HomeMy WebLinkAbout 04/08/2011 COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE Committee Meeting FY 2011-12 Departmental Budget ReviewsCOMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE
FY 2011-2012 Departmental Budget Reviews
MINUTES
The FY 2011-2012 Departmental Budget Reviews of the Committee of the Whole of the
Council of the County of Kauai, was called to order by Jay Furfaro, Chair, at the Council
Chambers, 3371-A Wilcox Road, Lihu'e, Kauai, on Friday, April 8, 2011 at 11:07 a.m., after which
the following members answered the call of the roll:
Honorable Tim Bynum
Honorable Dickie Chang
Honorable Nadine Nakamura
Honorable JoAnn A. Yukimura
Honorable Jay Furfaro, Council Chair
Excused: Honorable Mel Rapozo
Chair Furfaro: Aloha, good morning everyone, good morning Mr. Mayor and
your department heads that are here. I would want to greet you with a warm aloha, but also, it will
be a process that will go on for several days when I call this meeting to order. This will be the
departmental review meeting as posted. Each day we will be going into recess until we reach the
posted completed date of April 18. I also want to make certain that I announce that we have
Mr. Rapozo, who is on an excused absence, attending the HSAC meeting in Honolulu today. And I
would also like to make note that we will consolidate for the members of the meeting, we will
consolidate questions going over to the administration after each day under my signature so there is
one conduit going over to the administration. And you should all have some notepads. On that note
again, welcome, Mr. Mayor, and I am going to let you begin your presentation on the initial overview
of the departmental budget reviews. Thank you.
OVERVIEW:
Chair Furfaro, Vice Chair Yukimura, Councilmembers, good morning and aloha. Aloha.
Thank you so much for the time change, I really appreciate it. Of course happy to be here to begin
the discussions, the healthy discussions, as we move in detail throughout our budget process. I am
so proud to be sitting here with our staff members, our administrative staff, our team, who is here
who has been working very hard and diligently to make sure we get all the information possible so
when each of our departments come before you, we are prepared. You will also see a unified effort
from our administration as we begin the budget process just by the delivery of information and you
will see what I mean, soon. We wanted to make sure that we offer you a uniformed effort here so we
can follow through the process as you meet with each and every department. Again, thank you for
allowing me this opportunity to begin this discussion, and to provide a brief overview of the fiscal
year 2012 budget which was presented to you on March 15. Today, this morning, I wanted to focus
on...I don't want to make it too long, but I really want to make some key points here on what this
entire budget process and how we assembled this process and assembled the budget you see before
you and some of the important pieces that make a difference in us, we as an administration getting
things done, getting to the action that is so, so needed as we move forward and acknowledging the
challenges and economic turmoil that is happening not only here on our island but throughout the
state and throughout the country and the world. So we acknowledge that.
I'm going to focus on five areas. First I'll give you a brief overview, a financial overview, we'll
look at the reorganization to increase these three important areas I feel strongly about, and you will
see what I mean in our administration's effort to meet accountability, efficiency, and productivity.
Those are the three areas. No. 3, I want to share with you a slow return to normal operation, and
that's another part. No. 4, I want to talk to you and share with you some of our efforts in the Holo
Holo 2020 vision. And then finally, give you some variable to consider as we move forward, from now
to our official final submittal in May. So those are the five areas we going to be looking at.
Apri18, 2011
Overview p.2
In the financial overview, in my State of the County (I'm not going to do the whole thing,
obviously, but give you a snapshot.) The total budget that's before you is $164 million, of
which $84 million is in our CIP program, and I'm excited about that part and you will see why very
shortly, excited meaning how we are trying to address each and every project as we look and detail
them out. So we have an increase overall of 11.7 percent or $7.3 million that we're looking at. Over
the span of three fiscal years, from 09 to fiscal year 12, our budget has increased only 4.4 percent,
and so I wanted to kind of touch on that and how we have progressed from where we started and
where we're going. In Fiscal year 10 and fiscal year 11 combined, had a total of 6.6 percent decrease,
so average increase of 1.5 per year. Over the same span, personnel costs increased 22 percent, so
again you will see how much of the personnel side or benefit side of it really rose to higher levels.
95 percent of the 17.3 million, as stated, is attributed to increase in fixed costs. So payroll,
expansion of bus service, energy costs, we did include our wonderful fire helicopter operations which
is all part of this whole part that I'm sharing with you right now. Our CIP budget decreased 15
percent from the current fiscal year and so...now if you go towards the revenues part, real property
is down 6 percent, overall revenue slightly up due partly to our solid waste collection fee. I want to
kind of share that our efforts to find a good cross, a balance overall where we were able to hold off on
furloughs, we were able to also increase fees where we needed to look at how we need to manage
ourselves fiscally. So there's an overall picture here as you see on our efforts to acknowledge the
challenges, know we got to raise fees here and there, whatever is feasible, and at the same time find
a balanced budget that going benefit all. And I just wanted to make sure you understand that. So in
no. 1, in our financial overview that gives you that.
No. 2, the reorganization to increase accountability, efficiency, and productivity, that's
number two. I've been in the county system for over 25 years as of October of last year, so I come
with the understanding that sitting at a desk, at the portables by the convention hall and wondering
sometimes as I progress through this wonderful system of the county government some 25 years ago,
some of the areas that if I had a chance, what could I do, how could I make a difference if I had a
chance? And I speak to you from my experience of sitting there and all the different hats that I have
worn from that level up to the administrative level and thinking along the way, if I did have a
chance, how could I impact or make an internal systems change and at the same time engage
external, which is the public that we all serve. So I go back to that and reflect a lot of times, I want
to share that with you, because now I'm trying to bring that to reality in my role and try to see as a
team how we can get to that point. So I understand the challenge -- I've heard it all because I've
been there. So enough said on that. So, throughout this year as I have seen and tried to envision the
past two years as mayor, and I took those two years and pretty much flat lined, we just stayed with
what we had, which was great people, a great organization, following through with Mayor Baptiste's
administration, so taking the two years and following through on some of the projects, but at the
same time questioning if I had a chance again, how would I manage, what resources would I need to
get to where we want to go, what positions would I need, what areas within my administration
would I need to make it happen? With the end result getting towards the action of every piece. So I
want to share with you that what you have before you is a budget that includes some of my thoughts
and ideas on what I need as mayor to make a difference, to make the -- when I say and I speak and I
look at projects I want to get to that point and I need the support, see?
So you are going to see overall in some of the areas as we begin to reorganize and also look at
people's strengths. Sometimes, on the football field, for example, where I come from in the
beginnings, you know, you have certain positions. You have a center who is the guy who fumbles the
ball...ah, fumbles the ball?... hikes the ball -- Councilmember Yukimura, I going clarify that for you
okay. Anyway, hikes the ball. So my point being that sometimes you have people who can really do
well in one position and they are great, they have the passion, they understand the position, they
know what they need to do, but they are limited to that position. They are limited to the subject
matter, okay? Then you have people who can play multiple positions like center, guard, and tackle.
I mean, I could do that, but point being that there are people who have different hats and can
manage and play multiple roles. Then you have the team captain who can rally the troops, he might
not be able to do everything, but he or she can bring people together and help them to understand
and not set them up to fail. So I have to look at this whole picture and put people, not get rid of
people per se, but put people where I felt they would make a difference and help them to grow, in
Apri18, 2011
Overview p.3
whatever positions .were available, and at the same time bring in new people to enhance and work
collectively to the capacity of each person can do. So that kind of covers that area.
Some of the examples as we move forward in the reorganization and accountability area: in
budgeting, that's another thing, I was very concerned how we manage ourselves. How do we sit at
the table and budget? What discussions, how do we manage that? Before it was done more on a
quarterly basis; I think monthly; I want to start now. We started last year for the budget coming up
now. We had reviews bi-monthly, but I thinking we got to do that monthly. I'm starting now for
next year, at least in discussions. So I want to lay the foundation so it's clear to our department
heads that they need the direction from me. They need to understand, this is the direction we need
to go and I'm working on that. It's only been 4 months into our new administration, so I just need
the time to deliver and manage and be able to get what I need with the information and the great
people that we have. Now the people within our administration along with all the government
workers who work so hard on a daily basis, they are all part of this team, but we need a solid team
that is in a leadership role to get the job done and that's what it is.
I included in our budget risk management is another critical area, I feel. I've seen too many
large settlements and cost items that have resulted from our own lack of adherence to process and
policies. We need our managers to help them and assist them to make sure that when they get into
trouble and they get into some situations where they have difficulty that they are able to go to a
document, find the resource they need to address that problem. And we got to do that and I feel
comfortable and very proud of our risk management efforts in addressing these areas. Lack of
policies, lack of direction is unacceptable. It's how we conduct ourselves and make sure that our staff
has the resources that they need to better manage, especially at mid-level supervisors. They are the
ones that need the support, and I need somebody with oversight to tackle that on a daily basis if we
have to and that is the reason for risk management. Too much money has been spent trying to
figure out what -- you guys got the whole thing, right? So that's the risk management area. I know
that, I sat as a supervisor, I sat as a director. And so it's not about necessarily...sometimes the
system needs to change in order to provide the documentation and the support.
Our communications team, I have assembled an awesome communications team that can
cover whatever operations in this whole county and I feel confident about that. Our team can tackle
the needs, our team can deliver whatever communication needs, any department, I feel confident in
saying that because of the caliber of people we have, the expertise we have, whether it be through
PSAs, whether it be through social media, whether it be through communicating with the general
public, whether it be to doing outreach programs with the community and enforcing and making
sure we get the message clear and out there, whether it be updating our web sites and information,
getting to the people within their living rooms, that's where I'm at. So our communications team, I
don't care what anybody tells me, this team is assembled to address the needs of our county, period,
and I feel comfortable and confident. I need for you to accept or help me to move in that direction so
I feel confident in that.
Capital improvement program. I wasn't happy with how the whole system was set up in the
past, I'm not blaming anybody, I'm just picking up from where it was and moving on. So this
particular CIP program, thanks to the county council, we did have, we do have a executive to the
mayor position who is managing the projects, working closely with the different departments and the
goal being...too long we have set aside our projects have been sitting there with money attached and
not moving. Bottom line, looking at all the projects, figuring out which is real, aligning the projects
with goals and objectives and funding streams, whether it be state, federal funding, STIP funds,
whatever it is, I'm not going to accept projects that sit over here from the beginning without no real
cost to end it, to complete it. And a lot of times what I've seen upfront the funding is there, but it
does not include construction. And so that's what I'm seeing. So what we're trying to do is attach a
story, very simply, to every single project. If you, Councilmember Nakamura, wanted to know about
Opaekaa Bridge, you should be able to get a document that, going lay it out for you now with realtime
information. So it means, (inaudible) and working closely now with developing a project manager's
team, within our engineering department, and I'm talking reorganization. But three areas for me
right now although everybody else needs attention and I'm going to give as much attention as I can,
but if you're talking reorganization, personnel, public works, and planning right now, but more to
April S, 2011
Overview p.4
come. But if these we're talking restructuring, especially with the CIP project program. I feel
strongly that we need an avenue for all our projects to enter in this door and that door is the
engineering department. Every single project needs to enter to this door, be analyzed, be focused, be
channeled through, and then shoot back to each department with that support. We're trying to
create this process, how we manage the entire CIP project, and putting the funding where the actual
projects going happen, and then moving in that direction. So I'm very strongly advocating to make
sure that those projects, when I speak or when we speak, Councilmember, you might have a project
that is dear to your heart that you think should get on, let's talk about it. But we also have a listing
of projects that have been sitting there forever, so which projects should we actually get done, which
project maybe we should just abandon, which projects should we keep dollar-funded until we're
ready based on the information from experts, based on the information from our internal team, based
on the information from consultants or whatever it is, but tell me when that project is going to start,
how it's going to be detailed out, and when is the end date. If you cannot tell me that right now, then
thank you very much, let's move on to the next project. I'm just trying to share my thoughts with
you folks on how this whole budget process came about.
In order to address these areas and other areas, like I said, reorganizing personnel, the
structuring of public works, the other area within that would be our permitting system and the one
stop shop. So you are going to see some efforts there as well. I'm kind of getting into detail because
each department, I'm kind of excited about trying to share with you guys, but I know our
departments will do the details, I just give you the overview. So it's the combination of all these
things together that will result in a more responsive -- I like this -- user-friendly government, user-
friendly government. So we've got to continue to look at ways to provide the support. I know this is
challenging times right now, but sometimes you got to give this much more in order to get more at
the end. And this is the time.
So budgeting, risk management, communications, we talked about -- even within our own
office. I sit there and there's so much information and requests that come in. I want to be able to
respond back in a timely manner. Right now documents are coming to my office, there's a time limit
of three days and you are out of here. It has to get back, because we need to get documents so our
staff can get things done. Requests come in...I have a... I can tell you how many phone calls came
into our office today, or this past three months. I can tell you how many documents came in because
we have a staff now, a team, developing this process so I can response back. If you want to know
what Mr. and Mrs. So and so said, I can respond to you, using technology of course, and the expertise
of our team members, see. So we're trying to track things and be more accountable, not only
internally, because we have the internal customer, which is our brothers and sisters right here, and
then you got the external of course, which is the general public that we all serve. So I'm trying to,
again, figure and be more accountable as mayor with the team members we have and then share
with you some of the small things. We also have had two sessions already, we gathered every single
secretary, put all the secretaries in a room, have my secretary Cathy Simao sit with them and talk to
them about how can we be more efficient. We came up with number one, the simple things that
leads to the larger picture. Now we have the same -when you call our office, you are going to have
the same message. Example. Just small things. When we do transmittal forms, it's all the unified,
it's the small things that projects uniformity, teamwork. Then you get the larger things that we
looking at, right. I share with you that our staff members are looking at all the details. This is the
time, this six month period, from now to June, I'm giving...by July 1 I want to be moving, I want to
be moving, but all the little details is within this six month period. That's my goal. So half of the
things. They have two meetings and how wonderful to hear some of the secretaries say I think this
or I think that or maybe we should do this and then they start talking. How wonderful is that? Now
we looking at our accountants, put all our accountants in one room, Wally, and have them all talk
story and see what kind of process you guys think we should work in, what is more efficient? I want
to hear from them, not to mention our Employee Council, they have been doing some wonderful work
with projects and engaging community, but I want them to dive into some policies. I want them to
have a chance to say I think this, mayor, I think this to change the process, to change the work
environment. Give me your thoughts. I want to hear. Sorry, I'm using my hands a lot, but that's
okay. Anyway, so that's another example of trying to engage as much as we can because if we can do
that, I feel internally, externally it's going to go. It's not going to -- it's not easy. We're going to
make mistakes, you guys. I acknowledge that. But we got to start somewhere and the adjustments
Apri18, 2011
Overview p.5
that have to be made as we move forward, but I just share that. And we continue to look at ways to
bring -- I want to hear.
Then the next piece was the slow return to normalcy. This budget for the most part reflects
a continued conservative approach to spending. For the past two years we reduced spending, held off
on filling more than two dozen positions. I have stayed flat for two years. You can check it out if you
want, but that's the truth. So now I feel strongly that I need to move, I need help to get what I need
done. So I feel I tried to not...but 28 positions of furloughs, dollar funded positions, we're asking for
nine. I did fill some positions within my office but I need that to help that level move because you
put here, but the end result going be more. I believe that.
So with this coming back to a normal operations as best as we can, being conservative,
knowing all the challenges, we got collective bargaining on the table, we got all gas prices going $5,
have God forbid, so there's lot of things happening simultaneously. For the past two years we've
reduced spending, held off on filling positions. We need to continue to be conservative and I say that
from the bottom of my heart, but at the same time I need to understand, you need to help me
understand the needs in order for us to move to a different level. In order to get the work done and
provide the public with the level services needed, we must start restoring some -- some -- of the
resources that is needed and then go from there. We currently have, like I said, 28 dollar funded
positions. I propose to fill nine. Where? Okay, I can tell you where.
Engineering. I just said I need help in engineering. Planning, I just said we want to focus on
planning for now. I want to be able to bring in planner 1's, I want to bring in a planner entry-level so
we can find the balance with our young people coming in, whatever support that they need, and at
the same time, provide the additional support at the top level. So that's where I'm at, and you can
share what your thoughts are later. And of course in Parks. Regulatory requirements, fire, our
SAFER grants, all of those positions are in there too. Police and fire are here, we're working with
them, I acknowledge them, they do great work, there's a lot of things happening in our police and fire
departments, and we continue to work closely, whatever we can do to support that, I will. There are
certain areas that we can't, but I am willing to sit with our chiefs, our commissions, whatever we got
to do, to sort it out and map it out. So if we're not going to get it here, we may get it here. So it's just
a overall plan.
In our Holo Holo 2020, since taking office in 2008, I wanted to follow through on being
accountable back to the people, so we did a report card format where the people could at least track
our projects and that was just a tool that was up available to the public, listing all the projects that
we made commitments to and keep it on track. From the very beginning, I identified five areas
which is, of course, supporting our economy, planning wisely, customer service, caring for our
communities, and of course becoming more sustainable. That was from day one so that was focused
on that. Now in my inaugural speech in December, I outlined a vision for our island called
Holo Holo 2020. And afterwards, we initiated a series of projects that would help us realize that
vision over the next 10 years. So some of the 38 projects are already in motion. I just wanted to
touch on the projects that are already moving, it's in our budget, and it's there.
No. 1, installation of photovoltaic panels on the Lihu`e Civic Center's Piikoi building,
happening.
No. 2, construction of a lighted traffic warning system to improve pedestrian safety in Koloa,
build a elementary school to support safe routes to school.
No. 3, thank you so much for your support, the Kauai Bus has expanded service and we all
know that, because we worked together on that, together.
The county has begun the process to siting a residential adolescent drug treatment facility in
central Kauai. We said we going to begin the process; we did.
No. 5, the master planning process fora 75-acre green affordable housing complex is on
the way.
Apri18, 2011
Overview p.6
No. 6, the county has been awarded (I'm excited about this one) a grant from the state
department of business, economic development and tourism to install six electric charging stations at
county facilities and purchase several electric vehicles.
No. 7, the county supported the timely processing of permits so that the state's largest solar
energy project could be installed and that's on Olohena Road.
No. 8, the Kaiakea fire station, as you all know, it's currently going through LEED
certification, wonderful. We are all on the same page with that as we continue to move forward with
many of our buildings and facilities.
And finally, an invitation for proposals has gone out for an energy services company, right, to
assist the county to increase energy efficiency and renewable sources at the three wastewater
facilities. So that's already in motion.
Some of the other projects which you know about because I shared them with you folks
during our inaugural speech, so we are looking forward to the supporting of those projects and
others. We will be tracking the process in these projects through press releases, and I will take our
Administration on the road, we'll begin going out on the road in the various vicinities I tell you
upfront, to get information to share where we at, what we're doing, what some of the input, we're
going to begin that very shortly. I want to get out into community, it's not about the report card
which was a great tool, but we got to move on. Now it's getting out there, so we're going to
start that.
Now the last part, variables to consider as we move forward. Like I stated earlier, you know
we're going through...there are always variables that can seriously impact our budget. Between now
and our May submittal, a better estimate of next year's tax rolls due to the number of appeals we're
anticipating, that's some of the things we got to work on. The progress of collective bargaining, I
talked to you about that and I'm still and I'm smack dab in the middle of that right now, me and my
fellow mayors, and trying to figure out how we can come to agreement...of course going benefit the
working people and the people in general, and see how we can move that process forward because
the longer we wait, I believe, and I going go further on this, the more time and efforts will take this
whole effort in a different angle, if you will. So the sooner we can come together collectively
the better.
And then of course the legislature is still considering a bill that could affect our TAT. It's
always back and forth. We're just hanging there, I'm willing to do what we need to do to lobby, to
talk story, to walk the halls, do what we have to do because that TAT is so critical. We did talk
about a cap, okay, maybe, but let's look at that but totally take that TAT away is not healthy for our
economy. So we need to hold on to that and we all going lobby for that, I know. So that being said, I
just going caution against considering any significant additional expenditures, but let's talk about it
and see what areas can really work. So, in conclusion, I just want to thank you for your time and
thank you for all that you do. I know we look forward to more positive dialogue. I know the doors of
course is always a good opening with our committee chairs, working closely with our department
heads, go for it, talk story, go, go, go. If there's any other informational pieces between the council
chair and myself, we have a protocol, and we can continue to work on that, what is going to
best...because I want to be able to respond back to you folks and they know, they meaning our team
members know. I always highlight what is the response date from Councilmember Chang or
Councilmember Yukimura, it's response by February 8, highlight. Now what does that mean?
Is that real? If not, get back and let them know we can't. What is real and then get back in a timely
manner, team members. So I just want you to know we're working on it, we're on it, but I feel
strongly and happy with the team I've assembled, this is a team that going help me move to the
next -- us, all of us, so we can respond overall.
So I believe our fiscal restraint over the past two years has brought us to a point where we
can begin to restore some cuts, like I've said. We must always seek the balance of providing
adequate services to the public while being responsible stewards of the tax dollars we oversee. It is
Apri18, 2011
Overview p.7
not an easy task. However, I am confident that collectively we can make the tough decisions and
find the balance that will best serve the people of Kauai and Niihau. Thank you so much for your
time. Our departments will begin the initial detailed discussions, but I really appreciate the
opportunity as we continue to work closely together for the people we serve. Thank you so much. If
you have any questions for me?
Chair Furfaro: Mayor, thank you very much for your presentation. I have a
few statements for you after reviewing your budget that I would like to share with you, not specific
questions but more along the lines of making sure we're consistently communicating the information,
especially as we go forward to review operating goals and the necessities we have in our community.
First of all, I want to thank you for your statements about allowing certain chairmen of various
committees being able to have access with their counterparts. For example, Councilwoman
Yukimura heading housing having access to Mr. Jimenez, Councilwoman Nakamura having access
to planning, Mr. Bynum having access to finance, and so forth. Those are all parts about as we go
through this budget that we need to improve communication and I want to let you know it's very
much appreciated from all the members here of the council. On another note, I want to say I'm also,
you know, very concerned with the general financial picture for the county in the upcoming year and,
you know, I agree that Kauai is not out of danger here, especially with the timing cycle that we
have, you know, one day we're hearing about the GET tax state, next day we hearing that that
proposal is scratched. We were looking at the TAT bill revisions from the house, another revision
that cuts it more from the senate, and yet, you know, we have $13 million of that TAT money in your
budget submittal that stands right now. But any way you look at that, that number is going to be
short about two point two million dollars, even if we end up with the senate version being given to
us. You know, the devastation recently in Japan, we have not seen the impact from that tsunami
and the financial repercussions in our state, let alone here in our county. We don't have the
legislature adjourning I believe until May 5.
On May 8 we'll be looking for your budget revised submittal and I also want to say that, you
know, we have a habit that is one that we need to really look at in doing our budget if it works any
more. For example, we compare the budget of this year to last year's budget. But in actuality, we
have seven months of actual documentation and if we added five months of the forecast on it, we'd be
comparing part of a year with a new proposed budget, and I have a habit of looking at it that way,
and I have to tell you this, there's some bad news in that seven months. We are down almost 4.1
percent in revenues and we are also blended another, oh, 2.8 percent under-spending what you
forecast. So we don't want to enlarge the surplus but at the same time I believe we should be
comparing 7 months actual, 5 months of the rest of the budget against your new budget, that's for
example. Because of that I've always had a position that says I strongly recommend that this county
start practicing not a policy about surplus, but a policy about having a reserve as recommended by
many accounting practices. I think that's something we're going to talk about in this process.
We also know that Barack Obama within the next one hour and 45 minutes may or may not
be facing a federal government shutdown. Their belt is tight. President Obama continues to work in
negotiating and I feel positive that we can do this as we go through the budget process. But the
federal government has announced that all wage increases for federal employees will be capped at
their current level for two years. I also want to thank you at this point for your communication that
came to us after yesterday's meeting in Honolulu with the mayors and in particular in paragraph 3
you submitted, you said, as was the case two years ago, we are anticipating there will be a master
agreement. The next phase I am very appreciated is in this, and we continue to work on a
supplemental agreement to provide flexibility within each county. I think that's important to our
employees, that we have that flexibility.
And I would encourage you to continue to work through it. In our last CAFR as it was
presented to us, we show yet to be identified as a reserve but what we show might be a surplus is
about 43 million dollars worth of dollars. But what is not shown in this piece is we have already
anticipated spending another 9.2 million dollars for increases in PT&E, or retirement benefits. We
also have about 9.7 million that we have approved in new projects this year for the year that wasn't
in the previous budget. We also have the expansion of the bus, which is not reflected, that's
another 4.8 million. We also have the possible revised lack of furloughs for the ending of furloughs
April 8, 2011
Overview p.8
which shows another 5.4 million variance in your budget submitted last year versus what we
anticipate now spending. These are items that concern me because I would like to get to a point that
we have an operating but as we're in the year for the year, we're going through what is
commonly referred to as surplus.
So I want to say I understand your caution on that particular piece, but more importantly,
there is a current national crisis in the financial arena for government and every day we hear how
the crisis is growing in the state. And on that note, I just pledge working very closely with you,
mayor. I do want to say I think in this first review we need to be somewhat conservative until we
reconcile what actually comes out of the legislature, I believe, on May 5. Your budget review in final
draft form is due in front of us on May 8 and I think I have the dates correct, am I right, with the
ending of the legislature -- and I just want to say we're all really willing to work with you because
we're seeing all these red flags pop up. But I want to stress for our employees, I really look towards
you in your discussion with the mayors as I read this communication from you that we anticipate
that there will be a master agreement and that supplemental agreements which will provide us with
flexibility for our employees. I have to tell you I am very concerned as we reconcile the six months of
ending furloughs that it became very obvious, mayor, that that perhaps was not the best approach
for us and I acknowledge the fact that you did end it, but we need to keep that flexibility in any item
at the negotiating table and on that note I will ask other members if they want to make comments to
you at this point just on what you shared but I pledge to work very closely with the administration
and get us to the right place for the right reasons.
Mayor Carvalho: Thank you, Chair Furfaro, and yes the flexibility part I am
strongly advocating because we're sure that each county we have a master agreement but each
county has a different story. Leave it at that. I am totally supportive of moving in that direction.
Chair Furfaro: I have a technical agreement in my mind where I am
listening to dollars and dates and so forth. Technically you have to submit that revision to us on
May 8. The date I gave you was a holiday.
Mayor Carvalho: So May 5, May 6, right? Okay, got it.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Bynum, do you have just comments for the
mayor on his overview at this point?
Mr. Bynum: Comments and dialogue?
Chair Furfaro: Do you have comments for the mayor and I will see where
your comments go in the way of dialogue. Go ahead.
Mr. Bynum: So we can ask questions?
Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: Mayor, thanks for being here today and thanks for your
enthusiasm. I, too, pledge that we're going to work together as a team, as we've done pretty
successfully I think so far, but this is our opportunity to really set back over the next couple of weeks
and look at issues that are before us. You laid out really important ones but I want to dialogue about
a couple of these, give you some perspective from me but also clarify some things.
So I appreciated your state of the county address the other day, I thought it was really well
done and I get the overall message. And I think it's correct that we as a county under your
leadership moved early to be fiscally conservative, to really look at our spending, to limit the amount
and in the way that I think is the best way for us when we need to cut to really look at our personnel
costs by looking very carefully when you fill new positions. So we have positions that we know we
need eventually that we've kept and I appreciate that forethought on your behalf and that
leadership. I wasn't a fan of furloughs, I don't think it was a good way for us to do that but we made
that choice and now from my perspective I'm glad we're behind -- I mean we're behind that. But you
Apri18, 2011
Overview p.9
did move very early on and say, hey, we got to get in front of this. And it puts us in good stead and
as you said in your address, we are fiscally sound and that comes from a history of being
conservative and we have a lot of challenges ahead of us. So I'm going to get to some specific things
that you just mentioned.
First of all, I totally applaud that we are moving in risk management and human resource
areas. I'm going to have a lot of questions about how we do that, but one of your statements was that
we've suffered from a lack of adherence to policies and procedures and it couldn't be more clear from
this seat of paying out very large settlements, you know, any one of which could have funded this
new risk management position for several years. And so if we avoid even one of those kind of
settlements in the future it will have been a worthy effort. I think this council supported the
creation of that position. I want to recognize Mr. Rezentes' advocacy for that before you were mayor
because he also has to write the checks for these large settlements and I'm glad to see that we are
actually doing that now and then how that structures, how it integrates with training I think is very
important. I have the experience of being a manager in county government 25 years ago, a middle
manager, and I was glad to hear you say that middle -- mid-level supervisors need clarity and
support and tools to do their jobs well, because I was one of those people before, but I was in a county
where we had a very fleshed out training program, you know, and risk management and we had very
little liability because of that proactive movement. We're moving in that direction and that's a
positive thing.
You mentioned your communication team. When I worked for Mayor Baptiste I was, like,
hey, we got to communicate with the public better. I think we all know that work in government,
there was a period of time...there is always somebody in the mayor's office who takes concerns from
citizens and there was an era years ago where those would just stack up in the paper and they would
never be responded to. The mayor before you and you have beefed up your senior staff, beefed up
your communication team, you added a new position this year and I think that's really important,
but we also have to recognize that there's been significant increase in the mayor's budget in his office
over the last several years. I'm very likely to support those moves because I want to see an efficient
government happen, but I think in budget we're going to get down to some specific questions about
how those decisions were made so we have a better understanding.
This is kind of a side thing. You -- I also applaud the way your administration has moved
toward making more public information available more readily to the public through the web. We
have this new Granicus contract and the council now is moving at making our supporting documents
in a few months time readily available to the community as they watch our processes and I hope that
your planning department in particular uses that technology as well. so when people have a Kilauea
pavilion that's controversial, they can actually go onto the website, look at the supporting documents
and get the background information and maybe cut through the claims that they hear in the
community, from one side or another. I just picked that one because we're all getting correspondence
from both sides of that issue right now, so. You know, I think, that I have a particular interest in the
CIP program. We always had a difficult time -- not a difficult time identifying projects or even
funding them, but a difficult job of actually making them happen. You know, when I became the
chair of the public works committee 2 1/2 years ago, we had a very rich dialogue about the problem of
getting our CIP projects out the door. You know, more than a year ago you instituted some of the
things that I think you are following through on of really looking at each project, who's responsible
for it, what's a reasonable timeline, you know, and making an effort to look to be on that. We got a
spreadsheet from the administration after waiting and being patient because you had to get up to
speed with that, that outlined some of our major projects and made predictions a year and a half ago
about their timeline. As we get through budget and your focus on CIP, we're going to be monitoring
that through the finance and public works committee that I chair and, you know, just have an honest
dialogue. Hey, we had these goals two years ago because I think you and I both know things haven't
moved. Our track record even over the last two years hasn't been that great. I'm also concerned
about the 5 year CIP plan that we generate together and we need to look at that differently because,
you know, what we said, you know, why do we do a 5 year CIP plan in collaboration with the council?
In my mind it's so we're all on the same page. So when the public asks you or asks us, what our
priorities, we can turn to that plan and say this is the agreed-upon priorities in this plan but I've
heard dialogue in the past saying that's just something we have to do and we never follow it. Well,
Apri18, 2011
Overview p.10
why are we spending time and effort on something if we're not going to follow it? I think it's
important for us to get together on those issues.
And I have some concern, you mentioned beefing up engineering. Because, you know, a lion's
share of CIP projects tend to come through public works and it's in that division where we haven't
seen a lot of performance. But then some of your personnel changes, take civil engineer positions
and put them into something different. I don't need an answer today, but it's like how are we going
to accomplish that goal? It is a very critical important, particularly now when we're getting good
bids for projects that we're doing and we really need to put people to work. In the trades in
particular we still have very high unemployment, guys sitting on the bench, and some of the private
sector is bringing laborers from the mainland when our guys are sitting on the bench. So we need to
make sure we don't do that in our government work and we need to get that work out as quickly as
possible.
Both in the budget and in everything we do, we do planning. The budget is a plan about how
we're going to spend money. We make predictions about it. But then we need to always compare
that with actual performance. We have a plan to get CIP done, we need to compare that with actual
performance. We have budget plans that make predictions about what reserves or surpluses are
going to be but then we have an audit every year that tells us what our actual performance was on
those issues. And during this budget session I want us to look at that really closely, not just what
the budget plan is, but what our actual performance is.
You mentioned using technology to improve our performance and I think we've got a long
ways to go. You have a new hire at IT, Mr. Raines, a very talented individual from what I can see,
but we still move information back and forth in paper, volumes of it moving back between your office
and our office and I really would like us to hopefully as a county look at a comprehensive document
management, how we move information back and forth is pretty inefficient and I think that's an area
where some investments are appropriate in terms of making us more productive. Would you agree
with that?
Mayor Carvalho: I totally agree with that. I can give an example how we're
beginning the process like...personnel, we're paperlesss. See? So there was a concern as we met
through our budget sessions, which is great when we meet more often as a team, so there was a
concern of manual type applications coming in. So that came from the staff and we looked at that
and now working closely with the staff. Now the concern was, what if people weren't able to get
online? So we work closely with our one stop shop, and so now they come into the personnel office,
they can get online right there, if they're not familiar with that, we direct them to our one stop shop
training center and they go online with that. But the bottom line, we are making every attempt to
get to that. You know, even our Xerox machines now are capable of doing multi task and you can
have it scanned. The documents are scanned. You need a scanned document right now, I can send it
to you, you know, it's an official document. So I guess my point being we are moving and I agree in
our efforts and I have every confidence in our IT team with the knowledge that they have and some
of the great creative thoughts and programs that they are looking at, we are looking at. Even
getting down to a lot of streamlining our documents through our procurement process and our
boilerplate and looking at how we can come to something that's readily available should we need it,
so we are moving in that direction.
Mr. Bynum: I know one specific area that I have tracked over the years is
we have made considerable investment in GIS technology. It has tremendous potential, it's already
serving us really well, but it has tremendous potential in to connect up with other departments. I
was really looking for some investment in personnel there. I think we're, in terms of getting the data
in and actually using the technology we've invested in, I don't see how we're going to move from
point A to point B with the current level of support that that program gives, so I just encourage you
to look at that before the budget submittal and look at other ways, I think there are departments
who are not connected to GIS, that can and should. And can keep us -- technology can avoid us from
having to increase staff. You don't need to have a person chunking this through and you can be
done, and I know you are looking at those things. You made a comment about planning is an area
where we've seen a lot of change recently. It's near and dear to most of us here on the council, and
April 8, 2011
Overview p.ll
we're happy that... You made one statement, and it kind of surprised me, saying I want to bring in
planner 1's. Well you know, we lost Ricky and Brian and some very senior people there that have
the depth of knowledge. So I would hope that when we're filling some of the planning positions, even
though we want to bring in new people at planner 1, I'm worried about that kind of senior staff loss.
So it's just something I have.
Mayor Carvalho: Well let me clarify that. That is truly, on our side, yes, we
need to fill our upper level positions, right? But at the same time I need to also encourage, and see,
we have a lot of inquiries from graduates from college who want to come home so there's an
opportunity where we can offer that opportunity to work within our county government and match
them up of course with some of our senior people and that way you have this consistency and flow
through. Because a lot of our young people want to come home. They getting degrees in technology
and engineering and planning, they are bright minds even in waste management and environmental
services. And I personally have gotten requests from many of these young minds who want to be
able to come home, so I want to also begin that and try and see if we can offer that opportunity at the
same time knowing how important it is to get our senior people, our senior positions filled. I just
want to make sure you understand, I am trying to find that balance.
Mr. Bynum: Well planning is a good place to look at that because we have
some really young talented people there, Marie and Lea and Kaaina, you know, that are fairly new
to planning. Then we -- then we have a really young new planning director and we brought Dee
back, which was good I think in terms of having that corporate knowledge and that level of
experience, but...so it's that balance. So I just wanted to comment on that planning one, because I'm
thinking, geez, maybe we need to bring in some experienced planner 5's too.
Mayor Carvalho: I agree.
Mr. Bynum: The other thing I want to just mention was 2 years ago, 2 1/2
years ago, the administration presented a comprehensive tax reform program to the council.
Unfortunately from my perspective we didn't pass that and in the two years since we haven't really
addressed some of the areas of taxation where there's inequities, .either from our side and we're
responsible for that, or from, you know, the administration. So I hope there's a commitment to look
at tax reform because right now in my view there are some very large inequities about, some winners
and losers and who pays taxes, and there shouldn't be winners and losers, there should be some
sense that there's a real fairness in that system. So I guess I'll turn this into a question, can we look
forward to any initiatives coming from you and your administration regarding that issue and then on
the other side make a statement that you can count on some initiatives coming from this side on that
issue in the next two years.
Mayor Carvalho: Let me say this: the exciting part about this whole discussion
with all of you is I really feel that we are in line with many of the projects and many of the initiatives
right here at the table, which is a great thing. We are moving on tax reform, I signed it already to
finance, to begin the process, so that's in its beginning stages right now as we speak, and I'll let our
staff share with you where we at so far in the process and then inform you and then we can go from
there with our individual discussions, because a lot of the stuff that you are talking about, I want to
share some of the details of that for the following discussions. I'm here to give you the overall and I
hear what you are saying and I support that. At the end we can come back again and share some of
the information maybe that wasn't shared and go from there. But from technology to tax reform to
being cooperating in how we manage ourselves, we are all in line with that and many of the
initiatives we talked about, that is on the table now, that is in process and I'm happy with that.
Mr. Bynum: I know this emphasis on communication is so important,
because I've been in this long enough to see, hey, there's this group working on this issue and here's
this group in the administration working on the issue and have major legislation come before the
council, it's like wow, where did that come from? And to say, oh, did they know we were working on
this too? And, you know, even internal communication between council members that we're not
working at cross purposes or taking our talented...
Apri18, 2011
Overview p.12
shortly.
Mayor Carvalho: We have begun the discussion. We will share the information
Mr. Bynum: The other thing I want to say about the budget process is
really frustrating and this year's particularly tough. We're going to go through this next couple of
weeks and I hope that you encourage all of your departments to come here ready to make a
presentation and say what their goals and objectives...
Mayor Carvalho: Okay, hold off right there. That's exactly what's going to
happen. In my opening statement I did say we have come together as uniformed delivery to you.
You will have a document from each of our departments which will show you the goals and objectives
and some of the key areas, so you don't have to be...you may have to refer back to your big binder,
but wanted to get to a place...we have a...I think it was 10 areas that every single department will
be presenting to you separate from what you have and then you can go from there. And that again is
our effort to make it as easy as we can for you to look through and get a good idea of where
everybody is at and you can question them, because they should know exactly what projects we're
working on, what are the goals and objectives, how it's laid out, and I'm ready, we're ready to share
that. Be assured, that's why I say we're talking the same here. I'm excited to have our guys come up
and share.
Mr. Bynum: And that's great. Because I've been through budget processes
where some departments come up and do a great job with that and other departments come up and
they sit in that chair and say, got any questions? So I'm going to look forward to that.
Mayor Carvalho: They will be ready.
Mr. Bynum: I have two more things and then I'll close. One is about TAT,
you know, that's been a major discussion and dialog. In my view we're entitled to that, we host
visitors at a very high percentage on Kauai. Last year the council, the administration, did an
outstanding job, I think, of educating the general public about this issue and Ijust -- I'm worried
that we're not making those same arguments and effort this year to the legislature, making sure
that if they do something irresponsible that they are held accountable for that and I don't even think
caps on TAT are appropriate, personally. Last year the mayors did an incredible job of sticking
together and focusing on that. Part of this is self (inaudible) that taking responsibility too because I
know I was at the legislature several times last year addressing that and this year we're just so
engaged in stuff. But the budget process, the chair mentioned that you are going to submit a
supplemental budget on May 6. We start decision -- that's a Friday. We start decision making on
that budget on the next Monday, on the 9th, right? That's not a whole lot of time to digest because
there may be very significant changes in that May submittal that you are required to do because of
the collective bargaining, because of all of that. I know our county auditor is contemplating an audit
of the budget process and I think that's very appropriate and I hope we all cooperate and look at
about if, in the future, there's not a way to do this more systematically and give us a little more time
in terms of making those critical decisions at the end.
Mayor Carvalho: Right.
Mr. Bynum: I also want to encourage The Garden Island, if they are here,
to let the public know that through the leadership of our chair and the desire of this council, that the
majority of these budget hearings are going to be broadcast to the public. And I think that's a
wonderful thing because I think this is my sixth budget and overall when I go through this process,
I'm proud of our government. I'm proud of the workers that we have that work so hard and
diligently to serve the community and I think, you know, if the public watched this whole thing
they'd see some departments need more help than others, that some seem to have their act together
more than others and that's just true of any organization. But overall they are going to feel good
about the men and women that work on behalf of them in the county and know that the nature of
our relationship is we focus on areas where there's difficulties or where we have disagreements, but
there is much of what the government does that we all agree on that is all appropriate, and I
appreciate your leadership on these issues and we'll go through this difficult times, come out the
April 8, 2011
Overview p.13
other end. I really want us to look at not what our plan is, but what is our actual performance on
these things, whether it's budget or CIP or -- and, you. know, we're not always going to look great.
But we'll be honest and look at the actual performance. Thank you very much.
Mayor Carvalho: Just adding in addition to what you said, under our
administration, our entire budget has been online, too, I want to add that for people at home and if
they're interested, the entire budget is online for their review as well. So they can dive right in there
and be part of our discussions, too, if they want to, and I wanted to also mention that that's another
opportunity for the people to join in this. wonderful conversation. So great.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you, mayor.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Mr. Bynum and before I recognize the next
council member, I just want to again say here's a second comment about looking at the 7 months
actual plus the forecast, very important. Also, on the budget process, I do have a communication
going to the charter commission because, as you know, the timing of our budget is in the charter and
that is something that, you know, goes back when the state used to allocate us money. That's how
we've arrived at this date. So that needs to be something on the charter commission's radar screen.
Mr. Mayor, thank you very much, and I believe I'm going to recognize Councilwoman Vice Chair
Yukimura next. You have the floor. May I ask you to run the meeting while I step out as well?
Ms. Yukimura: Surely. Good morning, mayor and all of your team. Thank
you for your presentation and for your energetic enthusiastic and earnest efforts to bring positive
change to county government. It's very refreshing to see that kind of leadership and I appreciate it
very much. I so appreciate your attention to operations and how we are operating because I think
that's what will build the credibility of government, local government, and when people can have
confidence in their government, when there's time to make hard sacrifices or have to contribute more
in terms of fees and so forth, they will be more willing if they can see that their moneys are being
used with a lot of trusteeship and professionalism, so that what they get in return is good services. I
really appreciate your budget format presentation and I know I expressed about a month ago when I
met with your finance director and your managing director that the past budget presentations have
been somewhat lacking. And I believe that -- I mean, you have here in today's submittal your
mission, your goals and objectives, your successes and achievements of the past year, your
challenges, improvements, upcoming initiatives and, yeah, basically that.
And I'm hearing, I think, that all your departments are going to be in that format. It's very
good to have a report on what the departments did with the moneys last year or in this year that
we're soon ending, and then of course it's really important to us to hear what you are planning to
accomplish with the moneys that you are asking for. So I'm looking forward to that and I might ask
that perhaps you put that on the web as well because the line items are really hard to decipher but
with this kind of format it's a lot easier for both us and the public to try to understand what you are
going to be doing or what you want to do and why you want support for your budget. I really
appreciate and I'm very excited about how you are involving all levels of county government from
your secretary and assistants to your accountants and that's -- I think it will build for so much better
a team and teamwork when people feel involved and as Council Member Bynum said, we have some
really excellent and dedicated county workers and to take their input because they know so much
from their levels, whatever levels they are working at, they are really going to help us make things
better. Thank you. Oh, I ask that you involve, in that same spirit, the county council in creating the
vision for Kauai. We haven't had many opportunities and even the council itself hasn't had a
visioning session as we did one year where we laid out what we wanted to accomplish and that kind
of sets the parameters for what you budget. And I love many parts of your bolo holo 2020 and I
think that council members have some things to contribute toward that vision and it is really a
vision for our whole community, so just ask that you consider that.
On the issue of positions, I think we have to be conservative and yet we cannot just hold back
positions where we have important initiatives for the future of our island or initiatives that will cut
costs in the long run. And I remember when I was first mayor proposing a solid waste coordinator,
we didn't even have a solid waste division at that time, a film commissioner, and because those were
Apri18, 2011
Overview p.14
initiatives that were long range visions. So I'm in favor, I know that when you have new initiatives
you need people who are going to take it on and carry it and advocate it and do the planning and so
forth. What I ask, what I feel is really important, if we give these positions, are the hiring of people
who are qualified to fill those positions. We have, I think you and I know and other -- the community
knows that -- how much the community gets hurt when there are not qualified people in key
positions. And, you know, that goes to process, how we hire people. That was one of the reasons I
suggested an executive search process for our clerk position.
We have to hire the best if we want to really serve our people at the top level. And so it's not
always an executive search that's the proper approach, but proper process and really vigorous effort
to advertise and solicit applications and then a process for finding qualified people is very, very
important. I really appreciate your risk management, your IT initiatives and your focus on CIP.
Those are so critical core pieces of us moving ahead. And one of my questions, though, with respect
to risk management, is how will you judge progress and achievement in the area of risk
management?
Mayor Carvalho: Well, you have our -- Janine Rapozo is our Risk Manager
right now and we're in the process of laying out what those goals and objectives are and she has that
in her presentation to you folks too as well, so she will be laying out the discussions that we had and
along with of course Gary, our managing director, and Wally. So I can give you the bigger picture of
what I want and what I think should be addressed and then let them share with you what the
specifics are to answer your question.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, you know, I mean one possible measure or benchmark is
how much we pay out in claims.
Mayor Carvalho: Yeah.
Ms. Yukimura: And Councilmember Bynum is right, the amount we have
made out has been atrocious. And if you look back -- the other question is are we learning from those
settlements, what went wrong, and are we making the corrections or are we just paying and going on
to the next claim?
Mayor Carvalho: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: You know, those are issues of our proper procedures
regarding sexual harassment and workplace violence and so forth. And I know that there have
been some...
Mayor Carvalho: They are doing training as we speak, we have
completed...just began our sexual harassment training, we are doing the workplace violence
training; we're ready to do the back to work program which I think is important. People need to
realize that just staying home is not something that -- we would like to bring them back to work as
soon as possible and offer them an opportunity maybe not in their particular area but in the area
that can help them get better but get back to work so we can help move our operations forward. So
we are working on the back to work program as well.
Ms. Yukimura: And related to that, I think, is the initiative you did with the
other mayors about a human resource department that can service and analyze and really perform
those kinds of functions for a huge organization, athousand-plus employee -- a thousand employee
organization. So I stand ready to support you in that arena and I think the other council members
have similar concerns. I want to say that, you know, I know that this 75 acre housing proposal is in
your budget, but I'm very concerned that there is not a clear vision for providing affordable housing
for this island. And I haven't had a chance to really, I have to claim the responsibility of being the
housing committee chair and I haven't yet a chance but will soon sit down with your housing director
and his staff to look at that. But I want to know what is the projected need for affordable housing
and how are we going to do that and it's not going to be in just one area. How are we providing it in
our key work areas like, you know, Princeville and south shore and Lihu`e, Kapa`a, and now is the
April 8, 2011
Overview p.15
time we need to be doing the building and I know that we have the Paanau project well underway,
but construction workers could use some jobs, bids are coming in lower, this is really the time to do
it. And I have to also say that I'm extremely disappointed that the previous council and your
administration allowed the watering-down of the housing requirements both at courtyard at
Marriott and the Kukui`ula provision for workforce housing in Po`ipu. We lost so much and even in
our HOME moneys we're using three hundred thousand or some...I don't know, I forget the amount,
to purchase the right to the housing along the golf course here in Lihu`e, and that was meant to be
affordable housing for a long time, all 60 units or 24 units, I think, of them, and now we're having to
buy them back. So we need to really, you know, we have some leeway right now because the market
is down, but we all remember in 2002, 2003, 2004, you know, average cost of a house was $600,000,
people were crowded two or three families in a house, our homeless situation was worse and we're
going to come back to that as we achieve what we want, which is a stronger and more robust
economy. So we can't wait until then to say, okay, how are we going to solve our housing problem,
we need to be doing it right now. And I do want to work with you on that and I think it's an area
that we're really going to have a lot to work on.
And, lastly, this year to year budgeting really bothers me because I think we should be
doing 5 to 10 year budget plans. And then do our year to year within that scope. For example, what
is our pension fund obligations going to look like next year and the following year and the following
year? I mean, and our health insurance contributions, what about oil prices as we look at it. I know
you want a return to normalcy, but...we're going back to 2008 conditions, and if you look at oil prices,
they've never really come down; they've maybe come back a little bit, but they've always gone higher
and higher, how are we going to deal with that? Of course that's part of our energy sustainability
plan too. What about our bond payments? We just floated a bond a couple years ago, and our
payments will increase. I guess some of the payments, we're retiring some bonds but I'd like to see
the long range projections of that so we can do this year's budgeting in the context of what we have
to look at more long range. I commend you and your team for your vigorous and heartfelt efforts to
serve the people of Kauai and I think your leadership is bringing a lot of wonderful new initiatives
that we desperately need because we so long have neglected county operations and I really love the
attention that you are bringing to it and the call to dedication and commitment for efficient and
effective government. So thank you very much.
Mayor Carvalho: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: You are back just in time, Chair.
Chair Furfaro: I would like to go to either of you, if you would like to say
anything. If not, Mr. Chang, I will give you the floor.
Mr. Chang: Thank you, mayor, and thank you to the administration for
being here, and I, too, want to echo your enthusiasm. It seems like it started about an hour and a
half ago, so you still got that enthusiasm. I wanted to say thank you and I think Council member
Bynum went through a lot of the questions I had with regard to the CIP projects, because that's very
true and dear to me and I'm sorry that Tommy Contrades had to leave a little bit early, because I
wanted him to have an opportunity here. However, I did have several informal conversations with
him. We got 85 million dollars or so, 84.4694 million dollars, we got the money, we got to spend it. I
just have to say we were at the NACo convention and the national association of counties, the
message as an organization as well as our delegates in Capitol Hill said, you have the money, spend
the money. And to me there's no better way of communicating with our taxpayers and with our
public because when they see work actually being, going on within the community, then they know
work is being done. I also do share the sentiments of both Council member Bynum and Yukimura.
You know, we got to get our local workers out there. You know there's going to be lower bid
processes. There's a lot of people, as was mentioned, that's sitting on the bench. Sometimes I, too,
get really saddened when many of the construction work that has been going on is bringing in
workers from off island or mainland or what have you. So we got to get the local people going,
because economists will always say although the tourist industry, hopefully summer will be a lot
better, it's nice to get construction work. Part of me being in government or specifically the council,
you know, the big joke was when we saw something happening in the community people would kind
April 8, 2011
Overview p.16
of say, oh, it must be an election year. We've got to constantly show the people that we're working,
we're working, and we're working, and we're working, because that's what's going to really obviously
aid into the economy but more better or more importantly, visually we can communicate to say this
is what's happening, this is what's happening, this is what's happening.
You had mentioned that you wanted to take a road show with the administration hanging
around within the community. I think that's very important. I had a recent personal story that I'd
like to share. I was in the district of Puhi looking at some of the road conditions, the lack of lighting
conditions, some cars parking illegally on blind curves and Wally Kudo, Paul Togioka, Larry Dill,
Lyle Tabata, myself was there but just having being on a visible road with county officials I think
showed a lot of people that things were happening. And I would like to say that the very next day I
saw a KIUC employee surveying the dark areas within that Puhi area and I said, hey, what are you
doing? He said, I got a call from the county from Paul Togioka, so I'm looking at the lighting area.
So I was very impressed because the very next day my concerns were being addressed. That same
day, I noticed that the vans that were parked with grass growing, almost abandoned vans that's
been there plugging the blind spots, and they were there and I called Lyle Tabata and I called Larry
Dill and said I was very, very impressed. That, to me, is a great way of communicating, but showing
the public that County government works. So I just wanted to say that when you do go on a road
show, if it's concerning parks and rec or planning or public works, I hope that you can invite at least
one if not two of our council members that we can join along with that road show because I think
that together, together we can,. but obviously -- where did I hear that from -- but I think we can
make good decisions and move forward. Because when the public sees something is happening out
there and they see the change, I just want to say that I really enjoyed that. I wanted to also say that
I think this quote came in regards to staffing, staffing concerns, the importance of filling up
positions. I think you used the word, something like, the phrase something like this much more to
get that much more. And I agree. You do need this much more to get that much more. So I'd like to
be able to see us move ahead with some of the staffing concerns, especially the critical ones that we
need for public safety, for public works, what have you, here on the island, and I think, you know,
one of the last things that I did want to share, and I'm glad Councilmember Bynum brought this up
but, yes, for the first time ever I believe that the majority, just a few of our budget hearings, I believe
Hoike is going to get as much as they can, but there might be one or two that overlaps with council,
planning commission, police commission, etc. One of the things I learned last year was when it was
scheduled that public works would be here, I know a lot of the staffing were on their computers just
watching to see what their department heads or their administration was saying or trying to convey.
So I know that a lot of the hits came from that specific department, but I think it's a good
opportunity for us when the, you know, there may be questions from the public, then, you know, the
staff can say, by the way, that's a great question, however, if you tune in you can see it streamed live
on Wednesday from 2 o'clock to 4 o'clock, so that can help the public. One of the things that I do
want to explain to the viewing audience, when Hoike shoots council meetings, normally it takes a
half a day or if not a day that people can pick up bits and pieces of the meeting here, catch them at
night here, catch them in the morning here, but you've basically got about a week if not 10 days to
see that meeting. I do want to let the viewing audience know that the unfortunate part of television
when it's not streamed live but through Hoike, there's going to be times that the budget meeting
ends at 4 and then of course the following day the budget meeting starts in the morning. So I have
concerns, because when you air it, it might air at 3, 4, 5 o'clock in the morning with nobody around,
and the next day there's a new... So I don't know how many days they going to plan to do it, but that
might be something that we can talk about, to run it a little couple extra days longer. But I did have
an opportunity to speak with Leo, and Leo's going to speak with Mr. Randy Kozerski, who along with
Richard Stine, if we can coordinate what are the concerns that we might not be able to film the
budget hearings here at the council, The Garden Island newspaper is hopefully going to try to pick
up that slack of what we might be missing from the Hoike. So I think it's a good opportunity to not
only thank Hoike right now, but certainly as a reminder, thank The Garden Island newspaper,
because last year they did show the budget sessions here on a gratis basis. So I want to in advance
thank Garden Island newspaper so there won't be any...it can be continuous all the way through.
But I want to say I appreciate, I look forward for this budget review, it is an exciting time, it's a
scary time, but we got a few, couple of weeks to roll up our sleeves and make good decisions for the
benefit of Kauai. And like I said, I think the big thing for me is to get our CIP projects rolling and
get some people working. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Apri18, 2011
Overview p.17
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chang, I appreciate your initiative in some of these
conversations, but as the chair of the council, I want you to know that I have communicated to Beth's
office and Mr. Isobe's office. These filming activities that we have have been budgeted for this year
and they need to be communicated through the mayor's communications office, Beth Tokioka and so
forth. So I really appreciate your initiative, but, you know, let's not get our wires crossed here.
We're still waiting for some information. I guess Jay Robertson had transpired some information to
The Garden Island which in fact had never been communicated to this council, nor to me as chair,
but we do have money and I would encourage you and your initiative to have a few minutes to talk
with Beth today. If you could, I would appreciate it.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Mayor, I guess we're drawing to a conclusion on this
particular portion of the presentation and before I summarize, I see Councilwoman Yukimura
raising her hand, but I do want to say that let's make sure that as we go forward here, the budget
process is about reviewing financial performance objectives, it's not necessarily about taking the time
to discuss policies. If something comes out of the financial performance issues attached to the
budget, we're going to negotiate those on the merit and the facts. If we need to change a policy,
whether it's the CIP process, housing, and so forth, then we need to know that we need to negotiate
those through agenda items if we want to change policy directed at that, but we do want to make
sure that all of our transactions during this budget is done on merit, you know, the value of
those particular projects and goals, and the actual financial performance. Council Vice Chair, go
right ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: Just a procedural question, Chair. This time was scheduled
for overview and for the mayor's office, and we haven't really gotten into the mayor's office budget,
and I don't know if all the department heads need to be here for that, but I wanted to make sure that
we were going to have some time to look at that besides the overall.
Chair Furfaro: Your assistance...excuse me Mr. Mayor, you are consistent
with past actions, we are doing the overview, I am referring to the merited facts of the budget. If I
do excuse the other members, the mayor's department will be the next item.
Mayor Carvalho: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: Do you want a recess?
Mayor Carvalho: In wrapping up on my part, just thank you again.
Chair Furfaro: Yes, you heard my comment.
Mayor Carvalho: I heard your comment, and thank you for your comments, it
will be taken into our individual departments, we will look forward to healthy discussions. I really
feel strongly that you know there's many problems but we can really help out each other working on
solutions and getting to the solution part. I know there's going to be a lot of questions and dialogue,
which is great, but the efforts to get the job done on both...we are all elected officials and we have
the responsibility to perform and ten to provide information back to our people that we serve. So I
look forward to the healthy discussions. Let's roll up our sleeves and dive right into the information,
our team members are ready with their information, and aloha.
Chair Furfaro: Yes, and Mr. Mayor, I want to thank you for structuring. I
know we've talked about this in the past, the open lines of communication, but I appreciate the
structure that you put in the departmental overviews, listing goals, objectives, and comparison. But
on that note, I am of the assumption Mr. Heu is going to do the mayor's department review? We're
going to take a 5-minute break if you don't mind. We're going to take a caption break, okay 10
minutes. Mahalo, Mr. Mayor.
There being no objections, the budget review was recessed at 12:37 p.m
Apri18, 2011
Office of the Mayor p.l
The budget review was called back to order at 12:50 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
OFFICE OF THE MAYOR:
Chair Furfaro: We're back from our recess. I think we are at a point that we
can now talk particulars regarding the actual mayor's department, and Mr. Heu, thank you very
much for being here. And on that note, you might want to give us a preview of what a presentation
might be for a department.
GARY HEU, Managing Director: Okay, thank you, Chair, good morning Chair and
Councilmembers. For the record, Gary Heu presenting the mayor's office budget. For the benefit of
Councilmember Bynum, are there any questions?
Chair Furfaro: You must be hungry.
Mr. Heu: Anyway, I do want to acknowledge and thank Vice Chair
Yukimura for acknowledging our attempt at providing a more consistent look and a consistent
approach to how we address budget presentations, and I think that that is probably an indicator
that, yes, we do in fact listen when we're in discussion with council members and -- but I also want to
say that this is something that we have been discussing for a while in terms of... I think you
understand from discussions with the mayor is that he sees county operations, all of our operations,
as falling under the county of Kauai. We are one county, we are one entity with any number of
divisions and agencies. And to the extent we can, we have attempted during the Mayor Carvalho's
tenure to attempt to provide a more consistent look in terms of how we manage and how we operate,
even down to small things like we implemented this past year a standard format for our letterhead,
something as simple as that. I mean, we were getting pretty far out there with every department
and agency creating their own look and pretty soon it didn't look at all like we were all part of the
same county. So to the extent that we can, that is something in all areas in which we manage we are
slowly trying to, you know, to make that happen. So without further adieu, because I know that we
are all very busy, in turning to the mayor's office presentation and, again, this is the format...it was
a template and a format that was provided to all departments. So if a department or agency comes
in and their presentation doesn't look like this, you can wag a finger at them and say, hala, you guys
aren't following instruction, because they should all look very similar to this with a stated mission,
goals and objectives, and the sections that follow. For the mayor's office, I'm not going to read
verbatim as we go through this presentation, but I did think that it was important to start off with
the mission statement for the mayor's office so that you folks have a flavor of, you know, what we're
about and what we keep focused on every day.
The mayor's office -- the office of the mayor seeks to redefine public service by creating an
environment that is accountable, fiscally responsible, and customer service oriented. We are
committed to leading the county government in executing initiatives with professionalism,
transparency and a high ethical standard. Our commitment is to ensure quality service in a timely
and respectful manner to both our internal and external constituents. And everything that follows
beyond that supports that mission statement.
Just real quickly, in looking at some of the areas that we've been successful and we've
realized certain achievements, you know, a lot of this the mayor touched on in his overview for the
entire county and certainly within the mayor's office we are consistent with that and line up with
that. He previously spoke about the quarterly report cards that we generated during his first partial
term. He talked about the importance of customer service and we continue to hold that out as a key
priority, not just for the mayor's office, but driving that down throughout the organization so you will
see, if you take the opportunity to go line item by line item through our budget you will see that
we've provided additional funding there under training for customer service. I think one of the cool
things that was initiated was that those customer service survey cards, and so you can find them at
the counter or in all our various offices so that as we provide a service or we have contact with the
public they are able to provide us some very realtime feedback on their experience in their
interaction with our various offices and agencies, and we do, there is a feedback mechanism to those
departments and I am happy to report, I don't know, maybe disgruntled customers don't take the
Apri18, 2011
Office of the Mayor p.2
time to fill that out, but by and large, the feedback that we receive is very, very positive. And, you
know, we may be able to generate a report for you so you can see how some of our departments are
performing in that area. But like I said, by and large they are very, very positive and that's a good
thing because you want to get back to our front line employees to let them know that, you know,
their interactions are being recognized as positive experiences.
