mutual agreement on some of these myself and direct to the Planning Department and when we get them out to you, we will be held accountable, in particular, the department. They were all good questions, but I beg as you Chairman of the Committee that, let me have some time to summarize it. Ms. Kawahara: Great. Mr. Costa: If I could maybe just say that, you know, from when I came in, I was very ambitious and I still am committed... took on a lot more than the staff we had (inaudible). This department has never been... there is a good reason apparently why we took 30 years to update these things and it is not easy to get them done right away, but, you know, we did get some additional staff to build up our long range. They are finally settled in and beginning to directly administer some of those contracts that we already have. Our goal is to, number 1, finish what we have already asked for and received, and not ask for anymore until we do that and that is not reflected in our budget. Mr. Kaneshiro: Derek, did you have a question? Mr. Kawakami: I have a question on another topic, so I will wait until everybody is finished with this. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any questions for Mr. Costa on this? Ms. Kawahara: I just wanted to say thank you for hiring I think the 2 new planners that you have. Mr. Costa: It took us forever. Ms. Kawahara: So it is great. Mr. Costa: Thank them actually. 224 • • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Ms. Kawahara: Thank them for coming and I hope they are getting well trained and are ready to get up to speed because it looks like... I only can go off of my phone list, so I got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 maybe that look like they are all involved with long term planning, is that right? You have a Land Use Permit Technician, Account Clerk, Inspector, CZM Planner, and a Planner? Mr. Costa: Pure long range planning. I believe if you look under our table of organization, I believe there are 5 (inaudible). Ms. Kawahara: Okay. My question actually comes in under the long term planning for the L3hu`e Town Core Plan that was budgeted in 2003 and I believe there has been a 2006 draft which was updated, and now I wanted to know where it is. Mr. Costa: We have received a pre-final draft as you mentioned (inaudible) in 2006. That contract which is what we are finding (inaudible)... when we came in, we essentially and began to ask for appropriations which hadn't been done for apparently about 30... Ms. Kawahara: Uh huh. Mr. Costa: We used those budgeted amounts that were reflected primarily through CIP, 6-year CIP I believe in the range of 200,000 to 300,000. Ms. Kawahara: 250 maybe? Mr. Costa: I don't think you can... well, I have counted... unfortunate realization that 200,000, 300,000 will not buy you a development plan. Ms. Kawahara: (Inaudible). Mr. Costa: It could if you didn't have to do the extensive public involvement... public notification, public meeting process which, in my estimation, is about 200,000 to 300,000. So we have, unfortunately, had to experience in some of our projects, such as, L3hu`e Town Core Plan, Kapa`a-Wailua Development Plan, so getting back... Lihu`e Development Plan is essentially out of money, so when we receive that draft, I believe the contract was initially anticipated to produce a report that would then be implemented by reference. In other words, in Chapter 10, under... we would merely... we would refer you to the report which would then be the document that would essentially... we would refer to for any enforcement provisions. We have found through experience that that is not the most effective way to enforce. It is kind of like the problem we are going with to the General Plan actually, but our... our initial reaction was to excerpt primiarly key sections... I believe it is Section 4 and 5 that speaks specifically about certain requirements, design requirements... requirements that would be placed upon Public Works as well in building, repairing streets, maintaining trees. I guess in recognizing that, we realize that it would take some effort to hold those out and to go through a public process to actually highlight those as a specific ordinance and specific requirements on landowners as well as some of our agencies. We are in a position right now to... it is my goal within a month or 2 to get that document to the Planning Commission and implement it by reference as we initially had intended which will not carry the same forcing effect of law with some of the provisions in there. But in light of the funding for the overall L3hu`e Development Plan, it will certainly provide a supplement or a key element in the final adoption of the L~u`e Development Plan. Mr. Furfaro: Can I make a note on that? A lot of the questions now are drifting off to stuff that should actually be in my Committee at the time we discuss the theory, strategies, and application. I just wanted to say that to the Planning Director, I thought the question was more than reasonable about expectations of getting things to us, but this is a budget 225 • • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) committee meeting, and all of those philosophies should be expressed in the Committee when we put them on the agenda. Mr. Costa: True. Mr. Furfaro: I do want to say to the group here that you need to have some trust in me as the Chairman of this Committee and the fact that I have conveyed to Mr. Costa a very strong message that talks about achieving some deadlines and accomplishments in the Planning Committee. I just want to remind everyone that this is about making sure that the things that we put in the plan are actually funded or we have the appropriate for it. This is a budget meeting... where we are drifting off to is, in fact, Committee discussions. Ms. Kawahara: You have to forgive me Councilman Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Oh, you are forgiven. The problem is that... Ms. Kawahara: (Inaudible) and I have total trust in you that you are... actually, I really am appreciative of what you are planning to get all this done. So I guess I would like to add to your list here of ongoing... because it was part of the budget... I don't know that there is still encumbering or encumbered the 250,000 for that Lihu`e Town Core... is that still a budget question, is that okay? Mr. Furfaro: Obviously, that is a very good question. I just want to talk. When we drift off into theory and applications, it is a Committee activity. Ms. Kawahara: I was wondering... we are still with that L3hu`e Town Core plan question and the 250,000, and we are almost there, right? You are going to... Mr. Costa: I think I said it is fully expended... it is fully encumbered. Ms. Kawahara: And we are going to get a report back? Mr. Costa: Yes, and actually I would naturally touch upon that and in much more detail in a report that I think that we have talked about that would cover... I wouldn't leave out any projects actually in any report to you. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, so as long as that part of it is... we find out what actually comes out of that, the 250,000. Mr. Costa: And I just want to say that it has been very challenging, very educational for me... just as an example, I mean the TVR, study procurement, administering, and implementing... that finally terminated last year by way of the TVR, ordinance. It has been a long road and that is probably the simplest (inaudible). Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions for Mr. Costa? Ms. Kawahara: I have one more. There is a special project lines here and is that a straight forward special projects, and with all of the things that we have going and have requested, all of these are not... nothing, you have nothing going forward that is a special project that the County Council has requested from you? Is it zero here? That everything else was in the past budget? Mr. Costa: Yes, and that special projects that I think you are referring to was a line item that was in the last year's budget, and it provided some money to provide for 226 • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) facilitation which we used most of for facilitation for the Open Space Commission, but that is what those were. Those weren't... aren't meant to be confused with our significant planning projects which were significant funding as well. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. I just... for the record, I just want to note that I may have a concern that the impact fee study and I know that is your thing, so I am going to go with whatever you want to do. I just want to note that it was placed into CIP and is not in Planning now as might be assumed. And considering our CIP backlog, I wouldn't want to see that become part of the backlog. Mr. Furfaro: You know, I should pass onto you a copy of the study that was done under the Yukimura Administration. Ms. Kawahara: You did. Mr. Furfaro: I did, okay. And did I pass onto you the study that was recently done on the Big Island? Ms. Kawahara: (Inaudible). Mr. Furfaro: I will see that you do have copies. Ms. Kawahara: My concern is that it doesn't get lost in all of the CIP stuff that... that was it, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Derek, you had a question? Mr. Kawakami: Are we moving on? Ian, just for clarity purposes, I am looking under the historic commission and if I am reading this right, we have volunteer hours budgeted for $19,000, is that grant funded? This is 9 commissioners at $30 an hour on this page in your handout. I think it is page 5, the very last page. Mr. Kaneshiro: The last page of your handout. Mr. Kawakami: So basically my question is, if we break it down... these commissioners, it appears then... I am assuming that it is a paid position and this $19,000 is coming from some grant and I was wondering if it comes from that certified local government program grant. Mr. Costa: It is coming from this grant. I don't believe they are paid. Mr. Kawakami: Oh, they are not paid? The way that I am kind of reading it is, it is kind of broken down, volunteer hours... Mr. Costa: I see how it is listed there and that clearly does imply that... Mr. Kawakami: And even mileage too, yea? Mr. Costa: They are paid, but I guess I would have to clarify what we are trying to say. Mr. Kawakami: I guess we can send something over so you can go send something back later on. And just a follow up question, if it is coming. from that CLG grant and if these funds are... if this is the only way we can spend this money, yea... 227 • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Costa: It is purely funded by the CLG. Mr. Kawakami: This is purely funded by the CLG? Mr. Costa: Yes. Mr. Kawakami: So then my question is, if this is the only way that we can spend the CLG fund is on commissioner fees. Mr. Costa: You mean how we reflect... Mr. Furfaro: Is it a restricted grant. We give you the grant money, but you can only use it for the commissioners. Mr. Costa: I believe there is some flexibility and this probably more reflects how we are justifying asking for the grant. But if you can forward that question, we can give you a copy and we can expand on how flexible it is. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Ian. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Lani, did you have a question? Ms. Kawahara: If we are going to put it in writing to ask for (inaudible)... could you give us the recommendations that you have received from the U.H. Sea Grant Specialist to the Planning Commission? Just any of the recommendations that may have been provided to you as part of his contract to the Planning Department? Mr. Costa: Okay. Maybe... actually would probably be more... it would probably include a summary from the person or Jim explaining all the things that he has done. Ms. Kawahara: Working on and I guess how you have worked with him in any projects that you guys worked together. Mr. Costa: In everyday operations. Ms. Kawahara: Everyday operations and long term goals because... Mr. Kaneshiro: We are going to get all into that, let's have Mr. Furfaro take (inaudible). My communication will be mainly from budget perspective to see where we are at, you know, where the money was spent, where we are at to give us a report, so we can come back and work on the budget. Any policy issues, let Mr. Furfaro come with a communication in that regards, then we can have some dialogue in that manner. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, and if I am stepping on your toes, I am sorry. Mr. Furfaro: I have no problem with you stepping on my... so I will get together with you (inaudible). Mr. Bynum: Regarding training, you have new Planning Commissioners coming and is this a sufficient budget to provide them any training that they would benefit from? In this line item, I didn't see a comparison from last year, so... Mr. Costa: It will impact I think how we have been able to provide training in the past. I think one of the big ones is to allow... at least the Planning Commissioners an 228 i APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) often times we would like to include some of the historic as well as Open Space Commissioners, but to attend at least our planning conference. We have been... Mr. Bynum: Our statewide one. Mr. Costa: Yes. We also have been lucky to get some training, but only by way o£.. with respect Robert's Rules and by some volunteer citizens... Mr. Bynum: Through boards and commissions. Mr. Costa: Not only through board and commissions, but volunteer by one Phil Tacbian. You know, it is something that we obviously we... in recent years, we have picked up another Commission, but it is something that is... we want to provide the Commission as much as we can and we will work with what we have to meet their needs. Mr. Bynum: Where is the State Planning Conference this year? Mr. Costa: If I may not mistaken, I believe it is Oahu. Mr. Bynum: So I mean... I want to frame this question another way. I would want to personnel encourage Commissioner to attend that conference if nothing else. To network with the other Planning Commissioners from other islands to see what the other Planning Departments are doing, to talk about statewide issues, it is invaluable. I have concern that with all of this focus on cutting Planning budgets, we are going to lose something... I mean travel budgets, that we are going to lose something, so it doesn't look like that would be sufficient to send all the Planning Commissioners even to that one conference. Mr. Costa: As I mentioned, it will impact because we usually offer to all of them and it has been the one primary I guess experience yearly for all of the Commissioners to not only network with other Commissioners, other administrators, but also in that forum, you have probably a dozen different topics that does provide incredible insight as well as experience and knowledge in how other areas are dealing with the same issues. Mr. Bynum: We don't have to...I don't have to stay for this audience, but I will stay anyway. I mean the Planning Commissioners work really long hours, they get no pay, they do a fundamentally important thing and that conference alone is just extremely valuable. So maybe I will send a communication to ask what would the budget be required to ensure that the Commissioners can all access that conference and have a little bit of additional to attend APA or Smart Growth Conferences because they are asked to do an incredibly complex job and they did that. That is my opinion. Mr. Costa: Let me also touch on that. I believe of last year and the previous budget year as well as the current budget year, we were funded for some considerable funding for Commissioner training. So not only did we send Commissioners to that State conference, but we made it a practice these past 2 years anyway, last year and beginning this year to send Commissioners also to national conferences. I believe we attended with the Chair of the past at the D.C. Smart Growth, also the APA Conference... we were still committed to that. We have to reanalyze how we can do that, but I guess our intention hasn't changed. It will be a lot more challenging on how we actually do that. Mr. Bynum: There is a penny wise pound of foolish, right, if we don't give them the impact that they need to do their job well. We can huge costs in other ways. 229 • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Costa: And of course the Commission because of the number of years they get appointed does turnover regularly, but we are at a spot right now because of one early retirement and the turnover that we had, we have 3 relatively brand new Commissioners. Mr. Bynum: You don't have real depth of experience there right now because of circumstance. Mr. Furfaro; But I would think at the same time, the appointees that the Mayor send over are pretty seasoned in their own training. Mr. Bynum: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: We had a County Attorney and we had a previous representative in the House for the State, but I think Mr. Bynum's point is well taken and when you budget for these things, we have restrictions. But since more senior Commissioners have gone to other training, you might consider the possibility the least senior going to the most current conference because they should be able to serve the longest period of time. Mr. Costa: Since these Commissioners actually represent my bosses, I can merely suggest. Ms. Kawahara: Just help me with this serve violations line with $310,000. What is that? Mr. Costa: Those are... we have once a year or very rarely, we try not to give that, but and listed the help of the Sheriff's Department to... Ms. Kawahara: The Sheriffs Department for planning violations? Mr. Costa: Yes, to go and get a search order because few cases in the past and we have had to sort of provide for that. There are rare occasions that we are not... there is no cooperation and a refusal if you will. Ms. Kawahara: Oh, yea. (Inaudible). Mr. Costa: Allow us, so that is what that it is. Ms. Kawahara: So $310,000 would be for this fiscal year even considering the Prosecutor's stated goal to go after planning violations? Mr. Costa: We don't know that we needed to make any major adjustment to that. Like I said, it has been very rare that somebody can actually physically do that, but I believe this past year, we had one. Ms. Kawahara: You just did one? Mr. Costa: We didn't use the search warrant and that was voluntarily, so that is a good example. We didn't need one and we anticipated perhaps getting one, but in the end, we didn't do it. Ms. Kawahara: And with the upcoming TVR, stuff, you guys just go out and give violations and they take care of it and you don't have to... 230 • APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Mr. Costa: That is whole another... in terms of those that did not... I am assuming you are eluding to potential vacation rentals that did not either register or did not get approved or did not get a conditional use certificate which probably will be... It is hard to judge how many we are going to need, but... Ms. Kawahara: But for a budget perspective... Mr. Costa: That is going to be a challenge. Ms. Kawahara: This part here doesn't even... that is not an impact then on that part of the budget? Mr. Costa: We don't see that that is going to be problem. I must say the vacation rental effort is a new... Mr. Furfaro: Just for Councilwoman Kawahara's edification, I would also like to remind the Planning Department that the way the bill was written, there is this second inspection that happens in July. Mr. Costa: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: And I guess her question might be, is there enough funding to do that second round of inspection looking for those individuals who, quite frankly, never bothered to register, and so forth, and I think that is where her concern is on the $380. Do you think you are going to be fine knowing that you have to do this incremental inspection by way of the bill that the Council passed? Mr. Costa: The incremental inspection I don't see... in-other words, that inspection that is required for those that receive certificates, those people are very cooperative. It is those that did not, but there is no way that I can anticipate, you know, only to go by our historical experience which is a very small percentage actually result in that... having to take that kind o£.. Mr. Furfaro: Maybe you have to reframe your question, but there is a secondary inspection by way of what was put in the bill for this that did get permits. Mr. Costa: Yea, and I guess I will have to think about that because actually it is a little more challenging before we adopted this vacation rental ordinance actually we did use a search warrant to get in and do our inspection on a bed and breakfast and involves (inaudible)... the reason we needed to do that is we needed to... we could see the advertisements, but we needed to actually get to the computer and download receipts to prove that they were indeed booking for less than what was back in 30 days, but that could certainly... because that is the level of proof that I understand from past practice that we need to prove that kind of violation. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you for reframing. That is where I was going because it was an additional new regulation that could impact an increase here (inaudible). Mr. Costa: The potential for that is certainly greater, yes, from my experience. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Asing, you had a question? 231 APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Chair Asing: I have a question. Ian, if all of these vacancies are (inaudible)... do you have the available space (inaudible) house these individuals? I do not believe you have. Mr. Costa: Not comfortably. Chair Asing: You know, my guesstimate at looking at your operations, so I am correct? Mr. Costa: Yes for the most part. When we receive the additional positions for vacation rentals... Chair Asing: Then we are in trouble. I mean, okay, that is the first part of the question. The second part of the question is, are you in the planning process of reacquiring or just acquiring more space for your operations partially or in its entirety? Is that part of the planning process that you've implemented or planning or why don't you just give me some information. -, Mr. Costa: Let me just`say that when we receive 3 additio`nal' positions through the vacation rental bill which was 2 inspectors and a technician, we had, at that point, I believe realistically, we could house one of them, but upon receiving confirmation that were indeed going to get those positions, we began to look at who other available space. Also, as well as the Sea Grant Specialist. So the Sea Grant Specialist is currently housed off out of our office, in the Office of the Boards and Commissions. We've looked at... we've talked to building to see whether... what it would cost to potentially turn... we have 2 storage rooms downstairs and potentially turn one of those rooms into work spaces. We have also inquired about other existing space throughout the County to at least temporarily house those positions should it... when it comes to the... we have also expressed numerous times... I believe in the last few budgets as well as the current exercise of space assessment being conducted Public Works I believe, to make sure that we put in our request for additional space. If need be, we have converted... when we... what used to be the file area of our office, we converted it to 2 work stations by way of portable partitions, and had to move the files that then occupied that area to a space in Gems. Chair Asing: Ian... Mr. Costa: Yes, we are out of space. Chair Asing: Yea, okay. I guess the key question is, is there a process that you are currently going through to officially get more available space for your entire operations? Nothing like that is happening? Mr. Costa: I would say the only process officially is our participation in the Public Works study. Chair Asing: Okay, thank you for that answer. The last thing, Mr. Chairman that I have is, you know, with due respect to Councilmember Furfaro who chairs the Planning Committee and with all the projects that you have, I just don't see how you are going to do it. Your back in so many different projects. Just the TVR, bill right now, I believe we are in trouble. That is number 1. Number 2, I will give you an actual on the CZO update is at least... I am going to use the term at least 6 years ago, if not, 8 years ago we have had that on the books. So we are talking about something that is 8 years ago, we said we were going to do the CZO update and today it is still with us. I just want to be real and I want to get the information on the table, so that people know and fully understand the magnitude of the entire projects. We keep on throwing things in there for the Planning Department to do, not realizing that we have had so many other important projects that were not completed, not done, and still hanging. So I, you know, the Council Chair for 232 APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) the Planning Committee, I am sure has a lot of work to do and is doing it, and I trust that you will be working on it. Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you and if I could add to Chairman Asing. I believe when the dialogue was going on and we started talking about specific programs and so forth, I think I was trying to be diplomatic that we were going to come to some agreement of dates, but that they need to be realistic and we need to... and I hate to correct the Chair, but is 11 years on the CZO. Chair Asing: Well... Mr. Furfaro: How do I know that? I was on the Committee that did it. Chair Asing: And that is the reason I said at least... I have been here a little while and I have seen that just... I keep on seeing it. Mr. Furfaro: No, and I appreciate the comment and I think the Chair was little bit more candid. Chair Asing: You know, I have to say, the CZO is probably and you correct me if I am wrong, yea, the most important document for this County as far as planning for today and the future, the most important document. Mr. Costa: It is the primary document for implementing. Mr. Kaneshiro: For implementation. Itotally agree. Chair Asing: And, you know, we haven't done it. Mr. Furfaro: And, again, Mr. Chair, that is why I ask the Councilmembers to... we have had our first meeting, we are jotting some things down, but absolutely like you said, the dates need to be realistic and they have to be dates that they can mutually agree on. If all works well, I would hope to have something out within a week or 10 days as to what are the target dates for these things. They may be longer than we think. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Chair Asing: And I'd like to stress also on the first point that I tried to make and that, I think, is also a very important point for you in your work with your department and that is space availability. You know, we are talking about the Fire Department. The Fire Department is not as bad as you are, you know, and we are talking about the Fire Department. You should be really involved in that space allocation at the Pi`ikoi Building renovation and to find that you are not, is just... it surprises me that you are not part of that. Mr. Costa: Well, we have... you mean, the previous space allocation. Chair Asing: Yes, thank you. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. So Mr. Costa, as you know, I have been the Planning Chair for 13 weeks now, so I hope we can mutually agree and we had some meetings in the last 13 weeks about these dates, but I also want to bring this to your attention because it may reflect back on the budget piece here. I want to look at House Bill No. 593 which crossed over to the Senate and this bill deals with the Legislature inaction about a 2 year moratorium along the shoreline. I would like you to review this material to see if it affects our Sea Grant expectations if there is such as moratorium. It started out for the Waimanalo Kailua Kaneohe area and was modified to expand 233 APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) to the whole State, but you know, there may be other priorities for our Sea Grant people, so please keep a close eye on House Bill No. 593 second overlap over to the Senate. Mr. Costa: And I guess that is to some degree over shadowed by... I am not sure what the number is, but the bill to remove the CZM program. Mr. Furfaro: So just for your department and if has any impact on our Sea Grant. Thank you Mr. Chair. Ms. Kawahara: One more thing to add to your list of things that were budgeted last year and I don't see encumbered or expended is $150,000 for the Planning and Zoning Computerization project. Could I get that report also sent back to us? Mr. Costa: Sure. I can give you the short answer right now. We did not encumber any of that money. That money in our... and we can provide further backup on that, but we have been working with IT to identify, number 1, what is the... what software is going to benefit us the most? Provide most flexibility and use for us. The program we believe is the program that we need is much more than $150,000 and I believe we actually came up"Here a few years ago and pointed out that the program we had looked at back then, was I think a million dollars. Directive was given back then to IT to do a study and follow up and we are not sure where that is, but that is the answer for that. We did not encumber that because we couldn't purchase the software that we really wanted and needed for that price. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. With that, thank you Ian. JoAnn? Anyone else here besides JoAnn that wanted to speak? You have 3 minutes. The rules are still suspended, so for the record, you can introduce yourself. Thank you. JOANN A. YUKIMURA: Thank you Chair Kaneshiro and members of the Council. As you review... this is JoAnn Yukimura. As you review the use of the current budget and set the budget for next year for the Planning Department, I just want to express a few concerns about the state of Planning and the management of the Planning Department. So you can set conditions for the budget to ensure proper Administration of the funding. You know, the Chair was really right on point that the delivery of plans has been very disappointing. For 6 years now, only one development plan out of the 4 that have been funded has actually been completed. And of all of the studies that have been authorized, only the TVR, study has been completed. This really hurts the island because you don't have good plans to place and I have to say that even the ones that have not been done or have not been completed, there has been many concerns about that process really producing a good plan. The Lihu`e Development SDAT process was an experiment to try to incorporate sustainability considerations into our area development planning process. I haven't... well, the RFP that I saw didn't really have anything of those sustainability issues in there, but hopefully there will be. The process that was followed for the L3hu`e Development Plan was extremely disturbing because it is... once the Council gives the money and the money is set based on what the Planning Department says it needs and says it is adequate, you know, instead of implementing the plan, a different scope of work was implemented without coming back to the Council to say, oh, we don't have enough money, please give us more money, and then doing the full plan in its... to completion. I would say that was a violation of the budget line item which said Lihu`e Development Plan. There was no authorization to turn it into a core plan and that wouldn't be bad if it were actually... in the end, you got a L~u`e Development Plan, but you don't have that. And I know the philosophy is something that you don't touch on too much in budget, but if you heard the philosophy that described what is the planning process in the Director's head, and that is extremely worrisome because he is going to use his guidelines...things that won't have the force of law and that is why we sometimes have lawsuits 234 ~ s APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) because we aren't following proper process. So I just wanted to raise these issues because I think it is something you really need to look at as you do the budget. Thank you very much. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any questions? Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Yea, I just... I would like you to expand a little bit about what you just. said about guidelines that don't have the force of law because I had some questions when I heard that and I just would like to understand more about... Ms. Yukimura: You know, I don't exactly what Mr. Costa meant, but, I mean, you are threading really dangerous waters I think when you are following something that don't have the force of law, and then people will challenge it. Well, on what basis are you imposing these regulations and if you look back at some of the lawsuit that we have been dealing with recently, that has been part of the problem. So it is really important to have good plans in place and then the regulations to back up the plan and that is why in the ag land study, we said the result of the expenditure of half a million dollars has to be not only the identification of the lands, but how you are going to regulate them. So you could spend another 20 years having identified the lands, but not knowing what regulations you are going to use for them and using the existing regulations which we know don't work. They produce more country estates, than real farms. Mr. Bynum: I think the agreement that we had is that the ag land study will make recommendations about regulations are needed, but won't actually do that, but at least we will have specifics about where we need to go next. Ms. Yukimura: If you are right. If regulations mean a draft ordinance, that is fine, but if you don't get and that always the intention at least when I was Planning Director that that study would have both because otherwise they are going to come back and say, okay, now we need another $500,000 study to do the regulations. Mr. Bynum: Yep, that is what is going to happen. Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me. You meant to say when you were a Planning Chairman. You said Planning Director. Ms. Yukimura: Oh, excuse me. You are correct, Planning Committee Chairperson, yes. Mr. Bynum: And you are right. That is exactly what I think will happen. Ms. Yukimura: Yes, but if you don't... Mr. Bynum: We will come up with recommendations that we need to fund other consultants to actually implement. Ms. Yukimura: I mean, yes, you have to think the whole process through because otherwise it is a continuous, oh, I need more money, and you are never there where you need to be. So, you know, that is why it is so important to make sure that when you give the money as you being asked to do every budget, that the results will be what you want and need, what the island needs for good planning. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: JoAnn, thank you for coming up and giving your testimony. I do want to refer back to a couple of the comments that I made during the process here. I am now the 235 APRIL 13, 2009 PLANNING DEPARTMENT (4) Committee Chair of Planning. I do want to let you know that over the last several weeks, I have been meeting with individuals to, you know, strategically target some goals for us including the fact... I am very happy to share that Mr. Castillo has identified an additional attorney in his office that will specifically have kind of a land use specialty background. I understand he will be assigning a little more emphasis from the legal department on planning. I have also said in somewhat of a more diplomatic way more than on the spot comments that the Chairman of the Council made, but we are going to set some realistic, yet obtaining goals in my correspondence back to the Council. I agree, you know, when you set a budget, it is a financial guideline and there are going to be key dates to follow up and get reports to the Council. I think you might have heard when they are ready with some of the particular items that are on his plate right now, I did say, at which time you will come back and report back to the Council, so that we have some monitoring in the reporting scope that deals with what we hope we would accomplish there. I want to let you know that I am going to try to work very closely as the Committee Chair, but your comments about, you know, what happened and deviated in the Lihu`e town plan and how it ended up being a district plan, we will never know, and that should never happen to us again. Thank you. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you Chair Furfaro. I am very thankful for your focus and your oversight on this. You know, I was tryirig`wlien I° was~Planning`Committee'Chair to 'bring that Lihu`e Plan to focus and at times, there wasn't the openness to that discussion on the Council... around the Council table, you know, but it is good that it is now and focus. And you are right, it cannot happen again because we just keep wasting money and we keep denying the community good plans to then implement because putting good plans in place is only the first step. The next step is the implementation which is another big effort. So more power to you and thank you all for this opportunity to just give some input and for the follow up that you will all do. Thank you Chair. Mr. Furfaro: Your comments are well taken. order. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. With that, the Chair will call this meeting back to The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Mr. Kaneshiro: We will be recess until tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. where we are going to be taking up the Parks & Recreation Department. We are in recess. There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 3:19 p.m. 236 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) The departmental budget reviews reconvened on April 14, 2009 at 9:07 a.m., and proceeded as follows: PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT Mr. Kaneshiro: Budget review session is now called back to order. Let the record reflect that all members are present. Councilmember Kawahara is in the building. Before I have Mr. Lenny Rapozo up, we'll take testimony from anyone that wants to give testimony today. So, with that, Mr. Glenn Mickens. The rules are suspended. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Mr. Kaneshiro: Name for the record and you can begin your testimony. (Inaudible. ) Mr. Furfaro: No camera today. Mr. Mickens: (Inaudible.) Quick question, where's the camera, Jay? Mr. Furfaro: So, it's only good to look directly at him. We're trying to find the money to do the budget summary for your information. Mr. Mickens: How much would that cost? It's $265 an hour. Mr. Kaneshiro: Will you begin testimony, please? Mr. Mickens: All right, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's what I got you up here for. Mr. Mickens: Thanks. The other thing I...I have a problem with is this...not...you have to sit here the whole session and not be able to comment on any other hearings. Daryl, I hope that procedure can be changed. Mr. Kaneshiro: here every day. What do you mean not be able to comment? You can come Mr. Mickens: Well, you know, we can comment now, but we can't hear what the people...the administration is saying. What if we have a question we'd like to ask, you know? Mr. Kaneshiro: Let us know, we'll ask the question. Mr. Mickens: I understand that, but you're not giving us the chance to ask the question. Mr. Kaneshiro: Write it down, we'll ask the question. Mr. Mickens: Oh, okay. 237 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Kaneshiro: You're...you're here to testify on the budget and... Mr. Mickens: I understand...I understand, Daryl. Mr. Kaneshiro: I'm assuming that you did get to see their budget and that's why you're here to testify. Mr. Mickens: Well, read that whole budget, it's about that thick. No, I haven't... Mr. Kaneshiro: No, just this department. Mr. Mickens: ,...read the total budget. ~ . _ ._ _ Mr. Kaneshiro: Well... Mr. Mickens: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: Begin your testimony, please. Mr. Mickens: You have a cop...you have a copy of my testimony. Let me read it for the record. Isn't it way past time for this administration led by Mayor Carvalho who was the head of parks and recreation before becoming mayor to give us answers to a multitude of questions about this costly, ill planned, unneeded bike path. And for those members on this council who are proponents of this path, our new members in particular, I would ask the same questions I've asked for six year. First, do you believe that this path will, as Tim Bynum was quoted as saying, it also provides an alternate transportation from fuel and putting carbon in the environment? Will this segmented path ever be a means of bike or walk transportation that will take vehicles off our roads? That's a question I'd like all of you to answer. And the even bigger question is, even if the path from Nawiliwili to Anahola is completed, will any of you members abandon your vehicle and commute wherever you want to go on a bike? Live in the real world and honestly answer that question. I'd like to hear any one of you comment on that. Or is this just one big feel good project made to benefit the consultants, designers and contractors? The millions of dollars being spent certainly won't benefit the masses of Kauai. If no one on this council or in the administration is willing to trade their vehicle for a bike, then why is it being shoved down the throats of the taxpayers. Do as I say, but not do as I do, is that the motto? If this path is such a great idea to spend millions of dollars on, then where is the leadership of those pushing it to step up, get on those bikes, and lead by example. I haven't seen anybody here. I haven't seen anybody in the administration riding their bikes to commute anywhere. Remember too that under federal regulation guidelines, this path must be used for transportation, not for recreation unless the Secretary of Transportation says otherwise. And even if recreational use were permitted as the sole use of this path, the cost of land acquisition, the logistics of the final route, the maintenance and the security will be prohibitive. My maintenance worker friends on this path call me all the time regarding the problems with dog feces on the...next to the path they must contend with. Their union told me that their contracts don't specify being involved with dog feces and yet people are not using doggie bags but are putting the feces in trash cans and making a health hazard for them. What happened to Kaipo's excellent bill or proposal to have dog parks around the island and keep the dogs on...off this path? And where are the Humane Society volunteers and park rangers to enforce the licenses, the leash...leash lengths and doggie bag laws on the books? On October 18, 2007, the council, by a 4 to 3 margin, voted to approve a path 238 • . APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) audit to "examine expenditures, permitting and compliance with grant requirements," a Garden Island quote. The proposal was highly fought by all path proponents including two members still on this council. Regretfully, only Chair Asing remains as one of the positive votes and he is to be commended for his stance. As Kipukai Kuali`i so wisely said at the time, "It's the administration's mismanagement of this entire project that leads responsible people like Rapozo and Iseri-Carvalho to call for an audit." If we don't have any more nonsense and incompetence to hide and/or correct, then why should we oppose an audit? The citizens of Kauai, if you ask me, deserve an audit as much as we deserve a bike path. I implore this council to withhold any more funding for this path until the list of Mel Rapozo's questions from June 1, 2007 are completely answered. He had them on the agenda for over a year and I still have a copy of them here and I still didn't see answers and I presume that's why Mel and Shaylene had them on their agenda for that length of time. So, that's my testimony. I don't know if anybody's got any comments. Mr. Kaneshiro: I have a question for you? Mr. Mickens: Sure, certainly. Mr. Kaneshiro: Where in this budget to do you see anything that is funded for the bike path? Mr. Mickens: Jay gave me a...a copy of a... Mr. Kaneshiro: I see it in the CIP... Mr. Mickens: Yeah. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...with some other... Mr. Mickens: Yeah. Mr. Kaneshiro: But I don't see it on the current budget where it specifically says or asks for funding for the bike path? Mr. Mickens: Well, I'm wondering where the money's coming from then? Mr. Kaneshiro: We're not even there. We're on the... Mr. Mickens: Part from the federal government, 20% from the (inaudible), I presume. Mr. Kaneshiro: We're on the budget right now, looking at a budget with parks and rec which I don't see anything specifically describing moneys going to the bike path. So my question is your testimony probably was inappropriate at this time, but I had allowed you to go ahead and speak because there is going to be something about the bike path coming up, I believe, in a future council meeting a couple weeks from now. But what I'm saying is that there is no line item in this whole parks and recreation budget that relates to anything to the bike path. path. Mr. Mickens: Parks and recreation has nothing on there regarding the bike l 239 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Kaneshiro: No. Absolutely not. Mr. Mickens: Then I...then I...then I apologize. I...I didn't know when this was going to come up. I thought it was part of parks and recreation. They are the ones I thought controlling this path, so I thought obviously they would be the ones to be funding it. Mr. Kaneshiro: There's not a single item mentioned here in this current budget before us in regards to a line-item to the bike path. So I just want to let you know. Mr. Mickens: Well, I appreciate your tolerance. Mr. Kaneshiro: But I did let you speak, so with that, I won't open this up for questions because again, .you.. know, basically we're, not on._the subject, of the.. budget ahat_ we're . _ _r discussing, so I wanted to point that out for reference, members. So with that, Mr. Mickens, thank you. Mr. Mickens: When will this come up again, Daryl...Daryl? Mr. Kaneshiro: I believe... Mr. Mickens: Can you give me a date? Mr. Kaneshiro: In I would say less than...a couple weeks from now it will be on the council agenda. Mr. Mickens: On the agenda. Mr. Kaneshiro: To discuss about the bike path, so. Mr. Mickens: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: No questions. With that, thank you, Mr. Mickens. Mr. Mickens: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Anyone else want to testify before we have the parks and recreation up to discuss their budget? Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, I would ask that you call the meeting back to order because I want to make some comments. Mr. Kaneshiro: Comments, okay, absolutely, I will. Before we get to parks and recreation, I'm going to call the meeting back to order and open this up for some comments. Per request by Councilmember Furfaro, the meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. 