The sustainability initiative, a couple years ago we provided funding for our department
heads, deputies and other key management personnel to have kind of like an
orientation/introduction in sustainability. We thought that was very important because we feel
that... I mean if you are walking down the street, you talk to 10 people about sustainability, you will
get 10 different perspectives. We thought it was very important that all of our key management
personnel have the, receive the same message, had a common understanding as to how we were
approaching sustainability. In our budget you will also see some additional training dollars there so
that Mr. Ken Stokes can continue his work with our departments and agencies in taking the next
step in attempting to internalize a lot of these perspectives and concepts into county government and
what we are currently working on is...I think all of you have managed in one shape or form in your
careers and you know that in order to manage something, you need to be able to measure it. And so
that is a key function of what Ken is currently doing is working with our departments to start
identifying various measurements that will basically give us the feedback in terms of how we're
doing relative to efforts to become more sustainable, whether it's through energy conservation,
whether it's through more efficient use of fuel, whether it's how we deal with and manage our office
supplies. So, again, that's an effort that's continuing at this point in time.
Another real positive area for us as was identified by the mayor was our ability to
become...our desire and ability to become more transparent to the public and we talked about the
live streaming, we talked about being able to access additional documents online, and so we continue
that effort and we feel that that's a very positive thing for all of us as we serve the community.
The siting of a residential adolescent treatment, I think there are a few of us here when we
were unsuccessful down at Salt Pond a number of years ago. And I think there's some of us who still
sting from that and see that as such a great disappointment that we weren't able to make that
happen. And so we're stepping out again, hopefully doing a better job in engaging the community
upfront and trying to address concerns as we take steps forward to realizing our first adolescent drug
treatment center here on Kauai.
Another area that I just wanted to touch on real quickly was the training that our boards
and commissions office has been doing. I think as you folks...hopefully as you folks have been
running into some of our veteran as well as new board and commission members, hopefully they are
providing you feedback that those training sessions are in fact truly valuable. I've heard nothing but
good things in terms of the support that's coming out of boards and commissions as well as the
training opportunities that members feel they have had a chance to participate in.
The challenges, I think you guys are well aware of the challenges we face in the mayor's
office faces; you folks face the same challenges here on the county council-how to continue to make
the best use of our seemingly limited resources. You know, we'll get more into discussion on
expenses and revenues as we go through the budget discussion process, but obviously as much as
we'd like to think that we're pulling out of tough economic times, the fact of the matter is that we
still grapple with that on a daily basis and have to deal with the results of, you know, the struggling
economy as we try to manage within the county. Again, there is improvement, I think the mayor
touched on most of those in his overall presentation, you know, all the way from things like
utilization of the social network through our communications team all the way down to something as
simple as having a monthly meeting with all the secretaries within the county...I shouldn't say all
the secretaries, I should have said all the department and agency secretaries, But going back to the
communications team, that's been an incredible bright spot for us. I think that you folks all of
understand how truly important communications is, whether it's internal with our own employees or
whether it's external with the public, and to the extent that we fail to communicate adequately or in
an accurate way, those things always tend to come back and bit us, and we spend more time and
more resources trying to damage control in terms of communicating. So we think that it's an
April 8, 2011
Office of the Mayor p.3
investment that ultimately we will see incredibly positive gains in terms of how we use
our resources.
So now to the... I'm sorry, the last section is upcoming initiatives. I'm sorry, I see
Councilmember Bynum having a hard time. Sorry, I don't speak as loud as the mayor, but basically,
you know, most of our initiatives will be in support of the mayor's initiatives which are all defined in
his Holo Holo 2020 vision. That's our job. Our job in the mayor's office is to make sure that those
initiatives get pushed forward and become reality. So much of the focus of our, you know, of what we
do in the mayor's office tends to be in working directly with department heads in making sure that
those things are accomplished. As far as the Witty-gritty of the budget, the comparative graphs and
charts are provided for your reference, but the bottom line is that our current submittal to you
reflects a $450,000 increase over last fiscal year -- I'm sorry, not last fiscal year -- over the current
year, over the current year, okay? And of that increase, of that $454,000 increase, 78 percent of that,
or approximately $360,000, is attributable to the normalization of the furlough days, as well as
employee costs including social security, health fund and retirement contributions. And this will
tend to be the trend that you will see in all of the departments, that the lion's share of any increase
that's reflected for any department or agency is going to be in those areas, normalization of
furloughs, and employee costs. And when I say employee costs, I'm talking about, again, benefits,
social security and benefits. 16 percent of the increase is due to the funding or the filling and the
funding of a previously dollar-funded position. This was done back in the December timeframe after
the mayor's inauguration as we were looking at restructuring our operations within the mayor's
office and assuring that we had adequate resources to get done what the mayor committed to do. We
felt that it was critical that this position be funded and the position is the mayor's administrative
aide. It was a, like I said, a previously dollar-funded position that we used and we reflected it in this
budget proposal as fully funded for next fiscal year. I believe it's position no. E-63, you will see it in
the budget.
And then lastly, the last 5 percent of that $454,000 increase, which translates into
about $23,000, is for operational costs and those costs include lease expense for a vehicle and then
increased public access and training costs, as well as other small equipment and support costs. So I
mean you folks know the mayor's office, we are one of the smallest operations in county government.
We don't have a lot there. There's certainly not a lot of fat in our budget and I think the chair was
talking about taking a look at, you know, where our budget is relative to the seven months of the
year that we've been through. Currently if you look at our year to date spending at that point in
time, you know, we have expended about 70 percent of our budget based on having gone through
about 67 percent of the year. We are on track to... Whatever surplus that we talk about, we're not
going to be contributing that much to that out of the mayor's office. So we are, you know, on track to
spend the lion's share of most of our funds that have been allocated for this current year.
So, that being said, I'd be more than happy to entertain any questions you have on any
specific line item within the mayor's office budget or if you have any other general questions.
Chair Furfaro: Well, first of all, Mr. Heu, thank you very much for the
format that you have presented, but I am counting on all of your departmental reviews to have the
same format.
Mr. Heu: So are we.
Chair Furfaro: When we shake the finger if they don't have it, we will send
them home to the mayor.
Mr. Heu: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: On that note, members, on the overview that we've gotten on
the mayor's office from Mr. Heu, do you have any questions? Mr. Bynum go right ahead.
Mr. Bynum: I want to echo what you said about the boards and
commissions trainings, I think those have been very valuable. I personally believe the growth and
April 8, 2011
Office of the Mayor p.4
the expertise of our boards and commissions and the office that is providing resources has been a
shining star over the last couple years. I see Mr. Isobe is here. Thank you for administering a good
office and making those, because you know we have these volunteers step up, to have them have the
resources and the training. A couple years ago I was worried we were cutting every training budget
in the budget you know in half just kind of wholesale. You can get away with that for a while but
eventually training increases productivity so I just wanted to say that.
Some of the -- there's a million places we could go, but just something caught my mind. In
the mayor's Holo Holo speech, which was great, he talked about a north shore where visitors parked
- that we had reduced visitor traffic on to the north shore by having a north shore shuttle, right?
And I hope there is active, I was thrilled to hear a resurrection of that concept because
fundamentally the north shore is a destination for virtually every visitor that comes to the island,
over time we hope to increase those numbers but we also, as a community, said we like the one-lane
bridges, we like the... And so the carrying capacity of the north shore during peak times is way
beyond already. We're addressing that at Black Pot through our expansions there, but in the long
run there's a disconnect between the number of people who want to go there. So I think that's a bold
and really critical and important for long-term initiative, particularly on the north shore but also for
Po`ipu, for all of our visitor destinations, to have shuttles, public transportation improvements, so
not every single visitor has to rent a car for the entire time they are here and put it on there and it's
something I'm interested in. The south shore, for instance, if there was a really strong shuttle and
there were reliable transportation and car rentals, we have the green cars at the Hyatt as an
example where visitors can rent a car by the hour or the day rather than have all of these visits. I
hope that that part of it is actually being explored and that you are taking the initiative on it
because it's a great concept but there's a lot to work out for that.
I didn't say this earlier about collective bargaining. You know, how much are we engaged in
that process? Because, you know, it seems like the governor and maybe the Honolulu mayor are, you
know, that we kind of really don't have a lot of say. I'm concerned that they are looking at a 5
percent decrease and I haven't got all the details, I'm trying to figure it out, but there's this talk
about additional administrative leave as part of that bargaining and that's almost like a different
way to furlough. Furloughs really impact our delivery of service and our productivity of our workers,
So whether we do it all in one day and close the office or just those workers are not at their desk that
often, so I hope you are engaged in that dialogue as well because...maybe Igot that wrong, but it
looked like kind of furloughs by a different name.
Mr. Heu: Well, and I think that's why it was key in terms of what both
the mayor and the chair were saying, is that right now what we're seeing is we're seeing some
general proposals that have been sent across to the union in the form of a tentative agreement, but
we all know the devil is in the detail. Those details have not been worked out, nor do I think it's
appropriate for us to discuss them because the negotiations in actuality are still going on. But I
think, again to reiterate what council chair said as well as what the mayor said, one thing that we're
hanging on to is our ability to negotiate supplemental agreements with the unions in order to make
sure that... I mean, again, this is statewide agreement. It impacts all the counties as well as the
state. And we all know that we're all in different places, and so we need the flexibility to be able to
negotiate those individual supplemental agreements that fit our county's needs.
Mr. Bynum: And enough said for now because we're in negotiations, but I
think at the end you said the mayor's budget, we're not going to see much variance, that what you
budgeted you're going to spend the bulk of it. Is that what I heard?
Mr. Heu: Well, the very last thing I said was...I mean I was just trying
to demonstrate that what you budgeted us for us current year, I think we are efficiently spending
those funds and that we don't anticipate, you know... We didn't ask for a lot of what we don't need
because as you will see that... And you can hold my feet to the fire on this, from June 30, I don't
think you are going to see that the mayor's office is going to lapse a lot of funds.
Mr. Bynum: Right, and that's something I certainly pay attention to
because we have departments that have very large variances year after year after year, and so even
April 8, 2011
Office of the Mayor p.5
though we budget 147...we don't actually spend all of that money, a lot of it, and that's really about
where I think the public gets confused when they hear numbers, oh, there's 43 and we spent 9, but
then we don't talk about what we're going to lapse at the end of the year because that ameliorates all
of that discussion, right? So and that's part of what my comments earlier about let's look at...plans
are important but we also need to put those in context of what we actually do. And so just when I
talked to you about one line item during the break, I was mistaken.
Mr. Heu: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Mr. Bynum. One thing I didn't hear as directed
from Mr. Bynum's questions, I assume that when we get to either the transportation department or
economic development, there will be some discussion on these transportation issues. They are not
directly related to the mayor's office, but we're going to have some dialogue there, I can tell from the
questions surfaced by Mr. Bynum either in transportation andlor economic development, so just a
heads up on that.
Mr. Heu: Sure. And relative, I think, part of the discussion was in
relationship to the Holo Holo initiative, and you should feel free to question any of those
departments about the Holo Holo initiatives that they are responsible for because they are all well
aware of their responsibilities to each one of those initiatives.
Chair Furfaro: Well, when we get to those departments we will raise that
question. Mr. Bynum (inaudible).
Mr. Bynum: One quick follow-up. I remember that speech really well, it
was, I thought, brilliant. Is there a list of all those Holo Holo initiatives, kind of a bullet point? I
don't recall seeing a document like that, but if we have that? Oh it's...okay.
Chair Furfaro: It's in the cover letter.
Mr. Bynum: So I've already got it. Thank you very much.
Chair Furfaro: On that note, Mr. Heu, I'm going to ask Councilwoman
Yukimura if she has questions for the mayar's office.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, I do. I'll start on the Holo Holo 2020. I'm looking at the
mayor's message, page 10 of 12, and it does not actually show us what the mayor's speech did at the
inauguration. It's mainly projects rather than vision statements and many of them have been done
already, which is great, but in terms of a document to guide future budgets it's, you know... Well,
and I've already gone over the master planning process for the affordable housing complex, that
doesn't tell me what your housing vision is, the overall strategic plan for housing. And I mean I
seriously question whether this should be a priority of our housing plan. I don't think we have the
capability to do it, I think it's going to draw all our resources into one place, it's not a walkable
community project, it's in a bedroom community rather than a place where working it...our work
force is, and so I have a lot of questions about it. It's not that you could...it's a great thing to do,
provide housing, but a strategic plan will take our resources, what we have, and use it strategically
to create the most housing that we need and in the appropriate places. But I haven't seen a
feasibility study that says we need this many housing in 2011, 2012, so forth, and that our initiative
is going to tie in with our walkable communities plan, we're going to put housing where workforce is
and it's easy for our people to work in the smart growth thinking now, they include transportation
costs and housing costs. So houses that are close to workplaces are much more valuable and more
strategic than houses where -you have to commute a lot. So, you know, and then...and I love the
idea, excuse me, of the car-less scenario for the north shore past the Hanalei bridge, you know,
where you would have more public transportation opportunities available, but it's nowhere in this
particular...the mayor's message for the budget and, in fact, who is in charge of that project? You
know, is it transportation or is it; we don't even know who to ask. So, and, you know, the
photovoltaic panels on Lihu`e center, well that's been a project that's 10 years old at least, I'm glad
it's coming to fruition, but how much energy will that really save us in the big schematic? What is
April 8, 2011
Office of the Mayor p.6
our target goal for saving energy in the county of Kauai? I mean, in our county facilities, number
one, and then the larger county, number two, which is our energy sustainability plan? But you
know, what are your targets for this? It's not real clear. And, you know, thank you, thank you,
thank you, for the expanded Kauai bus, and I see somewhere else about shelters and that really is
another, and your park and ride, it's all been good. And I guess we'll cover that with our
transportation people. So -- and the permitting process, that's wonderful. And I guess we'll hear
more about that. So that's good.
Now, in your office of the mayor statement of goals and objectives, I totally concur with the 5
that you have identified, economic recovery, environmental sustainability, responsible planning,
community support, and customer service. They are fabulous goals. My question is, how will you
know you are achieving these? And I'm not clear what your targets are. Do you want to try to
answer now or will you have that later on?
Chair Furfaro: We got 9 minutes before we break for lunch, so, yeah.
Mr. Heu: I think you raise a good point, vice chair. Again, this is a
discussion you and I have had I think on numerous occasions, you know, relative to performance
measurements, and that is something that we continue to, you know, to drive at and attempt to
establish. You are right, it's wonderful to be able to identify these areas in which we want to
perform, but the question is how do we determine how we are performing. And I think I related to
you in our last discussion that I had...I was making contact with this organization of professional
managers for local government. And through that effort was looking at ways that, again, we're not
necessarily reinventing the wheel here, you know, within the county of Kauai because the same core
functions that we...many of the same core functions that we provide here obviously other local
governments also provide. And so that is something that I'm very interested in. Relative to these
specific 5 that are listed here, I think there are means for us to measure some, if not all of those. I
think that KPAA just recently came out with their...
Ms. Yukimura: Indicators report?
Mr. Heu: Yeah, the community indicators report. So there are
resources available for us, we just need to track these 5 areas to the available ones, and where
indicators are not readily available for us, we need to develop those.
Ms. Yukimura: Right, well, I think you are on the right track and, you know,
in the 30 years that I have been in county government I've never seen it really done in a systematic
way and I think you are beginning. And if you talk about accountability, you won't be able to be
accountable without those measures. So I hope you -- and I do support you to figure out those
measures. I mean, the mayor mentioned some of the measures of economic recovery in his recent
state of the county address, real estate sales, unemployment, that kind of thing, and certainly where
our society has been much more focused on economics than on environmental sustainability and, you
know, stuff like that. But still, you know, I don't know if it's a proper indicator to say more tourists.
I mean, what is our goal for tourism? I mean maybe there's a sustainable tourism plan where if we
get a million tourists a year that's what is our carrying capacity and as long as we can do that well,
we're happy, you know, and then we go off to diversify our economy for other economic fundamentals.
Anyway.
Chair Furfaro: Let's keep some of those questions prepared for the economic
development to review.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, I'll move on.
Chair Furfaro: You can give Mr. Costa some conceptual ideas about the
questions that are coming up, but let's move on.
Ms. Yukimura: I want to talk now about the siting of the residential
adolescent drug treatment center. I know there's a great dedication to this and it's out of the desire
April 8, 2011
Office of the Mayor p.7
to help provide for a greatly needed service. However,. at the last meeting that I was at at the
convention hall and, mayor, you stood around with me with the experts in drug treatment and they
warned us, they said, Maui's drug treatment closed down because they weren't able to support the
operation and I have asked Miss Koki, where's the plan that we can sustainably support an
adolescent drug treatment center and I haven't seen it and I don't think we have one because I don't
think anybody at this point knows. A 2417 facility is extremely expensive to operate. And Maui has
a much larger population and a much larger resource base than we do. How are we going to do it? I
mean we're going through all this trouble and then we don't know how to sustain it. So that's a
major question in my mind and at the same time at that meeting with these experts, they were
saying there's another way of doing it and it doesn't need a 24/7, but it's a matrix of and a referral
system that develops a plan, a recovery plan, for each patient. And it does some kind of out servicing
but it's a seamless plan that holds up these people and helps them. And I feel it's our responsibility
to really look at that alternative because it may be the more sustainable and viable alternative. It
will keep people in the...patients in the community. And. so, you know, because if the drug
treatment center is sustainable, then fine, show me how. But if it's not then if you don't have a good
plan that way, and all the evidence suggests that it's not an easy solution to find, let's hear those
other people who have been developing another creative way to address this really dire problem.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that, council woman, and I guess the message
there is obviously when we're getting to a point where perception is we have somebody else that's
actually operating our facility, their staffing needs would be in their proposal and that we would be
looking at a bottom line number and the question is, how do we support that bottom line number.
Mr. Heu: Right, and I would agree. That's a valid, you know, that is a
valid request in terms of taking a look at how an operation like that can be sustained. In terms of
the options to a residential treatment center I think that's, you know, probably an issue of great
debate in terms of I think we have any number of people who would tell us and have told us that
that's what's needed and I'm not saying that we should discount that there are other ways to address
the situation, but I just think that, you know, that's one of those issues that is probably still up for
debate in terms of the way to most effectively handle it.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, please don't put all the time and energy and resources
and community involvement, create a center and then have it fail because it's not sustainable.
That's not worthwhile. And it really behooves you to really hear out people who are providers and
who have been searching for effective ways of doing it, who have been working on an effective way,
and hear them out, at least, because they are the ones on the front lines and those ladies that were
in that circle standing with the mayor after that meeting were state and local people who are in the
trenches today doing the work. So -- okay.
Mr. Heu: I'm not disagreeing with you, right?
Chair Furfaro: I think she recognized that, but she's at her last question.
Ms. Yukimura: So just bear with me. No, no, no. Well, I thought I heard you
say you wouldn't look at and really research other options.
Mr. Heu: I didn't say that.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Thank you, then, I'm sorry I misunderstood. My last
question is, so which positions in the mayor's office were not approved by the last council in the
last budget?
Mr. Heu: All the positions were included in the approved budget. One
of the positions was approved as a dollar funded position.
Ms. Yukimura: And that was?
Mr. Heu: That position is E-63.
Apri18, 2011
Office of the Mayor p.8
Ms. Yukimura: E-63, which you have now funded and filled.
Mr. Heu: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And the executive protocol officer was in the budget too?
Mr. Heu: The position was in the budget. We have redescribed
the position.
Ms. Yukimura: With an increase in salary, or same salary.
Mr. Heu: I think the salary was decreased by about $2500.
Ms. Yukimura: Are there any others that...okay, were reformulated or not in
the budget?
Mr. Heu: Yes, there was a position, secretary to the administrative
assistant, sounds kind of weird but that's what the name of the position was. That position was
redescribed to the public information assistant, which is part of the communications team.
Ms. Yukimura: And the salary was increased?
Mr. Heu: Let's see, that salary was increased by about $4,000, yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, that's all I have.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, councilwoman. We are at 1:30 and I do have a
staff that needs to take a break, but I would like to see if there's just a few more questions because
I'd like to end this session before we break. Councilwoman Nakamura?
Ms. Nakamura: Hi Gary. I had a chance to, in February, attend an American
Planning Association conference on sustainable comprehensive planning and I... It is good to see the
work that you're doing within the county to teach about the concepts of sustainability and to see how
it's applied to county government because I think that's a great place to start. And one of the --
what's happening is a lot of the general plans now, comprehensive plans, that cities and counties are
doing around the country are incorporating sustainability concepts into the plans themselves. So I'm
looking forward to the conversations about what the county is doing as we do our general plan
update to make sure that we are coordinating and incorporating these concepts into our planning
process. So thanks for taking the lead on that. I also wanted to also commend boards and
commissions for the training that they are doing to make sure that our volunteers have the tools
they need to be effective. And one of the...it's impressive to see the numbers, the data, of the number
of volunteers that are being commissioners that are being served every year. That's, I think that's
the type of objective, the indicators I think that help us. One of the areas that I've talked to Jon
about has been the area of training our commissioners, especially those that have by charter the
responsibility of evaluation of department heads. So that's one area that especially trained --
evaluating department heads and the hiring of department heads when that's needed I think require
additional resources and attention. So that's one area that I would hope in the future there will be
some coordination with our personnel department on.
Mr. Heu: Actually, and not to prolong the discussion, but so that you're
aware, and maybe Mr. Isobe shared a little of this with you. I mean that was one of the mayor's
great desires is for us to really take a hard look at the evaluation process, the tool, the vehicle that
we use to support that process. And so that is underway in terms of a review. I believe the civil
service commission is also doing some work in that area and so there's a real concerted effort to have
that addressed sooner than later.
Apri18, 2011
Office of the Mayor p.9
Ms. Nakamura: Okay good. Finally, just to follow-up with Councilmember
Yukimura's discussion about the goals and objectives, I think what I see here are goals. I don't see
objectives. The objectives would take the goals that you have and then put them into actions that
can then be evaluated. So then with sort of a...so I guess we would be looking at over the next year
what part of this goal can actually be done, given the resources available. And that, I think, would
help us for every department to see. So you have...so this is a great list of goals, so what is it
within... For example, to provide opportunities for economic growth and stability is goal no. 4, so
within that goal, what are the objectives, the key objectives, that can be~done over this next year?
So, for example, you know, we have a Kauai tourism plan, so what are the one or two or three
objectives within those plans, within that plan, that can be implemented? We have a comprehensive
Kauai economic development plan so is it -- one of the objectives could be that we are committed to
implementing the 6 cluster areas or priorities within the 6 cluster areas to get some of these projects
off the ground. Those would be very specific objectives. That way I think we would have a better
idea, of really the...little more detail about where you are heading. But other than that, thank you
for everything.
Mr. Heu: Point well taken.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you Councilwoman Nakamura. So point well taken on
being able to measure the reach of those particular pieces. Also I would share with the
councilmembexs, Idid make a presentation to the civil service on upward appraisals and value
statements so I believe they are going to come back with something. They were looking at other
sources other than the one the council currently uses, so thank you very much on that. On that note,
I would like to say thank you to the mayor, and Beth and Gary, for being here, and Mr. Rezentes, he
seems to always find that far corner, but we see you there. Mr. Isobe, thank you too for being here
on this particular part. This is going to end the mayor's presentation. We're going to break for lunch
and come back at 3 o'clock for the county attorney, but before you leave, folks, as I had promised, is
there anyone on the public that would like to speak on the presentation so far? Seeing no one, we
are in recess until 3 o'clock.
There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews was recessed at 1:37 p.m.
Apri18, 2011
County Attorney p.l
The budget review was called back to order at 3:13 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
OFFICE OF THE COUNTY ATTORNEY:
Council Chair Furfaro: Good afternoon. Welcome to the county attorney's office to
the budget review process, and on that note, I believe you have a presentation for us, Mr. Castillo?
AL CASTILLO, JR., County Attorney: I do have a presentation.
Council Chair Furfaro: Would you introduce your staff to us even though we all know
one another...for the record.
Mr. Castillo: Yes, I will. Myself Al Castillo, county attorney. To my right
is Amy Esaki, first deputy. To my left is our...I call her the administrator of our support staff, Pam
Cox. She is delighted to be here.
Mr. Bynum: And I have lots of tough questions for her.
Mr. Castillo: But anyway, good afternoon again, Council Chair and
Councilmembers. I did submit to all of you the office of the county attorney 2012 budget
presentation, and I hope it meets the requirements, as far as form-wise, as was discussed earlier by
Gary Heu, so you don't wave your finger at me. Thank you.
First of all, the way that I'd like to do this is I would like to start off by saying that I really
appreciate the hard work that my staff has done regarding preparing me for this budget
presentation, and to my left and to my right are really the stalwarts of the office of the county
attorney, and I really appreciate their help, as well as the team members that we have within the
office. I would like to start off by saying "true north." And you wonder why I say true north. Well,
for those of you that maybe are mariners or star gazers, there's true north and there's magnetic
north, and there's a difference in both of them, because if you have a compass, north moves, but true
north does not, and the compass that the office of the county attorney's office has is really one that
points towards true north. We are guided by legal moral and ethical standards that we believe in
and strive for every day in our quest to provide excellent services to the county, and we try to do
excellent work. We try our best to provide to you impartial legal service. We are your legal advisors,
your legal representative. I want to thank all you for the confirmation of myself back in December. I
take your confirmation seriously. I respect and appreciate your confirmation, and I am always
mindful of my obligation to fulfill my requirements as county attorney for all of the departments, for
all are equal to me in terms of how we serve and in the manner that we serve. You know, our
mission, as I state in the budget presentation, is to diligently render competent legal services as your
advisor and as your advocate. And we take, we always take that to heart. We serve a lot of people
and, you know, we talked about earlier, I mean, Gary Heu and the mayor talked about boards and
commissions and I'd like the public to know that boards and commissions are made up of volunteers
in the community and they do thankless work and we're talking about cost control commission,
ethics commission, salary commission, status of women, arborists, building board appeals, the
mayor's advisory council fox equal access, planning commission, civil service commission, historic
preservation. We service the board of water, the fire commission, the liquor commission, did I say
charter commission, police commission, and the board of appeals. Our obligation is, if you look at the
Hawaii Revised Statutes, it's from a to z, volume 1 to the very end.
The objectives of, the goals and objectives I have listed for you, and basically the goal is to
provide timely legal advice and legal representation to the mayor, county council, the departments,
the commissions, boards and agencies. I would just like to move on with the successes and the
achievements that we have had. My...I think my, one of my biggest successes and achievements
Apri18, 2011
County Attorney p.2
that I would like to talk about, the first one, and it's not listed there, is number one, is I have a
stable base of deputy county attorneys. .And I have been working with them for a meaningful
amount of time, And I have had the opportunity and the pleasure to watch them grow intellectually
and legally and I really appreciate, and to me, to keep high quality people, people from this
community, from your community, is a success and an achievement in and of itself. We have
drastically reduced hiring of outside special counsel. And what do I mean by drastically? Maybe
that's my take on what drastically means, but I remember when I came in two years ago and I asked,
how many special counsels do we have? We had 32. In the fiscal year 2009-2010 we acquired one
special counsel and we had to because we don't have that expertise in that area and that was bond
counsel. Fiscal year 2010 to...from 2010 we had to hire one special counsel because we couldn't get
away from the conflict. So there you have it. I went from a lot to trying our best to do what we
canin-house.
In our litigation efforts, we have been able to collect a lot of money and the figure that you
see there is over $1.5 million. You know, that's significant because we do have able litigators now
working at your county attorney's office. Another success and achievement is we work well with the
office of the county clerk. Another achievement for me personally is we work well with your legal
advisors or your legal analysts. That is important in carrying out the business that we do because
we establish a good team, working effort, and everything is well coordinated.
What challenges do we have? Well, earlier today you heard the term restructuring, and
whenever you restructure how government works, that takes legal effort on our -- and it puts on
some sort of a burden on the legal department. And it's not a burden that we cannot handle, for we
can. I want to talk about the litigation efforts that we have embarked on and we continue to do.
Because we do have more litigation, that means we have to allocate a lot of our resources towards
litigation. And what that does, it does impede and burden our resources that we have to service all
of the other departments, so I don't know how much of the high quality of services that we can
provide, I don't know how long that will last because of the fact that we are doing as much litigation
as we possibly can. It's a balance that I know of, I'm very much aware, and I'm willing to tackle.
Another challenge that I put forward is the fact that our county charter is 42 years old and
our county code of 1987 is 24 years old. When I started working, one of the first things I -- you know,
it's clear that the code and the charter has been updated, but it hasn't been updated with the pace of
modern times. We acknowledge that and we are working towards... Well, we acknowledge that and
we know that that's a challenge. In an effort to update, in an effort to provide better services, we are
trying to change the code so that we can implement appropriate legal, sound, administrative rules in
regards to enforcement of our code. Another challenge we have is...are issues relevant to waste and
wastewater to energy, because this involves a myriad of legal issues. We have issues that are
related to the endangered species act and we have to balance that with the quality of life here on the
island of Kauai. Another challenge that we have is preserving and protecting our Hawaiian and
Kauaian culture, as we are very sensitive to all of these issues.
So what improvements have we made? We have drafted administrative rules in order for us
to enforce our code. That will be finalized shortly. We have finalized administrative rules in
implementation of our new plastic bag ordinance. What improvements have we done for this county
is that we have promulgated new rules which is the policy against discrimination and harassment.
And, by the way, my very first month when I got to be here, it was March of 2009, I reviewed
whatever policies that I could regarding our discrimination and harassment policy, and it was clear
to me that at that time we needed a change because it could not possibly address the concerns that I
had, had we stuck with the same policies and procedures.
Improvements or successes. I got to thank deputy county attorney Mark Guyot for taking
the initiative and earning his certification as a senior professional in human resources. It was his
April 8, 2011
County Attorney p.3
idea, he wanted to go to Honolulu every weekend, and he earned his certification, and it really, really
is helping our county. In fact, when the mayor said, as we speak we're doing the training, and that
was true, you know.
Another improvement, or it could be an improvement, a success, or an achievement, is the
fact that I have deputy county attorney Justin Kollar, who services the Kauai police department.
He's an ex-prosecutor, as well as myself. He was just...he was recently appointed by the Chief
Justice Mark Recktenwald to the Hawaii Supreme Court Board of Examiners. I don't have to tell
you, but I know that shows you the level of expertise that we do have in the county attorney's office.
He has been giving superior legal guidance to the police, he's been training the police in criminal
laws as well as employment law, because he was one of the first to cover the discrimination and
harassment issues and give the police proper guidance in those areas. One of the things that he
embarked on early on when he got the...when I appointed him to that department is assisting the
chief in achieving accreditation. And it was then that I learned that accreditation is not a simple
task, but it is a task that everyone needs to embrace.
What we plan to do, what are the upcoming initiatives that we have. Well we would like to
continue training, training of the county council. We have deputies like Planning Deputy Ian Jung
who is coordinating with the planning director to train the planning commission on recent planning
laws, and, you know, when I say recent planning laws, it's not just a bunch of laws, but we're talking
about very complex laws that we need to know. We do all of the training for the boards and
commissions, and what we have been doing is the more training that our deputies receive, the more
training that we can provide for the departments. And in our budget you will see that we actually
asked for a little bit more of training money but, you know, I hope our budget goes through because
training is very important, especially for the legal guys who are guiding the departments. What
we've done is we have categorized and updated or laserfische files for easier search and we have
organized our documents so that when people come asking we will be able to provide services faster
and more efficiently. You know, if you look at the comparative graphs of how much we are asking
and the difference between the years, last year and this year, it's not really much.
In...and let me turn this into a financial thing, but in December of 2010, you invested in me
by confirming my mayoral appointment. What did you invest in, and who did you invest in? You
know, it's no secret that I come from a strong labor background. Camp 7 McBryde is where I come
from. I watched the cane grow when I grew up. I watched the plantation demolish my village 73-74.
And I think my goodness, I didn't know that I was living in a farm worker housing environment.
You know, and I watched people being displaced from that location, Camp 7. I didn't know at that
point in time that I would be sitting in this chair from that vantage point, from this vantage point
here, to be able to understand county-wise what that means. You know, I've been a practicing
attorney for 30 years now. I was involved with the prosecutor's office since 1979. I worked with
Richard Kawakami back in the legislature when he was there. For 10 years I was the first deputy
prosecuting attorney under prosecuting attorney Ryan Jimenez. From 1996 to 2008 I did civil
practice, as well as criminal law, and for two years I've been your county attorney. And what I would
like to point out is what does this mean to me? Well, it's an opportunity that you have given to me,
and I thank you very much. I thank you because when I sit atop or I'm standing on top of the
Okolehau trail and I'm looking down at Hanalei Valley and Hanalei Bay, I recognize, appreciate, and
I'm cognitive of the many issues that faces the county. When I go hiking with my daughters at
Kalepa and I look at Maalo, what I see is not what I used to see before, and you've given me the
opportunity to see deeper, to be more wise in what I'm looking at, really.
You know, a month ago, I finished work at about 7 o'clock in the evening,and this is the
investment that you've had in me and my office, and this ties in to the quality of service that we
provide to you, and that is why I ask for your support in granting me what I'm asking in my budget.
A month ago I went home at about 7 o'clock, Thursday night. At 9 o'clock I got a call telling me you
Apri18, 2011
County Attorney p.4
need to come down to the civil defense because we have an emergency. At 9:10 I got a call from Amy
Esaki telling me that she's headed down to civil defense because we have a tsunami warning. Yeah,
you know, we're tired, but we have to face the call, answer the call. Igo there at 10 o'clock and I see
the mayor, Gary Heu, and the rest of the department heads, and all the people that have assembles.
All of you would have been amazed in the level of organization that was carried out that night
throughout the early morning. And I can remember sitting down at 4:30 in the morning with your
county clerk Peter Nakamura, and here we are helping the county, and here we are talking about
our financial responsibilities to the county. That morning I had an 8 o'clock meeting with Ed
Renaud regarding resurfacing. Later that morning I had a meeting with Lyle Tabata regarding
Kilauea issues. You know, you, the council members, you have a passion. You have a commitment,
you have an obligation to serve this county, and I know, I see it every Wednesday. Actually, I see it
almost every day. And the passion that you have, the commitment and obligation that you have, I
share the same feelings.
We are guided at the county attorney's office by true north. We are not guided by a compass
where north moves. We are guided by moral and legal responsibilities. So I ask you, please
understand me where I'm coming from, that it is from true north. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Mr. Castillo, and your staff. I guess it's our turn
to say thank you for that presentation, but we probably have a few more questions. And the first
question I'm going to share with you, I would like Mr. Rezentes, Jr., to make a note of this for all the
upcoming departments. I would like to know as we start to compare salary, wages and benefits, and
to put things in its right perspective of although your narrative says there are no new positions or
changing in any existing position, when we fairly make a comparison here, we actually see your
budget going up by $105,670 in the way of salaries. What we don't know and would like to know for
all departments, if we're going to follow this format going forward, was that $105,670, was that the
savings for 6 months of in any way tied to the furloughs?
Mr. Castillo: Yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: I'm sure it was, but I'm kind of using your department as the
first one to say, going forward I would like to know the specifics, how much of that increase in
salaries were tied to the adjustments made to going back to full-time status. And I heard your
answer, that's good enough for me here, but I think going forward, we would like to know that.
Mr. Castillo: And it's contained in page 6 of the presentation. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Secondly, I see your benefit line went from 54.3 percent last
year, and you don't have those percentages, I've done them myself, to 64.1 percent and we might
want for finance to eventually give us a breakdown by department how much of the P T and B line
was actually associated with increases in contributions to the retirement fund and other benefits. So
we can summarize it appropriately because I have calculated that the total piece is probably
about $9.2 million, but maybe we'd like to see it broken down in a summary sheet for benefits. Then
I also want to say that you are forecasting a vacancy in your department until the end of this budget
period with Joy, her position being vacated. Do I assume that that means that at the end of the 7
months actual and the 5 months forecasted, we will see that by the end of June as a savings because
that position is vacant, or have you temporarily transferred somebody to that position?
Mr. Castillo: Yeah, we did a temporary assignment, and we're trying to fill
a position.
Council Chair Furfaro: Got it. So I'm not counting on seeing that at the end of the
year as a forecasted savings. Currently I know the federal government has really tied down the
Apri18, 2011
County Attorney p.5
ability for us to apply for any special grants, and during any contract period, I would encourage you
to continue to look at those opportunities, even though none show up in your budget And I would
like to also say I would like to continue to support the initiative for building, planning to have an
attorney type of...as a hearings officer. I think in the long run we potentially have some savings
there if we had an in-house hearings officer versus every time we get into a controversial issue we
have to contract out. And I would hope that that would still be on your wish list.
Mr. Castillo: It is.
Council Chair Furfaro: And that's all I need to say about that right now. I was
hoping it would continue to be on your wish list, especially when we have challenges coming up as it
relates to building, TVR issues, and so forth. We could probably staff a small hearings
office/department rather than going out and contracting every time we have a serious issue that is
challenged.
Mr. Castillo: It is a priority for us.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, so...that's not reflected in your budget but it is
something you are going to continue to pursue.
Mr. Castillo: Yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: On that note, Mr. Castillo, I will ask other members if they
have questions about what you presented us with today. Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Thanks for your presentation. ell'Hello Pam, hi Amy. I want
to start by saying I think you've got...you're lucky, Al, that you inherited a really cool staff over
there. Whenever I visit the county attorney's office I have a sense of the confidence, calmness,
professionalism of your various staff members that you inherited, and I especially want to say that.
In the time I worked for county that the office I was always impressed with, and Joy in particular
was wonderful, and it looks like Pam is going to fill that position, and I think that's going to be great
as well. So you're lucky you inherited that group of people from my perspective.
Mr. Castillo: Thank you, I thank my lucky stars every day.
Mr. Bynum: But just a couple of questions. First of all, you mentioned
boards and commissions. I've already said I've seen a lot of growth in that and I'm excited about
them increasingly contributing to our governance, but I assume that puts some challenges on your
office too, the support that you provide them.
Mr. Castillo: It does, but I would like to say that John Isobe really,
really...how can I put it? He dedicates a whole lot of time and coordination getting people and with
our office regarding, you know, what's going on and what's needed. Thank you.
Mr. Bynum: But you. do provide legal staffing for all of those boards and
commissions.
Mr. Castillo: Absolutely.
Mr. Bynum: And so your office touches every aspect of government more
than, you know, overview more than any other department I can think of.
April 8, 2011
County Attorney p.6
Mr. Castillo: Well, to put it that way, councilmember, as a prosecutor for
almost 15 years, we dealt with volume 7, and I'm not belittling or saying anything about the
prosecutor's office. I'm a former prosecutor and my heart is there, but when you look in terms of the
law and the law is from...it's not only one volume; you know, so it's pretty extensive, you know, the
type of knowledge you need and if I don't know, I go find out. So thank you.
Mr. Bynum: So who's your tax specialist, tax code?
Mr. Castillo: That would be Jennifer Winn would be morel relevant to tax.
Mr. Bynum: Because I said earlier today I really hope that we look at
comprehensive tax reform, and I know I'm going to look at specific elements of that in the upcoming.
two years.
Mr. Castillo: Well, you must have been listening to Amy and...my
discussion with Amy this morning, then. I didn't see you. We were talking about that.
Mr. Bynum: Great. So you answered my question, it's Jennifer.
Regarding the county code, I was really glad to see this in here, you know, but you're talking about
more than just getting the update that is overdue, done. But when you get to the county code, I
mean I'm assuming and I want you to correct me that that whole formatting, the way it is formatted,
it needs an overhaul, not just an update but an overhaul, is that correct?
Mr. Castillo: Absolutely.
Mr. Bynum: And that's what you are talking about.
Mr. Castillo: That is in addition to what I'm talking about. Because we
cannot change the entire system. We got to take small bites at a time but you recognize as well as I
do the shortcomings of the county code as we have it, so yes.
Mr. Bynum: So do you have the resources to start that process or are you
just identifying that as something we need to do that you can't get started on or...
Mr. Castillo: Right now we have the energy, and with the resources that
we have, but like I said before, the more projects that we take on, the more we eat away our
resources. So...and I cannot quantify it in terms of manpower. I wish I could.
Mr. Bynum: So your answer is you are going to start that process?
Mr. Castillo: We are starting already.
Mr. Bynum: Is there a person who's in the lead of that?
Mr. Castillo: It's by committee.
Mr. Bynum: By committee?
Mr. Castillo: Yes. I don't want to shock the person and say this person is...
Mr. Bynum: And then the person says, oh, that, too?
Mr. Castillo: Yeah, so it's by committee.
Apri18, 2011
County Attorney p.7
Mr. Bynum: Okay, but I'm glad you identified it on your own. You know, if
you need resources there, because, you know, the end users are uncomfortable, right?
Mr. Castillo: Absolutely.
Mr. Bynum: I don't even know if it exists in electronic format right now. I
see Amy shaking her head.
Mr. Castillo: I'm hoping that will happen soon, and I can...I'm optimistic.
Mr. Bynum: You think that's pretty amazing, you know, that such a key
document in 2011 doesn't exist electronically. Because when I'm doing research for the other
counties, I go online and I can get the code, chapter, and verse, right there and, you know, when I'm
researching our own, I go to a binder, some of the pages look like they were done on typewriters, not
even word processing.
Mr. Castillo: And I go to that same binder and hope that I don't lose
the pages.
Mr. Bynum: Right. Then there's all of these pages stuffed in, oh, here's
this year's update, and this year's...you know that's a concern of mine and I'm glad to see you
identify it. Regarding the harassment policy, I'm glad there's an update, I'm glad training is
happening because we know that we've paid out an exorbitant amount of funds because we haven't
handled this issue well as a county. Would you agree with that?
Mr. Castillo: Yes, and I'd like to thank you for helping Mark Guyot in
coming up with the policies and procedure. At least you gave insightful input. Even if we -- we do
have the new policy but it doesn't, we don't -- it's not left there. I mean, there's more to do regarding
this area of law.
Mr. Bynum: And I'm glad to hear that because I think we all agree that
the former policy was flawed and I've said this publicly before, I think the rewrite that we are
working on now is adequate. It's not best practices yet, but -- and I'm not being critical because it's,
like, let's get it adequate and get it appropriate and get this mindset different. But I hope we do look
at it again next year and bring in some other resources because I know you knew it was important so
you want to get it done, you know, and reestablished but I hope we do look at it again and bring in
some other resources and try to bring it to the next level.
Mr. Castillo: And I agree with you that there is more work to be done.
Mr. Bynum: But one thing I just want to put on the record. I think when
you came in and we discussed this that the previous policy had the county attorney's office
designated as will conduct an investigation in every sense and there's some inherent conflict in that,
correct?
Mr. Castillo: Absolutely.
Mr. Bynum: So -- and that's been a difficulty in a few of our cases where,
and I know you inherited those cases, but it was, like, with the county attorney doing the
investigation, were they really looking after the employee's best interests and their civil rights or
were they doing that with an eye to potential liability in a case? So making that clear that the
county attorney is not going to be the investigator I think was very important.
April 8, 2011
County Attorney p.8
Mr. Castillo: Well, the beauty of me being...doing civil law from 1996
to 2008 is that I did employment cases, I did Iabor cases on defense of, so coming to the county, you
know, I fit right in, in defending the county. But you cannot -- it's hard to change everything all at
once to the level that you desire.
Mr. Bynum: I want to thank you for your presentation and I appreciated
the personal comments you made here today, because I do see you working for the county as an
opportunity to really give back to the community that you were born and raised in. And you do see it
different when you're standing up, looking down. All of a sudden, you work for a government, it's
like hey you think of the people who are trying to work on this initiative or have this concern. My
wife sometimes says you drive around and everything is an issue. But that's good that we have all of
us focusing on our community and how to make it better and how to meet the needs of our populace.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Councilmember Nakamura.
Other questions of the county attorney?
Ms. Nakamura: Hi.
Mr. Castillo: Good afternoon.
Ms. Nakamura: I wanted to commend the county attorney because of the
strides you have made in reducing the outside counsel, that's incredible, going from 30-something
cases to just one last year and reducing that budget line item by more than half.
Mr. Castillo: Thank you. I, you know, thank you because we do have
committed people and without the people that work at the county attorney's office and the support
that we have, I wouldn't be able to do it. And I'm including the council in that equation.
Ms. Nakamura: I had a question and I also want to thank you for the
presentation of the data in your report. This is really useful, great information and presented in a
way that's easy to understand and read and follow, so thank you.
Mr. Castillo: She's thanking you.
Ms. Nakamura: Good job, Pam and Amy. I wanted to ask you, it looks like a
number of the cases filed against the county are in Fifth Circuit Court, 71 presently, and maybe this
is not the right time to do this, but I guess at some point in time I would like to have a discussion
about the source of those cases.
Mr. Castillo: Sure.
Ms. Nakamura: I also wanted to ask you about, you know, I guess a big part of
what you do is training, too, the preventative work.
Mr. Castillo: Yes.
Ms. Nakamura: I wanted to find out how do you identify those training needs
for the upcoming year?
Mr. Castillo: I'm sorry, how do we identify the training needs?
April 8, 2011
County Attorney p.9
Ms. Nakamura: Surveys or do you get feedback from the boards and
commissions and departments?
Mr. Castillo: Yes, and it's not -- it's not an exact science. Part of it is
because I am from this community and, you know, you have your ear to the ground, you kind of know
what -- you have to know what is going on with all of the departments, all of the boards and
commissions, and I think what happens is with good communications that go back and forth, then we
can identify where we need the training. However, there are times when because of the fires that
pop up and the consistency of the fires that pop up then you know that that area needs to be touched
on.
Ms. Nakamura: Finally, on the update of the county code, when do you expect
to have that completed?
Mr. Castillo: Okay, it's not updated... We are working on the county code
in different areas and in areas where we feel that is important for the county, like, let's say, for
instance, on the county code relevant to public works and...public works and planning, that set of
administrative rules are right around the corner, I would say within a month's time we should be
done. And I would like to further discuss that with you off-line because it does involve liabilities,
powers, and duties. I'm sorry, but it does.
Ms. Yukimura: Excuse me here. Yeah, well, let's be clear. When you are
talking about the update of the county code, there's two types of update. One is the responsibility of
the county clerk, I think, and that is to transfer all the statutes and rationalize all of that into- an
updated code. That is our job over here. What you're talking about is promulgating the rules and
regulations pursuant to county ordinances, is that not right?
Mr. Castillo: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. I mean... and that's not updating the county code, it's
actually updating our rules and regulations.
Mr. Castillo: Yeah.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So that's, I think, what's in your kuleana. And what
you are saying is that you are working on various parts of doing that.
Mr. Castillo: Yeah, but there are code provisions and charter provisions
that we are looking at to address the problems or to address the objectives that we have for certain
departments.
right?
Ms. Yukimura: Of course, that's an on-going function of a legislative process,
Mr. Castillo: Yes, but...
Ms. Yukimura: That wherever we find lack or omissions in our laws, we
produce amendments or new laws to fill in the gaps.
Mr. Castillo: My answer to that, Councilmember Yukimura is that some of
what we are doing is not filling in the gaps; we are going beyond at what prior administrations
regarding the county attorney's office has gone, so we are being more proactive and we are venturing
into. areas that maybe the past county attorneys have never gone before, and we are trying to do, we
Apri18, 2011
County Attorney p.10
are trying to be more proactive to service this county in a better way. So I cannot characterize it as
plugging holes because it's easy to just plug a hole. We are paving new highways.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, that's fine. I don't dispute that, I'm just trying to
clarify what the role of your -- and what you. are trying to do.
Mr. Castillo: Okay, thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: So what you are doing is...
Mr. Castillo: No, you are right. It's not mechanical, what we're doing,
because one was mechanical...
Ms. Yukimura: Go ahead.
Mr. Castillo: One is mechanical and the ,other one is legal work, more
compiling, I mean...the way that you put it.
Ms. Yukimura: Right. The codification of ordinances and, you know,
translating the ordinances into and integrating it into the existing code is a more mechanical process
and we've been pretty far behind in that, but that's not your area.
Mr. Castillo: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Now, you know, the area of improving our laws is a joint
effort. Your office can do it, the mayor's office can propose changes, the council can propose changes,
citizens like Caren Diamond who proposed the shoreline setback changes, it comes from all different
areas. And I think what you are talking about is that, for example, you found some real
inadequacies in enforcement provisions in our planning code, and therefore, you know, you have
proposed some changes working with the planning department. And, you know, and the shoreline
setback there was a lot of work to do to update the process in terms of the newest information in
coastal erosion, and that's another area we did it. So, and that's what you are doing, but in addition
to that, and I'm very thankful somebody is paying attention to that, is you are doing rules and
regulations.
Mr. Castillo: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Castillo: Thank you for clarifying that because I guess it needed
clarification, I wasn't totally clear.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you. You are done. Councilmember Nakamura?
Councilmember Chang? Okay, then I have some questions. I wanted to follow up on Councilmember
Nakamura's point about prevention of lawsuits or preventive legal counsel.
Mr. Castillo: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And recently what came to my attention is that we
lost $260,000 to a vendor who sort of went bankrupt on a fire department grant from the federal
government, and I'm wondering what happened there that we didn't have enough safeguards. I was
told we paid...
Apri18, 2011
County Attorney p.ll
Mr. Castillo: Councilmember Yukimura, I think you are venturing into an
area which I cannot answer and should be in executive session.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, then tell me in generalities how you are preventing
that kind of thing from happening.
Mr. Castillo: Okay, I'm neither going to admit or deny basically the subject
matter of what you are talking about.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh yeah; don't have to talk about the subject matter, just
about preventative counseling.
Mr. Castillo: However, yes. In everything we do and every issue that
comes up, we...I make sure that the department clearly understands the issue at hand, clearly
understands the legal position that the county is in ,and we address it. I think we are very proactive
in what we do, and I know for a fact that when we react well to issues that are presented to us in as
professional a manner as we can, but we do not ignore what's put before us and we deal with it, and
especially when it involves... Say for instance if there is a, let's call it a mistake. We do what we
should do is follow through with the employment side of a mistake in addition to protecting the
county on the legal side. I don't know if that's clear, but that's as general as I can be. I don't want to
get into specifics.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you. On the number of cases pending before the
circuit court, which Councilmember Nakamura asked about, could you provide a breakdown of the
nature of the cases?
Mr. Castillo: Sure.
Ms. Yukimura: So we'll have that as... I mean that can come as a question
from you to the chair.
Mr. Castillo:
summary?
So you would want title of the case and maybe a short.
Ms. Yukimura: I don't know if you need the titles, but by types. I mean if
they are real property, foreclosures, or whatever.
Mr. Castillo: Okay, I just didn't know to what extent.
Ms. Yukimura: Possibly by...
Mr. Castillo: We'll categorize it.
Ms. Yukimura: You could break it down in several ways. Councilmember
Nakamura is saying maybe by departments, but I think you might also want to do by the nature of
the case. I think your staff can do that. Thank you. And on the... I was just curious, you said the
county charter is 42 years old and, you know, the U.S. Constitution is, what, about 200 years old,
which doesn't mean it's not a good document to follow.
Mr. Castillo: Yeah, I didn't say that.
April 8, 2011
County Attorney p.12
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, yeah, no. So I just was curious in terms of what you
think should be done about the county charter and whether you have that as one of your goals, or if
you just were mentioning it as a challenge.
Mr. Castillo: It's a challenge because we have to work with what we have.
I'm not suggesting that we revisit the county charter because it is amended from time to time.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, good. I'm glad that you have included in your
upcoming initiatives training for deputies. I think you have an excellent staff of deputies, and I
know that on-going training for professionals is really one of the keys to keeping the services
updated and competent, you know.
Mr. Castillo: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Do you have a budget for that?
Mr. Castillo: Yes, we have a budget for it.
Ms. Yukimura: And what have you...where have you budgeted that?
Mr. Castillo: It's...as you can see for the amount that we're asking, we're
not asking for the world. It's only a...maybe a thousand or two more than last year. But...
Ms. Yukimura: Where is that line item? Maybe you can give me the number.
Oh, it's... is it 513.24?
Mr. Castillo: It's 20 thousand.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so in the original budget you had 6,000.
Mr. Castillo: I'm sorry, I was focused on... I know the training is there, but
I was focused on, I'm sorry, I was focused on the back where what doesn't jive is I have training in
the back here, air fare, and all that stuff, but I would like the training to be more, because of the fact
that we are litigating more and it makes sense and we are training other departments more. We're
really focused on training the departments and the boards and commissions.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, what about...if you are involved in more litigation, are
you getting litigation training, trial training?
cheap.
Mr. Castillo: Yes, we are, and it's... some of the litigation training is not
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So right now your request is for 20,000.
Council Chair Furfaro: 20, 000.
Ms. Yukimura: And how much more would you like?
Mr. Castillo: No, that's... we go a year at a time, so... and then we can see
how much we...what we can do with the moneys that we receive.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, you spent $25,000 to date.
April 8, 2011
County Attorney p.13
Council Chair Furfaro: Maybe I can add some clarification here for the council vice
chair. A couple years ago we went through in abelt-tightening episode where we cut some of the
training budgets by as much as 50 percent. So I think at that time you probably had the
number 12,000 in there, which was reduced to six. That was a couple years back. So I think what's
happening now as we've increased the pieces and as the vice chair is suggesting, we probably need
some detail and we'll put that on our question since it's jumped significantly. But I think
Mr. Bynum will agree with me that there was a period of time that we had looked for some cost
savings and obviously training became a target a couple years ago. So if you just get a heads up, we
could submit to you some kind of reconciliation on what you plan to accomplish with the 20,000. I
just want to give you that background on how we cut it previously.
Ms. Yukimura: But you got, in last year's budget, 31,000, right?
Mr. Castillo: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And you spent to date about 25. Okay.
Mr. Castillo: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: I mean, I think we can do a follow-up question if you want to
submit more documentation about the kinds of training needs you have.
Mr. Castillo: Okay, thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: May I ask the council woman for just a moment here? Would
you consider yielding the floor in case Mr. Chang has any questions, because he has a departure
from the meeting scheduled for 4.15 today.
Ms. Yukimura: Of course.
Council Chair Furfaro: And you know, we can still continue business with four of us,
but would you yield the floor for him?
Ms. Yukimura: Of course.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chang, I just wanted to make that announcement.
Mr. Chang: Thank you, Chairman. I just wanted to say thank you for
your presentation and we really appreciate working with yourselves, you guys have always been very
accessible. So I just wanted to say thank you on behalf of the attorneys that we work with that are
not here. I also want to take this opportunity, you made a presentation for us and you made a
commitment that you were going to, you know, do your best to do everything in-house and cut back
on outside consultation, and when Councilmember Nakamura pointed out from 30 to 1, I saw you
getting really teary-eyed and passionate, because I know that was a lot of work and a lot of
dedication from your people to keep that commitment in mind. So I just want to say that I saw your
passion, you know, all relating back to the speech that you gave about going above and beyond, and
that's what I think we're all trying to do at this time. So I want to thank you, Mr. Chair and Vice
Chair Yukimura, for allowing me that and I'm glad Nadine pointed that out because that was a
biggie, that was one of the things that you did tell us was that on your list to alleviate any need or
any must for outside counsel. So we appreciate that.
Mr. Castillo: Thank you.
Apri18, 2011
County Attorney p.14
Council Chair Furfaro: And Mr. Chang, should you have to leave, feel free to depart.
Also, Vice Chair Yukimura, the floor is yours again, and thank you for yielding to Mr. Chang.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, Mr. Chair. About the in-house hearings officer,
which I think has merit, I'm just wondering how you would handle the conflict of interest problem.
Because, you know, for example, in the boating issue, the county was one of the parties.
(Mr. Chang was excused from the meeting at 4:12 p.m.)
Mr. Castillo: I would like to reserve the answer to that because the --
because the simple answer right now is the way that we have it set up, I don't see, any conflict issues
right now.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, because you don't have an in-house hearings officer.
Mr. Castillo: Yeah, but like I said, the way that we, we are formulating
how it's going to work, right now I don't see any...without disclosing how, I don't see any conflict
issues in the way. But...
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So what I hear...
Council Chair Furfaro: We will schedule that as a...
Ms. Yukimura: Well no, what I hear is that you are developing some proposal
about how to handle contested cases and hearings, and so if you are in that kind of a work product
process, we can wait until you've developed a proposal.
Mr. Castillo: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: But I just want to flag that as an issue that I think can be
very real unless you've thought through the way to address it.
Mr. Castillo: Well absolutely, we will. Actually, we have.
Ms. Yukimura: Because actually that is not in your proposal this year.
Mr. Castillo: That's right.
Ms. Yukimura: Unless you are going to propose it in the supplement, or it will
be a proposal for next year's budget.
Mr. Castillo: I'm told by Amy that it is in the planning budget. I don't
know what is in the planning budget.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, it's in the planning budget right now.
Mr. Castillo: In the planning budget request.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, well then we will be asking these questions when it
comes up in the planning budget. Okay, thank you very much.
Apri18, 2011
County Attorney p.15
Council Chair Furfaro: And I do think they need some time to work on the draft plan,
to your questions, but I just surface that now because there is this conduit of information that needs
to go from the attorney's office to planning. Thank you, Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, Mr. Castillo, and Amy, and Pam.
Council Chair Furfaro: I'm going to ask, you had a second? You had a first? Okay,
let me see if Nadine has a first. Mr. Bynum, I will recognize you a second time.
Mr. Bynum: Just a couple things. Back to the county code for a minute. I
guess the question I was asking is whether we need a format and structural change to the county
code and, you know, I'm not a legal person, but when I go delve in there, it's like why is this in this
section?
Mr. Castillo: I guess at this point in time a format and structural change
would be a policy call, so...
Mr. Bynum: Well, I'm asking if there's a need for it.
Mr. Castillo: I don't know. For me, there's a need for improvement. That's
the best that I can answer that question.
Mr. Bynum: We can talk about that more later.
Mr. Castillo: Thank you. Because you know as well as I do that these
involve lots of other issues that comes with the county code.
Mr. Bynum: Okay, enough said. And the other thing is about special
counsel. I appreciate your efforts to limit the amount of special counsel, but I want to just raise some
caution that you not go too far with that, you know, because I've been here long enough to sit in with
a lot of these special counsels. Some of them are just outstanding and bring a level of expertise that
I wouldn't expect your office to have, right. And others of them are not so outstanding, and I
know...you know we haven't seen those guys under your tenure as much. But you know, just don't
get too overzealous, and when you need, because I... Your budget doesn't reflect a decrease there
and I'm glad, you know. If you don't spend it, great. But that's an area where, like I said, some of
the special counsels that we have employed have been well worth the investment in my view.
Mr. Castillo: Absolutely. That's the beauty of me being a practicing
attorney for 30 years, and being a director on the Hawaii State Bar Association, because, you know,
during my 4 years there one of the primary objectives that we had was improving the attorneys in
the state of...the level of service by the attorneys in the state of Hawaii. So during my 4 years at the
Hawaii State Bar, I spent a lot of time getting to know a lot of the top-notch attorneys. So we know
who the...we know when we need and we're not going to go venture off in an area and say we can do
it when we cannot. So thank you.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Just a fyi on the county codes, with a briefing in my office
with retired Judge Murashige, our legal analysts both Christiane Nakea-Tresler, as well as Peter
Morimoto, and there are some updates that they are working on as a team, and the Judge Murashige
came by to visit with us as he was giving an update to the bar association on those codes. So just an
fyi.
Apri18, 2011
County Attorney p.16
Mr. Castillo:
Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman, did you have another piece? I want to say
before I close the day for us, I was very impressed with what you presented in your, how do I want to
say, goals, objectives, and strengths and weaknesses as it relates to the narrative tied to the
numbers. And please, that extra information that I requested, I was able to excuse myself from the
meeting and meet with Mr. Rezentes just to be more clear on what we're looking for going forward.
Some of the information will be easier to gather in than... Then we have to reconsider those things
that are with the bigger departments in measuring the differences, but I just want to tell you how
much I appreciated the way you structured your presentation. I do not think we have any more
questions for you right now and I would say to all of you, thank you very much in giving us the extra
time today. I am about ready to recess this budget review until Monday at 9 o'clock when we'll be
doing the police department. So on that note, have a good weekend.
Mr. Castillo: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Oh, I'm sorry, fire, not police. We are in recess until Monday
morning at 9 o'clock.
There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews was recessed at 4:19 p.m., until Monday,
April 11, 2011.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.l
The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 9:15 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
FIRE DEPARTMENT
Chair Furfaro: Aloha, good morning. We are coming back to order. This
meeting, the budget process for the County of Kauai was in recess since Friday. Chief, aloha, we are
hearing from the Fire Department this morning, Chief, and I would like to ask you before we get
started if you could introduce your staff that is here with you for your presentation before I turn the
meeting over to you.
ROBERT WESTERMAN, Fire Chief: Roger, thank you, sir, Chief Robert Westerman, Fire
Chief, County of Kauai. I have my deputy with me this morning John Blalock, my administrative
officer Rose Bettencourt, Battalion Chief Albert Kaui, Training Captain Kalani Abreu, Fire
Prevention Captain Daryl Date, Ocean Safety Bureau Kalani Vierra, and we have the...rescue
company from engine 3 is here with us this morning.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Chief, on that note, you have given us a very nice
document here with dates, with page numbers, all the way I like it, and so on that note, I'm going to
give you the opportunity to give us a general overview and the narrative you've presented in your
operating budget. So, the rules are suspended, you have the floor.
There being no objection, the rules were suspended.
Chief Westerman: Thank you, sir, and thank you, members of the council. You
should have three documents. One is, of course, the budget presentation today, and there's a
supplement that I turned in this morning. I apologize for those graphs are late. It should look like
this on the front page, okay, and then the strategic plan. We did plan on having the strategic plan a
little bit earlier, but we were waiting on the census bureau to finally collate the data and they just
still haven't gotten the 2010 data together, so we actually just moved our plan forward a little bit
using the 2009 estimates and some of our budget is based on our strategic plan. I won't read the
mission, but I will go... I have formatted this in the format that the administration had wanted. So
hopefully it will be familiar to you from the earlier briefings.
We started out with our goals for 2011 and as you can see we had a response to calls for
service in accordance with NFPA 1710 90% of the time and a lot of these goals will be addressed as
we go through the reading of the budget. Staff and...and if it isn't, I'll address it right here. Staffing
all the engines with at least four firefighters at least 80% of the time and that has to do a lot with
our NFPA compliance and our ISO compliance and we'll discuss that later. Minimum of two
firefighters to attend the National Fire Academy during the year and we were successful in that.
We've actually had four people attend. And that is a leadership building for us to provide that
opportunity for up and coming firefighters that want to move up into chief officer or chief officer
positions and want to move up to fire chief. Perform a community risk reduction analysis on the
ocean safety bureau and the deputy completed that this year as part of his program in the executive
fire officer program at the National Fire Academy. Complete the BORA data analysis by the
standards of coverage document. The BORA is Building Occupancy Risk Assessment and that's a
product of our accreditation and we're continually going through that process. Try to move our self-
assessment program to the application agency status and we'll talk about that a little bit later.
Develop and implement a department suggestion program; we're currently working on that.
Complete the standard operating guidelines; we're currently working on that. Apply for at least two
competitive grants and we'll talk about that; we've actually applied for many and to the tune of
almost $5 million to the budget over the last two years. And then outline a standardized
comprehensive training and promotion from initial recruit to fire chief, basically an accreditation
program. It's a pretty massive undertaking and we're working on that but the snail is going a little
slow, but it is in progress.
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, could you tell us...we understand that the
escargot is moving slowly there, but what was your original goal for the accreditation? Was it three
years? Was it...
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.2
Chief Westerman: The original goal for accreditation was five years and we're in
about year four of that original accreditation, and we're going to talk about that a little bit later.
Chair Furfaro: No, it's good for me. I just...since you brought it up I wanted
to exercise my memory.
Chief Westerman: Again, the objectives kind of go along with our goals and our
overall objectives for the department and how we interact with the community. I won't read all of
them, but you know, knowing our customer and being fiscal in all decisions, honest in our response,
polishing the badge, those kinds of attributes. So I'll first get into the meat of the budget.
Let's talk about the successes and achievements in 2011. Of course the fire department
added its first new fire station in 63 years, the Kaiakea Fire Station. It was constructed in record
time and that was a matter of the economy, and was staffed using the additional staffing provided in
the SAFER Grant, which was the opportunity for the county to save over $500,000.00 just in this last
fiscal year. It was designed with energy savings in mind and we are currently seeking a Silver
LEED certification and also we are receiving a grant, and OED is working on putting in a
photovoltaic system to help our energy cost by as much as 90% in that facility, which is pretty big,
because most of our stations run about $3,000.00 a month in power consumption. So we do
everything we can to try and reduce those costs, solar water heaters and then this one, a photovoltaic
system.
This year, the Benjamin Award for Valor, the highest award presented by the International
Association of Fire Chiefs was awarded to our rescue crew for their extremely dangerous and
successful rescue of the ultra light crew in Hanapepe Valley. This is the first and only time this
award has been presented to any Hawaii fireman or crew of firemen in Hawaii. The crew consisted
of Captain Metivier, Captain (then firefighter III) Abreu, Fire Rescue Specialist Constantino, and
Fire Rescue Specialist Garcia. And of course there was a lot of other people involved in that but that
was the rescue crew that received the award.
Then of course in the last year, the fire department successfully completed the purchase and
integration of the first Kauai County helicopter and have already made several successful rescues.
As part of this challenge, we successfully completed the initial crew training to ensure safe,
successful flight operations and funded part of that training with the volunteer assistance grant
money provided by the State Department of Forestry and Wildlife, saving limited department
training dollars.
The department hosted the Hawaii Fire Chief's conference, bringing over 350 people to
Kauai, over 100 firemen from around the state and as far away as Maryland. Thirty-five fire service
representatives including the Director of the National Fire Academy and over 50 vendors and a host
of family members to Kauai, providing a significant boost to our economy. The venue was designed
to provide an opportunity to integrate training and education that could not be supported within our
budget and it did just that by updating our wellness and fitness instructor certifications that would
have lapsed due to the lack training funds to send them off-island for the training.
We also held a community forum on residential sprinkler systems and a vast cross-section of
Kauai was in attendance from fire chiefs and fire inspectors from around the county to local
councilmembers, commissioners, architects, and engineers to plumbing and sprinklers installers.
The department was also successful in seeking funding from many grant sources in the last
year. We received over $3.5 million over the last -year and $6 million in the last two years that we
did not have to spend in county funds. Examples of grant funding: We received $150,000.00 to fund
at Ke'e Beach and that's annual; lifeguards on a grant from the state; $200,000.00 to partially fund
the helicopter grant from the CDBG Block Grants; $600,000.00 to fund the helicopter from the
Department of Homeland Security; $80,000.00 to assist with wild land firefighting equipment and
training from the Department of Forestry and Wildlife and then this year's, I stated before, $35,000
of that was used for helicopter training and equipment. And not to leave any available money on the
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.3
table, we even applied for and received a $2800.00 grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife for
headlamps for nighttime wild land fire fighting operations in the game reserves managed by U.S.
Fish and Wildlife. Believe me, I think that was the hardest struggle out of all the grants. Twenty-
eight hundred dollars, it might seem like it's not a lot of money, but I mean it's good funds and it was
well used, but it was a struggle.
The Training Bureau created some online training courses like vehicle extrication and
records management. The more we do in online, it reduces our overtime costs when they have to do
practical skills promotions of the training evolution. Additionally, we sent over 20 firemen to the
mainland for training at Incident Response to Terrorism Bombing course, prevention of and response
to suicide bombing incidents, radiological and nuclear response training, tactical emergency response
training, and I know these all sound like they're all terrorism events, but as we talk about this you'll
realize they do have some home implications. The training provided is very valuable training at a
significantly reduced cost. Essentially it's free. The cost of a single course is over $10,000.00 per
student. Airfare, per diem, hotel, ground transportation, facility cost, instructor cost, and we paid
$240 for our flight per diem between here and there and back. That's a huge savings for the
department. Now who would have ever thought of getting training for nuclear radiation testing
would every pay off. Well, right after the tsunami in Japan and the nuclear power plant and
everybody in the public's concerned about the radiation, we immediately put our radiation detectors
into service and started sampling the air from the second day. Of course, the EPA put their own
monitoring at Lihu`e Airport and now you can monitor that online on a daily basis. And their
readings are essentially the same as ours. It's the regular radiation background. So we have had no
incidences of increased radiation on Kauai. But these opportunities allow us the opportunity to be
able to take this training and convert it to homeland training. The tactical response training,
whether it's for hazardous materials incident or terrorist incident, it's essentially the same. And it
provides a very realistic training environment for the firefighters to attend that we don't get here at
home. And please feel free at any time if you want to ask a question.
The Fire Prevention Bureau investigated less structure fires even though the cost of fires
have gone up. Fire inspections were down at all the elderly facilities on-island this year and have
been completed and the number will increase over the years as the baby boomers start to get to
retirement into their golden years, and more facilities are needed to house the 40 million expected to
be added to those roles. And I've got to admit, I just read an article and that's actually light. They're
anticipating more like 81 million because of longevity of the baby boomer generation. Fire inspector
Dodd Apao has been deeply involved with setting up a Youth Firesetter program to help kids who do
set fires to obtain the proper counseling and treatment.
The Ocean Safety Bureau was very successful with their Junior Lifeguard program and won
the 7tb year in a row. They have worked hard through the year to improve our water safety message
and managed to even get a video presentation on Hawaiian Airlines on inbound mainland flights
discussing water safety with our water safety supervisor Kalani Vierra. We have tried for years,
ever since I've been here, to try and get some kind of messaging on the airlines and luckily OluKai,
who is one of the sponsors of the Junior Lifeguard program over the last couple of years, was able to
put together a real good presentation and were able to get it on the airlines. So everything that we
can do to caution or to advise the visitors before they get here is a help.
The Ocean Safety Bureau has worked hard over the years to be inclusive and it's important
to integrate these relationships. It has provided its jet ski training to the Kauai Fire Department,
PMRF Fire Department, Department of Boating and Recreation, Department of Land and Natural
Resources. The program is so well respected within the Pacific Region, we've been asked to go to
Guam and assist with the development of a jet ski program and provide training for their ocean
safety resource groups. And this wasn't just Kauai, it was along with other water safety officers in
Hawaii, Oahu and Maui. Our own jet ski program along with the premium pay program has been
extremely successful, an example for the state and is currently being adopted by other county
departments.
This year's drowning rates are down from a record high, 15 in 2008, 14 in 2009 to 9 in 2010.
We must attribute some of this to relationships we have continued to foster in the community with
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.4
the Water Safety Task Force, Kauai and Hawaii Lifeguard Association, Kauai Explorer Daily
report, the WAVE Project, the Rotary rescue Tube Project and the Beach Guardian program.
Without community support, we could not make these great reductions.
So now let's head into some challenges for next year. Accreditation as you had mentioned is
going to have to go on hold and will be removed from our goals next year. Without the staff to
continue to work the process, we can only work on single line items such as our RMS initiative or our
MDT/CADS initiative to improve our quality data coIlection and reporting, which are critical for our
accreditation program and we're still going to continue with those programs. Our accreditation
standards are not going to be met. We will have to remain below the national standards which will
affect our accreditation program. Response times without fully staffed engines have a direct impact
on our ISO rating where staffing accounts for 18% and our accreditations with limited overtime
budget staffing can only be managed to the level funds are available. Our operating overtime budget
has been reduced to less than $180,000. That's just the operating budget money. The overtime
budget in excess of $500,000, but $385,000 of that is overtime for holidays, not for operations.
Continued limited budgets are starting to have an accumulative effect on our ability to
maintain adequate training and certification. As we start not to retrain critical skills, we will start
to lose important certifications like Rescue Diver and Swift Water Rescue. The problem with
training is that it's low occurrence and high risk, the worst from a liability standpoint and trying to
maintain over 20 certifications per firefighter is an even more specialty certifications. Without a
large training staff, we're obligated to bring in or send out firefighters for some certifications at a
much larger cost. And we try and do a lot of this training, we try and bring it in...bring instructors
in to do train the training. An example of that is we funded last year and we're going to fund this
year, the ARS crew to come in and do the vertical reference training for our pilots and our. crew on
the helicopter. By bringing them in for two years in a row, they will then certify us to do a train the
trainer program, which on the third year will reduce the cost of that training. So we're trying to do a
lot of that to further our training.
The furloughs are over for now and that goes a long way to improving the capability of our
administrative staff to support the department. But with the extreme shortage in clerical and
administrative staff, we daily modify priorities to administer just the day-to-day basic paperwork,
payroll inputs and even community responses.
As the fourth largest department, we have the least administrative staff, smaller than even
smaller departments. So many things to not get done on time or are still awaiting assignment.
Within our Ocean Safety, public awareness and education campaign, we have lost major
supporters in funding our beach safety guides. This is huge in our ability to provide these guides
around the island to hotels and kiosks. But we are working hard trying to gather new supporters,
but without them our message is not going to get out and this will have an impact on our drowning
rates. And so you understand that we have several hotels and organizations that help support the
printing and distribution of that product. Economic times being what they are, some have backed
away, so we're trying to fill the void with others.
The Ocean Safety Bureau is not funded to change out our beach safety signs and a majority
are either missing or resting and ready to fall down. The challenge is maintaining and replacing
these signs in the most corrosive environments. We're not staffed to do this work and depend on
other agencies to budget, prioritize and replace. Given the recent court decision on signs, we cannot
afford to let this continue.
The Ocean Safety Bureau is suffering from an overburdened span of control. We have three
district supervisors and while they may only supervise 8-10 water safety officers, the fact is they're
spread out over miles of beach at up to four different work locations. This is causing problems with
the ability to directly supervise on a daily basis all the water safety officers at work at any given
time. We are seeing an increase of incidents of work-related injuries, issues, complaints and reduced
morale from other than the pay decrease. We're working on realigning and reallocating some
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.5
positions with the Ocean Safety Bureau to help better manage the bureau from the lowest lifeguard
to the top position within the bureau. There will be some cost implications of this realignment.
To better manage our personnel and resources and to minimize multiple inputs in the time
associated with those actions, we are moving to use our records management system to its full
potential. We have started to use its daily log function to keep from using separate log books, where
we duplicate the entries. We're starting to manage the daily staffing and time keeping to reduce
time needed for our staff to manage timesheets and hopefully integrate that into our payroll system.
You know a timesheet gets touched by about six or seven hands and gets reviewed a couple times. I
would say six or seven times it's getting reviewed from when they first put it in. It's very, very
intensive to do the payroll timesheets and to make sure they're accurate. So we're trying to find
ways to reduce that input and the amount of hands that get to see it.
We've also pushed our way into the complete streets program to help ensure as we build
safer communities we deal with fire response and safety in mind. We have started to integrate more
fully with the planning and permitting department to manage issues of use and zoning before they
become problems after the issuance of permits and zoning changes. We're very happy to say that all
the departments are very willing to work with us as we move through trying to integrate more fully
with the planning and permitting.
Improvements in the Prevention Bureau this year included the revamping of the fire
extinguisher training classes with apre- and post-test-given to evaluate if learning took place, using
a projector to show videos of fire behavior, using an evaluation form to check for class successes. In
our budget this year we included a digital extinguisher trainer to reduce the use of hydrocarbon fuels
and the ability to train more people several times to improve retention.
Fire Prevention has improved its grant writing capabilities by taking more classes and has
worked more closely with the mayor's communication team in getting out important safety messages
and information out to the public such as the Kauai Family Magazine, a new magazine that's come
on and we've been active participants with that.
So what are our initiatives? As we move into the newly renovated Fire Headquarters in
early 2012-still hopeful we're going to get there by then-we will improve our ability to respond by
adding aback-up emergency operations center, including an alternate dispatch center that will be
used routinely to not just test and monitor its capabilities and use, but to allow for cleaning and
work on the dispatch center without interruption of daily operations of the Public Safety Alarm
Center.
Along with our new Computer-Aided Dispatch System (CADS) through the police
department dispatch and our mobile CADS, we will come online providing a new level of safety to
fire and police. The new system will allow firemen to literally see what's going on around the corner
and integrate with the county computer network providing access to pre-fire plans, pictometry
imaging, records management system, high-speed Internet connections for command post and
communications. This integration with our new communications van provided through a PCIP grant
will enhance the command and control network to a level never before seen on Kauai. This type of
network provides the incident commanders and the EOC with high speed and secure links to better
manage and control emergency operations and disasters.
In order to help hold down costs, we are requesting a water tender from the Honolulu Fire
Department and they have consented. We also use U.S. Forestry Service Excess vehicle program to
manage our loaner fleet of brush firefighting vehicles.
The Prevention Bureau is working on a grant for a smoke alarm distribution program. The
purpose of this program is to distribute and install smoke alarms into the homes of target residents
and this initiative will drastically reduce the chances of loss of life due to a fire. They are working
with KEO and FEMA on a grant to pay for the smoke alarms and education.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.6
The Prevention Bureau is in the process of adopting the fire code, the 2006 NFPA 1 with
local county amendments.
The Fire Prevention Bureau will finally swap out its Sparky costume that is over 20 years
old and worn by more inspectors than I care to count. So you can imagine that it's a very hot
costume to wear and the newer materials make it a little more beneficial to our firemen. The Sparky
program is one of the best education opportunities and needs to continue and be fully supported.
As referenced earlier, we are working on a realignment and reallocation plan for the Ocean
Safety Bureau to better supervise and manage our water safety personnel. As part of the
realignment, we are proposing in the future an Ocean Safety Bureau Prevention and Education
Office to assist with public education for both our locals and visitors. Through our Beach Safety
Week initiative, water safety supervisor Kalani Vierra will be attending the national conference in
North Carolina, courtesy of the Hawaii Lifeguard Association, and seeking their approval to have
the President decree a National Beach Safety Week. I mean it's the first time; it's never happened
before. We have the opportunity to have the President from Hawaii and have somebody have our
star, Kalani Vierra, be able to go up and possibly get the President to declare the Beach Safety Week
and he surfs, so maybe it's encouraging.
As part of the helicopter program, we will be adding training and familiarization with our
personnel to assist in ocean drowning operations, something we're not able to do under the old
system due to the economics and availability of the helicopter.
So let's talk about the operating budget. The first graphs as you can see, there is an increase
in the overall operating budget for the department and in comes in different areas, and we'll describe
that as we go through. As identified in the Fire Department Operating Budget, our salaries have
inched up to 5.3%, the largest increase is in our utilities. While it is 26.7% over last year, it is less
than 1% of our overall budget and it equates to an increase of $36,000.00 mostly to the compensation
for fuel cost increases. And in all line items, for fuel we've added an increase in anticipation of fuel
going up. The next largest increase is benefits at 24.1%. Our actual operating budget outside of
salaries of benefits increased 22.7% and is only 8% of the entire budget. Year over year, the increase
in budget was $2.6 million of which $2.1 million was salaries and benefits. Part of the salaries and
benefits increase was the funding of the three dollar-funded firefighter positions, which we are going
to fill this year to comply with the SAFER Grant and to fully staff the fire department in order to try
and reduce overtime costs. We also accepted a transfer fire mechanic from public works. Overtime
costs were reduced another $65,000.00 over the last year's reduction of $40,000. So currently we're
not able to maintain our staffing levels at 80 % of the time with the overall dollars budgeted.
Chair Furfaro: Say that again, Chief.
Mr. Westerman: Okay. If you look at the graph, at the bottom of that page,
essentially we have a...our goal is to staff at 80%, four firefighters or better at every station every
day.
Chair Furfaro: Yeah, we agreed on that four years ago to help homeowners
with their insurance policies.
Mr. Westerman: Right, right, right, with their insurance, right.
Chair Furfaro: That was our goal.
Chief Westerman: And the national standard is 90%.
Chair Furfaro: Understood.
Chief Westerman: Understood.
Chair Furfaro: Prior to that we were below 80.
Apri111, 2011
Fire Department p.7
Chief Westerman: We were below 80.
Chair Furfaro: We decided 80. Now you're telling me we may fall?
Chief Westerman: Well, if you look at the graph below, we do fall below the line
on occasion and the bottom of the graph, those are the percentages of the times that we fall below
80%. And it's an overall average. So it could be one station on one day or another two stations on
one day that have an effect. That has a very minimum effect. But when you get three or four
stations at three in a day, that's when we fall below the line.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Chief Westerman: And we try and manage that by managing vacations, moving
people around the stations, and finally calling back rank-for-rank and then calling back overtime.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, let me ask, is that assumption made on the fact
that you're going to fill the three vacancies?
Chief Westerman: It's going to help. Yes, yes.
Chair Furfaro: But right now, times we fall behind is based on we fill the
three vacancies or we have not.
Chief Westerman: The graph shows the times we did not have the three
vacancies filled.
Chair Furfaro: So that's past historic data.
Chief Westerman: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Still having the three vacancies.
Chief Westerman: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Okay and do you do a separate vacation approval process for
your firefighters that takes into consideration the non-productive payroll during the times you meet
vacation schedules?
Chief Westerman: I'm sorry, try that again.
Chair Furfaro: Do you do a vacation schedule that indicates what approvals,
not by people but by station and staff, how many of them will be out on vacation in any period of
time that may contribute to that shortage?
Chief Westerman: Well, I don't know that we record it and look back at history
for that, but when we...and we do monitor the staffing at every single station, yes. But we also
transfer people between stations on a daily basis to make up the shortfalls.
Chair Furfaro: I understand that.. So that is encompassed in the overall
vacation approvals.
Chief Westerman: Yes, yes.
Chair Furfaro: And at the end of the day you have the final say whether
somebody can or cannot go on vacation.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.8
Chief Westerman: Yeah, but there's still things that we can't account for like
sick leaves. We can try and manage...we have a standard...we have a number set for the day, well
eight now at each station. We can have one person out on vacation and you're okay. But when you
have people that now call in sick leave or someone's on maternity leave or somebody's out IA, that
reduces the numbers, and so it backs them up.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, yeah and that's an operating issue everywhere.
Chief Westerman: Every day.
Chair Furfaro: Whether it's government, whether it's a hotel and so on.
Chief Westerman: It just takes a certain amount of bodies to have four
firefighters at every station every day and if they're not there, then it causes overtime, yeah. And we
try and maintain that as minimal as possible.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, then let me ask this question and I'll ask it of every
department since you brought it up. In your staffing business plan for the fire department, do you
take a credit for approved vacation and that number is deducted from the straight line staffing that
you have for your people? So I get a net productive payroll number and I get a gross vacation benefit
number. Is your payroll broken down that way? Let me give you an example. I have five
firefighters. Every station needs four to cover at any one time. The one guy is, and another
department used this term and that's why I've been focused on it, the fifth fire officer is then
determined to be the redundancy so that you can cover vacation, sick and so forth. When you do
your budget, do you count or do your credit the productive payroll based on anticipating people to be
on vacation?
Chief Westerman: I see what you're getting at and I'll say no. What we do is we
staff every station and budget every station with five firefighters. And then we budget our overtime
based on historical data on how many overtime dollars we'll need to manage with those guys being
gone. Yes and some of that money does transfer. So if they're gone though, if they're on vacation,
we're still paying them. It's not like they take vacation and that dollar goes away,
Chair Furfaro: (Inaudible.) And when they take vacation, it's a benefit and
it's non-productive time. It's in the line called payroll taxes and benefits. It's not productive time
and they earned it and they're entitled to it.
Chief Westerman: Right.
Chair Furfaro: I just want to know how you staff it?
Chief Westerman: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Do you account for it in your redundancy with firefighters?
And it is a management tool then because if you do have three guys on because two guys are on
vacation, you're going to come up short on the 20% of not having four men able to cover.
Chief Westerman: Right, right.
Chair Furfaro: So if, and this is a question I'll pose because we'll send all the
questions over together, if we were going to get to the point that more redundancy for the
department was necessaxy, would we need to add four more firefighters, five more firefighters, what
is that number for the purpose to get us closer to the national standard? Could you answer that if
we send it over?
Chief Westerman: Well, yeah, but I think what you're getting at again is how we
manage...at some point in time overtime doesn't become beneficial; it's better to hire another body. I
agree.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.9
Chair Furfaro: That's right.
Chief Westerman: We're not at that point yet.
Chair Furfaro: People don't realize that it's not the overtime we're worried
about. It's only the half-time, the premium pay.
Chief Westerman: Right, right.
Chair Furfaro: If we had three or four more firefighters, would we be able to
give ourselves: (1) a higher rating than the 80%, four-man teams and (2) would we also reduce the
premium portion of the pay? So I'll send that over in a question, but I think you understand where
I'm going. Mr. Rapozo wants to add to that.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, I just had a question, Chief. On your chart, you're
showing you did below 80% in May of 2010 and January of 2011, only on those two months, right?
Chief Westerman: Right.
Mr. Rapozo: Was there any reason? Was it illness, injury? Was it an
anomaly or is that something we can anticipate every year?
Chief Westerman: Staffing at that time was minimum. We had just...in July of
that year we started a new recruit class. We had just had some retirements. We had the three
dollar-funded positions. So we had about eight...if I remember the class was eight, eight strong. So,
when we're eight short already, besides...
Mr. Rapozo: We can expect to see this.
Chief Westerman: Yeah, we can expect to see that. And again, if I remember
right, we had two injuries IA and three firefighters that retired and three that were dollar-funded.
So we had eight positions. That gets rid of all the vacations for a day, so what are you going to do?
Not give anybody vacation? Well that's not very good business either. And that's where the
overtime dollars come and so we try and manage how much of it we're going to allow to overtime and
how many days we're going to allow that to go short because when ISO comes in and looks at it.
They kind of look at an average over the whole year. They won't come out and pick on one day.
They'll look at how we try to manage over the course of a year. They come about every three years,
so they look at year increments.
Mr. Rapozo: And I think we're...it does look, if you look at May and you
look at January of 2011, we fell. But if you take an annual average, we didn't do too bad overall.
Chief Westerman: No.
Mr. Rapozo: Because in fact, you had exceeded the national standard on
several months.
Chief Westerman: On occasions, yes.
Mr. Rapozo: So the national average really wouldn't be too much of a
(inaudible).
Chief Westerman: Right and there's a little bit more discussion in here about
staffing because it's not just staffing and doing ISO, it's the safety that's involved and I there's a
little bit of discussion here further on about the NIST study that was just done, so.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, Chief, I want to be very careful.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.10
Chief Westerman: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: You might take this a little bit as a tongue lashing and if you
do, you do.
Chief Westerman: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Safety is a very important piece for this group. And it was
this council that pushed, despite previous administrations to get you to the 80%.
Chief Westerman: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay and we also, and I in particular, don't appreciate the
fact when you said, what are you going to do, not give them vacation, when I already said they
earned it. Now if we work together, we can find out what your shortages are, whether it's three more
people, they could be floaters, whatever they are, but in general, we want to get to the national
expectation to have these teams covered with four people. That's where I'm going with this
questioning. It's not good for us to have ourselves drop below those ratings and then see that
increases occur in our citizens' property taxes and/or insurance premiums. We're trying to come to a
common solution. So I personally don't appreciate the short comment of what are we going to do, not
let them go on vacation when I just previously said they earned it, Chief.
I think Mr. Rapozo points out a couple of very important parts. There were a few months we
fell below that and you gave us some answers about industrial accidents and so forth. It seems to me
if we picked up two or three additional firefighters for your team, you would have the flexibility (1) to
manage it and (2) be able to meet those expectations because I don't like the idea that we canceled
getting us to a point that we're not working for certification. I mean water safety is a big part of
this. We'd like to take some identification of what we've done. During my time on the council, we've
added 17 water safety guys. During my time on the council we've added a number of trucks because
we came to a mutual agreement. We've added a helicopter. We've added three rescue trucks that
have over 100,000 miles on them. We need to get those done. But we have to accept the questions
here as giving us structure on what we can do.
The Waianae Coast has three fire stations. They have 180,000 people. So it's borne across a
very large population on the leeward coast. We have eight fire stations for a population of 68,000
people. So the cost ratio for the taxpayers is higher. So we need to come up with some alternative
plans. And we did add a new fire station in Koloa and we did add a new fire station in Princeville, so
I think although those stations stood as wooden barns, they were actually replaced with some pretty
convenience and well facilitated units. Now I agree this is the 8th fire station we've added, but we've
gotten there from mutual dialogue about your needs and what this ratio of a population can afford.
So, please don't take my questions out of context. I was a bit taken aback when you stated, what are
we going to do, just not let them go on vacation.
Chief Westerman: Well, I must apologize.
Chair Furfaro: Absolutely not.
Chief Westerman: I must apologize, Chair. That comment was not meant to be
that way. I really do apologize. I'm sorry for that.
Chair Furfaro: Our people earn that. Chief, our people earn their vacation,
everyone in your department.
Chief Westerman: I agree and that's the text in which I meant that. They have
earned their vacation, so we must give them their vacation within reason.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.l l
Chair Furfaro:
help give another solution t~
Chief Westerman:
Chair Furfaro:
Ms. Yukimura:
this. Is it appropriate now?
So understand, we're probing for the problems that we can
~ for you to the administration.
I appreciate that, thank you.
Councilwoman Yukimura.
Yes, just procedurally I do have some follow-up questions on
Chair Furfaro: Yeah, I think so.
Ms. Yukimura: Chief, I've been out for two years and so I'm sort of catching
up. In one way I want to say that I've forgotten how thorough and amazing your reports are. If
every department did it like this; we'd be far ahead. On this particular issue, I guess I'm wondering
what is the magic of 80% of time? There are these national standards, but we're a rural community
like the chair pointed out, 65,000 people with 8 fire stations, which is extraordinary. I mean Davis,
California has the same population and I think they have two fire stations? But that's because
they're on 10 square miles and we're on 555 square miles minus the interior, but that's still...and I
hear that we're trying so hard to fit the standard in. If it is critical to the mission where there's
really safety being jeopardized, then yes, let's strive for the standard. But if it's just a standard and
it doesn't fully relate to...or it may but not in a direct core way, I don't know. Sometimes when you
live in a rural area, your insurance is higher because you live in a rural area and one of my concerns
is over time if we become very spread out rather than more condensed in terms of our-this is a
Smart Growth concept-that most of our growth is focused in our towns and we're not creating ag
subdivisions which are residences not ag in our ag lands, then the cost of servicing, that's going to be
tremendous and maybe we need to think in terms of rural standards for certain areas and more city
or town standards for town areas and- people choose. They live in a rural area, but they gotta pay
more for fire insurance or something like that because they've chosen to live someplace where there
aren't a lot of other people and it's harder to service. So I guess my question-sorry, long prelude to
my question-is if we're not able to fully service this 80%, how critical is it?
Chief Westerman: Well, I'm glad you asked that question and I think you
answered it because let me go back to what you said and with what the chair said about the Waianae
Coast. Not the uniqueness of Kauai, but the difference that Kauai represents versus Davis and I
happen to know the Fire Chief at Davis, who just retired, you're right. They have two fire stations in
a very urban environment. But they also have 15 mutual aid fire departments that do automatic aid
with the city of Davis with the university. So, there's more like 17 departments that actually
support that community. The uniqueness on Kauai is we have no mutual aid other than one station
at PMRF and the airport, which usually won't go much farther than the airport. So we now have
urban, suburban, and rural environments on Kauai. We have all three environments that we need
to support. And if you look in the strategic plan, you can see by district what the ISO rating is for
those different areas and that's how, just like you said, we get to where how do we staff and how do
we manage and how much of... and I'll throw out a standard there the 1710 standard do we live up
to? Or do we go down to the 1720 standard, which is volunteer departments, which the ISO rating
for everybody would be 9. It didn't make a difference whether you lived in Lihu`e or you lived right
next to the fire station or you lived in one of these gentlemen estates in Kilauea or Molowa`a or one
of those areas or you lived up at Koke`e. So how do we provide our citizens with the best service at
the best price? And you're right, as the chair said it costs us a little bit more on Kauai because we
are unique in that we don't have a mutual aid agreement. So we have to provide everything. So
we're not sharing resources with anybody like the city of Davis. And you know, we don't have to pick
on Davis. Anywhere on the mainland... anywhere on the mainland because their next door
neighbors, they all provide mutual aid service with everybody else. And believe it or not we actually
have an IMAS plan for the State of Hawaii and we can get resources from Honolulu.
Ms. Yukimura: IMAS is?
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.12
Chief Westerman: Interstate Mutual Aid System and we're just now getting it
signed off and getting it through Civil Defense, but still it would be a time lapse of getting something
here, so. Daily to provide that level of service as we've identified and worked with ISO to get people's
insurance ratings to a certain category, that's all one part of it.
The other one and I guess really I won't read it here, but the next part of the budget talks
about the NISI standard and why do we respond with two people in a station, three people in a
station, four people in a station, five people in a station? What's the standard and why do we do
that? Well, the NIST report that just came out supports 1710 in the fact that four staffing per
engine is the optimum in whatever environment that you're in. And the reason for that is there's
22 critical tasks that need to be performed on-scene in a residential fire. And for the safety of the
occupants, the safety of the firefighters, and sometimes they don't do these tasks necessarily in order
and we use an acronym like RECCEO, which is Rescue, we're going to rescue first, and we're going to
do Exposures and we're going to Control, we're going to Contain, we're going to Extinguish, and
we're going to Overhaul the fire. And there's 22 tasks in all of that and what's critical is the
response, the initial response and responding with enough vehicles in enough time and getting water
on the fire fast enough. And with four people, as you read...and I put just the highlights of the NIST
study in here, with four people on an engine, we do that 5% better...5% faster. With four people
versus three people or two, we're able to complete the 22 tasks 31% faster and safer. And so
providing the service and in-I don't want to say adequate because I would say we're providing
adequate service. We're not providing a level I ISO rating that you get in New York City or LA or
someplace like that where you're right next to a fire station that has two engines and a ladder
company and a battalion chief all in one station within 5 miles of your house. But for us, we've got to
balance just what you're saying. What is the staffing we need daily to do a safe response and to do
an adequate response and over the variety that we have to service on Kauai. Because...and again,
it's not just that. On Kauai nobody else does it. We're doing rescues, we're doing HA7.MAT, we're
doing everything that is to be done. In a lot of other departments in the mainland, they will strictly
do fire suppression, maybe some medical response and a specialty crew will do nothing but rescues.
California, in some places the ocean safety is done out of the sheriffs office. So and to make a long
story long, it's a balance of all of those things and I don't want to make the assumptions. The other
people have done the reports. The National Institute of Standards has done the evaluation. They
did the critical tasking and they didn't just go out and evaluate. In this report, they didn't go out
and evaluate departments. They literally did the tasks. They walked through them in a systematic
way and graded every step of the process, timed every step of the process, because they're like
too...what is the standard that we should be setting for everybody? So that's kind of where we are
and that staffing Ievel we were about and trying to maintain that. You get a certain amount of
liability with the job. We have firefighters that are on the other side of district every day doing
something maybe in the community: putting up tents over at the humane society for their event.
Okay, that's not their task, but routinely the community is expecting us to do those kinds of things.
And so they're on one end of their district and now they have to go to a fire and support a fire that's
in their neighboring district because they're the second or third responding engine, it takes them a
little bit longer to get there. So, there's just so many things that...you know I could talk for hours.
This is my job. I really love it. I mean I could talk for scenarios and implications here to never-never
land, but I think where we are and again I'm not trying to paint such a drastic picture here that
looks that bad is that we...like Jay said, we have kind of set a standard and we need to try and at
least maintain that standard because of the effects on firefighter safety and public safety. And we're
kind of...we're there. What I'm saying is at some point in time though as the community still grows,
we start having more calls. Again, you take more engines out of service to go run a medical call, go
run a rescue call, they're running a fire call, and all the call loads are increasing annually. And at
some point in time again, we'll say, well and it's in our strategic plan where we think the next fire
station should be to support service and that's hard to choke down when you're already saying, why
do we have eight fire stations, why do we need eight fire stations, and you're already talking, Chief,
about a 9th one. Well...
Chair Furfaro: Caution you again.
Chief Westerman: Yes.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.13
Chair Furfaro:
Chief Westerman:
Chair Furfaro:
Chief Westerman:
Chair Furfaro:
Chief Westerman:
Chair Furfaro:
Chief Westerman:
We know you need a fire station, okay.
Yeah, I know, sir, I know.
We also know we Like the 80 % staffing.
Right.
Because as you said, you get a 31% better response.
Right, absolutely.
We'd like it to be at 80%.
Kaiakea has gone a long way to help that actually.
Chair Furfaro: Maybe at the end of this I can ask you again because you
need to clarify this for this council. I want you to reiterate your 2012 plans on the things that you
can accomplish to get us to that certification process.
Chief Westerman: Yeah.
Chair Furfaro: Okay?
Chief Westerman: Yeah, can do.
Chair Furfaro: I mean it's going to take us longer, but I want us to revisit
that.
Chief Westerman: Well that's kind of what I was talking about, the BORA
process and our mobile CADS and completing those projects anyway because they've got to be done
as part of the accreditation project. Those are two projects that we're going to continue to work on
this year to keep doing this while we're...
Chair Furfaro: I'll let you summarize that at the end. I would like to hear it
again and I'll go to Councilwoman Nakamura and then to Mr. Bynum.
Ms. Nakamura: Hi, .this is a very basic question.
Chief Westerman: Yes.
Ms. Nakamura: But what are the benefits of accreditation?
Chief Westerman: Well, the benefits...couple things, again talking about the
safety to the firefighters and the safety to the community. Part of what the accreditation process
does for you is take an internal look at what you're doing, how you're doing it, and are you really
doing it based on some standard, not your own standard. I mean we could create our own standard
and we could live within our own standard, but with the counselor sitting over there I think he'd tell
you it's better if there's a national standard out there or there are some semblance of some standards
out there, we should be complying with those standards. And I want to qualify that in that there
adjustable. Even though there's a standard, there's some movement in the standard. Just because
the standard is 90%, we can choose, as the chair said, 80% of our standard as our staffing and this is
the level of service that we're going to provide to our community and that's also in my strategic plan
is the level of service that we provide in our community. And so the standardization process says,
you've selected this level of service, so based on the standards, how are you going to provide that
level of service to your community because they need to know they're getting fair value for their
dollar in the service that they're provided at a level that's acceptable to them and again that's part of
the ISO rating. If they choose to live way up the valley in Waimea, they're not going to get a
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.14
6/9 rating. They're probably going to get an 8/9 rating living up there and they know that, but that's
the level of service that they're going to get from us because we've decided that the level of service in
the Waimea District is the level of service 3, which means to get all the way up the valley, it's going
to be 15 minutes. It's not going to be 5 minutes of response. But that's the standard we've set, so
we're measuring ourselves against the standard that we have set. That's what accreditation does for
us. I mean it's nice to have a little sticker on the side of your car because somebody says, yeah, you
meet some kind of standard, but what it truly means is the community is getting the service that
they're paying for and we're measuring that, somehow we're measuring that service. So we can go
back to the community and say, this is the level of service that you're getting. This is what our
accreditation shows, the level of service that you're getting. And then they can say, well, that's not
good enough. And that's fine. We just go back and say, if that's the level of service you need, here's
the cost. I mean we can provide any level of service you want. You just have to fund it. You know
what I mean? You can buy any level of car you want, you just have to have the right amount of
money.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you.
Chief Westerman: Yeah.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Chief, I got some questions from earlier but I'm going to save
those because I want to just stay on the topic we're on right now. I mean part of the message I heard
from you this morning is we had set these standards, we're striving to meet them, accreditation was
one of the goals we had set a number of years ago, but the reality of the fiscal constraint that you've
been exercising over the last couple of years is we're not going to meet that standard we envisioned
four or five years ago, right? That's what I heard.
Chief Westerman: Not that we're not going to meet it. It's going to take us
longer to meet it.
Mr. Bynum: All right, it's going to take longer, but we established...and
you just did a good job of outlining that we established this 80% as oux goal and our target and I also
want to say that I've told the other departments, look at the chiefs presentations at council. Beyond
the presentation to council, look at the strategic thinking that the fire department does, that they're
looking into the future, that they're making these decisions and having that discussion that's pretty
robust with us about what is a reasonable standard of service and expectation for our community
with its unique circumstances. And so it's not just that you do a good presentation, it's that you have
a strategic plan, that you're looking into the future, right? But I also hear that what. the chair is
saying and I just want to echo it, you can make a much better judgment than we can about how
many firefighters you need to cover and meet that standard. But I think what I heard the chair
saying and I would echo it is if that means adding a couple of firefighters so it's not so tight on that
daily decision if there's a floater or that:..I know you're making that analysis, but I think this
council's demonstrated a willingness to try to find more resources to meet those standards. The
specific question I had was in order to get accredited...I think you just answered it, but I want to
make sure I'm clear. You've given us this great chart that has this NFPA 1710 standard of 90%,
what our goal is at 80% and how we've done throughout the year. Does accreditation require
meeting that 90% standard?
Chief Westerman: No, no.
Mr. Bynum: And I heard that answer. You just kind of gave it, it's like no.
Accreditation doesn't mean we have to meet urban standards for every address on Kauai.
Chief Westerman: Absolutely, right.
Mr. Bynum: It means that we have to set a target and goal and articulate
it and measure it and meet it on a consistent basis, right?
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.15
Chief Westerman: Right, that's exactly right.
Mr. Bynum: Okay, so I just wanted to make sure that we're not striving to
be above 90% all of the time.
Chief Westerman: No, no, no.
Mr. Bynum: Because we've set our goal at 80%, right.
Chief Westerman: Right, right.
Mr. Bynum: And we can get accredited with that goal.
Chief Westerman: Absolutely because accreditation works for whether you have
a small volunteer department that has 30 volunteers and no fulltime firefighters to afire
department that's got 25,000 firefighters in it Iike Chicago or New York. So the process is it's
your...like the deputy (inaudible) noted, it's the process.
Mr. Bynum: And I want to check out one other assumption that I have.
You said earlier that you...and I know you monitor it on a daily basis, is our staffing level adequate
to meet the standard and at what point does overtime cost go so high that we should add a body or
two or three or whatever, right, you're monitoring that, correct?
Chief Westerman: Right, you're right, and just like we had discussed at some
point in time overtime is just too costly; it's better to put on bodies. I don't think we've reached there
yet. It's the overtime issue that we still need to fund the overtime so that we can maintain the
standard.
Mr. Bynum: Right and my assumption is that because you answer to a fire
commission, which is relative new for us, right, like three years or so?
Chief Westerman: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: That you have the latitude to be very clear with us about
what your staffing needs are. You have more latitude than say department heads that answer to the
mayor. Is that correct?
Chief Westerman: Well, I still answer to the mayor. I don't want to give the
misconception that I don't because the administration is still the administration. It's my
responsibility to make sure that I understand the administration's goals and objectives, but yes, I
have those battles with the administration that I feel that I need these positions, so I take on those
battles.
Mr. Bynum: When you prepare your budget, you submit it to the mayor for
review, right?
Chief Westerman: Yes, after the commission has reviewed it.
Mr. Bynum: After the commission and he may make cuts in that budget.
Chief Westerman: Right.
Mr. Bynum: The question I'm asking is if you felt that those cuts were
bringing you below that level that you think is adequate to meet our goals, do you have the latitude
to share that with this council?
Chief Westerman: Yes.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.16
Mr. Bynum:
Thank you.
Chief Westerman: And your earlier statement is...if you look in the strategic
plan and it talks about the level of services projected through the years and the ISO ratings and how
they reflect. So we are trying to look forward in how we provide that level of service in different
communities and in some cases if all we were doing is looking at Hanapepe, for example, the rating
just got moved up actually. We might be providing a level of service different in Hanapepe than we
do in Waimea or Lihu`e only because we have the capacity to provide it differently. For the urban
environment, we can provide the capacity a little bit easier than the rural, so our level of service is
lower by community.
Mr. Bynum: Right, two last things. Just to note, I have some specific
questions about earlier portions of your presentation, but I'm going to save those and it's really
interesting having our new councilmember Nadine on the council for me because I had the pleasure
of working with her at Leadership Kauai on our strategic plan and she really helped train me about
the difference between goals and objectives. And so I'm going to say this out loud and then check
with her later if I've got it right. You have goals and objectives down here, but my read of it is a lot
of what you have in the objectives section are actually goals and what you have in the goals section
are actually objectives. Have I got that right, Nadine? But you have gone beyond. Goals are fairly
easy to come up with.
Chief Westerman: Right.
Mr. Bynum: It's like hey, this is what we want to do. But actually saying
what are the standards we need to meet to accomplish that and I just think some of yours...they're
all in there, but they're...
Chief Westerman: We're open to any suggestions that you have.
Mr. Bynum: I hope I have that right. Thanks, Chief.
Chief Westerman: Yes, you're welcome.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Mr. Bynum.
Chief Westerman: If I may comment on his...
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead.
Chief Westerman: And you're right, we have had the discussion with the
administration and that's why we have those three dollar-funded positions funded this year. Two
reasons: (1) because of the effects on the SAFER grant and (2) because of the effects on our staffing.
So we did battle with the administration and believe me it was pulling teeth to get those positions
funded and to aIlow us to fund our two positions that have retired. So we have a recruit class of five
starting in 1 July which will go a long way to supporting our 80% manning.
Mr. Bynum: And that's a great example. I appreciate that. And to
recognize that in the mayor's budget message, he said, hey, we have taken...we acted proactively to
try to reduce spending. These are the measures we've taken, but we've been in that mode for a
couple of years or more and we're at this point now where we can't justify continuing that totally.
We need to invest a little more. So hence our overall county budget is up some and that's an
example when you have three positions that were dollar-funded last year and they're fully funded
this year, it's going to show as an overall increase in budget.
Chief Westerman: And that's a very good point because that's also, if you look at
our training budget, our training budget has increased this year. And we agreed in the last couple
years that we would push and pull training wherever we could to reduce the cost and try to find
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.17
other ways, but at some point in time, like I referenced in here, so this is in support of the budget.
This isn't to increase the budget at this point, please understand that. It's in support of the fact that
we increased our budget and our staffing; we've increased our budget in training because at some
point in time we just have to redo some skills and I referenced it here. Our diving skills and those
kind of certifications just have to get done and we can only put them off for so long and so again, we
have our increase in our training budget.
Mr. Bynum: And I'm really glad to have you say that because we're fairly
early in this budget process in terms of the whole administration. And that's an area where, hey,
when times are tough you can cut back on training and justify it for a few years. But eventually it
catches up with you, right?
Chief Westerman: Right.
Mr. Bynum: And I know the county attorney's office indicated that they
had put their training budget down for a few years and that they were looking to increase it because
we have to keep that level of excellence and productivity for our workers and you just can't cut it
forever, right? So you're not the first department that we're seeing, hey, we...and I think the first
year is like half, training budgets went in half. That impacts what you actually can accomplish and
so it's a really testy thing. We're still kind of a struggling economy, some hopeful signs, but still
trying to be really cautious. But you can't keep those things cut forever. It comes back to bite you.
So, thank you for that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, chief, before I recognize Mr. Rapozo, so just to
summarize all of that. The goal that the council is looking for is the 80% of the time your trucks are
staffed with four people in it. The objective is to make it 31.5% safer in a response time.
Chief Westerman: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. And now that we all know going to the mayor's office is
like visiting the dentist, thank you for that description, I will recognize Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo.
(Mr. Bynum was noted as excused at 10:21 a.m.)
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you and chief, I personally would love to give you
everything that you need and want. We all gotta remember one thing, that the money has got to
come from somewhere. There are no credit cards, no home equity loan for the county. So we have to
be careful and we are. The future doesn't look good and unless we're prepared to raise property
taxes...the money will not come. We don't have that luxury. Having said that, you mentioned
putting accreditation on hold. My question is and it's amulti-part question, if we hold up
accreditation, will that move us backwards in obviously time-wise, but will it cost us more to catch
up down the road?
Chief Westerman: For the accreditation process, no. It won't cost us any more
money. We're not moving backwards, we're just slowing down.
Mr. Rapozo: Right, I understand that, but I understand in some tasks if
you don't maintain something, it costs more to repair, and you're saying that's not the case with
accreditation.
Chief Westerman: No, we're able to maintain what we have.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. How much would be needed to not stop the
accreditation process? Because for me, I believe that it's a very important component of public
safety, whether it's police or fire, because a by-product of accreditation is a very, very good
department and then it happens. But how much...what's the reason...what is that dollar figure
that's forcing us to put it on hold?
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.18
Chief Westerman: Well, one of the reasons we have to put it on hold is overtime
dollars, it's using overtime dollars for operations. The staff that was working the accreditation
process kind of vigilantly for the last couple years, especially the last year, was a crew that was hired
to start to fill Kaiakea Station. It came online, so they've gone out to the line. So we had a couple
people in staff, we actually had three of them in staff, 40 hours a week for almost a year to work
really hard on the process. But now they've gone back out to the line, so they don't get to work on
that as hard every day. And the process really needs an accreditation manager to work the process
every day, and I don't have that in staff.
Mr. Rapozo: Right, but if you had an accreditation manager, that one
position, wouldn't that person require a supporting staff?
Chief Westerman: The supporting staff is the firemen, and it needs to be. It
needs to be the firemen and we do. We have committees assigned and sometimes when they meet
they have to use overtime because of FLSA. I can't let them meet if one guy is on red and one guy is
on green today and they're meeting about the process. One of them is probably going to be on
overtime. And we take one guy off staffing for the day and they have their meeting, and hopefully
they don't have too many calls, but again it's a management process every day, how we manage our
people. But without staff to work it and that's all they do, and you can probably ask anybody that
will tell you in this process you have to have someone dedicated to doing that. I apologize that I
don't have the time for it, I'd love to do it, but I don't have the time. The deputy doesn't have the
time, and so we need a person to be an accreditation manager. We have one, he's a battalion chief
assigned now, but, again, he has his daily routine work and so he doesn't get a lot of it done every
day. But he kind of keeps the guys on task for what. we are doing, like the SOGs, making sure those
all get done, and how we're measuring our processes, fixing the RMS system because those all go a
long way because you have to have years of data too. You can't just say, well, I'm going to get
accredited tomorrow, go down and answer all the questions. So you have to...
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, I understand that and I guess that's my concern and
that's why I asked if we were going to be moving backwards because you're going to lose a year and
probably more than that because I don't expect next year to be any better than this year. In fact, I
personally expect next year to be worse, so I don't see it. I'm just worried that if we drop the ball.
now, we may not pick it up and if we pick it up somewhere down the line, it's going to take us a
whole lot more resources to catch up because data won't be monitored and so forth. And that's just
my concern.. You don't have to answer it here, I'll send it over in a written communication. But I
just want to make sure you understand that for me, personally, I think accreditation is worth it. I
think it does help in many areas just in the training component and the facility component, your
fleet management systems, all of those things, that if we have an opportunity to get this done in the
next couple of years, I'd like to see it get done in the next couple years rather than put on hold for the
next couple years and then have to wait a whole another cycle of five or six years to see it happen,
That's just my opinion. I'll send over abetter-framed question for you to answer (inaudible). Thank
you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, chief, I am going to give you a little time at the end, as
I said, 10 minutes or so, to talk a little bit and kind of revisit some of the things we need to do
because I think you can tell by the tone from all the members, we're really wanting to stay focused,
even if it's the longer scope, on accreditation for your department. Mr. Chang, did you have a
question?
Mr. Chang: I wanted to clarify. Chief, you're not completely finished with
your report?
Chief Westerman: No.
Mr. Chang: Are you still going?
Chief Westerman: Yeah, there's still more.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.19
Chair Furfaro: We're in this section of questions, that's all. Do you have any
questions?
Mr. Chang: I think I'll just wait. I have a bunch of questions, but I'll just
wait until the end of the presentation.
Chair Furfaro: Very good. Okay, chief, you have the floor again.
Chief Westerman: Well, we've kind of talked out the next two paragraphs.
Chair Furfaro: That's a good thing.
Chief Westerman: Yeah, it's a good thing. So let's go to page 10. We talk about
the fire department relies heavy on its education and prevention, and we are woefully short on a
public education campaign. We simply do not have enough personnel to do all the outreach
necessary to continue to further reduce risk to our business and residents. The bureau continues to
provide service at a breakneck pace and this year they did, and we're talking about the fire
prevention bureau, 2,783 activities and inspections. The bureau provided all schools with a
wonderful fire prevention education campaign on a reduced budget. Some events got only inspectors
and no handouts, but they worked hard at trying to memorialize what they could. And I use the
word memorialize because if you've ever seen our ex-Captain Bukoski working with his crew at the
school with the kids, they can come up with some pretty good antics, and our new Captain Date is
doing a wonderful job at having the kids memorialize fire prevention week. They come up with some
really great skits.
Although our dollar losses continue to increase as we fight more fires, there are new and
more expensive homes and properties. So last year the total property loss was over $6 million, an
increase of 32%. Most of those were attributed to two: one was, of course, the warehouse fire in
Puhi, and and the other one was the business with the dive school in (inaudible).
We've worked with planning and public works in the last year to ensure that we are included
from the very beginning on all permitting and planning actions to help reduce the enforcement
actions needed after the fact. By being involved with the complete streets initiative, we helped make
our community safer.
We have no large capital equipment items in our budget. We have some small vehicles and
equipment and that is in desperate need of replacement.
Our engine replacement plan, as you can see below, is still holding up and our truck
replacement plan is being funded through federal grants, as the chair had mentioned earlier.
Again, our most sigxii_ficant impact is going to be the aging of America and the call load
increase due to in-home care or assisted-living where more routine calls could have been handled by
nursing staff versus calling 911 for less immediate needs. The baby boomers are reaching the golden
years in the next 10 years plus adding 40 million Americans to the rolls of the invalid and infirm.
And as the generations live longer, they start to stack up, back up, and use up services at a higher
rate. They are more demanding. They are not the silent generation of our moms and dads. They
are well-educated and demanding, and they are not afraid to speak up. You can pretty much read
any paper out there today on the aging of the baby boomers and it will go on to tell you pretty much
what I've just said.
Chair Furfaro: Chief, before you go on.
Chief Westerman: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: I just want to make sure the vehicle cable replacement that
you have here, you're actually identifying, this was in the second to last paragraph you touched on,
you're identifying the vehicles we want to replace in the future. But does this reflect your plan that
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.20
we actually hold one or two vehicles rather than, you know, put them out for salvage credit? You
have some vehicles that we have behind your station in Lihu`e, right?
Chief Westerman: Yes, right.
Chair Furfaro: This list doesn't show that.
Chief Westerman: No, no, this list doesn't show that.
Chair Furfaro: Thanks for the clarification, okay.
Chief Westerman: Then there was an additional request about our staffing and
that's the next section provided. It lists any new positions or changes to existing positions and that's
the fire mechanic position transferred from public works, a list of current anticipated vacancies and
those firefighter trainee positions are the dollar-funded ones that will get funded. The Firefighter I
positions, because of the promotion of the Firefighter III to fill the vacancy, and then the positions
that will get filled will be Firefighter I positions. Then the senior clerk position in our staff will still
stay dollar-funded. And then contractual positions, we have the Water Safety Officer I position, of
course that are funded by the state on contract and they're at Ha'ena State Park and that ends
June 30, 2011 unless funded by the state legislature and I'll be quite honest with you, I have not
heard at all what the state is planning on doing. We can only make the assumption they are going to
fund it in the next biennium budget.
And then of course the last page is the vehicle replacement plan. The top three replacements
are the ones we talked about using the federal funds to replace them. Then truck 5, even though it's
due in 2012 for replacement, it's still holding up so we'll probably extend its life. Because of these
three, there's not a better one of these three. One of these can still be used but not for the capacity
that this truck is being used for. And then we're down to 2016 before replace our next large capital
engine. So we've got a few years out before we have to do that.
Chair Furfaro: Chief, you may not see this situation in the same way I do,
but it is possible in the budget ending 2011, you may actually lapse some funds. Is it possible I could
ask you to to revisit that number and if we earmarked it for something that you might be able to
realize those funds that would assist you in your accreditation. Can I ask you to revisit your budget
and look at any moneys that might lapse that we could earmark before the year actually ends
towards your accreditation? You don't have to give me the answer now, but can I ask you to do that
because you have also done a pretty exceptional job at keeping costs in line. It reflects in your
overtime and so forth. But if there's money that's going to lapse, we could use it for accreditation.
Chief Westerman: Chair, I'd love to, but I'll be quite honest with you. I think I'm
going to be in the hole at the end of the year.
Chair Furfaro: I don't see it the same way.
Chief Westerman: Okay, I hope I'm not, but if there's any money, you bet we will
try and find a way to do that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, Councilwoman Yukimura has a question, chief.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh no, well, I just have a thought that I really respect the
judgment and in terms of the priorities, and I'm okay with slowing down the accreditation process so
that we can really focus on maintaining our key core responsibilities in the fire department, and I
acknowledge that you're not stopping the process. I see the commitment to this self-evaluation and
this commitment to ever-increasing excellence, so I don't think that's going to stop. But I think the
realities are such that we really need to recognize that, too. And with the new fire station and these
ever-increasing challenges that you've described, I feel that your judgments about how we allocate
time and resources are good. And particularly good because I think accreditation makes you Look
long range and you're already looking long range.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.21
Chief Westerman: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Chief Westerman: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: So if we're done with the overall report now, can we go into
general questions?
Chair Furfaro: Let me .check with other members.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, please.
Chair Furfaro: Chief, I want to point that out to you. For example, keep an
eye on how you're going to end your year because you did end in the CAFR the previous year, you
ended with some money that wasn't spent.
Chief Westerman: Yes, sir, we did.
Chair Furfaro: So I just want to make sure we don't have the same thing
happen this time around.
Chief Westerman: Yes, right.
Chair Furfaro: Any other questions before we go to general items? If not,
we'll go to general items and, as I said to you folks, I want to keep 10 minutes for the chief to revisit
the accreditation question at the end. So, councilwoman, you have the floor.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, okay, I don't mind if others go first.
Chair Furfaro: You have the floor.
Ms. Yukimura: All right, I'll try to make this quick. On your fire prevention,
I've always been really impressed by the effectiveness of it. When my daughter came home when she
was 7 or 8 years old and said, mom, if you catch on fire, you stop, drop, roll.
Chief Westerman: Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Yukimura: And I thought, boy, if you can reduce it to that simple
instruction that kids can always remember, in terms of saving lives that's incredible. So in terms of
your program which you show is kind of not having enough personnel, do you have really clear goals
and targets? Maybe you're reaching your targets already. I don't know, and how do you know when
you are? I was very impressed, this is in another section, where you talked about pre- and post-tests
to find out if people were really learning what you wanted them to learn.
Chief Westerman: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: And that's spectacular. A lot of times, even in drug
prevention, we do things and do things and do things, but we don't really know whether we're
achieving what we want to achieve, which is kids choosing to be drug free. So I just wondered if you
had identified your targets, so you know that your goal is to have 3,000 kids learn these basic rules
and that's what they're learning.
Chief Westerman: Well, thank you for that question. And in prevention, and
that's why we want to get to the next step in our education. We feel that we've gotten to a point
where we really can't get beyond where we are. We do measure certain .things and we only do
certain age groups with our prevention program intentionally. It's kind of like the DARE program;
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.22
we only hit certain age groups for two reasons: (1) because the education system won't let us be
there in every grade every year, (2) because we don't have enough people to be there every grade
every year. But the goal is to hit every single school and we managed that, so that's the goal in the
age groups. The second thing is, how do we measure that? And I agree, it's difficult for the kids to
understand how we measure that. But I'll tell you how we measure it. Just what you said. Your
children came home and they worked with you to do your Edith drill or your exit drill or talked to
mom and dad, talked to grandma and grandpa about changing the smoke detector.. That's how we
measure the successes. It's when people come back and tell us that or when teachers come back and
we get letters from the teachers and letters from the students that say, oh, this was good learning for
the kids, they took it home, they're real excited about learning that. That's how we measure. I agree
with you, trying to measure the successes of the drug program versus trying to measure the
successes of ours is very difficult, but we are encouraged when we hear and our ex-member
Kawakami kind of scolded me last year. He said, chief, my kids want that thing done, they hounded
me until we got our Edith drill done so they could take it back. But there is an ulterior motive
because then they get their little gift so they can go MacDonald's or they can go to Jamba Juice and
get their little prize. But they are taking them home and they are pushing the education out.
right?
Ms. Yukimura: So actually you could measure by how many gifts you give out
Chief Westerman: We could do that.
Ms. Yukimura: Because that means that those surveys or those exercises
have been completed in so many households.
Chief Westerman: Yes, yes, when we have that.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, that's very ingenious and very excellent to do that. I'm
thinking you don't have to do it in every grade in every school.
Chief Westerman: No, no.
Ms. Yukimura: You really need to get the learning happening and they
remember it forever, some of the simple rules.
Chief Westerman: Yes, and as for like businesses, for example, you notice this
year we did all of the care homes. If I remember right, last year we did all of the food
establishments, the year before that we did all of the liquor establishments. So every year we try
and set a goal on a particular business group and make sure that we hit every single of those
business group. Now, we do other business groups in the year, but we try to create a challenge of
let's get every one of these types of business groups so we can go through and provide the inspections
and services to those business groups. And maybe that wasn't identified enough in our report, but
that's why I said, they're very, very busy and that's what the 2,083 items are, is a combination of a
lot of those different things that they do.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, and you mentioned one of your... was it Bukoski who
used to be your...