240 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Furfaro: Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, it's very important that...the fact of the matter is there are people here in the audience, even this week, have misinterpreted things and have written in editorials and so forth. It's really important to have clear communication. In this particular dialogue we just had, I want to clarify it for the record, Mr. Rapozo did not get an audit authorized by the county or by our auditors. That is a complete misstatement. What Mr. Rapozo received was a request an approval from the council to seek an audit by the state auditor. She responded to us that she was incapable to perform that audit because of staff limits and that was not something that this county voted to go out and contract. We should also make it very clear that in the recent charter amendment, the people of Kauai have in fact asked to have a fulltime internal audit position on the council of which this council does reflect a budget in the county council budget for this upcoming year, which eventually will not have a direct communique to this council but rather as an independent audit process to address things like parks, recreation, performance, manpower, etc. So, it's very clear that we have that. The question was posed to me about capital moneys and I am willing and cooperative as a councilmember did give Mr. Mickens a copy of the upcoming CIP. Mr. Kaneshiro: Correct. Mr. Furfaro: And for clarification, that will be a separate audit item and discussion... Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: ...later in your committee. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's exactly what I mentioned. Mr. Furfaro: So, thank you for calling the meeting back to order and letting me address those miscomments. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you...thank you Mr. Furfaro. Any other miscomments or comments that you want to make just on this particular... Mr. Furfaro: I just want to comment on the audit at this point. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...speaker. Mr. Chang Mr. Chang: I just wanted to make a comment. Something that Glenn Mickens had said and those members on the council who are particular proponents of this path, our new members in particular, I have never once stated anywhere publicly that I was for or against the bike path and I'm not speaking on behalf of Councilmembers Kawahara or Kawakami. But I have never made any mention for or against the bike path. And to answer a real world and an honest answer to the question if a bike path was built to Nawiliwili to Anahola would I abandon my vehicle to use this as a mode of transportation to get to and from work, absolutely not. I think in our profession we are expected to groom well and dress well and there's other things that we do within the course of the day that we need to get to and fro before...and before and after breakfast, before and after lunch and before and after dinner, and it's not feasible. But I would say for the record I 241 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) ould definitely use one or two of my bikes and I would be proud to ride between Nawiliwili and Anahola as I've done from Kealia to Anahola on many, many occasions on my bicycle with suspension. So, that's just my answer for...to hopefully be honest. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, I'm going to stop any more comments because again, we're going a little bit off, you know, from the reality of what we should be focusing on. But I realize that some of you did want to get back to say, you know, how you feel and what your thoughts were with the testimony. But again, I did give Mr. Mickens his time to give testimony. Even then I realized that it wasn't subject to this budget. So at this point, if I may... Mr. Chang: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you for the time,. I j.ust... Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: ...wanted to explain... Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. Mr. Furfaro: ...the audits. Mr. Kaneshiro: Right, clarification on some parts. So, you'll have your chance, I believe, when we have this really come on the agenda. So, at this time I want to thank my committee members for that and I'm going to go ahead and suspend the rules and we're going to begin with the budget with parks and recreation. Mr. Leonard Rapozo, for the record state your name and you can give us some highlights of your budget. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. LEONARD A. RAPOZO, JR., Director of Parks and Recreation: For the record Lenny Rapozo, Director of Parks and Recreation. Before you we've put together a brief bullet point as to what our budget increases or decreases are for you to review and included is a pie chart illustrating the operations. But before I get there, yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge my division heads who helped to put together this budget and who helped to administer the programs of the county in the department of parks and recreation because we have this good guy...good people that work for us and for the people of Kauai. So I'd like to recognize Eddie Sarita who is the Convention Hall Manager, Cindy Duterte who is in charge of the division for all recreation, Lynn Kuboyama who's my fiscal person. She makes sure that we're on target and we keep track of what we're trying to accomplish. Everybody knows Mel Nishihara who's an institution in this county. He's the development and planning and makes sure that we move forward with a lot of stuff. And our golf course people, Craig Carney and Susan Honjiyo who has taken on the task of producing a really great golf course and was shown...showcased during the collegiate cup and of course aside from me being the newest guy is George Ahlgren, who is our parks chief, who helps, maintains and makes sure we take care of all our maintenance issues in the parks. And so with that being said, you know, I'd like to acknowledge them and thank them for...for their hard work and effort. 242 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) In the...in your file, the first budget comparison is the parks and recreation budget where we were tasked by the mayor to reduce expenses by 10% and we achieved that in parks and rec by reducing our...in the parks and recs section of our department by reducing our operations by 11%. And overall what happened is that now we are tasked to put in the post-employment benefits that the finance department used to take care of. They gave it back to parks and rec to take care of. Mr. Furfaro: Lenny, just for... Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: This is something that the council... Mr. Rapozo: Council, thank you. Mr. Furfaro: ...actually asked finance to do. Mr. Rapozo: Okay, okay. Mr. Furfaro: We asked them two years ago. The real...the reality is other...as other PT&E become more highlighted, we felt it was a better way to give you jurisdiction over all your cost. So all departments, at the request of the council, are now managing that: Mr. Rapozo: Okay, thanks. So with that being said, with the new benefits that we are now responsible for as a department and due to increase in salaries, pay raises by collective bargaining by 2%, that kind of got us back to zero again after we...we reduced our budget by 11% from the parks and rec section. For the golf fund, we reduced operations by salaries and operations by a total of 7% and then with the benefits, which was an increase of 7%, again we were...we...we came out with a zero balance there. So that's pretty much the highlights and...and we have a little bit... some bullet points there showing you the breakdown as to how we arrived at the different percentage increases and decreases. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay? You have a question, Lani? Ms. Kawahara: I do if we're going into questions now? Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Derek, Derek has a question. Go ahead, Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, Mr. Rapozo and all the members of the park and rec department. Mr. Rapozo: Good morning. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you for your hard work. My question is I'm looking at the operational 11% decrease and in it is a $514,000 decrease in equipment...in heavy equipment. I just wanted to be assured that...that our...our people out there will have the necessary tools to get the job done, so. 243 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, actually if you go into the bud...this reflects a lot of the big purchases that normally we replace, whether it be trucks or heavy equipment, bobcats or you know those...those big...big ticket items. Mr. Kawakami: Okay. Mr. Rapozo: We decided that we're going to hold off on and that's where the decrease occurs. If you look real closely at our budget, there are some purchases for weed whackers, blowers, that stuff to keep our maintenance guys... Mr. Kawakami: Okay. Mr. Rapozo: _~ ...being able to do theirjob,,yes. ___„ Mr. Kawakami: Perfect. Thank you very much. Ms. Kawahara: I actually have a lot of questions. Mr. Kaneshiro: You have a question, Lani. Ms. Kawahara: I have...I guess I'll let everybody go first because I have a lot of questions. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, I just want to follow up on Mr. Kawakami's question. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, absolutely, Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. So we get finance on Thursday I think. Is that right, Mr. Chair? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Thursday. So I think the question that Mr. Kawakami asked about the larger equipment is an excellent one and I just want to say it might be wise for us to have finance bring us a list...an annual list that they do with our equipment purchases so that we can monitor Mr. Kawakami's question as to, you know, what...what particular equipment were...we're putting off for a year and so forth. So, I just wanted to say that it might be something that finance should anticipate from us as a follow-up of Mr. Kawakami's question. Mr. Kaneshiro: All right, thank you. Mr. Bynum, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: Good morning, Lenny. Mr. Rapozo: Good morning. 244 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Bynum: And following up on equipment, the parks department developed kind of a schedule of trying to keep up with equipment... Mr. Rapozo: Right. Mr. Bynum: ...so it was retired at the proper time... Mr. Rapozo: Right. Mr. Bynum: ...because in the past we had 15-year-old mowers... Mr. Rapozo: Right. Mr. Bynum: ...that were spending more time in the shop than they were in the field. And so is that getting a pause right now on equipment? It's like you're saying, well let's hold off for this year because there was kind of this schedule going out several years. Is that... Mr. Rapozo: That is correct. We've had a good stretch of good years, so we've made purchases. So we looked at the overall assets and yeah, that is correct. Mr. Bynum: But you're committed to maintaining that kind of rotation... Mr. Rapozo: Definitely. Mr. Bynum: ...schedule on equipment... Mr. Rapozo: Definitely. Mr. Bynum: ...into the future years. Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Bynum: You feel like you've had enough catch up... Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Bynum: ...that you can afford in these tough... Mr. Rapozo: That...that is import... Mr. Bynum: I trust your judgment about value. Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Bynum: I just wanted to see...because you know there was a point where there wasn't that kind of long-range look. It was kind of like every year hit or miss and I really applauded that systemic kind of look at equipment and making sure that...that workers had 245 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) their tools, you know, that were reliable and up to date. So, you know, as long as we can get back to that in the future, that'll be great. Can you give a rundown of any vacant positions parks has now and whether they're frozen or whether you're hiring? Mr. Rapozo: We have... Mr. Bynum: I didn't see any dollar-funded positions. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, I saw just one position. Mr. Bynum: Just one? Mr. Rapozo: In 150...in 159, we have one dollar-funded position., Mr. Kaneshiro: Maybe...why don't we go to that first, just to explain the dollar-funded position first. Mr. Bynum: You see my...my page 159...Oh, there it is. It's (inaudible). It had a copier problem. Mr. Kaneshiro: He got some problems with his copy. Okay, there's that one position? Can we ask you guys... Mr. Bynum: So one...one park caretaker. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...(inaudible) at this point on that one dollar-funded position? Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, but we do have other vacancies and in order to meet the objective goal of the 10%, we looked at the operations in that area and they have a strong team right now over there. So, we decided to dollar-fund that one position to meet our...to meet our...our goal. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, but we do have other vacancies. Mr. Kaneshiro: I£..if you don't have that right now, I'll go ahead and send a correspondence... Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...to you requesting those vacant positions. Mr. Rapozo: Sure. Mr. Kaneshiro: So you can have... Mr. Rapozo: Perfect. 246 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Kaneshiro: Give us a list as we go through the budget process if that's okay with Councilman Bynum. Mr. Bynum: it...are you currently reci Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Kaneshiro: process. That's...that's fine and just, you know, what's vacant and is ~uiting or is it a frozen position. Yeah. Okay. That would really help us as we go through the budget Mr. Rapozo: Sure. Mr. Kaneshiro: So all vacancies and if your intent is to fill the positions and what is the current, you know, status of those positions. Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll come with a communication. Mr. Bynum: I can continue? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, go ahead, Tim. Mr. Bynum: Just other personnel...I...the last I heard all the park security officer positions were filled. Is that still the status? Mr. Rapozo: Six, correct, six. Mr. Bynum: So...and they finished their probation and they're out there doing park security. Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Bynum: That's a really outstanding addition to the community in terms of service and you know protecting and maintaining our parks in the proper way. So I'm thrilled that those positions are filled and going. That's all I have right now. Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Go ahead, Councilmember Kawahara. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Hey, Lenny. Mr. Rapozo: Good morning. Ms. Kawahara: Good morning to you. First I wanted to say that you are in 247 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) charge of a really large department. This budget took me almost all night to go through. I have several questions. A lot of them seem to focus on the programs that we've...that recs and...parks and recs provide. Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: And I was noticing that there were...in order to meet budget, it looks like youth summer field day was cut by $500, sports league was $2,000 and... Mr. Asing: Coun...Councilmember Kawahara, it...it might help if you identify the page you're on so that other councilmembers can also participate in listening to the question. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Asing: Thank you. Ms. Kawahara: Page 157. I don't know if I'm going to go through them all, but there were some cuts in youth summer field day, sports league, and clinic workshops/conference, and athletic equipment probably. And I wanted to be sure if you could tell us how...what kind of impact that'll have on the summer programs and if that'll lessen the number of participants? Mr. Rapozo: Some of the...some of the cuts that were made in this area here, in the past all of the moneys weren't used for those particular, what you just identified. So, we are anticipating that those expenditures there would be more in line with real...what our expenses are, yeah. So, that's why...and you know, like I said, we did need to meet the objectives and we don't think...we don't think it will have any impact on that. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Yeah and I did notice that there were year-to-date expenditures and they were quite...they were lower than what the mayor's request was, so you guys were adjusting for that, yeah? Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. The officiating on page 156 is... Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry, what about the officiating? Ms. Kawahara: Officiating... Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: For officials was down to $12,000 from $20,000 and youth and senior instructors to $55,000 from $60,000 and... Mr. Rapozo: Those..~.those... Ms. Kawahara: ADA auxiliary. 248 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: in the previous years. Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Rapozo: Ms. Kawahara: on the computerized conv Yeah, those are more in line of what actually was being spent Okay. Yeah. Then I had a question...I'm going to go through on page 158 enience kiosks. Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Are those needed this year? Mr. Rapozo: Yes, that's our...that's our intention. The one...the one addition to that that I'd like the councilmembers to know is that we are also looking at putting the kiosk also in Kilauea and upgrading the kiosk machine in the DMV area. So those two were first identified as the places that these kiosks were going to go in but we are also looking to put the kiosks also in Kilauea Neighborhood Center and in the DMV area. Ms. Kawahara: So presently there's none? Mr. Rapozo: None, yeah. Ms. Kawahara: And what are...they are for permits...to get permits on-line? Mr. Rapozo: To get permits, you want to buy a round of golf, you want to pay your registration to your car, that's...that...that...along those things. Ms. Kawahara: So was it the majority of it is parks and recreation is that why it's under your budget? Mr. Rapozo: No, we11...I don't know. A lot of. things come to parks and recreation. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, I noticed. Mr. Bynum: Because they have the facilities. Mr. Rapozo: Well...in partnership with the IT, because you know the gol£..we're trying to...we are determined to increase golf revenue and we want it to be friendly so that anybody anywhere can go and go get a...a round of golf. So, you know, that...that...we thought that is one of the number one priorities is that and the camping permits to be more...and...and to pay the fees, yeah. So just make it more accessible, so yeah, it came to parks and Cindy has been taking the lead on that and she's been working with the IT to get it done in those four areas. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, so the first four areas and you got two listed here. Does the four areas cover all of them for $20,000? 249 r ~~ APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah? Okay. Because it's my first budget, I really went... Mr. Rapozo: Mine too. Ms. Kawahara: I did my homework. Mr. Rapozo: Go for it. Ms. Kawahara: So, the question was on the next page 161. Previously it was an energy services contract for $3,360, so there's an increase there. Mr. Rapozo: 161? Ms. Kawahara: 161 under other services and now...instead of...I wanted to know what energy services contract was? Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry? Ms. Kawahara: I did want to know what originally the energy services contract was for $3,3...$3,360. Mr. Rapozo: Well, that's a historical. That contract is completed. So I...I'm not...I don't...I don't know what the services was I would have to... Ms. Kawahara: No, it was in the past, so then it's gone. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, it's done already. The contract is done already. Ms. Kawahara: And the new lines came in at new pest control contract and new pumping and hauling contract? Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Could you tell me about those, please? Mr. Rapozo: We...with working with the parks chief, yeah, we've been getting a lot of feedback from our visitors about the chickens on this island. And there's really no way to deal with the chickens other than asking somebody to go out there and catch them and dispose of them in a humane way. But what we did is that whether it's chickens, ants or whatever, we put some money in the budget so that we can...we can address whatever pest control needs that we have. The pumping item is for the Po`ipu Beach Park. The last flooding we had, we had no moneys in our budget to address that and so our parks chief is taking a proactive approach to get some moneys in there that is dedicated to that in case we gotta go through that again, hopefully not too often, yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, okay, that's...that's good to have actually. This other thing is the tree removaUpruning services. 250 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: I...I had an experience with that recently at the library so I was wondering are you actually planning on removing any trees or just continuing to prune. Mr. Rapozo: At this point it's just maintenance. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, we don't have any... Ms. Kawahara: And...and does...can you help me? Do you know if you're going to actually cut it down if you ask council first or... Mr. Rapozo: We probably wouldn't ask the council, yeah, we just. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, okay. I just...we had an issue with it on the state property where we cut it down and it was a big issue. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, yeah. Ms. Kawahara: So I would just suggest if you do it wherever you're going to cut it, you let the community know first and they'll try and save it somehow. Mr. Bynum: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum: with... supervision of tree Mr. Rapozo: May I interject on that? What's that? On that tree question, can I interject? Would it be okay? You had some questions regarding that? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that...when you...when decisions are made trimming and removal of trees that's...that's George's Kuleana? Oh, it comes...it gets to my desk first. Mr. Bynum: Okay. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, but the routine maintenance of pruning trees, trimming trees, George...George will...will ensure that. Mr. Bynum: Right because, you know, we...we have had issues with that in the past where arborists and community members have said, oh, you butchered that tree. 251 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: Right. Mr. Bynum: You know that was...but you know I know George has that expertise and so that's being monitored about... Mr. Rapozo: All our people are trained... Mr. Bynum: Great. Mr. Rapozo: ...with the chainsaw to do the...the right job. Mr. Bynum: I think we've improved in that. ., ~.. _ - z ~ -_ -~. -, - _ _ -_- ti- ..- Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, yeah. Mr. Bynum: Over the last couple years our sensitivity to appropriate kind of maintenance of trees has...you know, people love trees, right? They have a real investment in particular trees in parks and stuff, so. Mr. Rapozo: Right, right. Mr. Bynum: So, I just...maybe for Councilmember Kawahara I think the parks management in that has improved over the last few years. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah. Ms. Kawahara: I promised them that (inaudible) when we were cutting down the one for the state I said, oh, watch out for the county trees. (Inaudible.) Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: But I think it's prudent for the department to make the decision especially when it comes to the health and the welfare of the people of Kauai. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. Mr. Kaneshiro: Because let me tell you something, we've had some lawsuits where...where the tree fell and even had that occur. So I just want you guys to be aware of that...that you know, since then we've done a great job and they've been recognizing that if there are some maintenance that has to be done, they'll do the maintenance, and if it's come to public safety, they would have to take the steps and sometimes even cutting the tree down. So, I just want people to know that. Ms. Kawahara: Yes, absolutely. Mr. Kaneshiro: Be aware of that. Ms. Kawahara: That wasn't the issue. That was the issue, was the safety. Mr. Kaneshiro: All right. 252 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Ms. Kawahara: And I'm glad to see you're doing it two times a year and maintaining it because that's about pretty much...I think it maintains it and we get the coconuts before they fall. One question on training. I didn't know what rec track was? Mr. Kaneshiro: Hold on one second. Did you have something on this part that we were discussing? Mr. Chang: Yes. About the pumping and the chickens, yeah. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, go ahead... Ms. Kawahara: Pumping and chickens, go ahead. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...before we turn the page. Mr. Chang: Thank you. You remember Lenny when we were communicating with the recent flooding at the Po`ipu Park during Christmas? Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, right. Mr. Chang: That took us about three...three...three and a half days? Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, something like that. Mr. Chang: About three...three and a half days? Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, maybe four days. Mr. Chang: Do you remember through Aqua what that cost us to pump that out? Mr. Rapozo: A little over $12,000. Mr. Chang: And that's what my question was because I think that there might be more need for much more of a budget... Mr. Rapozo: Yeah. Mr. Chang: ...than $10,000 because that was, you know, obviously over Christmas week and you know we can probably anticipate one or two more floods somewhere, you know, within your jurisdiction. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, right, right. Mr. Chang: And also... Mr. Furfaro: Could I answer that? Mr. Chang: Yes. 253 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Furfaro: Okay, when it comes to that flooding, I...I do want to point out I think both Kawahara and Chang are on the right track in identifying that, but I want to make sure, because we are looking for some money, I want to make sure we understand that we don't have a duplication there because in the event we have flooding anywhere, could be outside the parks and so forth, there should be a contingency number in finance because it is the Finance Director that ultimately can establish an emergency response fees. And so, you know, we need to make sure that we're really focused if that money is going to be in parks, it's fine. But it's...there's other issues that we have to respond to in an emergency, and that money should actually be in the finance department under the direction of Mr. Rezentes because his signature can authorize it up to $50,000. So, it's just for the new members as well. I'm sorry, Mr. Chang. Go ahead. Mr. Kaneshiro: And...and...and I just... __ __ _ -- Mr. Furfaro: That...that's my chicken question. Mr. Kaneshiro: I just want to wanted to add that he specifically stated that this money is for Po`ipu Beach. Mr. Furfaro: I...I understand that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, right, so. It's a line item for Po`ipu Beach Park. Mr. Chang: Thank you and it's my first budget also. Mr. Furfaro: And you do...you're both doing fine. Mr. Chang: Thank you, three of us. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, all of you. Mr. Chang: Thank you. All eight of us and Glenn. Also with the new pest control contract, I don't know how many chickens we've been gathering up, where and when, but something that we all learned last week is that the Humane Society also does chicken and rooster pick up. So that might be also another... Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, but they...they charge a fee. Mr. Bynum: They charge you for it. Mr. Kaneshiro: Five dollars each. Mr. Bynum: So that...that might help fund that. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah. Mr. Furfaro: That's...I think that's where Mr. Chang's going with that. That money might...because they...they have a shortfall as well. But if you have that money, you know, there is a solution to be calling them for a fee. 254 • . APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: And actually we've been approached by two vendors to...to do that. I mean, we've been getting emails from visitors that their experiences are great, but at Salt Pond and different parks, the chickens make them not want to come back, so. It's...it's an issue enough that we had to put money. back. Mr. Furfaro: If they're euthanized correctly, they're not supposed to come Mr. Chang: Thank you and...and all of that conversation came about with the...sharing that article that you read with the Wall Street Journal. But thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Anything else on this particular page before we go to another page number? Mr. Bynum: I want to make one quick comment. I really appreciate you being proactive on these issues with the pest control and the...and the flooding, but you know, the council, I think, is not done looking at the initial cause of the flooding. I know I have some questions out to planning and...that I'm waiting for a response on. And so, you know, the bigger issues, I think, are being addressed, but you guys are being proactive because it's your park and you gotta respond to it. Mr. Rapozo: Right, exactly. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: No, not on this page. Sorry about that. I get one on 171 I'd like to address. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, okay, all right. I want to move on if we're done with this page. Mr. Furfaro: I...I just want to go back to other question. Could I ask that you correct it. If that number on computerized kiosks is correct, then either the number...and if the number is correct that $20,000, then could we expand the narrative to make sure it shows the four stations by the time we come to the supplemental review. And if you also could go back and double- check with IT that the number isn't only reflective of Kalaheo and Kapa`a. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. We'll send a communication to you. Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you, Mr. Chair. My question deals specifically with page 171 under construction and then stadiums. Am I assuming correctly that some of these funds are to attempt to get us in compliance with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife as far as our shearwater issues go? Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Kawakami: Okay and then... Mr. Rapozo: The Vidinha Stadium? 255 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Kawakami: Yeah, yeah. Mr. Rapozo: Actually, we have awarded the contract. I believe the company's name was ECM where we...we awarded the contract and we're in negotiations to execute the contract right now, yes. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you and then, you know, as a follow-up question, you know, I've been looking at this budget for a while and all these line items are starting to just look like letters to me and I'm trying to find if there's any funding in here for the Habitat Conservation Plan for...I...because it's a work in progress, yeah? Mr. Rapozo: Right. ___- _ -r . _ ~.. Mr. Kawakami: So, I'm just trying to identify because it's under your guys department if there's anything in there to address additional work on that so we can complete it. Mr. Rapozo: It's under the CIP Budget. Mr. Kawakami: Mr. Kaneshiro: CIP? Okay, thank you very much. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll be taking that up later on this afternoon. Okay, any other questions for Lenny or Mr. Rapozo? Lani, do you have one? Ms. Kawahara: On the same page or on a different... Mr. Kaneshiro: No. Ms. Kawahara: Yes, yes, I needed to go back to 152. There were these two items that I didn't just know what they were. For...just real quick, what is the rectrac and then the autocad? Mr. Rapozo: Oh, the rectrac is the system that we use to input the permits and stuff like that for our.. . Ms. Kawahara: Reservations (inaudible). Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, yes. Ms. Kawahara: Oh, okay. Mr. Rapozo: And the autocad is a...is a program for our development and planning division that they need so that they can do the necessary drawings for us to do our...our...our stuff. one? Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Is that a new or recurring one? That's a recurring Mr. Rapozo: The autocad is a new...the autocad is a new one, yeah. 256 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Ms. Kawahara: Okay, so they need to draw...This is on page 154. Mr. Kaneshiro: What page? Ms. Kawahara: Fellow councilmembers. Page 154, on the bottom. So...because I...I know it's kind of like an architecture thing when I saw autocad so that's why I was wondering. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah. Ms. Kawahara: So you're going to be drawing up plans on parks? Mr. Rapozo: Well, you know, to draw where our new parks are going to be, to help us in developing or presenting stuff, that's what the autocad...We have a new p1a...Dave Caylor is our new planner. So that specifically is going to be for him, that program. Ms. Kawahara: Okay...okay...okay. Page 155 and this has to do with the summer programs again. Because I was...that's mostly what I'm saying or concerned about is...is the differences in the numbers. You had 175 workers, part-time permanent during the summer programs. From 175 it went down to 150 and then the ADA aides were totally eliminated and I was wondering about that. Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry, try that again. Ms. Kawahara: On page 155... Mr. Rapozo: All right. Ms. Kawahara: ...down here there was last year, it seemed like there were ADA aides and 10 of them and I thought maybe that would be a requirement for your summer programs. Mr. Bynum: It might be on the next page, huh, under consultants? Ms. Kawahara: That was actually different. Mr. Bynum: Okay, that's the way I read it. Mr. Rapozo: So you wanted to know what is the... Ms. Kawahara: Where did they go and are...don't...don't you need the ADA aides to run the programs in compliance? (Inaudible. ) Mr. Kaneshiro: Can you state your name for the record, please? CYNTHIA DUTERTE, Administrative Officer I: Oh, I'm sorry, Cindy Duterte. 257 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Duterte: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Bynum: Ms. Duterte: consultant services. Ms. Kawahara: Ms. Duterte: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Rapozo: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. The ADA aides would actually be in the consultant services. Oh, okay. You were right. I was right. So we took them out of the salaries and put them in You put them in consultant services page... The $17,000. I'm sorry... Page 156. 150...156. Okay, okay. ADA auxiliary aides. Okay. Got it? Ms. Kawahara: Great, perfect. And then...good. So there...is that 10 of them? Are you still going to maintain 10? Do you know if you have to maintain 10? Ms. Duterte: It...it...it's dependent on needs. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah? Ms. Duterte: Yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, so you have that funding for that. With the 7 teachers, 6 aides and 2 site managers gone, will you guys be okay with your programs being able to maintain them and provide quality programs during the summer? Ms. Duterte: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Because that's the other difference between the 175 and the 150 staff. Yeah, you'll be good, the programs will be good without those extra? Ms. Duterte: Yes. 258 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Ms. Kawahara: Okay, because they're being removed. Thank you. Probably this one is the same answer as you gave me before. The officiating, the officials, less officials, timers and scorers was $20,000 and this year it's $12,000, so I'm saying...thinking it was...this is more in line with... Mr. Rapozo: We wanted to reflect the true cost. Ms. Kawahara: Reflect the true cost. Mr. Rapozo: Of what the program spent in the past. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, great, copier $51. I wanted to see if that was a mistake, page 156. Ms. Duterte: No, it's...it's not. It's actually...the copier is actually going to be placed at Kalaheo Neighborhood Center. So, it's not there yet. It's actually been...from last year's budget and actually been...in...in the process of being... Mr. Bynum: Procured. Ms. Duterte: Yeah, purchased. Ms. Kawahara: Procured, okay. So, the $51 is what? I don't know what the $51 is. Okay, same...okay. Now this one is on 157...I'm only going through the ones that caught my eye, so I...I want to let the public know that I'm not going line by line. But these are ones that I did have questions about and looked like they might be things that we could work with. The office supplies original budget was $10,451 and I see that that's been down...made lower to $7,500 and here I was wondering the difference right now with year-to-date at $2900 whether you think the $7,500 is another number that you could make more in line with the actual cost? It's a question. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, we're just going to have make do with less, yeah. When we try to meet our target goals, some of those things... Ms. Kawahara: So you want to... Mr. Rapozo: ...we just gotta make do with less. Ms. Kawahara: So, okay, so we're going to keep it at $7,500? Okay. I am at...that's chickens...got chickens. You know when the Kekaha Beach closes, is that Polihale? Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah? No? Is...we have a...we have a portable there? Mr. Rapozo: At Polihale? Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. Mr. Rapozo: That's the state, yeah. 259 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Ms. Kawahara: So this one at Kekaha...oh, that's on the main beach, yeah? Oh, okay, okay. The motocross one, portable, do you... Mr. Rapozo: Where are you? Ms. Kawahara: ...are they there... Mr. Rapozo: Where are you? Ms. Kawahara: Oh, on page 161. Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: ,:-.- The...I...I...so...we provide the track, yeah? And then is that thing is there permanently for the year at $1,000 a month? Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, okay. And... Mr. Bynum: Wait, oh, Cindy left. I had a general question I wanted to ask Cindy. I'm sorry. Mr. Furfaro: You should ask the chair. Mr. Bynum: Cindy came up and down twice and I wanted to ask her a question. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, can we have Cindy back up? Cindy, please. Mr. Bynum: I'm sorry. Mr. Furfaro: I think Mr. Kawakami had a question for you. Mr. Bynum: We...we moved in and out of recreation couple times. I just wanted to ask a general question. Overall, all of the services we've been providing we're maintaining in this budget. Is that correct? Ms. Duterte: Yes. Mr. Bynum: There's no cuts in recreational services? Mr. Rapozo: No. Ms. Duterte: The mayor was adamant about not cutting senior or youth programs. Mr. Bynum: Okay. 260 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: In fact, we en... Mr. Bynum: Senior or youth programs. Mr. Rapozo: In fact we kind of enhanced the youth programs because we'll let them know. Ms. Duterte: Yeah. Mr. Rapozo: And this next summer fun, if you look at our line item, we have budgeted for summer fun curriculum teachers and that's $31,000 I believe was 13 teachers and that's... Mr. Bynum: Right. Mr. Rapozo: ...to do graphs and... Mr. Rapozo and Ms. Duterte: Try to enhance the program. Mr. Bynum: Enhance the program. Mr. Rapozo: To enhance the program, make it better. Mr. Bynum: And that...and we...a couple years ago we extended hours, Yew? Ms. Duterte: Yeah, so with the 10-hour day that was the intent to bring these teachers in to help with the curriculum. Mr. Rapozo: Curriculum. Mr. Bynum: And we're maintaining those extended hours. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah. Mr. Bynum: And...and I was...also want to comment that...appreciate that the preschool summer fun funding for child family service remains in the budget, that's the...that's the same amount? Ms. Duterte: No, that was reduced. Mr. Bynum: And I'm sure Frank will come up here and tell us the future to maintain that service. Ms. Duterte: He's been around. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, he's a good strong advocate. And then the K-PAL funds, are those similar to last year? Or were they...was there a cut there? 261 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: Actually they wasn't there last year. Ms. Kawahara: That...that wasn't there. Mr. Bynum: It wasn't there. That's what I thought. Mr. Furfaro: Last year it was in the police department and I think Mr. Kawakami had a question about the program as well. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I want to, you know, we love K-PAL. I mean how many football players they got going this year. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, yeah. _ ,~ _ _ _ _ Mr. Bynum: (Inaudible) literally and so overall, wherever it is in the budget, we're maintaining funding for K-PAL. Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Derek, you had a question. Mr. Kawakami: Oh, my...my question is right along that line and I wanted to just know to...to what extent is the parks and the rec department involved with K-PAL as far as this funding goes? Because I know some of it also has to come out of the police department too. So, just for the parks and rec side, what...what... Ms. Duterte: It's really a matter of who'll receive the project and then require them to provide reports and expenditure reports. Mr. Kawakami: Okay. Ms. Duterte: Narrative and expenditure reports. Mr. Rapozo: So (inaudible) going to support the program with their expenditure reports for...you know, to allow them to operate. Mr. Kawakami: Thanks for the support. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furf...Oh, you have a question along that line? Mr. Furfaro: Mine was afollow-up as well. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, go ahead, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: It's not recreation stuff so. Mr. Kaneshiro: No, go ahead (inaudible). 262 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Furfaro: So I don't want the council to get caught in this as previous years. Is the police department staffing a K-PAL officer for a program that's in your department? Mr. Rapozo: Not that I'm aware of, no. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. So that's afollow-up question for the Police Chief. Mr. Bynum: Yeah. Mr. Rapozo: You mean that the...a...a...a position for a person in our budget? Mr. Kaneshiro: From the police. Mr. Furfaro: I want to go back and reference the fact that this council had no problem in the past to fund K-PAL, but it never got staffed. Mr. Rapozo: Oh. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Now I'm seeing the money in parks department as a follow-up to Mr. Kawakami and Mr. Bynum's question and I'm saying to be a K-PAL program and I'm now looking through the police budget, and I want to make sure that you folks close the communication with the police department and there is an officer committed to this $22,000. Mr. Rapozo: Oh, that, yeah, it's not in our budget, so. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, but the program is a county program that comes under the jurisdiction of the police department. I'm not concerned where the money is at. I'm concerned about from the police department, their role in perpetuating the program called K-PAL. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: When I...I concur that we should do a follow up with the police department because the history is the council funded a position that never got filled. Then it came out and it got real controversial and you know, now that the staffing's doing better at the police department, I'd be interested in finding out what's the chief's position for the future. Mr. Furfaro: So maybe we send that over as a question, Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, we will. Staff would you note that that we'll send a communication over to the police department regarding K-PAL position. Mr. Bynum: Councilmember Kawahara, who's done her homework, pointed out that the funding for the summer...the preschool summer fun's half what it was. That's a pretty significant reduction, so do you know...have you talked with Frank, is he going to be able to continue that program? I mean... Ms. Kawahara: It was at $25,000 and now it's 12.5. Same thing. 263 u APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry? Ms. Kawahara: Is that the same thing where it's `just more in line with what the actual cost is or... Mr. Rapozo: No, we just...no, yeah, we just when make a decision as to how we're going to meet some of target goals. Mr. Bynum: All right. I'd like...I just encourage you to dialogue with the...because these...we do summer fun for school age kids and they basically have...are covering for our citizens some of the preschool-age kids and then kids in Head Start who are the families that really need that support. Ms. Duterte: It is a wonderful program. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, we...yeah. Mr. Bynum: And so...you know, I...I think given that the...the council stepped up in previous years to put that funding in, I think there would be some investment here that it continue and have sufficient funding. So...and you know, it's not a 10 or 12 percent cut, it's a 50 percent cut, so. If you could just look into that or we will. You know, I doubt whether that's sufficient, so. year? Ms. Kawahara: Could I ask for the numbers of that program the previous Mr. Bynum: I think we had 25 in there the last two years. Mr. Rapozo: 25, was 25, yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you. The...going...oh, does anybody else have questions on this section? Mr. Bynum: I just...thank you for maintaining the level of services. I mean... Ms. Duterte: You're welcome. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Bynum: You know, people on Kauai rely on these programs to enrich their children, give them time, and you know frankly for childcare, right? I mean, you're going to be...put families in crisis if we cut hours or cut services, so, thank you for that commitment. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Lani, go ahead. Ms. Kawahara: More question. I wanted to know...several, several programs that you guys do. One of them is enhanced fitness program for the...for the elderly to improve 264 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) chronic conditions in older adults such as diabetes, heart disease, depression through regular physical activity. I wanted to know if that was going to be maintained at the level that it is at now. Ms. Duterte: As...as far as the Enhanced Fitness Program, it's actually administered by the agency on elderly affairs. We partner with them inasmuch as providing them the facilities and...and staffing to oversee the activities, and instructive (inaudible) and stuff. So as far as whether or not going increase, you would have to check with (inaudible). Ms. Kawahara: Thank you, thank you for clarifying that. Does any funds come from the rec department too that? Ms. Duterte: No. Ms. Kawahara: So it's just totally... Ms. Duterte: I think it's an (inaudible). Ms. Kawahara: ...composed in that one elderly affairs. Thank you. Okay, moving right along. Kiosk. Pest Control. Car replacements. Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry. Ms. Kawahara: Car replacements. Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: That's in there, yeah, for two... Mr. Rapozo: What num...you're on a particular page? Ms. Kawahara: Page 164. Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Ms. Kawahara: Chevy pickup and a Ford pickup. And I...I'm a...there was a lot of discussion on replacement programs last year, I believe, and I was just curious how old the cars...the trucks are that you're replacing for these. Mr. Rapozo: I'm not sure how old they are right now, but they were...these were identified as we gotta replace. So that's why they're in there and not out there. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, okay, so they have to be this year. Mr. Rapozo: Yes, yes. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. I needed to know what a drill attach...seed drill attachment was and a stump grinder. 265 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: A stump grinder is when you cut the tree down and there's a stump. This thing grinds it all up, yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Rapozo: The seed drill, I'm not sure. (Inaudible.) Ms. Kawahara: Hi. (Inaudible.) . . - _.e .. _. _ R _ -_ Mr. Kaneshiro: For the record, state your name. GEORGE AHLGREN, Parks Maintenance Operations Chief: George Ahlgren. The seed drill is an attachment that will go on an existing tractor and it is for improving the quality of the turf in our parks and particularly the ball fields where it... The attachment does two things at once. It makes a little slice in the ground and then also plants a seed in that groove as you move along. So it's a nice piece of equipment I've used in my past career. I think it'd be a nice benefit to our parks. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. We need it this...this is a Mel Rapozo question. Do we need it this year? Mr. Rapozo: It's in the budget, so we thought it would be needed this year. (?): Obviously because it's in there. Ms. Kawahara: Ah, but do you really need it this year. Mr. Ahlgren: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Ahlgren: I'll answer that one. Mr. Kaneshiro: From $253,000, you came down to $12,500, so I...seems like it's an important part. Mr. Bynum: May I interject on this, Lani? Ms. Kawahara: Go ahead, yeah. Mr. Bynum: May I? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: And so this is part of efforts to improve the parks department turf management, right? 266 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: Yes and not only parks, but we can also use it at the golf course too, yeah? Less...less... Mr. Bynum: Right. Mr. Rapozo: Less, you know. Mr. Bynum: Well the golf course does a pretty good job. Mr. Rapozo: I...I...you know, for the kids that play in our fields, you know, I think many of us feel like the parks can do and is doing a better job at managing that turf because it's a safety issue and playability, right? So, this is a key piece of equipment, I assume, to manage our turf better. Is that correct? Mr. Ahlgren: Yeah, one of the nice things about this piece of equipment is it's very...it doesn't disrupt the turf...the existing turf. You're just trying to thicken it up. You don't have to rototill the whole thing and start from scratch again. You can go over existing turf, thicken it up and then go through your bare spots and plant seeds as you aerate so it's a...it's a really nice piece of equipment to not interrupt any of your sports activities. You can just go and do this during the day and you can practice that night. So, it's a...it's a nice addition to what we already have. Mr. Bynum: And I think in the past we didn't do things like aerate and we didn't really a... Mr. Ahlgren: That's a tough thing to fit into the program sometimes. It's a...it's a really nice thing to do. We should be doing it. I'm going to try to work to get us to aerate and...and fertilize on a more regular program now so our...our turf is a little better. Mr. Bynum: Which leads to a question that I...I've asked in the past and I didn't think about it until right now as I...do we have sufficient budget for fertilizer and...and those kind of tools because this goes back a few years, George, to a...a sense that a lot of our sports fields were in really bad shape and...an a...an awareness that we weren't doing regular turf management is what I...the term I used, that we basically weren't doing that and I think we're starting to do that now. Mr. Ahlgren: Yeah, I think...I've really only been here for just about five months now, so I'm still trying to get my arms around...wrapped around all of our practices. I would say for this year, we're holding at status quo at least on the budget for fertilizer, herbicides, not trying to increase it wildly with not some kind of a...a basis of understanding on my part that we...I can justify that. We...we're going to hold status quo for right now. Mr. Bynum: Just for a...you know when the kids that play sports here go off-island to parks on Oahu and other places, you know, it's very common for them to say, ho, look at this grass, you know, this is...this so much better than what we're used to and hopefully we're...we're changing that. You know that...is that a goal? Let me put this in the form of a question. Is that a goal to... Mr. Ahlgren: Absolutely. 267 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: I...I think it's the reverse. Mr. Bynum: ...improve the quality of our sports fields, the turf? Mr. Bynum: No, I think it's the reverse I've...I've been in youth sports for 20+ and when they come to Kauai, it's Kauai that is the showcase of the state. Mr. Bynum: Now? Or... Mr. Rapozo: Always been. Mr. Bynum: Always been? Mr. Rapozo: Always been. Mr. Bynum: So, if you went... Mr. Rapozo: These youth...there's no youth sports in this state that can go to the football stadium that'll play like they do on Kauai. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you, Mr. Chair. there? Mr. Bynum: So if we went to... Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro, you had a... Mr. Bynum: ...Isenberg Park, we'd be feeling pretty good about the turf Mr. Ahlgren: I think it's going to improve. I mean at...at our major stadiums, I think the guys are doing a good job. Our program is good. Some of the lesser neighborhood parks, wherein part of that park we have a ball field, I think maybe we could improve in some of those areas. Mr. Bynum: Right and just to clarify, I wasn't talking about stadium stuff, I was talking about neighborhood parks. Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, even...even parks. Even parks. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro, you had a question. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. George, this is a...this is a stone in my foot...in my shoe. I might as well share with you. You're here five months, that's great. We were told, and I have to give Mel from the parks department A+ along this line, but we've never seen it practiced, Mel did a comparison for us A level fields, B level fields, C level fields. He did some labor calculations for us, fertilizing, watering, and so forth and...and basically said in our A parks, parks we might host tournaments with and so forth, this will be the schedule for aeration, fertilizer, watering and it would require the park to be closed at periodic times and so forth. But these are 268 i APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) some of the simulated costs that we should expect, secondary schedule and, you know those neighborhood parks that don't get a lot of play and so forth. We...we would like to revisit that, so we have an understanding o£..because you're ground maintenance. Am I correct? Mr. Ahlgren: Correct, yes sir. Mr. Furfaro: We would like to have an understanding of the total program that, you know, because we...we have to know there's certain costs that Mel has expressed to us, you know what it would be to do regular ground maintenance on...on these parks that we wanted to keep at...at A level. And I think the way it was calculated was based on acreage, you know, certain costs for those. And...and...and I'd...I'd really like to see us massage that original explanation that Mel gave us. Mr. Ahlgren: Okay, I'll talk to Mel about that and see what he...what he... Mr. Kaneshiro: And...and we can bring that up in committee...we'll...in committee to Councilmember Kawahara's committee, so just to let you know. Mr. Furfaro: It'd be very nice to have something like that. Ms. Kawahara: I'm almost done...almost done. I have the Convention Center to go...Convention Center to go and then just the...just general small office...small equipment. I did have a chance to go through all the different chainsaws, blowers, weed-eaters, trimmers, sprayers, edgers, pruners. I've got...so...in the past, are you guys...you guys are trying to get doubles of stuff for your east and west complexes so that when break...one breaks you can...you have one right there? Mr. Ahlgren: No, not necessarily. It's that...those are the needs by those different divisions or districts and... Ms. Kawahara: And they're single ones that you're not doubling up to make sure when one breaks... Mr. Ahlgren: No, no...no, no. Ms. Kawahara: Because I got five chainsaws 16-inch, two 20-inch chainsaws... Mr. Ahlgren: Yeah. Ms. Kawahara: Eight backpack blowers... Mr. Ahlgren: Yeah. Ms. Kawahara: One debris blower, which is what? That's a big one $6,500. Mr. Ahlgren: Right, that a...that's an item that we're planning on using on the...on...for the bike path area and large parking lot areas. A backpack blower is almost useless in something like cleaning up Vidinha Stadium parking lot after a big event. So this is actually, again, 269 ~ • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) it's an attachment that you pull behind either one of our carts or tractors. With a separate engine, you can direct the blowing and it's much, much more powerful than any of the backpack blowers. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you. I got ten, oh. Mr. Furfaro: Can...can I follow up on something there? Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Just on equipment and so forth, it would behoove us to red flag this to the finance department when we get into other CIP items. We still need to have a better idea of what the county determines as replacement, repair and maintenance cost versus, you know, capital improvement cost, especially when_.it comes to small tools and so forth._ So, I just raise that because we're still struggling for, you know, definitions on, you know, what we can expense out as repair and maintenance items versus what we might buy as, you know, tools for capital improvement, so. That...that...that really is for the purpose of when we do finance. Thank you, Lani. Ms. Kawahara: No, thank you. And I'm...I'm just...there's a list and I'm actually gonna...if you could provide me a list of all of these just to make sure I have the numbers right. I won't go through them all, this kind of... Mr. Rapozo: The list of? Ms. Kawahara: The chainsaws, the blowers, the weed-eaters, trimmers. The other one that had nine was backpack sprayers. Mr. Rapozo: The list of where they're going to go? Ms. Kawahara: No just the total number of each type of equipment. Mr. Ahlgren: I think they're listed. Mr. Rapozo: I think they're listed. Ms. Kawahara: Well, I...I...there...I know. I wanted to try and get it compiled, but I guess this will work... Mr. Ahlgren: Yeah, like page... Ms. Kawahara: ...because I compiled them by a grid. Mr. Ahlgren: ...167 for instance? Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, no, I mean I put them...I wanted them all together as one...one whole sheet as to how many...how many different chainsaws we're getting, 16 and a 20- inch, and...but, it's okay, I have it here. Mr. Ahlgren: Yeah, we have it this way because that's where the costs... 270 U APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Ms. Kawahara: Right. Mr. Ahlgren: ...are allocated into those different divisions. Ms. Kawahara: I just...I just want to make sure how it's being distributed across the different east/west complexes and different...different recreation... were? Mr. Rapozo: Ms. Kawahara: tamper was. So, you wanted to know where each one of those equipment No, no. Then the last...I wanted to know what vibrating Mr. Rapozo: That's going to be used at our cemetery, the Veterans' Cemetery. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Rapozo: That's an appropriate way to, when they put the dirt on the casket, to...we're trying to minimize, you know, when our big rains and we have the...the graves fall? Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. Mr. Rapozo: With this...we've been in consultation with the Veterans Office that this is appropriate equipment to help compact the dirt, so we can minimize those...those...those collapse. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. The last question I have. How many paint stripping machines do you guys have now? Mr. Rapozo: How many what? Ms. Kawahara: Paint stripping...paint striping machines? Mr. Ahlgren: Well, there's probably... Ms. Kawahara: Because you're requesting two, yeah? Mr. Ahlgren: Yeah, there's probably...gosh, Ihaven't got an exact head count. On my inventory I do back at the office. I could get that to you. I think we probably have six or eight striping machines and a couple of them are just really in...in bad shape this year. We're just...we've just set them to the side, so we're trying to replace those two. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Last question. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro, you had a question? Mr. Furfaro: Oh no, after, after. 271 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh, okay. Go ahead, Lani Ms. Kawahara: Page 172. This is the Convention Center. Mr. Rapozo: That's a different. Okay, you have something for? Mr. Kaneshiro: You have something for... Mr. Furfaro: I have something for George... Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: -...and..and.Mr. Rapozo._~I'mgoing to be, asking, Mr, Bynum in a separate communication. It's been a year since we had a review of what Mr. Moses and the Veterans Administration had suggested be some shared expenses through federal policy, state policy, and county responsibility on the Veterans Cemetery. So, since we've been talking about much of this small equipment that'll handle the grounds and so on, I do want to just give you a heads up that I'd like to get that in your committee and...oh, in Lani's committee. I'm sorry Mr. Bynum. In Lani's committee so that...at a separate agenda item we can get an update on the Veterans' Cemetery. And if you'd like, Mr. Rapozo, because you weren't here last year, we do have minutes with our meeting with Mr. Moses from the Veterans Administration on the cemetery. Mr. Rapozo: Yes, that would help, thanks. Mr. Furfaro: In fact, we can ask the... Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you, George. Could we have Mr. Sarita up at this time? For the record, introduce yourself. It's just that we need it on the recorder. EDDIE SARITA, Convention Hall Manager: For the record Eddie Sarita, Convention Hall Manager. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Ms. Kawahara: Hello. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, Lani. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, it's just actually one question. You know, I'm...I've seen the Victory Garden there on the Convention Hall lawn. Mr. Rapozo: The Victory Garden...the community... Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, the community... Mr. Rapozo: The mayor's...the mayor's garden. Ms. Kawahara: The mayor's garden. 272 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Rapozo: Okay, okay. Ms. Kawahara: I don't see anything on here that tells about the impacts of that and how...if it's in the budget. Just to make sure it doesn't die. Mr. Sarita: That...the...the mayor's garden came about as a...it's a project that's maintained in an agreement between the county, the department and the Kauai Agricultural Initiative. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. (Inaudible.) Mr. Sarita: They supply all of the volunteers. There is absolutely no expense except we supply water from the Convention Hall and the water for the plot is done through an automatic irrigation system. It irrigates the plot 15 minutes per day, three times a day. So, that appears to have been satisfactory for the last month or so. The garden is flourishing. Ms. Kawahara: That is-great to hear. Mr. Sarita: And a...no...no county workforce is...spend any time...devote any time to the garden maintenance. It's strictly done by volunteers. Ms. Kawahara: By volunteers. Mr. Sarita: I understand from the Agricultural Initiative Director Barbara Bennett that they have volunteers from the high schools as well as the Tongan community and other...other businesses like Kauai Nursery render volunteer services. So, there's absolutely no need for any line item expense for that. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Yeah because I did notice the Convention Hall has electricity in here but not water on the...this bill...in this budget. So is that just no water ever comes in on the Convention Hall budget or am I blind? Mr. Rapozo: There is water. Mr. Sarita: There is water. Ms. Kawahara: There's sewer and other services? Is it under other services. Mr. Sarita: Water expense. Mr. Rapozo: There is a water expense. Ms. Kawahara: Oh here, 17.5. Mr. Rapozo: There you go, that's the one. 273 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Ms. Kawahara: Oh, how come? Oh you know why? Because it's not showing on this thing. That...this is not yours. Never mind. This is ours. So, then the one other last thing and then that's it, Adopt-A- Park. What's the difference between this year and last year in relation to the $15,000 last year and now the $6,000 for it? Mr. Sarita: Well, we've...the program got started in 2005 and of the county's 63 parks, we now have 44 parks that's been adopted. Basically, the...the initial costs were to buy things like...things like T-shirts, tools. A large part of that expense now goes toward purchasing paint and painting supplies to combat the...the graffiti and I found that over the years that we could cut back and we voluntarily cut back in light of the economic circumstances. We (inaudible) applying some restrictions as to how much paint, how much T-shirts, and things like that that we buy under the program, so. The program is still ongoing. We still have great support from the volunteers throughout the island. Still trying to recruit enough people to cover thelast 19 parks... It's been very difficult. I guess people are more concerned today with their economic realities. It's hard to get volunteers, you know, to devote as much time as they did in the past. But there are people still willing to work and we're still trying to recruit. You know of anybody who wants to participate in the program, particularly on the west side, let me know. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: You have a question. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you for doing that. Mr. Bynum: So Eddie, Adopt-A-Park is going strong? Mr. Sarita: Still going strong, Councilman Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, yeah. Mr. Sarita: I think you just saw recently we had the Kauai Marriott cleaned up Nawiliwili Park. Mr. Bynum: Right. Mr. Sarita: And by the way, they got a National Award, you know, through the Marriott chain. Two of their people at the Kauai Marriott are going to Washington D.C. to receive this award, the Alice Marriott Award for excellence in community participation from the Kauai Marriott and they regularly paint the picnic tables and the other facilities down there, keep it looking good for the public, residents as well as for visitors. Mr. Bynum: So, the bottom line is the budget you requested sufficient to maintain the program? Mr. Sarita: It is...I'm confident that we...we can function under that amount taking...given the realities that we...the county now faces. It is, you know, we have to apply some restraint sometimes, but, you know, and be careful in how we expend the funds that we're allotted and I'm confident we can do it under that amount. 274 • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Bynum: Thanks for your...your efforts above and beyond Convention Hall Manager to...to support the community members, appreciate it. Mr. Sarita: Thank you, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Asing. Mr. Asing: Yeah, I'd like to follow up on that question, Eddie. Is it possible to try to maintain Nawiliwili Park parking area better than it is? It's not always in the best shape. Of course, it's not easy to maintain because of the ocean activity and rain, I guess, but is there something we can do to better maintain that area? It's really bad all the time. It's a tough one, Eddie. It's not an easy one, but could we make an attempt to try to get it better...in better shape than it is normally? Mr. Sarita: You know, I think we could...we could take a look at it. I...I only work on the volunteer portion, Chairman Asing. You know, the Kauai Marriott people do what they can, but as you, I think, realize that park is a heavily used park by not only the visitors but residents as well. Everybody likes to go down there. They get...the Marriott has, you know, been...they adopted the park just barely a year ago and they've already painted the picnic tables down there three times and you know, it takes a gallon of green paint for each table. There's 15 tables. That's 15 gallons. They use a lot of paint. But they try their best to keep it looking good. You know, it...I think we'll have to take a look at how much more they're willing to do, you know, the volunteers can do. They are limited, I think you recognize because of employment...employment issues. They can only do so much. The program is a supplement to...to the county workforces and not to replace the county workforces. So, (inaudible) the volunteers are...we'd like the volunteers to do only what they can to help the county forces, not do their job. Mr. Asing: Yeah, Eddie, I was making reference more to the parking area and I'm not sure whether it is your responsibility or is it the responsibility of public works or is there a kind of a combination between both the public works and the parks division. Mr. Rapozo: The parking will probably fall under us, but we'd have to ask the public works with their assistance to do... Mr. Asing: For assistance. Mr. Rapozo: ...the major work, yeah. Mr. Asing: Okay. Yeah, I'd...I'd like to have you folks kind of take a look at that...that area, thank you, appreciate that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any other questions for Mr. Eddie Sarita since we have him up here right now? Thank you, Eddie. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: Oh, I just had a comment. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. 275 APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Furfaro: I...I thanked you last year for paying so much attention to the Convention Center doors and the trim and the window work, it...it looks really good. I just wanted to share that with Mr. Sarita. Thank you, Eddie. Mr. Sarita: Thank you for your guys support. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any other questions for Mr. Lenny Rapozo or any of his staff in the parks and recreation area? Ms. Kawahara: with me. I just want to thank you for taking the time to go through it Mr. Rapozo: _Sure. . __._ . - _ _ -~--,_.~- ~-. Ms. Kawahara: I appreciate it and I look forward to working with you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Anyone has any more questions? If not, we're going to call this meeting back to order. Thank you, Lenny, and your staff for being here this morning. And we'll send some of the communication on some of the requests that we've made or some of my committee members made. So you'll have a written request... Mr. Rapozo: Right on. Mr. Kaneshiro: ...to respond to. Mr. Rapozo: Thanks. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you with that, I'll the meeting back to order. If you have any other further discussions before we call a recess? There being no further questions, the meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Mr. Bynum: I want to make a comment. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, Mr. Bynum, go right ahead. Mr. Bynum: I just want to thank all the parks people that came here today, thank you very much and, you know, since we created a parks department a couple of years ago, I think there's been really...a real improvement and a focus on parks and I appreciate all the hard work that everybody's doing at the parks department. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. We have a great staff. Mr. Kaneshiro: Lani. Ms. Kawahara: Yeah, I wanted to echo that too. I...I'm really pleased to be part of the county and to have such a great parks and recreation division, and it's so young, really good job. Thank you. 276 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT(1) Mr. Kaneshiro: Anyone else? I£..if not, thank you very much. Again, we're going to recess this budget review until 12 o'clock this afternoon. At 12 o'clock we'll convene with Public Works. There being no objections, the budget reviews recessed at 10:25 a.m. 277 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) The departmental budget review reconvened at 12:10 p.m., and proceeded as follows: DEPT. OF PUBLIC WORKS Mr. Kaneshiro: At this time I'm going to suspend the rules and take testimony from anyone in the Chambers. So I see Mr. Mickens' hands up. You're up Mr. Mickens. Rules are suspended. GLENN MICKENS: Thank you Daryl. For the record, Glenn Mickens. Daryl, I apologize again for being off the topic. , Mr. Kaneshiro: No, you're on. It's part of CIP, so go ahead. I'll let you speak. Mr. Mickens: This I am relatively positive I'm on topic. It's about roads paving, and you know, that's part of our budget, I presume, though I never did see the 09-10 road resurfacing budget. I have no idea why. I talked it over with Jay. He got the 07-08, the 08-09 was in it, now they're going to go to 10, so I'm not sure why. Anyway, you have copies there of my testimony along with backup material that I've given you. I hope it's a little bit in order for you to see. It refers to it. Let me read my testimony. If you have any questions, stop me. I have a long testimony and presentation to make regarding our roads. Since I only have 6 minutes, I'll try and condense what I have to say, and hopefully you'll give me the proper time to express my concerns at a later date. I've been making the case for 15 years that our roads are not being properly paved. The standard details book gives the proper specifications of how all roads, county roads, are to be paved and repaved, but these specs are not followed. This is a copy of the standard details book. I'm not going to give it to you. I was given this book sometime ago, okay, and it gives the specs in here according to what a road is supposed to be resurfaced, or new roads how they're to be paved. Code specs that new roads will have a 4-inch compacted sub-base with a 2-inch overlay of AC. AC means asphalt concrete. Resurfaced roads will have a one and a half inches compacted overlay of AC, and if we were following Hawaii Asphalt Paving Industry Standards, it's called HAPI, and you have a copy of HAPI standards in your little thing there. If we were following those, which Glover and Grace Pacific and Niu do, any cracked or badly deteriorated parts would be removed before the one and a half inches of overlay is put down. This is only common sense, since the top layer will only be as good as the base. I got most of my information from my friend Greg Shlepper who has been a paving contractor for 36 years. Some of you, including Donald Fujimoto, met with him. Regretfully he was monopolized off of Kauai and is now paving in Colorado. He even offered to put on a symposium to show how roads are properly paved. He wasn't going to charge anything for it, but was turned down. When our public works asks for a bid, they do not specify these HAPI standards, and thus the winning contractor ignores those recommendations that they abide by with any other bid. Yes, if our roads are repaved without removing the bad sections, it will be cheaper, as Jimmy Tokioka used to keep on saying, I think the other members have said the same thing. But this is being pennywise and dollar foolish as our roads are not lasting one and two years before potholes and deterioration set in. Whereas, if done by HAPI standards, they will last 15 to 20 years; that's why HAPI set these methods. Read their literature, which again you have enclosed. I walk 4 miles everyday over roads and have picked up pieces of AC that are less than one inch thick. I have these pieces I just picked up recently. There's maybe three-quarters of an inch or less from our roads, okay. And whether it's from the edge of the road, as Joe Rosa who as an inspector for the State points out, if it's from the edge of the road to the center of the road, it has to be an even one and a half inches of asphalt that's across the thing. Well, obviously we're not getting it. Over the years I've met with Councilmembers, Jay can verify what I say when he was one of them. County engineers, road supervisors, and deputy county engineers to show them my concern. 278 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) No one to this date has ever given me answers to the many questions I've asked. By our county standards, and see Tokioka's memo to Ladye Martin of 6-25-04 showing...it's enclosed in your thing there too, using one ton of AC to pave 90 square feet, and the 06-07 Glover bid of Ahi street, which is also enclosed there in your thing, 490 feet long, this Ahi street is obviously a short...down in Waimea. 490 feet long by 18 feet wide is 8,820 square feet divided by the 98 tons that they say they used, that's there in their specs, equals one ton per 90 square feet, which is the formula our county uses. The Glover bid and all bids show that we are asking for and using one and a half inches of AC for resurfacing. Again, check their bid right there and you'll see it. However, a check of the asphalt paving job calculator, that's this thing right here for you people to see, this is what every contractor uses. You just set it at the depth they want, one and a half, two inches, three inches, whatever, they go back and it'll show the tonnage that they used to do it. Okay. It'll show that we should be using one ton of AC to pave 108 square feet to get a one and a half inch overlay. I mean it's here. Simple mathematics. One ton per 90 square feet according to the calculator should give an overlay of approximately one and 7/8 inches. As I said before, the pieces of AC I picked up from our roads aren't even one inch thick, of the case cannot be made that by using one ton per 90 square feet we're getting one and 7/8 inches of asphalt on our roads, or even _ . ~_ the one and a half inches that the specs call for. For clarification, by using the county method`of one ton per 90 square feet, it would take 1,056 tons of AC to pave a mile of road. Some, of you members that were here before saw me put on this presentation. I put the numbers up on the blackboard, which I think, again Jay, you pretty much confirmed what I said. AC today costs about $200 per ton, so the cost of paving a one mile would be $1,056 times $200 a ton, or $211,200. However, since the specs and bids call for one ton per 108 square feet to get one and a half inches, that means we would need 880 tons to pave one mile. 880 times $200 a ton equals $176,000. Thus we are paying $35,200 more to pave a mile of road using our one ton per 90 square feet rather than the one ton per 108 square feet. And again, this is all simple mathematics according to this thing that every contractor uses. So there's no ifs ands and or buts about that. Since we have 300 miles of roads, county roads on Kauai, roughly it is costing us at least $10,560,000 more by using our county method over the correct method. There are many other problems with our roads-methodology of choosing the roads to be paved, numbers in the bids that I am confused about (if you look at the... in fact, if you look at Glover's bids there, they go all the way from per ton to 700 and some dollars a ton to 200 and some dollars a ton.) I don't quite understand that. Asphalt's about...and if you look at the Niu bid on the same 06-07 thing, you'll se where they're paying I think 214 or $216 consistently a ton. So I'm not sure why this huge difference in price per ton from Glover to there. There must be a reason. Once and for all I would respectfully request that my concerns are addressed, and do hope that you members want answers as badly as I do. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Mr. Mickens. Six minutes on the nose. Any questions for Mr. Mickens, committee members? Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: I just have a statement. I do have my own copy of the HAPI asphalt paving guideline, and I do intend to share this with the engineering department, and I do intend to ask some questions. Some of the areas that I might point that need to be in consideration is if you read the copies that I have in more depth, there are roman numeral 5 types of mix. So a question will be around those lines. These different mix types may actually calculate to different pricing. Mr. Mickens: Well, that's all in the bid there for Glover and Niu. They all say number 5. Mr. Furfaro: Why don't you let me finish. Mr. Mickens: Okay, okay. I'm sorry, Jay. 279 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Furfaro: Because I will direct those questions that way. And I also do notice that there are certain rules when it talks about the surface course, the base course, and any repairs to the sub-base course that are specified in here. But more importantly, it strongly recommends that a...final bids come in after there is a broad evaluation of the roads that are planned to be resurfaced, and they do recommend in these standards that these various conditions are widely at different roads, and therefore the bids include an evaluation before you solicit the bid. So I just wanted to share I'll be asking those types of questions. Mr. Mickens: Well, I appreciate that, Jay, and since again I've been going at this for 15 or 16 years, I just really would like somebody to address that problem...or these problems. Mr. Furfaro; Well, I will plan to address specific issues with mixes, evaluations of the roads that are identified, and in particular, I will have some discussion about some repair and maintenance of roads that we've recently done that I've gone out to visit. So... Mr. Mickens: Well, we'll still have nothing to do with the one ton per 90 square feet as opposed to one ton per 108 square feet. So the mix has nothing to do with that, right? Mr. Furfaro: I'm not sure. You're assuming it doesn't. I'm not sure. Mr. Mickens: I am. Mr. Furfaro: I'm not sure. I'm going to ask that question. Mr. Mickens: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: So depending on what kind of mix quotes we get and of what particular roads, one of the interesting things that I did acknowledge in my reading of my material was that the vehicle types and loads do not contribute to that much of a variance, whether it's cars, trucks, buses. According to this material, it does not have that much to do with the mix type. The mix type is driven by the history of the road condition. So I will ask those questions. Mr. Mickens: Right.' Okay. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Mickens. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Mr. Mickens. Anyone else wanted to testify? Anyone else in the Chambers wanting to testify before I bring the administration up? JOE ROSA: Good afternoon. For the record, Joe Rosa. I speaking in behalf as doing work with the state highway division for 16 years as a highway construction inspector. And the weights for the various types of mix on your mix 5 is 19.35 pounds per square feet, and for your mix 3, it's 16.87 pounds per square foot. The various types of rock for your mix 5 is more (inaudible). It's mostly rock chips, rock sand, and rock dust. Your mix 3 is mostly rock (inaudible) stone with chips. So there's a difference in those weights. The other thing here, I was on loan to the county on 2 specific jobs, because your county inspectors didn't qualify for working on federal aid projects. Basically because out of the things that was being done wasn't being done correctly. I have to say that. Because we as state inspectors when we were working, my previous fellow workers, there was various things we ought to do. We have to figure out theoretically how far a truckload would go, and we would have to paste it up and just wait for that load in that spreader to reach that (inaudible) point that we set out. And if he didn't reach approximately the distance, we know that we're over running, like putting too much of a base. If we passed that, we under running because we getting a thinner base of material. So a lot of the paving has to be done with your inspectors. They have to be 280 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) on the job there. My job when I was working was collecting the trip tickets to see how much tons was on that truck and how far it would go. If I...also would have to check the temperature and it was dumped into the hopper to see that it don't exceed 325 or not go below 250 degrees. If it falls into the hopper below 250, that load is out. So those are the things that has to do with paving, and we as state inspectors, when I was working with my fellow workers, there was strict compliance that we had to follow on the federal aid projects. We had to check temperatures, as I say. Theoretically figure out, check the thickness with a rod that we have. If it was inch and a half finished pavement, we would set the gauge up to 2 inch loose, and it won't go over that quarter inch mark that we had, because if we going over that, would be 2 and a quarter. What we want to do was maintain a tight 2- inch loose asphalt, so that when it's rolled and compact, we'd have the finish of inch and a half. Our tolerance on our cut cores would be point zero two hundredths of an inch; just about a quarter inch. So that's how strict the state was as far as paving. I worked the 2 county jobs, and surprisingly, the council at that time that we didn't have to come and ask for more money so that they could finish the project. I worked on the roadway where Glenn Mickens live up in Wailua Homesteads, and I also was loaned to the county for the Papalina Road by Kukuiolono Park, and those 2 jobs was, like I say, I had to be on loan, because the county inspectors didn't do the work that was required to be done on federal aid projects. So paving has lot to do with money, and like I say, if the State had the same policy...I question Mr. Tats Hirano once, to see that they want paving to 1"ast at least 10 years: 'At a ~"` paving seminar that I attended, they say 2 inch should give you 10 years. But then the State was doing inch and a half, and then I asked the question why do we do inch and a half and get 7 years? They say, well we want to give the taxpayers more benefit for their money. So instead of lasting 10 years it's going to last 7 years. So it's to do the job right and do what's required. That's all I have to say. If there's any questions, I'm trying to back up Mr. Glenn Mickens as far as .expenses is being cost. So I notice that time when they were paving that Waipouli Road when Mr. Mickens...somebody told me, hey how come the county they paving the road, they paving on dirt, all the road crack. I went and take a look. Sure. They don't put no tack coat. You cannot put tack coat on dirt. There's no bind. So naturally the heavy equipment goes on the side it's going to crack, and you can just kick it away, and use it for stepping stones. I've been those samples that Mr. Mickens had, and that's what it is-no tack coat. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Mr. Rosa. Mr. Rosa: Yeah, it's not doing the job right. So what I'm trying to say is that you members of the council, do it right and you'll get quality products. The roads are in bad situation, even where I live. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Anyone else wanting to give testimony before I get the administration up for their public works review, budget review. If not, Mr. Donald Fujimoto, we'll move along according to your handout. So we're going to take administration first. Members of my committee, you have this handout? If you would open to the last page, he has a...now this is a department of public works memorandum. It did not come from the council. It's from Mr. Fujimoto to all his department heads. So since he already has it set up like this, we'll follow the memorandum and move along as such. So take a look at the handout on the last page, and we'll take the administration and fiscal department up first. So with that, we're on page 134 of our budget documents. Okay, Mr. Fujimoto, go ahead and begin. Starting from page 134 members. DONALD FUJIMOTO: Okay, thank you. Well again, due to the tight economy or recessionary period, the administration gave us a goal to cut 10% prior to the post benefits, and I'm proud to say that public works did meet that goal. In fact, I think our budget reflects a 11% decrease...11.33% decrease. The task did present some challenges, and we did have to make some tough decision, and again, our budget reflects trying to meet the present state of the economy. With that said, we're going to try to go...move through our budget in a systematic way, covering first administration and fiscal, and then going into engineering, building, auto maintenance, wastewater, 281 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) and solid waste. And on Thursday we'll pick up highways and CIP. With that said, I think the easiest way to look at administration and fiscal is that, again, there was a slight increase that was due to, again, post benefits, most of it, post benefits and bargaining unit requirements. We did cut travel by 50%. Any questions on that item? I think this graph... Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, Mr. Furfaro has a question on those items. Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. This might end up going over in a written question, but we have had, you know, as we've shifted these benefits for all departments, has the administration done any internal training that you or your department heads have participated in that demonstrate how you can control those benefit costs to date? We've shifted the cost to you, have you received any training or briefing on how to control those costs? If the answer is no, fine. I'll send it over as a question. Mr. Fujimoto: Yeah, can you send that over? Mr. Furfaro: We'll send it over. Mr. Kaneshiro: Just to see if you have a procedure to that. Mr. Furfaro: (Inaudible) if everybody's been able to be briefed on how to...and what to look for in these budget shifts for benefits. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. We'll come with a communication, Mr. Fujimoto, to you in that regards. Then you can come back with an answer. Alright? Thank you. Go ahead. Go on. Mr. Fujimoto: Anything else on administration? Mr. Kaneshiro: Anybody has anything else in the administration? For our committee members, you can refer to the first chart on the handout that Mr. Fujimoto handed out, and if we look at our plus and minus program that we got from our staff, it's on page 16, and of course we're on page 134 of our budget. Mr. Furfaro: I'm sorry. Is mine stapled backwards? Mr. Fujimoto: It may be. Sorry, first chart should be administration/fiscal. Mr. Kaneshiro: We got it the same way too. So the first page. Basically we'll start with the budget comparison, again, for administration and fiscal. I just wanted you to refer to the last page, because basically, we'll try to follow that schedule that Mr. Fujimoto is recommending for his department heads. Okay? So administration and fiscal, any questions at this point members? Okay Donald. Mr. Fujimoto: Moving on to engineering. I'd just like to clarify that in our efforts to provide more support and to provide better direction to our staff, public works has reorganized, and my primary emphasis or focus will be wastewater and solid waste. My deputy Ed Renaud will be overseeing roads, building, and the shop. And Ken Teshima has oversight over engineering. So with that said, I'll defer this to Ken. Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me. But I do understand that the dialogue on roads is going to be Thursday? Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. 282 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Furfaro: Not now? Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: If we move along and we have some time, we may be able to take up CIP today. But how we have it posted basically was public works and CIP, so it depends on our schedule how we move along, and if we need to, because we haven't been able to complete some of these, we'll cover CIP on Thursday. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Asing, you have a question? Council Chair Asing: Yes, follow-up on...because I want to write it down. Again, on your assignment, you have Ed Renaud doing roads, buildings... Mr. Fujimoto: "And automotive. .'" ~~" , " -_.. ~~: _ -.-,.~ z _~._.-o_ . -, - __ - .._ Council Chair Asing: And automotive. And... Mr. Fujimoto: Ken Teshima, he would be engineering. Council Chair Asing: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay Donald, continue. We're on page 139 in our budget text book. Okay with that, for the record just introduce yourselves. WALLACE KUDO: I'm Wallace Kudo, chief of engineering. Mr. Kaneshiro: .Thank you. KEN TESHIMA: Ken Teshima. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. You can begin by stating... You have a statement you want to make about your budget? Just, you know, on your budget comparisons for fiscal year 2009- 2010? Mr. Kudo: We were asked to cut back 10% from our original budget from last year, and I think we did that by... We had an engineering position and construction inspector position which we moved into a dollar funded position. Mr. Kaneshiro: You know, my comparison shows a 30% cutback. So you know, from fiscal year 09 to fiscal year...08-09 and fiscal year 9 and 10, but just in your public works engineering department you have a 30% cutback, and I believe one of the major ones here that we're looking at was salary was one of them. So that one position does reflect that? There's 106,000 basically under salaries that were cut back on that. Mr. Teshima: There is also under special projects... Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh yea, okay, 474,000 under special projects. 283 APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Teshima: That was aone-time deal for this fiscal year, but not for the next fiscal year. Mr. Kaneshiro: I see. Okay. Mr. Teshima: That pretty much what the (inaudible). Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah I see that. Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Looking at engineering, in all of public works, according to our staff there-are 4 dollar funded. Is that right? No. I'm sorry, that's not true. But you have 4 positions dollar funded in engineering. Is that correct? Mr. Furfaro: Page 139. Mr. Fujimoto: That's right. We have 2 dollar funded positions from contracts, and 2 of the vacancies were converted to dollar funded. Mr. Bynum: Two vacancies and... Well, they're all vacancies, right? Mr. Furfaro: Are we all on the same page. Page 139 the council is looking at. Do you have that page, Donald? If we not looking at the same thing it doesn't help. Mr. Kaneshiro: Donald, we're going right off your memorandum. In the back of your memorandum, you said engineering, and engineering is on page 139 of our budget textbook. So basically that's where we're at. We just following your memorandum. Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. I'm sorry. Yes, those are vacancies. Mr. Bynum: So I'll just ask a broad general question. You know, you and I've been meeting about CIP projects that are having a difficulty getting completed, right, and but these are the positions that generally put those out and manage them, right? Like construction inspectors and civil engineers. So I mean if one priority is to get these CIP projects out and on the street, in the spirit of recovery when we have them funded, and we're having a hard time doing that with management. So I'm confused of why the cuts would be here. I mean wouldn't that be a high priority to have these positions that can put these projects out? Mr. Fujimoto: Well, right now we have the 2 dollar funded positions, and we're still in the process of trying to fill those dollar funded positions. The purpose of the vacancies was to be able to do our 10% reduction. I think at a point in time, all of the vacancies were frozen, and the idea was so that we don't have to lay off people later. You know, these positions, again, were not filled and rather than fill these positions and look at how we're going to balance the budget and start cutting positions, our decision was to just not fill these positions for now. Again, they are dollar funded, so if and when we do have projects that could pay for it, we could easily fill those positions with project moneys. Mr. Bynum: Because I think we've generally been assuming dollar funded, and correct if I'm wrong colleagues, the dollar fund means there's no intent to fill those positions in this fiscal year. Mr. Fujimoto: No. The intent actually, in the wisdom of council, was to provide the dollar funded positions so that if and when there was CIP projects, the projects would pay for the positions and we could fill the positions, the management positions, to do the projects. 284 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kaneshiro: So what I'm hearing from you then currently, with the projects you have under CIP, you have enough personnel to handle the current projects you have going. Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: Is that what I hear from you? Mr. Fujimoto: Yes, you're right. Mr. Kaneshiro: So in no way, you know, this could compromise any part of the services that you are now doing for some of those projects. Mr. Fujimoto: Yeah, and you know, it does give us the added flexibility to hire more people if and when we have more projects, and if we can find the staffing. Really, that's the issues, finding the right people to fill those positions. Mr. Kaneshiro: `-But currently at this point you feel comfortable `that you-have enough positions to do that at the amount of volume and what you're doing. Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. Mr. Heu: Chair, Mr. Heu for the record. Just so that... Because I think this is going to be a reoccurring issue relative to the vacancies, the dollar funded positions. And so maybe just have a quick discussion now rather than every division and department we go through, you know, kind of going through the same thing. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, I'll allow you to do that. Mr. Heu: Thank you. Basically, what we were looking at is attempting in reducing...being able to reduce the budget, take a snapshot in time, freeze positions. Now, the dollar funded positions may in fact be filled next year, and the way we would do that is the discussions we've been having with department heads is that we are looking at no net adds to the organization. So what that basically means is that we may have... We know as we go through the year that through attrition we will create additional vacancies. Now at that point in time, we will reassess and look across the organization and say, okay what is the best use of this particular vacancy. Is it to fill this position that was recently vacated by this retirement, or do we have a higher need somewhere else in the organization, as an example, in engineering, and do we choose to maybe take maybe a position that's deemed less essential or less of a priority, and do we use the funding from that position to fund maybe a higher level or a higher needed position. And so as we go through budget discussion, because we see it as vacant today and/or dollar funded today doesn't mean that we won't continue to assess the needs of the organization as we go through the year and come back to this council to, you know, get whatever authorization and funding that may be necessary at that point in time. And I think...you know, I just want to set the stage for the rest of the budget discussion when you see those vacancies, it doesn't mean that currently that we don't think they are a priority, it's just that when we took the snapshot, that's where the vacancies were, and as we move to the remainder of this year and next budget year, we certainly believe that through attrition we'll have opportunities to fill some of those high priority positions. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thank you for that explanation. Any questions for Gary? Mr. Furfaro go ahead. 285 • # APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Furfaro: Yes, budget chair. I do also remember this discussion maybe 3 years ago, especially as it deals with engineering and building. I think we had an understanding that as projects come onboard, we could earmark as much as 10% of that project money for a special project manager for that particular project. Whether it's a construction expert that reports to Doug Haigh or it's an engineering type person, we could make those evaluations project by project. Is that still part of this... Mr. Heu: That's correct. The vice chair is correct. So there's like 2 categories of dollar funded positions. One would be for project management type of functions like you've just described, using project money to fund a position. And the other is a dollar funded position which was kept in there as a placeholder to maintain that position in the budget, so that if we were able to fill it at a later time because of, you know, through attrition and transfer the funding over to the dollar funded position that we'd be able to do that also. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Bynum, you had a question for Gary. Mr. Bynum: Just...while we're general, before we move on to other public works departments. We have projects that have waited several years to get put out that were funded several budgets ago, right? And so to me it's kind of like chicken or the egg. You got to do work to get those projects out before you can access the funds that might help pay for part of the salaries, and we're in this economic stimulus period right now where we have new potential money coming, you know, to the county, plus we have the funds that we already funded. -And we have high unemployment, and so we, I think, all share a goal to get these projects going, right, to get people on Kauai put to work. And so you know, and if I misunderstand this correct me, but it's some of these positions that need to get the projects going, right. Mr. Heu: In a way that's true, but we've...just to let you know that we've had an internal team looking at...understanding that the stimulus moneys are coming down and in preparation for some of that work, as well as work that we've identified as a county, we've had a team comprised of Donald, Wally, finance director, and others who have been looking at the possibility of getting some consultant project management type assistance. This methodology of getting projects out the door is employed by federal highways and others, and so we are currently doing our due diligence to see if in fact there's a good fit with what we have in the county. Mr. Bynum: Right, and I'm really... I've also been meeting and dialoguing about that issue, and I'm hopeful that that whole concept gets to the point it can be brought and presented to the council, because it's one solution to this. But in the short term right now, I mean that's something that we're looking at moving to, right. And I just feel like we have to respond to the stimulus projects, but we also have a backlog. Is it true that we have a backlog of our own projects that if we had our way would have been out a year ago or two years ago? Mr. Heu: Yes, there are CIP projects that probably haven't moved as fast as we'd like. Mr. Bynum: And so this is...you know, we're in a good climate for those projects to go forward, because we're going to get better bids and we're going to put people to work that are unemployed. And so I'm really frustrated that I don't know how we get there quickly when the pressure's on us to get there quickly, and I'm assuming that it's people like civil engineers IVs who, you know, can put those projects through our system. We're already stalled and the backlog has grown over the last few years of trying to get those projects out. But we were in a really intense economic climate where maybe it wasn't as critical as it is now. So I just want to express those concerns in a broad sense. 286 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Heu: Sure, and we understand, and I'm sure that you are also aware that it's not like we've had people banging down our doors for some of these engineering positions, and you know, that's why, you know, some of these positions, quite frankly, have gone...have remained vacant for so long with full funding on our books. And so at this point in time, being in the economic condition that we're in, we thought it was more prudent to go ahead and take the savings now and should the opportunity emerge where we're able to leverage, you know, some of those resources, then certainly that would be high on our list of considerations, and we'll be back before the council to get that position funded. Mr. Bynum: Because we've had a problem hiring these engineering positions, but it's a real different job climate. I mean there may be private sector people who... And so I just really want to...I'll just generally express that concern. This is the time we should be putting these projects out. The need in the community's great, and we're going to get better bids, and we're already frustrated on how difficult it is to get them out. So you know, I certainly... I was here 2 years ago saying how do we get these positions... I was contem... You know, I asked help from the administration about how we could increase the salaries, if that's what it took to get these key positions filled. So you know, that's where we were 2 years ago; we're not there now, but I just see the chicken... It's like, yea these projects can draw down funds to helprpay for these salaries; but if " °"~- we don't have people to get them into the pipeline, they're just going to languish there and we're going to... So I'll be...keep asking questions about that, how we... Mr. Heu: And I'm sure when we get to the CIP discussion we'll have more depth in the...discussion on the project by project basis why something is moving and why others have not been able to move. Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Jay. Mr. Furfaro: Yes thank you. So I want to make sure, because you know, this is kind of deja vu of yesterday with planning. We have these projects out here, we have to establish some priorities. What you're saying to us is we have the team that's looking at these projects, with yourself, Mr. Rezentes, Donald, and Wally. You folks are looking at those projects, which in fact when we attract the release for those, we have the people to manage, whether it's engineering or a building project. And I think it's one of the things that clearly came out in our past audits that when we do those releases, we have to have the people in place. But that is the dilemma we're in right now. We put the people in place and not have the project releases ready to go, or does your team put together the basic fundel(sic) elements of scope, design, costing, solicitation of bids, and when we know we have all those parts, you're ready to launch and hire, which is what the stimulus plan is supposed to do-stimulate employment, that we're going to go out and recruit those people. I would strongly concur that you know, it is a chicken and the egg thing, as Mr. Bynum described. But I would urge you to be able to go out and solicit the pool of applicants that might be out there, so when we finally have these projects ready to go, we've got the people that can manage it, you know, from day one. And it is worth, really, you know, putting on the radar screen of HR, it really is. Mr. Heu: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Thank you Gary. With that members, any further questions for the engineering department? 287 APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Bynum: I don't want to beat a dead horse, but how is your capacity to engineering to put out these projects right now that are assigned to engineering. I mean some of these projects... Mr. Furfaro: Through contract services. I think that's what we were suggesting. (inaudible). Mr. Bynum: And I know that public works is looking at that seriously about outsourcing contract, right, which I totally agree is a place we should go. But in the meantime, I mean, you know, do these places hamper your ability to put out these projects that are identified as ones that are going to be managed by engineering. Mr. Fujimoto: I'd like to say that we've...you know, top priority right now is the stimulus funds, to be able to be prepared to expend those moneys when they come in, and I can assure you that we do have the staffing available. In fact, all of the staff are already committed to these projects that we know we have a good idea that the stimulus moneys will be coming in. So based on available staffing, yes we do have the available staffing for these projects, and yes, we are pursuing other options to be prepared to do more if we need to. But right now I feel very comfortable that our staff can handle the stimulus projects that's coming. Mr. Kaneshiro: Lani, you had a question? Ms. Kawahara: I'd like to request from the department a listing of which of these projects are engineering projects, and a percentage of what you think you're going to be able to get done this fiscal year...target date. Mr. Fujimoto: That's the CIP list. Can we defer that to when we discuss CIP? Ms. Kawahara: I wanted to give you a headstart. Mr. Fujimoto: Oh thank you. Ms. Kawahara: Because it's a long list, and I'm wondering how much. Mr. Kaneshiro: We're in engineering right now. Anything else for engineering? Alright, thank you Mr. Kudo and Mr. Teshima. Thank you. Mr. Fujimoto: So the next section is building department. Mr. Kaneshiro: Members, we're on page 141 of our budget textbook. For the record, please introduce yourselves. ED RENAUD: Hi, good afternoon. Ed Renaud, deputy county engineer. DOUG HAIGH: Doug Haigh, building division, department of public works. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. With that, is someone going to give us a brief summary of your budget comparison 2009-2010 or anything that you wanted to add regarding building department's budget? Mr. Haigh: Nothing really significant to add. We don't have any real significant changes to our budget. You know, like every year, told to do more with less, and not increase anywhere, and this year we've cut back some more, and trying to survive and continue on. 288 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Furfaro: I'm looking at the staffing guidelines. I just want to make sure we don't go through what we just did. Page 144. What page do you have in front of you? Mr. Haigh: Mine was starting with page 141, but... Mr. Furfaro: Starting with 141, okay. Mr. Haigh: That is the code enforcement and the administrative section of the building division. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Haigh: Mr. Furfaro: position? Mr. Haigh: dollar funded positions. Mr. Furfaro: right. Does 144 go into your jurisdiction? Yes, it does. So if I look all the way up to 144, you have only one dollar funded Well, in the administrative section, we have several project manager And I think we just explained conceptually how we're going do that, Mr. Haigh: We have a maintenance worker who's dollar funded, that's on page 144, and then we had one position actually eliminated in the janitorial section...shifted to department of finance. Mr. Furfaro: So Doug, all in all, considering how we're going to handle the project manager contracts, which are these dollar funded position here by contract, how many positions did you lose, and how many positions were dollar funded? Was that one in one? Mr. Haigh: I think we're... You know, the dollar funded positions in the administrative section are the project manager/construction manager. I don't think we have any real change in that from last year. We currently have 2 bodies being funded for those contracts...for those contract hires and being funded by projects. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, so could you tell me those 2 projects that are currently being managed by people that are not showing up here in the payroll, just the project names is fine. Two or three. Mr. Haigh: That's correct, there's actually two and a half. Okay, we have our ADA improvements, and with that we're also assisting parks on specific ADA projects. The county annex we're using project management staff. Historic county building we're using project management staff. Wailua golf course maintenance building we're using project management staff. Kealia fire station using project management staff. Nawiliwili to Ahukini bike path pedestrian project we're using project management staff. Police station ventilation humidity control... Council Chair Asing: Why don't we get that over in communication. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, sounds like a... I guess the point I was trying to make is, here's a perfect example that the payroll is not being reflected in the staffing guides, but the reality is we do have two and a half people who's PT&E is being charged actually to the projects. 289 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Haigh: Correct. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. So we'll ask for a summary in a... Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: But that was my point. I just want to make sure we have this manpower working on these special projects, but they're not reflected in the operating budget. Mr. Kaneshiro: Correct. Okay. Mr. Rezentes: I just wanted to say that because he has 5 equivalent fulltime project management...project managers listed on page 141, we do have the ability to increase capacity. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, understood. But again, I was just using that to demonstrate that we're not shorting oversight and management of the projects. His PT&E is actually showing up in the contract for the project, and I think it's a pretty good way to go about it. But we'll send a summary over, as suggested by Chair Asing, as a communication. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: And so...and that's why I was trying to get out earlier, is I understand that once a project is active, it generates funds that can...that we can hire the contract manager...the project managers from, and that's like Rafal and Pat, right. But all of those projects you mentioned are ones that needed somebody to solicit the bids and do all the... Mr. Haigh: Well, let me correct you. Mr. Bynum: Okay, please do. Mr. Haigh: As soon as the project shows up on the CIP budget, there's funding. What we did is we sent special requests in to council to approve us to use the construction project manager position and so we're using the funds from the CIP and we're really...this is before construction management, actually for project management. So we are...as soon as it's in the CIP budget, we can come to you folks, get approval to start billing management hours. And I've been very fortunate to have some people who are very capable of doing project management, developing projects for us, and that's been a big help, and they're starting... You know, Rafal is actually doing design and a construction management for the ADA stuff'... Mr. Bynum: So what you're saying is the bid doesn't have to be out on the project in order to get the personnel that could be funded by the project. Mr. Haigh: And that would be the difference between project management and construction management. Project management takes the full spectrum, starting from conception of the project. Mr. Bynum: So other divisions could do a similar (inaudible). Mr. Haigh: That is correct. Mr. Bynum: So maybe...and maybe staff could ask. 290 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) ahead. Mr. Haigh: And they are. Other divisions are. Mr. Bynum: That's helpful, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any other questions for building side? Mr. Asing go Council Chair Asing: I think just as a follow-up, Doug, that some of these project management items are not, I guess you use the same people for several projects. Am I correct? Mr. Haigh: Absolutely. Normally we're all handling at least probably 4 or 5 different projects at one time. Council Chair Asing: And that's my concern. Mr. Haigh: And it is taxing us. Council Chair Asing: My concern'is that'you don't overload it~so that 'it"becomes difficult- °'' now to handle the projects. Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: I think that's a very valid concern that the Chair raises. I do have one more question on staffing. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: And Doug, and for the engineering department, as we have these dollar funded positions and so forth, you also have an opportunity to evaluate some of these project managers out in the field, and you know, perhaps at some point in time, one or two of them might be interested in actually becoming fulltime project managers for the county. So please make sure that, you know, you've got a high achiever out there, somehow we allow HR to know about the possible recruitment of those individuals, especially the high achievers. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: So the building division's responsible for repair and maintenance of all of our county buildings right. Mr. Haigh: That is correct. Mr. Bynum: And so just a general question that...and so your budget includes the materials and the things that you need to accomplish those, and you know, is that sufficient to meet the needs for the year? Mr. Haigh: We hope so, and I... We don't have any reason not to believe they'll be sufficient at this point. If you notice too, we did cut back quite a bit from last year on the amount of R&M large projects that we be doing, and that was strictly a budgetary response, not a need response. Mr. Bynum: And so we're deferring some maintenance in these difficult times. Mr. Haigh: That's correct. 291 APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Bynum: Okay, which we can only get away with for so long before it turns around and bites us, right. Mr. Haigh: Well, we consider ourselves already bitten, and we do the best we can. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: We just haven't removed the stitches. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other committee members have questions for Doug or Ed Renaud? Okay, we'll have the next department up. Auto maintenance. We're on page 196 of our... We'll wait a couple minutes as we have your handouts passed out right now. I guess you got to tab to the highway fund side and fine page 196 on our regular budget, and you'll find auto maintenance and stuff in there. It comes out of the highway fund. So we can ask them the question too if not. Alright. Okay, introduce yourself. Mr. Renaud already introduced himself, so go ahead. DWAYNE ADACHI: Dwayne Adachi, automotive division, public works. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Everyone got the handout that Dwayne passed out regarding the 3 to 5 year heavy equipment replacement schedule, and the 3 to 5 year light equipment replacement schedule. We all have that. Thank you. Brief summary on your department, auto maintenance. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, and could we also ask Dwayne, he gave us a very comprehensive list, if he could give us some assumptions on certain vehicles, and if we're deferring anything or so forth. It would be appreciated. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll go through that list also. So first of all, any brief comments on your department? Mr. Adachi: Basically the major reduction in our budget was due to the lack of equipment purchase this fiscal year, and we had one dollar funded position. And post employee benefits. Basically that's it. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. With that, we can go into, because you brought up about the equipment purchase, we can go into either one of the sheets first. Perhaps you want to start with the 3 to 5 year heavy equipment replacement schedule first. Anyone has some questions about that? So in the meantime, you were saying that you did some deferral on buying some heavy equipment? Mr. Adachi: Yeah. Basically this list was what we projected to replace this year, but during the budget review process, we decided to defer till next fiscal, based on the state of the economy. Mr. Furfaro: So everything was kind of pushed back one year? Mr. Adachi: Pretty much. Mr. Furfaro: Pretty much. Mr. Kaneshiro: So you were feeling the state of economy might change next year? Mr. Adachi: Probably not. We're taking one year at a time. 292 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kaneshiro: Good answer. Members, any questions on that? If you can see the replacement schedule, he had some scheduled for 2010 and had been deferred that... Mr. Adachi: This list actually is projects based on the fleet management program that we have. This is based on... We have some criteria we follow, and the criteria is listed in the legend on the...in the 2010 replacement schedule. But that is just a tentative list to give us guidelines on which equipment we should be replacing if we're able to stay on track and follow the schedule. But we have leeway. We can make judgment decisions, you know, and adjust the list as necessary, as we've done in this case. Mr. Kaneshiro: So far, though, because I guess we're seeing some tight times come down for this fiscal budget, but according to your schedule, according to what we see here, you've been pretty much on top of following your replacement schedule. Mr. Adachi: Well basically, we've been fortunate the last 4 or 5 years to be able to replace a lot of our equipment. So I would say our fleet right now is about maybe 80% we replaced in the last 5 years. We can afford to forego equipment purchase, you know, this year we not going... After this we not going really struggle too much. " ' ~ ~ - "' ` " ""- " Mr. Kaneshiro: And I thank you guys for really taking such an aggressive step, you know, in trying to really keep up with that schedule. Now you can see that if we hadn't, I think we'll be in deep kim chee about this time if you got something you want to replace, especially in tight fiscal times like we are now going through. I mean congratulations. I mean really. Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: You know, Mr. Chair, maybe as the comment, you know, we have been able to do a number of replacements over the last 5 years, but I'm going to kind of reverse the question. Is there anything on this list that you would say to us maybe, if you had to reconsider not deferring another year, is there any item you would like to share with us that maybe we should take a second evaluation on? Mr. Adachi: Well, the main priority is solid waste, refuse collection. If we could reinstate any equipment if you give us the opportunity, we would first look at solid waste equipment. Mr. Furfaro: That answers my question. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright. Any other questions? Mr. Asing. Council Chair Asing: Just a follow up. You want to be more specific? I think that's an excellent question, but you know, you make reference to solid waste. As an example, what would it be here? Mr. Kaneshiro: Two trailers. Mr. Adachi: Well, that we would have to look at, because right now... Council Chair Asing: You haven't gone that far. Mr. Adachi: No. Mr. Kaneshiro: But we see 2 transfer trailers here deferred for another year, but that could go... 293 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Adachi: But you know, the other thing too is we in the process of trying to implement the curbside recycling yeah, so we have purchased equipment, collection equipment, that we trying to...I guess would take the place of some of these older trucks, you know. So when the time comes we would have to just make the decision at that time. Council Chair Asing: Let me follow up a little more then. Would you say then it would be probably the Wilkins transfer trailers. Mr. Adachi: Could be the trailers or could be that refuse, the rear load refuse truck. I'm not sure. We have to assess the situation when the time comes, you know, if we have the opportunity to replace. Council Chair Asing: Well, I...you know, I go to Lihu`e transfer station kind of often, and I hear and I notice a couple of the trailers that I think is in not too good shape. Mr. Adachi: I agree. I agree, but then we also have other equipment that fall in the same category. So we would have to evaluate all of our equipment. Council Chair Asing: Okay, thank you. Mr. Furfaro: Maybe we should send it over in a question. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, we'll get a communication over to you. Council Chair Asing: Maybe they can set some kind of priority. Mr. Kaneshiro: Tim you had a question? Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I just appreciate your comments, because probably 6 or 7 years ago we were behind schedule, yeah, and I know you were...you had vehicles you were having to weld the beds because they were rusting and stuff like that. At some point the vehicles spend more time in the shop and they cost us more to keep them old, right, because of the loss of productivity and all of that. I just reflecting back to like my first budget when...you know, we had more assets, and the decision from the administration at the time was let's get caught up on these equipment purchases, you know, both the ones that you're responsible for and things like parks. And as Councilmember Kaneshiro, it's paying dividends now, because maybe we'll make it through these lean times without having those trucks that you see every other day and literally falling apart. But I have to ask one question, because this got to be a typo. There's a 2002 Chevy trailblazer with 478,000 miles on it? Mr. Adachi: Cannot be. Mr. Bynum: That cannot be. Mr. Adachi: Chevys don't live that long. Must be an extra number someplace. You can send a communication, we can correct that. Mr. Kaneshiro: It's in the solid waste department. They're up later on. Mr. Bynum: If we have time, I have a general question. You have the biodiesel project, right. It was like a pilot project. Mr. Adachi: Actually we passed that pilot stage already. 294 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Bynum: Now are we routinely using biodiesel? Mr. Adachi: Yeah. We use 5% blend at all of our filling stations now. That's about as far as we can go, 5%. Manufacture... Some of the manufacturers decline to warrant their product if we use more than 5%. So until they loosen up and allow us to go to a... Mr. Furfaro: You don't want to jeopardize warranty. Mr. Adachi: Yeah, right. Mr. Bynum: And I learned that some diesel engines are rated at different blend factors. Is that something we're looking at in the future? Mr. Adachi: If we are able to, then we would. I would like to go more than 5%, but right now my hands are tied, I cannot. Mr. Bynum: And our source for biodiesel is? Mr. Adachi: We go out to bid, but we're currently...our supplier is local. Mr. Bynum: So that's a good thing. So I just want to acknowledge again your initiative at doing that, and appreciate that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Lani, you had a question? Ms. Kawahara: Yeah. I just have to ask this question, because somebody might bring it up and I want it on the record. There's the 2 pickups for parks coming in, yeah, and there's deferred a bunch of older cars and trucks, and I just needed confirmation of that. Mr. Adachi: Well, when we get to that point we make a judgment call. We decide on the vehicles that are in greater need of replacement, currently. And those that can last longer or are in better condition, we defer. than... Ms. Kawahara: So these 2 parks ones are probably high use, right? Higher use Mr. Adachi: Generally speaking, the parks and roads equipment, solid waste equipment, usually get more heavy usage than the...like housing, planning, finance, those are more like office type use. Ms. Kawahara: I just wanted to confirm that. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Dickie, go ahead. Mr. Chang: Dwayne, just out of curiosity, when the trucks or cars at its peak, you guys re-sell them, or just... What happens to the vehicles? Mr. Adachi: We auction. Public auction. Usually once a year during the summer, July-August we try get together an auction. Collect all of our replace equipment and offer that to the public. Mr. Kaneshiro: We used to pass them on to different departments before. They used to do that. Derek, go ahead. 295 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Mr. Chair, and maybe we should send this over as a communication. You don't have to answer now, but I was just curious to know the comparison of cost of biodiesel per gallon to regular diesel right now. Mr. Adachi: Right now biodiesel costs a lot more than petroleum diesel, because the price fluctuation. In August the price of biodiesel and petroleum was about even, comparable. But diesel fuel dropped considerably the past 6 months. But the biodiesel price didn't drop because the factor, main factor, for the price increase or decrease of biodiesel is alcohol. That's the main product used in the manufacturing of the biodiesel, so that dictates their price. So but we have other benefits besides price, financial benefit, with the usage of biodiesel. Mr. Chang: What kind of mileage you get, typical. Mr. Adachi: Petroleum diesel gets better mileage than biodiesel, because of the I guess the octane rating. Biodiesel is less octane rating than petroleum diesel. But the benefit of biodiesel right now for us is, well because the newer equipment, engines, have a federal standard or guidelines they need to follow and meet, it's a emission standard, requires the usage of ultra low sulfur diesel now, and removal of the sulfur from the diesel creates more heat build-up in the engine, because like sulfur is a lubricant. What the biodiesel does, it restores that lubricity to the fuel, and it's also...it has a combustion factor that we can benefit from besides our other option would be an additive, you know. But the biodiesel provides us a little more benefit than the additive. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Great. Okay, any other questions for the automotive section of public works? Thank you very much. Okay with that, Donald, we have our next department. Mr. Fujimoto: Yes, wastewater. Mr. Kaneshiro: For the record, please introduce yourself, Ed. Mr. Fujimoto: Donald Fujimoto, county engineer. ED TSCHUPP: Ed Tschupp, wastewater division chief. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Bynum: Our tab says sewer. Mr. Fujimoto: I guess on wastewater, the primary changes were decreases to one position, dollar funded, increase to post benefit, employee benefits, and a decrease to reduction of consultant services, R&M, SRF loans, and equipment purchases. Mr. Tschupp: We also inherited one position which represents a transfer from finance division, finance department to the wastewater division, and that's the billing function in our personnel. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, committee members. Go ahead Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Should I and can I assume that all of the items that have been identified in the capital improvements plans regarding wastewater are in fact in an effort to make sure that we stay in compliance with department of health requirements? 296 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Tschupp: Capital improvement includes some plant expansions and you know, down the road, and so it's both a growth... Mr. Furfaro: As well as a compliance. Mr. Tschupp: As well as a compliance. Mr. Furfaro: You feel comfortable where we are at with current inspection scores that we are constantly making improvements? Mr. Tschupp: We are continuing to attempt constant improvement and upgrade amongst our operational activities. We have the typical problems of some aging infrastructure, and so that does involve, you know, putting money in to replace equipment when needed. We're kind of at a point with a couple of our plants where...we had major plant expansions at LShu`e and at `Ele`ele in the early to mid 90s, so now some of those equipments are starting to get out the 15 year, 20 year, and so you know, it's one of those things that you have constant replacement requirements. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Ed. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: Hi. Thank you Mr. Chair. You know, I'm just looking at the difference in consultant services and the difference of 80,000 less. Can you explain the big kind of change in consultant services. Mr. Tschupp: Yes. Consultant services includes...there's that particular line item, if you're looking at the line item on consultant services, there is a trigger in our permit, on our NPDES permit, that if we have an exceedence, then we're on a very short leash to go out and do a pretty significant study. It's a relatively new permit condition, and over the last couple of years, we didn't know whether...we didn't have much track record on those particular testing species, it's rain organisms, and we initially put in like $100,000 as essentially to provide for us to be able to go out and on a fast track hire those consultants. We've now had, you know, a couple years of experience with those marine organisms. We feel a little bit more comfortable that, you know; that we're not going to need to do that. I think it's still prudent for us to have some provision to go hire those consultants i£..but we feel a lot better now about not needing quite as panic a situation. I'm not sure that that was... Mr. Kawakami: Thank you. Mr. Tschupp: Too technical or... Mr. Kawakami: No, just the verification that you feel a lot more comfortable addressing the issue at hand was just the answer I was looking for. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Committee members any other questions for Mr. Ed Tschupp? You have your hand raised? Mr. Bynum, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: Planting seeds for the future, just an idea. Think about getting a grease trap inspector and combine that with sign ordinance, you know. Creative thinking, you know. One person do sign ordinance inspection and grease trap inspection, right. Some day. Not this year. 297 APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) health. Mr. Furfaro: Grease trap inspections are a requirement of the state department of Mr. Tschupp: Actually it's in our sewer ordinance too. It would fall under the generic classification of a pretreatment requirements, and under the plumbing code, certain classes of facilities, restaurants, are required to have grease traps. So we kind of reflect that in our sewer ordinance, but...and I was looking at the sewer ordinance the other day, the...we have some authority, but we don't actually have an enforcement program established. Mr. Furfaro: And I guess that's where I'm going with it, because food and beverage facilities actually are subject to an annual review by the state health department, of which the grease trap is part of that definition of inspection. That's where the enforcement and the fines are. Am I correct? Mr. Tschupp: I don't know the health code with respect to those. It sounds like you know far more than I do. Mr. Furfaro: I've been around a few restaurants. Mr. Tschupp: ...on the restaurants. I do know that within the sewer ordinance there is provision for us to go in and ask people to give us their records and so on. And so the...anything that we do would be supplemental to anything that the health department does. For us, grease is very hard to treat at the wastewater plant, so it's actually in our economic interest to have an enforcement, whereas the health department doesn't necessarily have that (inaudible). Mr. Furfaro: But if we find a grease trap that has problems that are not acceptable before these perhaps go into our treatment and we don't have the right enzymes, your action is to report it to the health department where the real clout is. Mr. Tschupp: I'm not sure about that. Under our ordinance we do have, you know, some fine provisions. So I don't know how those would stand up if we were to call the cops on them. Mr. Furfaro: That's why I would suggest you work closely with the state health department on their inspection, which is an annual inspection. I think we also understand the other out product of this is the fact of the matter is convince this restaurant that they can sell their cooking fats. They can in fact turn some waste into a actual profit margins by doing it right. Mr. Tschupp: Biodiesel. Mr. Bynum: And increase our island supply of biodiesel. I just. I didn't mean to open a can of worms, but I've learned a lot from Ed about how wastewater works, and more grease in the system costs us money, especially energy costs, right. So I think we've contemplate... In the past we've had or there was a proposal to have a grease trap inspector? Mr. Tschupp: Yeah. This year is not the year to ask for staffing. Mr. Bynum: But some day, because it will save us money and it has all these benefits. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, but I guess my message is, why add staffing when you should be able to convey to the restaurant food and beverage operators that they can turn their waste into money, and it saves everybody. 298 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Any other questions for Ed? Council Chair Akng: I think I want to double up on that, though, because I believe that that, you know, that is part of the board of health's responsibility. So I thought that they make it a point to do that. Mr. Furfaro: I think they have one inspector. That's it. Mr. Kawakami: But I can confirm that they do inspect, because we get inspected at least once a year. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. No further questions? Next department please, Mr. Fujimoto. Mr. Fujimoto: Next section is solid waste. Mr. Kaneshiro: We're on page 207 of our text, budget textbook. Okay Donald, have them introduce themselves for our records, and they can begin. TROY TANIGAWA: Troy Tanigawa, I'm the division chief. ALLISON FRALEY: Allison Fraley, solid waste program manager. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any highlights of your department? Mr. Tanigawa: We have in the solid waste division a decrease in personnel cost due to dollar funding of 3 positions, and a decrease in overtime cost. Decrease was offset by additional automated collections...automated collections personnel. There was an increase due to the addition of post employee benefits, and we also have a decrease due to reductions in building maintenance, equipment purchases, and various programs. We'll take any questions you may have now. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, with that, I'll open it up for my committee members. Mr. Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: You know Mr. Chair, I think this is going to be more appropriate as a communication sent over. It's in regards to our tipping fees. I just wanted to know if the increase in the tipping fees are going to cover the operational cost, and if not, I would like to see the real dollar amount that would cover these costs. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, you got that? We're going to send that communication over. I guess in regards to the tipping fees. And also we do have that coming on our agenda in couple weeks, I believe, on our council agenda. So hopefully with the communication we can address that before it comes to the agenda. Thank you. Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Yes. This is just a general statement as it probably relates to their budget, but we are at a disadvantage at this time. You know, we have not seen a really current estimate of the bond float. We're at a huge disadvantage. I'm asking particular questions here, and I don't know in our bond, are we going to secure some land for a MRF? Are we going to have a MRF? I have voted in favor of curbside recycling, but I understand in the evolution of this, we are first going to use it for collection. But I want to make sure we understand that curbside recycling is also supposed to eventually help us separate trash from recyclables. But those recycled items have to go somewhere. I mean it's as simple as that. I mean...and as we were talking about grease traps for the county, this recycled material has some dollar value, salvage credit, at some point which has not been a truly good market recently with the falling prices, and we have to realize that. And I 299 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) certainly realize that, you know. It may not reflect the kind of profitability that many salvage companies went into the business for. But from a strategic plan, you know, the more we invest in curbside recycling, I just...whether it's a clean MRF where it comes to us separated, whether it's a dirty MRF and we separate it there, you know that for me is the big question unanswered, followed by the fact that I have not seen the current bond float that, you know, supports the financial foundation of a strategic plan dealing with waste. So I just want to plant that seed, Mr. Chair, because I think in 2 weeks we have them in front of us in a presentation. Am I correct? Mr. Kaneshiro: I'm not sure about... Mr. Furfaro: (Inaudible) I think some of us would really like to, you know, to know that... The strategic thinking has to be supported by a financial plan that invests in the amenities required for this. And I just want to say, you know, until I have a better understanding how the financial plan supports the strategic thinking of solid waste, you know, I'm going to have a more difficult time, you know, voting on some of these things that'll be in front of us, and I think that's a good business question. So I don't need the answers now, Wally. I just want to make sure everybody understands. Mr. Rezentes: Well, and it'll be... The bond float information will be part of the CIP discussion. Mr. Furfaro: Very good. Very good. I appreciate that. I didn't give away the floor yet, but they all want to grab because he's answered my question. That's fine. I surrender the floor. Mr. Bynum: I just... When are we going to receive information? Mr. Furfaro: He just said, when we go into our CIP. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, and if we're moving right along, we'll even take them up right after this. Mr. Furfaro: So I surrender the floor Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: We don't need to wait until Thursday, since we're...if we're moving right along, we'll bring that back to the committee members and see what they want to do. Let's focus on solid waste side right now. Any other questions from his presentation in regards to solid waste? Mr. Bynum: We just got this handout about recycling which I haven't had time to read, but we had that public hearing about the bins, and member of the public wanted to know if we were going to ship the recycled materials off island, and I assume that is the case if we can't process them here. Ms. Fraley: Yes. It's on that handout, actually. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I haven't had a chance to read it. It was just handed to us Ms. Fraley: Yeah, so for processing we've been, you know, speaking with potential bidders for that service for the pilot program, and it's looking at though we would ship loose materials off island for processing on Oahu probably. We have to go through, you know, the formal bid process for this, but that's what it's looking like now that no place on island can sort...has the capacity to sort mixed loads. 300 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Bynum: So maybe I'll... I assume, because we just got the integrated solid waste final, that's the final right? Ms. Fraley: Well, it's the final draft because it needs to be reviewed by the public, and then after that review period, if there were any changes, it would come to you after that and it would be adopted by the council at that point. Mr. Bynum: So I assume we're going to come...you're going to come to the council and make a presentation about that, and we're going to have dialogue. I want to focus on budget, and so... Ms. Fraley: Right. Mr. Bynum: I want to honor the chair's requirement. So what... So I'll ask a broad question. What is in this current budget that is supporting the rollout of the integrated solid waste plan. Ms. Fraley: In the recycling part- of the budget, I can give- you the account numbers... Here it is. It's under other services for recycling. Council Chair Asing: What page is that? Ms. Fraley: 219. Is everybody there? There's 2 different descriptions there. One is for the processing for a hundred...estimate of $100,000 for the pilot period. And then there's $50,000 for consultant services to help with the education...for educating the target group for developing and administering a pre and post pilot survey about recycling behaviors, and also for developing a strategy for monitoring garbage bins and set-out rates, and then also for assisting with the final report on the program. And that's all contained in the write-up that I handed out. Mr. Bynum: And so in this current budget that's the only budget items that anticipate a change in... Ms. Fraley: No. Also there's a budget for carts. We'll need 1600 carts, collection carts. They're the same kinds of carts that were...so it's in the same line item. It's page 216, other supplies, and part of that. So 216 other supplies, at the bottom there is a line item of $560,000 for carts, and part of those carts, $160,000 would be for the carts for this program. Mr. Bynum: Yes, also at the public hearing, I hadn't done the math before, but these carts are a thousand dollars a piece? Ms. Fraley: Mr. Bynum: Ms. Fraley: Mr. Bynum: Ms. Fraley: Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Bynum: A hundred dollars. A hundred dollars. Yes. That's... Okay, that's... I didn't do the math. A thousand would be a lot. Perhaps somebody moved the decimals. At a hundred dollars they sound like a bargain, but at a thousand. 301 APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kaneshiro: That's why for 5,600 it's 560,000. Mr. Bynum: Right. Ms. Fraley: So those are the only costs for that program. Council Chair Asing: I have a question. How are we handling the greenwaste hauling now? Are we... We used to contract that out. Am I correct? And then now we're doing it ourselves on overtime. Is that correct, wrong? Mr. Tanigawa: Partially correct. We're doing it both ways. At the 2 sites we're managing greenwaste onsite where we hire a contract to come and shred onsite, and they do the hauling of portion of the mulch offsite. The portion that they don't haul, we keep and we use onsite for different purposes. At 3 other locations, we use our in-house forces to load and haul unprocessed greenwaste to permitted processors on-island. There are 2 right now that we're utilizing. Because of the way our hauling routes are conducted, using 2 different processors, you know, that one is located on the north shore and one is located just outside of Puhi, we were able to save some money on hauling cost. Council Chair Asing: Okay, so both ways then. where? Mr. Tanigawa: Yeah. Mr. Furfaro: That's only 2 sites; you said there were 3. Northshore, Puhi, and Mr. Tanigawa: Hanalei transfer station, Kapa`a transfer station, and Lihu`e transfer station we conduct the hauling of unprocessed greenwaste offsite. At the Hanapepe transfer station and the Kekaha landfill, we manage greenwaste onsite and have the hauler or processor haul it off. Mr. Furfaro: So I guess, Mr. Chair, to follow up on your question, so the overtime incurred is a follow-up to Chairman Asing's question is, the 3 sites we haul from? It's the hauling that we're incurring the overtime? Mr. Tanigawa: Yes. Loading and hauling operations. Council Chair Asing: The hauling that we do. Mr. Tanigawa: Well, what happens is we utilize other public works personnel to provide the truck and the...you know, trucks and loading equipment to help us move the large volumes. Council Chair Asing: Is there a way we can do it without overtime? Mr. Tanigawa: We haven't been able to avoid overtime thus far, because during the regular workweek they've busy doing their normal duties, so most of the overtime have been incurred on the weekends. Council Chair Asing: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: Can I do another follow-up? 302 Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Furfaro: So you're actually using public works people? Mr. Tanigawa: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: So from an accounting standpoint and an auditing of that overtime, is that overtime showing up in public works, or is it showing up in solid waste? Mr. Tanigawa: I believe we're paying for the overtime. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, could we send it over as a question? The overtime incurred in public works is actually being transferred to solid waste. Mr. Kaneshiro: Committee members, any more questions? Lani. Ms. Kawahara: I just had the same questions that Councilmember Furfaro had about where the MRF fits iri into' all of this and~"wliy there-is riot som`etling`budgeted: ~ But"I und'er`stand" ' `° that the solid waste management plan update might address that. And the...what was my other question. The other question was, is it really a pilot project or is it a phase one of recycling? Ms. Fraley: The curbside? Ms. Kawahara: The curbside recycling. I know that's not a budget question, but I've always been trying to say that it is a phase one of curbside recycling that the county's going to continue. Ms. Fraley: Well, it hasn't at this point been characterized as a phase one. It's a pilot and the goal is to test the service to determine potential participation rates and other logistics to determine any improvements for an islandwide implementation. So you know, the cost, though, of processing it is going to be higher and it shouldn't be used because we don't have a MRF. So those costs won't be used to determine cost factors...cost factors for the program. Ms. Kawahara: Then (inaudible) do you come back to the county council to expend that $10,000 for the amendment to the contract, that if that occurs in public discussions, the page 209. Page 209, bottom, integrated solid waste management plan update contingency for amendments to RW Beck contract. That $10,000 is something that you'd have to council to get in order to finalize that plan? Mr. Tanigawa: No. We didn't intend for that to be. We put that in there and we wanted to get your approval to go ahead and make the expenditure if the need arose during the plan finalization process of the integrated solid waste management plan. Ms. Kawahara: And that would include all the public hearings that would take place in that final phase of this? Mr. Tanigawa: It's part of the adoption process or approval process for the plan to do a public hearing and, you know, take additional reviews with the department of health. This $10,000 is actually to address consultant costs to do any changes or modifications to the plan that...or were a result...or came about...the need came about because of the public hearing, you know, meetings with the county council during the adoption process. 303 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Ms. Kawahara: So my question I guess... Thank you for that. The adoption process will have to come back through us after this $10,000. Yeah. Mr. Furfaro: That maybe I can help here... Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: ...on a couple of questions, Lani. First of all, if we look for the MRF, because of the size of the project, the money for that will probably show up when we see the bond float, because it is a major asset of the county-additional building, land acquisition, and so forth. So you know, that wouldn't come up in the regular operating budget. What they do is they place this 10,000 contingency in this so that when we have the public hearing on the actual operation, the reality if they need a money to fall back on, it's in that contingency. Now what we should expect from the reality of this from now until May 2 is we should ask for a reconciliation of the surplus money. So each year for when we put contingency moneys in the budget, if they're not used, they actually show up in what is labeled here as a surplus, what I see as a reserve. So I hope that has helped you understand that process a little bit. Ms. Kawahara: Yes. But I do want us to be able to have some type of input and say over what the final is going to look like, and thank you for that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Regarding the pilot project, when you make a contract for processing, is that going to take into account the potential revenue from the recyclables...I mean like... Because those prices have fluctuated so dramatically in the last year. If they go up again, are we going to realize some of that savings? So you factor that into the contract? Ms. Fraley: Right. What we did was look at all the costs that a potential processor might incur, and one of the cost is the cost of actually sorting the material and the sale of the material. It actually is a cost still at this point; it's not a revenue, but it's not that high, because the cost of sorting takes into account the revenues. Mr. Bynum: Right, but let's say the marketability of the recyclables goes up dramatically. Will that impact the amount we would pay the vendor? Ms. Fraley: Well, they're going to put in a bid at the time, you know...at one point. So a bid won't be flue.. It's a 6-month period they'll be accepting materials. It won't be varying by the month..So the time they quote, the cost of sorting would be, you know, the market at that point for the 6 month period. Mr. Bynum: Because...I mean I visited a MRF this year, and the guy said a year ago they were covering all their operating costs from the sale of the recoverables, and now they were actually having to pay people to take them. So that's a pretty dramatic change. And then I guess my other question, even though this is a pilot project, once we educate this segment of the community that's recycling, we don't intend to stop right? We're going to continue the service that (inaudible). Ms. Fraley: We don't know at this point what will happen after the pilot. You mean... Are you asking if we'll continue to service that one population? We'd need to get back to you on that. 304 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Tanigawa: Right now all we have is 6 month program...or pilot project budgeted for recycling. Mr. Bynum: Well, I would...and you would hope once we start doing recycling in this community that we're rolling out beyond the pilot to do it for the community on an ongoing basis, and our solid waste plan will make that commitment, and it won't be a break in service. So I'm thinking that even though you sign a 6-month contract, you may need to extend it, because you don't want to start and then stop and start. Are you going to try to integrate this pilot into the regular mainstream roll-out for curbside recycling? Mr. Tanigawa: We'll have to get back to you on that question. Mr. Furfaro: Okay,. but let's all get back to the concept of what happened. We plan to recycle, we have somebody we contract for, they give a bid. Their bid is a salvage credit for what they collected which is offset on the cost of their bid. If they lose money on what they recycle, it's going to come out of their pocket, not ours. If a company finds themselves that it's no longer profitable, right, they could cancel the contract with us. The idea is to find a bid that has enough salvage credit in it and accomplishes the specifications that we want, but we-never see revenue from that. We see a cost. But it is projected to be a net cost, is what we see. Mr. Tanigawa: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Bynum: And I apologize for asking the same question that Councilmember Kawahara just asked, but I'm not a good multi-tasker. I was trying to read your thing and I...but you know, because I feel just the same way that...you know, I have a problem with calling it a pilot; just call it phase one, because I think we're committed. I assume we're going to be probably committed to the recycling program into the future. So hopefully we won't stop and start (inaudible). Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, like anything else it takes money to start and to continue, so I want to point that out as the budget chair that, you know, you can find the money, we can continue. Mr. Kawakami you had a question? Mr. Kawakami: No. Council Chair Asing: Let me follow-up on that question then, because I believe that, you know, we're... You're calling it a pilot project, and I agreed in the beginning, and I still agree. But this pilot project that you're making reference to is a project that has been going on in Honolulu. Am I correct? Ms. Fraley: Yes. Council Chair Asing: Now, from all the information you've been able to get from Honolulu, because I believe they have been doing it for, am I correct, over a year? Ms. Fraley: Yes. Council Chair Asing: So would you have any idea as to where they are today and are they like they're through with the pilot and they're actually doing it today. Am I correct? Ms. Fraley: Yes. 305 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Council Chair Asing: Then I guess with that said, it goes back to Councilmember Kawahara and Councilmember Bynum on calling it phase one, because it looks as though there's no reason to believe that it'll not pencil out. Thank you anyway. I thought that using Honolulu's...Honolulu as a guideline would give us more definitive information. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any more questions? Mr. Kawakami, you had one? Mr. Kawakami: I just want to send a communication over to find out some of the goals, benchmarks, and measurables that we're looking for while we're conducting this pilot project. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, very good. We'll do that. Anything else committee members for solid waste? Any other questions? weeks. Mr. Furfaro: I just want to reconfirm we're going to have it in committee in 2 Mr. Kaneshiro: Yep. Okay, with that, thank you. Members want to take a 5 minute recess. We don't have any caption, but we'll take a 5 minutes break and come back and continue with our budget sessions. Five minutes break. There being no objections, the Budget Chair recessed the meeting at 2:01 p.m. The budget review reconvened at 2:15 pm., and proceeded as follows: Mr. Kaneshiro: Can I have your attention please. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Mickens, Mr. Taylor, we are in session. Mr. Chair, may I get your recognition for a moment? Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. For the purpose o£.. I believe there are number of people here that want to testify. I thought I'd make a quick summary specifically of what we've got scheduled for public works coming up in the near future. I should point out that tomorrow, April 15, we actually have a appropriation of $400,000 from the solid waste fund for other supplies in the relationship of ordering 4,000 bins for the automatic refuse collection plan. Also, on Apri122 we will be having a public hearing scheduled, and also on Apri129 these items will be back in committee. So I just thought I wanted to summarize that so people are aware of dates. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for that Mr. Furfaro. With that, I will suspend the rules. Anyone wanting to give testimony before I continue with our budget review? This is your change now. Go ahead. Rules are suspended. JOHN HARDER: Thank you Councilman Kaneshiro. My name is John Harder. I'm the chairman of zero waste Kauai. We're a small local nonprofit that's dedicated to maximizing diversion through recycling, reuse, and reduction. With the integrated solid management plan update still to be reviewed and approved, zero waste Kauai questions the expenditure of additional funds to analyze the feasibility of waste to energy. Especially as little or no effort has been made to see just how far and aggressive diversion program can take us. In addition, last year the Big Island developed and released a detailed RFP for waste to energy, and the results indicated that the costs were unacceptable. Now the county of Hawaii is drafting a zero waste management plan. Why do we need to spend our limited financial resources to come up with the same conclusion as the county council of Hawaii? While the draft integrated solid waste management plan does call for the implementation of curbside recycling, there's no funding for a development of a detailed curbside 306 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) implementation plan. It's difficult to develop a detailed implementation budget when you don't really know where you're going. More importantly, there's no provision in the budget for the development of a material recovery facility. Without a material recovery facility or MRF, the county will be forced to ship the collected recyclables off island for processing. From zero waste Kaua`i's perspective, the priority issue in this budget should be the siting, design, and construction of a MRF. As far as the curbside pilot is concerned, we question the need to study the cost and participation rates of curbside recycling. First the one year pilot, and now I hear it's only 6 months, especially if the collected recyclables can't be processed locally won't provide an accurate assessment of cost. Second, during the initial rollout of the program, with no economic incentive to recycle, the participation rates will be next to meaningless. With the numerous curbside recycling programs initiated in small communities over the past decade, a better estimate of diversion would come from analyzing results in comparable communities. We feel that the pilot curbside recycling program that is proposed in the current budget should be more properly designated phase one, launching curbside recycling on Kauai, and it's implementation should be tied into the development of a MRF and a long term commitment to include recycling as a major element in the county's solid waste management strategy. The curbside pilot should be considered the first phase of the implementation of islandwide collection, and not a study of costs and participation rates. As the administration feels it's beneficial to proceed with the implementation of curbside collection prior to the development of adequate processing capacity, then there should be a commitment to proceed with the MRF as quickly as possible, and ship the material to Oahu until the MRF is completed. In addition, as part of the development of curbside recycling, the county should initiate residential collection and residential collection fee structure, leading to the implementation of pay as you throw. ahead. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. With that, any questions for John? Mr. Furfaro, go Mr. Furfaro: John, thank you for that testimony. John, will zero waste Kauai, do you have any recommendations as it relates to the county initiating any residential collection fees, and if you do, could you be prepared to share that with us in the Apri129 committee meeting? Mr. Harder: I can definitely make some recommendations. We thought some of these things through. However, I'm going to be off-island April 29, but I think somebody from our committee will be able to discuss that at that time. Mr. Furfaro: Good, because I do think zero waste Kauai is made up of just more than you, right? Mr. Harder: Yeah. There's about a dozen or two dozen of us that are core workers, and about 60...70 people that we email regularly. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, well we'd like to hear your opinion, and if you have anything to share, Apri129 would be good for us. Thank you John. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: Just more a philosophical question. Are you against all types of feasibility studies, or just one that pertains to recycling? Mr. Harder: No. I think in a case where there is something to be learned and there is not a wealth of data already out there, feasibility studies makes sense. But if a similar communities have already done, you know, that work for you, it doesn't really need, you know, spending a whole lot of money to come up with the same results. 307 APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thank you. Council Chair Asing: I have another question, and let me read what you just stated. In addition, last year the Big Island developed and released a detailed RFP waste to energy, and the results indicated that the costs were unacceptable. My question is, the definition of unacceptable. Mr. Harder: Okay, the definition was actually made by the county council, but the numbers were... They released an RFP, request for proposal, for an incinerator, or waste to energy facility, to handle east Hawai`i's trash, which is in volume just about the same as Kaua`i's. The price for that facility came in at $135million, and the cost, the tipping fee, the related tipping fee, after they deducted for the sale of electricity was going to be $125 a ton. When the council looked at that, they said we can do better some other way, or they also said, we can't afford this. So those are the numbers that the council found unacceptable. Council Chair Asing: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: May I follow up on that? I want to follow up on the Chair's question. You know, I looked into that a little bit, John, just simply that... You know, I have 3 daughters that live on the Big Island (Hilo, Waimea, as well as Kona), and what portion of the cost made up for the actual community pick up, because I was shocked to find out that the Big Island has not county refuse collection, and I often figured on a...okay, from this 120,000 population, how you guys first going to collect it to make sure it all gets to one place. Was that in the bid cost? Mr. Harder: No. The bid cost were only for receiving the material on the tipping floor of the incinerator. As you mentioned, Big Island does not have a county collection system. They have basically 2 ways of handling your trash. You either contract with a private hauler and pay him a contracted rate, or you haul it yourself to a transfer station where there's no charge; however, when that material gets to the landfill or an incinerator, the county then has to come up with the...pay those costs. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, I just tell you, I was shocked, you know. I have 2 daughters that are married there, and they use their husband and their truck, but I have a daughter who's single there and has a very busy professional schedule, and she actually pays a third company to pick up. So I just wondered if that was in their cost as well. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thank you very much. Next speaker. Do we have another speaker? Anyone else wanting to speak? ROB ABREW: Aloha Councilmembers. My name is Rob Abrew for the record. I'm here as an individual. I missed most of the presentation by the solid waste administration, so I'm not quite sure if I'm going to touch on a couple of things that had been talked about, but I did hear a couple more information. One of the first things I want to talk about is the issue, in this budget, is...items in this budget is a budget for 5600 more carts. Tomorrow you guys going to vote on a proposed $400,000 for 4,000 carts, so we're going to have 9600 carts on this island in the next year. Does our pilot program and does the new solid waste program even have that many customers they're going to deal with in the next year? Are they going to have that many customers? There's 17,000 residence...households on this island, so we're going to... In the first year before our program even starts, we're going to have half of our containers on this island. To me, as a business person, we have those carts sitting here, if they're sitting here collecting dust, why are we spending our money until we know for sure we're going to continue these programs, and then we bring the carts in. I don't know how many trucks we have...automated trucks we have on order, but if we have 9600 carts and physically the carts can't go around every week and pick up those 9600 carts, what are they here for? We're spending money that we could use in other programs for the next 308 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) year. The next thing I want to address, because... The pilot program is 6 months. I thought it was a year. We might have had more consideration from that; now it's only 6 months. I think that's one budget item that could go. You pass one tomorrow, but get rid o£.. $560,000 can come right out of the budget right there. The next issue I want to talk about is the staffing issue in the solid waste department. One of the things that I'm sure all you guys know and in the budget they have dollar funded the coordinator job. Just to be up and up, and be a disclosure, I am one of the applicants that did apply for that job. I've been told it's on hold. But I would like to give the job description of that job to this council as testimony to come back and ask the solid waste administration or the public works administration, who's going to do these duties? We are talking about all these new pilot programs, all this new stuff, we have a limited staff now, they're worked to their bones, we have 2 supervisors in the entire public works department, except the ones that go out on the road and do the landfill and do the transfer stations to do all these programs. You know, it's ridiculous to try to have these wonderful people who work for us not have the people to implement these, and it's wrong to spend the money upfront when we don't have the people to do it. So basically that's the only 2 things I wanted to touch on... Oh, one more thing. In the new solid waste plan that's going to be coming out, there was a page in it that referred back to the 94 plan of recommendations back in 1994 of what this county should do to control solid waste. I believe out of the 8 recommendations it had, this county has followed through on 2 of them. To me, that is not an employee problem; that's an administration problem. If we have an administration that's out there talking all fluffy and thing and not backing up by doing the actual things, I know you guys can't do anything about it, the only people that can do about it is the administration. Don't fund them until they put the people in, process, the processes are in place, and then fund it. Once they come to you and say this is our plan, then you fund it. Don't just give them a blank check. That's all I have to say. Thanks. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. We'll have that passed out to the community members. Do we have another speaker here in the Chambers? Ken Taylor. KEN TAYLOR: Chair and members of the council, my name is Ken Taylor. First I would like to acknowledge what John had raised to you all earlier in his presentation, and it's people like him in the community that have a lot to offer that I sometimes wonder why we're not spending more time with people like this to help set the direction of county activities, because he is got a lot of knowledge and experience. I myself come from a community that started their recycling program way back in the 70s, and been doing curbside recycling for approximately 20 years now, had a small MRF to start with, and that's private industry has built a bigger newer one in more recent years. But what concerns me is a pilot project. To me, pilot projects are projects where you're going off to do something that nobody's ever done before, and so you feel it out, you do a pilot project to see how things go. But...and as far as curbside recycling and MRFs are concerned, they've been done for many, many years all over the world. There's no reason in the world to spend time and money on pilot...so called pilot project. You make a decision, you make a decision that you're either going recycle or you're not going to recycle, and once that decision is made, then you can move forward with the proper procedures. But to play around with this thing, it's really sad because we're at a time and the world conditions that we don't have a lot of time, and we need to move forward with recycling, there's no question about it, and it shouldn't be a big deal to make that decision. And if we make that decision, then it requires curbside pickup, a MRF, to move the process completely forward. I just find this is the time. This is the time to bite the bullet and go for it. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for that testimony. Mr. Furfaro: May I have a moment? Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead. 309 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Ken, this is not in a question. This is in a summary, because I think it's really important that the entire community understand we need to weigh out the financial opportunities and costs that are here because of these economic times, and we also need to weigh out the value as a community of recycling. And here's what I want to say. Our budget is subsidized by 69% for waste operation from the general fund. Taxpayers in this county do not pay for waste pickup. In fact, as I gave an example, you're on your own on the Big Island. $7.8million comes out of the general fund for this. We have an opportunity to add value by recycling, and at the same time, it poses an opportunity because we're giving the community more value to make the political will to charge for trash pickup which will help us offset what could possibly be an $11.8million shortfall when the State takes away our TAT. Because what they're going to say to us is, that money is now... For you to supplement your budget, you will now have an opportunity to charge additional taxes on your transit accommodation tax to make up for that shortfall. So what we're really wrestling with here is doing the right thing for the right reason, and at the same time, addressing the potential increases and the political will to make a decision to pay for trash and rubbish collection. And it makes sense, because if we are going to fund through the bond a MRF that will allow us to have the proper facilities for recycling, then the general fund should be paying for that bond to get us a MRF. But collection in this concept, substitute it by a collection and giving the community a value of curbside collection will help us offset this enterprise fund shortfall. Second and from the previous speaker, we go into these containers on the first go around. The fact of the matter is that is intended, and I think I heard Mr. Kawakami speak on that. That is to introduce the equipment and the collection cycle which will offer us an opportunity to be more cost effective in our day to day operations, and in fact as you follow what's happening in Honolulu, the second group of containers that come now are color coded that will be for recyclable items. And hopefully we'd be able to get a contract that subsidizes that collection, but also, we will reduce collection in the community, which equals overtime and operating costs, because people will be more conscious of what they're throwing away. So it is not just a question about waste to energy. It's not just a collection about dealing with the apparatus associated with equipment for a MRF. It also is directly related to the fact that we could lose nine and a half percent of our funding from the State, and we may have to make the political decision to start charging for collection, but add value to the community on recycling and so forth. So I wanted to paint that picture a little different than what people are looking at--just seeing cost and so forth. There is hopefully an opportunity in a long term strategy to be able to reduce operating costs, and yes, have the political will to charge for those collections. That's what I wanted to say. So it's a bigger problem. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright. With that, thank you Mr. Taylor. Anyone else here? If not, I'm calling the administration back up at this time. We'll go into... You already had you 6 minutes. I'm not able to allow you to speak again. I gave you your 6 minutes to speak earlier. You could have taken 3 minutes first and. 3 minutes later when there were hardly anyone here. So at this time, if there's anymore solid waste items you want to speak on, there'll be, as Mr. Furfaro mentioned, several committee meetings coming up within the next couple weeks, and even a public hearing on the 22nd of April, I believe... Mr. Furfaro: 22nd, that's correct Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: So at this time we want to get back on the budget, and we're going to take up and move up and take highways now as the next item on our budget review. ED RENAUD: Ed Renaud, deputy county engineer. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. For the record, Ryan. RYAN NISHIKAWA: Ryan Nishikawa, public works. 310 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Renaud: To make it quick, roads, we decreased...our decrease is in 5 positions dollar funded right now, and then we increased, again like everyone else, the employee benefits, and then we decreased due to reduction in equipment purchases and supply purchases. Mr. Furfaro: May I raise a question? Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: We're talking roads right now. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, 183 I believe. From 183 on our budget... Mr. Furfaro: Ed, there was a statement earlier from someone who worked a very long time for the State, Mr. Rosa, on resurfacing roads and so forth, and he implied that the State people actually found themselves having to help the county on inspecting certain conditions that drove the budget for roads. And I have got a lot of material here that I'll be glad to share with you, but there's a couple very obvious concerns that I have that I need to know, when we make our evaluation each year for roads, do we have an outside consultant of someone el"se that actual'ly'looks at these road conditions, because this HIPA piece indicates...HAPI piece indicates that there are 3 approaches to this. It's incipient cracks that start in the road that they do recommend sealing so that no water gets in, and it complicates the lower bed lining, because if the integrity isn't in the bed lining, then you are required to cut and patch. Secondly, you know, do we consider any of these opportunities to slurry seal or put a roughness coat on there to extend the life of the roadway which will help us manage the cost. And number 3 I found very interesting here is, after you do these evaluations, it does leave you the liberty, and I will read from this, this is on the pavement instruction of resurfacing. It says, the minimum recommended HMA layer thickness if 2 inches. We've had people come up and tell us the minimum is an inch and a half. This particular thing says 2 inches is the recommended piece for the longevity, but if you had evaluated the road and you have the maximum aggregated sides, which might make it difficult to compact, and you are treating the underside road appropriately by patching, this says that you may actually, under State mix category 5, you may actually lay a thinner layer if you've done this inspection, up to three-quarters of an inch, if you've done the inspection right. So it seems to me that according standards driven by HAPI, if we're doing the appropriate evaluation, if we're using slurry seals to promote the longevity of the road, and if we're cutting and patching according to the scope here on areas that really have serious deficiencies, we might actually be able to reduce to three-quarter inch the coating. But that's all based on the evaluation and patching done correctly. Do you have any comments please? Mr. Renaud: Yeah, you're correct. We have not done that, okay, in the past. What we are trying to do now, and if you look at Papalina, we trying to do this. And what's going to happen there, if we do this process, which is the correct way, I come from that field, it's going to cost more, but if you have a dollar amount like what you folks give us, then what's going to happen, to do this repair the proper way and everything, maybe that first next time around we're not going to have the lineal feet on the miles. But we are looking into that approach. You're correct. Mr. Furfaro: Well, I think if we do look into this approach, and there's some very interesting equipment identified here and some very interesting categorizing of subgrade conditions that you should look at here that it might put us in a position that using these specs in the long deferral that we have, I think we actually might be able to look at some transportation funds to be more aggressive with this. I'll pass this on to you. Thank you Mr. Chair. Council Chair Asing: Let me follow-up on that a little bit. Ryan, I believe you gave us a study that you did on repaving and why we don't do what we perhaps should be doing. Didn't you give us a...and some examples were on the side of the road where, you know, it gets eaten away, and 311 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) therefore it would be cost prohibitive and we would end up not being able to pave and meet our requirements? Mr. Nishikawa: Yeah, I recall...something...I don't know whether it was a study, but it was more of a justifying...trying to justify why we do...we use the method we do...what currently to pave roads, and bottom line was the fact that in order to do what, I guess Mr. Furfaro was saying, and to do all the patchwork and stuff before we surface would be so costly that, you know, the number of miles of roads we could resurface under the current budget would drastically be reduced. Council Chair Asing: Yeah. I'm not sure if you recall that piece... Mr. Furfaro: I do recall that. Council Chair Asing: And it was just... You know, when I heard that presentation that you made, it was, you know, a choice, and the choice was such that I believe we would probably end up with less than half of the roads being repaved that if we follow this procedure. Am I correct? Mr. Nishikawa: Well, I'm not sure whether it be half or what percentage... Council Chair Asing: Well, I'm not sure whether it's half, but it's considerable. Mr. Nishikawa: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Well, I only brought that up, Mr. Chair, because on Thursday I had a previously booked lunch with Congresswoman Mazie Hirono, and I wanted to look at the opportunity at some federal moneys to... You know, if we've done this kind of deferred maintenance for a long period of time, you know, maybe it's time to really raise our hand and say, hey we got to do this thing correctly, because, you know, I went to hotel school, but I'm reading all these instructions that, you know, I can see we're doing sometimes the minimum of the layering. But...and it says we can't do that if you do the patch and seal work appropriately; that's what it says, you know. If you're not going to do the patch and seal work appropriately, this thing says you should be laying 2 inches on top of it, not an inch and a half. Mr. Renaud: One thing that happened to one of the projects we did was Maluhia Road, and thanks to Donald pushing (inaudible), we did that road properly. We repaired first and then we did the overlay. So that's an example, thanks to Donald. Mr. Furfaro: And I did notice, when you did the shoulders at Maluhia, you did put another aggregate base on it, and then the asphalt, which is exactly what this says we should be doing. You know, the block top isn't going to adhere, and there's at least 3 gradings of different soil types from, you know, clay to sandy silt and so forth that determines these things. But you have to go out and evaluate it first. So I concur. We could come up short, but maybe this is the right time to be asking for some money too. So thank you gentlemen. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Chang. Mr. Chang: Yes, thank you. Ryan, I thought I heard you say we...do we use consultants, and where are the consultants from? Mr. Nishikawa: For the road resurfacing? Mr. Chang: Yeah. 312 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Nishikawa: No, we don't. We do the work in-house...the design in-house. Mr. Renaud: We can bring one consultant, that's not a problem, but I believe right now we have some expertise within county. Mr. Chang: No, I wasn't... I thought I heard of a consultant, and I'm not asking for one. But I thought if we had one... I think I'm noticing that we... Was the budget for the maintain roadways for 68,000, was that last year's request also? Last year's budget? Mr. Furfaro: There was a year, gentleman, that with the generosity of Mr. Asing, we actually put more money than we typically do in the budget, so the comparisons might be...not be totally consistent in trend. Mr. Nishikawa: You talking about the 79,000? That's for our operating budget materials...in this case, for the Hanapepe Baseyard. Each Baseyard has a line item like this, and so it'll vary between baseyards as to the amount of dollars we allocate for materials. Mr. Chang: I understand. Thank you. Ricky; thank you. - Mr. Kaneshiro: Councilmembers, any other questions for Ryan? Mr. Furfaro: I just want to follow-up. I think Mr. Chang asked a very good question, because you've got material in each Baseyard for patch and repair and so forth, but the moneys for the actual road resurfacing is in the capital appropriation, and when we get there, we should make note that in the past, and as I mentioned, under Mr. Asing we were able to give additional money in the CIP typically more than what we got, and that money actually comes from our roadway tax for county fuel prices. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Thank you Ryan. Thank you Ed. Moving right along, we're going to move into the CIP budget. We polled the members; most of the members said they want to move on. Mr. Furfaro: I blocked out my schedule `ti114:30, so... Mr. Kaneshiro: We blocked out `ti114:30, so we have all the departments here. Mr. Bynum: We just received this document too, right? Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, I understand, but you know, we all know how to read it and we got all of these guys here, and... Mr. Kaneshiro: We understand, but... Budget and review; they're all here. We got `ti114:30. Mr. Furfaro: We have a long way to go in the budget process, man. We got `till May 2, so... Mr. Bynum: And we haven't scheduled any callbacks, so... back. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah. Mr. Furfaro: So let's go through everything and then decide what we have to call 313 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kaneshiro: And decide what you guys want to do, you know. But then we're through the review process right now and should continue. At this time, Mr. Fujimoto, go right ahead. Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. I guess we're ready to jump into CIP. With that said, there is a separate parks department, and just to...I think it's easier if we just take care of parks first, because I think that's more...and then we can get into the more detail on public works side. Mr. Kaneshiro: Before we do that, Mr. Bynum, Councilmember Bynum, had a few questions for Wally. So before we go into the parks side, let's get Wally up here. Wally, Mr. Bynum had some questions for you. Mr. Bynum: I want you to help me and make sure I correctly... This is a new document, right, we just got? Mr. Rezentes: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Okay, and so the column here that says bond, this is a... I want you to distinguish the previous bond from the new bond. You're giving us information about the... Mr. Rezentes: Okay, last page. Mr. Bynum: Is it integrated in the first part of this document as well? Mr. Rezentes: Yeah, it should be. Mr. Bynum: Because I saw the last page was just kind of summary, so the 20... Mr. Rezentes: The last page is basically all of the new bond line items and projects that... This is our draft of the projects that we had listed at the time. Mr. Bynum: Right, so the new bond... Mr. Rezentes: And again, I just wanted to caveat the fact that these projects and the funding amounts may change; it may change depending on such things as the amounts received from grants, stimulus moneys, etc. So it's a moving target right now, and we will likely want to refine this as we work with the council on finalizing the bond ordinance as we move forward. Mr. Bynum: Okay, I just want to get acclimated, so... On this last page there's 2 columns. The column to the far right is total, right. Mr. Rezentes: Yes. Mr. Bynum: And that's all new...proposed new bond money. Mr. Rezentes: Yes. So if you run from 12 million all the way down to the lmillion line item that'll equal the 53,810... Mr. Furfaro: So the new bond is 53.8million. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I got that. But the 2 columns that are to the left, what is the distinction between those 2 columns? 314 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kaneshiro: For the record, Clint, just introduce yourself. CLINT SAIKI: You talking about the funding that's being proposed in these 2 columns? Mr. Furfaro: First 6 items in the left column. Mr. Saiki: The first column is primarily all of the solid waste projects, from the 9 million down to the 2 million. Those are the 6 solid waste projects that we're looking at, and it's purely to separate the solid waste projects since there were so many of them. The second column separates the rest of the projects which the 12 million represents the cost for Waimea and from the 1.9 it's the Wailua emergency bypass down through the balance of the projects. Mr. Bynum: Right, I got that. So some of these projects are new, and some of them are ones that have been on CIP... Mr. Saiki: Actually these are all'new"moneys°being•proposed.` There~are:aome of these projects may have had some initial funding for design in the past in our CIP, but these are all for new scope of work for new projects. Mr. Rezentes: And if you look at, just for your edification, the items 5 and 6, if you see the amounts for those, 6.99 and 2 million, and if you move to the right you see 600,000 and 1.6, that's...the reason for that difference is the timing of the project on the go forward basis. This is what was needed I think at the initial 2 or 3 year timeframe for that total project. Mr. Bynum: So the 6... So like on number 5, the 6 is for now... Mr. Rezentes: No, the 6.9 is the all in total. And the 600,000 is design and land acquisition is for that specific purpose. Mr. Bynum: So I should read that as saying total cost projected of a central composting facility is 6.9, and the total cost of a MRF is 2? Mr. Furfaro: That's permitting, design, and feasibility study. Mr. Saiki: That does not include the construction. Mr. Furfaro: And may I just expand... Mr. Bynum: So the composting is just what it say, design and no land acquisition. Mr. Rezentes: Right. Mr. Furfaro: If I can, in our past meetings when I was finance chair, we're talking of upwards of $6.5million on the MRF, of which a certain percentage is tied to the acquisition of the land, a certain percentage is talked in terms of the building of the facility, the operational components, and so forth, but what's in the bond is only the design and items as mentioned earlier. And for the other members here, we had 26.7 million focused on what will really be talked in terms of solid waste program, and we have 27.110 on all other projects. The 2 of them together is the 53810. Mr. Rezentes: Correct. 