Chief Westerman: He used to be the Captain in the Training Bureau, who's now
moved out to Lawa`i.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, I just wondered on the possibility of using retired
firefighters who have a particular knack for being with kids or whatever or even being with
businesses or wherever you are, whether that would be a way to expand your services that way?
Chief Westerman: We could look into that.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.23
Ms. Yukimura: I don't know. Okay. When we were at the wonderful
ceremony with the Eagle Scout who put up a flag pole at Hanapepe, there was a call, emergency call,
and your crew had to leave, and it turned out to be a medical emergency.
Chief Westerman: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: My question, I don't know all the parameters, but it did seem
sort of overkill to send a fire truck and I don't know what it costs per visit of the fire truck and then I
know the ambulance followed, and I'm thinking so that's why our crew was able to come back pretty
quickly and we were all glad for that. But is there a way to respond more efficiently to medical
emergencies than to take a fire truck out?
Chief Westerman: Well, in that particular call, that was Joshua Quinlan, by the
way, that was the Eagle Scout that put up the flag pole for us in Hanapepe and we thank him for
that.
Ms. Yukimura: And his dad was the Fire Captain there.
Chief Westerman: Yes. Well, if you did notice the ambulance was about
five minutes behind the engine, so.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Chief Westerman: The reason that we respond is because we have the capability
to get to a resident sooner probably 80 % of the time than the ambulance can because we have more
engines in the community than they have ambulances, and there's more of a chance that their
ambulance is going to be out of district transporting than we would be out of district. And there's no
way to...we can rate the calls at dispatch to a certain percent, but we found out that most of the time
it's inaccurate. The call might just come in that I'm feeling tired or I'm feeling weak or whatever and
so we say, well, they're alive, they're talking to us, let's just send the ambulance and they get there
and they've had a stroke already. So our ability to get there and provide the initial first responder
service is a timing issue critical to saving life. That's the reason.
Ms. Yukimura: I can understand that.
Chief Westerman: We send an engine because we don't want to break the crew
up. The integrity of the crew is important that we send the whole crew. We can't just break them up
and send a couple people from the crew because they might be in one end of the district and all of a
sudden there'd be a fire call. Now they've got to come all the way back, get the rest of their crew, and
then go out on the fire call. Basically that's the basic reasons why we respond the way we do. Can
there be other ways to do it a little more efficiently? I don't know if I want to get into a discussion of
doing fire-based EMS at this point.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, I know that's a highly complex issue.
Chief Westerman: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, you've shown me or you've said enough to help me
understand what the necessities are for the way you are choosing to respond now. I think that's all I
have right now. I just want to say that your report is filled with things to commend and, for
example; using your hosting of the fire chiefs conference to satisfy some of your training needs was
really very, very brilliant, in my opinion, and I am very glad for the fact that your capital equipment
planning is up-to-date. I know that when I was mayor we ended my term with all the equipment in
order and all the needs met, but after that, and I remember about four years ago when you came and
showed us all these equipment that was bought in 1994 and how it hadn't been updated, but I see
that over time you've really brought that up-to-date and that's very commendable and then your use
of federal grants is also helpful.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.24
Chief Westerman: Yeah and thanks to the administration. I think we kind of
have the same thought that managing a stable budget over time and replacing capital equipment
over time is a lot better than having to...especially when you get into bad economic times all of a
sudden, then you can't afford a huge cost for an engine. It's better if you have them leased over time
and then you can replace on a smooth keel over time.
Ms. Yukimura: So thank you, chief, your report is stellar and I'm very
thankful for your leadership and the team that you have.
Chief Westerman: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Chief, I have Councilwoman Nakamura.
Chief Westerman: Thank you, sir.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you, chief, again, for providing this information. I
have yet to read the strategic plan since we received it today, but I look forward to reading it closely.
It's just great to see this level of detail, and the thoughts and recommendations by each station just.
by glancing through it. I really want to take a closer look at that. I have some questions. One thing
that popped out at me was the lack of funding for beach safety signs given the recent state, the
ruling actually that affected the DLNR signs that made the state liable for the deaths of two women.
Chief Westerman: Right.
Ms. Nakamura: So what I wanted to find out is what's the county's plans to fix
these signs, replace these signs?
Chief Westerman: Well, that's actually a plug to help fund another department.
We count on Parks.
Chair Furfaro: I'm sure Mr. Dill would appreciate that.
Chief Westerman: Parks and public works to replace those signs. We on
occasion, they get busy, they get all the materials, and we'll take a couple guys and put a bunch of
signs in. But usually it's us calling them and then they're putting it in their list of priorities and
getting the signs done.
Ms. Nakamura: Do we have an inventory of the signs that need to be fixed and
replaced that can be forwarded to public works?
Chief Westerman: Yes. Have we done that? Not yet. We're going to do that.
Ms. Nakamuxa: Can we have a comprehensive list?
Chief Westerman: Yes.
Ms. Nakamura: I also am really proud about your working toward the LEED
certification for the new Kaiakea fire station because I think that if we want to promote this
throughout the county, the county needs to show leadership and this is a demonstration of that.
Chief Westerman: Yes.
Ms. Nakamura: So I thank you very much for taking the lead.
Chief Westerman: Well, that's really in administration, the initiative.
Ms. Nakamura: Yeah.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.25
Chief Westerman: The building's done and it's working fine for me, but they
want it to be a little more LEED friendly.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay.
Chief Westerman: So we're behind them in supporting that initiative.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay and I think I guess maybe this is a question, again, for
public works, but what might be our plans to try to get grants to do the same for other existing
stations.
Chief Westerman: I don't know. I'm sure that we can pursue that. I think this
actually came out of OED, I think is the grant that we got for this one.
Ms. Nakamura: Yeah.
Chief Westerman: Yeah, I'm up to the challenge to use my facilities to help
reduce my utility cost. I'm probably one of the highest utilities cost per facility because we're in
them 24 hours a day. We're not only in them during the daylight hours, so.
Ms. Nakamura: I think water might be a little higher. Also, with the three
dollar-funded positions, that the budget is showing that we're funding, will this impact your
overtime expenses for the upcoming year?
Chief Westerman: Well, we're hoping that what's left in our overtime we're -going
to be able to manage. That was the push, one of the pushes for the administration to give us those
three dollar-funded positions as staff positions.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay.
Chief Westerman: And then with what's left limited in overtime, we'll try and
manage to that 80 percent. I guess it has increases in our overtime because every time every
position has holiday overtime associated with it and it might have some operational overtime
associated with it. But I'm actually looking at the three positions helping us not use as much
overtime. Does that make sense?
Ms. Nakamura: Right, okay. And just in looking at your incident report, it
looks like 76% or 77% of all of the incidents are related to EMS.
Chief Westerman: Yes.
Ms. Nakamura: And only 6% related to actual fires.
Chief Westerman: Right.
Ms. Nakamura: I think that that's kind of a follow-up to Councilmember
Yukimura's concern raised earlier about strategies and and I don't think we need to discuss that
here, but it raised a flag for me.
Chief Westerman: Okay, well, if you don't want to discuss it here, then at any
time I would be willing to discuss it with you.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay.
Chief Westerman: But again for us the call coming in, we don't have a clear
definition of exactly what's happening, so it's providing that first responder response to every single
call and in most cases, like I said, faster than EMS can get there and then supporting EMS. A lot of
times the calls, it's us loading the patient or if they've got a particularly heavy patient or they can't
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.26
get him out of the house, they can't get him down the stairway, we have special equipment on our
vehicles to help do that. Doing CPR, there have been plenty of times we've put a firefighter in the
ambulance to assist because they have to drive their vehicle and so that only leaves one person in the
back, so we provide a firefighter to go out of service and go into town with them to do CPR or
whatever help they might need and the engine company will just go back with one less person and
then when they're done, they'll drop the firefighter-back off or sometimes if we're really short, the BC
will go pick up the firefighter and bring them back to the station right away as soon as they get to
the hospital. So, but we do a lot of things. It's not just going there and turning around and coming
back. I guarantee you they're providing some service.
Ms. Nakamura: And that collaboration is saving lives, so thank you.
Chief Westerman: Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you.
Chief Westerman: That's why every engine has an AED on it. Last year,
through some additional funding and through some grant funding, we make sure we have an AED in
every piece of apparatus that we own, whether it's an engine, a truck, a pickup truck, staff car, even
my vehicle has an AED in it.
Ms. Yukimura: What is an AED?
arrest.
Chief Westerman: That's an automatic external defibrillator to support cardiac
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, thank you.
Chief Westerman: You're welcome
Chair Furfaro: Chief, the mobile CADS, have they been installed in your
trucks yet?
Chief Westerman: Yes, sir, the units themselves are installed in all of our
equipment. We got those in a federal grant a year and a half ago.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, but they are installed.
Chief Westerman: They are all installed. So now that they issued the CADS
contract for the provider, part of that will be the use of the mobile CADS, and those are going to be
tremendous for our firefighters. It's going to be great, it's going to go a long way to helping them in
their call response, their ability to prepare on a call, keeping out data updated. Again, these are the
items that we can help support our accreditation process as we move forward. So we're excited.
We've been waiting on them for about two years. So we're pretty excited about them coming
on-board. The pictometry, the imagery, that's created a challenge for us. Those pictures are pretty
storage intensive, so we've had to figure out a way and working with IT that each engine only gets a
certain set of pictures because Waimea doesn't necessarily need Hanalei's pictures because of size
and how we'll store them in the units. Then the ability to use them, the high-speed Internet
connection goes a long way to that. IT is upgrading the network, has gone a long way to help us to
provide that service.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, I also want to concur with Councilwoman Yukimura. I
think actually the list we got on your aging of equipment was in 2004, and we've kept up with it in
the capital and lease programs, and I want to commend you for doing that. It's makes it very easy on
aging and replacements. Could you provide me some information about the equipment we have in
reserve now?
Chief Westerman: Yes, sir.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.27
Chair Furfaro: Okay, just a quick list. And also before we go to the summary
about the accreditation, I'll give you 10 minutes here and so forth. Can you tell me, have we
identified any new staffing levels for a beach that we're currently not staffing with lifeguards? Over
my time on the council we've added 17 positions, but do we have another beach that we need to be
considering for public use and so forth that currently isn't being staffed? The last one I think we did
was Anahola. You don't have to answer that today, but if there is, I'd like to hear from them, the
water safety officers, through you. I think Mr. Chang has a question and then we'll go to a little
summary, if we could, from you. Mr. Chang
Mr. Chang: Thank you, Chair. Chief and staff, thank you for coming. I
just have mostly comments and then maybe we could get the...I'll try to summarize short questions
and you could answer it now or a little later. First of all, as everybody stated earlier, I want to thank
you for your report. It's an extremely thorough report. The way I kind of, like, think, I look at
everybody that's scheduled to come before us and I said, wow, when they saw that the chief was first,
they better listen up and take a look at these notes because this is kind of like how the way the thing
is done and something that struck me when you said turn to page no. 10, you'd be surprised because
a lot of times pages aren't numbered, so we appreciate you also numbering it. I also like the colored
pictures and I like the colored graphs because when you're looking at graphs they don't come out
good in black and white. So I'm just going to make a few comments over here.
Number one, in regards to your Kaiakea fire station, one thing that you mentioned, it was
constructed in record time and it was something that was very good for us to know because these
projects that are coming up in front of the county, CIP projects that we're mainly concerned with,
hopefully there is no reason that they can't stay on time. And I like your LEED certification. If I'm
not mistaken the difference between silver and whether it's gold or platinum is not much of a
difference, except I believe it costs a lot of money to be categorized as platinum. That's what I think
I learned from the KCFCU LEED certified business building that they just reopened. So I wanted to
say if you folks didn't have a chance, you might want to walk through that building or just do a little
guided tour because they did a good job with that building, of course, across from Kukui Grove. If
you haven't seen it, that might be something you want to check in.
And I did want to touch on the Benjamin Franklin Award for valor. I think I know the
situation a little bit better than the general public based on...I see fire specialist Abreu here and fire
specialist Constantino, but Francisco Garcia is my neighbor. So I was able to get the beauty and
success of this. But it was a very, very heavy, heavy, heavy-duty rescue that could have gone the
other way. So, we have our fire helicopter; I did watch video of take-off, landings, when you did your
presentation in the pool, and I understand that you also, not only rescuers but you cross-trained
actual fire crews. Was that correct? So on a separate communication, and I'll communicate that
with our Public Safety Chair Rapozo because we can do that because I'd like to see a presentation so
you can let the public know what you did with the rank and file firefighters at their station along
with the rescue crews. I thought that was very well done and I think the public should see that, to
know behind the scenes what you folks are doing.
With that being said, I hear nothing but great things about I believe the pilot operator
Hobbs, pilot Hobbs and his staff. I mean, the way that it's portrayed to me, when he goes through an
obstacle course or whatever he needs to do when he needs to do it, it's just like boom, boom, boom,
boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom and then see you later. And that's very exciting to know
that somebody is familiarizing themselves with the winds, with the conditions, the ravines.. Every
island is different. You don't just pull somebody or call somebody to say, hey, we need some help and
expecting them to do what they do. In many cases some of your rescue people were just on-the-job
training like, okay, no more practice. Here we go, this is the real thing.
Another thing I wanted to comment you on was that recent fire seminar that you had and
you hosted. I would continue to encourage you whenever these possibilities come up about hosting a
conference, not only is it good for Kauai, but I also, as we all do, look at the economic impact and the
reason I say that is that a lot of times when it's another county's time to host an event, sometimes
they don't want to do it. So I hope you guys realize that if somebody says, oh, you know what, oh
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.28
bummer we got to do it. Volunteer to do it and take that assignment because you know how to do it
and, it's good for all of Kauai.
I wanted to also say and commend, because I understand Kalani Vierra got back from Guam
to do the training with the jet skis. The jet skis are huge. If I'm not mistaken, way back when, I
can't remember, maybe 10 or 12 years ago, Masa Hosaka was one of the first jet ski operators and I
remember because Battalion Chief back then was Bob Kaden and in order to test it out they needed
a guinea pig, so they took me out on a relatively big day in Hanalei and put me on the shoulder, and
said, okay, we're going to go back to shore, this is the international call for help or what have you. So
I know they saw me, but I think they wanted to see how long I could tread water. But I understood
at that time who a sled works and all of that. So I just wanted to commend all of you and on another
note, we could probably get more information down the line with Kalani because there is the public
and private sectors out there that I actually got involved with. But there is going to be a fundraiser
come October 9, so maybe it should come down in some sort of press release, but we are trying to get
three additional jet skis and trailers and hitches and all that stuff that will be donated to the fire
department. So at another time, we can let the public know this is how we're getting acknowledged,
this is what we've done, we were invited to go to Guam so that way the county can really realize that
we're supporting something very, very, very good here on the island of Kauai.
You mentioned a little bit about we lost a lot of the major supporters in funding for the
beach safety guides. So you went on and said that this is a huge ability to provide these guides
around the island in kiosks and you're working hard to gather new supporters. If you can maybe let
us know what kind of financial help you need because maybe we can assist with getting new
supporters out there or just let people know that, hey, there is a need out there if you want to step
forward because maybe families of people that you rescued, visitors might want to come back and
say, hey, I was there, you did a great job. Because at that point in time I think somebody's life is
worth, you can't put a price on being scared and I think a lot of people will understand what the
value of life is and I'd like to see people come back and give back knowing that it's for a very, very
good cause.
I want to commend Kalani and whoever was responsible because we've been trying for years
to get water safety in the airlines. That was the way that you can get the attention, you know, prior
to landing show beautiful things but not all beauty doesn't come without harm. So keep in mind
there's other airlines, Alaska Airlines, WestJet, people coming in from various destinations, from
Canada or San Jose or Phoenix or San Francisco or LA. If you can maybe continue that effort to
work with other airlines I think that's going to be great.
I remember back when at the baggage claim areas we used to run - is that running now?
(?): No.
Mr. Chang: Okay, maybe if that can get back up because when you're
waiting for luggage that's the time that people can be looking at beautiful things, but more
importantly cautioned. But I really want to help out with that, the guide, the safety guide because
everybody has it, it's around, it's very important.
Lastly, on another note, I think the community understands what the men and women of
your fire department does and you mentioned a couple things within the community, but things like
Lights on Rice Street Parade, when you decorate the front lawn of the Historic Kauai County
Building and/or setting up for hospice, this is not a 2- or 3-hour job and you're out there. Everybody
knows this is pretty much several days, if not weeks, and we're only talking about set-up. We're not
talking about breakdowns. So for the things that you folks do, I want to commend that. I think
we've all went through the concerns that we have with your budget and everything else, so this is
more to commend and just pick up on things that I noticed through your presentation.
Again, I want to thank you for your presentation. I thought it was extremely well done.
We're going to take a look at it and you can rest assured that you have our support in making Kauai
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.30
us, but I doubt very seriously there will be a call back. So on that note, we need to take a caption
break. Go ahead, Mr. Chang
Mr. Chang: Thank you, Chair. Just one fast statement. The one thing
that I forgot was if there's anything we can do to help out Kalani Vierra as you go to your conference
in North Carolina to have the President declare a National Beach Safety Week. I think it's really
important. We're the only state surrounded by water. The east coast side of North Carolina, there's
a cape there called "Care Fear," so I think the people there understand the water hazards on the
Atlantic Ocean. But if there's anything this council can do, then we'd be happy to throw in a letter of
support. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you. So, chief, again, on behalf of the council, I want to
thank you for a very well prepared document and watch for a few questions, and we're going to take
a caption break and in 10 minutes go to the liquor department. Thank you all and all your staff
members that are here.
Chief Westerman: Thank you.
There being no objection, the budget reviews recessed at 11:12 a.m.
April 11, 2011
Fire Department p.29
what it is, safety and security first and foremost, so. Thank you to everybody for attending this
morning. Thank you for the time, Chairman.
Chair Furfaro: Chief, just because we're getting to a point we have to take a break,
but also we have liquor commission up next, I would like to also add a comment to Councilwoman
Nadine's request on the beach sign review. I would say just from today's discussion that's the
highest priority for us to put on a question to get it done, and work with public works, and we'll
make it a point then. But more importantly before we take our caption break here and go on to the
liquor commission, may I ask you just to give us just a little bit of a highlight again on what we are
doing in reshaping accreditation. What are we doing this year that will help?
Chief Westerman: Well, thank you, chair. I'll try and be brief. That's difficult
for me, but I will try. I did want to say first off, thank you, Councilmember Chang, for the
comments, but the men and women of the Kauai Fire Department are doing a fabulous job every
day. We have a couple of sayings. The deputy has a good one, it says we're our own worst enemy
because it doesn't make any difference, we're going to get the job done. And I call that polishing the
badge. They do that every day and they do a very good job of it.
The accreditation process, again, it's just a process and we're not hanging our hat on it will
make a difference in budget, it will make a difference in the way we respond, really, it's just a
process by which we can set a standard, the county can help us, administration, the council can help
us set a standard on what level of service we want to provide. And in working on that process, it's a
long-term process and then it's a continuing process after that. So it isn't like we're going to get this
done and then it's all said and done and we don't do nothing because every year you really need to
revisit the process.
And what we're going to do this year,. like I said, is back up a little bit, slow down, and we're
going to do a couple things. One, we made an effort to push forward in our records management
system to making sure that all of our information is gathered in a single place. And the reason for
that is because, as we talk about the mobile CADS and the CAD system, they're linked. They're two
systems that are linked together. And the ability to pull the information out of the computer-aided
dispatch system and into our RMS and being more accurate is probably one of the most important
things that we need to achieve in the accreditation process because you have to have good truthful
reliable facts on time response, call taking time, the time it took us to turn out from the time we got
the call, the time it took us to get from the station to the scene, the time it took us to put water on
the fire, all those time are actually all accounted for. They're going to become more automated.
Right now, they're very manual and very subjective. It depends whose watch you looked at. The two
things that we are going to move forward in this year in the accreditation process are an extremely
important part of that process and I want to go back and state one thing. My intent was not in this
budget to say, woe is me, we can't make it work because we realize the situation that the citizens of
Kauai are in and the county of Kauai is in. We've determined that we're going to hunker down and
we're going to do the best we can with the budget that we have, with the money that we have, and
make it work. It was just to highlight some things on how we're going to manage that. Is the
overtime budget going to be tight? Yes. Are we going to have to slow down on accreditation? Yes. Is
it going to put us out of business? I hope not. I hope we're here tomorrow. We're not going to shut
any fire stations, we're not laying off any firefighters at this point. So our determination is to
hunker down and get the job done that we have with our budget. But to identify the things, again
like the challenges in the training budget. We fell back a few years, we're moving forward a little
bit, and we just have to adjust within that budget. And again, I'll be happy to, if you send over any
other questions, I'll be happy to answer the questions. I thank you all very much for your support
and I guess that's really all I have.
Chair Furfaro: I don't think we'll be calling the fire department back. I think
it's a certain statement about your effectiveness as a leader, chief. I want to thank you for that. I'm
sorry if I was direct, but in these times, we have to be very honest and open and direct, and we have
to make sure that we're doing the right things for the right people, and those include our community
and our very, very qualified fire members in the department. You have a wonderful team there. I
think you're setting us an example for all the other counties and you'll be seeing some questions from
April 11, 2011
Liquor Department p.l
The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 11:38 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
LIQUOR CONTROL DEPARTMENT
(Mr. Bynum was noted as excused.)
Chair Furfaro: We have one councilmember that's on an excused absence
until one o'clock and Council Vice-Chair Yukimura will be joining us anytime now. Oh, you're here.
So we're going to start and we're going to suspend the rules and give you the floor first to give us
your overview of the Department of Liquor Control. So the floor is yours, sir.
There being no objection the rules were suspended.
ERIC HONMA: Council. Chair Furfaro, Vice-Chair Yukimura and members of
the Council, I appreciate this opportunity this morning to present my department's budget. Before I
get into the specifics of the budget, I'd like to just for the...
Mr. Chang: Eric, do you want to state your name for the record?
Mr. Honma: Eric Honma, for the record, director. I believe this is going to
be Councilmember Nakamura's first go around in this proceeding and so I hope the rest of the
councilmembers indulge me while I kind of just give a brief overview of the department and how we
kind of operate.
First of all, I think now I'm the smallest department in the county with just eight employees,
the smallest department. However, for the purposes of planning and budgeting, I've divided the
department into three branches. We have the administrative branch, the regulatory branch, and the
enforcement branch. Again, it may seem odd that, you know, how do you split eight employees into
three branches, but I'd like to call your attention to one of the handouts which is in the back of your
packets which has our organizational chart.. In the administrative branch, it consists of myself, the
commission secretary, and a senior clerk, and we are basically responsible for the day-to-day
operations: the incoming correspondence, outgoing, we pay the bills, process applications, those kind
of things. The second branch is the regulatory branch, which consists primarily of the seven
commissioners as they exercise their regulatory function. They are the only ones that can hear a
license application, grant or deny an application. They are also responsible for the adjudication
when a licensee is cited, so they will hold an adjudication hearing and determine by evidence
whether the violation did or did not occur. And if it did occur, then what would be the appropriate
penalty. And then the third branch is our enforcement branch, which is really the nuts and bolts of
our department. Currently our enforcement branch has four-and-a-half people, if you will. We have
four field investigators and one supervising investigator, who's primarily in the office splitting the
time between the supervising investigative responsibilities, as well as the licensing responsibilities
that he currently does too. So he kind of wears two hats in that area.
We recently were able to fill two vacant positions. One was vacated as a result of retirement,
the other one by resignation. So hopefully within about a month we will be up to what I call full
capacity as far as my investigative staff of having four investigators. Having four investigators out
in the field will allow us to have an investigator out there seven days a week 365 days a year. They
work weekends, they work holidays and the goal there is to ensure that the licensees that they are
responsible for overseeing are conducting their business according to federal and state laws, pure
and simple. Do not sell to minors; do not over serve to individuals that are already intoxicated; don't
serve people more drinks than they are allowed to have, those kinds of things.
Part of my budget presentation you will notice that as a result of being conscious of the
budgetary constraints and our fiscal responsibilities, as a conscious thing we are going to return back
to what I refer to as our core function, which is enforcement and preventing underage drinking.
Underage drinking is acknowledged as a national problem with regards to the health and safety
consequences for our minors and our younger generations, and Kauai is no different. In fact, I
believe that some of you saw the article about two or three weeks ago, Kauai was...it was very
unflattering. Kauai was one of two communities in the State of Hawaii that were identified as "the
most drunken communities in the United States" and that was based solely on per capita
consumption. It's not something you obviously want to be known for. But underage drinking is a
April 11, 2011
Liquor Department p.2
focus of my department, as well as an integral component of the anti-drug plan that has been put
together by Theresa. When I do community presentations and to try and frame the issue of
underage drinking and what we, police and policy issue people are facing, I will usually go out and
say, well, what percent of alcoholic beverages that are sold on the island do you think are consumed
by minors? I get 5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent. And just for the sake of discussion and input
today, -let's say that we all agree that 5 percent of all the alcoholic beverages sold on the island of
Kauai are consumed by minors when they go down to the beach parks or they go to somebody's
house, whatever, 5 percent, seems like a minimal amount. But when you take it into context that for
the past fiscal year ending June 30th, there was sold on Kauai $83 million in alcohol sales. And this
is from 205 liquor licensees on the island, from Koke`e Lodge, the farthest west, to the
Mediterranean Gourmet, which is the farthest east; 205 licensees sold $83 million of alcoholic
beverages. So if we go back to the first question about well, what percentage do you think and we
agree on 5 percent, we are assuming that $4 million of alcoholic beverages sold on the island were
consumed by minors. And it's very easy and obvious to see how that sales number can translate to
assaults, violences, accidents, those kinds of things. So we're going to go back to what I call our core
function, which is trying to address underage drinking in cooperation with anti-drug program and
then some other efforts that we also feel are important. With that is my segue into my budget.
I'll start off with the mission, which I'm sure all of you have read already since this was
distributed last week Friday. But I'm sure you're more interested in the goals and objectives of the
department and how it relates to the budgeting and planning process that we have. The first goal
we have is to reduce availability of alcoholic beverages to minors from liquor licensees. For one, we
are basically the sole law enforcement agency that has a responsibility to visit all 205 licensees.
They have legitimate licenses but at the same time we need to be there to monitor and assist them to
ensure that inadvertently their liquor is not getting into the hands of minors.
Two, we want to maintain below a 10 percent non-compliance rate for compliance checks.
Compliance checks, some licensees feel it's pretty draconian, send in a minor to try and see if they
can purchase an alcoholic beverage. But the way the protocol is set up, the licensee has every
opportunity to succeed as opposed to fail. The minor is generally age 19 and 20 when they go in. If
the cashier asks, how old are you? They are to give them the real age or their correct age, which is
19 or 20. If they ask for an ID, they must produce a valid Hawaii ID, whether it's a state ID or
driver's license. And in all the cases the minors will have vertical licensees if they are under age,
which should beano-brainer. But I'll get into that a little bit later on. And so, there is no
entrapment issue here, absolutely none. And we have found nationwide, as a matter of best practice,
that compliance checks are one of the most efficient tools for law enforcement to use. Again, there
are varying opinions out there by licensees, especially if they've been cited two times already and
looking at a $2,000 fine, but we need to do that.
Then as a matter of objectives in trying to accomplish our goals, we are going to conduct
semi-annual compliance checks of all liquor license establishments. We're going to provide on-site
training and education for the licensees because it still baffles me that after six years...the
compliance check, the minor goes out, they have a vertical license like this as opposed to the
traditional horizontal. And as recent as last month when I prosecuted a licensee before the
commission, the manager of the restaurant was not aware that a vertical license meant that the
individual was under the age of 21, never seen it before. This is six years after this type of license
was issued in the state of Hawaii. At that time we were the 8th state to go into a vertical format for
underage. So this will help them identify underage for both alcoholic beverage as well as other
age-restricted products, such as cigarettes. I believe some places you can't even buy spray paint if
you are under the age of 18 because of the inhalants and graffiti problems and those kind of things,
but I'll get into this a little bit later on. And then ensure at least one investigator is scheduled for
every day of the year, not only to inspect, but to be there as a resource for the licensees as well as
when KPD needs some assistance because we work very closely with them, both are enforcement
people out on the road.
Successes and Achievements: Well, we reduced the alcohol non-compliance rate to below
10 percent this past year, and that has been the first time that has happened in the format that
we've been conducting in. But obviously we'd like to maintain that below 10 percent failure rate.
Can we expect 100 percent compliance? Loftily we'd like to think that would be the ideal number,
but when you add in the human factor, salesclerks are tired, the line is long, it's busy, they get
distracted, we've heard every excuse in the book. We're going to try and assist the licensees in
April 11, 2011
Liquor Department p.3
maintaining the highest level of compliance that they can, not only for the public's good but their
own good too because their license is in jeopardy.
We've implemented the initiative to allow greater public and licensee access to information
via website. I believe that IT will probably go over this, maybe Wally. In this age of transparency
and technology, it allows us to upload information on a daily basis to the website for viewing by the
public and our licensees. We're part of that program and we will continue to do that as the
technology and the need arises. We've allowed for certain licenses and permits to be applied for
online. A nonprofit organization that's headquartered in Honolulu, they can apply for aone-day
special license in Honolulu over our website. They can download the form and send it in to us or
electronically do it to us. We're slowly moving in that direction and one of the challenges as well as
upcoming initiatives, I'll touch a little bit on something that's part and parcel to that.
Challenges: Maintaining adequate inspection and monitoring of licensed establishments
during furloughs. I think all the departments that are responsible for some sort of inspection,
whether it be the planning department or building division, having to deal and work around the
furloughs and try to ensure that we still maintain an adequate number of inspections, investigations
has been a challenge.
Enforcing Licensees' Creative and Novel Promotions: It's no secret everybody knows it.
Businesses are trying whatever they can, I mean, they are really pushing the envelope, you know?
They have college night, they have whatever promotion to try and get customers in the door and
some of these are really borderline, and we realize that we need to be there and ensure that these
promotions and these (inaudible) activities are not detrimental to the public and are consistent with
our state statutes. Enforcement of noise regulations has and is always a continuing battle. Again,
this relates to more live music, more deejays, more dancing nights, trying to get the younger crowd
in, any kind of crowd in. I think Wong's does a Kachi-Kachi night on Thursdays now, just to try to
get people there. Everybody is using entertainment as a draw, so it's a constant challenge for us.
Maintaining investigative safety and security in the working environment: That is always of
utmost concern for myself as the department director. I believe it was Friday or Saturday's paper,
there were four individuals that were tasered and arrested down at the Marriott with 60
to 80 people. I believe that was Thursday night because Friday morning Sgt. Shimabukuro was
right in my office going, hey, what are we going to do about that place and stuff like this? He had
two officers and 80 people that were essentially taunting them. My investigators could very well
have been in the thick of that had they been coincidentally there at the same time, and so those
kinds of unanticipated situations that have a tendency of becoming not necessarily violent, but very
borderline like that is a challenge and a concern for us. We want to provide the best safety
equipment, the best training for investigators. At the same time we also need to realize that there
are some liabilities with regard to enforcement techniques, enforcement tools, such as electric guns,
those kind of things. I guess with the county attorney's office and with risk management, we need to
find that balance as to what can we offer the investigators, at the same time ensuring that we have
minimal liability as far as the misuse of those types of equipment.
Dealing with high alcohol content drinks: This relates back to underage drinking. I believe
the councilmembers got a very good education and overview. I think a couple of you missed it, but
what I'm referring to are these. This is the infamous For Loko, came out about two years ago. It had
a lot of press recently. This particular variety was banned.
(Mr. Bynum was noted present at 11:53 a.m.)
Mr. Rapozo: Smile for the camera. First get it on the camera and then
(inaudible).
Mr. Honma: This For Loko brand was banned by the FDA because the
FDA determined that caffeine, taurine and gaunine were not appropriate food additives in an
alcoholic beverage. It didn't take about a month before the manufacturer removed those three items,
reformulated the drink, and put it back on the market, but still with its same alcohol content. Those
two cans there, one is For Loko, the other one is called Tilt, those two have 12 percent alcohol by
volume, each. So those two cans have the equivalent of 10 beers there.
April 11, 2011
Liquor Department p.4
Ms. Yukimura: Really?
Mr. Honma: Yeah and the original danger was that For Loko had 5 beers
and the equivalent of 2 to 3 cups of coffee in it based on the caffeine and the taurine and gaunine
additives as stimulants. And so for preventing underage drinking, you look at the packaging, you
look at the colors, coupled with the marketing, it's kind of obvious as to where this is directed, you
know? So not only from a policy standpoint, from an enforcement stand point of preventing
underage drinking, the battle is going on with manufacturers and packagers like this. And you
combine that alcohol with the sweet flavor, I mean these are like watermelon, raspberry flavored,
those kind of things. The sweet fruity flavor masks the taste of the alcohol, the smell of the alcohol,
and it's very appealing to young people. I mean, you go and you get asix-pack of Heineken and it's
about $8.00. That can there is about $2.50 and you have almost the same equivalent of the number
of beers. And you know, obviously underage drinkers, they're not social drinkers, they're not down
there sipping a beer and talking story. They're wanting to get the most bang for their buck and
something like that helps them along.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, it looks like soda.
Mr. Honma: It is.
Ms. Yukimura: It has the look of soda.
Mr. Honma: It is. Well, we had an interesting demonstration that was put
on by Brenda. Along with these two alcohol beverages, she brought Full Tilt, Rock Star, and these
other energy drinks and the parents couldn't tell which one was the alcoholic beverage. I mean their
child could be walking around in their house with one of these and they would think oh, it's one of
those popular energy drinks that the kids have and there was an incident like that on a school
campus. The teacher didn't realize what the kid was drinking was an alcoholic beverage that looked
almost identical to one of the energy drinks that you see on the shelves that the kids carry around
with them. And so it is a continuing challenge and I think we're going to be focusing along in that
area.
Improvements: I think we have now greater transparency of information from my
department through our website of what we make available. Part of our difficulty is that part of us
is still stuck in the paper age and so a lot of our records and things are still in paper format.
Improvements, we've had better collaboration with underage drinking initiatives of the anti-drug
office. I think that has happened more as a function of need than it is as a result of a planned
process. The whole thing about thinking out of the box, doing more or at least the same with less
has given Theresa and I an opportunity to sit back and make a laundry list of well, Theresa, what
are your resources, these are mine, how can we make sure that we don't waste them by overlapping
and at the same time making sure that we don't leave any gaps in our overall efforts to reduce
underage drinking.
Upcoming Initiatives: We want to digitize our important documents, That was recently
pushed along for us this past November. We had sent out bids and we now have a high speed copy
machine that serves as also a scanner. And so what we will be doing on a systematic basis is
scanning. We have folders that have Club Jetty information, Coco Palms, Waiohai Hotel, Po`ipu
Beach Hotel. Some we need to keep for historical purposes, others because of legal requirements we
need to maintain them for a certain amount of time. But we want to get as much of that from hard
paper to our server and that will tie in because we wanted initially wireless access to the licensee
information. Again, until we can get that onto our server, get the investigators, possibly some
I-books or lap books where the investigator might be out Hanalei Gourmet, needing to know or verify
a manager's record for the licensee. Currently what the investigator does is drive back, does an
investigation on our hard copy, and then will return back the following night if there's a citation that
needs to be issued. By digitizing all of our information, we get it on our server. They can access it
remotely, wirelessly, put it up on their I-book and they can check the manager's list from right off
the server. So hopefully that will improve efficiency and at the same time get rid of these cases and
cases of boxes and boxes of paper that we have stored all over the place. We have it in our storage
room, we have it in our downstairs one, sharing with the mayor's office and everybody else.
April 11, 2011
Liquor Department p.5
Develop online payment service for all fees. Currently the permits that I mentioned that are
available online are non-fee permits. We are still working towards the idea of online fees and
negotiating the cost. I believe it varies from either a flat rate or a percentage of the transaction,
which the county does with real property and sewer and those kind of things. For us it's a financial
consideration because we don't have that many fees and we collect 205 a year from the 205 licensees.
So whether it's cost effective for us to go online and then offer that service or how much do we charge
a licensee for it as opposed to them still sending in the check like they do currently, we're going to be
looking at that as an option.
Finally, establishment of an underage database for multi-agency use. This was brought
about through the anti-drug office, Theresa's office. Previously and in some ways currently, if a
nonprofit organization like the YWCA or YMCA or Boys and Girls Club want to go and apply for a
grant to address underage drinking, there'd be bits and pieces of information all over the place.
They'd have to come to me for my stats, they gotta go KPD for their stats, they go to the Department
of Health for alcohol and drug their stats and OJJDP and their stats. Currently there's a database
being developed now in Theresa's office where everybody inputs to that one repository. So anybody
who wants to apply for a grant that needs epidemiological information can go right to that source
and help support the grant and justify the grant because a lot of the information in there is
epidemiological and in best practice, that's the format that these grants need to be in. They don't
want you to just say, oh, well we're going to address underage drinking here on Kauai. With that
information in the database, the grant people want to know, okay, what's your target group, what
age, 12 to 14, 16 to 18, males or females, why? .What location? Why? Because each location, each
demographic that you're looking at, you need to have a different strategy. A strategy that works in
Kapa`a may not work in Kekaha, let alone one that works in Mililani would definitely more than
likely not work here. So that type of detailed database information will help the grants become
stronger and more effective and hopefully be able to allow policy issue people, enforcement people an
opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of what they're doing and how they're doing it. I know
Councilmember Yukimura is always interested in well, how can you judge or how do you measure
your successes or your improvements. Some of it empirically is, as I said before, difficult to... The
program that we take to the classroom today may end up...two years from now, some student, when
faced with the situation, say, gee, do I actually take this drink or not? Can reflect back and... But
we don't know about those successes. But it's one of those things. We know that we have to be there
because it invariably shows that communities that don't have any education, any support,-they have
higher instances of underage drinking than places that do. It's one of those things where it's a focal
point of Theresa's anti-drug program and we will support it in a way that we can but at the same
time realizing that with the budget being zero based right now and in fact by the administration's
request, they said don't even come for an increase, don't even go there. You won't have enough
strength in your information to justify that. Zero base and bare bones what you want to do and how
you're going to do it. And so we're following that format and so we should now require us again, like
I said, to refocus on our core mission and get down to what we need to do.
Council Chair Furfaro: Eric, let me now open for some questions from the members,
but before I do, I want to get your department's organization straight in my mind. You currently
said you have two vacancies?
Mr. Honma: .Well, we have made conditional offers of employment as of
last week Friday.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Honma: So technically they are now filled.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, so when...you see them being filled, then, within the
next week to 10 days.
Mr. Honma: There is some paperwork that they need to fill out; they need
to pass apre-employment physical, those kind of things. They need to do criminal history checks,
those kind of things, so I think by the time the papers get in and we can officially bring them
on-board will be about a month or so.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, and then you would have full staff (inaudible)?
April 11, 2011
Liquor Department p.6
Mr. Honma: Yes, yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, and those two positions, is that SR-16 and SR-14 that
you're filling?
Mr. Honma: Yes, they are.
Chair Furfaro: Those are the two.
Mr. Honma: Yes, they are.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, very good. Members, do you have questions? Go right
ahead, Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Eric, I had one question as it really pertains to
the underage drinking. One of the biggest problems now and in fact I think it's quite common on
this island is the rage parties. And I know you guys' responsibility really lies with the distributors
and the licensees, but do you folks get involved at all with KPD as following up after they may arrest
a child or a juvenile on alcohol charges or whatever? Do they forward any reports to you folks for
additional follow-up, so you can go pursue the licensees?
Mr. Honma: Yes, they do. In fact, as a law enforcement agency, we get, as
you are familiar with, the daily bulletin, which catalogs the citations and arrests that were made the
previous one or two days, and we highlight anytime there is an alcohol violation involving a minor.
Whether it be possession or operating a vehicle, we do follow up. We make personal interviews with
the minors, obviously with the proper permission from the parents and after we Mirandize them and
everything else. But, success-wise, I gotta be frank. It's always, oh, how did you get the alcoholic
beverage? Oh, we were down at the beach and then just had one cooler and then I just took one
(inaudible). I said, well, whose beer was it? Oh, I don't know. Somebody just said oh, come, have a
beer one and, you know, they're very reluctant to say who gave them, where it was and implicate a
friend, so. But we do make an effort to follow through. If nothing else, we try to get some anecdotal
information as to, you know, okay, it seems like a lot of these parties are (inaudible)...kids are
getting it at beaches and so that gives us at least an idea where to not necessarily concentrate our
enforcement effort but to share that information with KPD and those kind of things.
Mr. Rapozo: I know there was a large one up at Loop Road Saturday night.
It went all the way till the next morning and interestingly, I spoke to a couple of the kids that were
there and not once did a patrol officer or anybody stop. by. So I'll be following up with KPD on that
because Loop Road, obviously out of the way, but several hundred kids, lots of alcohol, music,
generators, and all of that. And I think it would be neat to be able to tie back where this alcohol is
coming from.
And then my last question is real simple. Have we revoked any licenses in the last year?
Mr. Honma: No, not in the last year.
Mr. Rapozo: Is that something that we discourage? Is that something that
we should be encouraging? The reason I ask that question is many of the licensees, to them a fine is
really nothing. It's a small price to pay to get out of a bad situation. But if the license was to be
revoked for any length of time, whether it's a week, a month, I think then it becomes a bigger
deterrent and I know it's the commission's responsibility to, I believe, to levy the sanction. Is that
correct?
process.
Mr. Honma: Yes. It's within their purview as part of the adjudication
Mr. Rapozo: What is the department's position on revocations of licenses
because I can remember being part of several commissioner interviews and I always ask that
question and it seems like revocation is always not looked at, and kind of want to stay away from
revocations. But I think revocations is probably the best punishment for any establishment that
Apri111, 2011
Liquor Department p.7
sells alcohol or liquor to a minor, period. I just feel that a fine isn't sufficient for that crime,
especially in the last few years where we've lost quite a few young adults because of driving while
intoxicated. Is that something that we stray away from or is that something that the department is
actively suggesting. And in fact, in the trainings with these licensees, letting them know that, hey,
we have zero tolerance and going forward, I'd like to see that be a real push from the department
and hey, if you guys get caught selling alcohol to a minor that the goal or the...we will seek
revocation because I think that's probably the only way these guys will learn a lesson.
Mr. Honma: Well, as far as penalties that face a licensee for any violation
of state statute or county law, primarily with state statute which providing liquor to a minor is in
violation of state law, the commission in its adjudication process, if they have found that the
evidence shows that a violation did occur, they have three options as far as penalties. One is first a
monetary fine of up to $2,000.00. The second is a suspension of the license, which I believe is maybe
what you're referring to.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, I should be using suspension as opposed to revocation.
Mr. Honma: And the suspension can be for any time period.
Mr. Rapozo: Right.
Mr. Honma: For 30 days, 60 days, and the ultimate would be a revocation.
Now, as far as a revocation goes, that's a very sensitive punishment.
Mr. Rapozo: Let me not use revocation any more.
Mr. Honma: Okay.
Mr. Rapozo: Let's use suspension.
Mr. Honma: Okay.
Mr. Rapozo: Because I meant suspension as opposed to revocation.
Mr. Honma: We have suspended licenses for a period of five to seven days
for violations of selling liquor to a minor. For the past two or three years now, the commission has
been very consistent. For the first violation of selling liquor to a minor, like if they got caught in
compliance check and if the evidence shows that the violation did occur, they impose a $2,000.00
fine, will suspend $1,000.00 for a year provided that that licensed establishment does not get a
similar violation. If they do, then the $1,000.00 is invoked and then they'll cite for an additional
$2,000.00. So the fine becomes $3,000.00 at that point and that has happened on a couple occasions
already so far since we've stepped up with our compliance checks. But to any degree, such as
30 days, 60 days, I believe the commission looks to try and balance the punishment. I agree in some
cases there's some establishments that can very well afford $2,000.00. And there are others that
even $1,000.00 is a week and a half's worth of receipts for them, and so that is a pretty hefty fine.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, but so is the officer that's gotta go tell some kids parent
that the kid is dead because of the...
Mr. Honma: I totally agree.
Mr. Rapozo: To me I think this is one of the crimes that I think we need to,
if we're in fact having this war on drugs and underage drinking, then I think the county has to put
their money where their mouth is too and say hey, we're not going to tolerate it. In fact, if you don't
train your employees, then fine, you suffer the consequences. I know I'm not making any friends
here, but the bottom line is all too often we see what the damages are to our kids and I'm not
blaming you. I'm just saying that maybe as the commissioners come up, we can address it over
there, but I think the department should set a goal or a direction to these commissioners saying, this
is what the department recommends and in fact, it is a first offense and why even...I could never
understand the suspension of a fine. I mean the crime has been committed. The crime had been
proven guilty and in this crime, unlike like stealing a little piece of candy or something, some
April 11, 2011
Liquor Department p.8
employee gave a minor some alcohol, sold alcohol to a minor, which to me it rises to a very high level
of criminal activity, in my opinion, only because I think we've all seen the damages that that can do.
Mr. Honma: Well, I believe philosophically the suspension is also meant to
act as a future deterrent.
Mr. Rapozo: Correct.
Mr. Honma: Because not only do you know you're going to have to pay the
$2,000.00, but you have that $1,000.00 hanging over you too. So that's going to be added there
automatically. So in some ways we're hoping that that will serve as a deterrent and encouragement
for the licensee to be more compliant.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay and then I'll send over a request because I know you got
the results of the compliance checks, but the actual end result, whether it was a conviction or what
was the penalties aren't on here. So I'll be asking for that.
Mr. Honma: Okay, well I can tell you right now out of all of these
violations from the off-premise from 2006 to 2011, on-premise from 2009-2011, each single violation
resulted in a conviction, if you will, and again more likely than not each individual licensee was fined
a minimum of $1,000.00. Those second offenders were fined $3,000.00. But every single one
resulted in a citation.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Mr. Honma: One of the things that I'm particularly proud of...I mean this
is a -civil adjudication, granted that the standard of evidence is a preponderance as opposed to
criminal...
Mr. Rapozo: Right.
Mr. Honma: ...but I'd say 99 percent of the time when the licensee is faced
with evidence and the charges, that when they appear before the commission, they will admit to the
charge and I think in 15 years I've lost one adjudication, not necessarily on my own personal...but it
reflects on the staff and their professionalism. The investigators know what standard I want when a
report is written. I provide them the tools by being able to attend training academies and those
kinds of things, and so it is purely more on the investigative staff, of the guys in the field more than
anything else. But each one was a conviction that resulted in a fine.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, I will send it over in writing. It's a lot easier. I'm
curious to see how many second offenders, second violation or if there are any second violators, if
someone got cited for a second time and what was their first penalty, if it was in fact a deterrent.
And let me just disclose now. My brother works in your department. I did not discuss any of this
with him prior to today, so these questions are just...
(?): Original.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Eric, all of the questions will be coming over from us under
one signature, so we'd appreciate that response.
Mr. Honma: Via Gary.
Chair Furfaro: Yes, that'll be the procedure. And we're coming up on
15 minutes overdue here. Mr. Chang.
Mr. Chang: Thank you, Chair. First of all, Eric, thanks for being here.
You mentioned the vertical license for the underage. That's been in effect for six years. So whether
someone is serving or selling alcohol to anyone, whether they know it's vertical or horizontal or what
have you, they still have to look at the birth date, right?
April 11, 2011
Liquor Department p.9
Mr. Honma: No. For the vertical format it says, under 21 until what the
date actually is that they're 21. So you don't need to look at the birth date. It says here 21 on
2-21-2011.
Mr. Chang: Okay, let me get that clarified. So something vertical means
you're under 21?
Mr. Honma: Yup, at the time of issue.
Mr. Chang: But there's no birth date on the...
Mr. Honma: There is a birth date, but the whole format and the issue with
the format is that once you receive a vertical license presented to you, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
ding, ding, ding.
Mr. Chang: But despite the ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, they should still
be looking at the birth date anyway, right?
Mr. Honma: They could, but then again, this is indicative of someone
that's under 21. So the birth date on here would just say that they're 19 or 20.
Mr. Chang: But you still have people unfamiliar that that's been in effect
for six years.
Mr. Honma: Yup, yup, unfortunately. And on the other side of the coin is
you have those that don't even ask a 19- or 20-year-old for an ID in the compliance checks because
we do keep that data whether the clerk did or did not ask for the ID. And so it's kind of difficult to
see who's more culpable here, someone who gets a vertical license that should automatically tell
them or somebody that doesn't ask a 19-year-old, how old are you or can I see your driver's license.
You can pick which one you think is the worst of the two, but I...
Mr. Chang: Excuse me, so that still happens, as we speak, on Kauai.
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Mr. Chang: So what is your office doing to...
Mr. Honma: Well, if you notice in my budget summary here, we're going
start doing more on-site training for the licensees. We have and continue to offer that. For some
licensees, it's difficult for them to send the employees every Wednesday for a manager's test where
we go through the education part about the license and so forth. So if a restaurant down in Hanalei
wants to have five people there, we'll send Gerald out to go do training on-site for them and
emphasize things like this, and emphasize things like this ID checking book, which we provide free
for the licensees. We buy about $5,000.00 of this a year and this ID checking guide allows the
individual to check the format of very single license in the United States, Territories of the United
States, Canada. It'll tell you what format, what the security features are, and every year this is
updated and we provide this for the licensees. But again, the tools can be sitting in the restaurant or
the bar and if the employees don't avail themselves of it, then it's a wasted resource there. Again,
we're not only the enforcement agency, but we'd like to (inaudible) to work with the licensees and
train them, and provide them the expertise that we have. The investigators go to academies, they go
to conferences, they have the most up-to-date information. So again, if it just stays with the
investigator, it's of no use unless we deliver it down to the bottom line.
Chair Furfaro: On the operational issues, I think we may post a separate
session as it relates to budget pieces right now as we're coming up on some critical times. I may ask
you to come back on some of the operational issues in future budget meetings.
Mr. Honma: Okay.
April 11, 2011
Liquor Department p.10
Chair Furfaro: That might be the right thing to do right now. On that note, I
would like to encourage everyone to send, if you have any expanded questions dealing with the
budget piece, send them to me and I will in fact get them on one communication. We are going to go
ahead and break here now for our lunch break. I want to make sure we understand, I am going to
ask us to be back at 1:15 p.m. to start with Civil Defense. That means we're going to cut a few
minutes off of our lunch break. But let's be back here timely.
Eric, I do want to say, I've seen the progress in your department and the new initiatives
you've taken and so forth and I just wanted to thank you, as well as your commissioners. (Inaudible)
see that you're filling the vacancies in your department. So we'll be sending over a few questions,
okay.
Mr. Honma: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, thank you. We're going to go ahead and recess. We'll
be back at 1:15 p.m., please, on a timely basis.
There being no objection, the budget reviews recessed at 12:22 p.m.
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.l
The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 1:29 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
CIVIL DEFENSE AGENCY
(Mr. Bynum was noted as excused.)
Chair Furfaro: Aloha and thank you everyone. We've now returned from our
lunch break. And for just the general membership, I would like to announce again we are on a
relatively tight schedule. If you have to pose a question on budget issues, feel free that you'll have
the time to pose those questions. If it's just a period of narrative for the sake of expressing views on
performance, we can always schedule something in a future meeting about an update. But we are
here to get the rationale behind the operating budget and the expenses so earmarked. On that note,
we are going to start about 15 minutes late here and we are going to start with the civil defense
agency. If you would like to come up individually, as a team, Kylan, that's up to you, Kylan, but the
floor is yours. I expect that we will have Mr. Bynum here momentarily, but you may start your
presentation.
KYLAN DELA CRUZ, Civil Defense Manager: Thank you, council chair. Kylan Dela Cruz,
Manager, Civil Defense. Okay, you should have a packet in front of you.
Chair Furfaro: We do.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Okay, just to get a quick (inaudible) of our civil defense
agency, we currently have a staff of five personnel and our mission is to protect the lives and
property of all people living on Kauai County during emergencies or mass disaster events, okay.
You have an outline of the goals and objectives. If you have-any questions?
Chair Furfaro: I would like you to walk us through it, please.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Okay. Some of our program objectives, I'm going to cover a
little bit about our strategic plan. We plan to do an internal strategic plan and I will explain that
later as we go along. Our program objectives is (1) to improve the operating efficiency of the
emergency operations center; (2) to train staff, governmental and nongovernmental emergency
responders by their participation in exercises and attendance in formal training sessions; (3) try to
improve our timeliness and efficiency of the local disaster warning and notification procedures; and
(4) increase public awareness of the civil defense programs through public presentations, public
relations news releases, hazard awareness programs, and distribution of emergency preparedness
literature.
Some of our successes and achievements: Within the past year since July of 2010, (1) we had
responded to five flash flood warnings and (2) one severe thunderstorm warning where we partially
activated and (3) of course this recent tsunami where we fully activated. (4) We also conducted an
annual weapons of mass destruction full-scale exercise with our army national guard and our
various local and state agencies. (5) We also provided supporting grant purchases for the fire
department as well as the police department. (6) We provided 25 public presentations/outreach
community programs. (7) We also worked with state civil defense to increase the emergency
management preparedness grant, the EMPG grant; we increased the funding. We just recently had
a memorandum of agreement to increase the funding from $70,000.00 to $90,000.00. It was targeted
to pay our salaries and wages. (8) We conducted multi-agency interoperable communication
exercises. It was a functional exercise where we had a search and air rescue exercise utilizing the
police command vehicle and the fire department mobile command vehicle and using our TRIAC
package, our tactical radio interoperability account communications. Basically what this does is it's
a mobile interoperable communication system that integrates various frequencies, whether they're
satellite phones, cellular phones and other vhf line-of-sight radios, it integrates it so that everybody
can talk at the same level. (9) We also conducted a hurricane tabletop exercise. Basically this was
an administrative request where we had an interagency discussion involving scenarios similar to
Hurricane Iniki. Basically we asked like (inaudible) at this time we're in a hurricane watch, what
are your functions, things of that nature.
Some of the challenges our agency faces is (1) meeting the obligation of all grants
administered through the agency. What this means is that in order to meet the mayor's
2020 Holo Holo objectives, we tried to increase the management side and lessen the clerical. In the
management side, we kind of integrated doing the clerical activities as well. Because of the amount
of grant money and a lot of discussions/coordinations with federal and state agencies, as well as with
our local fire department, police department and IT, we had to look at it in more of a managerial
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.2
perspective to try and facilitate these grants moving forward in order to get the procurement
completed. (2) General maintenance upkeep of 48 state-owned sirens. Even though that's not our
primary responsibility, we do facilitate the maintenance with the sirens or assist the state in the
maintenance of the sirens. (3) Employees being trained in appropriate levels of incident command
systems for operational and compliance requirements with the department of homeland security. In
order to be in compliance we need to have particularly the mid level and senior level training in the
300 and 400 level of incident command systems training in order to meet the department of
homeland security requirements and FEMA to get FEMA funding. (4) Also, another challenge is the
lack of radio communication expertise. As you all know we don't currently have a
telecommunications administrator. So it will be difficult for us to establish communication plans
and run with our communication grants, some of the grants that have to do with radio
communications.
Some of the improvements: (1) We added a new satellite phone/internet/radio system to the
civil defense capabilities and added an interoperability unit also known as the ACU2000 in the
emergency operations center. Again, this added our ability to merge communications to various
communication systems to talk to one another. (2) Also as far as improvements, our influenza
pandemic plan was accepted and approved by the administration. (3) The continuity of operations
plan for all department agencies within the county is in place and approved by the administration.
Basically all of the departments reviewed, including council services, the plan and is basically a
blueprint for vital staffing departments and agencies in times of high employee absenteeism caused
by pandemic flu, influenza or other catastrophic disease. (4) We also had an outreach on evacuation
plan initiatives. In addition to teaching all hazard awareness programs, we also increased the tempo
to work with the Hawaii hotel and lodging association, schools, seniors, nonprofit organizations,
healthcare providers, and businesses on providing input and reviewing their evacuation plan and
procedures. (5) We also enhanced the communication updates with the mayor's communication
team. Again, that's another objective from the mayor's Holo Holo objectives. Basically we
streamlined the protocol with our agency and the mayor's communications team.
Upcoming initiatives: What ongoing and future project initiatives will you be addressing in
the upcoming year? (1) We have ongoing tactical interoperability communication plan
administration, also known as a TICP. This is in regards to both internal and external interoperable
communications amongst the various radio technology systems. (2) Ongoing training exercises in
incident command systems and EOC activation, emergency operation center activation. We just had
basically the senior officials' workshop, which was held for mid and senior level administration,
targeting basically the new people that came into the administration to know what is their role as a
participant at the emergency operations center. We are also having future workshops at the 300
and 400 level. The 300 and 400 level in the incident command systems basically are classroom
attended versus on the computer training. (4) We also are going to add hurricane and logistic
annexes to our current emergency operations plan. (5) We're also going to increase education and
outreach efforts as per the mayor's Holo Holo 2020, (6) with more emphasis in reinforcing our
evacuation plans. Basically we want to review their plans and rehearse their processing in
deconflicting some already established plans. For example, like businesses, rent-a-car businesses
having a plan to evacuate their vehicles prior to the incident happening at the the Vidinha stadium,
for example, where we already have public works and parks already assigning their vehicles over
and have a plan to preassign their vehicles over there. So, in order to deconflict that, we need to
review their plans to make sure that we don't have traffic congestion over there just trying to stage
vehicles of that sort. (7) We also are going to conduct an in-house strategic plan. We're going to
relook at our mission statement to insure that it also entails our visitors. We want to make sure
that our mission statement does encompass our visitors as well to the island. Our strategic plan
basically is to cover writing out clear objectives with tasks to accomplish those objectives.
If you look at our budget graphs we have roughly an overall percentage increase of 30%.
There is actually an attachment outside of the table of organization, there is also another
attachment that shows the percentage variance from the previous year. Our current table of
organization has been adjusted to include the appointed position, which is my position, the
manager's position, and the removal of the grant coordinator position. We also have two grant
funded positions supported by the department of homeland security. They are the grant fiscal
specialist and the grant specialist positions. Currently the grant fiscal specialist's contract ends at
the end of August of this year. Our grant specialist position currently is an 89-day contract that is
vacant due to the unavailability of funds. In our equipment, we have three projectors in the EOC
and a printer that are due for replacement and our three-year vehicle lease.
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.3
Chair Furfaro: Okay. First of all, I'm going to touch on a couple of items. I
would like very much to let you know it's been consistent with some of the other departments,
especially as it relates to staffing. I'll start with the grant writer. When we approved the grant
writer in the past, we saw during these very difficult times how important it was for us to look at
other sources of moneys at the state level and at the federal level. I'm concerned what we've done is
we have, I guess, resummarized the duties of that position. And I want to know if we did it in
collaboration with police and fire, who this grant writer was also supposed to support? We launched
three grant writers in 2007 or 2006. I know that at the time because my first six years on the council
I was the finance chair. Now, I'm looking at a position that indicates you will have a grant writer
periodically due through the year that would be on an 89-day contract only. I would like to know the
rationale behind that. So, I'm just going to direct the question over to civil defense saying, with the
replacement of this fulltime position for a grant writer that was also supposed to be the support for
police and fire, what justification did we go through in eliminating that position for the purpose of an
89-day contract? The next piece I'm going to ask you is under wages and benefits, of the difference,
which is about $76,400.00 in my rough public school math, how much of that increase is actually
related to furloughs, if in fact you had furloughs in civil defense. Do you know if you had furloughs
last year in civil defense?
Mr. Dela Cruz: Yes, we did.
Chair Furfaro: Could you give us an example of what that savings in civil
defense equaled for six months as we compare the variances here in payroll? Then, I would also like
to know, this comment about the lack of radio communications expertise. Where is that
responsibility? Is it in civil defense or is it communications? Is that related to something that we
might be able to look at in the IT Department? Because, the fact of the matter is, it's not a fulltime
staffing position, but it is a telecommunication issue that IT should be aware of, that we've got a
resource person there to support you. And then I see your comments about the work you've done on
evacuation plan initiatives and so forth and I know that's an ongoing thing. I think Mr. Mickens will
always tell you, we're aone-road island. But one of the things I wanted to share with you in this last
exercise, I was talking to our county clerk who was at headquarters pretty much on the hour by the
hour, because I no longer had a civil defense pass to go on the highway. I do believe that every
councilmember here, if you could revisit, should have a civil defense pass that in the future if we
needed to get through because after the initial $100,000.00 is spent, the reality is you have to come
to the council for additional moneys. And if none of us could get through to meet in a location, I
think it is worth going back and revisiting that pass so that we could get through a blockade or
something of that nature. And then, of course, that just kind of adds to the logistics of what do we do
if we finally had to respond? How do we get this group together? Maybe you can expand on some of
your plans with this annex. Are you looking for other locations to...like sublocations to support your
efforts? In your upcoming initiatives, it's item number 4 and I'm not sure I clearly understand that,
adding hurricane and logistic annexes...or is this for shelter?
Mr. Dela Cruz: It can include shelters, but the annex is to explain a little bit
more in detail to what is already stated in the operations plan.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. You know, I was twice president of the hotel
association and very much involved in their safety plans. They're all available to you folks, but one
of the things I do want to share with you, I was very concerned after both hurricanes, is when we do
use the stadium or we do get to the airport when we're trying to dispose of or park and record a
rental vehicle, maybe this is just the hotel thinking, but we lacked the valet service that said rental
car Nissan 2256 that has a tag on it that says it's parked in row 3, stall 8. It took several days to get
to the point to sort out where the car keys were for the actual vehicle. It might be something you
could add in this plan. I think it would be very good. So those are the only comments I have. The
questions will go over based on the payroll related to the savings of the furlough to justify the
difference here and the grant writer. That's the only two questions I'm going to send over. The
others are for your consideration. And I also want to publicly say thank you very much for all of your
team's effort recently, actually, a month ago today. It was very well organized, in my opinion.
Members? Mr. Rapozo, we'll start with you.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Kylan, my first question is on the
utilities. It's now down to 3750. That's an 85% drop. How are you going to save that much
electricity?
Mr. Dela Cruz: What happened was the alternate EOC site, we were paying
for the utilities at where the council annex was?
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.4
Chair Furfaro:
The basement.
Mr. Dela Cruz: The basement. Since then, the alternate EOC site will be
relocated to where the current fire department is renovating up at the Pi`ikoi Building. So with that,
the cost of paying those utilities was taken away from our agency.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh, okay, so it's going to go somewhere else.
Mr. Dela Cruz: That's correct.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. The only other question, I think, is what Mr. Furfaro
opened up with and I don't think it's a question for you. It's more for the administration as far as the
justification for removing the grant writing position. Because of the connectivity with the other
public safety agencies, I think that there is some concern. And with your report here, both of those
grant specialists, the grant fiscal specialist and grant specialist, both rely on federal funding, which
at this point one is not available.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Correct.
Mr. Rapozo: And the other one we don't know in August.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Well, what happens is...and we go by...on the grant, it goes
back three years and is based on 3% of administrative total costs. So, for example, if we
have $150,000, we have $% of that that can go towards administrative costs, which is the clerical
side to that, and that takes us only to about $30,000 or something like that.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Well, I think for the reason stated by Mr. Furfaro, I
will be sending that over. I don't think that was brought up on Friday. It wasn't?
Chair Furfaro: No.
Mr. Rapozo: Now you have a department with two executive positions
overseeing potentially two people. That's what you have. You have a plans and operations officer
and you have a public safety services secretary, and if you got the federal funding for the grant
specialist, then you would have four. And please don't take this in any way offensive to you as a
person because I think you're highly qualified with your experience, but as a councilmember looking
at a budget that's very, very tight, it's pretty difficult for me to justify, again, two executive positions
totaling almost $200,000.00.
Chair Furfaro: Why don't I bring up Mr. Heu to see if he can add some clarity
for you.
Mr. Rapozo: If he's...
Chair Furfaro: Kylan, just stay right there, move over one. Mr. Heu, would
you mind?
GARY HEU, Managing Director: Good afternoon chair and council members, for the record,
Gary Heu. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to have this discussion with you folks. When the mayor
was entering his new term aftex the election and the inauguration, we looked at a number of
different things that during the course of time that he was finishing off Mayor Baptiste's final two
years, it gave the mayor the opportunity to really take a look at certain areas within the overall
county operations to look at things that were going well and then areas that we thought could use
additional focus and resource. Certainly if funding was more readily available, I think we'd be
sitting here asking you today for additional support for civil defense. But given the task of working
with what we have, we felt that reallocating the grant position to provide additional...I guess to put
it in simple terms we wanted to provide additional fire power for the organization, and we wanted to
provide it at a high level so that position could provide not only high level oversight and support but
also just to increase capacity within the organization.
(Mr. Bynum was noted present at 1:48 p.m.)
Ms. Yukimura: Increase the what?
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.5
Mr. Heu: The capacity, I'm sorry. And I would use the example of when
I was in a former position, in the private sector, you had the ability to staff certain positions within
the organization, and each one could do a certain amount of work, certain scope of work within that
organization. What we began to do was instead of having positions that were fairly narrow and
limited in the scope of work they could do, we started to transition to create more high-level positions
that could really take...you had more flexibility in terms of how you deployed those resources, in
terms of a position could handle everything from soup to nuts, from cradle to grave. What it did is
from a management perspective it gave us greater flexibility in terms of how you would deploy
resources and reallocate resources as the need arose. So, in other words, as an example we might
have had a position called a junior engineer and that junior engineer could do a certain scope of work
but could never do the function that a regular engineer or senior engineer could perform. If we had
in place a person, a senior engineer, that person could do everything that the top level engineers
could do and all the way to the most basic engineering functions. What that did is, as the workload
changed because it's a dynamic thing, we were able to make the adjustment and meet those needs
for the organization. So, I guess you could use that as kind of like an analogy of what we were
attempting. Again, knowing that we had limited resources within civil defense, trying to give it the
position with the broadest reach so that, again, we could adapt to the changing needs and
requirements of the organization. That's the best way that I can explain it for you at this point in
time, and again, it's a judgment call. It's a call made based on observations of the organization and
how the organization performs and not looking at any one really narrow element of the overall
responsibilities within that agency, but trying to look across at the greater needs and the needs of
the entire organization.
Chair Furfaro: Let me refer the first question back Mr. Rapozo since he
raised it. Mr. Rapozo, you still have the floor.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. I guess my question is, Gary, is it common in the
private sector to have two executive positions to supervise two employees because that's the...
Mr. Heu: Well, I don't necessarily view it as two executive positions. I
think that each of the positions within civil defense has a defined scope. I think that when you look
at how, as a practical matter, how Kylan's position as the overall manager within civil defense
currently operates, he does have overall oversight for that organization. So while there were no
specific responsibilities that were removed from the administrator position, as far as the day-to-day
oversight of that organization that is held by the manager for civil defense, which at this point in
time is Kylan Dela Cruz.
Chair Furfaro: I'm going to go to Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Well...
Chair Furfaro: And let's stay focused on that staffing issue right now.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, this issue only, yes. Well, I hope you will remind the
mayor of what you just said when he talks about adding entry level positions. It doesn't quite make
sense what you say because rather than increase the capacity, it seems like you took away a huge
capacity about grant writing, which is really important to civil defense alone, but then to the larger
disaster response community of the police and fire as well. And if you have this increased capacity,
then those who are in office right now should be able to write the grants. I'm very concerned that
this 89-day grant writing is so discontinuous. I mean you have to follow grants, you have to know
what was written and then follow in the implementation, and to have people come in and out of office
just doesn't seem very workable. And so you're spending on the first page of the line item budget, it's
a total of $500,000.00 in salaries and benefits for four positions. So how do you explain that you
can't do grants with the increased capacity of this new arrangement?
Mr. Heu: Well I don't think anybody represented that we can't do
grants. Is that the impression that the councilmembers are under?
Ms. Yukimura: Well, your needing two additional positions in grant writers
because you removed the grant writing position.
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.6
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, Mr. Heu. I think the way I posed the question
earlier on the rationale behind that, I'm hoping you're writing back to us and expressing that certain
members who are in this staff organization will take some responsibility...
Mr. Heu: Absolutely.
Chair Furfaro: ...for ongoing and is that the right assumption?
Mr, Heu: That's the correct assumption and maybe I should...I don't
know. Maybe it was assumed on my part that people understood that. We're not taking a step back
from, nor do we acknowledge that the grant component, the grant element of what this agency does
and the support it does is in any way diminished. That's not how .we're approaching this. The
commitment is still there to provide support to the various organizations that counted on that grant
writing position to carry out that function with this new organization. So we haven't backed off one
step from acknowledging the importance, number one, of going out and seeking and managing those
grants in an appropriate way. Nor have we stepped back from providing the support for the
organizations, again, that counted on that position. There may be a reallocation of responsibilities in
terms of what was encompassed in that grant position. There may be a redistribution of how those
functions are carried out, but there is no diminishing of the commitment to the grants program.
Chair Furfaro: And afollow-up to Councilwoman Yukimura's number of
the $524,000, it actually makes up salaries, wages and benefits, so about 44% of that number is
actually benefits, taxes and so forth. So the real payroll number is $300,200.00. But I'll give the
floor back to her. If you're going to broaden your questions now, you may do so.
Ms. Yukimura: No, no. Oh, thank you, I just want to follow up, Chair.
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: So maybe I don't understand this grant fiscal specialist and
the grant specialist. Those are positions that are in existence right now and have always been in
existence?
Mr. Heu: I'm sorry, Vice Chair. My understanding is that those
positions were in existence, are currently in existence, but the problem/the challenge, I guess, with
the grant specialist position is just the lack of available federal funding at this point in time.
Ms. Yukimura: I'm sorry. Which position? The problem with the...
Mr. Heu: Grant specialist.
Ms. Yukimura: Is that what? It's empty?
Mr. Heu: Well, there is no available federal funding.
Chair Furfaro: He was financed by federal funds, I think, is what he said.
Ms. Yukimura: Both of them are financed by federal funds?
Chair Furfaro: But that one wasn't approved yet. Is that what you're saying,
Gary?
Mr. Heu: Yeah (inaudible).
Mr. Dela Cruz: That is correct. The grant fiscal specialist, the current
contract expires at the end of August. We do have funding for that for the following fiscal year;
however, as far as for the grant specialist, that's the 89-day contract that currently we don't have
federal funding for.
Ms. Yukimura: So both of these are federally funded, but you don't have
federal funding. You don't anticipate having federal funding for the grant specialist?
Mr. Heu: Yeah, just for one of the positions.
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.7
Ms. Yukimura: And for the grant fiscal specialist, the funding expires August
31St of this year, but you have funding for another year?
Mr. Dela Cruz:
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Dela Cruz:
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Dela Cruz:
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Dela Cruz:
That is correct.
And beyond that?
Well, we have to look at...
Applying for...
Yeah, that's correct.
For whether moneys will be available?
Whether money will be available.
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, I think it is more the second comment as some of
this grant funding, we were given the opportunity as we dealt with community needs and terroristic
activities that required pursuing other grant moneys, whether it's for emergency security support,
medical support, equipment. So some of those funds are actually, I believe, phasing out. That's the
assumption I'm making, Gary.
Mr. Heu: I mean, if you'd like to send more specific questions relative to
those positions over, we'd be more than happy to kind of drill down and get you all the answers to
those questions.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Gary, and then I will expand on my first question
to include some of Councilwoman Yukimura's in that communication. If you can give us the
rationale behind that reduction, I'd appreciate it. And we'll do so if that meets with your
expectations?
Ms. Yukimura:
at right now?
Yes, I just want to know what level are these positions funded
Mr. Heu: While we get somebody up here to answer those specific
questions...
Chair Furfaro: Yes, we can do that.
Mr. Heu: ...I'll just fill the air, real quick. I think, chair, you had asked
the question on a communications position.
Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Heu: And that position is, if you folks recall, it was at one or two
budget sessions ago, was transferred from the police department to the IT.
Chair Furfaro: It was transferred.
Mr. Heu: To finance in IT. So that position currently resides within the
IT department in finance, which I think we all at that time agreed that it appropriately belonged.
Chair Furfaro: And I was just referencing to his strategic comments on
upcoming initiatives, making reference to this telecommunications needs and I thought it was there.
So you're confirming it is in IT.
Mr. Heu: It is, yes.
Ms. Yukimura: I'm still waiting for my answer on the federal positions.
Chair Furfaro: Oh, you're going to call somebody up?
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.8
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, I hope so. But to finish the part that Mr. Heu just
started, I would like to get an organizational chart of the emergency communications responsibilities
because I know that when we first created that system, we had a position in police.
Mr. Dela Cruz: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so maybe it's a different function that I'm thinking of.
Mr. Dela Cruz: No.
Ms. Yukimura: But I'd like to see an overall picture of who's responsible for
what, even though it's across departments.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Right, you're talking about the telecommunications
administrator's position?
Ms. Yukimura: Well, you know, my...
Mr. Dela Cruz: Just to clarify that as far as the communications position, yes
it was in police.
Chair Furfaro: We're all square with that.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, maybe I just need to be updated because I wasn't here
for the last two years.
Chair Furfaro: And what Councilwoman Yukimura would like to see is a
template of this effort of communications to the public, whether that template crosses over Beth
Tokioka's department, IT, civil defe nse, show us a chart on that piece. That's what the councilwoman
is asking. We've answered the question about the position for communications that was in
telecommunications that has been moved to IT and that was during the councilwoman's absence
from the council that that occurred. But I believe the template she's asking for is how I explained it.
Ms. Yukimura: And should include that position, I'm presuming, with a
description of what that position does versus what the police position does or maybe that's the one
that's been moved to IT. But whatever it is, we'll get to see the overall framework of the
communications.
Chair Furfaro: We'll send that over in a question.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, thank you. Now if I could just get...
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Heu, Councilwoman Yukimura has one more question
and then I'm going to go to Councilmember Nakamura. So go right ahead, JoAnn.
Ms. Yukimura: It's about what the present level of funding is for these grant
specialists.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Currently the grant specialist position is an...hold on...if you
refer to the table...
Ms. Yukimura: SR-15 and SR-20 are the levels.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura:
salaries?
Mr. Dela Cruz:
Chair Furfaro:
Ms. Yukimura:
and your grant specialist
So what is that? Approximate monetary amount for the
Roughly $60,000 and $48,000 respectively.
So, $48,000 to $60,000.
So the grant fiscal specialist is around the range of $60,000
is around 39?
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.9
Mr. Dela Cruz: The other way around.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, all right, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Hi, I have some similar concerns about the grant specialist
positions. I wanted to find out how much of your revenues or grants that you've received from the
federal or state governments over the past few years and how much do we currently receive? I don't
expect you to answer all of this today, but we can put it down...
Chair Furfaro: We can send that over in a question.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Okay.
Ms. Nakamura: And how much of the grants that you have written, civil
defense has written, in collaboration with the other departments because it sounds like, from what I
understand, that it was a coordinating function also.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Yes, that is correct.
Ms. Nakamura: So I would be interested to know that. And also, I'd be
interested to know whether...since some of these positions are going away technically, have position
descriptions been changed to take on these, the grant writing and coordination work?
Mr. Dela Cruz: That is correct, as Gary stated that the job descriptions have
been realigned to meet those demands.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. Just with the recent tsunami evacuation, has that
exercise been evaluated by the county?
Mr. Dela Cruz: We just recently had an after actions review.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay.
Mr. Dela Cruz: We also had a discussion with the hotel and lodging
association, as far as their internal plans and how they want to in the future to meet with us to have
us assist with developing those plans, as far as reviewing those plans and making sure that those
things that we talked about earlier as far as coordination with prepositioning vehicles and that sort
of thing does not conflict with other agencies or businesses, yeah.
Ms. Nakamura: I think that will be on a future council agenda.
Chair Furfaro: We can certainly put that on.
Ms. Nakamura: To get an update on what worked and what didn't work?
Chair Furfaro: Maybe we can put that in public safety, if you'd like.
Ms. Nakamura: Because I think that would be a great template for your
future strategic actions based on where we could have improved. That would be a great road map for
your actions over the next year to find what some of those weaknesses were.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Yeah, it's not a problem.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Rapozo, did you have another question?
Mr. Rapozo: (Inaudible.)
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chang? Mr. Bynum? No?
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.10
Ms. Yukimura: I have one more.
Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura has one additional question.
Ms. Yukimura: Actually two. One is about your CERTs groups, your
volunteer groups that I know Mayor Baptiste put a lot of emphasis on them and actually I agreed
with him, knowing how difficult it was for government to reach all the communities at once in the
event of a large disaster and having localized groups trained and prepared to help the local
community. Is that part of your plan? I don't see it anywhere right now.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Yeah, part of improving our readiness is to seek other ways
where we can utilize those resources such as CERTs in assisting, possibly, but we need to establish a
means for training and getting them prepared in order to meet those needs such as assisting in the
shelters, assisting with the road blocks so KPD can expand their road blocks and things of that
nature.
Ms. Yukimura: So I'm not sure what your answer is. You folks have worked
in development of these volunteer groups as part of your plan or not?
Mr. Dela Cruz: We have discussed that with a couple of the leadership within
CERTs. However, we have not yet gotten into a discussion with CERT members.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and just for the viewing public and maybe for others,
CERTs stands for?
Mr. Chang: Certified (sic) Emergency Response Teams.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Response Teams, sorry.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, great.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Mr. Chang, for the acronym and its explanation.
Ms. Yukimura: Certified (sic) emergency response teams.
(?): Community.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, Community Emergency Response Teams. Thank you,
everyone. But these are volunteer groups that are trained and certified to work with their local
communities?
Mr. Dela Cruz: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Dela Cruz: It's actually...the fire department actually does the training
for the CERT and it's actually federally funded through that.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So this is amulti-agency effort, I guess.
Mr. Dela Cruz: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: All right. So you folks are are in the process of analyzing
what exactly you want to do with these groups?
Mr. Dela Cruz: Well, we know that we are always short on resources as far
as, you know, road blocks, shelters and things of that nature.
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Dela Cruz: In evaluating some of the responses such as with the schools
and stuff, we do have members that are associated with the CERT, discussed with them their
concerns on how they can help some of the CERT members, kind of explain as far as how they could
assist the county in doubling our resources, so to speak.
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.ll
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so you have a need, and some people who have been in
CERTs have tried to explain the value that they may have in meeting those needs, and you, as a
department, are working with the fire department and as a county are in the process of thinking
about how you're going to use them, if at all.
Mr. Dela Cruz: That is correct. But we have to establish a...they have to be
trained and we're still in those discussions as far as how we're going to get them trained and be
ready as far as establishing specific responses, addressing some of those specific responses.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. All right. And then my last question is I remember a
couple of months ago having a very lively and interesting meeting about the upgrade of the
telecommunication system, which is essential for a disaster response and recovery. So, as I recall,
there were going to be federal moneys. I think I'm looking for a timetable though on this. So there's
no request in any budgets, fire, police, you folks, for county moneys at this time?
Mr. Dela Cruz: (Inaudible.)
Chair Furfaro: Come right up. Pull up the mike, Elton, have a seat, be
comfortable. Excuse me, I'm going to add to that. Okay, we still don't know who is in charge of
CERTs. Is it civil defense or is it fire? Who is the overseeing group? Now, if you break it out and
say, training is with fire, okay? Then we can understand that. But I think as Councilwoman
Yukimura is pointing out and perhaps we can get it, and in that case with the budget training, who's
budget does this show up in? Police? Fire? Civil defense?
Mr. Dela Cruz: There's this thing called the citizen's corps from the grant
moneys that we administer. The fire department is in charge of the training.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, so you're administering the funding available for
CERTs training through civil defense, but the actual action plan is the fire department's for the
training.
Mr. Dela Cruz: For the training.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: All right, thank you for the CERTs answer and the other
question was about the emergency communication system.
ELTON USHIO, Civil Defense Plans and Operations Officer: Yeah, as far as the upgrades,
the P25 upgrades to the 800 MHz trunk radio system, other than the original council appropriation,
the federal homeland security and public safety interoperable communications .grant funds that
we're putting towards that are enough for the entire Phase I at this point. So, we are not currently
planning on requesting additional moneys in the near future. However, in discussion with IT,
administration, as we're looking towards Phase II, Phase III, in that multi-tiered project proposal,
down the road we may need to. But at this time we're concentrating on Phase I.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you for a clear answer. So one of the .reasons for
multi-year budgeting is to...
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Elton.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, Elton. Is to know what's coming down the pipe in
terms of what our funding needs will be and as we know earmarks are not as easy anymore. So,
what I'd like to request is a timeline or critical path chart, as the chair would say, on this system
that will take us from Phase I to our end goal of a completely updated system. So, that will be part
of our question as well.
Chair Furfaro: We'll be looking for that critical path. On that note,
Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: First I want to apologize for missing the first part of this. I
got called away on some pressing business and I'm sure my colleagues asked the questions, and I can
go online tomorrow and view this part of the meeting that I missed. And I don't expect you to
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.12
answer right now, but I want to make sure we do a follow-up on CERT because two years ago we had
a CERTs coordinator that was removed from the budget and I had commitments from the fire
department that they would continue to provide support and that we would not see a diminishing of
the training and/or numbers of volunteers. I was really concerned about losing that position. And so
I'd like to have a comparison from where CERT was at two years ago and their goals and
accomplishments. I know it's probably going to come from fire, but if our staff could pick up on that,
I'd appreciate it.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for making that point. As Mr. Bynum pointed out,
I have to tell you we just went through fire and I didn't see any of these particular points about
CERTs training in their narrative or in their line item. And believe me I know where to look in the
budget to find the line item. It's not there. So I would encourage you to have some dialogue about
Mr. Bynum's question. Are there any more questions at this point? I think we have quite a few
secondary questions to send over to you. Again, I want to compliment you, your staff, on the events
of a month ago today. I think many people pulled together as is the style in Kauai, but it takes
leadership, which comes from your department, and it's much appreciated. On that note, watch for
our questions and we'll let you go now. Okay, thank you.
I believe the next agenda item we have is the Kauai Humane Society. Am I correct? But
before I do, is there anyone in the audience that has any comments about civil defense? Oh, Glenn,
you're behind the camera. Come right up. As you know, I'm allowing people to give public testimony
after the presentations are made. Go right ahead, Glenn.
GLENN MICKENS: Thank you, Jay, for the record Glenn Mickens. First I just
want to thank you, Jay, for your openness and your accommodating the public now that never
happened before. So I really want to sincerely thank you for that. You have a copy of my testimony.
I know we were 20 minutes late starting this other issue, so I'll get to it as fast as I can.
We hear over and over, how well prepared Kauai is in case of a tsunami, hurricane or any
other natural disaster. With all due respect to civil defense and the people who run it, I beg to differ
with this assumption. We basically have one highway, as Jay was pointing out, that runs around
our island. And when there is a disruption on that road, traffic accidents, fires that cause smoke
across the roads, which I've been in or washout like the Kaloko Dam break caused a few years ago,
transportation stops. Even without a disaster, traffic on our roads gets worse and worse and even
more population, more vehicles and more (inaudible) the problem can only exacerbated.
About 10 years ago, thanks to Senator Lehua Fernandez-Salling and DOT Director Steve
Kiyono, the Kapa`a Bypass Road was built. Since it was an existing cane haul road, no EA or EIS
was necessary and it was started and finished in eight months, and it has been a success. We have
these same cane haul roads all over our island that were thoughtfully put there to allow the sugar
cane trucks to operate without slowing them down or slowing other vehicles using our main
highway. This idea and action was truly one of proactivity and badly needed on our island today.
Thus my point is that before we are prepared for any type of disaster, we desperately need to
make use of these cane haul roads, and not only for disaster preparedness but to address the traffic
problems that we have been ignoring for way too long. This ignored problem may not be a civil
defense issue only, but the safety and welfare of our citizens. It should certainly be on the top of
their administrative list. Thus, I'm not pointing my testimony, it's more of a constructive criticism
issue than particularly pointing a finger at anyone. And even though this may be more of an
administrative problem than the civil defense, it's still a civil defense problem and it must be pushed
by Kylan and his people.
Anyway, Jay, that's basically...I don't think any of you people disagree with this. Jay, your
commuting 50 minutes a day now and it's only going to get worse and worse. But until we open up
some means of travel and for civil defense... I sat in Lihu`e one time there was a smoke thing in
Lihu`e three or four years ago, I guess. I don't know whether it was a bomb or something, whatever.
It wasn't serious, but it was enough to stop. I sat there for an hour till we could even get out of
Lihu`e. So when little incidents like that happen and we don't, well, if you're talking about a
tsunami, that bypass road from the river up to Hanama`ulu, that thing has never been open. I mean
we don't seem to be pushing. Anyway, I know you're pressed for time for your next...
Chair Furfaro: No, I appreciate your comments, Glenn. They are well-taken. Your
truth is we have one road around the island. But we also have Barking Sands. We also have a
heliport in Port Allen. We also have an airport on the north shore. And we rally behind those
April 11, 2011
Civil Defense Agency p.13
things. I was a north shore CERTs member and when Kaloko cut out the road, the Princeville
Clubhouse was used as a central gathering place for people who needed dialysis. I, myself, met with
First Hawaiian Bank and Bank of Hawaii, who the banks were closed, but we still had to put money
in the automatic machines so that people didn't...and someone had to coordinate with Beth and the
police department for a caravan to get food out to Big Save and those are the importance of those
groups for the exact reason you're pointing out. We are faced with some physical challenges.
Mr. Mickens: And as you remember, those people on the north shore at that time, they
couldn't get to the airport. They had to go to the Princeville Airport, get helicopters, rent helicopters
to go down there for $200.00 or $300.00, whatever it was costing.
Chair Furfaro: Well, I have to tell you something that was a personal choice.
Helicopter service exists. They wanted to catch one to go, the tariff was this. But if they wanted to
wait their turn, there was Princeville Airways; there were other sources to go out. But in any
emergency, the main thing is that you take care of public health and safety for the people that are on
the ground until help can arrive. And through CERTs we're able to do that. Your comments are well
taken. Thank you, Glenn.
Mr. Mickens: Thank you very much, Jay.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, is there anyone else in the public that wishes to speak?
If not, we'll go to the Kauai Humane Society.
There being no objection, the budget reviews recessed at 2:24 p.m.
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.l
The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 2:24 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
KAUAI HUMANE SOCIETY
LAURA WILEY, Kauai Humane Society President: Aloha Council Chair Furfaro and
honorable councilmembers. Thank you so much for having us here. For the record, I'm Laura Wiley
and I'm the President of the Kauai Humane Society. This is Orianna Skomoroch, our executive
director.
Chair Furfaro: Welcome, as they adjust the camera, welcome.
Ms. Wiley: Thank you, mahalo.
Chair Furfaro: I'm going to suspend the rules and give you an opportunity to
give us an overview of issues faced with our collaborative effort between the county and the humane
society.
There being no objection, the rules were suspended.
Ms. Wiley: Wonderful, mahalo. And I'm glad you mentioned that
because we're so proud of our partnership with you and we love the relationship we have with the
administration and the council, and we thank you very much for all your support. And we always
look forward to continued efforts together. We really sympathize with the enormity of the challenge
in front of you to be in such trying economic times and have to make such critical decisions cannot be
an an easy thing, so our hearts do go out to you. We did submit our request to the mayor's office and
we are very proud to provide animal management services for the county. We do have a contract for
that. Typically we operate that contract between...year to year we operate that contract typically at
a loss of around $200,000.00 to $300,000.00 a year. So this year we have asked fora $50,000.00
increase in the contract for our animal management services, as well as a $5,000.00 increase in the
spay/neuter grant that you guys give us to help support our spay/neuter efforts. We are also asking
for $40,000.00 for a new vehicle. Our vehicle fleet is quite decrepit and old. We were disappointed
that the administration's budget did not reflect those increases. In general, we feel that we really do
a great job for a bottom line price. I think anytime you're looking at any kind of operation, your
three big costs typically are going to be land, facilities, and labor. We are incredibly grateful to our
landlord, Grove Farm, who leases us our beautiful property out in Puhi for an incredibly, incredibly,
incredibly reasonable price, so our land costs are basically nothing. Our facility was built on the
generosity of the donors on Kauai and on the mainland, and so we have a beautiful facility that
we're very proud o£ So the land costs and the facility costs have pretty much been taken care of.
The labor cost, of course, we do not have union, state or county employees. Our labor cost is
significantly reduced compared to your typical county or state employees. We don't have anywhere
near the salaries and nowhere near the benefits. In addition to that, we literally have hundreds of
volunteers that donate thousands of hours of time. So from a labor standpoint, we just really feel
like we excel in getting a lot done with very little. So in general, the big picture, we feel like the
land, the building, and the labor we keep ~ very low. We also feel that we excel in the area of
fundraising and asking for donations. So to be honest, the reason we were asking for an increase
was just to help shorten that gap, that deficit. Our total loss for the entire Kauai Humane Society
for fiscal year ending June 10 was $27,000.00. The day before our fiscal year ended, we were very
fortunate to receive a $200,000.00 grant. Well, it was a bequest from Mannette Bock, specifically for
spay/neuter, but if we hadn't received that $200,000 grant, we would have been negative
$227,000.00. So, I know you have to sit here and listen all day to people whine and complain about
how hard it is. In addition to providing the service that we do, we also have a holistic approach. We
are very adamant about humane education and spay/neuter and dog training classes. We feel that
all of that is essential to having a successful animal management program. Thank you very much.
Ori and I are going to tag-team it. And if you have questions, we're happy to be here and we thank
you very much.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you folks for what you do in our community. It is very
much appreciated.
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.2
Ms. Wiley: Oh, we feel that and we love to do it, so thank you.
Chair Furfaro: And I would just like to recap this a little because here is our
dilemma,
Ms. Wiley: Of course.
Chair Furfaro: We do not quite know the outcome from the state legislature
at this time, and therefore, we will revisit some of our funding on May 5, after the legislature is
complete and we know whether we're looking at the senate version or the house version of the TAT
or if there are any other cuts. But to understand your presentation here, first of all you have
11 fulltime equivalents that make up your workforce.
Ms. Wiley: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Very good, thank you for that. And depreciation is not
necessarily something that we can justify going forward.
Ms. Wiley: Of course.
Chair Furfaro: But I appreciate your acknowledgment of the generosity of
Grove Farm and other donors. But I see this as you're asking in addition to what we budgeted for
past practices, you're looking at a need fora $50,000.00 increase in services provided to us currently,
plus perhaps another $5,000 increase in spay and neutering programs, even though you had the good
news recently.
Ms. Wiley: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Is that the gist of what I'm catching here? There's about a
$55,000 additional need here.
Ms. Wiley: Yes, and again I'm sorry if I didn't articulate it quite well, but
typically we're proud to operate the contract and we do so at a huge loss. And so we're just trying
to...
Chair Furfaro: Minimize it.
Ms. Wiley: Minimize. So are we saying we're going to increase our
services by $55,000? No, quite frankly. We are aseven-day-a-week operation. We have humane
officers on call 24-hours a day, so we are first responders. But no, it's not going to get you any
additional service.
Chair Furfaro: And I just want to share, I understood that. If I was going to
Dairy Queen and had a chocolate sundae, I'm not getting any more sprinkled nuts or any chocolate
syrup additional. I'm still getting the standard `ono sundae.
Ms. Wiley: That's right.
Chair Furfaro: But you need a little more help in operational issues this
year.
Ms. Wiley: I love that analogy.
Chair Furfaro: I want to make sure it's clear with me...
Ms. Wiley: It is.
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.3
Chair Furfaro: ...that we may not be able to visit this until May is what I'm
trying to say.
Ms. Wiley: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: Because we have this legislative thing that is not clear in our
picture right now.
Ms. Wiley: Absolutely, got it.
Chair Furfaro: I summed it up pretty well with the $55,000 you need.
Ms. Wiley: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, I obviously enjoy chocolate sundaes, too.
Ms. Wiley: Moi osi.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum. Before I give you the floor, councilwoman, may I
ask you to take over the meeting for a few minutes, here. Mr. Bynum.
(Chair Furfaro was noted as excused at 2:34 p.m.)
Mr. Bynum: Aloha, thanks for being here:
Ms. Wiley: Thank you.
Mr. Bynum: Last year the county's funding was $595,000, right? And this
year the mayor's budget keeps that the same. Is that correct?
Ms. Wiley: Yes, that's correct.
Mr. Bynum: We have this budget analysis done by our staff of every
county department.
Ms. Wiley: Okay.
Mr. Bynum: And I haven't found any that are the same as last year, right?
It costs more every year to do business because expenses go up.
Ms. Wiley: Unfortunately, true.
Mr. Bynum: Do you know offhand what that percentage would be if we
gave the $55,000, what the percentage increase would be? I think it's about 9%.
Ms. Wiley: 8.4%.
Mr. Bynum: Okay, so you're asking for an 8.4% increase.
Ms. Wiley: Correct.
Mr. Bynum: So just the page that I'm looking at right now, water safety
10.97% increase, fire commission 35 % increase, civil defense 30% increase, public works 11%, right?
So this is the county's budget. I've never seen a budget where we keep the exact same figure year
over year. And then thanks for the handout. In the handout, the cost for the animal management
program total is $893,000.00, right?
Ms. Wiley: Yes.
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.4
Mr. Bynum: Okay. And that's all really the responsibilities that our
county has, right?
Ms. Wiley: Correct.
Mr. Bynum: So if we didn't have the humane society, how would we fulfill
those responsibilities?
Ms. Wiley: Well, again, it would be even harder because you would have
the land component and you would have the building component.
Mr. Bynum: So we'd have to have facilities, we'd have to have employees.
Ms. Wiley: Correct, right.
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.5
Mr. Bynum: And having spent a big part of my career in nonprofits, I can
tell you if the county did this job it would cost a lot more than $893,000.00. But we're not giving you
893, right? We're giving you or the mayor's proposal is 595 and we'll see in May during the decision
making what the council wants to do about that.
Ms. Wiley: Right, sure.
Mr. Bynum: But you had a $162,000 deficit.
Ms. Wiley: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And how does that get made up?
Ms. Wiley: Through a variety of ways. We have a quarterly newsletter
that goes out that is wonderfully fabulous and entertaining with great stories of all the good work we
do. We do have a thrift store. We have several fund development events throughout the year, where
we write and ask for money. Not only do we ask for money with our newsletter, but we have
professional fundraisers that are continually mailing out every year. So we have the professional
fundraisers. We have our newsletters. We have something called non-event, which is something
that we are proud to say we started several years ago where we ask people to come to a fictitious
event. So they don't have to come, they can sit at home with their cat on their lap. We write grants.
We have the thrift store and I'm sorry, this is shameless, but we have our big annual fundraising
gala coming up Saturday, May 7, at the Kauai Marriott and everyone at home watching, please
come, it's going to be fabulous.
Mr. Bynum: And the theme this year?
Ms. Wiley: Hawaii Fido and Willie K. and his band are going to be there.
Our deficit at January 31 was about $71,000.00. So we're really needing to make a lot of money at
this annual dinner to help cover that.
Mr. Bynum: Okay, so to summarize, your answer is you provide services to
the county and your donors subsidize that for the county.
Ms. Wiley: Yes, I apologize, yes.
Mr. Bynum: Okay. No, no, that's fine because I didn't know about
Hawaii Fido,
Ms. Wiley: Oh, good.
Mr. Bynum: You guys always have a great theme. I knew about the event,
but I didn't know the theme. You always have a great theme. Last year, as I recall, it was country
western.
Ms. Wiley: Wagon Tails.
Mr. Bynum: Before that it was... (inaudible.)
Ms. Wiley: Yes, Wolfstock.
Mr. Bynum: Anyway, I've become very aware of the services you provide
and I'm very appreciative of them, and we're going to do our best to pay our fair share of the services
you provide for the county.
Ms. Wiley: I know you always do and we really appreciate it. Mahalo.
Ms. Yukimura: Is that it? Thank you. Councilmember Rapozo.
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.6
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you and thank you for being here today.
Ms. Wiley: Oh, thank you for having us.
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.7
Mr. Rapozo: There is a huge difference between what we want to do and
what we can do. I just want to make that clear. I think you were here watching the poor civil
defense guy get reamed over the coals and that's for civil defense. It's just a tough year for everyone.
It's going to be a tough few years for everyone. I have a question. What is the total budget of the
humane society? Can you provide that to us as well?
Ms. Wiley: Sure. I'm going to say off the top of my head about 2.3, but
I'm going to give you a number here real quick and Ori can jump in if she wants. If I can rifle
through my papers, it's about $2.3 million.
Mr. Rapozo: And that's for all of the services that you provide..
Ms. Wiley: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: That's what it costs. And of that, what percentage do you feel
is county related services, basically the services that are required by the contract with the county?
What's the percentage?
Ms. Wiley: I should know this off the top of my head.
Mr. Rapozo: And that's fine, we'll send it over.
Ms. Wiley: Yeah, okay.
Mr. Rapozo: Because I don't want you to guess. I'd much rather have it...
Ms. Wiley: Right, okay.
Mr. Rapozo: And I don't expect you to answer that.
Ms. Wiley: Thank you, bless you.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. That's pretty much it. I'll go send over the request. I
think Jay mentioned the TAT. You know if anybody thinks we're going to get all of that, they're
terribly mistaken. At best we may get half, which means we're going to have to shave right now, if
we keep this current budget, about $7 million somewhere. It's not going to be easy for us. It's going
to be very difficult for us. And I just want you to understand, it's just tough decisions are going to
have to be made. Unfortunately, this table is the one that's going to have to do it and that's why
they pay us the big bucks, I guess.
Ms. Wiley: We don't envy you at all.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, neither do I, but we gotta do it and we'll get it done. So
we'll send over the questions and we'll take it from there. Thank you.
Ms. Wiley: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Councilmember Chang?
Mr. Chang: Hello, ladies.
Ms. Wiley: Aloha.
Mr. Chang: Aloha, thanks for coming. I want to ask a couple of general
questions, if I may, because there are a lot of questions out there in regards to the county, questions
from our community. So I don't know where to start and it's not going to be in any way, shape, or
form, and it's an open forum deal here. Number 1, where are we in regards for our search for an
executive director, a permanent executive director?
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.8
Ms. Wiley: We have temporarily suspended our search. We conducted a
massive search in the fall and we got lots of applicants. Some of them were very qualified. We had
our heart set on one and, unfortunately, things didn't work out right at the last minute. This was in
January, where all of a sudden it looked like things were going in a different direction. At that time
in January, we needed to put our full focus into the annual dinner that's coming up in May and we're
really so fortunate to have someone like Ori with her kind of organizational development and
management skills. She's running things terrifically. The staff is getting valuable training in
organization development and management skills. Things are running so smoothly. So the reason
we asked Ori to do this in the first place was so that we didn't have to rush and get somebody
permanent and that we didn't have to "settle" for someone. And so we thought well, we're just going
to take a break, let time go by, get a new pool. And so that's what we're doing. After the annual
dinner, we'll start the search again.
Mr. Chang: Okay because one of the points you brought up was animal
management program savings or human education?
Ms. Wiley: Humane education, yes.
Mr. Chang: Excuse me, humane education. Because we are all constantly
getting serious concerns within the community about unleashed dogs running around and biting
people or unleashed dogs biting other smaller dogs or mauling other dogs or what have you or just
the barking dog, I don't know how we can answer when we're not getting direction from the humane
society. Is that your responsibility? Is that your goal to educate us to say, we're in the process of
doing this regarding unleashed dogs or we're in the process of addressing the barking dog issue
within the neighborhoods? Because this community is wondering what are we doing as a community
to address these problems. So I don't know what the job description would be for humane society
officers or what have you, but how do we answer that to the public? Because that's something that
constantly hits all of us in the form of letters, a-mails or in the public.
Ms. Wiley: I'm so glad you brought it up and I would encourage you to
please, when you start getting these phone calls or letters, to call us. I know Councilmembex Rapozo
has contacted us on several issues and hopefully we were helpful or being a work in process on that.
Our humane officers are star quality. They're out there seven days a week enforcing the laws,
writing citations, and helping in neighborhoods with barking dog complaints or loose dogs, so we're
out there on the road every single day. So if there's a particular issue that you're having trouble
with, please contact us. We want to help in any way that we can.
With regards to the barking dog issue, about ten years ago the administration and the
council approached the humane society, said there was a problem, and asked us to draft legislation,
which we did. There were some public hearings and I love Councilmember Yukimura's description of
a lively discussion. The discussions were frighteningly lively and at that point, council said, whoa,
we're not going to support or introduce any legislation with regards to barking dogs. Here it's come
cycled around and I have some personal points that I could say about that, but I'm going to turn it
over to Ori, who works with our lead humane officer who is responding to these kind of calls that we
get every day.
(Chair Furfaro was noted present at 2:41 p.m.)
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, before you do, Ori, I do want to say that our
agenda item here today is the fiscal accountability of budgets, okay? I will share your opportunity to
give feedback, but at the same time I don't want to divulge anything that anybody's working on that
deals with getting us to the right place for the right reason. Barking dogs is not the agenda item
today, although we will anticipate you coming back to visit us as we go back to search and seek
information about this issue. Before you answer that, I will go to Mr. Chang.
Mr. Chang: Chair, thank you very much. I apologize. I didn't mean to
sway out on the non-agenda item, but I just wanted to let you folks know what are the big time
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.9
legitimate concerns out there because the community, many of whom doesn't know what is going on,
no offense to anybody, but we all know Dr. Becky Rhoades was pretty much all world. She was
respected in many places throughout the lecture circuits, throughout the country, so I know she did a
lot of things. We're asking for money for spay/neuter and is your spay/neuter person fulltime? Do
you have a fulltime spay/neuter?
ORIANNA SKOMOROCH: Yes, we do and we always have had. Dr. Dawn is our
veterinarian and all the programs that have been established by both Dr. Rhoades, the board of
directors and the staff are all in place and are all running. We continue to address issues regarding
barking dogs, aggressive dogs, loose dogs, and we reply and give our reports to the finance
department. But we document every call we get. We follow up on all of these calls. We also are
working with the feral cat issues and the Salt Pond issues.
Chair Furfaro: A little closer on the microphone, please.
Ms. Skomoroch: Okay. We're also working with the issue of stray cats. There
is nothing that all of these years and the phenomenal program that's there that has dropped or has
changed. Everything continues; it's being enhanced and in fact, what even more we can do as you'll
find in our new brochures and things that we are letting everybody know we are now also doing
foster care for puppies and foster care for the kittens, so that we're not just constantly keeping the
cats or dogs or pets in these kennels. But we're getting them into homes where they can be nurtured
and then brought in for the adoption. So there's a lot going on and we do itemize every call that
comes in.
Mr. Chang: Okay, thank you and again, my apologies. As the chair said...
Ms. Skomoroch: No, no, I think that's very good, thank you.
Mr. Chang: We could put a separate communication because I just feel
that there are a lot a lot of questions out in the community right now that there are a lot of concerns
because I'm a pet owner myself and we all love the pets. So there are questions that could be put on
another communication. So, again, I apologize for straying. I think, Laura, you wanted to...
Ms. Wiley: I was just going to ask if you get our newsletter because our
newsletter really keeps everybody informed. And if you're not on the list, I'll go and make sure
you're on the list because. we got a lot of good information on there.
Mr. Chang: And you might want to send it to everybody here on the table.
Ms. Wiley: Yes, we will.
Mr. Bynum: Do you get it?
Mr. Chang: I don't.
Ms. Wiley: Okay, well, that's okay.
Mr. Chang: Okay and lastly, maybe you might want to update us again on
your fundraising. Are you guys on par with the May 7th Willie K.?
Ms. Wiley: Oh, yeah.
Mr. Chang: You're on par with...the count is on par of last year, like we're
selling, we're moving along?
Ms. Wiley: We're moving along, we're going.
Mr. Chang: Okay.
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.10
Ms. Wiley: We're aiming for a sellout. We didn't sellout last year, but we
hope to sell out this year.
Mr. Chang: Okay, good and I want to congratulate you for that, for
excelling in your fundraising efforts because this is big, huge as far as raising your money.
(Inaudible.) It's up to you. So anyway, Mr. Chair, thank you and I apologize once again.
Chair Furfaro: No, I just wanted to refocus. The agenda item here is the
budget. The offer you made about coming back is one that you may be getting an invitation from us
soon when we post other agenda items that deal with issues that are in both of our realms, but this
is a budget meeting.
Ms. Wiley: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura, I believe, has a question for you.
Am I correct?
Ms. Yukimura: Well, I just wanted to say that while you were gone, everyone
asked questions except Councilmember Nakamura or myself and if she doesn't have any, then I do
have some questions.
Chair Furfaro: Then you have to floor and thank you for watch the shop
while I was gone.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, you're very welcome. Let's see. This is going to date me,
but I remember when the county used to take care of animal control functions. So I am greatly
appreciative of the work that the humane society does because we've come a long way. I want to
express my thanks to you and your staff and your board and all the supporters and members for the
tremendous contribution to livability and humane treatment of animals on the island. So you have
the two areas which comprise county responsibilities are your county animal management and your
spay/neuter programs, right? And you've detailed them in two columns. I wondered if you could just
tell us in general what CAM or county animal management involves. I don't think everyone knows
that when there's a dead animal on the road, I think you folks are called out to get it off the road.
And there are a lot of things that out-of-sight, out-of-mind, people don't realize the functions that are
being done in order to keep things moving and sanitary and humane. So I thought maybe you could
detail the major blocks of responsibility under each?
Ms. Wiley: Very good. Well, county animal management, our contract
refers to operating a general program of prevention of cruelty to animals and operating a shelter.
We respond to phone calls basically. If people can no longer keep a pet, they will surrender their pet
to us. If there are stray dogs or cats running around, they often contact us for assistance in catching
them. So basically, we operate that shelter for homeless pets. These are pets that people have
either brought to us because they didn't get their animal fixed and now, their puppy has a litter of
puppies or cat or whatever, and so it's really about health and welfare. We can't have stray dogs and
cats, obviously, running around loose. As Councilmember Chang inferred, it's dangerous. So we
take them in, we try to either reunite them with their owner if they are lost or find them a home.
And so that's basically what our animal management is. Animal management is also responding to
cruelty complaints or barking dog complaints or a lot of complaints, as you know.
Ms. Yukimura: Welcome to government.
Ms. Wiley: Yes, a lot of complaints. The spay/neuter is just something
that we believe wholeheartedly in. You can't have any kind of successful operation without
addressing the overpopulation issue, and the county has been so gracious and has basically given us
a grant every year of $60,000.00 to help us in our efforts, that basically is fix as many as you can
because the numbers are staggering. What one unaltered dog or cat can produce in its lifetime is
just mind blowing.
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.ll
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Ms. Skomoroch: And if I may.
Ms. Yukimura: Bring the mike closer.
Ms. Skomoroch: If I may, with the officers going out, they're responding
consistently to the telephone calls and the pickups or checking on the welfare of animals. On any
daily basis we have in-house, in the shelter 50 dogs, 100 cats, and every day our average is about
24 pets that are brought in, either cats or dogs. So that requires the kennel cleaning, that requires
feedings, that requires the bathing of the animals, that requires the veterinarian services and the
staff in taking care of the animals to keep them healthy. It is also, besides that, the spay and neuter.
In the first six months, our shelter alone did 1,459 spay and neutering at the shelter. We also go
pick up the animals from the individual's home if they can't come and deliver it, besides the
unfortunate name of called road kill that we also pick up and bring in. We also work closely with the
parks and DLNR. Because if they find a dead animal or whatever, we assist in bringing that in
because we have the large incinerator. We work closely with them. We work closely with the police
department and we're working very closely now with parks and recreation.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you very much.
Ms. Skomoroch: You're welcome.
Ms. Yukimura: So in terms of your goals for the county responsibilities that
we contract with you, do you feel that we are succeeding in controlling our stray animal population,
and how do you know or do you have targets that you're aiming for and you know how well you are
achieving them or not achieving them?
Ms. Wiley: To be honest, probably not. We just finished a comprehensive
strategic plan update which took about a year. We just need to polish that up and that perhaps
might have more information that I'd be happy to give to you.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. I mean I think...we certainly hear anecdotal reports
about the increasing feral cat population, but I have no idea whether we really have more or people
just think we have more. But they are raising concerns about, for example, at Salt Pond, the cat
feces does carry this parasite that lives in saltwater and can be very dangerous to, I think...
(?): Humans.
Ms. Yukimura: ...babies and frail or ill people, and the possibility of overflow
into the salt ponds are things that are being raised with us.
Ms. Wiley: Several years ago all the Hawaii Island Humane Societies got
together to see if there was a way to really figure out how many feral cats we're talking about
because like you said, you'll read articles that say this or that or the other thing. And at that time,
we decided no, there isn't really a way to tell how many feral cats we have on these islands. With
regards to Salt Ponds and some of these other feral cat colonies, we are working very closely with the
feral cat colony providers and we really do think we're making positive headway in that direction.
And if you'd like to know more about that at a later date, we'd love to come back and tell you because
we think we're taking positive steps.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, very good, thank you.
Ms. Wiley: If I could add one last thing and Ori is going to have to help
me on this. At the state legislature they're dealing with a pet overpopulation problem and there's a
bill that's advancing that's relating to breeding and not being allowed to sell pets that haven't been
altered. So, you're right. It is getting everybody's attention because it is a big problem.
April 11, 2011
Kauai Humane Society p.12
Ms. Yukimura:
Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. I am going to ask a
favor of you, if you could. We're working this year with a format that we agreed to accept from the
administration, and if you could check with someone in Mr. Heu's office?
Ms. Wiley: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: I'd certainly like to have you comply with our request here, by
maybe taking the information that is in your overview letter to us and match it here.
Ms. Wiley: Yes, I see.
Chair Furfaro: With missions, goals and objectives, especially if we're going
to attempt to revisit any moneys for you.
Ms. Wiley: Absolutely.
Chair Furfaro: Maybe you could expand in this section some of the
information about Salt Pond.
Ms. Wiley: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: It might be nice to see that narrative here. But again, I just
want to thank you for all that you folks do in our community for us. I think we've got a ways to go,
but we have an opportunity after the legislature closes. So if I could ask you to make contact with
Mr. Heu's Office, I'd certainly appreciate it. Thank you, thank you very much.
Ms. Wiley: Thank you very much.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: We're going to start next with the HR department on our
agenda here, but in 10 minutes we have to take a break. So I think we're going to take a break now.
There being no objection, the budget reviews recessed at 3:01 p.m.
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.l
The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 3:25 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT
Chair Furfaro: Aloha, we're back from our. recess. The next agenda item
covers the budget review for the department of personnel services. Gentlemen, may I ask you to
introduce yourself. I'm going to suspend the rules and you have the floor.
There being no objection, the rules were suspended.
MALCOLM FERNANDEZ, Director of Personnel Services: For the record my name is
Malcolm Fernandez, Director of Personnel Services. With me today is the Thomas Takatsuki,
Personnel Services Manager.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you.
Mr. Fernandez: Thank you for the opportunity today.
Chair Furfaro: Members, we are about an hour behind in today's schedule
and obviously if we have a long list of questions or need a return from the group, we can arrange that
for April 19, following the call-back we have for the liquor commission. So I'm going to let you start
your presentation. Go right ahead.
Mr. Fernandez: Okay, we've presented you with our 2012 budget presentation
on hard copy. So I really wanted to know if you want me to just go to the budget section and explain
the variances that's on page 4.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Fernandez: The increase to salaries and wages over last year will be
about $58,000.00, which is 11.3% over last year. And that's due to getting back to pre-furlough
levels and having a full year of funding for our personnel clerk I position. In the area of benefits,
we're looking at $78,000.00 increase or 27.7% and this is due to salaries and wages returning to
pre-furlough levels, full funding for the personnel clerk I, and then anticipated increases in the areas
of retirement, health fund, social security, and other post-employment benefits. In operations we're
looking at a 15.7% increase, which is about $12,000.00. Mainly we're looking at providing funding
for employee training on specific items like drug and alcohol testing, preventing workplace violence,
first aid and CPR, and moneys for staff training in the areas of FMLA and fair labor standards act.
And the last item, our civil service commission, we're looking at a 2.3°lo increase. This is due to
increased cost of mileage expenses. Let me add that when we reviewed the recommendations from
cost control and it included providing additional training, and these are the additional trainings, I
believe, that we requested we look at doing. That's why it's in the budget.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Members? Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Aloha, Malcolm and Tom. In your mission statement you say
to provide quality service to the public, our employees, and to all county departments and agencies,
to enhance the achievement of their goals. By this do you mean quality human resource services?
Mr. Fernandez: Yes, if you have the moneys to do whatever. Again, providing
the extra services there is depending on whether or not we have the extra bodies and moneys to do it.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, what do you see as human resource services?
Mr. Fernandez: Well, it can be a variable amount of things because not every
human resource services department provides the same services. So it can be called human
resources department and then you can provide the basics like workers' comp, training.
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.2
Ms. Yukimura: I'm not asking you because I know the answer. I'm having a
sense that in all the discussions to move from a department of personnel services to a department of
human resources, it's a conceptual shift. And I'm not familiar enough to know all of it, but it is
something more than just the mechanics of providing job applications and eligibility lists and stuff
like that. It's deeper and bigger than that. So I just wondered if that was part of your vision and
money shouldn't be the limiting factor. I think we want to create what we want and need for the
county and then look at the resources for doing it. But actually when you have a clear and large
vision, the money often...that's when the money will start coming, you know? So I just wondered if
you had any thoughts about that because I'm not clear what quality services mean.
THOMAS TAKATSUHI, Personnel Services Manager: JoAnn, if I may? I think because we
are currently a department of personnel services, we provide basically by statute in the area of
recruitment and examinations, classification and pay; we are involved with labor relations. In the
past, we used to be like a coordinator for training, piggybacking with the state. But currently the
state does not have any training programs that they contract out with us anymore. In the long run, I
think when you're looking at human resources, human resources is more in line basically, as we've
been trying to get in, doing more proactive in training, getting involved in our work comp. ,I've been
(inaudible) to the risk management area. Those are the things that eventually administration is
looking at. So when we have stated our goals and objectives and we're talking about providing
services, right now we're trying to provide services in those areas that I mentioned: classification
and pay, the recruitment side, and labor relations primarily right now, hopefully, later on in the
other areas of HR.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. That makes some really good distinctions that
are helpful to me in thinking about this. Are you saying that you folks are limited by statute right
now?
Mr. Takatsuki: I mean, as to...me personally, no, but I think by statute it is
pretty clear as to what we are responsible for based on what the charter states. That's the reason
why, I think, they are looking at trying to change it.
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Takatsuki: (Inaudible.)
Ms. Yukimura: So actually maybe the statutes define the minimum that you
must do, but they don't restrict you from doing more in the area of human human resources?
Mr. Takatsuki: Yes.
Mr. Fernandez: That's right. They don't restrict us from doing any more. It's
a question of do we have the bodies to do it.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, I think it starts, though, first with a vision of what you
want to do and Tom, you mentioned risk management, which I think it is a huge piece for the county
and that's been evidenced on the negative side by some of the lawsuits and settlements we've had to
pay out. So if that's an area that you folks are looking at, that's good and I'd love to see it included in
your goals and objectives.
Mr. Takatsuki: I think the administration is already looking into that and I
think they have basically addressed some of the concerns by the position that Janine holds now.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, but then I don't understand the connection with you
folks. I'm trying to understand the organizational framework that's going to implement and deliver
the risk management shift or programs or policies that may be developed.
Mr. Takatsuki: Basically what I'm looking at is like long range...
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.3
Ms. Yukimura: Long-term?
Mr. Takatsuki: Long range. It's not a current, now thing.
Mr. Fernandez: Organizationally, it is in the financial department right now,
so you know, functioning, yeah it's functioning there right now.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, okay. Then I guess we will ask the administration for
some report on how they see the risk management implementation through an organizational format
because you folks are clearly involved. You have to be involved if you're the agency that deals with
personnel matters. I mean just by your training in drugs and alcohol and preventing workplace
violence that influences risk management. Even supervisory training that builds capacity in our
supervisors is risk management as well. So I guess, I think the council is very concerned and would
be supportive of any efforts to manage risk and reduce risk, but we're not clear how the
administration is going about doing it and we're not clear to what extent and how the department of
personnel services is involved in this, and I'm not clear how you could not be involved in it.
Mr. Fernandez: You know, we work hand in hand with the risk manager in
providing information, but risk management in itself, in companies that I've worked for before, risk
management was not attached to HR. Risk management stood alone on the side, and was actually
part of finance. So this organization and how you have it right now, in other organizations, risk
management is where it belongs because risk management is in charge of doling out the monegs that
are needed to settle cases.
Chair Furfaro: Or HR is responsible to see that we never got to the cases.
Mr. Fernandez: That's correct.
Chair Furfaro: That's the bigger issue here, gentlemen. So, let's not lose
focus to stem any possible repercussions because of not understanding rules or administration, that
portion is in your scope. And let me apologize, Councilwoman Yukimura, for speaking up.
Ms. Yukimura: No, no, I appreciate the reinforcement of the idea and inquiry.
But I think what we're asking is and the chair is right, finance is the tail end treatment of the
problem, you settle the cases, you pay off the claims. You folks are the prevention aspect of risk
management to the extent that we train our. employees, we help them recognize risk situations
before they turn into problems, injuries or lawsuits, so forth. My question is do you see yourselves as
part of the prevention aspect of risk management?
Mr. Fernandez: Yes.
aspect?
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and do you have a goal or objective that includes that
Mr. Fernandez: Not right now. This is based on what we know or how we
operate right now as a personnel department.
Ms. Yukimura:
your department?
Mr. Fernandez:
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Fernandez:
Ms. Yukimura:
along-term process, you
Okay. Are you at any time considering a strategic plan for
Yeah, we are considering a strategic plan
You are?
Yeah.
Okay. So we can expect that maybe in that process, which is
vill be addressing that issue in more detail?
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.4
Mr. Fernandez: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Do you have a timetable for your strategic plan?
Mr. Fernandez: Not right off, not right off. We're still just looking at what we
need to do first.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Well, I'll let Councilwoman Nakamura ask the
questions about resources for doing that. I'm harkening back now to maybe three or four years ago
when we funded a person to help you update all your personnel files. My question is did that get
done or was it a victim of cost-cutting that that position never got filled.
Mr. Fernandez: That's correct. The position never got filled until this past
February.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, okay. So you actually have somebody onboard to do that
now, though?
Mr. Fernandez: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And is that one of your goals?
Mr. Fernandez: It's not stated in there, but it is one of our goals to get that
done.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So how would you state it? Because, forgive me, I
wouldn't be good at doing that. What is your goal? It's to update all your personnel files in a data
retrieval system? You help me here, please.
Mr. Takatsuki: I think when we originally came in, we had a backlog of a lot
of the applications because of the fact that we were supposedly going paperless online. So the
backup was a lot of the applications that had to be fitted into the (inaudible) system. That was one
portion, in addition to assisting our personnel clerk in the backlog in the area of transactions. A lot
of the transactions were backing up, so we needed help there. And also one additional thing that we
needed was to have training for succession planning. And then I think at this point in time, we were
having this position double duty in working with our secretary in trying to update a lot of the files
that is currently there and going on-I don't know the name-some laser. But anyway that is to
help the secretary also.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. I mean my memory says that it was an internal
customer servicing issue because when employees asked for their files or for data from their files we
didn't have current data or we had to do these pretty involved paper searches.
Mr. Takatsuki: No, right now the employee folders and files are no longer
with our agency.
Ms. Yukimura: I see.
Mr. Takatsuki: They are all located in each of the departments. The
departments are responsible for those files.
Ms. Yukimura: But how do you know that there is a standard way and what
happens when one employee moves from one department to the other.
Mr. Takatsuki: The file folder goes with that person from that department.
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.5
Ms. Yukimura: But standard ways for updating and it's all on paper. It's not
anywhere on...
Mr. Takatsuki: No, it's all paper.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so that's a little bit worrisome. I mean the files could
be misplaced. You could have a variety of methodologies for updating files. I mean it's one of the
things we all worried about when we computerized the county. You know, people were learning
Word, and other people in other divisions learning WordPerfect, and all of that kind of stuff. There
needs to be some standardization.
Mr. Takatsuki: I think there is a standard as far as filing and I cannot
guarantee that every department/agency follows that same...
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so is that a good practice to have it all in the
departments?
Mr. Takatsuki: It was the decision of the previous director to do that. He had
his own reasons. I do not know why. But I guess it was easier for the departments to maintain, at
that time, their own files.
Ms. Yukimura: Although if you had everything on the web you could do it
both: you could keep a central file and you could also have them have access to it as well, right?
Mr. Takatsuki: Correct.
ago.
Ms. Yukimura: And of course, the previous director was like about 20 years
Mr. Takatsuki: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: So it feels like this whole .data system for employees is...I
mean you're to be commended to have gone to this paperless approach of job applications. That's a
good start, but as I recall three years ago or so when we gave you the clerk, there was a concern
about uniformity of files, accessibility to employees and their information needs, and then just
personnel practices for keeping records. I could be off here.
Mr. Takatsuki: I don't think it was the file itself, but we input into the...what
is it...it was part of the computer system. I don't know if it's .the GMBA or the data information that
goes in. Our personnel clerk does certain inputting. Anytime a new payroll certification comes in or
anytime there's one for a pay increase, any type of action that occurs, the job of the personnel clerk is
to go into the system and input all the...and bring the data current.
Ms. Yukimura: And that is for all different departments?
Mr. Takatsuki: For all employees.
Ms. Yukimura: All?
Mr. Takatsuki: All employees.
Ms. Yukimura: The thousand plus employees in the county?
Mr. Takatsuki: Right, so I think when you're talking about history, part of
the system was that you could go in and on this certain day so-and-so, this happened, it was a
promotion, what the pay was, and then you can input all of that into the system. And then when you
pull that individual person up, you can see all the changes and by line item, you can see what actions
were taken.