315 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Furfaro: And thank you for putting all the solid waste items in one category. Mr. Bynum: So the rest of this I get. The first column in the main body is the new bond...new proposed bond, the rest of it is the other CIP line items we're used to seeing, right? Mr. Saiki: If you look at pages 1 through 8, those are details for all of the projects which are inclusive of the new bond float, as well as the residual funds that are remaining in our CIP today that you saw on our...what was submitted for the ordinance. So the cumulative cost is what's shown on those pages. The detail of the 2, of the bond float as well as the residual amounts that are in the CIP now. Mr. Bynum: Got it. Okay, I just want to make I was acclimated to this document before I... Mr. Furfaro: And I just wanted to summarize for all members too, so... Mr. Chair can I look at items other than solid waste? Mr. Kaneshiro: Absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: Pono Kai seawall. Mr. Chang and I were discussing this, and you know, perhaps he wants to comment on this as well. Do we have a fairly good estimate from the consultants we have on how we arrived at that number? I know we had some Oceanit people looking at that, but I'd like to... Mr. Rezentes: I guess we initially were hoping to do parks first, but you want to change, or... Mr. Kaneshiro: Sorry about that. Mr. Furfaro: We'll come back to that. Mr. Chang and I will come back to that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, sorry about that. We'll start with that. Okay members, go to page 6 of your handout. You'll find the parks projects there under the CIP project data. With that, Mr. Rapozo, again introduce yourself, and also... Mr. Rapozo: For the record, Lenny Rapozo, director of parks and recreation. Mr. Nishihara: Mel Nishihara with the park planning development section. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Okay. Mr. Bynum you had a question? Mr. Furfaro: I have a question. Mr. Kaneshiro: He raised his hand first. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, but is he ready? Are you ready? Mr. Bynum: Yeah I'm ready. I'll just start with this. What's the status of the 11-acre park in Kapa`a? I didn't see it in here, so... Mr. Nishihara: The soccer... We completed the EA and we also completed the conceptual plan for that. We haven't started any on the construction design and... 316 APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kaneshiro: Hold on a second. Glenn, if you need to continue with your conversation, I would have to ask you to leave the chambers. We have the administration here before us to give us some information regarding the budget and programs. Mr. Bynum: I just...yeah, because I didn't hear what you said, Mel. Mr. Nishihara: We completed the EA and the conceptual design of the project; that's it. We haven't got any funding for do the construction design of the 11-acre site yet. So right now it's on hold. Mr. Bynum: So it's on hold, because I thought I was going to see it in the new bond. Okay. That's the answer. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Bynum are you finish with this? Mr. Bynum: I have other questions, but I can wait. Mr. Furfaro: But you turn the floor over. Thank you. I would like you to look at this item from a stand... Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Rosa, that also goes for you too, if you're going to continue with your conversation, I would say if you would please leave the chambers and continue. We're trying to go over our budget review with the administration, and the communication that you're continuing is disrupting our review. Mr. Furfaro, go ahead and continue. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Just for the purpose... When you sit in the front row, ladies and gentlemen, we get an echo. Mr. Kaneshiro: That's right. Mr. Furfaro: Okay? We can't hear their response, so... I just want you to look at Northshore parks improvement, 505,175. I just want to say with conceptually our plans to look at expanding Hanalei, I know this money is earmarked for Ha`ena as well as Black Pot area, but I just want you to consider, you know, perhaps a portion of that money is better used for us to actually do some land acquisition at this point, because once we have our new master plan for Black Pot, you know, it might change the scope of what we want to do with improving the pavilion. And I know we've addressed the most serious part with wastewater earlier on, but you know, that's a pretty sizable amount, and you know, if we could use a portion of it for the land acquisition and then once we have a master plan for Hanalei, you know, look at future bond money. But you know, to do something now and then find out we're going to move the pavilion or change the boat ramp or something like that, it may be something we want to consider in actually land acquisition at this point. And I only make that as a comment, because it is on our radar screen to come up with a master plan for Black Pot. Mr. Nishihara: Just to update you on that funding right now, Ha`ena... This project was earmarked... First priority is the Ha`ena comfort station, Ha`ena beach park improvement. Hopefully we can go out and re-bid the project again; we had a little problem on that, but also, we have some HTA money available that we want to use. So we on a crunch time trying to get done. If we do, then that would split this project amount where we estimated close to half a mil based on where the location of the project is. But there will be some funding left if, you know, we can get the 317 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) project out in time and get that HTA funding secured. So there will be some balance left once we encumber the money before the end of fiscal year. Mr. Furfaro: I appreciate you looking at that, Mel. Thank you Mr. Chair. Council Chair Asing: Let me follow up. Mel, this is specific to Ha`ena beach park eh? Mr. Furfaro: No, it's both. Mr. Nishihara: It's... It also mentions line item pavilion, but majority, right now we haven't done anything for the pavilion area. We...this project, as you well know, is a long standing project o£.. Council Chair Asing: Very long standing. Mr. Nishihara: Very, very long. Council Chair Asing: Very long standing. As a matter of fact, you know, that park has seen very little improvement for years and years and years, and the parking especially is just horrible. Mr. Nishihara: So that's... You know, we have all the specs, everything, bids all ready to do. We had a little problem on the...we had to cancel the bids, but we going out again. Council Chair Asing: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: You have an idea of what you might get in the way of money from HTA? Mr. Nishihara: HTA, 250,000 I believe. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mel. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead Dickie. Mr. Chang: Thank you Chair. You know, Mel, I had a question. I heard you saying that the money for Ha`ena will be used for the comfort station? Mr. Nishihara: Comfort station, do the ADA walkways in there, and the parking lot. Of course the parking lot is based on what the community want. It's just going to be typical base course; we're not going to pave it at all. That's what the community wanted. The only section that's going to be concreted or AC will be the ADA parking. Mr. Chang: Are we going to re-stripe that area? Mr. Nishihara: Can't re-stripe on... Mr. Chang: Re-stripe in meaning identifying the parking stalls. Mr. Nishihara: It's going to be as is. We just going improve it, base course, and that's...we not going to put any kind AC pavement. That wasn't what the community wanted when we went through all these meetings. So... Mr. Chang: So even the handicap parking stall is not going be... 318 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Nishihara: The handicap we'll provide the parking be concreted...we have provided parking for, and that will be clearly marked. But everything else will be as is, only thing we just going to trim and dress the parking lot. Mr. Chang: Because I'm sure that, you know, having HTA moneys, you know, because it's a heavily traffic local and tourist area, especially camping is permitted out there also? Is that correct, Ha`ena park? Mr. Nishikawa: That's the park by the dry cave. Mr. Chang: Yes. Mr. Nishikawa: There's camping there, but we talking about the end of the road. Mr. Chang: You not talking about Ke`e, right? Mr. Nishikawa: No, ...,..e= - - - -_ - ~ :, _ _ - -_ Mr. Chang: You talking Ha`ena. Is there money for Ke`e? Mr. Nishikawa: That's State. Mr. Chang: That's State, yeah, I understand that. But we're talking Ha`ena, right? Okay. Because I just had heard...and I'm sure... I hadn't heard from the community, but just people in general, it's hard to identify the parking out there. And earlier we had George over here with that big $6,000 blower or something. I just kind of visualize blowing that whole area clean, and then re-striping to at least make the appearance look nice out there, because as the chair was saying, the parking there is pretty horrendous, because you can't park going to Tunnels, you know, all that area. So that's where most of the people park, and they either walk or they swim, or walk along the beach. So that's long overdue as far as that park. I'm glad we got money. Mr. Bynum: If I can interject? Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Bynum, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: I concur with Councilmember Chang that there are several north shore parks I'd love to see us organize the parking, because we have parking issues everywhere. But just, you know, I also understand, Mel, that, you know, a strong vocal element on the north shore that comes to the meetings is opposed to that kind of paving, and so I just wanted Councilmember Chang to know that... I would love to see us organize the parking there and at Hanalei pavilion in particular where it's always problematic and always a mess. And you know, I know if we organize it and stripe it, we would park more efficiently and get more cars, and it would have a better feel, and that's my personal opinion. But to parks credit, they're listening to a very strong group out there that is very invested in their...anything beyond Hanalei bridge... I got that right, Mel, they've been opposed to that kind of parking area, is that? Mr. Nishihara: That's correct. Mr. Kaneshiro: Derek. Mr. Kawakami: I got a question now that kind of lines up with this. I think some of the push back on these kind of parking projects also it has to deal with runoff too, especially close to 319 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) the beaches. So if we're considering this, have we ever considered some sort of like porous concrete that I've been seeing around. You know like Po`ipu Beach, that whole thing floods, and I was wondering, you know, if we ever thought of using that kind of porous concrete in our projects? Mr. Nishihara: I think we...when we worked with the community we talked about it. We talked about different types o£..our consultants brought up different types of parking, and one was this I think using plastics, which is...I'm not sure on that. It's cells, fill it up, grow the grass in. From what... They came back and when we met with the community on that, it didn't last long, so you know, you end up with this same thing, you know. And again, you know, likelihood there are problems where if you look at Po`ipu beach, that's the lowest areas always flooded. You know, historically it has been that before it paved or cleared. So you can have porous material, but you have water table that high, where are you going to put it? Mr. Kawakami: That's true. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Any other questions for parks department under the CIP? Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: The Kalaheo neighborhood floor...gym...is that... It's zeroed in here. Is that because it's done? Mr. Nishihara: They should be starting sometime this week. Mr. Bynum: Right, so it's not a budget item because it's already been funded. Mr. Rapozo: It's being used now. Mr. Bynum: Okay, good, good. Great answer. Mr. Kawakami: I got a question if you're not ready. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, go ahead Derek. Mr. Kawakami: You know under lighting retrofits, is the habitat conservation plan included under the lighting retrofits, because there is a study portion of it too, yeah, the lighting side, which the actual HCP. So I was kind of wondering where that was as far as funding. Mr. Nishihara: All I know is we have...we have the HCP plan that's under contract that's ongoing, and the money that we have here is my understanding is supposed to match the State money that's for Vidinha, Peter Rayno, Isenberg, Lihu`e county park, and the Hanapepe stadium light retrofits. So contract is being reviewed by county attorney. Once that's...form and legality, once that's done then we'll send it out to a consultant for execution, then we can give notice to proceed as far as the design work. So if you're saying we...there should be provision for the HCP plan, I don't think we have reached the point to know what kind of commitment money-wise the plan's going to take. I don't think we have reached that as far as the HCP plan. Maybe that's why there's no money there, but that's all I know on that. Mr. Kawakami: Well I know eventually if they don't approve it, this is something we're going to have to continually fund, because there's no way out of it, so...I mean that's a good answer you gave me, and I think we should be aware that if there's nothing here, we got to be prepared to see these guys come up and ask us for some money, because there's no way around the HCP. 320 C • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Any other questions for parks? Tim you have one more on the parks side on the CIP? Mr. Bynum: I may send over some written question, because I haven't had the... It looks like some of these funds have been moved around. They were in one place, now they're in a different place. Is that right? Like... Well, no, I guess I do have questions about the islandwide parks ADA full accessibility. That's like phase 2 of the walkways and parking areas, or... Because we had extensive discussion at...during the previous council before there was a parks department, or actually with Donald, about round 2 of ADA improvements and... So maybe you could just give a short explanation of that. Mr. Nishihara: Very brief. I believe this is hopefully the catch-all on all those projects that we need possibly to go back or we need to start the tying the dots together so to speak. I mean we doing some now through building division quite a bit, department of justice and some (inaudible) transition plan, but there's others that we have to complete down the road right now. So...but we are doing some...building is doing right now quite a bit trying to get...tie the dots on all the projects that some of them have completed but we have to go back and complete it to meet the new requirements. ~ -"' - " Mr. Kaneshiro: Anything else committee members on the parks on the CIP budget? Okay, thanks. Mr. Fujimoto: I guess the easiest way to address this is by starting from page 1. We'll go right down the list. So the first section is wastewater. The big item on that one is the 12million that we added to the bond float for Waimea wastewater treatment plant. Any other questions? Mr. Bynum: I mean that's designed already, yeah? Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. We're going to be doing a design build. Mr. Bynum: So no luck in getting stimulus funds? Mr. Tschupp: Actually... Yeah, that one we're on the state's list for $7.5 million worth of ARRA funds for that project. Mr. Bynum: Seven and a half... So what's the 12 here? Mr. Tschupp: Well, the bulk of the project. The project budget is 12 million. We may in fact just yesterday or this morning we got correspondence from the health department that they may actually be able to fund the project not...through a combination of SRF plus ARRA for the full funding. That would be great. That would allow the bond float to... I've got about 4 projects, all of which are smaller that are not in the CIP because we couldn't get them in. Mr. Bynum: So we may get other funding for this 12 which would... Mr. Tschupp: But if the 12 gets funded by a combination of ARRA, which is looking really good, and SRF funds, then hopefully we'll be able to... Mr. Bynum: I don't know what SRF is. Mr. Tschupp: The state revolving fund. 321 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Bynum: Oh, okay. For the wastewater... Right, right. Mr. Tschupp: For wastewater, that's the traditional source of funding. Federal funds funnel through the state. Mr. Bynum: So we might move that 12 to other departments, Ed. Mr. Tschupp: Well, that's of course not my call. I can use it. Mr. Bynum: I'm sure you could. Because I... I mean that's good news, because I thought that was a high priority. We set it as a high priority. It was a ready to go one, right? So it seems like if we're going to get stimulus money, that's a good one. Mr. Tschupp: And the health department is very... They really like that project partly because it's got the renewable energy component in it, and so it looks green, and... Mr. Bynum: Right, and I won't ask you to talk about that now, but in the future we want...I want... That's a question I wanted to pose you about, because I think we've said that in some of our stimulus funds that we were going to look at alternative energy in wastewater... Mr. Tschupp: Different pools of stimulus moneys. Mr. Bynum: Yeah, so...and you know, again maybe not at this point, but that'd be a good topic for you to come brief the council on, I think, yeah? Mr. Tschupp: Yeah. Mr. Kaneshiro: Anything else for wastewater? Any other questions, members? I guess that was a previous ticket item that you had there on wastewater. Mr. Bynum: Just a procedural thing, because there's this thing that... These 2 items, one that says minus 123 and one that adds 123. Mr. Fujimoto: That's just to close out the line, I believe. Mr. Tschupp: We replaced the centrifuge about a year ago, which was an appropriation of 600,000. The project bid for 477, so that minus is returning the balance of funds. Mr. Bynum: Right, but right above it there's a plus with the same... You mean both of them? So both of these are gone. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: You had a question for Ed, Lani, on this from wastewater? Ms. Kawahara: No. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay Ed, thank you. Thank you for the report. Mr. Fujimoto: Councilman Bynum, just to confirm that. That is just really just to cancel that line item just to close out. Mr. Bynum: So you put it in there and then you put a line to cancel it. Okay. That's just me understanding. 322 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Fujimoto: The next CIP category is solid waste. This one you guys had a lot. Anyway, Troy. So again, on the bond float we're looking at about 26.7million of additional projects, plus ongoing projects. Any particular questions? Ms. Kawahara: If you can help me. The Kekaha lateral expansion and the Kekaha landfill phase 2 closure, those were I believe...were they on our list for the stimulus? Mr. Kawakami: It was appropriations request. Ms. Kawahara: Oh okay. So none of these have any chance of getting any of the stimulus moneys. Mr. Fujimoto: Yeah, it didn't make it. It has to go through a federal process or... Ms. Kawahara: Competitive or something, okay. That's all I have for right now. Thanks. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay' 1VIr. Bynum. ~' ~ " `"' ° " Mr. Bynum: Kapa`a RTS reconstruction, what is that? Mr. Fujimoto: It's a refuse transfer station. Mr. Tanigawa: RTS is acronym for refuse transfer station. Mr. Bynum: So that's a project we're moving on now? Mr. Tanigawa: Yeah, currently we're trying to finalize negotiations with the consultant, contract negotiations for planning design work. Mr. Bynum: And that's going to accommodate drop-off recycling? Mr. Tanigawa: Yeah. Mr. Bynum: So the new landfill money, that's not all the money, that's just planning money, or...? Mr. Tanigawa: No. It's just some planning funds. We already have some funds currently in the CIP under general fund. The additional funds are for additional planning funds and land acquisition costs. Mr. Bynum: So this 3.4 is for land acquisition and planning. Mr. Tanigawa: A little bit planning, yeah. Mr. Bynum: And the same with the central composting, that's for planning or land acquisition or... Mr. Tanigawa: Planning and some land acquisition funds. Mr. Bynum: And the same for the MRF. These are like first steps. Mr. Fujimoto: Right. 323 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Ms. Kawahara: I don't remember. I'm getting tired. Mr. Bynum: We don't know where it is yet. Ms. Kawahara: No. What is the central composting site. Mr. Bynum: That's where we're going to deal with the greenwaste. Ms. Kawahara: It's a greenwaste facility? Mr. Tanigawa: Yeah, that's a facility that manages greenwaste. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. I mean that makes sense automatically. I just didn't...I haven't heard of it today. Sorry. Mr. Tanigawa: No problem. Mr. Kaneshiro: Derek, go ahead. Mr. Fujimoto: Anyway, let me just try to give you a brief explanation. The central composting site is just a central site where we receive all the greenwaste, and where we process it, where we grind it, and we would compost it ourselves. The MRF is a center where you actually sort the recyclables. Today the standard is a single stream what they call single stream, so everything is mixed together-newspaper, plastic bottles, everything, and then so you pick that up in a container, and then you bring it to a central site and it goes through a conveyer and people just sort the things out. Ms. Kawahara: And I remember now. The greenwaste stuff we're paying...there's 3 different people that a certified that we're paying, yeah. Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. One of the things that we found out is when we did the Kaloko cleanup that did...we actually saturated their capacity. So there was a period when they couldn't take any greenwaste. And so we felt that there is a strong need for us to control a site and permit it. Mr. Bynum: And waste reduction consultant services is? Why don't you call it waste to energy consultant? Mr. Fujimoto: Alternative... What is the correct term? Alternative conversion technology I think is the politically correct. Ms. Kawahara: So that's a study for waste to energy. one? Mr. Bynum: So now we have waste to energy, incinerator, and what's the new Mr. Fujimoto: There's so many different processes right now. Mr. Bynum: So in that... Wasn't this in the... So this is money that's moved from the general CIP to the bond? Mr. Tanigawa: No. 324 • Mr. Fujimoto: No, it was always there. • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Tanigawa: It's in the general fund. Mr. Bynum: Because it's in the bond line item now on this document I'm looking at. Ms. Kawahara: Is that where it's supposed to be? Mr. Tanigawa: I stand corrected. It's in the bond fund from a prior fiscal year. Mr. Bynum: Oh, it's not new bond. Mr. Tanigawa: It's not in the new proposed bond. Mr. Bynum: I got it. Click. The status of that, we haven't hired that person or... Mr. Fujimoto: We're in the process ofexecuting a contract, I believe. Mr. Bynum: In the process of executing a contract? Mr. Tanigawa: It's just going to be doing a ownership analysis...very preliminary step to determine what the optimum ownership scenario should be for the county. For waste to energy facility, it could apply to any type of other major investment type of facility that requires a major investment. Mr. Fujimoto: Feasibility study. Mr. Tanigawa: It's basically a feasibility study on ownership. Mr. Bynum: Is there a contract... Is there a scope of work or some kind of document we could review? Mr. Tanigawa: It's under negotiation now. After award... I believe it has been awarded, so I think we can forward something like that to you folks. Mr. Bynum: It has been awarded? Mr. Tanigawa: Yes. Mr. Bynum: This 385,809 has been awarded. Mr. Tanigawa: No. That's the fund... That's the amount of money that's available in the...and I believe what's been awarded is not shown there, but it's a portion of that amount budgeted. Mr. Bynum: You don't know how much? Mr. Tanigawa: I'd say it's about a hundred...a little over $100,000. Mr. Bynum: A hundred thousand. Okay, so this was funds...this was funds to study the feasibility of waste to energy. 325 APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Tanigawa: No. It's the ownership analysis. Mr. Bynum: But it's not like the waste to energy in any way? Mr. Tanigawa: It is, because it looks at the cost, but it's, you know, considering the cost and the different scenarios or options for ownership whether it's public or private or a joint venture. Mr. Bynum: Whether we fund it or contract it and where the capital investment comes from. Does it look at how much the capital investment would be? Mr. Tanigawa: It anticipates a certain size facility and a certain cost. Mr. Furfaro: At some point it would say that the investment is greater than the risk associated with it, and that's what it would be. It would be a study about the value of the asset being owned by us or them. Mr. Bynum: I guess it's just news to me that before we adopted the integrated solid waste plan we're spending money on the feasibility of things we haven't voted on yet. So that's news to me. Mr. Furfaro: Well let's make sure we all understand. Is that in the old bond or the new bond. Because with the new bond... Mr. Tanigawa: Old. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, but I want to point out, with the new bond, we have a whole ordinance to go through. We have a whole discussion point of what's in there. But the stuff from the old bond that might be carried over is still subject to the council having an evaluation of it. I want to make sure we understand, the new bond we have plenty of time to look at the items. Mr. Bynum: Well, if... I said...and maybe it's my fault in terms of doing due diligence that it's news to me that we're spending money on the feasibility of waste to energy before we make that decision, so you know, I assume if it's... Unless this happened before I was on council and I missed that, because... Ms. Kawahara: How old is this original funding? Mr. Fujimoto: Well actually, the study is about prolonging the landfill. Ms. Kawahara: No, no, no. The actual funds. How long back ago. Mr. Furfaro: Let me answer that for you. The bond, when we float a bond, we have 2 years to actually make decisions about spending that money before we enter into a penalty period, okay, and we did not float a bond last year. So this is at least...we're on the verge of hitting that deadline. Mr. Bynum: So was this funding before I was on the council then? Mr. Furfaro: No, you were on the council. It's the first year you were on the council, I think. I don't disagree with what you're asking, but I want to make sure we understand. It's not a study about waste to energy. It is a study about if we do go into waste and energy, do we want to own the asset, or somebody else operate the asset. And now that I think of it, Mr. Bynum 326 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) may not have been on the council. This is probably a 3-year old bond. You've been on the council 2 years. It might be 3. Mr. Bynum: This is my third budget. But it's just news to me that we're spending money on... Mr. Furfaro: Let's have the finance director answer the question. Mr. Bynum: Okay. Mr. Rezentes: I'm sorry. I just wanted to clarify. It's not specific to a waste to energy technology. It's open up. It's open for other technologies that may want to participate in the RFP, and then an analysis ultimately will be made as to what... Mr. Bynum: So it would be applicable to a composting facility or a MRF or a... Mr. Rezentes: Other types of technologies, as well as...inclusive of waste to energy. Mr. Bynum: So if we're awarded the contract, I can see the contract and the scope of work, right? Mr. Tanigawa: I don't have it with us. Mr. Bynum: Well, I don't mean right now, this minute. Mr. Furfaro: But just so we're all clear. The solid waste people, you kind of brought this question onto yourself, because that understanding could be a study on the value of ownership versus leasing or operating itself, on a MRF, on whatever it could. But you said we're going to be using it for evaluating the asset of a waste to management plan. It's not about are we having a waste to energy plan; it's about that asset, and if you did enter a contract, you know I think you should be sharing that with us. If it's still funds that can be used from the previous bond to evaluate MRFs and so forth, then you know, we should have a clear understanding of that as well. I'm sorry, Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Like I said, you know, if that's the case, then it's not... You know, maybe I missed something somewhere along the line. But now I want to understand it more clearly, so... Ms. Kawahara: I appreciate that, Councilman Furfaro. That clarified it. I do... I do want to say the reason why we're struggling up here, in case anybody's wondering, is I have had people asking about the use of any moneys to do a study on what may be a waste to energy plan before we even try to do diversion programs to the highest and best amount possible, as people have been saying to me that that would be further down the line after we figure out how much we're able to divert from the waste stream. So that's just where...why there's difficulty in understanding where this came from and what it's for. I hadn't known that there was something out there kind of like ticking away that was linked to that. So I...not ticking, okay. Mr. Furfaro: Don't think it's linked to that. Here's how we should pose the question. It's an ownership asset study, but at the same time, what you just told us in solid waste, on the flipside we're looking for a bond that talks about us designing and studying a MRF. So the money could be used to evaluate that, but what we heard was we have a contract issued about asset management of a plant related to waste to energy. We heard that. Okay, so let's say it's for an ownership asset study and it's not yet determined what we're studying. 327 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Bynum: Waste conversion. Mr. Rezentes: Waste conversion technology. Mr. Bynum: That's not what it says. It says waste reduction, and so... Ms. Kawahara: So we'll just get a contract from you so we can see it ourselves. That will work huh? We could get a definition of... Put our minds at ease? No, not our minds at ease, but where we are. Mr. Bynum: I don't want to belabor this because we'll come back to it, but what I want to say is that...similar to what Councilmember Kawahara is saying that I received communication that says there's money in the budget to do a waste to energy study. That was news to me. I went looking for it. When I saw this waste reduction consultant services, reduction doesn't necess...is not the same as conversion, and so then I asked where is this in the budget and I got pointed to this. And then that's hence my question, because you know, I'm not convinced one way or the other on waste to energy, but we haven't voted on it. And I think my position has been we shouldn't pull the trigger until we pull the trigger, you know. We shouldn't spend money until that decision is made, and so... Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, I'm not going to beat this horse dead. The buggah is also make, but the word over there is waste reduction. To me, tells me it's tied to a MRF. Mr. Bynum: Well, and I just heard conversion... Mr. Furfaro: And we shared with him we heard a different word. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll come with a communication. Mr. Bynum: We'll discuss this further. Mr. Fujimoto: To just put this body at ease, the new bond float does not include any bonds for that, what you guys talking about. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Bynum: Well I didn't know the old one did either. Mr. Kaneshiro: Derek, you had a question you wanted to ask? Mr. Kawakami: No. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Anything else for solid waste projects that's on the CIP budget? here. Ms. Kawahara: I love seeing the MRF on here. Thank you for having the MRF on Mr. Bynum: I think the new information we received today about the new bond that we're allocating funds to move on composting and materials...that's good. So I'm pleased to see that. 328 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Ms. Kawahara: It's really good to see. Thank you. Mr. Bynum: One other question. This host community benefits. Is that from last year or is that new? Mr. Fujimoto: The last budget. Mr. Kawakami: Can I... You know, because you raise that question, all last year or before last year, CIP projects would be in regular font and all new proposed ones is in bold. Mr. Fujimoto: Excuse me? Mr. Kawakami: That's an easy identifiable way to see all new CIP projects are the proposed in bold? Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. Mr. Kawakami: Okay. ._ `- Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Ms. Kawahara: Can I ask about the Maluhia... Mr. Kaneshiro: We're not on roads. Mr. Fujimoto: If no more questions for solid waste, go to page 2. Mr. Kaneshiro: I want to address a concern that was brought up to me. I have a note that was passed to me here speaking about saying that they want to say... For the second or third time today we have asked for public testimony before we started the CIP budget. So what I would like to do is still continue with the CIP budget. When we're done with the presentations, then anyone else who wanted to speak will have the opportunity to do so. So at this point I want to continue with out CIP going to the different departments. I will give you an opportunity to speak after we're done with the administration, I'll open it up for public just to let you know, because I've already given the opportunity before we started. So with that... Mr. Fujimoto: This is going to get a little complicated, because we've got a combination of roads, engineering, and building. There's 4 projects: Apapane road is roads. Hanapepe flood control and Waimea flood control, I think those 2 are actually levee projects, and Hanapepe and Waimea levees, so that... Sorry, those are building projects. Excuse me. Hanapepe Waimea levee is a roads project, because it's dealing with maintenance. I'm not sure who's going end up taking it. Doug, are you going to be doing that levee? The erosion control? So 3 roads and one engineering. Ms. Kawahara: Hanapepe flood control is engineering? Mr. Fujimoto: Hanapepe flood control and Waimea flood control are actually certification of the levees, I believe. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, so we'll start with the drainage projects. Anyone has questions on that at this point under the CIP budget? 329 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Ms. Kawahara: I just have a question just the formality. So when these are on the list, because some of them have been on the CIP list for a long time, are you saying that you're committing to actually going to be doing these within a (inaudible). Mr. Fujimoto: Well, Ryan can give one update on Apapane Road. It's supposed to be (inaudible). Mr. Nishikawa: For Apapane Road, we plan to do the work. We just have not got the time right now to address that particular project, but we do intend to complete the work...do the work. Ms. Kawahara: This fiscal year? Mr. Nishikawa: I hope so. Mr. Fujimoto: Again, in defense of Ryan, we've had several major emergency projects, and Aliomanu Road was one of them. So he was spending a lot of time working on that, and that is where we put the sand bags and now we're still trying to push forward to get the permanent repair done there. And he's actually had...was actually doing the levee work prior to engineering taking it over. So there was a lot of other priorities. This Apapane Road came about after the 30 and 40 days of rain. Apapane is on the valley side of that...on the Grove Farm museum side. There's an erosion from a county road, and so we need to address that, because all the county water is flowing through that area. So it is important that we do it, but it's not a real high priority project. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Anything else for drainage projects? If not, move on to the next items would be on the highway projects. Mr. Furfaro: May I make a statement for the council benefit, so that... You know, a lot of items we're going to continue to have discussion on and so forth, but for the new members of the council as well, when it comes to roads and so forth, every 5 years we get earmarked some money for us, and we have some projects that are identified accordingly. And then of course we have other projects that need to be in place that we could actually apply some stimulus money to project ready and so forth that deal with transportation. And then of course we have our_ regular roads maintenance that deals with moneys available to us from the county fuel tax and so forth. So I just wanted to summarize this. There's 3 opportunities here for money for the new members, and we are in that 5-year cycle right now for federal moneys. So thank you for letting me get that clarified. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for that statement. Mr. Fujimoto: I guess one way to address this is if you look at the new bond float, roads is involved with that Wailua emergency bypass road, 1.9million, Aliomanu road repair, emergency repair. Those 2 are roads projects. You have any questions on those 2 projects? Mr. Kawakami: I got a question on Aliomanu road. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Kawakami, go ahead. Mr. Kawakami: Have you ever identified the cause of why that road is in the condition that it is? Mr. Fujimoto: Aliomanu? 330 Mr. Kawakami: Mr. Fujimoto: Mr. Kawakami: Yes. Just high surf. High surf. • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. And so the erosion is going to harden that coastline. We're looking at putting a revetment, permanent revetment. Mr. Kawakami: Is that revetment going to affect any of the other properties? Mr. Fujimoto: I think definitely anything will have some consequence, so we are doing an EA, and the EA should address the consequences of our proposed improvements. Ms. Kawahara: In line with his, are you guys working with Jim O'Connell? Mr. Fujimoto: Yes, definitely. Arid you know, initially we were looking at all' kinds of different alternatives, you know, from concrete walls to whatever, but it's coming back to, you know, what is the most natural, and I think we talking about revetment, which is rocks. It dissipates the energy better and it's more natural. I think it's more environmentally friendly from all the different solutions, and I think cost-wise too, I think it's probably going to be the most cost effective. Ms. Kawahara: Great. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay committee members. Any other questions? Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Maybe I had my thinking wrong, but the Hardy street improvements I thought were on the STIP. Mr. Fujimoto: It is. In fact, we're asking for the match. The million dollars is the match to the STIP. I think the project is like four point something million, and so the million dollars is our match. Mr. Bynum: Okay, that answers that... I didn't know the cost was that high. Mr. Fujimoto: That's an engineering project. Mr. Bynum: And that's become a high priority to move, huh? Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Fujimoto: And again, thanks to Doug, the highway department has given us an opportunity to pursue program management to actually pursue that project. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thank you. Anything else that pops out? 331 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Ms. Kawahara: The Pono Kai revetment wall? That's the one, right, everybody talks about. Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. Pono Kai seawall, I think the question was... Mr. Furfaro: (Inaudible) that was my 4 item before I was told we were going to parks. I want to reverse back to there. We spent money for a consultant, it was Oceanit, and my question was this, if you don't mind Lani... Ms. Kawahara: No. Mr. Furfaro: Do we have a more firm number as Mr. Chang and I were discussing that number? Mr. Fujimoto: No. Mr. Furfaro: Do we have something in today's dollar to fix the rocks...the wall fronting Pono Kai? Mr. Fujimoto: Let me give you some history on that project. Initially, again, somehow it got dropped on Ryan's lap, and since then, it went back and forth. I think Doug, again, volunteered to do that because of his...just to ensure that his contract guys were fully funded. And so now the project is now with Doug. But anyway, to make a long story short, this budget item number came from Aliomanu cost estimates, and we do not, as far as I know, we do not have any firm numbers yet on that wall, the construction estimate. We're still trying to finalize the EA, and that would... Mr. Furfaro: What did we get by hiring Oceanit? Mr. Fujimoto: No. They're doing the EA, which is actually the first part of the planning process that we need to complete before we can do anything. Mr. Furfaro: But they were asked right here by me in the last council meeting, can you give us some today estimated cost of that revetment, and I was almost certain that they were more than willing to give us a cost and we also wanted our seagrant people to look at these estimates. Mr. Fujimoto: And again, I guess they throw numbers very liberally, and sometimes prematurely. In fact, their first estimate was like $900,000...600 to 900,000. Mr. Furfaro: I remember that, as Mr. Bynum is pointing out, and that's why now I'm looking at 2.5million, right? Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: I'm going, ho that's about 3 times. I'm going to have to reconsider the next time we hire these guys. Mr. Fujimoto: What we're looking at doing now is constructing a wall behind the existing wall because of the so called issues. Mr. Furfaro: I understood that as being one of the options. 332 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Fujimoto: Because of that, you know, we wanted to make sure that we have enough money in there. And so I used the estimate they gave us for Aliomanu, which is about the same distance; we talking about 500 feet of front, you know, revetment work, and their estimate... Mr. Furfaro: So (inaudible) the same at Aliomanu? Are we going to dig a trench and pour a revetment and then let it naturally erode? We're doing the same kind of work? Mr. Fujimoto: Well, again, we're still looking at various options. I think we're looking at a revetment...one hybrid between a revetment and a seawall. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Well like I said earlier, you know, this is in the new bond, right. We have to go through the whole ordinance. We're going to have more discussion on that, but I was very surprised to see that number. Mr. Fujimoto: Yes, and I think... Mr. Furfaro: But you've answered my question for now. Mr. Fujimoto: For all practical purposes, I'm hoping it's going to be a lot less, but right now, again based on preliminary estimates, we using that as our budget. Mr. Bynum: I'll remember that when you come back here and say you need some more money to get it done. Council Chair Asing: Okay, with that, anymore questions for Donald on... I guess Donald you referred us back to the bond because of the 2 road issues? Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. Council Chair Asing: Are we going to go back to highway projects now? Am I correct? With that Councilmembers, any questions on the... We're on page 3 on highway projects now. Mr. Furfaro: I have none, Mr. Chair. Council Chair Asing: Okay. Anyone have any questions? We're on page 3 now, highway projects. Mr. Fujimoto: I'd just like to mention. I think you guys already know that the bike path did make the stimulus funds, so it will be funded through the stimulus program, Kapa`a through Lihi segment. Mr. Furfaro: From Lydgate to Lihi, right? Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: And then in the other federal money, the 5-year piece, we have money for the Nawiliwili side, right? Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. Mr. Bynum: We're asking. We need to get it. 333 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Fujimoto: Yes, it's in the STIP, and again, you know, thanks to Doug, I think we're leveraged. I mean Maui was trying to apply too, but they're not quite as ready as we are, so I think we've got a good position on the EA process. Mr. Bynum: Our strategy pays off. Mr. Chang: Can you call Glenn Mickens and let him know the good news? Mr. Fujimoto: I can talk to him about it. I'll personally walk him through. Council Chair Asing: Can we take the next one. Shall we go to page 4? Mr. Fujimoto: And I think that Wailua bypass road, I think the State legislature is going to appropriate it...sounds like a good chance they're going to give us... Any other questions? Council Chair Asing: Okay. Can we go on to buildings then now? We're on page 5. Mr. Kawakami: Question. Council Chair Asing: Yes, Councilmember Kawakami. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Mr. Chair. The adolescent residential treatment center, what are the funds specifically for? Mr. Haigh: funds. Mr. Kawakami: Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Haigh: number. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Haigh: Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Haigh: Mr. Furfaro: Well, the project's been closed, and so we're just getting rid of the Oh, I see. (Inaudible) was our financial exposure up unto that point? Well, there's a whole history behind this that's not reflected in this I know the history. My question is directed (inaudible). This number does not all reflect money that we've spent. Okay. So it doesn't reflect the whole project. No. Thank you. Mr. Bynum: It's just what's left, right? Mr. Haigh: It's just money that's left that hasn't been reallocated. Council Chair Asing: Daryl, I have a question. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead, Chairman Asing. 334 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Council Chair Asing: Okay. In the middle of the page, historic county building, is that enough money? Mr. Haigh: If we get our FEMA grant for hardening the windows, it should be adequate. Council Chair Asing: If we do not, then we will be short. Mr. Haigh: If we do not, we may have to ask for some more funds. We still don't have 100% design, so we not, you know...we're still moving with the estimate. So once we get the 100% design done, we'll have a better idea of where we're at. FEMA is poised to approve the grant, but we have some issues with out hazard mitigation plan that civil defense is working on. Mr. Bynum:. That's the grant we used for the fishbowl as well? The same? Mr. Haigh: Yeah, it's relate... It's a wind mitigation grant, similar grant. Right now we have one for the Piikoi building, one for the Moikeha building, and one for the...where planning is. ._ ~ _. _ _...