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.6
Ms. Yukimura:
gave to you.
Mr. Takatsuki:
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Takatsuki:
Ms. Yukimura:
And that was the job of the clerk position that the council
That was part of it.
That was part of the job.
Yeah, because of the backlogging of that...
For a thousand county employees?
Mr. Takatsuki: It was more than that because for every piece of paper,
payroll certification that takes place, that thing has to be entered. So it's been adding up and adding
up.
Ms. Yukimura: And we haven't been working on that for the last three years
and we're going to start now that we've hired somebody this past February?
Mr. Takatsuki: They've been inputting data. It's just that...
Ms. Yukimura: Since February?
Mr. Takatsuki: No, from the time that we requested a position until today, we
have been inputting data into the system. It's just a matter that because we're so backlogged, as we
put in the old one, we have new ones coming up, so we just cannot catch up to present.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So can you give us back a report of the status of your
IT System, whatever that is, the employee record system, and whether you feel like you're up-to-date
in the system or moving to a new system? Are you working with IT? And this has to be a county
wide system if all the departments are inputting it from their different departments.
Mr. Fernandez:
they've been looking at it
where we are at on that.
Ms. Yukimura:
Chair Furfaro:
Ms. Yukimura:
this particular line.
Yeah, we are working with IT on a new system, but again
for quite a while already and you have to talk to Wally to find out exactly
Okay.
Councilwoman, would you yield the floor for a question?
Yes, I'm actually done. I know there is more to follow-up on
Chair Furfaro: So the council approved this position more than two years
ago. You filled it 45 days ago?
Mr. Fernandez: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, for your department I am totally surprised that you
can't move more effectively and quicker to fill the personnel needs of this county. That question
answered, next one. Do you not agree that a training business plan should also reflect potential risk
management with the employees because we're training them appropriately?
Mr. Fernandez: I agree.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, so will we be seeing a training business plan for the
personnel and human resources department in the near future?
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.7
Mr. Fernandez: You will be.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Now, along these files that you're working with
IT on, the fact of the matter is that we go through an annual audit. In that audit the county of
Kauai has to report our potential liability and exposure for the accrual of earned vacation and
earned sick leave. The summary page of all 1100 employees, Tom, would I be able to say I can go
there and find out employee a, b, c and d, how much vacation liability the county has because we can
see their records?
Mr. Takatsuki: No.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, so I want to tell you right now, that is something you
need to focus on because as of right now, we could be understating or overstating our payroll liability
for benefits. I would think that you would have to have a discussion with finance on that to make
sure we're close.
Mr. Takatsuki: I think if you check with the departments, the departments
are responsible for the accrual of vacation and sick leave. They are supposed to have records that
are up-to-date.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, I understand your point. But you just told me that
there should be a crossover with loss prevention. Underestimating or overestimating a liability for
earned sick leave and earned vacation pay is a concern of mine. It will come over in a question, but
to just say I know what we're doing here. We're scanning two years of county records to get us
caught up, but if I go up to our personnel department to basically say to Nancy, Nancy, could you tell
me of our 22-member staff, which includes people in the elections department, I can get a number of
earned vacation and sick leave to quantify that liability. That liability should also be transferred
over to the master records that you keep. That's my point. That is a liability to this county if we
can't account for our exposure on earned benefits. So, Tom, I know that you folks know where I'm
coming from on this, but somebody has to be checking on this.
Mr. Fernandez: What I understand is that this information on an annual
basis is compiled and given to finance and then finance makes the calculations and we have a sum as
to what it is.
Chair Furfaro: Well, then I'll copy finance on the same question I'm going to
send you. But if you're telling me, personnel and human resources, and we have this liability
sticking out there, and you are the ones that can obviously tell us how much time a 30-year employee
has accrued, what they have used, what the balances are; a 20-year employee; I think somebody
should be checking on it. That's a big number. In fact for this county that's 44% of our PT&E benefit
line of total payroll. That's a huge number. So I'm just saying we need to make sure there's some
cross reference to those things. I have gone to civil service and testified on other forms that can be
used on things like evaluating how somebody is graded by their peers. You know, the public works
people, the department head, gets feedback from the planning director and the planning director gets
feedback from the housing director, how they interact, and we a1so...I think the last one I went to
was with you folks present, even to get an upward appraisal. Do you folks have anything to report
back to us on how the commission is dealing with that? Is there any current news?
Mr. Fernandez: I don't have any current news. I know they were working on
that and I think they were close to making a presentation to the mayor on that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, yeah, and how would that process then go? Would they
present something to the mayor and then they would present it to you folks for the potential of
implementation? Would that ever come to the council to give us an update on upward appraisals
and feedback? Do you know how that would progress after it goes to the mayor?
Mr. Fernandez: I don't know, but I'll bring it up to our commission as to how
they plan to implement that.
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.8
Chair Furfaro: I would certainly appreciate that as a follow-up to my visit
with them. So Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. I don't know, I guess it sounds like there's a huge
disconnect between some of the councilmembers on this table and you folks. I think when I read
your report, your mission, goals and objectives, your function in this county is really to facilitate the
exams and hiring, the civil service merit appeals board, labor relations. On this side of the aisle,
some of our members feel that you guys are really an HR thing, training, risk management and so
forth. For me, I'd like to know what is your perception of what your job is? From what I'm reading
here, it has nothing to do with the risk management. It has nothing to do with...
(?): Evaluations.
Mr. Rapozo: All of that. You're basically to establish eligible lists on a
timely basis; classify positions on a timely basis; develop a ,highly qualified and effective staff, and
enhance their (inaudible) and I'm assuming that's your staff; develop and maintain an effective civil
service commission merit appeals board; effectively handle labor relations, responsibilities, contract
negotiation and contract administration, and my second question will be based on that; timely and
accurate audit of personnel transactions for compliance with personnel laws, rules and regulations.
So I think that's kind of what I'm hearing that's what you're saying that that's what you're
responsible for. Risk Management now is in the mayor's office and the lawsuits and all of that
(inaudible) with the county attorney's office. I'm trying to figure out really what, in your opinion, is
your function because it just sounds like there's kind of a mis...
Mr. Fernandez: That presently is exactly what our function is, but we're
moving towards providing the services that you guys want as risk managers. Like the training is the
one issue that we never had. And this is why I'm adding in the training parts in there.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. No, that, yeah
Chair Furfaro: I'm sorry I have a conflict with that. Earlier, you told us
training was part of your department and it was moved. Now, you're saying that it was never part of
your department. Let's understand, business .training plans are about preventing incidents,
accidents, and just personnel issues in general. So I don't know which it is now, but we have a lot of
work to be done there, gentlemen.
Mr. Takatsuki: In reference to the training, when I say training, at one point
in time, it was co-sponsored with the state in providing training to our employees, okay? We weren't
trainers. We coordinated and we scheduled and we recruited from the departments to find out who
wanted to attend the training. Those were the types of training that we used to do before. But then
it got to a point that the training budget...we never did have a training budget to begin with at that
time. Then there was training and there was a training budget during Ms. Yukimura's term and
then we had a trainer that was providing training, different types of training. He actually was a
trainer that provided training for the employees. Then that somehow went from the mayor's office
and moved to finance. As of today, I think the training money is still in finance. But we knew the
need for the workplace violence, so we had gotten moneys from the council to do workplace violence
training. We also had some moneys to do drug and alcohol awareness. Because of the drug and
alcohol policies that was part of our collective bargaining agreement, we did training in that area.
So now to get back into the area of trying to say, sorry, Mel, but in deference to we are personnel and
the duties and the goals and objectives are stated in there. But being proactive, we're trying to look
in other areas to include training now. If you guys give us the money for training, then we'll
coordinate and get trainers to do the training.
Chair Furfaro: Tom, I think you know where we're going with this. But I'm
going to give the floor back to Mr. Rapozo. So thank you very much for clarifying that confusion.
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.9
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. And my only other question is all the budgets
that have been coming to us today and for the rest of the next week or so takes the salaries back to
pre-furlough levels. That's why some of these increases are quite high. It can be kind of misleading
because, wow, how come the salaries are so high? Well, it's because now we're going back to pre-
furlough time, so it's obviously going to be high, but it's taking us back to where we were. The recent
discussions in the media about the 5% pay cut that HGEA basically agreed with the governor and
apparently is going towards the membership, that's not reflected in here. All the salaries we're
showing now, obviously, at the time the budgets were prepared, we didn't know about the 5%. The
nine day or six hours per month agreement, as well, is not factored in here either. When you kind of
put in that six hours per month...I penciled it out, it's actually like a 3-1/2% reduction after you add
in the extra vacation days. It's not really a 5% reduction, it will be like a 3-1/2% in my calculation
and I could be wrong. But it is obviously going to be less than 5%. So at what point...and the only
reason I'm asking you this is because I think you're more in tune with the negotiations than any
other department. When can we expect a better indication of how these things will go. I understand
in that agreement if any other union gets a better deal, then we have to give HGEA back the same
deal. So there are all kinds of moving parts in this budget and I'm trying to figure out what are the
safe numbers to use. Obviously, if we don't account for it, we'll get into trouble. Do you have any
idea as to what kind of timeframe and if you don't know, then that's fine.
Mr. Fernandez: I don't know. It's anybody's guess because nothing is
finalized.
Mr. Rapozo: HGEA, though, that is going back for ratification, is that
what's next?
Mr. Fernandez: That's correct. I believe they're meeting with their members
today and I think they're going to look at having a general meeting.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. That's all I have, Mr. Chair.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Just to follow up on that question. This is the
worst case scenario. What they have presented to us does not include the 5%, does not include the
six hours a month of paid time off. So your answer to Mr. Rapozo should have been this is the worst
case scenario. At the opening day I read a letter that the mayor sent out to us and all employees.
Paragraph 3 says he's hoping that the county has the flexibility not to implement the 5%, not to
implement the six hours a month of paid time off. He's negotiating that. So what the mayor has
presented to us is the full payroll. It's not showing what each of these items that Mr. Rapozo has
pointed out, which are key points that would reduce that payroll. We have the worst case scenario in
front of us because he still has the opportunity to negotiate that piece separately. That's how we
understand it from the mayor. And I would certainly think that we'd all try to get on the same page
with us having...basically if we're going to do a furlough, we're going to do it according to the HGEA
process negotiated at the state level. But hopefully we're not doing one. Here's what it boils down
to: simple math. Mr. Matsuda, Waianae High School, okay. Every six hours a month for 12 months,
we might as well have given everybody nine days of paid time off. That's what it amounts to. You
get an extra nine days a year of nonproductive time. That's what that amounts to. What the mayor
is saying he's trying to isolate time for us to be able to give full employment to our staff, maintain
productivity, not lose counter attendance one Friday a month, and that's what we're hoping we
would come to a conclusion to. I hope, Mr. Fernandez, you understood where I'm coming from in that
summary.
Mr. Fernandez: I do.
Chair Furfaro: What's in front of us is the worst case scenario with the
highest payroll expenses, but the best case scenario for our employees because they have fulltime
equivalent work. So I think the mayor is trying to do the best he can under those circumstances, so.
Mr. Bynum.
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.10
Mr. Bynum: And I'm going to stick with that because on the other issues...
maybe I'll make a statement and I might ask a question. I've been through a few budgets and we
tend to ask these questions and I think it comes from a desire from us that we want to see a more
HR type of arrangement, but I don't know that it's fair to come up here and ask you every year how
come you're not doing that because you have to have the resources to do that, and you have to have
direction from your administration to move in that direction. I don't see anything in the budget with
a study about how we're going to integrate finance, I don't see any consultants, I don't see any...what
I do see is we staffed a risk management position in finance. I know I asked last year, does this
belong in finance or does it belong in personnel because in the long run those are questions that the
administration needs to answer for us. But I hope that this year we have that dialogue with your
department and finance, and really get more systematic about how we're going to move from point A
to point B. Councilmember Yukimura expressed some of my concerns too that personnel records are
all over the place.
I would really like to see that on an Intranet, so if we're going to keep the personnel functions
in the departments, they can have access real time just like you. If we're tabulating all of those
things that the chair was talking about every year on paper and then moving them over to finance,
that's really inefficient, right?
Chair Furfaro: Totally.
Mr. Bynum: So I hope we have a robust dialogue this year because this is
my fifth year and we've talked about this every year. But a year goes by and I don't see any
systematic planning. Although, I am optimistic that we're doing...you know this comes from my
experience of being a middle manager in a county 28 years ago. And we had a robust HR
department. As a manager I had to make sure that the employees I supervised had training on all
levels of risk management. You know our joke was it starts with how do you lift a box correctly. I
bet you we don't train our employees about how to lift a box correctly. But the county I worked in
28 years ago, every three years an employee would get that training guaranteed, and we used to joke
about it, right. So I appreciate your answers today, but they're not different than the answers I've
heard in the past. And I think that takes leadership from the top to say, you know what, this is
going to be personnel. We're going to turn personnel into HR. If we were going to do that, perhaps
the risk manager should have been in your purview, not in finance. So I'm still waiting to hear those
answers. But I personally don't hold the two of you responsible to give that direction, unless you
want to take initiative and make proposals, right? But you need permission from your boss to do
that too, right? Okay, so I get it. But I do want to stick with this because it's tough doing budget
here when we don't know what the HGEA contract is going to be, we don't know what the UPW
contract is going to be. But I have some real concerns about what I've heard. All over the country
public employees are being asked to take some kind of a hit. I don't know that we're immune from
that, but I'm really worried about this idea of six hours a month. I believe that the mayor said at his
thing and he has given us a budget to fund our employees consistent with what they received two
years ago, right? And to expect that they're going to be at their desks Monday through Friday, on
our normal times. If the governor negotiates the six hours, I see that as almost 10 days, right?
Mr. Fernandez: It's nine days.
Mr. Bynum: Okay, so it's nine days. That's almost two weeks, right? We
currently have 21 days vacation. So that gets up our employees close to six weeks, right? Six weeks
they can be off work. It's maybe not as bad as furloughs because we're not going to shut the doors,
but still how to be keep our productivity? I'd rather personally deal with a 3% or a 2% cut and keep
our employees working the time that they're working. I hope we have that flexibility as a county to
do that because to me the six hours was just nine days of furloughs in a different way. It's still going
to impact our delivery of services and we have great employees. They work really hard. They have
this much work to do and they're going to get this much done. So that means they're triaging all of
the time what's most important for many of our employees, right. I bet you that's true of the two of
you, right? Are you ever at a lack for oh, I don't have anything to do today? And so I'll turn this into
a question. Do we have that flexibility? Can we work with the unions to have a different negotiated
settlement? Or are we just tied to whatever the governor and one mayor decide?
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.l l
Mr. Fernandez: I think under the HRS, the governor just needs one vote from
one of the counties.
Mr. Bynum: I'm sorry. Can you say that again?
Mr. Fernandez: Under the HRS, the governor needs just one vote from one of
the mayors, but that doesn't mean that you cannot enter into a supplemental agreement.
Chair Furfaro: And that's what I read from on Monday. That's what the
mayor is doing. I think if Mr. Bynum posed his question, do we have the ability to negotiate a
supplemental agreement for our employees? Is that possible?
Mr, Fernandez: That's a possibility.
Mr, Bynum: That's a possibility. So I would encourage the administration
from my perspective to negotiate a settlement that doesn't take our employees away from their desks
additional time. I don't think that's a good way to run any government or business. I don't know if
it's directly related, but when I walked into finance the other day, there was the longest line I've ever
seen of people trying to get driver licenses. And it has got to eventually have that impact if people
are there fewer hours. We don't have fewer driver licenses or vehicle registrations to process. We
have actually more probably. So I hope that that happens. I don't know what the employees think.
Maybe some of them are thinking, hey, if you're going to give me a 5% cut, I want that time off. I
would rather have them do a 2% cut and be there at their desks or even keep salaries the same and
keep them at their desks because we went through furloughs. I'm glad to hear that we may have the
opportunity to do that. I hope that we try heartily to do that.
Chair Furfaro: Would you yield the floor to Councilwoman Nakamura?
Mr. Bynum: Absolutely.
Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Hi, I have a few questions. One of the things you mentioned
in your report is the concern and challenge regarding succession planning. You mentioned that even
in your own department you have three senior staff leaving in the next year or two and I think that
it's very common with many of the county departments and was wondering who is responsible for
succession planning?
Mr. Fernandez: You know each department is responsible for their own
succession planning of the department. I believe they...again, succession planning is grooming
somebody, not anybody in particular, but giving the opportunity for somebody in the department to
move up. You would provide that through training, opportunities for training.
Ms. Nakamura: Do you provide that training for each department?
Mr. Fernandez: We don't provide the training for each department. The
department has to go out and set their employees up for...because we're talking about specific
training, say in accounting, which we can't provide. It'll be something that...
Ms. Nakamura: I'm talking about training to strategically think about how to
do this. What are the tools that might be available, how they should start in advance, work
backwards from when people are going to retire. Do you give our managers that type of training?
Mr. Fernandez: Actually, we don't give them that kind of training.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay, that's fine.
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.12
Chair Furfaro: Well, if that's the simple answer, then I think what the
Councilwoman Nakamura was looking for is a template, a template that all departments can use. A
simple template that shows a green color for somebody who is new and we can invest in, a yellow for
somebody who could be transferred, a red for somebody who is going be retiring. So that we know in
advance and not that you would do the plan, but that I think you're saying that you would provide
the template for all the other departments.
Ms. Nakamura: Another area is personnel evaluations. Do you provide any
training on how that's to be done or is that also given to each department to do?
Mr. Fernandez: We don't provide that.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay, thank you. Also, I wanted to find out, some of the other
departments in doing these budget presentations have given us some pretty good data that shows us
kind of some metrics and how we can evaluate their work and in this presentation I didn't see any of
that. And so I was wondering for example, are there vacancies in positions that need to be filled in
the department?
Mr. Fernandez: You know all of this information really is in our annual
report. Every year we put out the annual report and we have all of that specific data on
transactions, recruitments, and reallocations and so forth. So we can pick up that, if you...
Ms. Nakamura: All right. So it's available.
Mr. Fernandez: It is available in our annual report.
Ms. Nakamura: Maybe that would be helpful to get a copy of that then, yeah?
Mr. Fernandez: Okay.
Ms. Nakamura: And I would just want to follow up with Councilmembers
Furfaro's and Yukimura's point about the training. I noticed that it wasn't in your budget and then
the mayor added a line item for training. Just how do you go about. determining how that money
gets spent for training?
Mr. Fernandez: What do you mean how that money gets spent for training?
Ms. Nakamura: Yeah, how do you determine what training to offer to county
employees?
Mr. Fernandez: Well, what we did just recently really is look at the
recommendations that came from cost control. They did a study and recommended that we do
certain training for our employees and that's what we went on.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay, so the cost control did a survey of the employees?
Mr. Fernandez: That's correct.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. So now you're going to try to implement those
recommendations? Okay, okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro:
(Inaudible.)
(Chair Furfaro was noted as excused at 4:14 p.m.)
Ms. Yukimura: Any other
Councilmember Bynum.
questions of the personnel department?
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.13
Mr. Bynum: Forgive me, I'm just naive about this. When we get into this
negotiation, are you guys present and directly involved in that?
Mr. Fernandez: At the cost level, it's the mayor and the governor or the
mayors and the governor. We are on the periphery giving advice if we need to give advice.
Mr. Bynum: So you're present but kind of as a resource.
Mr. Fernandez: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: I see. Okay, thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, as a follow-up, don't you figure out the cost
consequences, the time consequences, I mean lost time of any proposal that is being discussed
between the governor and the employees of the unions?
Mr. Fernandez: We do that as a natural consequence of the negotiations
anyway.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, I mean before the negotiations rather than after.
Mr. Fernandez: We give estimates as to what it'll cost. Given a specific
proposal, we can do that.
Ms. Yukimura: Do you give any recommendations to the mayor in terms of
things that he needs to consider or think about?
Mr. Fernandez: We do.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So I just have one question for my own and then I'll
hand the gavel back to the chair. When you say that you have the power to negotiate a
supplemental agreement, what is a supplemental agreement and what are the parameters for a
supplemental agreement? Can it "contradict" the main agreement?
(Chair Furfaro was noted present at 4:16 p.m.)
Mr. Fernandez: It can. Actually, it modifies the main agreement.
Supplemental is with one jurisdiction with the union or more, but if it's all of the jurisdictions that's
when you call it a memorandum of agreement.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so can you provide us the language that defines the
supplemental agreement then?
Mr. Fernandez: We can.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, great, thank you. Yes, question from
Councilmember Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: I don't know if I heard right. You said that the contract
negotiations with the labor unions is not done by you. It's done by the mayor? Sorry if I misheard.
Mr. Takatsuki: Well, Mal and I are involved in negotiations of the contract.
Our portion of the negotiation is basically the non-cost items. When it comes to cost items, then the
mayor is involved. The non-cost is things that do not...you can get part of the contract...
Mr. Rapozo: What's an example of a non-cost item?
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.14
Ms. Yukimura: Can you move the mike a little bit closer to you, Tom or
Malcolm?
Mr. Rapozo: I'm reading here, it says support departments in labor
relations by effectively handling the negotiations, contract, administration, grievances. But you're
saying that that the mayor does the financial...all the...
Mr. Fernandez: The final decision on the cost items is with the mayor.
Mr. Rapozo: I understand the final decision. I'm talking about the
negotiations. Who sits at the table when you guys negotiate contracts? I thought it was you folks. I
really thought it was you.
Mr. Fernandez: We do.
Mr. Rapozo: I understand you sit at the table, but who does the
negotiating? Do we hire a negotiator or is it the mayor?
Mr. Fernandez: It's actually all of the jurisdictions sitting in on the
negotiations. So we have for each jurisdiction a representative from each jurisdiction.
Mr. Rapozo: And who is our negotiator? In the recent HGEA, who was our
negotiator?
Mr. Fernandez: I am.
mayor.
Mr. Rapozo: So you did the negotiations with the labor union, not the
Mr. Fernandez: No, depending on what you're talking about. If you're talking
about the cost items, the mayor is the one who...
Mr. Rapozo: Give me an example of a non-cost item.
Mr. Fernandez: The non-cost items, we have the authority to move on a non-
cost item.
Mr. Rapozo: What is a non-cost item, I'm asking?
Mr. Fernandez: Anything that we don't have to go to you guys for funding.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, but you guys are here to justify this budget and I'm
trying to...I guess I was under the impression that your office, that you, Malcolm was...in fact in
prior budgets, I know you've said it that you were the one who negotiated for the county. You were
the negotiator for our county.
Mr. Fernandez: Except for the cost items, we will have to get official sanctions
from the mayor.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, so we can scratch that off this list here because I didn't
see that in the mayor's presentation. I didn't realize the mayor was negotiating our union contracts.
I realize that he's got to approve it or authorize and give his vote. But I always thought the active
negotiations of the contract because you folks are supposed to be familiar with all the departments
that you folks would be the ones actively negotiating the union contracts. But I guess I was
mistaken and I accept your answer. It is what it is. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it's
wrong. I'm just saying that I was under the impression that the personnel department was the
negotiators for our labor contracts. I didn't think that was unreasonable. Thank you.
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.15
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo, you know what I'm going to do? On that note,
I'm going to ask Mr. Heu to come up. Gentlemen, I would like to say thank you for your presentation
at this point and I'm going to ask Mr. Heu to come up. We have questions we'll be sending over to
you and we could reschedule you for a visit in the afternoon of the 19th. But let me get some
opportunity to talk with Mr. Heu. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
So, Mr. Heu, just to kind of roll into this, I read the mayor's communication to us. That
communique said that, in the third paragraph, he's still looking at some particular way to leverage
ourselves to have a supplemental agreement. I understood that to be pretty factual, but you've
heard some of the questions from Mr. Rapozo. You've heard some of the responses and if there's
anything you'd like to clarify, I'll give you the floor.
GARY HEU, Managing Director: Sure, thank you, and for the record, Gary Heu. Yeah, just
to clarify, I think what Malcolm and Tom were saying for the most part is accurate. But I think it
creates this image of the mayors sitting across from union representatives going back and forth in
terms of no, we can't agree to three days furlough, we can agree to two days. The fact of the matter
is that it's a very involved process. We'll have, obviously, our personnel people involved in the
discussions, as well many times we'll have a legal representative, someone from our attorney's office.
So it really is a collective, collaborative type of effort. I think where they're saying that the mayors
get involved is when there is a proposal that's on the table that needs to be considered and it needs
the counties' up or down, that's really the point at which the mayors are involved. They are not
necessarily involved in the back and forth and in the trenches relative to, you know, is it going to be
a 5% reduction, a 10% reduction. As we discussed on Friday, each county, each entity has their own
needs. So while a 5% reduction may meet the state's needs, City & County of Honolulu may think it
requires a 10% reduction. Now everybody is free to share that information, but the bottom line is
that the final decision making is the point at which the mayors get involved and say, yes, we can live
with this proposal or no, we can't. So again, I just wanted to kind of dispel the notion that in some
smoky back room you have four mayors and a governor sitting across a table from union
representatives into the late hours of the night. That's just not accurate. Again, the mayors all have
their support people there with them, whether it is their administrative or executive assistants, their
legal counsel, their personnel folks. So I hope that provides a little clarity.
Chair Furfaro: I appreciate that and what we'll do is we'll frame these
questions, which will come over to you. In the response you can offer us more written clarification on
the procedure and policies on that so that we're all very clear. I appreciate you coming up. I would
like to just raise one question directly to you from other members and then I'm going to wait until we
frame those questions. Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Do you agree Gary that we have the ability to do a
supplemental (inaudible) different than what the state turns up with.
Mr. Heu: Well, I'll use as an example the last contract that was entered
into. There was a master agreement that provided for up to 24 days of furlough. Then each county
or each entity was then able to negotiate supplemental agreements, that again met their needs, their
specific needs, which is again where most of the discussion revolved around when we were here on
Friday to have that discussion. Because, again, I think there's acknowledgment that every
jurisdiction has its own needs and requirements. And so what will work for the Big Island or for the
City & County of Honolulu may not necessarily be in our best interest. And so again, that's the way
that we're approaching this is that the information that's been transmitted over to the union is what
would be considered the master agreement and that the various jurisdictions will have the
opportunity to negotiate the supplemental agreements.
Mr. Bynum: So using your example, for instance Maui County limited
themselves to one day furlough.
Mr. Heu: Yes, that's right.
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.16
Mr. Bynum: And they had that latitude to meet their needs differently and
so I know the City & County, the mayor there said, no, no, no, we need a bigger cut, right? And that
may be their needs. I just want to encourage the administration to find a solution that doesn't do
this administrative leave and reduce the productivity of our workers. Maybe there's a formula and
there's an agreed upon cut, but that cut in reality is a combination of dollars and time. And I just
would strongly encourage you to find a formula that doesn't increase the time off of our employees.
They have a pretty generous benefit with that now. And so anyway, that's my two cents.
Mr. Heu: Sure and you know, point well taken. I think that message
was heard when we were here last Friday and as we said last Friday, it's probably premature to
have much discussion at all being that we still are basically in negotiations with the unions.
Mr. Bynum: Right and just to add one thing, because the mayor, I believe,
was correct that when he can became mayor, he moved pretty aggressively to limit our workforce by
dollar-funding positions, putting in hiring freezes, and that is one of the factors that puts us in a
different position. We already have a smaller workforce. So maybe City and County didn't do that,
and they kept the numbers up and they really need that cut now, right? But we've accomplished
some of that by reducing the workforce, correct?
Mr. Heu: Well, I don't know about reducing the workforce...well, so far
as that we dollar-funded positions and we didn't fully fund it.
Mr. Bynum: Limiting the growth.
Mr. Heu: Yeah, yeah.
Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you very much.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Heu, I'll go ahead and give you you the floor again. But I
also want to comment, and what Mr. Bynum said was nonproductive time with pay.
Mr. Heu: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. We want them to be productive within the 40-hour
workweek. I'll give you the floor to respond to anything more. I think Mr. Rapozo had a question.
Mr. Rapozo: I'm done.
Chair Furfaro: You're done? Okay.
Mr. Heu: Just real quickly, thank you, chair, I wanted to address
Councilmember Bynum's concern about transitioning to a human resources department. I think he
made a comment that there needs to be leadership in that area and that really has to come from
above. I think you know this, councilmembers, is that the mayor has stated in no uncertain terms
that that is his vision to have a fully functional human resource department. When you talk about a
position like the director of personnel services, administratively he does report to the mayor. But
you folks are all aware that his employment is controlled by the civil service commission.
Mr. Bynum: Thanks for that clarification.
Mr. Heu: Right. And the civil service commission has also, which is
nice to have administrative direction, but also the body that is responsible for the employment of the
personnel director has also made it very clear that that is an expectation of theirs also, that the
director will assist in moving the department into a transition position, eventually to get to a human
resources department. And relative to the fact that there's nothing in the budget that necessarily
provides for that to happen this coming year, I would say rest assured once we feel that we have a
good plan to effectuate that transition, we will be back before this body either in a budget session or
via a money bill to request whatever we feel is needed to make that happen.
April 11, 2011
Personnel Department p.17
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Heu on this item, a last question is coming to you from
Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Gary, it's good to hear that that is the mayor's vision. I think
what I'm having some concerns about is that the goals and objectives are not clear that we are
moving in that direction. In the personnel service department report, as well as the mayor's report,
the mayor's office. So if there's any way to take a look at that to see whether it's coming up with a
plan, a plan for transitioning, I think that needs to be articulated.
Mr. Heu: Yeah and that's a good point. I think what will be
problematic as we go through this process or will be a challenge is that there are so many ways to cut
this up and there are so many ways that we need to look at how we are currently structured and how
we get to a point where we do have more consolidated functions under a human resources
department. What does it really look like? As you folks well know, from one private sector company
to another, it looks a little different, same thing with any governmental agency. So there's a lot to
that.
Ms. Nakamura: I guess the question is if that is one of your objectives for this
year, then can that be done internally or do you need to bring in someone to help figure out what are
the alternatives and what's the best way to get there. Will you need resources to do that? I guess
that's the question or do you have the internal capacity to make that evaluation and
recommendation?
Mr. Heu: What I would say in answer to that, because there have been
a number of us looking at this over the years as Councilmember Bynum has said. This is not a new
discussion. I would say that we've got internal people looking at this and at the point in time where
we get to a place where we have some clear sense of where it is that we need to be, at that point in
time we may need to look at bringing some outside assistance in, but we're not to that point yet. I
think we're going through some very basic analysis in terms of some large functional areas that we
would like to see possibly reorganized. But yeah, clearly when we conceptually have have a better
handle on where it is that we're headed, what we want to see, then we may need to bring in some of
that type of expertise.
Ms. Nakamura: And I guess a timeline on how we're going to get there would
be helpful.
Mr. Heu: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, councilwoman. Mr. Heu, on that note I think we
all look forward with the narrative that was just said and we look forward to your notes on how you
redefine someone's kuleana, okay, and taking responsibility for these things that we need to be
cumulatively reviewed. So on that note, we're going to send questions over.
Mr. Heu: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: I'm going to excuse you from the table.
Mr. Heu: Thank you very much.
There being no objection, the budget reviews recessed at 4:33 p.m.
April 11, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney/Victim Witness Program p.l
The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 4:33 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
PROSECUTING ATTORNEY/VICTIM WITNESS PROGRAM
Chair Furfaro: I'm going to ask the prosecutor's office if they can come up.
SHAYLENE ISERI-CARVALHO, Prosecuting Attorney: Good afternoon, Shaylene Iseri-
Carvalho, Prosecutor, thank you for having me. I believe we're having some scheduling issues at
this time and therefore, I would be amenable towards any time that the council is available to hear
our comprehensive PowerPoint presentation.
Chair Furfaro: Shay, thank you very much for the flexibility. I just spoke to
our staff and we're able to put you in the schedule on the 19th, that's a Tuesday, from 10 a.m. to
noon, if that works.
Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: That would be fine, no problem.
Chair Furfaro: Then we will recess this part of your meeting. Thank you
very much for bearing with us.
Ms. Iseri-Carvalho: Thank you.
There being no objection, the budget reviews recessed at 4:34 p.m.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.l
The Departmental Budget Reviews reconvened on Tuesday, April 12, 2011, at 9:38 a.m. and
proceeded as follows:
Mr. Bynum was noted present at 10:12 a.m.
POLICE DEPARTMENT
Council Chair Furfaro: Hello, everybody. I .would like to call back from
recess, the budget review meeting. Chief, let me apologize for you. Our hearing went a little farther
along than anticipated this morning, and then I needed the break for some pre-organizational effort
on my side. So let me extend my apologies to you and your team for our late start here. Chief, I
would also like to indicate that Councilmember Bynum might be joining us a little later. He had
something to attend to this morning, but we have enough members here at the table to move forward
and allow you to make your presentation. Why don't we start from there?
DARRYL PERRY, Chief of Police: Thank you very much. Aloha Chair Furfaro and
Councilmembers. I am Police Chief Darryl Perry of the police Kauai Police Department here to
speak to you on our 2011-2012 budget. I will give you an overview of K.P.D., which will be followed
by the assistant chiefs who will discuss their particular area of responsibilities. The first will be the
Administrative Bureau Assistant Chief Mark Begley, the second will be Patrol Bureau Assistant
Chief Alejandre Quibilan, and the last one will be Investigative Bureau Roy Asher. They will just
give you an overview of what their particular area of responsibility so you have a complete
understanding.
The Kauai Police Department is currently comprised of 130 sworn officers and we currently
have 18 vacancies. We also have 51 civilian support staff with 24 vacancies. KPD is part of the
executive branch of government, and we derive our powers from the laws passed and approved by
the legislature and also by the governor and mayor of each respective counties. We serve a defacto
population of about 85,000 local citizens, military, and visitors. On any given 24-hour day, we will
respond to over 120 calls for services, ranging from parents wanting their children counseled, to
death cases, and everything in between. Our primary responsibility is to preserve the peace, protect
individual rights, prevent crime, detect and arrest perpetrators, enforce state and county laws, and
serve legal documents. And to accomplish our mission, we will need your support for personnel,
equipment, training, and other cost items. However, we also acknowledge that we, meaning the
governments throughout state, are in a very difficult economic situation. So with that said, let me
begin.
I'd like to start with our mission statement of the Kauai Police Department, and also
included in there is our vision statement. The employees of the Kauai Police Department in full
understanding of the spirit of aloha are committed to enhancing the quality of life in our community.
We embrace the values of pono, respect, integrity, and professionalism. As Kauai Police Department
employees, we promise to strive to be leaders in public safety through teamwork and an unwavering
commitment to excellence. We strive to serve. and protect. The Kauai Police Department also
envisions a community that is free from the fear of crime where our citizens and visitors trust,
believe, and have confidence that our employees shall serve the highest level...shall the highest level
of professional services.
With that, I'll begin with my 2011-2012 goals and objectives. The first is our recruitment
process. What we'll do is we'll talk about that a little bit later, but for now, what we're looking at is
starting the 82nd recruit class and training approximately 10 to 15 officers. We have 35 right now
waiting in the wings. The second and third goal for our budget year is to acquire a temporary
Waimea police substation, and if you look at the back portion of the handout for Waimea, we have a
rendering of what we think it's going to look like. It's in the back here. This is the old dispensary,
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.2
and we're working with Easter Seals, and the county will help us, and also we'll be having federal
funds to assist.
The third goal is the temporary Kawaihau police substation at Mahelona Hospital. Now I
have temporary there, because we're looking at putting up a module through asset forfeiture funds,
but there may be an opportunity to put a permanent site there, so we're exploring that possibility.
The fourth is the opening of the KPAL Kawaihau youth center. I put that in there prior to
the opening, which occurred in February. I wasn't able to attend, but that was one of our main goals
that we were considering from last year.
And also our...on the fifth goal was to have an online suspicious activity report via our web
page, and it's currently online, we're using it now, and we've received 30 inputs for information
regarding criminal activity that we're following up on right now. So that's working pretty well right
now.
The sixth goal is to reduce our traffic fatalities by 20% by increased enforcement, public
awareness... When I say 20%, last year we had 10 fatals and that's 10 too many. We want to reduce
that, but I'm realistic, and I know that we're not going to get zero fatalities. In fact, we already had
three this year.
I'd like to continue on with our successes for 2010 and our achievements. Starting off with
recruitment. Recruitment of police officers at all law enforcement levels presents difficulties with
respect to filling vacant positions and retaining employees. The reasons are numerous, but Kauai
has additional challenges-unqualified candidates, small pool base, individuals not wanting to
pursue a law enforcement career, a competitive job market, cost of living, including housing, food
and transportation, coupled with past organizational mistrust promoted by the media blogs,
literature, and the likes. Now we have a really good relationship with The Garden Island, and the
Garden Island has promoted KPD with articles on the KPAL youth program, police explorers
program, shop with a cop, muscular dystrophy, helping them out, even our DARE program. But
articles that recently appeared in the paper, and this was about a week ago: "Former KPD officer
convicted of drunk driving." None of the administrative staff was involved in hiring this individual
way back when. Yet there is still an umbilical cord connected to KPD, and it only makes us look bad,
because they connecting KPD. Not once in this article did it mention that this individual was
arrested by a KPD Officer who did the paperwork that allowed him to be convicted. All it mentioned
was "former KPD officer." Now these are the things that makes it very hard for us to recruit,
because people look at that and say, yeah KPD is back to their old thing again. And it's just
(inaudible). But we love The Garden Island, don't get me wrong, but it's this kind of love-hate
relationship, and sometimes they do really good, and sometimes they can just drag us down.
The other area of success and achievements are in our accreditation process. Now that's
been a top priority for us, and Lt. Jon Takamura is currently our accreditation manager, and along
with the help of Counsel Justin Kollar.
Mr. Chang: I'm sorry, but I think you left out a real important part...after
we talked about the media, the blogs, I wanted to make sure that this can get on the presentation.
Chief Perry: Thank you. I appreciate that. I got so excited with the
accreditation. The second part of this is that in terms of the recruitment is that while we still have
challenges, in the past three years KPD has graduated 26 new officers. We also promoted two
assistant chiefs, three captains, three lieutenants, and seven sergeants. And again, with this coming
year, we're looking at the 82nd recruit class with 10 to 15 new officers. We're also looking at
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.3
promotions for our ISB, which is investigative bureau, so that they can help us with our felony
investigations. Thank you, Councilmember, for bringing that to my attention.
So now, I'll continue on with our accreditation. Right now, we're putting together a
committee which is being led by Lt. Jon Takamura. In the next few weeks (I had months there.) but
actually in the next few weeks we'll have an assessor free of charge who will be coming down here to
do an evaluation of the Kauai police department, what our strong points and (I don't want to say
weaknesses) but I want to say limiters, because we can overcome whatever we identify.
Other achievements include traffic enforcement and roadway safety. It's an area where we
have prioritized our efforts focusing on speeding, drunk driving, seatbelt, distracted drivers, and
child restraint violations. In 2010, officers issued a total of 20,282 citations and arrested 274 drunk
drivers. And unfortunately, even with all those enforcement efforts, again as I mentioned, we still
had 10 fatalities.
What I wanted to also, in the back, I wanted to focus your attention to the most recent March
arrest that involved DUI, and these numbers, if you look at these numbers, it has the date, offense,
sex, age, enforcement, accident, breath, blood, and arrest. But if you look under breath...
Mr. Chang: Chief, I'm sorry. Is there a page number? Okay. Sorry.
station.
Chief Perry: It's in the back.
Council Chair Furfaro: Everybody got it? It's right after the rendering of the Waimea
Chief Perry: Yeah. The names are blacked out to protect the innocent.
But if you look at these numbers, point-zero-five (.05) is an indicator that a person's ability to drive a
vehicle has been incapacitated. But if you look at these numbers for the breath test, point-two-one-
one (.211), these are the highest, point-two-six (.26), point-one-seven-seven (.177), point-one-seven-
four (.174), and point-two-seven-seven (.277), these individuals are about as intoxicated as you can
get on the roadway. Of these 20 arrests that were made, 15 were from enforcement efforts. Our
officers are out there patrolling the roadways day and night, and five are from collisions. Our job is
to make sure that these individuals don't get on the roadway. Our job is to save their lives, save
themselves from killing themselves. So we were out there and of -that 274 people that we arrested,
you can be assured that at least two or three of them would have been killed if our officers were not
there on the street. So that's a great achievement for us.
Ms. Yukimura: So chief, your OVLT 2, that's your driving to arrest...that's
driving under the influence of alcohol?
Chief Perry: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Thank you. I notice too that at least have are like
young adults, 20s and younger.
Chief Perry: If you look the point-two-seven-seven, that's about as pickled
as you can get on the road. Another success is of course our youth programs, and this is an essential
part of the Kauai Police Department-on drug prevention such as drug awareness, resistance,
education or a DARE program, and Explorer's Youth Program, through our Kauai Police Athletic
League (K-PAL), and we reach out to thousands of children. K-PAL has basketball, flag football,
boxing, and the like, and again, just recently we opened the K-PAL youth center at Mahelona
Hospital.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.4
Other areas of success, including complaints sustained against K.P.D. officers are at an all-
time low. The Kauai police commission receives complaints from the public relative to allegations of
misconduct. Over the course of the past three years, sustained complaints are down by over 90%.
Again, that's not to say that complaints are not being made, but on further investigation it was
discovered that the officer displayed proper judgment and acted in accordance to policies and
procedures. But you should know that employees who violate department policies are sanctioned
according to the severity of the violation, while taking into consideration the employee's history.
Another area where we made some changes, and it's for the best... actually it's way down the
line, way down the line, and that's the new beats which were designated. It's a new numbering
system implemented so that in the future when we have enough staffing, we can fill those beats. If
you look at the illustration there, phase one was supposed to begin in 2010. We actually have the
beats in place already; the beats have been designated. We just don't have the bodies to fill them.
Ms. Yukimura:
five beats in the Kawaiha
Chief Perry:
Ms. Yukimura:
Chief Perry:
Waimea, for a total of 10.
So in the Kawaihau district in 2010, your goal was to have
u area? Is that how you read this chart?
Yes.
So what is the number of total beats we have right now?
We have three in Kawaihau, three in Lihu`e, and four in
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so that's of 2009? Okay. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, this is the second time this has happened to me
that people have raised their hand and directed a question to the chief without being recognized
first. Okay? So all apologies accepted, but by the time we do this the third time, then it becomes a
free for all. So chief, let me acknowledge the individual council member before they pose a question
to you. Thank you.
Chief Perry: Yes, sir.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. Did you have something?
Mr. Rapozo: I was just going to ask if you were going to let him finish the
presentation.
Council Chair Furfaro:
chief. I guess more detail is co
Chief Perry:
Council Chair Furfaro:
Ms. Yukimura:
the... so that we understood...
We can take questions as we get to areas, if you don't mind,
Wing from your division heads?
Yes. And we're waiting for questions too.
So we have a question? Councilwoman Yukimura.
I just...I was limiting myself to questions that just clarified
Council Chair Furfaro: That might be a good idea.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.5
Ms. Yukimura: .Not discussion of the policies or the issues, but just so could
understand what the chart was saying.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. So we'll be addressing questions for clarification on
specific pieces of your charts and questions and then we'll move right on until we get to the meat of
it. Only questions about clarification on the presentation. Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: I just wanted ask the chief to clarify Kawaihau, because I
think for the public when you say Kawaihau, people think Kapa`a, but yet your Kawaihau district,
your three officers actually serve from Wailua...actually, I'm sorry, from Kapa`a...
Chief Perry: That's correct, from Kapa`a.
Mr. Rapozo: To the end of the road.
Chief Perry: To the end of the road, Ke`e.
Mr. Rapozo: Three police officers currently serve that entire district. So I
think it's important to recognize the fact that...Kawaihau is a big part of it, but it extends all the
way to the end of the road on the north shore.
Chief Perry: Correct.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you.
Council .Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Rapozo. Councilwoman
Yukimura?
Ms. Yukimura: And when you have three as three beats, it actually means
three officers?
Chief Perry: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: One beat is one officer?
Chief Perry: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chang has another question.
Mr. Chang: Chief, while we're on that subject, can you define the
boundaries of Lihu`e for the public, and the boundaries for Waimea? We said from Kapa`a north, so
if can just define the boundaries for us?
Chief Perry: What I'm going to do is defer to my patrol services bureau
assistant chief. Do you want to do it now?
Council Chair Furfaro: No, we'll defer until we get to the assistant chief, if
Mr. Chang, does it matter?
Mr. Chang: That's fine.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.6
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. Go right ahead, chief.
Chief Perry: I just wanted to clarify one more thing about how these beats
were derived. What we did was we looked at the population growth. We checked with Planning and
where are businesses going to be located, calls for services, and we also looked at the geographical
distance, because you have to consider officer safety. These are how those beats were delineated. So
just for clarification.
I'd like to touch upon the challenges that is KPD is facing. Crime continues to be a challenge
for KPD, especially crimes against property. And although Kauai is much smaller than other
counties, we're experiencing the same challenges and trends as the other counties. K.P.D. is always
exploring ways of being more proactive and innovative to address these issues. This includes
deployment of special task force, use of technology, and partnering with the community to create
neighborhood security watches. When our next generation CADS comes into play, that's computer
aided dispatch program, when it's installed, we'll also have what we call crime mapping, and it will
identify hot spots so we can better deploy our resources to that particular area.
You also have a chart below that talks about the state crime index compared to 2008. I
couldn't find the 2010 crime index, but it's basically the same. Let's go for violent crimes, and for
Honolulu there was a decrease of one-point-six percent. Hawaii, an increase of six-point-two
percent. For Maui an increase of seventeen percent. For Kauai, an increase of two-point-eight
percent. With regards to property crime, Honolulu had an increase of four-point-nine percent,
almost five percent. Hawaii, four-point-six percent. Maui had a decrease of five-point-six percent.
And Kauai an increase of four-point-seven percent. I also have attached in the back for you, there's
a seven months crime index that was created by our records division. And if you look closely for the
first seven months, Part one crimes, we were slightly down this year, but part two crimes, and the
part two crimes are listed here in the back, this is the form, Part two crimes there is an increase.
And also in traffic offenses there is a slight decrease in that. We project this trend to continue. We
are working very hard to bring down the part two crimes. Most of it is thefts, thefts on vehicles and
arrests.
The other challenge, again as mentioned, is the recruitment of new officers and this
continues to be a formidable task. Currently we have 18 sworn vacancies and we're also looking, as I
mentioned, to have six new officers and 10 to 15 new officers. But we also have 15 officers that are
eligible for retirement. When I look at the individuals themselves, it appears at least six of our
senior officers will be leaving our ranks for retirement. With respect to improvements, our
communication with the general public and other emergency agencies is vital to the safety of our
citizens and visitors, especially in times of natural or man-made disasters. With the recent award of
the next generation CADS system, the county of Kauai will be better prepared for these events, and
I have to recognize Assistant Chief Mark Begley for spearheading this two-year project. And
hopefully during this fiscal year we'll begin the implementation, but I made an error here, we will
not be fully functional; it'll take much longer than that, I was informed about that. But we also have
a new drop and run communication site that was established with IT, but we're still working on the
redundant dispatch center, which is in the making right now.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: I just wanted... On the drop and run, could you explain the
drop and run?
Chief Perry: Yes. In case anything happens at our facility here at the
police station, say there's an electrical fire or something then we need to evacuate, we have another
location by IT that we can over there immediately and continue to dispatch officers. This is only for
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.7
short term, and the redundant center is for longer term, in case we have a super hurricane that
takes us out, we can go to the second site and be there for a longer term.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you.
Chief Perry: In regards to upcoming initiatives, I had mentioned two,
which was very important to us, which include the temporary Waimea police substation, the old
Waimea dispensary, and the Kawaihau police substation. These are our two most important
initiatives in the works.
I'd like to focus your attention to the comparative graphs that we -have with regard to our
budget. In wages and salaries, we had an increase of .7% or about $96,000, and this is the amended
version. This is the long form was handed out, $96,000 increase. For benefits, we had an increase of
about $1.3million, which is equivalent to 16% increase. For operations, $352,000 fora 16.5%
increase. For equipment and lease, $224,000 for an increase of 248.9%. And we'll talk about that
later. For utilities, an increase of $28,300 for an increase of 20.65. Total there's about a total
increase of about $2 million or 8.2% from last year's budget.
The proposed budget, I believe, is sufficient to fulf"ill...to allow us to continue in our mission
to service the people of Kauai. There's just two other things...or actually three other things I'd like
to talk about, and one is risk management. Risk management is an inherent part of law
enforcement duties and responsibilities. We have the authority to restrict a person's freedom, the
most cherished right in our Constitution, and under certain circumstances, take the life of a human
being. No other county agency has that awesome responsibility, and while we must manage our
service delivery, even as we focus on firearm training, safe driving techniques, self-defense, first aid,
and the rest, and including sexual harassment, and E.E.O.C. complaints, we must not forget that
risk management begins with the hiring and training of our new officers. It goes without saying that
high standards cannot be negotiated away, and that K.P.D. continues to recruit the very best
because to do otherwise would compromise our mission. I'm sure many of you are familiar with
vicarious liability which includes the failure to direct, failure to train, failure to supervise, and
failure to discipline. But under vicarious liability, there's another area called negligent hiring,
negligent retention, and negligent entrustment. Under negligent hiring, that's where we have to
watch who we bring in. We have to hold our standards very high.
The next is the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation which will be held in Honolulu
November 8 to the 13th of this year, and Honolulu is spearing that with the federal government, and
we have officers selected to assist H.P.D. upon request, but we haven't received plans yet from
H.P.D. And with respect to cost, I was advised by one of the captains there to consider to crafting a
memorandum of agreement for reimbursement if we are to assist them.
And finally, there was a survey that was taken by the Kauai Community Indicators, it's a
telephone survey for March 2011 that revealed that K.P.D. is making a difference in service delivery
that hasn't been seen in many years. For question number one, do you feel safe walking in your
neighborhood at night? Central and north Kauai, for central and north Kauai, 84% answered yes.
For east Kauai, 85% answered yes. For south and west Kauai, 72% answered yes. We have to look
into that. That seems...we like to do better service on that side.
Question number two. How satisfied are you with the police public service provided by the
county of Kauai? For central and north Kauai 83% were satisfied or very satisfied. East Kauai, 83%
were satisfied or very satisfied. And south or west Kauai, 82% were satisfied or very satisfied. I
have to take off my hat to all of those who have supported K.P.D., including the council and the
mayor's office, and especially to the men and women of the Kauai Police Department, and of course,
to the public for supporting us. It has been a long road, but the support that we've been having,
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.8
we're making a difference in the community. So at this time, I'd like to bring up Assistant Chief
Mark Begley to talk a little bit about our administrative bureau of Kauai Police Department.
Council Chair Furfaro: Chief, on that note, because we started late, and I just want
to get a feel for... I'm going to move the county clerk's review until 1:00 on April 19, because we're
filling vacancies, and many other processes here, I would rather that we have a review of the county
council later during the budget review. Would you have a problem, because we started late that if
we just went through until 1:00 with the police department, if necessary, then we would break for
lunch at 1:00. Would you have a problem if we tried to give that extra time to the department today?
Chief Perry: No, we wouldn't have a problem, except for Assistant Chief
Begley will have to...he's on his way to Oahu to do SHOPO negotiations, so we won't be-here, but the
captain will be here.
Council Chair Furfaro: Very good. I was wondering why he looked so dapper. He's
going to Honolulu. So let's anticipate, if we need the extra time we'll go past 12, and we'll break at
one. Okay. Mr. Begley, you have the floor.
MARK BEGLEY: Thank you Chairman Furfaro and members of the county
council. Mark Begley for the record. Administrative and technical bureau's budget doesn't have any
major changes. I'll touch briefly on the changes in the budget for the coming fiscal year and then I'll
discuss with you the changes we've made in the bureau to improve efficiency.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chang.
Mr. Chang: Just a technical issue, if we can. Mr. Begley, the three of us
cannot see because of the camera, can we slide? We want to see how marvelous you look. You look
marvelous.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Begley, after your presentation on the administration,
please do anticipate questions, because that's when we're going to do it, by division, and I
understand you have a travel schedule. Go right ahead.
Mr. Begley: I understand. Thank you Chair. The changes in
administrative and technical bureau include the addition of approximately $60,000 to cover costs of
an outside agency to assist us in conducting background investigations. This is something that has
been discussed over recent years to improve the speed in which we can process a list of police
applicants. We've identified two potential companies who currently perform background
investigations for the federal government, including secret clearance and top-secret clearance. So we
are hopeful that one of these agencies will be able to perform in a satisfactory level background
investigations for our police officer candidates. The other area is police physicals which is a
contractual requirement with the police officer's union. Every two years we conduct physicals to
make sure everybody is healthy and doesn't need further medical care.
Then we've re-introduced the education incentive of $10,000. The chief wanted to get this
back in the budget, and the administration was supportive of this. This is a reimbursement for
officers who seek higher education that is relative to law enforcement. All of the changes in A&T's
bureau requests are relatively minor. If you do have any questions about any of those changes, I
would be happy to answer those questions as they arise.
What we have done to improve the efficiency of the administration and technical bureau is
first that we've looked at ways to reorganize the bureau, staffing, maximizing the staffing that we
currently have, and we always feel like we don't have enough staff to the task that is before us. So
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.9
we've looked at job responsibilities. and how we can best utilize the staff we currently have. We've
already performed one reorganization in areas of our background investigation with the assistance of
the personnel. department, the mayor's office, and obviously finance department. We've redescribed
one of our clerical positions and created a dedicated a backgrounds clerk. The position has already
been created, we've already recruited for the position, we currently have nine applicants which we're
in the process of screening to fill that position, and so far we're very pleased with the caliber of
applicants that have applied for that position.
The second area we've identified for reorganization is in the records section combined with
our evidence processing. We intend to move a lieutenant to our records section to oversee records
operations, and we intend to create, redescribe one position, create a new position with the
assistance of the administration for evidence technicians. These positions will require a bachelor's
degree in processing evidence, expanding our capabilities to respond to major crime scenes, process
evidence properly, evaluate and store that evidence, prepare it for trial, et cetera.
In the recruitment area, we have hired five public safety workers. Those five individuals are
scheduled to start on April 18. This is the first time in the history of the agency that all positions in
the cellblock will technically be filled. We always prepare for attrition. So we don't know how long it
will be like that, but it is still a significant milestone for the department to have reached this point.
Council Chair Furfaro: Well you can knock on wood and we'll offer you a round of
applause. Thank you.
Mr. Begley: And everything that we discuss, though I'm here representing
the administrative of technical bureaus, this have all been team efforts, department-wide, the
administration, the chief, and many individuals are involved in all the things that we accomplish
and achieve. Police services officers, we currently have 35 officer applicants who have passed first
couple of phases of screening which includes physical readiness testing. We are very pleased. We
have re-introduced a validated standard for physical readiness for police applicants. We only lost
four applicants through that testing, so we're very happy about those numbers. 35 very promising
looking applicants that are proceeding on to the next stages of screening for police officer positions.
As already stated, we have nine applicants for the dedicated background clerk's position. We
recently hired dispatchers. We've already lost one of them. It's a stressful environment that people
are most often not used to experiencing. We appreciate it when people get in there and realize that
it's not the job for them and gracefully bow out. It's often the best decision for the community and
the agency. So we will be preparing to recruit again for dispatcher positions and screen when
appropriate.
Also in the area for recruitment, we've been working with P.S.G. Films, a production
company that works with national geographic. They are tentatively slated to come in to Kauai at the
end of April and begin filming a series of documentaries on our police officers working on the street,
on the roads. They want to see everything that our officers do out there from chasing cattle to
responding to commercial burglaries. This is a type of advertisement and recruitment that we can't
afford to buy. Something like this is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in recruitment and
advertising money. We're very pleased and we hope that that comes to fruition.
In the screening area for applicants, already mentioned are our reorganization, backgrounds
clerk, outside agency that we're looking to contract in the upcoming fiscal year, and we would also
like to see a multiyear contract for psychological services. Having to procure psychological services
every time, we have a list of applicants, is very time consuming for our staff. So we'll be seeking a
professional services contract in the next fiscal year to streamline that process.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.10
The chief mentioned the next generation CAD system. This is a new computer aided
dispatch system for our dispatch center. I also includes mobile computer aided dispatching which
places mobile data terminals in all patrol cars so that information arrives on their screens within
seconds, sometimes split seconds. Information is more readily available to the officers on the
incoming call, and eventually we will be using that as a route for overflow of 911. When we have
critical incidents and 911 calls are coming in faster than dispatchers can receive them, if the officers
are available, a computer system recognizes that the officers are available and will be able to send
the calls directly to the officer's mobile data terminal. The vehicle locaters, each mobile data
terminal will have a GPS in it that tells the dispatchers exactly where all the available cars are, and
that will be seen on a screen in the dispatch center, and the computer will also be able to recommend
the best unit for the incoming call. And of course, an integrated records management system which
is key for proper operations of computer aided dispatching system. The amount of records that the
CAD system brings in and also the records that the CAD system needs to access involve some very
complex interfaces, so it all has to work together very well.
We're looking at about a 12-month implementation period. This is a lot of complex
interfaces, software, a lot of training is going to need to be done, and it's going to have to be
implemented in phases so that all of our personnel are able to move into it efficiently, not just leave
the system they've been working with for years today, and then start working on a new system
tomorrow. I think we all recognize that it doesn't work that easily. But we're very excited about
this, and appreciate the assistance we've received from the county attorney's office, the strong
support from the mayor's office, and finance department in getting to this stage where we've actually
issued an award and we're working on executing the contract to get the implementation started.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Begley, I want to thank you for your presentation. I do
want to say a couple items, and I assume you're made the administrative portion of the presentation
for the department. I just want to bring Councilman Bynum up to date. We had an overview from
the Chief. We just got some corrective narrative on questions specific to his presentation. Now we're
bringing up various division heads. We're going to keep the key questions directed at each division
as those members are here. So Mr. Begley has come up first, because he's got a plane to catch to
Honolulu, and we are extending the police department until 1:00 as we rescheduled the county
clerk's division. Mr. Begley, I have three small things and then I'm going to have to excuse myself
for a moment and I'll turn the meeting over to the Vice Chairman of council for some other questions.
First of all, this is directed to all of your departments and the chief. I want to compliment
you on the budget comparisons for what you have actually done so far this year in seven months
compared to your budget. There needs to be some rewards for living within the budget. So I want to
share with you. One of the rewards, I think here is I want to let the administration know that if you
need to redirect some of the money in the current budget to help us get to a point that the CAD
system is functioning because you implemented the appropriate training, the overall dialogue and so
forth, I personally would be very, very supportive of that. So please...and I see the administration is
in the audience when I said that, so please, so note that I would be supportive of that. Secondly, I
also want to thank you for managing the general overtime in the department. From an
administrative overview that's probably the best we've been in a very long time as related to the
percentages used against the percentages budgeted, and then I do want to bring your attention to
one line item that that will go over in a question which doesn't have to be answered today. But it
looks like when we got to the particular area of unemployment compensation, somehow it looks like
that line wasn't budgeted for the department. That's the only real line item you're over budget at
this point, and Mr. Begley, before I turn it over to the others, I would just like an explanation maybe
that compensation line is merged in some other benefit line, but it's the only thing that really stands
out on your sheet. Thank you for a very excellent report on where we're at and the direction we're
going from an administrative point of view. And on that note, I'm going to turn the meeting over to
Vice Chair Yukimura for the moment as we take other questions. But well done, chief. Well done for
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.ll
where we're at. Thank you very much. Vice chair, would you take over the meeting while I excuse
myself?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, sir. We'll have questions then, of Assistance Chief
Begley. What I'd like to try is if you start on one subject have everyone talk about one subject, and
then go on. If, for example, we're talking about recruitment or CAD system.
Mr. Rapozo: Well, we should probably start at the top then.
Ms. Yukimura: Go right ahead.
Mr. Rapozo: I don't know. I only have a couple. The first question is how
much do we spend on the psychological part? Whenever we hire psychologists, how much do we
spend a year? I guess where I'm heading is are we approaching the time where it would be feasible
to have a police psychologist on staff? Because that's something we don't have. And the police
psychologists throughout the country serve more than just pre-employment. You guys...all of your
cops go through some heavy-duty stuff on a daily basis, and there's really... They have the EAP
program, you have some chaplains, but a police psychologist which could be used for pre-employment
and also for any issue that police officers deal with. And I ask that because I understand these
contracts aren't cheap. And we hiring them, and I think you mentioned earlier chief in
your... assistant chief in your discussion that it's time consuming to have to go out and track one
down, and I guess the procurement process, however it is. You're seeking a professional services
contract. But are we approaching the time where the K.P.D. should be looking at a police
psychologist? I ask that, because. I don't know.
Mr. Begley: It would be great to have a staff psychologist. The issue that
we would face is justifying the cost of a psychologist to the caliber that we've been using to be
dedicated to the agency. We probably wouldn't be able to justify that expense. How much it costs us
per year depends on the number of applicants, and that's the type of bids that we get. We've
identified three or four psychologists out there that meet the standards that we would require for
screening police applicants, and- the bids that they give us are per applicant. So for every applicant
that they have to process, they're going to charge us this much money. We give them an estimate of
how many applicants we think we'll have, and they give us a bid based on how much per applicant
that we send to them for screening. Annually, it costs us around $30,000 give or take a few
thousand. A psychologist of the level that we've been using, to put them on staff would probably be
in the neighborhood of $200,000 a year. So it would be difficult for us to justify that, but we would
like to see a multiyear contract that not only includes screening for police applicants, but also
assistance with incumbents who need someone to talk to or perhaps even need a fitness for duty on
occasion. We need that level of evaluation of an incumbent.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. And the other question is you mentioned the PSW
positions will be... Oh, let's stop. If anybody else has anything on that issue.
Ms. Yukimura: If we can stay on the psychological first. Does anybody have a
question about that? Thank you.
Mr. Chang: Just a question of interest. So the three or four you make
reference to, psychologists, are they on-island, or you have to bring them in?
Mr. Begley: Two of them...three of them that are coming to mind right
now are within the state of Hawaii; none of them live on Kauai. The psychologist that helped us
design the current screening system we have and who has been winning the bids each time we go out
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.12
for bid lives in Oregon. He had previously worked with the California post and redesigned the
psychological screening for the state of California police officer applicants.
Mr. Chang: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Any other questions?
Mr. Bynum: Very brief. I don't want to discuss it now, but if you have any
documents about what the psychological screening exists of, what measures they use, I'd be
interesting if you could supply that to us.
Mr. Begley: Well, whatever we can release, we'll be happy to send to you.
Mr. Bynum: Not specific, just what is the process? What is it that... Are
they using MMPI, that kind of thing.
Mr. Begley: Certainly.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, Councilmember Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Chief Perry, in Honolulu, does Honolulu have a on staff
psychologist?
Chief Perry. Yes they do. They have about four of them.
Mr. Rapozo: And what is their typical salary range?
Chief Perry: I don't know.
Mr. Rapozo: I can't imagine them being paid $200,000, I just have a hard
time...if they're on staff, because along with that comes the benefits. And you know, so I just want to
make sure that... If it's something that's feasible, I'd like to pursue that, only because I think a lot of
the officers today could benefit from the ability to go talk to...and that's why I'm saying a police
psychologist, not a regular one. Because it takes a...it's a different animal.
Chief Perry: That's something that we looked at recently, because we have
officers in the department that it's the nature of the job that they don't reach out for help. We need
to be more proactive in that arena in providing the services to them. So as we speak, we're looking
at contracting out to a local psychologist on the mainland to assist us in helping us with our mental
health issues with our officers, making sure that everything is okay. Because oftentimes, the officer
comes in the department after years and years, they don't get any help unless they seek help
themselves, and oftentimes they won't. So we want to make sure we have resources available to help
them. But currently, the only way we can do that is to go outside and contract with them. Bringing
somebody on board would be great, but again, it would be...I would guess over $100,000 easy.
Mr. Rapozo: I agree, but I think the cost of not having it can be even more
expensive. I think we have a lot of officers that if you had an in-house staff psychologist, like most
departments, I think the ability for you to have them seek help would be a lot easier than trying to
have them go outside. And again, I don't know what psychologists are being used, but police
psychologists are a little different, because they can relate. It's a little different than your
traditional. If you could explore that, I would appreciate that.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.13
Mr. Begley: Councilman, I've been involved in screening psychologists and
reviewing prior psychological reports on police applicants and police incumbent that have gone south
and have had to be removed from service from the police department for approximately the last six
or seven years. One of the problems that we faced in the past is using psychologists and even
psychiatrists who are not properly experienced certified to do the kind of screening that we need
done. I've worked with Dr. Herb Gumpton, the primary staff psychologist with the Honolulu police
department, for the last five years, as well as other top professionals in the nation. Part of our
requirements is that our psychologist has a minimum of 10 years of experience conducting police
officer applicant screening, board certified, and a Ph.D. Not everyone has those qualifications, and
the ones that is do aren't able to do it fulltime for a single agency for free. Now we could get a staff
psychologist on at a reduced salary if that staff psychologist could also perform in private practice
outside of the agency. If we work something like that, we might be able to get a more reasonable
salary. But it's going to be difficult to find somebody of the caliber we need to screen applicants
properly for something we can justify...an amount of salary we can justify.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. And that we leave up to you guys' expertise of
finding the right people. I'm just saying that I'm prepared to support it at whatever cost, because I
think as we move forward, and the officers of today are tasked with more work, I think we got to be
able to help them as well. That's my bigger concern. There's a lot of money in this budget that I
think that are set there for luxuries, and again, that's what I'm looking at, is the ability to help our
officers. That's all I have about the psychologist.
Ms. Yukimura: Any other questions.
Chief Perry: I just have one more comment. And at times, I feel like
perhaps I could use their services too.
Mr. Rapozo: And I speak from experience, chief. I've seen psychologists
while I was in the force that had no experience with police work, and they just...you know, I may as
well talk to my mom, because she understands me better. That's the truth. It's like going to a foot
doctor for a heart condition. It doesn't work. That's all I'm saying.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. I have something on this subject. I want to first
really thank you, chief, for recognizing that risk management begins with hiring and retention. And
training...hiring and training. I wish everybody in the county would recognize that. I think it's
more so with the police department, probably police and fire. But it's true of every hire that we
make as well. So thank you for that real focus, and then for the follow-up in terms of what the
system is by which we hire and train. I guess, let's see, I think this is somewhat related in terms of
critical incidents debriefing. You do have that service, do you not?
Chief Perry: Yes, we do.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, and how is that performed?
Chief Perry: Well, we had... Jan Rudinoff was working for us, but he left.
But basically debriefing, we would have to have the employees assistance program to help us out to
identify or suggest somebody to come and help us with that. Jan was very instrumental in the
debriefing efforts. We also have Mr. Thomas Contrades that has stepped up and wanted to be a
chaplain, so we are looking at other individuals to help us out, especially in incidents... More
recently, incidents where we had hostage situations and there's a potential of using deadly force, you
need to be debriefed in those areas.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.14
Ms. Yukimura: I do recall that after the hurricane my fire chief said, mayor
you have to debrief. They brought in a team from Honolulu, an in-house team. So there are
colleagues trained in that specialty and they debriefed all of the fire personnel in our fire
department. And I believe the police had something similar, I hope, because that was so important.
And then we had to debrief all of my cabinet because of the nature of the hurricane, which is when I
really learned about the importance of that process, but it did bring to my awareness these trained
in-house teams. I don't know if there's such a thing in police work as there is in fire work
apparently, fire department work, and it seems like there are some people within the departments
who have that particular disposition and natural skills that when trained, they can really do a great
service, and people feel comfortable because they're known, you know. So I don't know if that's
something to look into that might be much lower cost than hiring a psychologist.
Chief Perry: We also have peer counselors. In-house peer counselors.
Ms. Yukimura: So you have that in your system?
Chief Perry: Yes, we do.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, great. Thank you. Next question, Councilmember
Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: The other question is regarding the public safety workers.
You mentioned that you're going to be at full staff shortly. You hired five more?
Mr. Begley: Hired five more. All positions will be filled. Not all bodies are
available to work in the cell block, but all the positions for cell block will be filled. So we won't be
able to hire any additional cell block workers unless somebody leaves their position or we get
additional positions at some point.
Mr. Rapozo: Try that again. You said all positions are filled?
Mr. Begley: All public safety workers positions will be filled as of April 18.
We have five new cell block workers coming on staff.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. So that should alleviate...or eliminate the overtime
expense from cell block?
Mr. Begley: Once they are trained and functioning in the cell block it will
reduce overtime significantly.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, but you still will incur overtime in cell block?
Mr. Begley: Most likely. We have one person in cell block that is currently
injured and not able to work at this moment.
Mr. Rapozo: So just one?
Mr. Begley: To my knowledge. I'm not aware of anyone else that is not
functioning in there right now.
Mr. Rapozo: Is that question better... Who? Is that patrol? Who controls
the cell block now, patrol? Okay. So I guess we'll have patrol up later. Okay. I guess I'll reserve
my questions for patrol.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.15
Ms. Yukimura: Any other questions? Councilmember Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: I apologize for being late to this hearing this morning. It-was
unavoidable, so I hope I'm not going to ask questions you've already answered. But I'm really happy
about the Waimea police substation moving forward; it's a really great collaborative effort from
everything I can see.
Ms. Yukimura: We're trying to stay on cell block workers for now.
Mr. Bynum: Oh, we're on cell block workers? I'm sorry, I thought we went
to general items. I'm glad you're fully staffed,- so I'll save... I was going to go to a couple of other
questions. I'll wait.
Ms. Yukimura: You'll definitely have your turn. Okay, anymore questions on
cell block? Or public service...what do you call that? Public safety workers, and they are the ones
who work in cell blocks.
Ms. Nakamura: Just one question. The biggest cost increase was the
consultant services.
Mr. Begley: For the A&T Bureau, that's correct.
Ms. Nakamura: For the A&T Bureau. So I was just wondering the reason for
that. Is that all related to...can you explain that increase? The $74,000 increase in that line item.
Mr. Begley: Police applicant screening services are $60,000 in that
account number. That's to hire an outside agency to conduct background investigations.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay, and that...previously you did not go outside to do that?
Or you're using a different firm?
Mr. Begley: That's correct. We did it in-house.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: To that point, that background investigation is so important.
I think this is a good idea what you're doing here. Back to the...I just want to say I really want to
celebrate that we're going to have a full staffing. I remember four years ago, maybe, when the
overtime was incredible. Inexcusable actually, and thank you very much for working on that. I just
want to really mark the achievement when it happens. Thank you. Back to you Councilmember
Rapozo. Anything else?
Mr. Rapozo: No, not for A&T.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, other members?
Mr. Rapozo: I think the chief has something
Chief Perry: Can I make a comment. With regards to cell block, I did some
research, and annually throughout the nation 300 individuals die in our cells...in the jails, county
jails. This is because the state and even the county police have become the default institutions for
people who have mental illnesses. So the longer we keep these individuals in our jails, the more at
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.16
risk we are as an agency, and this relates...and I'll get back to it, but it relates to the new ATM
machine that we have in the police station. There were some questions about that. One of the main
reasons why we got that ATM machine is that when individuals come to bail out somebody and it's
late at night or they can't go to a bank or something, they have the ATM machine over there to get
some money out so that individuals can be bailed out. So it's a very minor part of risk management,
yet it can be very significant, because an individual who dies or commits suicide in our jail system,
we'll be liable for that. So we look at not only the staffing of our cell block, but we also look at other
ways to mitigate those types of liabilities.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, chief. You have a follow-up question.
Councilmember Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: One of the things that I'll be looking at this year for the state
association of counties is to look at that legislation where in fact it's not such a hindrance to get
someone mentally evaluated. Because at one point, the police department could just drop off
someone at a mental hospital or a state hospital to get evaluated. It was a cop's discretion, and
basically if there were signs that this is person was mentally disturbed, such as, hey, I'm going to kill
myself, straight to the hospital, and that was it. You dropped them off, sign the paper, and it was
a 72 hour mandatory review, or whatever they call it. That has since changed, and now you got to
spend I don't know how many hours at the E.R., and I've seen it while I was at ER with my mom.
I've seen your officers baby-sit someone that's... Whether it's true or not true, you typically have an
officer or maybe even two officers baby-sitting this person. Whereas that person should be taken to a
hospital. I'm not sure how successful we'll be, but that's one of the issues we'll be looking at at the
state level and hopefully get your support. So that in fact when any prisoner displays any sign was
mental illness that they be taken to the proper venue, which is the hospital, the mental hospital, like
it used to be. Whether or not that gets passed, I don't know. But it's something that we
definitely...because it's a statewide issue now that's costing a lot of money for the counties. So that's
just something we'll talk later about.
Ms. Yukimura: Other questions on this issue? Yes, Councilmember Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: We can go on all day about this, because this is my
background, and I really appreciate your comments there, chief. Because by not funding mental
health services for adolescents, for adults, and you know, we've squeezed that for 15 or 20 years, and
it has put a huge burden on the police departments all over the country, but here, you know, and
schools, because we're handling mental health issues in the criminal justice system, and giving
people criminal records that really could have been avoided. So I just really appreciate your
comments. It's a very sad situation where, you know, you save money here, but you just pushed the
burden on to other systems. Unfortunately, the criminal justice system ends up being the system of
last resort, right. So if we had better homeless programs, better mental health programs, you know
that would be ameliorated and you could focus more on real crime. So... I'm sorry, I just couldn't
help making that comment.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, it's fine. Any other questions on...of Assistant
Chief Begley? Councilmember Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: So you're getting these substations in Waimea and Kapa`a,
right? That's great. So...and this is kind of for the business people in Kapaa, so that means
eventually we're not going to see a lot of police cars and that little mini substation. The kind of
police presence there isn't going to be as visible eventually?
Chief Perry: Oh, yeah, we'll be visible. We'll be patrolling all the time.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.17
Mr. Bynum: No, I mean in a positive sort of way. I have business people
saying we hey need those parking spaces for parking downtown, you know, that kind of thing. So I'm
really thrilled to see those initiatives, and they seem to both be creative. Thank you for that.
Chief Perry: I'm going to digress just a little bit. In the budget, there's a
section there we're looking at purchasing a segue so that we can be patrolling the bike path. So
that's part of the pilot program that we're instituting; hopefully down the line we can go ahead and
get a couple more.
Mr. Bynum: See, now you triggered me. Do you still have bikes? You have
officers on bicycles?
Chief Perry: We still have bikes, but we don't have them on the bicycles.
At this point we just can't afford to put our resources out there yet, unless we have a special project,
then we put them out.
Mr. Bynum: I understand. My question is more about staffing and the
impact of furloughs, and I didn't get to discuss that last year, but it was our...during budget. But
you know, I think it was the council's expectation that we were going to leave public safety alone,
and we didn't. To me that meant the HGEA employees at the police department wouldn't be
furloughed and they were, and that's the kind of questions and clarity that I sought last year that we
never really had that discussion. But I know I came out of this not expecting police and fire HGEA
employees to be furloughed and they were. And I assume that had some pretty significant impact on
your services. Is that correct?
Chief Perry: Yes. Significant...depends how you define that. It did impact
us, and we did have to expend some overtime for them to catch up on their work. I don't have those
numbers readily available right now, but I can get those numbers later.
Mr. Bynum: In our county auditor's work plan is an audit of furloughs, so
eventually we'll get the answers, so I'm not trying to go backwards. But I want to mention for the
record that our assumption also was that police dispatchers and public safety workers wouldn't be
impacted by furloughs, and they were. And that's still unresolved as far as I'm concerned, because
they were required to take pay cuts as opposed to time off. And we fully funded those last year.
That should not have occurred.
Mr. Rapozo: Madam Chair, point of order. This is not on the budget.
Mr. Bynum: Yes it is.
Mr. Rapozo: No, it's not.
Mr. Bynum: I don't want to be interrupted, Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Well, I'm asking for a point of order. That is my right, and
this discussion is not on the budget. We're going back into historical data, and if that's going to
happen... That's why we go beyond the time that's allocated and we don't have time for our
questions. Please, Madam Chair, think about it. It's a discussion on furloughs. This is not... The
furloughs are done.
Ms. Yukimura: Agreed. But I want to give Councilmember Bynum a moment
to wrap up on the issue of furloughs. First of all...
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.18
Mr. Bynum: We have to discuss things in context. So I can take 30
seconds to put my question in context. Okay?
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Go ahead.
Mr. Bynum: I am so irritated with these interruptions. So we have a point
of order. Do we want to vote on it?
Mr. Rapozo: I asked for the point. It's up to the chair.
Mr. Bynum: And so in discussion, I'm asking...
Mr. Rapozo: She said go ahead. Why don't you go ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: I need that gavel.
Mr. Bynum: I'm asking you to give a little bit of latitude to put things in
context. So let's have a vote on that point of order.
Ms. Yukimura: No. I think I will make a decision, and my decision is that
furloughs are a little bit on the edge, but I'll allow you to ask your question and take 30 seconds to a
minute to create your context.
Mr. Bynum: Are you aware of the current budget negotiations for HGEA
and UPW that include administrative time off?
Ms. Yukimura: That is related to the budget, and whether it is in the budget.
So the answer was yes?
Chief Perry: I don't know all the intricate details. I do know that they're
going to be given some time off. I think was 6 hours or something like that.
Mr. Bynum: We had the discussion yesterday during budget with the
administration about whether that was the case. The answer was that we have the ability...that
that basically is a master contract, and the counties can negotiate things that may be different based
on each county's need. I have concerns that having administrative leave equaling nine days is going
to impact the productivity of your HGEA employees. So I'm encouraging the administration to look
at some union outcome that doesn't increase employees time off or time they're not at their desk
fulfilling and...because I think it has a very significant impact on productivity. So my question is, do
you have a concern that the productivity of your HGEA and UPW...I don't know if you have UPW
employees, I don't think so. That their productivity could be impacted in terms of getting their job
done if they have nine fewer days there at their desk?
Chief Perry: Yes, it would impact.
Mr. Bynum: I would encourage you to, you know join with some of us, in
encouraging the administration to look for a union outcome that doesn't make it 30 days off from the
workplace? Because if you take the 21 days vacation, combine nine days of defacto time off, it
impacts the productivity. I know you went through that with furloughs during the six months they
were in place. Our auditor will do an audit to see more specifically what the impact was on our
productivity, our budget. But this is proactive in that I want to make sure you're aware that there's
a proposal out there that could take your employees off their desk nine days...nine additional days a
year.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.19
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So I think that's... It is important for the police
administration to inform the mayor as the chief negotiator as to the impacts various proposals would
have on your operations. That's for sure. And I don't know what kind of budgetary impacts would a
nine day administrative leave. That would be additional cost as 1 would it not? So certainly maybe a
projection for us of what those costs would be if such an agreement went into place. So that will be a
follow-up question.
Mr. Bynum: So the current budget does not anticipate pay cuts for those
HGEA employees. Is that correct?
Ms. Yukimura: Tight now, the budget before us.
Mr. Bynum: The budget you submitted does not, you know, budget those
employees at any reduction from their current salary.
Chief Perry: No, it does not...as far as I know.
Mr. Bynum: And at this point that's very appropriate.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes. It is in negotiations right now, I guess, and hopefully
you are being consulted as to the impacts on your department. It may come up in the supplemental,
I don't know, depending where negotiations take us. But it certainly behooves us to project it out so
we can see what the impacts will be if that goes into place. Okay. Are you done or you have other
questions?
Mr. Bynum: I did and I've lost my train of thought.
Ms. Yukimura: Well we'll come back to you. Councilmember Nakamura?
Councilmember Chang?
Mr. Chang: Is it pertaining to Tim's question or we're wide open now?
Ms. Yukimura: No, it's back to the overall administrative functioning of the
police department under Assistant Chief Begley.
Mr. Chang: So we can ask an open question now?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, regarding the administrative division.
Mr. Chang: Well, I want to make sure I'm asking the right question then.
Assistant Chief Begley, you were talking about at the end of April there's going to be a production
crew coming down to do the day in the life of a Kauai Police Department police officer? Is that
something as such?
Mr. Begley: We have tentatively scheduled production here on Kauai for a
documentary on our officers patrolling. It won't be a single officer. It will be multiple officers on
patrol performing different functions.
Mr. Chang: So is that strictly for recruitment or they're doing something
really cool for the department? Where does it air?
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.20
Mr. Begley: This is the same company that filmed Alaska state troopers
which is currently being aired on the National Geographic Channel. For some reason National
Geographic was interested in a series on Kauai. Initially they wanted to come do a pilot program.
National Geographic told them never mind the pilot, just go do it if they're willing to let us film their
officers working, we want to do the show. It's just somewhat of a godsend for us in a recruitment
perspective. As well as we believe it will be good for the island as well. When you see the beauty of
the island and the crime here compared to the crime that people deal with in urban areas is nothing
in comparison, you know, but it's still interesting stuff.
Mr. Chang: So do you guys have anything to say about the script or do
you get to watch the finished product or the final edit before it airs?
Chief Perry: The contract is still in the works. Our legal adviser is making
modifications to it. We will have a say in what goes on.
Mr. Chang: Okay, good. Thank you. Congratulations.
Chief Perry: Do you want to be part of it?
Mr. Chang: No. I was approached a while back, so I understand, but
there were several minor concerns, so I can share that. It kind of deals with Hawaii Five-0, like
Kaua`i's nice and mellow and...people die on Hawaii Five-0, you know what I mean, every episode.
So it's kind of curious discussions way back when. So just a little interested. Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Other questions? Other questions? If not, afollow-up to
Councilmember... Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Councilmember Bynum. On this subject?
Mr. Bynum: Yeah, on this subject. I'm aware that departments on the
mainland have recruited our officers. Are there obstacles for us to recruit officers who currently
work on the mainland?
Mr. Begley: Well, the biggest obstacle in recruiting from the mainland is
our ability to properly and thoroughly screen applicants that have strictly mainland histories, as
well as the expense for good applicants to come to Hawaii to go through our process. We have
recruited from the mainland; we've had very limited success in recruiting officers from the mainland.
Our best field to recruit in is right here in Hawaii.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, there's cost of living as well.
Mr. Begley: There are many impacts. One of the impacts is officers that
have no family, no foundation here in Hawaii, they come over here, and it's a very significant
cultural change for them, and some of them aren't prepared for it.
Ms. Yukimura: So as a follow-up to Councilmember Chang's question, I was
delighted when you mentioned that there would be a film that sort of takes in what it is to be a police
officer on our island. I see it as an excellent recruiting tool. But I did get some second thoughts just
in this discussion to air it nationwide. Because one, you could get this overload of applicants...if it's
over-romanticized, you could get an overload of applicants who, even like teachers and others who
apply for jobs, have no idea what the realities of living here are or are sensitive to the cultural
issues, and then you'd have to screen that way. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is, you
don't want to advertise to a lot of potential criminals that this is a nice easy place either. So I'm kind
of semi-serious to think about those unintended consequences. But I also think that a documentary
film could be a wonderful thing to recruit people with an inclination to police work, desire to work in
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.21
the community in this kind of work and recruit them. So I just want to recognize that it's somewhat
of a double-edged sword that you have to think about.
Mr. Begley: The first issue raise is a potential problem,. but we would
consider that a good problem-having too many applicants to screen.
Ms. Yukimura: That's true. As long as you have a good screening process.
Mr. Begley: Right. It's not the best possible scenario, but it's a scenario
we don't mind dealing with. The second potential issue of giving criminal an impression that this is
an easy place to commitment crime, the fact is that mainland agencies recruit Hawaii police officers
because Hawaii police- officers are unique in the sense that they often investigate a crime from start
to finish. Not all crimes go to a detective's bureau. In the mainland, most urban agencies, the patrol
officers only respond to in-progress crimes. They don't handle whatever crimes come in and
investigate it fully. If it's not occurring in progress, it goes to the detective bureau. So our officers
are very well rounded and very competent in investigating crime, and I think that that is the image
that we will put out that though we don't have a lot of major multi-homicides, thank God, our officers
are competent when it comes to investigating the crimes that we do face.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Chief?
Chief Perry: Just another comment on the first part about having too
many applicants, and again, I go back to the vicarious liability and negligent hiring. Not only is it
that we have to get the best qualified candidates, but if we don't get enough candidates to fill the
positions, that would be negligence on our part-not recruiting enough and not getting enough
candidates. So it's adouble-edged sword. Yeah, it's a hard balance to do. But as the assistant chief
said, that's a good problem if we do get it.
Ms. Yukimura: Right, and your best protection is an excellent screening
system, which I can see you putting in place. So thank you. Other questions? Councilmember
Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Forgive me if I'm being redundant, but this is an important
issue, I think, regarding, again, our union contracts, because I know there was a really strong belief
among people that whatever the governor negotiates with one other mayor is what we live with. But
that didn't happen last time, right, that Maui had a different deal. And I was assured by the
administration yesterday that that is the circumstance this time. That if the governor announces
some deal that includes administrative time off, we can go and engage with the union and see if that
works for Kauai with our budget reality, with our staffing realities. I wanted to make sure you were
aware of that and encourage you to assert that.
Ms. Yukimura: Is there a question?
Council Chair Furfaro: Let me take the floor, if I may? Just for your information, if
you weren't present yesterday, the administration answered that question that they are attempting
to have a supplemental agreement for Kauai on any master agreement. I just want to make sure
you were aware of that, and on that note, if you have anything to add to Mr. Bynum's query, please
go right ahead and do that. Okay, if not, yes, Councilwoman.
Ms. Yukimura: I just want to acknowledge that that was Councilmember
Bynum's point, and I see Chair that you're emphasizing and letting the Chief and Assistant Chief
know that that's an important option to know about. So thank you.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.22
Council Chair Furfaro: And I think that's Mr. Bynum's point that we want to make
sure that everybody is on the right track with what the administration is trying to negotiate. So I
left, we were discussing national geographic, and we are where now?
Ms. Yukimura: We're still on the... Well, I have one question myself.
Council Chair Furfaro: Why don't I do this since you were running the meeting. Why
don't I go ahead and let you have questions now.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. On your reorganization of your personnel, in order to
put into place a good system for background checks and records in evidence processing, you're not
asking for any new positions. These are just evaluating the positions you have and then
restructuring them or reframing them for your needs, is that correct?
Mr. Begley: Not at this time. At this time we're redescribing positions
and moving positions. It will be down the road that we will ask for a single new position, but we're
not at that stage right now.
Ms. Yukimura: Well I just want to commend you for that kind of approach. I
mean so often we see departments just assuming the existing structure and then coming in and
asking for new positions, and actually, our question should always be when they do, have you looked
your existing organization and have you seen if there were potential for reorganizing and
restructuring. So I just want to say that that's very commendable in terms of what you're doing.
Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: On that note, Mr. Begley, we will probably allow you to go to
Honolulu.
Mr. Begley: My flight is not for another hour.
Council Chair Furfaro: Well, you're welcome to be in the audience on an on call basis.
But I do believe that we are not going to go to the investigative service bureau next?
Chief Perry:
Patrol Services.
Council Chair Furfaro: Patrol next, okay. Very good, Chief. Thank you. Have a safe
trip to Honolulu. Let me ask B.C. B.C., are we due for a caption break? We'll go another 20 minutes
then.
ALE QUIBILAN: Good morning Chair Furfaro and Councilmembers. For the
record, Ale Quibilan, Patrol Services Bureau Commander. Just wanted to give you a brief highlight
on the patrol services bureau, our operations and what we're looking at. First of all, just the make-
up of the patrol services bureau. I am the assistant chief. I am supported by Captain Michael
Contrades as my operations officer. Our district commanders, the Hanalei district commander, I'd
like to recognize them because they do a lot of work, and they do make my job a whole lot easier, and
they're the ones who really take care the community out there. I'm just the guy who points the
direction. Hanalei District Commander Acting Lieutenant Sandy Wakumoto, Lihu`e District
Commander Acting Lieutenant Trent Shimabukuro, Waimea District Commander Lieutenant
Richard Rosa, the Traffic Safety Unit Commander Mark Scribner, and our Administrative
Lieutenant who oversees cell block, which was one of the discussions, and dispatch, Lt. Jon
Takamura. The projects, as some of these were already covered by Chief Perry, but I'd like to just
reiterate them. We're working on the relocation of the Kawaihau District from its current location at
Kapa`a Beach Park up to the Mahelona property...Mahelona Hospital property, which is a larger
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.23
area and a safer...higher ground, and not in the inundation zone. The relocation of the Waimea
Substation to its temporary site at the Waimea Dispensary, which is being overseen by the Easter
Seals Hawaii. The establishment of our alternate dispatch or communications center which will be
part of the fire department administration offices, and just to let you know that about a year and a
half to two years ago we were able to obtain a space down at the Koloa Neighborhood Center as our
Koloa mini-station or offices; it's not as large as we'd like to, but at least we have a presence of an
office down there where we can run operations from on the south shore.
The Patrol Services Bureau is broken down in operations by 10 beats. Just a brief history, in
1989, the police department created the 10th beat. 21 years later, we still have 10 beats. I just want
to make that point across, because it is a factor in some of the stats that I'll be producing or sharing
with you in the next few minutes. Our patrol services bureau officers are the first responders to
disasters in major incidents, the biggest...most recent example was the March 11 tsunami event. We
are the first ones. We're the first ones on the line and we will hold that line as long as we need to. I
want to make you aware of that, we are out there 24/7 addressing every issue as was mentioned
earlier-chasing cows to burglaries and thefts, and securing major crime scenes. In order to
continue or to operate, we need vehicles. That's one of our primary tools to keep on the road and to
stay highly visible and respond to emergencies and critical incidents. At this point, we are reducing
our fleet. This is acost-saving remedy, and it's not a whole lot, but we're trying to save money where
we can. Our current fleet was at 114 cars. Everything from the prisoner transport vehicle to a
pickup truck, and down to our last unmarked vehicle, which is the one I drive. We're reducing that
fleet by 9 vehicles to 105 vehicles. I can see that we can still maintain operations with that level,
and hopefully save the county and the department some moneys. But just to make you aware of that
we have vehicles in the fleet that as of this year, 2011, are 11 years old. Normally our vehicles are
looking at 7 to 8 years before we downgrade them to another agency or take them completely off the
line. But over the years, due to cost savings, we were asked to not purchase any vehicles, so we were
hanging on to these cars, and this year makes 11 years. We're starting to phase them out, but again,
we are going to be having cars of 10 years old. There is an item on the budget for pick-up trucks. We
feel the need for apick-up truck, and people may ask what is the reason. Again, the big example, or
the most recent example would be the tsunami event. At 8 o'clock at night through 3 o'clock in the
morning, you're trying to get public works and other support out there to start closing down roads, to
move equipment, traffic barriers. Again, we area 24/7 operations, and we can utilize those vehicles
as a primary means until more support can get to us to assist us in road closures and evacuations.
And again, over the last five years with major flooding issues from Kaloko reservoir time to the
Marriott flooding and erosion issues impacting the entire island, we find that specialty vehicle such
as a pickup truck is a major part of patrol operations.
At this time I'd like to really say that I'm very proud of the officers and commend the officers
in the patrol services bureau for what they've done. And as Chief Perry had mentioned, we issued
over 20,000 citations, and I have a chart here from 30 years in 1981 and we've never accomplished
that. And again, as I stated, we've been in 10 beat system for the last 21 years, and we've asked our
officers to continue to keep our roads safe and to take impaired drivers off the road, to slow down
vehicles, reduce fatal accidents or injury related accidents, and one of the major ways of doing that is
to get the message across is traffic enforcement. We've done that. We've asked our officers to take it
to the next level year in and year out. Over the last I would say five years, we were averaging
about 14,000 citations. And last year we kicked it up a notch, and as Chief Perry mentioned,
unfortunately, we had 10 deaths on our highways. I would say more than half, if not 75%, were
preventable, because they were inattention to their driving, something that we could not prevent
because they took their eyes off the wheel or they disregarded something out there that caused
the accident.
Besides our day-to-day operations, we continue to support both governmental and
nongovernmental agencies and organizations, such as under the state, we support the DO CARE
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.24
officers, which is the department of conservation and resource enforcement. We support department
of transportation highways, department of transportation airport division, the federal transportation
and security administration, and the state department of education with their evacuation drills that
they do annually at every school, every public school exercises those drills, and we provide support
for them.
Regarding support for other county agencies, we do support the parks and recreation,
especially park rangers, in their efforts to keep our county parks safe. They are a law enforcement
arm for the county; however, their enforcement powers are limited. We do support the department
of public works. The last major project that they had was moving some buildings to the high schools
as part of the anti-drug program, I believe. So any of the county agencies that ask us for support,
we're there for them. Some of the non-governmental agencies that we do support on an annual basis,
are charitable organizations that do their fundraising, some of them are such as the Kauai Farm
Bureau Fair, the four day event, we provide security. Kauai Hospice, during the 4th of July
celebration in the sky, we provide traffic control and security. Waimea Town Celebration, a 2-day
event with traffic control. A Taste of Hawaii, Relay for Life, American Cancer Society, and of course
you know of various parades and charity walks.
We continue to address community concerns related to criminal activities and nuisance
complaints. Some of them are wanted persons, burglaries and thefts, speeding in neighborhoods,
underage drinking, loitering and noise complaints, and illegal camping and illegal habitation. So
again, patrol services bureau, we're on the line every single day of the year, any call that's been
received, we address any call initially. If we have to hand it off to the detectives office, we will, but
we are the first ones on the line there, and we are shorthanded. Obviously, after 21 years of holding
10 beats, we are looking for an expansion. I know that's down the road some. We have already
discussed our plans for the beat expansion, the district expansions. It's going to come to a point
where the five major districts...and Ithink Councihnember Chang had a question about the
boundaries. But it's going to come to a point that the five major judicial districts, which is the
Hanalei, Kawaihau, Lihu`e, Koloa, and Waimea districts will require a district commander at that
point. We are spread thin. We have a lot of responsibilities and over the years, more and more
organizations depend on us. Because of costs for them, they really depend on us. Instead of hiring
private security, they'll depend on the police department to provide security, traffic control, and
other support. That concludes my presentation, and I'll be able to take any questions that you may
have.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. Let me surface a couple of quick
questions before I pass it on to the group. When you do reduce the fleet, do we take salvage credits
for the vehicles that you dispose of?
Mr. Quibilan: At this point, I can't answer the question. Once I pull it off
my fleet, I turn it over to the administrative and technical bureau, and from that point, I don't know
what becomes of the vehicle. If it's salvageable for auction or salvageable for another agency to
acquire, such as we've given the state sheriff cars because of their budget constraints. So again, once
I release the cars from my bureau, I don't know what becomes of them.
Council Chair Furfaro: I'll send that over as a question. That's very generous to give
it to the state sheriff, but to say I'm looking for the money so can get you a new vehicle. If we can
actually get some fee for disposing of the vehicles. But I'll send that over in a question. What is the
ideal size for the fleet? We're going down to 105?
Mr. Quibilan: Yes.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.25
Council Chair Furfaro: What is the ideal size of your fleet if they should be no
vehicles greater than let's say eight years old, then the. fleet size should be how many vehicles?
Mr. Quibilan: I believe that is our recommended fleet size at this point.
Council Chair Furfaro: The 105?
Mr. Quibilan: That's correct, sir.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. And it's safe to assume 105, and none of those vehicles
being aged more than eight years?
Mr. Quibilan: If we can rotate our vehicles after eight years that would be, I
think, an appropriate time, yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: Do you measure a second critical point as far as mileage? Is it
just eight years, or is it eight years plus 120,000 miles?
Mr. Quibilan: That's a good question. You have to understand that mileage
sometimes may not be a factor because our cars may sit idle at a...especially in like a fatal accident
scene, it will sit idle with lights on for 4 hours, and the engines are running, so wear and tear on the
vehicle, so not necessarily mileage. What I'm concerned about is engine wear, transmission wear.
So sometimes the mileage doesn't give us a good indicator of what the condition the car is in.
Council Chair Furfaro: Did you fill the vacancy in your automobile repair facility, so
that the vehicles we do have are getting regular routine repair and maintenance? Has that vacancy
been filled?
Mr. Quibilan: The fleet coordinator position...
Council Chair Furfaro: I think that's what it's called. It's been filled?
Mr. Quibilan: It's not under my position, but I can tell you it's temporarily
filled until we can find a permanent person.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. So we may still be looking for a permanent person. So
I'm assuming that we've got somebody who's getting a contract renewed for every 89 days, then they
get a day off, then we bring them back on while we're recruiting?
Mr. Quibilan: Yes sir. That position falls under the administrative and
technical bureau.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, I'll save that piece for them. And then in your view of
the staff needs, at what point do you think we'll get to a district commander? Two years from now?
Is that something next week? Where do you think you're at with that?
Mr. Quibilan: I think that once we start increasing the beat...once we start
splitting the beats and increasing them, especially in the Kawaihau and the Lihu`e districts, which is
where the most work is located, then we would need to, especially in the Kawaihau district, we'd
need to have a district commander there. Falling back on my training under incident command
system, it's a span of control, how many people can you supervise under a span of control. And I
think we're at the limit right now. So we would need to...once we start increasing our beat numbers,
we would have to add more supervisors and commanders.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.26
Council Chair Furfaro: So we're at that staffing point already?
Mr. Quibilan: Yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. Okay. Let me ask members if they have questions.
Members? Go right ahead. Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Chief, you said you're getting no new vehicles?
Mr. Quibilan: No, sir, I didn't make that statement. This year, this current
year we have 8 vehicles that's coming in; we expect them in the next 2 months. It's on lease. We've
put in for additional new vehicles for the next fiscal year's budget.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, so the 16, you're expecting 16 new vehicles...marked
vehicles for the patrol.
Mr. Quibilan: That's correct.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, and the one more question on the fleet as well. Even
though you have your fleet service person, your cars are still serviced by the auto shop, right?
Mr. Quibilan: That's correct.
Mr. Rapozo: And so the minor stuff and the routine stuff is done by your
coordinator, but the actual service, when the time comes, you still got to go wait in line like
everybody else.
Mr. Quibilan: That's correct.
Mr. Rapozo: And doesn't that cause as a problem as well? I don't say that
in any disrespect for our shop. It's just that I think our shop has enough work to do, and I've always
advocated for a separate mechanic that can do the service for our public safety vehicles. I believe the
bus has one, the bus transportation department has their own mechanic. I just think that...and I've
asked for this many, many years, that the police should have your own mechanic, so that we know
your cars are being serviced on a timely basis, and not go behind the plumbers and electricians, and
hopefully they can get to your car. I just want the council to understand that although you have"
your own coordinator, they do the tire repair, they do the minor stuff, but it's not a service...you don't
have your own servicing center?
Mr. Quibilan: No, we do not
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: I was not aware of that.
Mr. Rapozo: I think it has come up in several budgets, and I've sent over
again. I'll send it over again. I actually was in communication with (I'm not sure if Mr. Layosa is
still there.), but I asked him in prior years to submit me what it would take so that you could have,
and even if you have to share with transportation, it doesn't matter for now. We need something
that when your car needs to be serviced, it needs to be serviced. We can't wait for the mechanics to
be...okay, now you can bring your car down; not for public safety. For the reasons that you state,
when the vehicle is parked on the side of the road with the lights flashing for whatever the case is,
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.27
an accident, flooding, that engine is still running, and the odometer may not be an accurate reference
or a representation of the wear and tear of that car. So I think it's something that we've got to
explore. I'll send that over, Mr. Chair, in the form of a question. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: So noted. We'll send that question over. Councilwoman
Yukimura, then is that you Mr. Chang?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes. Thank you, Chair. On the fleet issue you're saying that
instead of maintaining 114 vehicles, you're going down to 105?
Mr. Quibilan: That's correct, ma'am.
Ms. Yukimura: And you're not asking for other than the pickup truck or
two...you're asking for one pickup truck?
Mr. Quibilan: We would like to replace two current... actually three current
pickup trucks and then add one more to the fleet. So a total of four pickup trucks.
Ms. Yukimura: And is that in the budget right now?
Mr. Quibilan: Yes, it is. Under patrol.
Council Chair Furfaro: May I ask him to summarize your question one more time. So
you have one right now.
Mr. Quibilan: Regarding pickup trucks. We have three in our fleet right
now, under patrol. One in Lihu`e district, one in Waimea, one in Hanalei. We'd like to replace those
three, because they're all about 10 years old or older already. We would like to replace the three,
and then add one to the Kawaihau district. The fourth will be to Kawaihau district.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. And so your patrol vehicles are...you're keeping up
with the patrol vehicles needed? Or you're refraining from asking for some this year out of
consideration for the budget?
Mr. Quibilan: No, ma'am. We're asking for 16 vehicles to replace cars that
are 9, 10, 11 years old this year, because we haven't bought cars in the last two years, the past two
years. So it will be a one for one exchange. We are at 105 cars. It will be a one for one exchange.
Get the old cars off the fleet and just get the new ones and maintain 105 cars.
Ms. Yukimura: And you said earlier in answer to a question by the chair that
you feel like the 105 vehicles is your sustained need? That would that meet your sustained need?
Mr. Quibilan: I believe that that would sustain us in almost any major
catastrophic incident. We can get every police car on the road if necessary.
Ms. Yukimura: And it would serve your needs on a regular basis,
non-disaster situation?
Mr. Quibilan: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.28
Council Chair Furfaro: I do think there was a second part to that question,
Councilwoman. And that is, and those 105 are all less than eight years old? That's what I thought I
heard.
Mr. Quibilan: Of the 105, we still have cars that are 9 and 10, and I believe
maybe even 11 years old.
Council Chair Furfaro: But I'm talking about the goal. At 105, you'd like all the
vehicles to be eight years or less?
Mr. Quibilan: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: So you have a fleet replacement plan that is based on 105
vehicles total that will all be within the seven to eight year age, that's your goal. And do you have a
multiyear plan for getting there?
Mr. Quibilan: Yes. We normally replace 14 cars every year. The reason
why we went to cars that's older than eight years, they're 9 and 10 years old, is because we didn't
buy 14 cars every year. If you look back in our vehicle purchases, we had years back in the
early 2000 where we did not purchase cars, but the following budget year we would buy, 18, 20, 22
cars. Well those cars are coming of age now, and we got to replace those cars. We can live with 14
every year, but to get those older cars that we bought in 2000-2001, which we bought maybe 18 or 20
cars, it will take us two fiscal years to get them off the fleet.
Ms. Yukimura: Right, so you're trying to get into a cyclical plan where if you
replace cars adequately every year, then you will achieve your goal of having a fleet that's well...that
can serve you well?
Mr. Quibilan: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: So what you're saying is, to us who fund this or make the
decisions about funding, and the mayor too, that you have this plan, and it needs to be followed?
Mr. Quibilan:
That's correct, ma'am.
Ms. Yukimura: Because when you don't follow it, then you accumulate
larger request for the next year or the next year, and that happened to the fire department too.
Mr. Quibilan:
Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: We replaced all the trucks from 1994, and then for 10 years
nothing happened, and .then all of a sudden they had this huge bill. Okay. And in terms of the
servicing, you're saying that right now with the fleet coordinator, you're not getting the timely
maintenance that you need?
Mr. Quibilan: The cars are being brought in. We have a policy in our
bureau, once that odometer reaches a certain mileage for service, it will be down and it will not
continue to run. And depending on how soon we can get the car in the shop, the car will be parked
along...on the road, because it's a violation of our policy to keep the car on the road beyond the
service mileage.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.29
Ms. Yukimura: Well, I appreciate that adherence to policy. So then my
question is are they being serviced in time so that you have the cars that you need, or there's a time
lag that is causing a problem or is soon to cause a problem.
Mr. Quibilan: I have to say there is a time lag. But our officers, they
understand that. So what happens is that if the car goes down on their first day off, and if they got
three days off, there's three days that hopefully that car will be back on the line upon their return for
their first day back the following week.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So in the future, there is a potential usefulness of
having your own mechanic, like the transportation agency has?
Mr. Quibilan:
Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. All right. And then on your deaths, the 10 deaths, how
many of those deaths were related to alcohol? If you don't have that information, would you be able
to provide it?
Mr. Quibilan: Yes. I don't have that information, but we can provide that
for you.
Ms. Yukimura:
Okay.
Chief Perry: I read each of those fatals. I would say...I have to go back
and read it again, but about 50% were alcohol related.
Ms. Yukimura: And how many involved young people?
Chief Perry: Young people meaning?
Ms. Yukimura: I guess 18 years... 25? Okay, 25 and under. Our statistician
says that's the...
Chief Perry: Off the top of my head, I know there's at least a couple. But
I'll have to go back and get that information for you, and we can do that.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, because you know, I so appreciate your recognition of
the role the police has to play in terms of citation and keeping people from speeding, but there's
other factors involved that are beyond your control, like alcohol use, and then the other would be
how roads are designed and built. We're learning that in smart growth circles that the wider
straighter roads are actually where most of the accidents happen.
Chief Perry: Sure. I think there's about 57,000 licensed drivers on Kauai
today, and of those 57,OOO...and I don't want to be the grim reaper here, but I can almost guarantee
you by the end of the year we'll have a couple of traffic fatalities. So our job is to go out there, and
that 57,000 drivers, try to identify those individuals so we can stop them from killing themselves...
Ms. Yukimura: Or others.
Chief Perry: And that's a formidable task. And we have individuals,
the 274 that we arrested, and I can guarantee that we saved some of their lives, although they don't
appreciate it, but...
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.30
Ms. Yukimura: Those who were driving under the influence?
Chief Perry: Correct. So it's a really difficult task, but again, we're out
there doing our job.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Before we go any further, we do need to take a caption break.
We're going to take a 10 minute break. -We'll go back to the Council Vice Chair Yukimura when we
come back. But we need to take 10 minutes now. Let's be punctual, and try to be back at 11:42
There being no objections, the Chair recessed the meeting at 11:32 a.m. The meeting was called
back to order at 11:47 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
Council Chair Furfaro: We're returning from recess. We have the police department
in the budget cycle here. And we left off with Councilwoman Vice Chair Yukimura having the floor,
and I'll give that back to her.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. My question is about the beats. When we create
an additional beat which looks like one person, but it's a 24/7 operation, so it actually involves how
many people?
Mr, Quibilan: To staff one beat, 24/7, allow for days off and vacation,
optimal 7 officers to staff one beat. Six minimal, you'll still run into some canceled days off when a
vacation occurs. But 7 optimum.
Ms, Yukimura: So when you're talking about new districts, we're looking at
right now we have three districts, and you mentioned going to the judicial districts which would
mean five districts?
Mr. Quibilan: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: So if you create a new district, and it has three beats, or you
could start a new district with one beat? Am I mixed up here? Maybe you can just correct...
Chief Perry: Generally how it works is you have a district, within a district
you have sectors, and within a sector you have beats. But right now our department is too small for
that, so we're looking at districts and then beats. If I were to put a number on it, it would be
between three or four beats to create a district. As we grow more and more within the district itself,
we'll have sectors, and by that, I mean if you have like about 10 beats in a district, then you separate
them, and you have this sector one, sector two. And that's basically how it works in most
departments. That's how it works in Honolulu. Districts, sectors, and then beats.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so...I mean if you were to increase beats or increase
districts...I'm just trying to understand how you would begin to do that. What would be your first
step in enlarging your coverage? It would be by creating another district?
Chief Perry: We'll create the beats first. Beats first. Then we'll take a
look at that and see whether or not we have enough on this island to create a district. But we're
already projected out to have about five districts based on staffing.
Ms. Yukimura: That's your long range?
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.31
Chief Perry: That's the long range plan for 20, 25...I think 20 to 25. So
whoever comes and takes our place and we'll be on the golf course or riding our bike, they can look at
our long range plan and just plug things in as we move forward.
Ms. Yukimura: Right. And you're, according to what you said, looking at the
planning decisions being made from the planning department and the planning commission to see
what the nature of growth will be on the island. I mean, because we are...we can go a variety of
ways in terms of how we grow. We can just keep creating Ag subdivisions that create low density
sprawl and look at what the cost of services that will be versus a more, you know, keeping most of
our population in towns and what we would call urban growth boundaries and leaving the open
space areas for basically farming.
Chief Perry: That's the larger focus on the staffing for the police
department versus the vision of planning right now.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So if you create a beat, then it's seven people
minimum. So you would add beats to the existing district right now and then later on when you get
district commanders then you'd be forming new districts?
Chief Perry: Whether we have a certain number of beats that will be
moving towards districts. We have our long term plan of the (inaudible) districts, if you look at
doubling the number of beats that we have currently, and within that expansion, we have will have
created the districts. But we have those districts designated already. As we do have all the beats
already designated. The boundaries have been put together. It's just that it hasn't been executed
yet because we don't have the staff.
Ms. Yukimura: Right. I can see the logic of really developing your
recruitment capacity, recruitment and processing and training, because the more beats you have, the
more positions you have to fill, and we're already struggling to keep existing ones filled. So you seem
to be taking the right sequence. Thank you.
Chief Perry: And this is part of assumptions that we're making on the
growth of the population and the improvement on our infrastructures, including the roadways.
Particularly the roadways, because it opens up more areas for development. So that's our long term.
We're looking at that long term.
Ms. Yukimura: Right. Well, you know, there's a real question about whether
we have moneys to really make a lot more roads. I mean, you know, just widening Wailua bridge,
although it is a bridge and therefore costs more, was 30 to $50 million for one mile. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Chief, I'm going to recognize Councilmember Rapozo, and
then Councilmember Bynum. Go ahead Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. And this is still on the subject of beats. Is there a
standard or a recommendation nationally regarding population versus beats? Does that even exist?
I don't know.
Chief Perry: Not to my knowledge, because there's too many variables.
For example, in Waikiki, you can have a beat that's maybe a block...only a block, and then in
Wahiawa, you can have a beat that encompasses several miles. So they may use a population as a
guideline, but it's not the only variable that's included in the determination on creating a beat.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.32
Mr. Rapozo: Yesterday, you know, we had some discussion with the fire
department as far as they have a national standard that says four firemen per station, and we...this
council made a commitment that hey, we're going to...we want to accomplish that 80% of the time.
The national standard is 90% of the time, but we're trying to...or the national average, but we're
trying to meet 80. For many, many, many years, and I think, Ale, you explained the years that has
gone by, we always bring up the fact that we probably need more cops on the island. Would you
agree, Chief, that we should have more beats?
Chief Perry: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: One of the things I think is going on right now is as police
work gets more dangerous, as it gets more busy, you have hotels that offer security positions, or even
fire department, because now we got eight stations. They're looking at nine...at minimum four per...
If you look at it, if you had to pick and choose, I think a lot of people are looking elsewhere because of
the risks, the dangers, and the hours, and you know, they know that there's only 10 cops on the
island. If I had to choose between playing on a football team with 8 against 11, or 11 versus 11, I'd
probably go on the one that had 11 people, because there's a much better chance of success. I have
this weird vision that if in fact we created the beats, and I'm not an expert, Chief, you are, but I'm
just saying, if we had an opportunity to say, you know, we're going to add five beats and we're going
to go on this mass recruiting effort in the next three years to get the positions required to fill the
beats, five or even 10, I don't know. I think we would get a lot more response, because now the kids
are saying wow, if we get 20 cops on the island working, at the same time, versus 10. I got to be
honest, now in my age, I think you'd got to be kind of crazy to go and take that job. And I don't say
that to reduce the recruitment, but it's the best profession in the world, I can honestly say that. But
with today's world, it's not the same world when I was a cop. It's different today.
The other night you guys had 80 or so guys fighting -down here, a bunch of drunks fighting,
and ho, two cops get to respond, and then hopefully eventually you'll get three and four. That's
not...nobody should be put in that position. And then get criticized because you tasered or you
maced somebody or pepper sprayed somebody. And the people read this in the paper and say, oh my
god, I can go work hotel, get free medical, free- dental, and I get free dinner at the cafeteria. And the
pay isn't that much less. So I guess what trying. to say is it's time I think for the county to realize
that 10 beats simply not enough. As I look at the new positions throughout the county in this
budget, there's a lot of positions being filled that I think are much less of a priority than filling beats
and putting cops on the road. And it's convenient to say, well we can't fill the position, so no sense
ask for more, but I think it's because of the structure. And if we made that commitment, we
meaning the county, not you Chief, if we as a county, this Council, made a commitment that
financially we will support your desire to move forward with 15 or 20 beats in the next five years or
whatever it is, I think then we'll start to see more interest develop, and that's just my humble
opinion from somebody that truly appreciates what you guys do with 10 beats. Ale, I think you said
it well.
Is there a cost to it? Definitely. Is there a benefit to it? Most definitely. The biggest
complaint I hear in the community is how come the cops don't come around anymore. Well maybe
it's because they're servicing 120 complaints a day, where before we serviced 40 complaints a day.
Maybe that's why they not knocking the doors, checking doors at night; maybe that's why. It's not
because they sleeping. It's because if you had 10 cops back in the 80s, and you had 10 cops today,
and you had that much crime in the 80s, and you have this much crime today, then obviously we no
more enough men and women. So anyway, just... I'll send it over again, another request that what
it would take fiscally to do a beat expansion 5 beats per year for the next three years or so, or one
beat per year, two beats per year, something that we can go out on an all-out campaign and
recruiting effort that will say help us increase the Kauai Police Department to 15 beats or 18 beats,
whatever it is. It's going to cost money, but believe me Chief, I think you folks deserve it. It's hard
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.33
for you guys to watch every other department get more people, we need more planners, we need more
firemen, we need lifeguards, we need this, we need that, and you guys sit here every year and
just...no, no, we'll make do with our 10 beats. I think it's unfair, and I think the people suffer. So I'Il
send it over as a question. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that commentary, and Chief, I just want to
make sure you understand, for the period of time that I've been on this Council, this Council has
committed to that. I think I would just like to reiterate, it starts with getting you more members of
the department on the team. It's hard to expand when we have that many vacancies. So certainly
we need to look at a recruitment plan, and actually, even a plan to re-sign those that are earmarked
to retire, you know, maybe through some incentives. But I just want to make sure you know that
Mr. Rapozo makes good points, but this Council is committed to help you get us to the right place for
the quite reasons. Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Sticking with beats, we currently have 10, right? Your chart
says you had hoped for 14 this year, or in 2010, but that didn't happen, right.
Chief Perry: Actually, we do have the beats created. We just can't staff
them.
Mr. Bynum: Right, and so you have 18 vacancies now, and so I want to
make sure that the only obstacle to this expansion is recruiting. So I'm assuming if those 18...if you
didn't have 18 vacancies, we'd see a budget with additional staffing.
Chief Perry: Absolutely
Mr. Bynum: So I just want to reiterate what the Chair said. The obstacle
is not the commitment for the resources to do it. When you're ready for the resources, I believe we'll
be here to provide them. In fact we're anxious to provide them. Regarding vehicles for a minute, you
said for two years, you didn't purchase any vehicles, right.
Chief Perry: Yes, sir.
Mr. Bynum: So this year we're back on track, and I think that's consistent
with... No, we're not back on track. But we're purchasing some vehicles in the last two budgets,
correct?
Mr. Quibilan: This current year's operating budget we are receiving eight
new cars. Now normally we like to have 14 to replace. So we are even short, although we're buying
or bringing in new cars, we are short of the 14 that we would normally want to have every year.
Mr. Bynum: Okay, I appreciate that answer, because...but there were two
years where they were zero?
Mr. Quibilan: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: And I think, you know, the mayor's budget message was that
this county moved quickly when the economic difficulties came anticipating tough years, you know,
made these cuts, vehicles is one example, positions and travel budgets. This year, even though we're
still being conservative, we're starting to say hey we...because you can't do that forever. You end up
paying a big price. The trucks you're buying, are they four wheel drive?
Mr. Quibilan: We will be requesting it to be four-wheel drive.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.34
Mr. Bynum: I would encourage you to do that I know there's been
circumstances in the past where they would have been needed. Right?
Mr. Quibilan: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: Especially when you're assisting DLNR in the coastline areas,
right. So...
Mr. Quibilan: That's correct, that and projects along the county beaches,
county parks.
Mr. Bynum: So those are my questions. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Nakamura, did you want to have some time
now or towards the end?
Ms. Nakamura: I have general questions not relating to this.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, okay. Is there anything you would like to add about
your divisions at this point?
Mr. Quibilan: Just the one more. Just a note. I asked our dispatch
supervisor Kathleen Langtad to just pull up some records over the last few years on the number of
calls for service that our dispatch received, and I asked her to just go back a few years, so just for
your information some numbers. 2005, this is not including calls requiring fire and medics, this is
strictly police service type. So 2005, we had 37,500 calls for service. Two years later 2007, 36,124.
2008, 38,500 calls for service, and last year, 2010, it jumped quite a bit to 45,531 calls for service,
again, not including fire and medic calls. So it is getting busier, and we anticipate that every year
the complaints will continue to come in. Now if we're just talking about generating report numbers
and investigations for criminal or miscellaneous calls or traffic accidents, over the years, we have
also increased that. I think last year we were at about 33,OOO...just about 33,000 of actual police
report numbers investigations being generated. So the numbers do climb, and again as I mentioned,
and that's why it's important that you know that in the 20 years we've never increased our beats, but
the calls for service has continued to increase.
Council Chair Furfaro: And it's a further compliment to the police department when
we know those statistical numbers, and yet we still have an 82% satisfaction from the citizens. I
think that's certainly is a good testimony to the police department. Thank you. Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: I did have one. I didn't realize we were ending up already
with patrol. But I did have one question, Ale, and it's more of a concern. It pertains to the cellblock
overtime. We did request, and I appreciate the quick response from your office, Chief, regarding
this. I did have it passed around to everyone, so everyone has a copy of the totals, and it has been a
concern, Obviously, I wasn't here for the last two budgets, but it was a concern prior to my last
budget here, and it still is, and I heard the Chief Begley's discussion on the filling of the positions.
But when I look at the hours and the costs, one of the concerns I have is, you know, the use of the
higher paid officers or...yeah, everybody's an officer, but the higher ranking officers for the purpose
of cellblock overtime. And if you look at...I'm sure you have it, but between sergeants and
lieutenants, you're over 2400 hours, and patrol officers just a little over 2,000 hours. And this is a
concern for me. I'm not speaking for the rest, but the bigger concern is patrol officers who have
spoke to me over the years basically saying that the weekends are basically blocked off for the higher
ranking people. That in my opinion needs to stop. We as managers got to make sure that when
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.35
we...the overtime is...we know the police department is going to have overtime, period, whether it's
vacation, sick, injury, shortages. But this is quite disturbing to see how much of the overtime hours
are being spent on the higher ranking officers. So I'm not sure if you have a comment on that or...
Mr. Quibilan: Just we've reviewed and addressed that issue in the bureau.
One of the issues that do come up is that because of our staffing shortage, officers do get their
first...sometimes two out of three days off are canceled to work, and these guys are burnt. They're
working late shifts, they're writing reports after an arrest. So some of them, I'm not going to say all
of them, but some of them do have a lot of overtime or they're just getting through a 40 hour week
or 45 hour week depending on their work schedule, and they don't want to volunteer for anymore
overtime, they don't want to get assigned to anymore overtime. That's one of the issues that I have
to deal with. What do I have to consider as far as a rest period to make sure this officer is alert and
able to get on shift for another...for a nine hour shift. That's one issue that I deal with. We had
considered adding the PSW or the cell block schedule onto the platoon schedule. If you're familiar
with the platoon schedule, it's one shift, whether it be day, evening, or midnight shift across the
island, we add cell block as beat 11. Okay we get 10 beats, the cell block becomes beat 11. Now it's
almost guaranteed, because the shortage at cell blocks that somebody is going to get their days off
canceled on top of already trying to cover 10 beats. So that was the issue that we were dealing with.
We do depend, if you look at the sergeants and the higher ranking officers, I think some of them, if
not...maybe half of them are from another bureau. Because they have more steadier schedule. They
have the weekends off, they have a Monday through Friday job, and they're willing to take the extra
hours to help us out. If that's the case, and I'm not going to turn them down to try to help me out as
far making sure my guys have their rest period at the same time. There's other issues that's
involved, but it's...but it involves some kind of risk also.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, I don't want to go there. We can definitely do that in
executive session another time. But just looking at the numbers and the individual overtimes, I
mean much like we went through public works not long ago, you know you have officers approaching
the $40,000 a year in just overtime, and I think that's a red flag. The other concern, and again, is
the safety issue as it pertains to rest periods. Because I know that there are guys out there working
doubles and taking a short break and hitting back on the street, and that's not good either. So I
don't know how to fix it. I think if you add it as a beat, yeah, maybe that will work. But maybe we
need more PSWs. Maybe we got to...you know, now that you're filled up, maybe we can...you know,
maybe you need more PSWs. But it's definitely a concern, and it's been a concern, and glad to hear
that you guys working on it. Thank you. That's all I have, Chief.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that point well made. So I would like to go on
to the next division if I can, Chief.
Chief Perry: Yes, we have the last bureau, the Investigative Bureau, by
Assistant Chief Roy Asher.
ROY ASHER: Good afternoon Chairman Furfaro and members of the
Council. My name is Roy Asher, for the record, bureau commander for the Investigative Services
Bureau. Like my counterparts, I'll start off with a quick overview of our bureau.
Council Chair Furfaro: That would be appreciated.
Mr. Asher: It's made up of mainly three sections. The first would be our
Vice Unit, vice and narcotics, and our second one is our Investigative Bureau section, which is our
general investigations. It's made up of detectives. And our third is our special focus group which is
the domestic violence, our missing persons, Internet crimes, as well as financial fraud. Included in
that third one is our DARE program and our SRO program. In regards to our budget, there's not
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.36
much change in there. We do have our. challenges like the rest of the bureaus in overtime. We've
taken steps to try to minimize that. A lot of that is driven by manpower shortages as well. Of the 13
detectives that we are allotted, I have only 11 right now; I have two vacancies. Of our vice personnel
that we are allotted, we have 12, I have six vacancies there, including one asset forfeiture sergeant.