--._ _ ___ . Mr. Furfaro: But they're 3 separate grants. Mr. Haigh: Well, they have Moikeha and the one at planning are mixed together, but there's... Yeah, 3 grants. Actually, I've got 4 FEMA grants right now (inaudible), because we had a wind study also that we're managing. We're managing 4 grants right now. Mr. Bynum: And that was... That came about from initiative from the building division? Mr. Haigh: Yes. We were very fortunate. These grants had been put in years ago, and after the disasters that happened on the other islands, the mitigation measures from the other counties fell down and we were their last resort. It's good to have a reputation for spending money. Mr. Bynum: So taking our opportunities when we find them. Mr. Haigh: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Yes Mr. Chair. I'd like to know, the number you have in here for the new Kapa`a fire station... Mr. Haigh: Excuse me, I couldn't hear. Mr. Furfaro: Yes, I'll wait. Did you need to answer him? Mr. Haigh: With 2 coming in at once, I don't hear it... Mr. Furfaro: I have that problem. Mr. Haigh: I'm getting older. 335 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Furfaro: Does the Kapa`a fire station reflect the money that we recently approved for the waterline? Mr. Haigh: Mr. Furfaro waterline. Mr. Haigh: Mr. Furfaro waterline. Mr. Haigh: Mr. Furfaro: No, it does not. It does not. So there's additional money on top of this that's for the That's correct. So this is basically the building project estimate without the Correct. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Any other questions on the building projects before us right now under the capital improvement budget data? Ms. Kawahara: Yes, thank you chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Ask the question. for? Ms. Kawahara: Piikoi interior renovation. Is that the one that we've been waiting Mr. Haigh: Well, the administration has funded it. It has not been finalized how that funding will be sent, but they're plugging a number in there as we finalize the decision of where to spend the money. Mr. Bynum: For construction though. Mr. Haigh: Construction yes. There's got to be design... Mr. Bynum: Not planning or design... Mr. Haigh: Design and construction, yes. And how much design, we don't know yet depending on what direction they want to take. Mr. Bynum: And some day they'll tell us who goes there, right? Who (inaudible). Mr. Haigh: I'll defer to Ed. Mr. Kaneshiro: You have a timeline on this? Perhaps what we need to do is come with a communication or request for a timeline on this particular project. Mr. Haigh: That would probably be the best way to get an answer from us. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, you'll get one. Mr. Furfaro, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: So is this a new accounting term called plug? I'm serious. 336 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Haigh: I mean it's done periodically, we do that, we just plug in numbers. I mean like this civic center phase 3 which had the historic county building, the annex, and the (inaudible), we plugged a number in there, and then as we develop design and plans, then we start using the funds. Mr. Furfaro: And I don't mean that in any other way, but it's very important for us to understand. You put a number there to identify a cost. It may not be refined. It might not be scoped out. It might not have building specs. It might not have fire department's comments. It's a plug. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? You had a question Lani? Anyone else? Committee members. If not, thank you. We'll go on to... We'll skip over... We've already done parks... Hold on one second, Mr. Asing has a question. Council Chair Asing: Before you go off of that, you're going to be sending over... Mr. Kaneshiro: A communication on the timeline of the...L Council Chair Asing: Well, besides timeline, I'd like to know exactly what the plan is. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Council Chair Asing: I don't want just timeline. Timeline to do what. What is the plan. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, you got that? Mr. Furfaro: You hear the Chair wants more definite information as to regards to the plug. Mr. Haigh: Thank you for being so efficient in these meetings. We're 2 days ahead of schedule. I wish all our contractors could be as good as you guys. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, with that, we'll skip over to page 8. We're on page 8, Donald, other projects and so forth. Mr. Fujimoto: Yes, we can address the bridge projects. I think most of these are miscellaneous bridge repair projects. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, go ahead. Any questions on that? We see there's additional funding on the bridge projects, as you can see...or anything that you see in relationship to the public works office. Mr. Furfaro: I would like to get a better understanding of Opaekaa. Mr. Fujimoto: Opaekaa bridge... Mr. Furfaro: You got emergency repairs there as... Mr. Fujimoto: Yes. Right now the emergency repair, based on the last bridge evaluation, the recommendation was to drop the rating weight limit from I believe it was 5 tons to 3 tons. And so 3 tons is just barely SUV vehicles, I think, going over 3, and because of that we have 337 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) implemented this emergency repair. And the emergency repairs is supposed to reinforce the bridge sufficiently to bring the rating back up to at least 5 tons. Mr. Furfaro: So right now, Donald, the bridge... Right now the bridge is posted with a 3 ton limit. Mr. Nishikawa: Let me clarify. The bridge is currently posted at 3 tons. The additional support or bracing of the bridge will just...we will not be changing the weight limit on the bridge. But you know, it'll reinforce the bridge to a point where hopefully if something gives way, these beams are going to support everything up in place. Mr. Furfaro: So let me understand this. We've downgraded it from 5 to 3, we have put some temporary repairs in, the plan going forward is to strengthen the bridge but leave it at 3 tons. Mr. Nishikawa: That's correct. Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Does that meet the requirement for school buses? Mr. Nishikawa: School buses, no. School buses are something like...I would guess 12...15 tons. Mr. Furfaro: May I ask, have we notified the DOE as such when we change the bridge levels that they actually have official notice from the county of Kauai that our plans are not to repair the bridge and restrengthen it beyond the 3 tons? Mr. Nishikawa: No, we have not. Mr. Furfaro: Could we make sure we do that and get the appropriate notice reviewed by the county attorney's office? Mr. Nishikawa: Okay. But you know, remember that the bridge has been posted 5 tons for many, many years. Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, I understand. That's why I want to make sure we send notice. If our plan is not to reinforce the bridge or get it back to the, you know, the posted 5 tons, let's make sure we send an official notice to DOE and have it reviewed by the county attorney. Mr. Nishikawa: We can do that. Mr. Kaneshiro: 1VIr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: So...and this is for now, and then we're going to do this contact sensitive design right. Because in the historic society newsletter this month was a story about this bridge, and it was pretty fascinating, if you didn't get to read it. So there's that historic aspect. So for these bridges, we're going to make sure they're okay for now, and then eventually get around to addressing the long term issues. Mr. Fujimoto: I believe we're in the process of issuing the RFQ (inaudible). Mr. Kudo: (Inaudible) out to get RFQ and resumes from the consultants. Mr. Bynum: Okay, so we're moving forward. 338 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kudo: Yeah. Mr. Bynum: Good, thank you. Mr. Kudo: Initially we had it on the RFQ and found out that we weren't in compliance to federal requirements. So we had to go out to get that RFQ. Mr. Bynum: We'll all look forward to the public discussion on this one. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Chair, go ahead. Council Chair Asing: I thought we... Did we issue a contract for this? Mr. Fujimoto: For the emergency repair I believe we did. That's to reinforce the bridge. Council Chair Asing: It's done already. Am I correct? - '~ ` "' Mr. Nishikawa: No, no, no. The work has not been done. Council Chair Asing: No, not the work has been done, but the contract has been issued. Mr. Nishikawa: Yeah, is currently onboard. About week and a half ago. Council Chair Asing: Right. Okay. And that is for the 200,000 or... The 200,000, am I correct? Mr. Nishikawa: The contract we current...just executed, the purchase order we issued is for both Opaekaa and Pu`u`opae bridge, the temporary repairs. Council Chair Asing: So is it the 200,000 or the 300,000? Mr. Nishikawa: The 300,000. Council Chair Asing: I thought it was 200. Mr. Furfaro: No, but the line says, as the Chair is...you have 200,000 for the temporary repairs. You have 300,000 for the new construction and design. Mr. Fujimoto: The 300,000 is a STIP match for the design money. Council Chair Asing: Okay, thank you. Ms. Kawahara: We pau with bridges? Mr. Kaneshiro: We're still on bridges. You have any questions? Mr. Bynum: Yes. The Hanapepe bridge, the town is organizing a birthday party or something, right? So we feel confident we can have those improvements done prior to their celebration? Mr. Fujimoto: Should. 2011 the celebration, I believe. 339 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Bynum: Yeah, they're planning already though. And we're going to retain the walkway on... Mr. Fujimoto: We have about half a dozen projects ready to go for RFQ and that is one of them that is with that other Opaekaa and (inaudible). Mr. Bynum: Yet to be determined whether we can make it ADA compliant, or that will be part of the design. Mr. Fujimoto: Mr. Bynum: Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Fujimoto: Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Kaneshiro: And in that particular bridge, it may just be infeasible. Right. No, I understand. What did you say, the bridge might be invisible? No, infeasible. (Inaudible) That's a no cost bridge. Okay. Moving on, Donald. May I take a moment just for a clarification? Absolutely, Mr. Furfaro. Go ahead. Mr: Furfaro: I said that a bond fund might lapse in 2 years, and the finance director corrected me; it lapses in 3 years. So just FYI. Thank you Mr. Rezentes. Don't want to have any miscommunication. The penalties are incurred in the third year. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes Lani. Ms. Kawahara: Are we done with bridges, and then the rest of the stuff on the page can we discuss? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, you have anything else you wanted to discuss on the CIP? Ms. Kawahara: On this page 8, yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: On page 8. Okay. Ms. Kawahara: The big one is the Kilauea agricultural park for 2.6. Mr. Fujimoto: Can you submit those? That is under (inaudible). Mr. Kaneshiro: Yeah, we'll submit a communication to that, in other words, because it is under OED, office of economic development. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Should I voice my concerns on it now, or in the communication? Mr. Kaneshiro: It's your wish. 340 • • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Furfaro: It's your choice. Mr. Kaneshiro: As long as it's on here, it shows here under CIP. Mr. Furfaro: I should make mention to you we've been working on this for a very long time, and the 2.6 was the minimum investment. There were 3 proposals that came out of my committee last year, so... Ms. Kawahara: I'll put it in a communication. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Alright, anything else on page 8 for discussion or questions to the administration? Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Well, maybe this is a discussion for tomorrow, and I don't know that these gentlemen know the answer anyway, so... But there's this line item... Mr. Kaneshiro: On the open space. Okay. We'll have that tomorrow. In fact it's on committee agenda. ~ -= .... - :. _ Ms. Kawahara: The photovoltaic project. Mr. Fujimoto: Can you send a communication to this? Ms. Kawahara: That's somebody else...with OED? Okay. Mr. Kaneshiro: I think we talked a little about that, right. Mr. Bynum: It's for the round building eh? Mr. Kawakami: We did. Mr. Kaneshiro: We did, right, in economic development. Was that came out of the departments? Okay. Ms. Kawahara: Okay that's all. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. I guess that's it then. Yes I will now. I think we went through all of the departments. With that, rules are still suspended, so at this time we'll take testimony from anyone in the chambers. So you're welcome to come up and give testimony. How many are here to give testimony on this? One, two? Just go ahead and for the record state your name, and you may begin with your testimony. JAMES GERARD TRUJILLO: James Gerard Trujillo for the record. (Inaudible) Thanks for the opportunity to provide testimony in regards to a number of budget items. First off, I hope in the future we might be able to find funding for the procedures to be televised for those who can't make it. I wanted to speak specifically about the issue that came up through solid waste regarding the waste to energy, the consultation fees or the...as you try to clarify what we were going to be spending a significant amount of money on, I think it's very important that we understand what we are going to be spending our money on. Chiefly, the waste to energy issue, as a former member of the integrated solid waste management plan committee member, I was on the advisory committee that worked with R.W. Beck as a number of other community members were. That plan was drafted over a number of months, about a year and a half actually, and I do remember that when the waste to energy component came up there was quite a bit of discussion and conflict. It was not something that we 341 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) felt was unanimously supported. There was actually some hard feelings in regard to how that did make itself into the plan after much discussion, and how the options were limited for us as the solid waste advisory committee learned more about the expenses, learned more about the operations of a waste to energy facility. As we're all aware, the economic situations have changed quite a big. The energy situation has not gotten better. The...I guess attractiveness of being able to convert municipal solid waste into an energy is one that initially seems like it be a good idea, especially when we're dealing with solid waste issues such as our island with our landfill being well over the limit and in need of an extension before we will site a new one. We know that it's not a panacea that we will still need to site a landfill, and we know that there are a number of components that are necessary before the actual siting of a waste to energy facility would even happen. I think that in the community there's a growing awareness about the liabilities of such a facility. I think that the resistance or opposition to such would be one to consider in regards to even having this on the table for discussion. And so I do appreciate that you all spent a fair amount of time clarifying what Troy and Allison guys were proposing in their budget. I do know that the materials recovery facility was also discussed as an option in this integrated solid waste management plan. The fact that it wasn't on the table for discussion when the plan was first proposed, and then through the procedures here, I think Mr. Bynum that might have been your first council budget hearing when there was discussion what were we going to do, and I do remember Diane Zachary from the Kauai Planning Action Alliance that she was also a SWAK member, she forcefully advocated that a MRF was one of our key components of this plan and should have been on the table, and it was omitted. That the inclusion of it was after the fact, and realizing that this is something that we need as a community as another one of the tools or strategies for us to deal with a growing landfill. And our current budget doesn't seem to have that component being part of the solid waste management plan. And Mr. Furfaro, you shake your head. Is that in agreement that it's not part of the plan, or that it is... Mr. Furfaro: I'll answer you when your time's up. Mr. Trujillo: Okay, thank you. That there is a need for, as this pilot project so called for recycling comes into play that we need to have all the components in place in order for us to have a viable program. To have part of it there and to think that we're going to do a viable study on how effective or its efficiency of a program, I don't think it sets ourself up for success. So I really appreciate the scrutiny that you're giving it, and I do hope that we're able to, through a variety of means, whether it's further public hearings, if it's another workshop, look at these issues and look at these budget numbers, and look at the program in total as a whole that we can then come up with a plan that's workable and serves the community. It's unfortunate, I don't know how many years have passed since R.W. Beck kind of gave it that stamp, and how many budgets have kind of come and gone, and we're still looking to approve it. I do remember testimony or feedback that Chair Asing brought up was that we've done this, we had one a long time ago, we haven't done anything with it. let's get to it. And I think that's what people are asking for. I think that recycling has its place, that we have a community that's willing to do what's necessary for us to do the right thing for our future generations. This is what we're talking about-a sustainable Kauai, and that's about government being able to help community work the systems that are necessary for us to all to have a quality of life that we so desire for our children and their children. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for the testimony. We have questions. Mr. Furfaro, then Mr. Bynum. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. First of all, your question about broadcasting, we hope to be able to fund the summary after May 6, just so you know. The reality of doing daily expressions would certainly get people an audit trail to do this, but when we do the final summary of the budget, it will provide the mayor an opportunity to speak on this budget, it would provide the comments from the councilmembers here to speak particularly on how they foresee these very difficult economic times, and so we are planning something when we get to that summary point, so there will be a 342 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) broadcast and it is something Councilwoman Kawahara is working on. And I want to say also that we work as a body. And I get very discouraged sometimes when people come up and say, it's something Diane Zachary did, it's something Mr. Bynum did, and if you've been following this over the last 6 years, I want to say, the R.W. Beck plan did not have a MRF in it in their first presentation. Mr. Trujillo: That's right. Mr. Furfaro: Okay? But there were people on this council, including myself and other members like Councilwoman Yukimura and Mr. Asing, we basically said they needed to go back and study that opportunity. So I want to make sure you don't perceive this is some individual effort, but this is an effort of an entire body. We've had people today talk to us about not even spending money on investing in containers for curbside pickup, because we need to educate and make sure we evaluate all of these particular pieces. And I have no problem telling people I've been a proponent of a MRF for a long time, and in fact, the last 3 council meetings we had, I pointed out, you know, I want to make sure the MRF is in this bond, which it is. And then we went into this presentation about some money we had which really deals with asset management about energy pieces, and clearly, the message needs to go across to the people in solid waste that that money is not °`-° about studying for a waste to energy piece. It is money that's put aside, as Mr. Rezentes came up and said we're going to study certain assets and certain technologies. There's technologies moving today about other alternatives for energy that are not specifically waste to management, but that money is set aside, and I'm also going to repeat this for the rest of the body, if it ends up being something that weighs should a MRF be an actual county asset or a third party, you know, it might be used for that. But if we come in with a alternative energy piece that's an investment of say $20million, then quite frankly, it's going to depend on the value of that asset where we direct that money to do the study. If we've got an alternative piece that's $20million, well we're going to use that money to determine is that a third party operation, and we're not going to use it to study the MRF. And that's business sense, and that's what, you know, we need to really convey in these meetings here that, you know, so often you say if government ran like a business, we wouldn't have these problems. But the reality is that's not the answer either, you know. The answer is, you know, it's not all capitalism. It's not always the social issues that are driving the decision. It's about doing the right thing for the right reason for the right people at the right time. This article right here, China is not even sure they want to be in the recycling market anymore. There's no money in it for them. They were buying steel from all over the world, and having collected the recycling gauge on that, but in today's economy, it changes quickly. And I just want to say, that's what the administration, Ibelieve, put on the table for us. That money is used to find out if there's a third party asset to be managed. Is it done by the outside, or is it by us. And if nothing, we might use that money for the MRF, a MRF that I think members of this council as a body have been very, very focused on conveying to the administration the value in the re-use of items. So I want to make sure we're really clear that, you know, as a businessman, I was the first winner of the green star award on this island. I had housekeepers taking bottles home, and we were changing light fixtures in corridors, and automating the circulating pumps to make sure only use at peak demand, and there's all these technologies today that I think we want to find out, hey is it a third party that has the skill and the expertise to tell us where that best dollar is spent for this, and not to just say it's money for a waste to energy. It is an ongoing view, I think, on the part of the administration to say, you know, who's going to own this investment and whose dollars are going to be investing in it. That's what that money is interpreted for. And I just want to make sure we're really clear, it's not just waste to energy. It's all other possibilities. Mr. Trujillo: And I thank you for that. I do think that as a body, as fiscal manager, that it is the responsibility, especially as elected officials, public servants, that you have that in mind for the general populace, for the community that contributes (inaudible). 343 APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Furfaro: What I have in mind is to do the best possible job I can, and function as a body of 7 people to air out the differences in the opportunities, and I want to make sure it's... You know, some of us are very, very supportive of KPAA, and I know that's one of the funding items that I'm going to ask to restored, because the $35,000 we spend on KPAA, I mean she gathers so much data and information for this council, we could never do that in the planning department. Mr. Trujillo: That's right, and the return of investment is significant. Mr. Furfaro: It is outstanding. Mr. Trujillo: That's right. You're absolutely right. Mr. Furfaro: So I'm glad we had this moment. Mr. Trujillo: Well thank you, and I appreciate the opportunity for clarity. Mr. Kaneshiro: Hold on one second. Mr. Bynum you had a question? Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I just...you know, I don't want to be redundant with what Mr. Furfaro said, but you know, when the solid waste thing came out, it gave, in my view, a lot of lip service to recycling without the meat and the components that needed to be there. And my memory is that a majority...a big majority of the council had problems with that, pushed for a revision that would make more sense and make clear our commitment to recycling and other alternatives, and you know, in fairness to R.W. Beck and the administration previous to this one, they came back with those components, identified, they even accelerated some of the composting things. I hope we can stick to that time schedule. I have misgivings about whether just as a bureaucracy that we can move at that quick a pace to implement as quick as the...and you know, that I think should be our goal to do that. And in spite of the budget difficulties we have, you know, to proceed. And the bond money information we got today, just a couple hours ago for the first time, you know, has funds in there for the, you know, for the MRF, for the composting facility at least. So that commitment's being followed up with a specific proposal, and that's good. But I...you know, I'm not convinced that waste to energy should be part of our mix, not necessarily on philosophical grounds, but on scale and economy and what I just said about being able to roll out a composting facility, a waste to energy facility, automated collection, curbside collection, those are big changes, pay as you throw, implementing trash collection fees, which I think we may need to do sooner rather than later. You know, the R.W. Beck, I haven't looked at their final draft in totality yet, but my skimming of it, it gives us information like the true cost if we roll that out for every household per month, is like $86. That's huge, and we're going to have big challenges meeting those capital needs and doing what... But I think we have that responsibility, because the way we're doing solid waste now is absolutely wrong way, and we need to do the absolutely right way going into the future. But it's... We got huge challenges. So I was concerned today that...and I think we got to get to the bottom of this confusion about what this money's for, because you know, we were hearing different things, and sometimes the language we use is very important. It's like, you know, whether it's... anyway, I said at one point, why don't we just call it waste to energy if that's what it is, right, instead of using these nuance language right. So you know...and I also said earlier I wanted to take responsibility. You know, I've been here 2 and a half years, and I don't think I ever approved...at least knowingly approved something that was going to spend money on waste to energy prior to making that decision. So...but I also want to thank you for your involvement in the solid waste task force, and just clarify that Diane Zachary, I think there was as an individual, not representing KPAA, right? Mr. Trujillo: Absolutely. 344 LJ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Bynum: That she was just one of the citizens members of that. But I concur with Mr. Furfaro that the organization provides tremendous value. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. With that, Councilmember Yukimura...former Councilmember Yukimura. JOANN A. YUKIMURA: Well, they still call Governor Ariyoshi governor. Thank you Chair. Thank you councilmembers. I appreciate this. I know it's been a long day. I just wanted to... JoAnn Yukimura for the record. I just wanted to try to shed some light on the question of when did we vote for waste to energy expenditures, because we didn't. We never did. We never had a discussion that we would. And we voted for waste reduction, that was the line item we voted for, and in my mind and also in the mind of solid waste experts, waste reduction is recycling, composting, expansion of thrift shops, it's things that reduce the waste stream. And waste to energy is called waste conversion. And so I actually think there was a mis-use of funds on the part of the administration because the council never voted for waste to energy expenditures. We were waiting for the...we were waiting for the integrated solid waste management plan that would set forth the vision or the end in mind, and if it included waste to energy, then we'd allocate the budget accordingly. You know, the budget really tells the story, and' that's what concerris~ me about-this budget, both the operating and capital. I sent you copies of the Maui budget, and if you look at the Maui CIP, there's a MRF in there, there's a construction demolition facility in there, these are all part of their 6-year CIP, and I think they started on their solid waste plan after we did, and we have waited for 4 years and we don't have a solid waste plan, yet we have an administration that's spending money and making decisions, strategic decisions about how we're going to do our solid waste. So this is a problem, and we could use that 385,000 for...to buy land for a MRF. I mean you'd get close to that... I think Maui put in half a million dollars, you know, and if we had started on MRF planning, we could have used stimulus moneys to build a MRF. I mean plans for a MRF have already been submitted to us by Eric Lombardi who came from...and, you know, so we have... The MRF is not complicated. It's basically a big warehouse with the proper kind of equipment. So we're at a disadvantage now because we've been pussyfooting around on the planning process. And we missed the opportunity to use stimulus moneys for it. And I think the question to be asked is what useful information will the waste to energy study give us. I mean you know, what...how is it going to help us develop our solid waste planning process. So I don't know the answer to that question, but I mean... Anyway, that's the question that should be asked. And the last thing I want to say about the recycling markets, they go up and down, but they go up and... They go up with the price of oil, and we all know that the price of oil is going to go up, because it costs so much oil and money to create finished materials from raw materials. It just costs so much money to go from box site to aluminum, or from iron ore to steel, or from trees to paper, and that's what you saw. When the price of oil went up, recycled materials were really valuable, because they are cheaper; they're a cheaper alternative. And that's what's going to happen again, and we need to plan for that, or we're going to be in big trouble. We're going to... We may need the paper rather than China, one of these days, but we're not there yet. So anyway, those are my comments, and thank you very much. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Kawakami, you had something? Mr. Kawakami: You know that waste reduction study we're talking about, I was confused about it, but I think it was clarified like 3 or 4 times that it was a asset ownership study, and it didn't just cover a waste to energy plan, but it encompassed every type of waste facility, a MRF... Ms. Yukimura: Well, let's see the contract... 345 • ~ APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Kawakami: And if I'm wrong... Wait. If I'm wrong, then the administration should tell me that I'm misunderstanding what this money is for, and they should be clear about it. If I'm wrong. Ms. Yukimura: Well, they've never told it to the public with any clarity on public record what they're doing with those moneys, at least to my... Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me. I just want to say, JoAnn, you were out of the room when I clarified it. this. Mr. Kaneshiro: When I came with a communication and we had some clarification on Ms. Yukimura: Well, they've done it now after they contracted for it. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, we've had it. But we've done it. We had that discussion... Mr. Furfaro: We are asking them to review the document. Ms. Yukimura: Yes, and that's very good, and I'd like to see it myself. Mr. Kaneshiro: We are asking for that document. Ms. Yukimura: But the question is, what information will it give you that is top priority for solid waste planning and implementation. I'd like to know the answer to that. Mr. Kawakami: From what I understand, the information is whether we should own it or not. Ms. Yukimura: Own what? Mr. Kawakami: The waste facilities. Ms. Yukimura: It depends on the specific facility and the feasibility of different facilities. Mr. Kawakami: That's what the study is for, though. Ms. Yukimura: But you can't do it for a whole category of facilities. You have to do it on a specific facility, because some of them are going to have a much bigger return on investment. For example the MRF, it will start paying for itself within 5 to 10 years. A waste to energy facility will, in a conventional sense, will be 30 years to pay for it. Mr. Kawakami: And my understanding is that it's not going to just encompass all of them under one package, but take them individually as they should be as you suggest. Ms. Yukimura: Well, I hope so, but I don't believe that for... Mr. Kawakami: And like I said, there's administration in the room, so if I'm wrong, then they should say I'm wrong. Mr. Kaneshiro: We'll have them up right after you're done. 346 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Thank you I'm done. Mr. Furfaro: I just wanted to reassure you that the way the question was posed to the group was very similar to the points you're trying to make. Ms. Yukimura: I did hear some of them, and I don't want to show any lack of appreciation for that. Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: But we are pursuing an understanding of exactly what they perceive that contract to cover. Ms. Yukimura: Yes. That's good, I wish it had been done before they spent the money. But thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Gary Heu. Mr. Heu: Good afternoon Chair and councilmembers. Gary Heu for the record. Actually, I wasn't necessarily coming up to speak to the contract, which is:..'° Mr. Kaneshiro: I've already requested to send over a communication for the material and whatever questions to, you know, committee members have. So we'll be sending that over to you. But in the meantime, go ahead. Mr. Heu: I mean... You know, and I'll just... I just wanted to share what might have...some of the discussion that may ultimately have led to the request for the funding and subsequently the development of the request for proposal. And quite frankly, the initial discussion was waste to energy, because you know, I think a fundamental question goes back to, again, asset ownership. In preparation for getting off to a start based on what the plan was recommending and currently still recommends, we felt that it was necessary to do some due diligence so that we were working things not so much sequentially, but in tandem with the process. Because admittedly, and I think to the, you know, frustration to a lot of people, including the administration, this whole process, the integrated solid waste management plan update process, has taken a lot longer than anybody would have initially anticipated. I mean I don't think it's a matter of laying blame anywhere. I mean the process has just taken a long time. I mean it's gone through many iterations and updates just to get us to where we are now where we finally have a document that we put out for public review. And that document has been transmitted to council. So you know, at least as far as the previous administration was concerned, it was prudent for us to at least begin activities which would prep us to be ready to move on whatever the plan recommended. And if in fact the plan held true and recommended as a component waste to energy, then we should be prepared to move on that. Again, instead of acting in a sequential manner. And you know, with all due respect to JoAnn Yukimura, I think that she and I have seen differently on this particular issue for a number of years now, and I understand where she's coming from, and I hope that in some ways that she can understand things that I put forward. But I guess the reason why I wanted to come up and say something was because if you subscribe to her contention that if it hasn't been approved in the...you know, if something has not been approved, formally adopted via the integrated solid waste management plan, then a lot of the things that we're currently discussing, we shouldn't be working on either. We shouldn't be talking about a MRF. We shouldn't be talking about putting moneys in a bond float for a MRF, or putting moneys, you know, to set aside lands for a centralized composting facility, because those are all components of the integrated solid waste management plan that are identified in this update. And again, if we're going to subscribe to we don't move until have an adopted plan, then we shouldn't move on anything. But I think that it's prudent for decision makers, policy makers, to base on what you see and what appears to be the way something is headed, then you start making preparations for that, and that's all this has ever been. So it's not that we were 347 S APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) ever going to propose building a waste to energy plant or facility prior to the adoption of the plan. But I think that there's always going to be planning and some due diligence that needs to take place in preparation for what looks to be an inevitable outcome. Now maybe that's taking too much for granted, but again, we've had this discussion with council, and in my mind, settling an ownership for a facility like that is something that decision makers and policy makers need to understand before you can get to the point where you're able to make a proposal in terms of how you're going to proceed. I mean that's the key issue, is who's going to own that facility, and that's what this was an effort to do. So again, what the verbiage in the contract...request for proposal says, I couldn't tell you right now, but I can tell you that the concept was borne out of a need to have a better understanding of when the administration comes before the council to make a recommendation on how to proceed on a waste to energy facility, what was it that we were going to use as a basis to stand on to make that recommendation. And it had to be more than we feel this way about moving forward with a county owned facility or we feel this way about a...the county moving forward on a privately owned facility, and we don't... At that point in time, and I asked around, but nowhere could I find within the county a person or a set of people who had expertise to be able to do that kind of analysis for us. So I just wanted to share that. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. With that, any questions for Mr. Heu? Mr. Bynum: Gary, I appreciate you giving a...your synopsis and a straight forward answer. The difference... You know, because I had the same thought that, you know, we...and I'm advocating that we move on MRF and put things in the budget and saying yes I'm glad it's there, you know. The difference for me is that, you know, I've said that straight upfront, you know, I want this to happen, I want it, you know, and we had that dialogue. But on this waste to energy thing that we're discussing now, it was news to me. And I said a couple times, maybe I didn't understand or I...you know, I'm willing to look at that, but you know, I... If you would have made this argument six months ago, you know, we need to do this kind of analysis, I probably would have voted for it. But I don't ever recall that that's the way that was framed. So the difference... You understand what the distinction I making? Mr. Heu: Sure. Mr. Bynum: It's like... But you know, when we were having this dialogue, I had the same thought you did. Well we've moving on curbside recycling, we're moving on bins, we're moving on other aspects of the solid waste plan with the assumption that we're going to head that way, but... So I just wanted to make that point. But I appreciate you being straight forward, because I do want to see the contract, and my guess is it's probably going to be related to waste to energy. So you know, we'll find that out when we cross that bridge. But I appreciate your comment. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, with that. Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Very simple. We're back to where I said it's an asset and ownership question. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Got it. With that, thank you Gary. Since we don't have anymore questions, I'd like to call this budget session back to order and open up for any discussion that members would want to have. If not, I'm going to recess this... Yes, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: Well Mr. Chair, I... Because we've completed our business, we're not going to meet on Thursday? Mr. Kaneshiro: We're not... We still have finance. 348 APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Bynum: So we're at the end of our budget... Mr. Kaneshiro: We still have finance. Mr. Bynum: This round... Oh we still have finance. That's right. I'm sorry. Mr. Kaneshiro: We're not done yet. Mr. Bynum: Okay. So I'll reserve... I wanted to make some general sum up, but I'll save that for the end. Mr. Kaneshiro: But we still have finance department to deal with, so we're going to recess. What I'm going to do is actually for a recess... Hold on, I'm explaining that we're going to be calling for a recess till Thursday at 1:30. I believe we had them...finance department scheduled for 1:30 on Thursday. It's already been posted also, just to let you know. So we're going to keep on that schedule. Mr. Furfaro? clerk? Mr. Furfaro: Yes budget chair, may I ask if I can ask "a' few questions of the` county Mr. Kaneshiro: Oh absolutely. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Nakamura, can you come up for a second? Mr. Kaneshiro: Rules are suspended. Go ahead Peter, for the record, again. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Peter. Mr. Nakamura: Peter Nakamura, county clerk for the record. Mr. Furfaro: I just going to ask Mr. Heu and Miss Yukimura if they could take their discussion outside so I can...don't get an echo. Just so that we can... Peter, can you give us a quick synopsis, the Thursday, the big questions for me are, you know, the financial ones and kind of getting an update on what may or may not happen with the TAT tax and so forth. But could you just give us a little bit of an overview on when we can expect some of the summary notes from your staff and so forth? Mr. Nakamura: For? Mr. Furfaro: From all these divisional meetings. I know I got caught up on one from our first day...the summary questions. Or am I just...have I just missed... Mr. Nakamura: Oh, the questions over back to the administration for... Mr. Furfaro: Yeah, are we going to... Are we maybe...until Friday, or... Mr. Nakamura: I think we're up to... Mr. Kaneshiro: We're up till today. There's copies coming out. Mr. Furfaro: I'm sorry. I better go back and check my mailbox. Mr. Kaneshiro: In your mailboxes there's copies that I just signed. 349 • APRIL 14, 2009 PUBLIC WORKS (2) Mr. Furfaro: I got the first day...the second day... Mr. Kaneshiro: But I just signed some earlier, and it's... Mr. Nakamura: So we just finish today, and I think today generated a number of questions. Mr. Furfaro: So we're current up until Wednesday. I'll go look for my notes from the budget chair. I have no more questions for the clerk. Mr. Kaneshiro: With that, Lani? Peter. Ms. Kawahara: I just did want to address one comment that was made...not for Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, I'm going to call this meeting back to order, and you have a comment. I'll open it up for discussion. Any further discussion? Ms. Kawahara: Yes. I wanted to respond to the gentleman that was up here, I think Jimmy Trujillo, about having the hearings televised. I just wanted to share that Chair Asing and finance chair have been receptive to doing the...to televising the general one at 5 o'clock on May 6 as a public hearing. So they seem to be receptive to that, and we do seem to have enough money to do that. So I'm looking forward to hopefully being able to help you with the request. Thanks. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you for pursuing that for the entire body. Mr. Kaneshiro: Alright, with that, we're going to be in recess till Thursday at 1:30, because it's already posted for 1:30, and then we'll take finance for further budget review as the next department. With that, we're in recess. There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 4:50 p.m. 350 • • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT The departmental budget review reconvened on April 16, 2009 at 1:36 p.m., and proceeded as follows: FINANCE DEPARTMENT: Mr. Kaneshiro: Let the record reflect that all members are present. Anyone in the Chambers wanting to speak on this item? I see no one. With that, I will suspend the rules. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Mr. Kaneshiro: I will have Mr. Rezentes present the Finance budget to the Committee today. Mr. Rezentes, for the record, just introduce yourself and then you can begin. WALLACE REZENTES, JR., DIRECTOR OF FINANCE: Good afternoon Chair and Councilmembers. Wallace Rezentes, Jr., Director of Finance. I have with me today Belma Baris, Deputy Director of Finance, Alvin Honda as well as Dave Spanski who could possibly add to my testimony today, and answer some of the questions that you folks may have. I have provided you a 2 page summary sheet of the Finance Department's overview I guess. For fiscal year 2010, we have a 49% reduction over the current fiscal year and the reason for that is what you have heard throughout this discussion is spreading out to the various departments the OPEB cost which was once centralized in the Department of Finance, so it is a significant decrease in our budget. If netted our the OPEB cost, the Finance Department would have been... is reduced by 10.9% which was our goal... net our goal of 10%. If you look at the charts below, you will see that salary and benefits make up 51%, operations make up 49% approximately of our budget. Reductions in operations and a small reduction in the overall salaries assisted us in attaining our 10% goal for the upcoming here. Some of the highlights that I have listed, we are dollar funding 4 positions throughout the Department of Finance which will save about $300,000 a year. We have a transfer of a Public Works vacant position that would provide a courier mail function for the County and we hope to do this on a... roll it out on a Countywide basis as we move forward. Many of you may know that right now, we have various department staff throughout the island coming in centrally to the civic center for mail pickup, delivery, documents that need, you know, signatures on them and we hope that by adding this position, we can centralize that process. You may also know that, right now, our purchasing staff... our purchasing technicians have historically provided that function. We don't think it is too wise to have a purchasing technician double as a mail clerk when we could better utilize that person for helping the departments with the purchasing function of the County. We... not in the March submittal, but I believe the Police Department... the Police Chief in his testimony to you earlier, you know, stated that we... stated our plan of trying to move the County Telecommunications Administrator... Public Safety Telecommunications Administrator to finance IT from the Police Department. We hope to include that change in our May submittal to you. We have a... the Finance Department has an equivalent full-time... equivalent count of 80 people, 80 employees. We currently have 9 vacancies or 1% vacancy factor and that... I have been holding off on a number of these vacancies, and some of them we are plann;ng to move ahead on filling, but, you know, we still will likely have a certain amount of a vacancy factor that will help us in the upcoming budget cycle. You will also note in our Treasury Division and I can bring Dave Spanski up here to provide further details, but in our Treasury Division, we have... since I think... Dave, what was it, about '06 started the... April of '06 we started accepting payments via credit cards and that was a statewide roll out. That program has drastically increased in usage over the past few years. A decision was made sometime ago to have the County eat the merchant services charges versus passing it on as a convenience fee to the users. We are the only County right now that still eats that fee. Because of increase in usage, right now we actually have real property taxes and wastewater (sewer fees) as well... we just started this year with motor vehicle registration fees online. But because of the 351 • • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT increase in usage and I think I indicate here that about 14% of the sewer customers utilize the service and 12% of the real property taxpayers utilizes the service. This year we feel that the cost will increase above $250,000 and it may actually hit $300,000. So in the... right now, in our budget, our March submittal, we only included a line item of $120,000 for that purpose and our intent is to phase out the coverage of those fees and pass it onto the consumers as a convenience fee for the use of that service as the other counties have done in the past. I think that is basically the major, you know, shifts or changes that we foresee in the Finance Departments various budgets that is before you right now and I am open to receiving questions that you folks may have. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Wally. With that, Mr. Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you Wally. My question is on page 1, number 3, the intent to transfer a Public Safety Telecommunications Administrator to IT. Can you give me more details on that? Is that a position that they didn't need and that is why they are transferring it or... Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: No, we had discussions with the Police Chief and the Deputy during our budget process and they support this move. The current (inaudible) of the position has a Countywide focus on telecommunications that is beyond the Police Department. He obviously services the Civil Defense Agency, Fire, Police, and manages the 800 megahertz system that actually also benefits Public Works. Our Wastewater Division, our Roads crew, etc. We felt that shifting that position back into IT would provide a better Countywide focus for that position as we move forward and IT has, obviously, a lot of dealings with this position in, you know, in their support of the 800 megahertz system and other duties that he has. So I think it is... we think it is a better fit. To give some history of this position, it actually started in Public Works, right Alvin? It started in Public Works, it was shifted for, I forget... maybe Ricky can tell you. For some reasons (inaudible), but we feel ultimately the right fit for this particular function would be in the IT Division. Mr. Kawakami: This is a filled position? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Yes, it is. Mr. Kawakami: So the whole body is moving... Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: The body and the function, yes. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? Mr. Furfaro: I was in meetings all day. I am not quite ready with some other questions, but I want to go back to Mr. Kawakami. So that position is in IT and are you going to allocate any of the cost? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: The position will move to IT. Mr. Furfaro: And are you going to allocate out any of the cost? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: We don't intend to and it is all... the departments that they service, predominately, the General Fund supported the departments. Mr. Furfaro: And I guess I think we need to start changing attitudes about not where the money comes from, but who is accountable for those individuals. Their performance and output, you know. So when you have someone who services several departments, but the guy 352 • • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT that is overseeing him is, you know, not ultimately responsible for his work distribution. I have seen this system both central and department specific and I think it is always harder when you have somebody doing work... multiple hats. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Serving multiple agencies. Mr. Furfaro: We are trying to say to these agencies, hey, you know, you have to be responsible for your department. If somebody knows that he has 15% of this guys time in Public Works, make sure you get 15% of the productivity, and yet I see your point. It comes out of the General Fund, you know, that is where the cost is, but we are trying to get these guys all to understand that we have very few profit centers in the County. I mean Liquor Commission might be one, but all of those funds as we set up as Enterprise Funds are supposed to be profit centers or at least breakeven. That is not necessarily the interpretation from an accounting standpoint you know, but you are not going to plan that kind of allocation? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: You know, if there is opportunities to allocate funds to special funds that are self-supporting, we definitely could look at that. We should look at that. You are right. I agree that we should look at... if we can prorate some of the cost to departments that can help support that function, we could try to analyze and do some pro-ration. Mr. Furfaro: It is just that, you know, we are cultivating this seed about departments being more accountable. You know, everything from their benefit packages, you know, being put in their departments and so forth. I think it is worth watching because that is really the message. During these tight economic times, everybody has to be responsible for their cost centers. Mr. Kaneshiro: Tim, go ahead. Mr. Bynum: A couple of questions relating to IT. Are there vacant positions in IT right now? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Yes, there are. Mr. Kaneshiro: Give us the page number Tim? Mr. Bynum: Page 33. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, it makes it easier for everyone. Mr. Bynum: Do you know off hand how many or which positions? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: We have a Senior GIS Analyst and Information Technology Specialist IV and an Informational Technologist Specialist II. Mr. Bynum: What position was Lynette? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Is it... Mr. Kaneshiro: The position number. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: I believe it is 244, but let me confirm. Mr. Bynum: Because she was like the Supervisor, right? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Right. 353 • Mr. Bynum: Mr. Rezentes, Jr Mr. Bynum: Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Mr. Bynum: Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: that position, so now it is vacant. Mr. Bynum: Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Mr. Bynum: Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: consider trying to hold of. the budget. Mr. Bynum: Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT And is that position... and is somebody supervising now? Eric. Eric? The IT Administrator. I know, but we tragically loss Lynette last year, right? We hired someone else and then that person is no longer in It is vacant. Yes. And we are not moving somebody into it? Not at this time. It is one of the positions that we may f on funding, but right now it is funded though. Right now it is funded in It is not a frozen position? No, no. Mr. Bynum: I just wondered if you were going to do an internal because it is like a senior position. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: And to be honest, I am not sure that there is anybody even internally, but anyway. Mr. Bynum: Under peripherals, there is a significant reduction and I assume that is kind of deferred rotation... Mr. Rezentes, Jr.; And you will see actually when we start discussing the bond issuance, there is a couple of new significant projects that IT will be working with the bond... the proposed bond moneys that will be coming in, so there will be... some of their staff on the development side will be pretty busy going forward. Mr. Bynum: Pretty what? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Pretty busy going forward, you know, if we are able to get those funds via the bond float. Mr. Bynum: But this thing that went from 657, is that just kind of our routine replacement of computers? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Yes. Mr. Bynum: So we are just kind of sliding that back as a cost savings. 354 • Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Yes. • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Bynum: In terms of the IT projects that were underway, we are not delaying those like laser fiche and... Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: No. Mr. Bynum: Digital documentation kind of stuff? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: No. The document imaging, no, we are not. I believe the Council is the first wave... is on the first wave of the... Mr. Bynum: I keep waiting to see them... but we can talk about that some other time, but those projects are not being delayed by budget constraints. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: No. Mr. Bynum: That is the answer that I wanted to hear. Mr. Kaneshiro: Did you have a question Lani? Ms. Kawahara: Yea, I am going through the pages though. Are we going in order? Mr. Kaneshiro: What are you, back to page 1 then? Ms. Kawahara: Back to page twenty... Mr. Kawakami: I have a question on IT Mr. Chair if we could stick to that subject. Mr. Kaneshiro: Since we are on IT right now... Mr. Kawakami: Fellow Councilmembers, I am going to go off of this that was created by staff', so you can refer to page 7, and just under other services, I am looking at a zero out of other services under IT. What are the other services? The decrease of $242,000? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Alvin, do you know what that is? Mr. Kawakami: And this would be on page 34 on the budget. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: We can get back to you on that. Mr. Kawakami: No problem. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Can we follow up with a communication on that on other services for $242,000? They took it out of there and they must have put it somewhere else. Hold on for a second, we might get that cleared now. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Oh, I am sorry. What that is, it is the streaming media. That is what we pay our Ho`ike contract out of. If you recall, we are switching that over to Boards and Commissions. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. 355 • Mr. Kawakami: Okay. APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: It is a transfer of the management of that program to Boards and Commissions. Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Wally. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, thanks for that. We don't need to send a communication staff. Does that answer your question Mr. Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions by Committee members? Lani, go ahead. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. On page 27, cost allocation management study and (inaudible) and I am curious to what that was... consultant services. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: The County from time to time, goes and attains services to cost allocate or to provide GASB which is a government accounting standard boards training. We also... out of their... pay for... what is that program Alvin? The one that Myles does. The central services allocation cost and what that is, is annually we have a consultant that provides a document that allows us to allocate cost to cost centers and recoup moneys from Federal and/or State grants. But because of the grant requirements, we need to have a third party do the cost allocation study that is approved... that is, you know, approved by the Federal government and the State. So that is usually, you know, done annually through Finance/Accounting. Ms. Kawahara: The (inaudible) the item that you were talking about for the credit card fees, could you show that to me please? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Yes, what page is that on Dave? Let me get there. It is on... actually it starts on 43 and ends on 44. On 44, it is described as credit card fee for $120,000 in the text. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. In previous... I think it is great that we are doing the credit card services and I do agree that we should definitely be charging it as a convenience fee, but you are scaling it down from... which it could have been $300,000 this fiscal. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: We could have. We are hoping that the $120,000 will take us approximately mid fiscal year. It may not. It may take us maybe 5 months depending on how much the usage increases, but... Ms. Kawahara: But the end of the $120,000 period, then we will be totally... Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: That is our intention to make sure... we are made whole with whatever the cost are. Mr. Bynum: Can I ask a question about that? We get savings when people use credit cards online, that saves us money, right? It increases productivity? Mr. Furfaro: When they use credit cards, the service fee that we incur... Mr. Bynum: I understand that. 356 • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Furfaro: Yea, I was going to answer the rest of your question, but since you understand, there is a schedule that you should be asking about. You have to ask them what the schedule is based on the volume. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead and ask your question Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: The question is, I know there is cost involved in processing credit cards and that is what we are talking about, but when people use credit cards, they are not coming to the counter right? We cost savings as a result of that? DAVID SPANSHI, TREASURER: Okay, as far as... it is a convenience to the customer. They don't have to drive in, okay. Yes, the face to face is some kind of saving. They come and they talk and how about this, how about that... now they just come and go to their computer and do that, but our process is still the same. We still have to count, we still need to allocate it to the right guy, and so on and so forth. So the operations portion has not changed much. It has been a convenience to the customer. They don't have to get in their car. Yes, they will be... I can see where you are going with this, face to face thing. There is some time with that, but it still, you know, it is minimal as far as the staff's time. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: I think it lessens some of the lines that is there from time to time. You know, we have 12% to 14% of the traffic now not coming through, but... Mr. Bynum: That is kind of similar to ATM. When I go to the ATM, it is a lot cheaper for the bank than if I am using an employee's time? I just wondered if you have looked into that. You know, if 90% of the people get there... someday...their licenses renewed online, you know, is that going to keep us from hiring new staff: According to Dave, it takes as much staff time to process the online request as it does the... Mr. Spanski: Right, because what happens is, okay, you go and... the fee to the provider is $2.50 per transaction and if you pay with a credit card, it is an additional 2.2%. So say, for example, for sewer, you have a $100 bill, okay, you pay with a credit card, so it is $2.50, plus $2.20. Okay, you have a hundred dollar bill and the County gets approximately $95 even though the bill was $100, we are netting $95 because we are paying the provider his $2.50, plus he has to pay his merchants the 2.2%. Okay, now if you take it further and you have a $1,000 bill on real property, it will be $2.50 and now the merchant fee is $20.20. So now you are only netting $975 from a $1,000 bill. Mr. Bynum: Who is our merchant provider? Mr. Spanski: It is HIC consortium. It is a State... the State picked them up in 2003, okay, to start putting their stuff on the Internet. So we interviewed... the County at that time, we interviewed all the local banks. We had them come in and make a presentation and official payments which is IRS's payment engine and Hartland Securities which is another payment engine used. So at the lowest cost... putting those things together, this HIC was the lowest cost. They kept their cost the same since fiscal year 2007. Mr. Bynum: So that is a competitive thing. People process credit cards for a fee and some will charge more than others. Mr. Spanski: We had all the local banks come in, make a presentation, we had official payments come in, and... 357 • • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Bynum: What I really wanted to get it... how does that impact our labor? I am coming from the assumption that we saved labor cost, we might not need to hire new people because it is quicker to process this online, but maybe I am wrong about that. Mr. Spanski: Well, there is still a back office. We still have to account it to the right person. Make sure it is up there. A lot of things are simpler with the real property, it is a lot simpler because they can give us a file. Who paid them... we can upload it in the system and it populates it. With the sewer, we have it all in-house, so we are not that sophisticated there yet, so we still have to... they will get it, we will pay it, they will give us a list of people and their account number, we have to give it IT, and they forward it into the HTE system. Mr. Bynum: And I don't want to belabor this, but, you know, are we looking at those kinds of systems because I renewed my license the other day and they are still using the typewriter. Anytime you see typewriters and they are filling out forms on the typewriter, it makes me question about whether there is a more efficient process. Mr. Spanski; Right now, that is all that we have. (Inaudible) until something change, you had to update your card, they might have changed it. I am going to still use the same old card... there is this real ID coming into play, so next time you come in and renew your license, you are going to have to bring your birth certificate, your social security card, your marriage license... if you want to change your name or if you changed your name, you have to bring in that documentation, so that can be processed into a nationwide network. Mr. Bynum: Homeland Security, right? Mr. Spanski: Right, so they are trying... being delayed, we don't know what is going to happen with that and our cost still incurs some of that stuff, and now we are talking about scanners at each person's desk to update that... and then access to a nationwide system where all 50 States driver's licenses are in there, so that is the little convoluted stuff. We haven't got to that point yet. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: To follow up on the question. So the bid we have, there are no discounts on merchant fees based on how much volume you do? Mr. Spanski: That is correct. Here is what it is to you County of Kauai. Mr. Furfaro: Whether you do $100,000 or $10 million, it is... Mr. Spanski: It is a flat fee. Mr. Furfaro: Unbelievable. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: But I think when they went into it with the other counties, wasn't it done that way? Mr. Spanski: The other counties... okay, the only counties that... motor vehicle registration, County of Maui uses that. Real property tax, they are going to try and use HIC, the same vendor. Big Island uses the same vendor for real property tax and City & County is going to try and use them for their real property tax. Mr. Bynum: Presumably, you look at that periodically. 358 • ~ APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Spanski: That is correct. Mr. Bynum: It is still costing pretty high, but I think... Mr. Furfaro: Where they are encouraging the use of this and vendor we selected, every time we market more volume, they get richer. Mr. Spanski: That is correct. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: But they did estimate at the time a certain... obviously, when you stated, it was at zero and they estimated a... Mr. Furfaro: We would figure that, but there are no tiered breaks. Mr. Spanski: We started out... when we first started out in '07, we were 8%, '08 we went to 10%, presently now at '09, we are probably at 12 to 13%, and we are probably forecasting 14% for the next year. Now, when we take that away from us paying, you probably going to see that go down because the Big Island paid on their first half and they just introduced on their second half in February. They had a 2% usage rate, but we are at 12% to 13%. Mr. Furfaro: Another follow up question. When was the last time we... because of all the necessities coming up and the need for new equipment, when was the last time we actually increased fees to get your drivers licenses? Mr. Spanski: 1987 I believe. Mr. Furfaro: So it has been 22 years. Is the Treasury going to be making any recommendations? Not now, but as we get to the point that we are going to have all these new expectations put on us which may put more demands on staff, will we at least get to a point where maybe the cost of a driver's license is at least equal to the cost for us to recover? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: We will definitely look at that and we have proposed... I think more than once to Council and the Councils have shut it down in the past, but now we have different circumstances, and we will... that could be definitely part of the mix. We are far behind the other counties in that respect. I think some of the other counties have up fees 2 or 3 times since we have touched ours. Mr. Furfaro: Dave, when is the Federal government expecting us to do all these new applications on the licenses that you explained to us? Mr. Spanski: December of 2010, but this stuff keeps getting pushed back because a lot of the States have said that they are not going to do it and so far our State is one of them. Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Ms. Kawahara: Mr. Rezentes, Jr Okay. The unfunded mandate. Yea, okay. Or the partially funded mandate. 359 • • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Furfaro: I just want to say that it is worth and maybe this can come back in your Committee later, but it is worth looking at on these mandates how we recover our cost. We can look at and we have time it seems, 2010 you said Dave? Mr. Spanski: Yes Sir. Mr. Bynum: One other question. I didn't really even go there, but when is the contract renewed for the merchant processing rate? Mr. Spanski: It is a statewide contract now. Okay, so what we have done is, the State gave us the opportunity to go ahead and use that. Mr. Bynum: To be part of that. Mr. Spanski: To be part of that, so it is basically, we have left it in the State's ballpark if you will unless we see that the, you know, the rates get absorbent, but, you know, from my background, from my investigation and stuff, there are still the lowest game in town. Overall cost, you know. Mr. Bynum: The reason it is interesting because I shut down my small business this year and I process $34,000 in a whole year and I think the rates are similar to what you are quoting. Mr. Spanski: Right. Mr. Bynum: So I assume our volume is much greater than... Mr. Spanski: Right, but, again, they are dealing with VISA, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Diner's Club, you know, so that is a conglomeration... that is the weighted average of all those guys. Mr. Bynum: Okay, we will talk about this in the future some time. Mr. Kawakami: Mr. Chair, my apologies, this is more of a comment then a question, so I will defer it until you call the meeting back to order for discussion. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions for the Finance Department? Lani, you had a question? Ms. Kawahara: And I am now on page 34, IT. Mr. Kawakami: Eh, you stay go Japanese style, backwards. Mr. Kaneshiro: forward, 3 steps back. Ms. Kawahara; Mr. Kaneshiro: Ms. Kawahara: the GIS line here for $5d have wireless broadband. It is like a line dance. They do a line dance. They do 2 steps Because I am interested in IT. Continue cowgirl. Because I am interested in the IT stuff. I was curious about ,000, and then the broadband, the wireless broadband part and where we 360 • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Can you put that question in writing? Ms. Kawahara: Okay. Then how about the IT consultant for $60,000, convert data, is that the digitizing? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Yes. It is converting data to objects data migration. I apologize, I can't answer... if you put it in writing, I will definitely have a one page... Mr. Kaneshiro: We will get that to you Wally. Ms. Kawahara: Is the real ID training with the unfunded mandate, is that going... it might not happen, yea? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: It may not. Ms. Kawahara: Yea. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Or it may be pushed out further as Dave said. Ms. Kawahara: I am going in ordei now. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, we going forward now. Ms. Kawahara: Yes. Oh, maybe not. Getting back to the driver's license and typing the stuff out, is any of the counties actually computerized? Mr. Spanski: No. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: It is all on the same system. Ms. Kawahara: All on the same system and the County & City of Honolulu that we pay $70,000 for... to use their driver's license computer, that is something... Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: The City manages the system. Mr. Spanski: Both motor vehicles and driver's license data systems are runned and operated by the City & County of Honolulu. So we pay them... you know, they have the IT professionals that are there 24-hours a day, they fix the machines, and they do the program. So say, for example, if we raise our driver's license fees or motor registration fees, somebody has to go in there and update the computer. Ms. Kawahara: Is it remote or they physically visit here? Mr. Spanski: No, no, no. It is all there in Honolulu. It is housed in the City & County of Honolulu. It is housed there. Ms. Kawahara: And I would imagine... huh? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: And they do that for all the counties. Ms. Kawahara: Computerizing the whole State would be crazy expensive, Mr. Spanski: Right. 361 • • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Furfaro: Can I expand on your question? Ms. Kawahara: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: So Dave, is that charge $70,000 just to be part of it, the base, and then... Mr. Spanski: No, it is by hit. Mr. Furfaro: So we pay additional when we want to change a program? We pay time and materials? Mr. Spanski: If it is specific to us. If it is general to everybody, you know, our City & County feels good about it, they will do that. You see, City & County has a County registration fee for the motor vehicles if you will. They charge $20 in addition to all the other fees, so that is how they house... pay some of those people. So if it is a County... you know, if it is something that they have already done like for themselves, you know, it is not a -big -deal, so they... usually- everything is a statewide, so they just do it. Mr. Furfaro: But if it is something unique to us, you should anticipate budgeting a fee to do that. Mr. Spanski: Yes, and we will get that data if we ever have that, but in my tenure here, we would never have that. Mr. Furfaro: Well, we have not made many changes 198... Mr. Spanski: Well, that is correct, but everybody else has raised their driver's license fees. Mr. Furfaro: That is the whole point. We are sitting here 22 years... Mr. Spanski: And if we are going to do that, they will probably need, you know... I just got an e-mail from the Department of Information Technology from them. They said to remind out Councilmembers that if we do change the fees, they will need a couple of months lead time to update the system. You know, so if you want to approve it effective July 1, we have to let them know now, so it would be effective. Ms. Kawahara: So like $5,000 maybe for the charges to do it? Mr. Spanski: Oh no. That would be a free one. Mr. Furfaro: Because that is something that... can we ask what Honolulu's licenses are? Mr. Spanski: Okay, you guys ready for this one? Ms. Kawahara: Yes. Mr. Spanski: The license plate is going to 8 years now. Okay, so prior to... it used to be 6, we are at 12... okay, we will talk about a 6 year license first. We are 12, City & County and Big Island are at 18, and Maui is at 30. Okay, we are going to go to an 8 year... 362 • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Furfaro: And we are where? Mr. Spanski: 12. Now we are going to a (inaudible) which effective... Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: That is not time, that is dollars. Mr. Spanski: Every time there was an update, so it really was a 4 year license and the Legislature changed it to 6. Everybody upped their fees but us. Okay, now they are going to 8... now proposed for City & County is $24. Proposed for Big Island and Maui is $40. That is what those guys were posing to their Council. Mr. Bynum: And we are still at $12. Mr. Spanski: We are still at $12 at the present time. Mr. Kaneshiro: You get senior discount. Mr. Spanski: As a side note, you will see a lot of people that maybe come from the outer islands and maybe they are visiting relatives or are here for a meeting, they will come and update their license here. Ms. Kawahara: Please don't say that. Mr. Spanski: When they come to visit, they will come and update their license here. It is a Hawaii driver's license. Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay. Mr. Chang: Hold on. Run that by me again. I am a visitor... Mr. Furfaro: ' It is a marketing tool. Mr. Spanski: If you live in the State of Hawaii and you have a Hawaii driver's license and your license is coming due... Mr. Kaneshiro: So you are at the cheaper place now, so stay here. Ms. Kawahara: But if people from Maui want to come... Mr. Furfaro: They save $28 by coming here. Mr. Kaneshiro: They will lose with the plane fare anyway. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Only if they are visiting relatives. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions? Mr. Bynum: At $12, our cost to process higher than $12? Mr. Furfaro: Oh, yes. Mr. Spanski: For every dollar that we take in, we spend $4. Ms. Kawahara: It says here, $60,000 for the... 363 • ~ APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Spanski: That is the data processing fee that City & County charges us. Mr. Bynum: Was I on the Council when we said "no" to a fee increase? Mr. Kaneshiro: No. Ms. Kawahara: Materials $60,000 cost of license and permit over the (inaudible). Mr. Spanski: Right, again, that is all for the plastic and the machine and everything. So to process a license, just to get your laminated picture and everything is $2.45. Ms. Kawahara: I have a question and it is related to something that has come up 3 different times in conversations and I am not sure if it is addressed here, but the tickets that people pay for speeding and all of the violations... Mr. Furfaro: The money all goes to the State. Ms. Kawahara: So there is nothing in here? Mr. Kaneshiro: No. Ms. Kawahara: And does it come back to us? Mr. Furfaro: No, so that is what we lobby for. We want to bring that. Mr. Bynum: Every year, that is an HSAC proposal for like 20 years. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. We are going to talk about bond yea later? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: We can tell the police to only give warnings and the State would be upset. Ms. Kawahara: I know. The rest of my questions are actually going to be about bonds. Mr. Kaneshiro: Hold on one second. Ms. Kawahara: I did have another question while we are waiting. Can you tell us what your 9 vacancies are in which departments? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: I have 2 Tax Clerks in real property. Drivers License Examiner and Inspector in Driver's Licensing. Ms. Kawahara: If you can send that back and how long have those been vacant and should we expect any impacts from them being empty? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: I mean there are always impacts. I mean it is a matter on how you can manage them with the existing staff. I mean, obviously, there is going to be some give by not having all of the individuals there. You know, one of my main priorities right now is trying to fill one of the 2 Tax Clerks that is in real property, and we are hoping to fill one of them soon because we are down 2 there out of a contingent of what...full-time equivalent, there are 4 with Belma, so we are down 50% in that area. 364 APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Ms. Kawahara: So that is your priority? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Go ahead Derek. Mr. Kawakami: Real fast again. I am trying to take notes on this, but how many credit card transactions did we have so far? Number of transactions? Is there like a one number you can give me for 2008? Just a total. Mr. Spanski: For 2008, credit card transactions, real property... out 54,000 bills mailed, there is 5,600 people used the real property system for 2008. Okay, for sewer, out of approximately 25,000 bills mailed, 2,800 people used the system or 11.46%. So essentially when we started the program in '07, fiscal year '07, the use rate was about 8% and it has gradually increased 2% per year. So I would anticipate for fiscal year 2010, it would be about 14% across the board, and that would approximate with motor vehicles coming on board, we should anticipate over $300,000. Mr. Chang: So on the bill, at the bottom, it says, Mastercard, VISA, Discovery, American Express... Mr. Spanski: It just says you can pay online. Mr. Chang: Okay. Mr. Spanski: And then you can go to the County's website, okay, and it gives you those choices there. You just dump in your credit card number. It takes it all. Mr. Furfaro: So Dave, that number is about 7,800 transactions a year? Mr. Spanski: Yes. So, for example, you know, that was real property, that was about $8.6 million collected and about $312,000 for sewer. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: So we are about... Chair Asing: (Inaudible). Mr. Kaneshiro: You can pass that over to us Dave. We appreciate it Dave. Chair Asing: (Inaudible). Mr. Spanski: I can tell you what the total loss is. Chair Asing: It is really the key. Mr. Spanski: Right. It is the fees... Chair Asing: It is good, but it is not as important as the total loss now. Mr. Spanski: Okay, say for example, in fiscal year '07, total fees we spent out was $131,000. Okay, total fees in fiscal year '08, $214,000... well, $201,000 and through March of this year, we have spent $234,700. 365 APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Ms. Kawahara: And you are expecting it to be $300,000? Mr. Spanski: About $316,000, $317,000 with motor vehicles coming online. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: So we are spending about $5,000 a week in fees. Mr. Kawakami: But there is going to be a mechanism to recover some of that? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: We have a toast of things that we are discussing internally that could be implemented next fiscal year and I think we are developing as Dave has, you know, the backup support documentation for those things, but there are a number of areas that we definitely can look into and are looking into to potentially enhance revenues. Mr. Chang: So if you lose or you misplace your license, you go and you fill out your paper, you do your eyes and everything else, and they give you the license in 10 minutes, that doesn't cost us anything? Us, meaning the person that lost or misplaced the license? Mr. Spanski: No, you have to pay for it if you lost your license. It would be a $5 charge. Mr. Chang: Oh, they do charge you? Mr. Spanski: Yea. Mr. Bynum: Such a deal, $5. Mr. Spanski: Think of it this way Mr. Chang. When they give you back that card that cost $2.45 just to get that laminated right there. Mr. Chang: So we make $2.55? Mr. Spanski: No, you have to pay for the labor. Mr. Furfaro: Manpower. Mr. Spanski: Manpower, lights, water... Mr. Kaneshiro: Okay, any other questions for Finance? Ms. Kawahara: One more. I might had learned from Councilmember Furfaro. The Risk Management Coordinator... Mr. Chang: What page? Ms. Kawahara: Page 55. We have a coordinator and not an officer and we have a dollar amount here. Mr. Bynum: You dollar funded your Risk Management guy? Ms. Kawahara: Is that dangerous not to have a Risk Management Officer? Is there possibilities of major loss? 366 APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: There is always possibilities of major loss and we are really happy that the County Attorney's Office is taking a more active role in helping the departments lessen risks along these lines. And ever since Al took over and hopefully once he gets, you know, fully staffed and in the process of assigning individual attorneys to the various departments, we are going to... you know, that is all... part of their function is risk management as well. You know, it will definitely help each of the departments in the risk management area. But, yes, it is... Ms. Kawahara: Aren't you bound to have one as a County? Mr. Furfaro: We don't have one Lani and there is a PowerPoint presentation that I made last year, and I will be glad to share it. It went over to Mr. Rezentes, and it seemed like the emphasis for the immediate control would be in Police Science, and that is why we had budgeted... positioned it and that is the position that moved to Al's office. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: And it is great because Al just informed us of something that his deputies are working on with the Police Department that is going to save us some potential exposure and moneys because of their active involvement with the Police on a couple of personnel issues that have just popped up. So, I mean, we are already seeing some of the dividends of the active nature of the County Attorney's Office. Ms. Kawahara: The Risk Management Coordinator that you are currently salaried, paying? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Without a Risk Management Officer, what exactly will that person do? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Basically the same thing he does today. Ms. Kawahara: Is he temporary assignment at another level? Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: No, he is not. Mr. Furfaro: He actually works with our insurance carrier. He (inaudible)... kind of documentation and administrative part of it. It doesn't do the next step which we intended that really is focused on the investigation, interviewing the Department Heads...we have somebody who is kind of a more administrative flow through person. When it is time to make a settlement based on recommendations from our insurance company, he usually comes to the Council. Ms. Kawahara: And we use the County Attorney. Mr. Furfaro: We use the County Attorney and our insurance guy to make the recommendation. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Our third party administrator. Mr. Kaneshiro: Tim, you had a question? Mr. Bynum: So remind me Wally that... The position that you lobbied for was this EM-5 one. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Right. I still want it. 367 • • APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Bynum: Of course you do. We had the other one, right? Mr. Furfaro: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Because I worked for the County of Riverside and I managed 40 people and I got audited by my department to make sure that everybody had their risk management safety training and I know that that process was so much more sophisticated than anything I have ever seen in our County save the County huge sums of money. That is still our plan. We are going to get more sophisticated at risk management and it is just one of the sacrifices of this economic times. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: We hope to be fully staffed one day, absolutely. Mr. Bynum: Wally went out on a limb and pushed for the... Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: I did. Mr. Bynum: And we supported him and so when we can get back to that, that will be a good thing Wally. I want to acknowledge that you took the initiative on that. Mr. Rezentes, Jr.: Thanks. We will get there. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any other questions for Finance? Okay, thank you very much Wally. At this time, I will call the meeting back to order. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Mr. Kaneshiro: Any discussion? Mr. Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: You know, in light of like the credit card transactions and I am trying to look past the loss that we are having with the merchant fees. I mean I think when we are all campaigning, we talk about things like reducing traffic and getting cars off the road and then we start focusing on increasing our buses and bikepaths which are all wonderful things, but I think at the essence of this, this credit card option does exactly that. It takes cars off the road and in 2008, it took 8,400 off the road and it is going to increase. So at the same time, we have to look at recovering some of those fees and on the flip side, I mean, when you look out into private sector realm, we don't pass on the credit card fee to the customer. It is a convenience and there are some businesses that choose to not use credit cards and they lose the convenience and they may lose customers, but here in government, we have a monopoly. So there is no choice. It is not like somebody can say that I am going to be part of County of Maui then because they have a better system. It is offering a convenience to our taxpayers, so I really see a value and I think we really should look at what kind of ways we are going to try and recover some of those fees because just to see 8,400 cars being taken off the road in 2008 at the beginning of the program is kind of promising. When we start talking about 14% of real property taxpayers using our online services, to me, it is worth the investment, but we just have to do tweak it a little bit, and see where we can stop some of that loss. So with that, thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any further discussion? Mr. Bynum: I just want to follow up on what Councilmember Kawakami is saying and that was the source of my question about whether we had cost savings... the banks charge us fees to use the ATM's and it saves us money anyway and it is a source of revenue. And, 368 APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT you know, for all the reasons that Derek said, I have some discomfort with the idea of charging those fees because it serves so many roles. I also want to acknowledge that the Administration is moving forward of kiosk in our neighborhood centers, so people can access that very system, right? So that was the source of my questions earlier was I am... I am glad that we are the only ones not charging fees and I am going to be sad if we start charging fees because I think it does meet a lot of our stated goals. Mr. Kaneshiro: The other part is that it could be an administrative call, so just to let you know where the Council has no say. Mr. Bynum: Right. Mr. Kaneshiro: So just to let you know that the Administration needs to recover and we can comment all we want, but it is still an administrative function. Go ahead Lani? Ms. Kawahara: I just wanted to say that I believe people will pay it for the convenience of being able to do it. I know that I pay for convenience being as busy as we get, so, you know, it is probably 2 extremes, but I believe that the services that we provide are services that are to be valued and to show a value, sometimes you have to show that there is a cost to doing a service and I think a convenience is a cost. Mr. Kaneshiro: Anything else before I close this Finance Department... Mr. Furfaro: About revenue in the Treasury report. It is in my a-mail yesterday. Mr. Kaneshiro: I don't it has anything to do with this budget right now. Mr. Furfaro: It has everything to do with those 2 gentlemen right there. Mr. Kaneshiro: But not with the budget that is currently... Mr. Furfaro: It absolutely does. Mr. Kaneshiro: I don't think so. At this point, I don't... Mr. Furfaro: I disagree with you. Mr. Kaneshiro: That is fine, but I think that as the Chairman of this Committee, I saw the questions that you particularly asked. One was the bond for Black Pot replacing and that is not particularly on Finance Department here before us. We are discussing Finance Department budget and I want to make that clear. Mr. Furfaro: I have already explained to you Sir, I disagree with those comments. Mr. Kaneshiro: That is fine. You can disagree... I don't care if we got 10 gentlemen in front of us, but currently I am saying... Mr. Furfaro: (Inaudible) if you want to cut me off, but I am disagreeing on your position. Mr. Kaneshiro: His budget has nothing to do with the bond float at this point. We are talking strictly Finance budget. Remember that. 369 APRIL 16, 2009 FINANCE DEPARTMENT Mr. Furfaro: Sir, if you move a half a million dollars out of the budget into the bond, it provides the money... Mr. Kaneshiro: Do we see it here in his budget? Mr. Furfaro: If we are proposing a forecast... Mr. Kaneshiro: I am telling you right now that I will not allow that to continue. At this time, if you want to come with a communication and bring it up to the Chair to bring this to the Sunshined meeting, that is fine, but I am looking at his budget right here and this is the discussion. We are scheduled right now, Finance Department budget, 1:30 to 2:30, and that is strictly on their budget. Mr. Furfaro: I will make my comments if you call the meeting back to order. If you don't, then I won't make comments. Mr. Kaneshiro: The meeting 'is still back'in" order. I would like to comment on what we have in front of us people. The Sunshine is we have Finance budget Committee members. Remember that and as Chair, I will not allow my Committee members to discuss anything else which in regards to the Finance Department right before us here. If you are not clear with that, fine. I am just telling you, you want to discuss, we discuss what is on this budget right in front of us. I don't care if you got 10 of the Finance guys in here. We Sunshine this review and the review is budget. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, there is no need to go on. I agree with your position. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Then okay. Mr. Furfaro: But I don't agree with the process. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, thank you. At this point, I would like to... we don't have to recess the budget hearing at this time. We adjourn the budget hearing. With this, I am going to, again, adjourn this departmental review session. All those in favor? The motion to adjourn the departmental budget reviews was then put, and unanimously carried. There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews adjourned at 2:40 p.m. APPROVED at the May 13, 2009 Committee Meeting: DARYL W. IRO, Ch 'r Budget & Finance Committe Respectfully submitted, ~_~ ~~ RICKY WATANABE Council Services Administrator 370