So in totality, I have nine vacancies which equates to 9 of the 18, or 50% of the department's
shortfall is in my bureau, half of it, and which equates to 25% manpower shortage in my bureau. So
that drives a lot of my overtime as well. We've made changes in our training, overtime, ox
expenditures, I should say, in that we've recently started bringing the trainers to Kauai, rather than
having two officers ~ get the training, we've had the trainer come here. And in this last two weeks
ago, we had DNA training, as well as homicide training, which covered...we were able to get 26
officers trained in homicide and DNA. Of that...on a side note, we had 6 attendees of the 26 that
came off off-island. So we allowed three counties to come in and bring their two detectives, in
addition to our detectives, as well as our personnel in patrol to get the training. So we're kind of
moving towards that, if you notice in our budget. It's a bigger bang for the dollar.
To touch upon our vehicles, we're okay with vehicles now. We asked for two. My newest
vehicle is a '06, it's the Prius. We haven't had any purchase of vehicles for 5 years, so we're asking
for 2 to replace the older ones that we have. Any questions.
Council Chair Furfaro: First of all, I want to thank you for that quick overview. But I
would like you to expand a little more when you put your staffing shortages the way you did where
the chief is sharing with us we have 18 vacancies, but in reality, 50% of them, if I'm understanding
this correctly, are pretty much under your domain. Could you expand a little bit on what we're
doing, perhaps with...I heard something about training and so forth. But what can we do to qualify
some of the existing team to move up in your area of the department.
Mr. Asher: With the exception of our vice unit which is 6 officers, rank of
officers, the other vacancies are detectives or sergeant level. So like the Chief talked about that we'd
have to promote to fill those vacancies. As patrol has sectors, our detectives are assigned certain
sectors as well. The caseload for them is triple of what an officer handles. You have to understand
that there's three watches per sector. Well, there's one detective that covers that sector. So he does
the intake on all those cases that are referred to us. We did make a change where we've now mainly
focus on the felonies and the misdemeanors stay with patrol officers for now, and that cut down our
workload, and we can now give attention to the more serious crimes, than be overwhelmed with the
petty thefts.
Because of the shortages, our beat assignments for our detectives have gotten wider; they've
gotten more area to cover. We have tried to... we've had two specialized, one in Internet and one in
financial crimes, so that's an increase now for us. Our vice unit, we still have those shortages as
well, and their challenges now is with this medicinal marijuana problems that are cropping up for
that. That makes our enforcement efforts a little more difficult. Because before, if you could see a
marijuana plant, it's a crime in itself, but now we got to take those steps to see if there's a permit or
not. And just recently I was handed a...our vice unit served three waxrants this past week. Of the
three warrants, each had a medicinal marijuana permit there, but in each and every one, they had
more plants than they're allowed to. So it's a, from my perspective, it's just a cover to keep us away
that they have the permit, but they're growing a lot more. One of them was an indoor grow as well.
So it's a bigger problem than people realize.
Council Chair Furfaro: How is the allocation of these lesser issues to Patrol. Is that
working all right for now?
Mr. Asher; Yes, I believe so.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.37
Council Chair Furfaro: Members, any questions here
you.
Mr. Bynum, we'll start with
Mr. Bynum: If I missed this, I apologize, but currently, you have three
SROs at the high school?
Mr. Asher: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And that's an area that if we could, we would have them at
the junior high as well, right?
Mr. Asher: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: If we could staff it. And I know I told this story before. I still
feel bad, years ago, chastising the police department for not filling the junior high SROs when I was
totally out of whack about the challenges you guys are under. So I apologize for the 15th time for
that naive criticism long time ago. But I think it's a great program, and I don't need to tell you that,
so hopefully that's an area we get where we can expand that program. And I just wanted to mention,
or ask, how is the relationships that get administered by the children's justice center?
Mr. Asher: I think. it's fine. Are you referring to the forensic interviews
that we do there?
Mr. Bynum: Well, forensic interviews and also case management is part of
their goal to have police, social workers, therapists, you know, all working together as a team for the
families. You know, I do a disclosure as a director of that program for two years a number of years
ago, and I still have a big interest in it. I just want from your perspective, because those are
potentially tense relationships. People have different goals, and I think it takes an ongoing
commitment from those various agencies to value that. Is that something you value, and then from
your perspective is it working?
Mr. Asher: Definitely. I recognize-the importance, and we did have our
challenges, and we did take steps to improve that. In respect to that, we've had the case reviews; I
think you're familiar with that, where the detective will review the case with the board. We've
moved that into our building, because now our other detectives that may not be involved in that
particular case, it's easier for them to be accessible and sit in on it. So we made those changes, so
now you get a better attendance.
Mr. Bynum: I know for a police officer, time is the most valuable
commodity, and commitment to this kind of inter...takes time, and I hope that you think it's worth
the time, you know. Because it certainly serves the victim's families in particular really, really well,
in my opinion. So I just wanted to get an update on that status and appreciation that that ongoing...
You have to keep re-establishing those relationships. There's no question there's going to be flare-
ups and difficulties, right.
Mr. Asher: We've got issues in the past, because when you do a forensic
interview, you have to be certified, and many of our officers that had that training have retired or
moved on to other jobs in the department. I would be remiss not to mention that of the 11 detectives
we have, 5 of them less than three months as a detective with us. So the training is always an issue
for us.
Mr. Bynum: I'm sorry, I didn't hear the last thing you said.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.38
Mr. Asher: Of the 11 detectives we have, 5 of them are with us for the
last three months; they were just newly promoted and they come up to work in our bureau. So
they're newly detectives for us. So training is always ongoing and an issue for us.
Mr. Bynum: Right, and you know, I know that career movement in the
police department means rotate through different places. If you're the director of an agency, like
children's justice center, you get somebody good, get them trained up, and then oh, they just got
transferred, right. (Inaudible) been through this, right.
Mr. Asher: You can't deny people from moving up, you know, if they get
promoted.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you for your commitment to that program and being
willing to continue to deal with the difficulties. I hope you see the benefit for the community and for
the department. Thank you very much.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Mr: Bynum. Mr. Asher, I'm going to turn the
floor over to Vice Chair Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you Chair. Your department or division handles
burglaries and thefts?
Mr. Asher: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: So, you know, as the chief mentioned and we're all aware,
there seems to be an increase in that. I know the community is disturbed by it. What do you need
from us in terms of dealing with that, and what do you think are the causes of this increase?
Mr. Asher: For us, it comes down to manpower as far as our resources.
We have the tools; we just don't have the manpower right now to do the stakeouts and that type of
operations.
Ms. Yukimura: I know that you, and the chief mentioned a good relationship
with the Garden Island, I know that all the articles seem to include, whenever there's a disclosure
about some burglary or theft how business owners and homeowners can be part of the preventive
aspect of it, which I think is very useful. So you mentioned that training...in terms of manpower,
you have fairly new detectives. How long does a detective stay? I mean what is the average stay in
that division? A rapid rotation would be of some concern, because you have these really well trained
people over a certain period, and then they leave. And yet I guess part of your policy is that you
move officers around so they can get trained in different aspects of it?
Mr. Asher: Yes. For a detective, it's a five year rotation, but you can't
stop the promotion or the retirement. It's their right.
Ms. Yukimura: And you don't have higher steps within the detective division
to keep the expertise or the training in your division?
Mr. Asher: No.
Ms. Yukimura: That's how ali police departments work? So how do you
develop like really crackerjack expertise?
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.39
Chief Perry: Let me just add something to that. As a former detective,
when you have a case, and sometimes you may have 20 to 40 cases pending, it works on you. You're
thinking about these cases 24/7, and after so many years, you just get worn out. You get tired. And
then when you're dealing with especially assaults or abused children or you're dealing with cases of
violence, you just get worn out. So oftentimes a detective will say I've had enough, I want to transfer
out, and then the only other place to go would be administrative or patrol bureau. But that's not to
say that we've lost their expertise, because wherever they go, we can always access their abilities.
As a matter of fact, when some of our detectives have gone back to patrol and they arrive at a crime
scene, they're better able to handle it, so that when we and the detectives take over, it's a better case.
So we never lose their expertise, and actually it's augmented patrol. And just another...on this very
matter, is that patrol division, and you have to understand, I'm sure you do, that the allocation of
your resources, you have to prioritize them. And for now our priority is in patrol division. We got to
make sure that our citizens are protected immediately if there's an issue that's going on. We cannot
be running eight officers and we have 10 beats. So we have to fill the patrol division first. And of
course we're always looking at -the investigative division, but...I mean bureau, but we need to
prioritize, and the priority right now is for patrol division. And when we can, we actually take from
patrol division and we move them up to the investigative bureau, which we've done just recently.
Another area that we've done that too is in our internal affairs. We don't have an internal
affairs section. We use existing positions to create that internal affairs. So even at that, we have to
prioritize. But if you have an organization that is lacking integrity and we can't go out and service,
so that's a priority. If we don't handle the felonies, we don't solve the cases, the victims get...that's a
priority. And patrol, that's a priority. So we have...it's just a matter of little degrees that you have
to...you're actually playing like a chess game, and where it's going to be the least impact. That's real
difficult thing to do today with the lack of staffing. I know we get criticized. And I know people want
our resources. But you've got to look at it from our point of view too. We are an organization that
has to play by the rules. We have our Constitution. We have all the things that's necessary to keep
our freedom. But the crooks on the other side have no rules, none whatsoever, and if we violate
those rules, then we'll be subject to criticism. This is one organization, one department that has a
really, really tough job, and there's no other department in the county that has to deal with the
issues that we have to deal with on a daily basis.
Ms. Yukimura: And Chief, that takes such incredible leadership, and I do
want to thank you for providing that. I think we've seen major improvements since you've come
aboard, and your emphasis on integrity is so correct, because without it, you can't do...you can't
begin to do your job. You've done so much to re-establish that credibility, and as you explained the
incredible balancing act that you have to do, I think you've done your job with such creativity and
innovation and ways to maximize your resources without, you know, without being able to access
larger amounts. You've done so much to optimize what you do have. So thank you for that. Related
to that, then...
Mr. Asher: Let me take this opportunity. Last budget we had 14
opening, and now we're only 9, so it's getting better for us.
Ms. Yukimura: You had what?
Council Chair Furfaro: We had 14 vacancies, and now we are down to 9. So we're
improving the attrition, but we still want to move forward.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, and then the quality because of the integrity of your
recruitment and your training, the quality is getting better and better. So that's really good too. So
you know, I did want to ask, on your statistics regarding crime, both violent and property crime,
percentages don't tell the whole story, because Maui decreased property crime by minus .5 percent,
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.40
and we increased by 4.7%, and it still might mean that we have fewer property crimes than Maui.
So if you do have the raw numbers that would be interesting to get. And also a little bit more back,
this is 2008, 2009, so maybe from like around 2005 so we can see some trend lines. That would be
helpful.
Council Chair Furfaro: We'll send over a question asking you to show us a five year
trend line, depending on what information you have that is the most current going backwards, five
years.
Ms. Yukimura: And the numbers as well as the percentages.
Council Chair Furfaro: yes, I meant the numbers, the actual case numbers.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Oh, I apologize.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Asher, I am not sure we have any more questions for you
at this point. Chief, do you have another division to come up? Now I would like to ask the members
to keep their commentary and may I say well deserved praise to the end of the comments, because
we still have some general questions for you, Chief, and I'll start with Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you, Chair. I wanted to ask you some questions about
your strategic plan, and starting off with your goals and objectives. One of the questions has to do
with...you spoke about accreditation and the progress that you're making, and that it is a top
priority. Yet, I don't see it as one of your goals for this year, and what might be some of the
objectives that then you can measure yourself against. So, that would be a request to specify what it
is that over this next year, during this next budget year, that you would like to accomplish with
respect to accreditation.
Chief Perry: And maybe I give you just an overview of the accreditation
process. And this comes from Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, and I
just happen to have that. There's a 5-step process, and which is enrollment, self-assessment, onsite
assessment, commission review and decision, maintaining and compliance, and reaccreditation.
Each step has to be taken one at a time. Right now we understand that the department needed to be
brought up to speed in the last few years because we were way, way behind. There's a cost factor of
about $15,000 when you first enroll, and you have 36 to 24 months to complete this entire process
here. So our plan initially was to make sure that we're going in the right direction. First we had to
fix what was happening in the department, which took a while. Part of that was updating our
policies and procedures, and some were back from 1985. So right now we have dedicated Jon,
Lt. Jon Takamura is our accreditation manager, and we will have aself-assessment. But what I
don't what to do is to start the clock ticking right away. I want to make sure that we're heading the
right direction before we plop down $15,000. So more than likely we're looking at the next budget,
the 2012 and 2013 budget for the 15 grand, because we're going to do aself-assessment, we having
somebody come down to look at the department, do aself-assessment, take care of as much as we
can, and then say boom, here's our application, now the time starts. We don't want to do that
prematurely.
Ms. Nakamura: So the objective can be, under accreditation, is to lay the
foundation for initiating the accreditation process. But that would be your goal for this...an objective
for this year.
Chief Perry: That's what we're doing right now.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.41
Ms. Nakamura: That's fine, okay. Another one is in the area... This is to
follow up on Chair Furfaro's comment about succession planning, and we talked about...talked to the
personnel department yesterday about this, and pretty much they said they're leaving it up to each
department to do their own succession planning, and the concern is that, I think I read in your
report that you have 15 people eligible for retirement. Six might actually retire, and you may bring
up nine, you know, bring in nine new recruits. So, it doesn't seem like there's going to be movement
to.,.you know, to actually get ahead, Seems like with the retirements and then hiring, you know, it's
a status quo situation, And without... and yet your goal here is to try to get 10 recruits this year,
which is a great goal to have. But it doesn't...with the retirements happening, it doesn't seem like
we're going to get to where we need to be. And, so, I'm just wondering, you know, whether with the
goals that you have, what are we actually achieving. So, I guess it's a concern. I'm sure you...
Chief Perry: Well, what we actually are achieving? Well, actually, we're
just...hope we don't go backwards.
Ms. Nakamura: Yeah, yeah.
Chief Perry: And that's where we are right now. Until there comes a time
when we can put all of the elements in place, for example, what A.C. Begley talked about, getting
background checkers and also being able to bring more people in with the psg. Once that starts
going, hopefully we'll get more people. But right now we just don't want to go the other way. And
it's difficult enough just to stay status quo. You know, we brought in 26 people in the last three
years. When I came aboard, we had 30 vacancies, and we brought 26 people, yet we still have 18.
And it's very difficult to move forward when you're just making ends meet right now. No matter,
and we've been trying very hard, but it's the way things are. We're not giving up, of course. But I
can see where you're coming from on your concern.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay, another area, you know, we met with the prosecutor's
office about a month ago talking about the coordination between police and prosecutors. You know,
we have data here on the number of crimes committed and so forth, but what we don't have is of
those crimes committed, how many resulted in convictions, and she talked about the need to do
better coordination or computers talking to each other to make sure that we have the data so that
when she goes out for grants, and probably for you, too, that you have solid data, then, to use to
make your case. So, that was another area that I wanted to get your response on.
Chief Perry: Well, our coordination with the prosecutors, at first it
was...as you all know, it was a little bit tenuous. Because we look at our job and her job as...while
there should be a nexus, we have different standards of proof. For us it's.-..for her, she is beyond a
reasonable doubt, which is the prosecutor's office. For us when we make an arrest, it's for probable
cause. And if we didn't have the ability to take somebody off the street or arrest them for probable
cause, then...and it was only beyond a reasonable doubt, if you look at 100%, 95 to 98% would be
beyond a reasonable doubt, probable cause would be more than 50%. But the way we control the
streets is the way we are able to address those situations is by arresting people or bringing people in
based on probable cause. But the prosecutor's office has a different standard. So in many occasions
when we arrest somebody on probable cause and we are keeping to the mandates of a statute, by
statutes we can do that. But for the prosecutors, if they cannot prove the case beyond a reasonable
doubt, then they will decline the case, and it won't get prosecuted. So, that's the difference between
the prosecutor and the police department. And that's where we had some issues. But right now..,in
fact, over the last few years...in fact in the Iast year, we've been coordinating and we've been having
meetings on a daily basis. We need to improve our RMS systems so that we can integrate...interface,
interface better. And hopefully with a new next generation CAD system and RMS system, we'll be
able to do that. It's been an ongoing issue, but we're getting better at it.
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.42
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. Also, you had mentioned the opening of the KPAL
youth center. That was pretty much a goal completed this year. So, if we're looking at next year, I
was just wondering what...and I know that the programs are up and running, being offered to, you
know, the youth of all ages. So, I was just wondering for this next fiscal year, what is your...what are
the department goals with respect to these types of prevention programs?
Chief Perry: Increasing the attendance, having more children involved,
maybe looking at different types of activities.
Ms. Nakamura: I think if we could articulate that in the plan, then that would
be really helpful.
Chief Perry: Okay.
Ms. Nakamura: Also, the Mahelona substation facility, I just...I noticed you
laid out some of the key steps in here, and I just wanted to make sure that there's coordination with
planning department for all the different types of land use permits that may be required for this
project. And that's a concern. Wanted to ask, and I can send this over as a question, thanks for your
help with the neighborhood security watch information that you sent over, I wanted to get an idea of
how many secured neighborhood security watches there are and whether you have any goals for next
year about expansion. And just going back to your budget, the biggest increase that I saw between
last year and this year's was on the other post-employment benefits increasing from 3.5 million up to
almost four point...almost 6...5 million. So you know, it went over a $1 million increase, even
though the salaries haven't increased very much, so I just wanted to ask you about that.
Chief Perry: I'm going to ask...that's beyond my range of expertise. I'm
going to have to depend on the county to explain that.
Ms. Nakamura: All right, thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Is Mr. Rezentes here? Okay, we'll have to send that question.
But I had that question, too, so, thank you for asking it. Anything else, Councilmember Nakamura?
Anything else, members? Councilmember Bynum?
Mr. Bynum: This is wrap up, right, for the police department?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, it is.
Mr. Bynum: Chief, thanks for the presentation today. I just want to tell
you, I look at the back of the room, I know all these guys, I trust these guys. You know, I've been
here...this is my fifth budget. I'm really pleased about the direction and the expertise the police
department is, from my perspective anyway, and I'm hearing that in the general public as well. I'm
just really pleased. And I appreciate, you know, how straightforward you are in your comments, it's
like hey, we're just hoping to not go backwards. The numbers show since you've been Chief we
haven't gone backwards. We've actually picked up some ground. You know, but that's the ongoing
concern ever since I've been involved in the county. And so, it focuses on a discussion we have every
year about retention, you know, and I appreciated in your thing that there was this, and we talked
about is there incentives, because I also think about Wes and Scott and Vernon. It's like, hey those
guys are my age. I wish they were still on the force, and I could keep going down a longer list, right?
We talk about this, is there an incentive? I really would like to explore that this year. I mean, could
we offer a bonus? Could we offer higher pay if you sign up for athree-year contract and get that
high-3 better? I don't know. I'm going to ask the county attorney these kind of questions, you know.
Could we? Because we have that frustration, and my assumption is, and you said, I think Roy said,
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.43
we have this many detectives and a significant percentage were there three months, or three or four
months. There's also this expertise that we're losing. So, even though you're staying, you know,
you're holding the line, you're losing senior people that, you know... Glenn is another name. I miss
Glenn. You know, is there any specific proposals about retention that you're aware of or incentives
that we could offer and make it attractive for some of these officers to stay beyond their scheduled
retirement?
Chief Perry: Right now we do not have...none. Just the pride of helping
the community and being here for others that are in need, but that's something we should explore
and we can explore and we will explore.
Mr. Bynum: I appreciate that and I know it is... I mean you said earlier
and it's just for absolutely true, nobody, no county employees face the kind of challenges your
employees face every day. And, so, I'm very appreciative of the people you have and their dedication
and professionalism. Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Any other comments or questions? I guess that
brings us to a close... Oh, Councilmember Chang? No. We're going to come to a close. So, yes. If
you want comments, you...
Mr. Chang: I just want to comment, you know, earlier we talked about
traffic patrol, and there were 10 deaths last year and 3, sadly, you know hopefully none other, but
maybe you can also, you know, in another just for our information, you know, when somebody dies,
there's always somebody else in the car or somebody else in the other car or other multiple vehicles
or what have you. So, you know, we might think about the deaths, but there are so many people that
get really, really, really hurt, I mean, like beat up. And it takes sometimes years to recover. So, I
think that's a really important step also. So, we can get the magnitude about how severe an accident
is and that's a multiplying effect. The only other thing that I would like to say is discussing the
vehicles and the wear and tear, I know years and years and years ago, and we can touch base...I
remember when the community college used to take in cars so the students would just use the cars
as guinea pigs, for example, an oil filter, or pumps or brakes or what have you. So, maybe that
might be a nice way to explore if there is a vehicle that's going to be momentarily out of service,
maybe the instructors can teach the kids and the kids can get them online, and it can be a
community service project or what have you. Because the KCC automotive department is an
excellent automotive department with great instructors. So, maybe that might be a project that they
could do. And it's a great community service. Something that you may have to wait in line with
other vehicles, maybe we can slide in or be a part of that. So, that might be a good...
Chief Perry: That's something we can explore. That's a good idea.
Mr. Chang: Thank you Vice Chair.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, and I'll hand it back to the Chair.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. Are there any other questions? We're
rolling up here. Chief, I would like to give you...you've had a couple other administrative changes in
your department...a Ms. Arruda here?
Chief Perry: Yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: Do you want to tell us? I believe she's your new fiscal officer.
Chief Perry: Yes. Do you want her to come up?
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.44
Council Chair Furfaro
Chief Perry:
DAURICE ARRUDA:
Council Chair Furfaro:
your role at the police department.
Ms. Arruda:
last May.
Yes, if she could.
Daurice.
Good afternoon.
First of all, I'm going to ask you to introduce yourself and
Daurice Arruda, fiscal officer for the police department since
Council Chair Furfaro: I just want to say thank you very much for stepping up to the
plate. We've had some retirements, natural attrition there. I just want to tell you Chief, how
impressed I am with the seven months the financial detail there. I mean, for me to scrutinize the
detail and only have the one question about workers' comp and the unemployment issue, perhaps it's
something we can get back to. But I just want to thank you for all your assistance with one of the
larger departments. Good job, good job, good job.
Ms. Arruda: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Good job. And, Chief, I want to say the same to you. Great
job. I think our community is very fortunate to have you leading our police department. I think you
share our common concerns, but I think you also acknowledge the report and support that you can
see in numbers, details, data, and great job. And, so, we'll be sending over some questions, but we'll
have no call-back for the police department at this time. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone
that's here.
We are not adjourning at the moment because we made some changes in the schedule. I'm
going to ask Mr. Watanabe to come up on behalf of the Council. This will only take a moment.
Thank you for extending the time today. Mr. Watanabe. Bye everyone, thank you. As I would like
to make note, we have several things going on at the same time today, including the fact that our
county clerk is out complying with the needs on the credentials report so we can swear in the sixth
member today. And it is at my request that we pay attention to getting those things done for
our 4:30 special meeting. And I'm requesting that the council review now be moved instead of one
o'clock today, be moved until 1 o'clock on April 19th from 1:00 to 3:00.
Mr. Watanabe: That will work.
Council Chair Furfaro: That will work for you and the department?
Mr. Watanabe: Yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. Thank you very much. You've got to introduce yourself
at least.
Mr. Watanabe: Ricky Watanabe, Council Services Administrator.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. and on that note, we're on break...oh,
did you have a question?
Ms. Yukimura: Well just...we still have the auditor or not?
April 12, 2011
Police Department p.45
Council Chair Furfaro: No, we have the auditor,
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so that's at 2:30 yet, Chair?
Council Chair Furfaro: At 2:30 with the auditor. We're going to take a recess right
now and move the county clerk to April 19. So, on April 19 we have liquor commission at 9 in the
morning, prosecutor's office at 10 to 12, and then we break for lunch and we have our own
department at 1 o'clock. That's what it looks like now. Can I confirm that with a just an
acknowledgment? Okay, we are on recess for lunch unti12:30.
There being no objections, the Chair recessed the budget reviews at 12:50 p.m.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.l
The Departmental Budget Reviews reconvened at 2:20 p.m. and proceeded as follows:
OFFICE OF THE COUNTY AUDITOR
Council Chair Furfaro: Aloha. We're back from our recess for lunch on our budget
review. Next office will be the office of the county attorney... What did I say? I elevated you. I'm
sorry. The county auditor.
Mr. Bynum: Or demoted.
Council Chair Furfaro: I don't know. Seeing your choice of a background piece here,
it's a very high waterfall. Don't want to be...don't want to be jumping off of that. The floor is yours.
Please introduce yourself and your department.
ERNESTO PASION: Good afternoon, Council Chair Furfaro and members of the
county council. For the record my name is Ernesto Pasion, County Auditor. I would like to introduce
a member of my audit team, Ron Rawls, who will be presenting to you a little background about our
office, the work that is being done or is in progress in our budget highlights. Ron is an Oregon-
licensed CPA and comes to us with more than 30 years of auditing experience. His experience
includes 16 years in government auditing and 15 years private industry auditing positions. Ron has
been actively involved in professional peer review .activities. He served as a member of the Oregon
board of accountancy's quality review committee for seven years, and also as a quality assurance
review team member for the national state auditors association. On the private industry side, he
has often been selected by the institute of internal auditors to participate on quality assurance
review teams for internal audit departments in the health care industry. I believe his selection to
the quality review teams in government and private industry is testament to his knowledge of
auditing standards and procedures. At this time I would like to yield the floor to Ron.
RON RAWLS: Thank you, Ernie. For the record, my name is Ron Rawls,
and I'm an auditor with the county auditor's office.
Council Chair Furfaro: Do you want a chair next to you, Ron, so you can put
things on?
Mr. Rawls: I think I'm okay. I'd like to begin with a brief overview of the
mission of our office. And again just briefly, the mission of the county auditor's office is to provide
independent evaluations and analyses of county operations and to be a catalyst for improving county
government. The results of a recent national...nationwide survey indicated that public levels of
dissatisfaction and distrust of government spending practices crossed every geographic,
demographic, and political group. Of special note is the finding that there still remains a 67% point
gap that exists between what taxpayers expect and what their government...expect from the
government and what they actually receive. Government must respond to the public view that being
open and honest in spending practices is vitally important. We believe that audit offices such as ours
have been established by the voters in part so that we can take a lead role in promoting increased
government accountability and transparency.
Some benefits of audits. Government audits provide independent fact based information and
assessments to the public and govexnment leaders regarding the cost and efficiency of govexnment
operations, as well as the effectiveness of government programs. Audits often lead to
recommendations to increase accountability. Performance audits also often lead to recommendations
which are intended to result in cost savings, more efficient operations, increased revenues, and
improvements in internal controls, such as controls designed to safeguard government assets against
loss from theft or misappropriation. In addition to how programs are carried out and how money is
spent, efficiency and effectiveness audits can also address whether citizens can find the right service,
know where to call, whether .the county responds or at least whether the county responds in a way
that meets the citizens' needs or whether the county responds in a way that is respectful. I'd like to
point out that we use citizen-based criteria in our audits. That is, we audit from a citizens' point of
view. Our audit reports are designed to provide plain language information regarding what we did
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.2
and what we found. The Kauai County Charter requires that audits...that our audits be conducted
in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. I think it's important to note
that all other state and county audit offices in the state of Hawaii are also required to follow the
same standards.
Government auditing standards axe set by the comptroller general of the United States of
America through the government accountability office, otherwise known as the GAO. The GAO
publishes the standards in the yellow paperback book, which is commonly known as the yellow book.
The professional standards in the yellow book provide a framework for performing high quality audit
work with competency, integrity, and objectivity. Yellow book standards establish the levels of
evidence needed to support audit findings and conclusions. Yellow book also mandates quality
control measures for audit work. Yellow book also establishes ethical standard for auditors and sets
continuing education requirements. Finally, the yellow book requires that the county government
organization provide the auditors with access to information and sufficient independence to make
certain that audit findings are complete, accurate, and free from external influences.
We believe that most county employees are hard working employees who are conscientious
about doing the right thing. Employees often know what systems, resources, and directions are
needed to improve government efficiency and effectiveness, and they are often a source of
information or suggestions for improving operations. In fact, we anticipate that information and
suggestions from some of these employees will influence the development of recommendations or
improvements in county operations that will appear in our audit reports. We are pleased to report
that during audit fieldwork this year, we have been positively received by employees who have been
interviewed. During my careex, I have conducted audits on a wide variety of organizations including
many government agencies and programs. It has been my experience that audits often lead to
positive results for all organizations whether in government or in the private sector including for-
profit and not for profit organizations. I have found that my experience auditing on Kauai is no
different. Based on our audit work to date, we expect our audit reports to include recommendations
that will help the county reduce costs in excess of $1.3 million annually.
Let me provide some examples. One audit we are doing studies whether the county
implemented the cost control commission's recommendations for energy savings. This audit also
evaluates the county's energy management strategy. The final report for this audit will identify
actions that the county could take to save up to $1.3 million annually in energy costs. Another audit
examines whether fuel purchased by the county is accounted for and used for valid county business
purposes. While conducting this audit, we found opportunities to strengthen controls over fuel
dispensed through the gasboy system. We also found opportunities to provide incentives for fuel
conservation, as well as opportunities to better ensure compliance with certain state laws and
federal regulations.
Our capital project implementation audit includes an assessment whether best practices
were followed in building the Kaiakea fire station and in the county's road maintenance program.
We expect this audit will include recommendations for decreasing risks in building construction and
road repair projects. Our 2010-2011 audit work plan was an ambitious one. Our goal was to
complete at least three to five audits during the fiscal year, and we are on schedule to achieve that
goal. More specifically, the audit report draft for our energy audit is currently being reviewed by the
auditee, the mayor's office. We expect that the final report will be issued in May. With respect to
the audit of fuel costs, the majority of audit fieldwork has been completed and we expect to issue a
draft report before June. Finally, regarding our capital projects implementation audit, an initial
draft report for the audit of the Kaiakea fire station and the construction project and the county's
road maintenance program is currently being prepared, and we expect the draft report will be issued
to the auditee in June.
While we are conducting these audits this year, we were also able to complete other projects
that were included in our 2010-2011 work plan. Some of the projects that are either complete or are
on schedule are the following: one, the annual financial statement audit for the county's
comprehensive financial audit report. This audit was completed by R.C. Holsinger and Associates,
an independent CPA firm. The final report was issued in December 2010. We completed apre-audit
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.3
assessment of the feasibility of consolidating personnel functions. This assessment was finalized and
submitted in January 2011. We also completed apre-audit assessment of the financial results of the
furlough program. This assessment was also completed in January 2011. This pre-audit assessment
showed that a full audit of the furlough program was feasible and in the public interest.
Accordingly, fieldwork for this audit has begun. Another project that is nearly complete is the
auditor's report to citizens. This is a plain language summary of the voluminous comprehensive
annual financial report, and we expect to issue this report shortly to provide citizens with a less
complicated description of some of the key county financial indicators. Finally, under the county
charter, the county auditor is responsible for procuring the services of an independent CPA firm to
conduct the annual financial statement audit for the county. We are in the process of procuring a
CPA firm for this service. in particular, an rfp has been issued and bids are due by Apri121. We are
happy to report that we have experienced significantly more interest in this procurement than in
prior years, and we hope that this will translate to achieving some...receiving some very
competitive bids.
Our overall...our proposed overall budget for the fiscal year 2011-12 remains substantially
the same as the adjusted budget for the current year. And we would like to note that we made an
effort to maintain our overall level of spending at amounts equal to or less than the previous year.
Some differences occurred as follows: consultant services decreased by about $297,000. Fluctuations
in this line item are normal as the funds needed for consultant services will vary from year to year,
depending on the technical support needed for the audits included in our audit work plan. The
salary and benefits line items increased from the adjusted budget for the current fiscal year. This
increase was primarily attributable to increases in fringe benefit costs assessed by the finance
department, as well as the need to fund the salaries of...for two support staff positions for one full
year instead of five months as was the case for the 2010-2011 fiscal year.
For the upcoming year, the funding for our office will be used to complete another 3 to 5
audits. As we have done this year, we will also oversee the annual financial statement audit for the
fiscal year ending June 30, 2011, and we will produce a report to the citizens for 2011 which will
present the highlights of the next financial statement audit in a concise, easy to read .and
understand format. Some of our planned audits for 2011-2012 will be carry over audits. That is,
these audits were proposed in the current year work plan and are being carried over to the next
year's work plan. The first carry over audit is an audit of the county's budget process which will
include a review and evaluation of the ways in which the county proposes and sets budgets. This
audit will also include a comparison of county budget practices against nationally recognized best
practices for budgeting as established by the government finance officers association. The second
and third audits will examine programs implemented by the county to reduce personnel costs;
namely, the furlough program and the partial hiring freeze program. These audits will assess the
objectives of these programs as well as whether the objectives were met. These audits will also
include independent calculations of the extent to which savings were achieved and the financial
impacts of the programs on county finances including county revenues. The fourth carry over audit
project is a pre-audit assessment of the county's enforcement practices in the areas of planning and
permitting. The pre...this pre-audit assessment is a study...is a review and plan...is a study to
review and plan how such an audit could be done effectively and efficiently. If the results of the
pre-audit assessment are positive, the project will be converted to a full audit and fieldwork will
begin in the 2011-2012 fiscal year.
With respect to initiatives for the upcoming year, we are currently evaluating potential
audits for inclusion in the 2011-2012 annual audit work plan. This work plan will present...will be
presented to you, the council, in June 2011 in accordance with the county charter. Some possible
audit topics currently under review include cash management practices and controls, overtime
policies and expenses, travel policies and expenses, take-home vehicle policies and expenses, board
and commission support and management, IT security controls and work load management, large
sole-source emergency and exempt procurements, selected special funds and the departments
supported by these funds, county recruitment qualification and hiring practices, and county
procedure...procurement practices. This concludes my portion of the audit presentation, and I'd like
to turn it back over to Ernie.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.4
Council Chair Furfaro: Why don't both of you stay there for a Q&A. Ernie, shall we
turn the lights back on? Is your PowerPoint presentation done?
Mr. Pasion: Yes, we're done.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, let's get the lights back on. Can you provide them with
a copy of how all of the other departments gave us their goals, missions, and so forth? I would like
you to turn this PowerPoint into a presentation that we're using for all departments. If you could do
that, you know, certainly before the fourth of May when we are going to go into our final session. I'd
like to use that format. You have all the materials here.
Mr. Pasion: Okay.
Council Chair Furfaro: Yours are just enhanced by a number of pictures.
Mr. Pasion: Okay.
Council Chair Furfaro: I would start before I turn over this portion by asking you, do
you have anything else to add, Mr. Pasion?
Mr. Pasion: Yes, I would like to thank Ron for presenting the highlights of
our audit budget and programs. Before we entertain any questions, if you have interest or concerns
for us to audit, we welcome suggestions through resolutions from the council. I have read the agenda
of the state ways and means committee and 7 of 14 agenda items request the state auditor to audit
several agencies of the state. Similarly, one of four agenda item of the house finance committee
deals with a request for an audit. So, it's covered in the charter that the council has the authority to
pass resolutions to submit audit...to suggest for us to audit any interest that you have on the
county's operations. So, I would like to just mention that to you. And now we're ready for questions.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. Thank you again for doing that. I want to reinforce
that very different in our structure where the Chairman the Council may direct and assign
particulars to the county clerk. For the audit reporting to the body, it is exactly that. You report to
the body. Any special programs, any requests from us to add or delete to your audit requirement,
that discussion comes up as an agenda item with the approval of the entire body. Then and only
then would Isign-off as the county chair. There are a couple pieces I do want to share with you that
we need to go back and address. First of all, I'd like to get your PowerPoint presentation into the
goals objectives that we've identified for the other committees. And we will have one of our staff
members get that information for the conversion. I want to bring up two disappointments first that I
just want to reintroduce to you here, because I thought we had an understanding, but I didn't see it
in your presentation. Approximately eight weeks ago we agreed that within asix-month period you
would provide for the council an audit manual. I don't see it here. Can you tell us where you're at
with the audit manual?
Mr. Pasion: As we speak, it is in progress.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. So, you do feel that we're going to be on target?
Mr. Pasion: Yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. And I would...I would make that
adjustment in your presentation. I think it is a very important part for us to understand. The other
particular piece I want to share with you is on the yellow book standards, that is not mandated by
law, but this is suggested best practices.
Mr. Pasion: It's a requirement for us to follow.
Council Chair Furfaro: That's right, is the best practice.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.5
Mr. Pasion: And, as a matter of fact, it is reflected in our county charter.
It's just like another law that we have to conform. We have public law for federal. We have HRS
and administrative rules for state. And for us, we have the yellow book.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. And for the county of Kauai, we have chapter 32,
which references...and I'll have more discussion as we go-along here. We have the county auditors
which indicates that I can appoint a single member of the county council, I would think preferably
the finance chair, for the purposes of heading up a committee for an audit. And that committee is
headed, let's say, by Mr. Bynum. And the council can then appoint up to four citizens to sit on an
audit committee. And it's very clear through here, and to me, this is the first step that we need to go
to when we get your audit manual so that we can identify people in the public who bring these best
practices to the table to be considered. Because under that same section, that is where your
subpoena power comes from and so forth for conducting, you know, any investigations dealing with
findings. So, I would like us to revisit article 32 of the county charter. And I think we should be
visiting this committee before we try to accomplish all the best practices outlined in the yellow book
piece. That is my recommendation as Council Chairman. It is pretty thorough here and makes, you
know, the powers, duties, and the functions of that committee very clear under a single Chairman
from the committee...I mean, from the council, who heads what would be a citizens committee to
review the plans and actions and so forth. So, if we could take some time to do that, I would
certainly appreciate that. I'm going to pass my charter in that section on to Mr. Bynum who is our
finance chair, because I think it would be important for us, first, to have an audit committee clearly
made up of people in the community that bring financial understanding to the table. I would Iike
also to ask you, have you been able to fill all your positions at this time?
Mr. Pasion: No, Chair. We have received several resumes and we are in
the process of evaluating their qualifications. We would like to get somebody that would be a fit to
our... into our operations.
Council Chair Furfaro: Understood, understood. So, currently you still have the one
vacancy in your department. And I want to let you know, I appreciate the fact that your actual
budget presentation on payroll and so forth, you're really indicating that your budget will pretty
much remain close to what you submitted earlier. And I just want to say that's very much
appreciated that the audit department is setting the standard on any growth in an operating budget.
So, on that note, I will open the questions for Councilmembers. Mr. Chang.
Mr. Chang: Thank you, Chairman. I just have one question for
clarification. Under audit manager, what does unclassified mean?
Mr. Pasion: That is a personnel department term for that position. When
you establish a position, they are either assign a number or...they have a number, but they also have
a designation of whatever. It's coming. That question should be asked of the personnel department
rather than us.
Council Chair Furfaro:
Mr. Chang:
Mr. Pasion:
Council Chair Furfaro:
Mr. Pasion:
Council Chair Furfaro:
Mr. Rapozo:
Council Chair Furfaro:
Are you fine with that?
I didn't understand that.
We'll get the information for you.
Okay. You'll submit that information for him?
Right.
Thank you. Okay. Mr. Rapozo?
Can we go to another topic?
Yes.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.6
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you for the presentation, and it sounds like you guys
are pretty busy. I just had one question going forward, and it's page 5 on your slide, "other work
plans...other work plan items completed were on schedule." Obviously the financial audit is a
requirement. The pre-audits that you talk about, are those initiated out of the council? I was not
here in the last term, so I'm not sure. Was that council initiated or was that your office initiated?
Mr. Pasion: The second item, there, the pre-audit of consolidated and
personnel functions that has been completed was a request coming out of the cost. control
commission.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. And then the furlough?
Mr. Pasion: That was initiated by me and my office.
Mr. Rapozo: And then the report to citizens, that's something that's
required?
Mr. Pasion: That is...we are a member of the association of government
accountants, and what they have done is they have developed afour-page report that summarizes
the CAFR so that it would be...so that the general public would be able to understand the operations
of the county, where they got their funds and where they use their funds and things like that.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, and then just to expand on the furlough audit, that's
going on right now? I see the pre-audit was completed.
Mr. Pasion: Yes, it's going on right now. And we had a meeting with the
director of finance and his staff, the new IT manager, and we has a representative from the county
attorney's office. And, so, their concerns were addressed. And, so, an IT security agreement is now
in transit from North Carolina where we have the...where our consultant is situated. The
consultant, by the way, is the same consultant that the county used for the FLSA cases.
Mr. Rapozo: I guess my concern is if in fact that... I would assume that
request or that audit was initiated at the time the county was going through the furlough?
Mr. Pasion. That is correct.
Mr. Rapozo: And now that the furloughs are done and over with, is that
still a priority and is that something we should be...
Mr. Pasion: That's the time to do an audit because then you have to find
out, you know, what were accomplished.
Mr. Rapozo: Understand, but I don't know how much resources is being
taken up in your office with this audit; I don't. I think just from the few discussions we've had in the
last few days, I think it's clear that there was...just not real sure that it was a positive result, the
furloughs. But having said that, I'm just thinking, is it, in fact, worth our energy and our resources
to continue being that the furloughs are done? And I'll use this analogy, because it's a true one that
happened to me when I was younger. I had a little hot rod and somebody told me, hey, Mel, go put
on these headers on your car, it will save you money, it will save gas, and it will sound a lot better.
So I put these headers on...my neighbor uncle put the headers on, and after about six months I
realize, you know what, the thing eats more gas, it did make more noise, but it really didn't save any
gas. So, I took the headers out and I put the old stock exhaust pipes back. And I'm thinking...and I
use that analogy because I didn't spend any resource trying to figure out why the headers didn't
work because there were other things I could spend my money on. If I had money of course I'd go
find out, and that's kind of where I'm leaning on this is, if in fact it's done, the furloughs are over, is
it really worth pursuing, in your opinion?
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.7
Mr. Pasion: Well, I'm sorry to say, councilmember, but your analogy is not
appropriate for this because your converting your hot rod into whatever it was, was not scientific
based. Before the county went into a furlough, we did some research and we found the University of
Berkeley Report and the furlough of the state of California, and we said wow, we're going to
furlough. Did we do any studies on what the impact or the effect of the furlough on the community
and the employees of the county? I don't think so. That's the reason why. Because we have to do
this, because what happens if we going to go into furlough again? At least we will have the basis.
Mr. Rapozo: I just wanted to know what your opinion was, because I think
the benefit or the result of the audit, regardless if it said we lost money or we...I mean, is it
something that we really need to know? I think...I think, for me, I don't think we saved any money,
but that's just my opinion based on talking to department heads.
Mr. Pasion: Well, exactly. That's the reason why we should have it. It's
in the records. If the administration wants to go into a furlough again, at least they'll have to look at
history to have a better plan of doing the furlough, you know, in the future.
Mr. Rapozo: I just question your...
Mr. Pasion: History is a guide for us...
Mr. Rapozo: Understood.
Mr. Pasion ...for future actions.
Mr. Rapozo: I think we all learned...
Mr. Pasion: And that's what audit is all about.
Mr. Rapozo; Okay, that's fine. I just wanted your professional opinion and
I got it. Thank you.
Mr. Pasion: You're welcome.
Council Chair Furfaro: I would like to also ask the staff if they could, because we
have three members that were not on the council when we approved your audit plan, so I'm going to
get a copy of it redistributed to them. I also want to point out that you're required to submit the
action plan to the council each year for our approval. Once it is approved, any additions or deletions
do need to come back to the whole body so we can determine if we need to adjust any funding for you
and so on.
Mr. Pasion: Well, chair, the audit workplan is presented to the council not
for approval. It's presented to inform the council because of our independence. We are an
independent body attached to your office...
Council Chair Furfaro: And again, I want it restate so you heard me clearly, the plan
was submitted to this council, aye or nay?
Mr. Pasion: It was submitted to the council for information only.
Council Chair Furfaro: And once we move forward on that, any variations require
you to come back to the council. That's my statement. Any additions to your plan once it was
submitted requires you to come back to the council.
Mr. Pasion: Any amendments to that work plan, chair, we would...my
office is required to provide an amended version of that audit plan, not for approval again, but for
information purposes only.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.8
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. I'm going to record that. The next time you submit an
amendment and you need more money, you do not have the control of the purse strings to change
that. That requires approval, and that was my comment. You submit your initial plan. It's
accepted. That's what you're going to do in a work plan. Two months into the year, one of the
councilmembers asks for work to be done, which is not in your budget. That variance requires us to
hear from you. And if you need additional funds, that's when we give it to you. Okay? And, so, I'll
be glad to meet with you afterwards if we're not clear that, you know, we just can't add work. You
just can't add work without having the appropriate funds approved to do the work. So, I just want to
make clear that a modification to your plan requires submission to us. And at that time, if you need
additional funds, it comes from that expanded work.
Mr. Pasion: What we have...you know, some citizens from the public, you
know, have been trying to get in touch with us on some of their concerns. And what we have
suggested to them is that they should work with their Councilmembers because they represent them.
And if they agree on some of the ones that they have concerns with, then that would be a basis for
the Councilmembers to pass a resolution. And by having that resolution coming from the council,
then the appropriate funding will be provided.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, so thank you for what you said the council can act on.
And based on that, I'm going to say once you submit your plan, there's no variations. Because what I
just told you is you want to initiate something new, you have to come to us, we modify it with a
resolution, and we approve funds to do it. I am not going to recognize you at the moment until I get
my point clear. If citizens want to petition for additional audit functions that may require additional
money that's not in your approved budget, I would prefer it comes from you. You can validate their
concerns with being a necessity or something that could come up in the following year's plan. But
you just say the only way they can do this is by soliciting their councilmember, you know. I'm not
sure that's what I want to hear...
Mr. Pasion: That's what we recommend, chair, for the public to do because
we cannot just say, yeah, we can do it but we don't have the funding. So the funding would come
from the council. So, let's say if a citizen approaches one of the Councilmembers and gets the
councilmember to understand that concern and supports it, and then the budget process follows.
And that's the resolution. Then if it requests funding, then the council will have to...
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, thank you for sharing your view on that. I feel that
your audit department should be making recommendations to us if something is urgent enough to
add to the audit. But what I heard from you right now, any changes once your plan is submitted and
still subject to our approval from a financial standpoint, those resolutions should come from the
council and the council only. No initiative will come from the audit department, and I'm very clear
on how you see it. I wish it was differently, that if something was important enough that you would
initiate it. But I understand your position.
Mr. Pasion: Thank you, chair.
Council Chair Furfaro: Any other questions? Go right ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Let's see. When do you... I believe the furlough
information is very important because we're in the midst of trying to think of alternatives to the
furlough, and it's really important to have information about whether there are actual savings and
whether there are additional unexpected...unprojected costs. So, when are you...what is the
timeline for the furlough audit in terms of when you think that would be done?
Mr. Pasion: We hope to...we hope to do it in the coming fiscal year. Let
me do this. We have initiated quarterly updates with the Councilmembers. And what we would like
to do is provide that as an update rather than do it here.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.9
Ms. Yukimura: You know, I think you can do whatever you want to. But I
think it's good to have public knowledge what your estimated time of completion is. Because it's not
like we're going to hold you to the day, but an approximate timeframe?
Mr. Pasion: Okay, since you asked. Audit on the furlough. The
procurement process begun with purchasing April 14 of 2010.
Ms. Yukimura: And that's your start date or your finish date, April 14 of...
Mr. Pasion: No, we started last year on this particular audit.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, okay, excellent. Good foresight.
Mr. Pasion: We just started, but then we had some delays...
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, you did. You know, I'm not trying to catch you on
anything. I just want to know now what your projected date is. I mean, I'm not holding you
responsible...I mean, I'm not criticizing you for any delays. Just want to know when it will...when
you now plan to finish it, or approximately when.
Mr. Pasion: I would say I would project the end of second quarter of the
next fiscal year.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so that's like end of the year approximately.
Mr. Pasion: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, end of 2011...
Mr. Pasion: In fact, hopefully for the next budgeting process.
Ms. Yukimura: That will be good. And then your...the 2010-2011 audits, the
energy fuel and capital project audits, you may have told me this at some point, but I don't
remember. Do you know...can you tell us when those will be completed?
Mr. Pasion: The energy audit...the draft has been provided to the mayor's
office, who is the auditee. They have asked for two extensions already, and the second extension
ends April 14. That would be, you know, we will then look at their response and then we go from
there. So, we should be able to issue that, you know, before the end of May.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Because actually, it might be useful for this budget
process, but that's okay. So, you're saying that the present status is that a draft has been... It's not
a...your report actually has been sent to the mayor's office for comment and response?
Mr. Pasion: On the energy one, yes.
Ms. Yukimura: On the energy, and you've gone through two extensions, and
you anticipate having it back from the mayor's office in time for you folks to finalize it and release it
by the end of May; is that correct?
Mr. Pasion; That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, and how about the fuel and capital project audit?
Mr. Pasion: We plan to have the final draft issued before the end of June.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. And then your capital audit, projects audit?
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.10
Mr. Pasion: That's the same thing.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. And then in terms of...
Council Chair Furfaro: Well, may I have the floor just for a moment, councilwoman?
Ms. Yukimura: Sure.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Pasion, I passed out the 2010 audit summary for all
members, some who were not here at the time. And I just want to let you know, that reference is
there now. Mr. Kuali`i, did you get a copy as well? Thank you very much. It's yours.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you.
Mr. Pasion: Just to let you know, vice-chair, that we follow an audit
process, and normally it takes 6 to 9 months. We would like to cover this...I have a flow over here,
process flow over here. What we would like to do is present to you in our quarterly updates what we
went through on the items that we submitted, where we're at, what were delayed, what caused the
delays, and all that stuff. We have timelines. I was reading from my cheat sheet here that when we
started the audit.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, thank you. Okay. -And then if I dare to enter these
waters, in terms of what you...you know, how you see the work plan and approval and financing of
the process between you and the council, county council, what I understand and I don't see a lot of
conflict is that you folks submit a plan and the disclosure of such a plan is required. The submittal
of such a plan is required.
Mr. Pasion: By charter.
Ms. Yukimura: It's required, and then any amendments thereto, a submittal,
we need to be informed about that also?
Mr. Pasion: We would send an amended...
Ms. Yukimura: Right, work plan.
Mr. Pasion: Work plan to inform the council.
Ms. Yukimura: And we approve a budget for you based on some plan, work
plan, or amended plan. And then if you have other audits you want to initiate on your part, because
you think it's very high public interest and fits the mission, you can do it if you can do it without
money. If you need money, you come to us and ask us for the money and we say yea or nay.
Mr. Pasion: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Council Chair Furfaro: I think we just summarized that earlier.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, okay.
Council Chair Furfaro: You come back to us and ask...
Ms. Yukimura: If you need the money.
Mr. Pasion: Yeah, if we need technical expertise. If it's a...we can do it
within our department, then we don't have to come for more money.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.l l
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Pasion: But if we need expertise from the outside, then we have to
come because we need the funding.
Ms. Yukimura: And if citizens make suggestions, you can either say, you
don't have the funding right now and it's best to go through the council, or you can say, we think
that's a very important idea and we will introduce it at our next work plan.
Mr. Pasion: We could do that, too.
Ms. Yukimura: And with the required funding, right. So, it can come from
either side. It can come from you folks. It can come from citizens to you, to us, or from citizens to us
to you. But it has to be vetted through whatever process you have and...or through the council
process where four members, at least, have to approve.
Mr. Pasion: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: ...the resolution and/or the financing for it.
Mr. Pasion: That's correct.
Council Chair Furfaro: So, now that we revisited what I said earlier, are you
retracting your comment that you would not come to us if it was an item that required funding?
Because you basically agreed with Councilwoman Yukimura that said... Excuse me. I want to know
what the clear answer is. Are you going to accept applications to amend your audit plan or not? I
mean, are you directing people to us or to you? You know, I want to be very clear on that.
Mr. Pasion: Chair, if we have request for audits that's beyond...
Council Chair Furfaro: Beyond your plan.
Mr. Pasion: Beyond the technical capability of my staff which then
requires external expertise, then we would say, we don't have the funding, we could do it for just like
what the vice chair said, we could do it for next year, submit it...
Council Chair Furfaro: I think that's what I said, Ernie.
Mr. Pasion: ...or you can work with a Councilmember, or a couple of
Councihnembers, and if they introduce a resolution and it gets approved, and when they approve,
more likely we get the funding.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. Let's not create different standards about the same
question. Now, you have a plan submitted to us two days, June 28 for 2010, on 2010. Now that we
have your budget, when can we expect the plan that is supported by that budget?
Mr. Pasion: What we plan to...
Council Chair Furfaro: No, that is not the plan. This is the plan that I passed out.
Mr. Pasion: Right.
Council Chair Furfaro: Very specific. A couple appropriations...I want to go through
this, budget practices, audit of programs, managing employee issues, that's the plan we accepted.
When can we expect the new plan that supports your budget?
Mr. Pasion: What we could do, chair, is submit to you and to be agendaed
at the last council meeting for the fiscal year.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.12
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. So the last week in May, you want an agenda...
Mr. Pasion: June.
Council Chair Furfaro: June, I'm sorry. You want the last week in June. I don't find
that acceptable. Because we're 7 days before the year ends. So, I would say I heard your answer. I
would appreciate it if it could be earlier.
Mr. Pasion: Well, there are two council meetings every month, so we could
do it at the first council meeting, then, of June.
Council Chair Furfaro: I like that. What a wonderful world of compromise we live in.
So, we're going to do it in the first council meeting in June.
Mr. Pasion: In June.
Council Chair Furfaro: And I will so make note of that so we don't get it two days
before the end of June like we did this year. Thank you. I know back and forth communications can
lead to mutual agreement. Thank you. Any additional questions? Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Thanks for the presentation. I appreciate it. I follow this
with interest, and I'll continue. And I'm anxious to see some of your initial audits which look like
they're coming soon. Currently, and I don't want to go too far into this. But I hope we don't find out
that furlough saved us no money. It was presented to us almost as if it was going to save dollar for
dollar, and I doubt that's the case. So, I am very interested to see what our savings were. But if I
understand your audit, and I know I've asked these questions before, it also will audit the impact on
the delivery of county services; is that correct?
Mr. Pasion: Would you kindly...
Mr. Bynum: The furlough audit will...
Mr. Pasion: Yes, yes.
Mr. Bynum: ...assess the impact of the delivery of county services.
well?
Mr. Pasion: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: And will it assess the impact on the private sector economy as
Mr. Pasion: We will attempt to do that, too, yes.
Mr. Bynum: And I find...I think that's very important. Currently there is
a, in our union negotiations, there's a potential to do 9 days of administrative leave as part of the
package. Would the findings of your audit be illustrative in terms of the impact of 9 administrative
days on county services and/or financial situations?
Mr. Pasion: Councilmember Bynum, I think it would be too premature for
me to say anything. I don't want to preclude the results of the audit. When the results of the audit
will come, then we can go from there and then we can project what 9 days of administrative leave
will mean. Because that means to say that some services will not be provided by those on those 9
days. It depends also on how the operations will be set up. They could stagger personnel so that the
office is open, you know. Even though it's an administrative leave, the office is open, but let with
fewer personnel. So I don't want to preclude the results of the audit.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.13
Mr. Bynum: I think...so I'll just speak for myself. I think the findings of
the audit will help us understand some of the impacts of having personnel at their workstation less,
less frequently, even though in a different mode than shutting down government for the entire day.
So I was pleased to see a memo that you sent to the council recently that indicated that your
pre-audit assessment was that you could conduct a full audit and that it would be in the public's best
interest, and I agreed with that, so I was happy to see that. So other than that, I also just want to
say I understand that your office was new, that you had some...we had some kinks we had to work
out amongst all of us, and that impacted the delivery of services in terms of your procuring staff and
other resources. Hopefully those kinks are worked out and so you can hit the new fiscal year fully
staffed with all of those understandings in place. But, you know, I want to be fair to you that it's
logical that could impact delivery of some of the work product. So, I think this is a new exciting
adventure for our county, and oh, I had a couple other specific questions. I assume you have to
interface frequently with the finance. department, for any audit?
Mr. Pasion: From time to time because when it comes to procurement, the
procurement has to go to purchasing, and purchasing sends the paperwork to the director of finance.
The Director of finance then refers it to the county attorney, and you know, things like that.
Mr. Bynum: So, has the administration identified a contact point for you in
terms of your interaction with the administration? Is there an audit manager on their side, for
instance?
Mr. Pasion: We've been providing copies to the managing director so that
the mayor's office is informed about some of the requests that we are asking of the administration.
Mr. Bynum: So, you know, I think the auditor's office, as you've indicated
and you agree, and you indicated can have a positive financial impact on the county, but it also is a
financial cost to the county. You know, your budget wasn't...that we're reviewing today wasn't there
a few years ago, so, that's additional cost. I would think that it also will put an additional burden on
administrators in the administration to respond. Maybe I should have asked them this question of
were they seeing that burden and how were they addressing it. But I thought we might see a
position in finance, for instance, just to kind of facilitate that interface and make it efficient and
coordinated. So, I didn't see that, but it's the questions I have. Do you agree with my assumption
that this puts an additional workload on administration as well to be able to respond to all of your
questions and to work with you?
Mr. Pasion: I would say yes, because, you know, if we didn't have audits
before since the incorporation of the county since 1905. We had our first performance audit,
what? 2004? And the charter was, you know, mandated in 1969. So, we are, you know, we are like
a baby, you know, trying to learn, you know, the steps.
Mr. Bynum: Right. And you know, there are some growing pains in that.
Mr. Pasion: Yeah, that's correct.
Mr. Bynum: And we've through some of those, and we'll probably have a
few more. Thank you for the presentation today.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: I just had a question and it's regarding the procurement.
What's the process right now when you have to go through procurement, as far as the procurement
officer, is it going through the administration or is it going through our council chair?
Mr. Pasion: We submit our request to the chief procurement officer of the
legislative branch, according to the Hawaii Revised Statutes.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, so through the council chair?
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.14
Mr. Pasion: We go to the council chair, and he signs off, and then we...
Mr. Rapozo: And then it goes to purchasing for that part of it?
Mr. Pasion: ...part of it. and then it's referred to then director of finance
for his approval too. For the funding, make sure that the funds are available.
Mr. Rapozo: Correct. But I guess my question is it gets scrutinized here
with our procurement officer...
Mr. Pasion: That's correct.
Mr. Rapozo: Then so after Mr. Furfaro signs off on it, I'm assuming it's a
process that just goes through a purchasing process. I .know you said that it goes to the county
attorney's office as well?
Mr. Pasion: Well, some of the procurement requests that we have
submitted have been channeled through the county attorney's office for reasons I don't know.
Mr. Rapozo: Through...after the procurement officer signs?
Mr. Pasion: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Well...
Council Chair Furfaro: I'll clarify that. In the early parts it was being channeled that
way, much to my surprise, but as I have communicated to the county auditor that I will now agenda
certain items that I think necessarily need to be reviewed by the body, and we will document that
review as a body. And on a 4-3 outcome I will sign off on it. That has now been communicated to
finance.
Mr. Rapozo: I guess I just want to make sure, as the separation of power
prohibits us from interfering with the day-to-day operations of the administration, it works the other
way as well. You're part of the legislative function, and that's why the council chair is authorized to
be our financial or the procurement officer. And I think this is probably the first term that it's really
occurred that the council chair has acted in that capacity. And I just want to make sure that that
separation is respected on both sides of the fence. And, in fact, if Mr. Furfaro, through whatever
process he deems necessary, if it's a vote of a 4-3, or if it's a signature that he does on his own, once it
leaves his signature, then the only thing left is the purchasing and make sure that it meets the
procurement standards. I just want to make sure that is what's happening and it's not getting
scrutinized by the administration because that, I believe, is a violation of the separation. I mean, I
believe that, and I guess that's probably a discussion for another day. But I think that addresses the
concern that finance should need another position to help you, and I don't think so. Because that
happens here. It's a legislative function. It's not an administrative function. Believe me, I'm a very
strong proponent of audits and we should have done a lot more. It's nice to see now that we're
actually getting some performance audit. It's not investigative audits to get people in trouble. It's
performance audits to see how we can save money. And by your screen, the 1.3 million, I think that's
a refreshing result of this charter amendment if in fact we can carry out that recommendation. So,
thank you very much.
Mr. Pasion: And the energy audit in 2010, we spent 7 million-4 on
electricity compared to 2009 where we spent 6.1. The fact that we had less activity in 2010 because
of the two-day furlough starting July 1 to the end of the year, that tells you that there's a lot of
opportunities for us to do more energy conservation so that we can save, you know, more. So, you
know, when the energy audit comes out, I would say that it would be a good piece to read and get,
you know, hopefully it will be...the recommendations will be implemented.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.15
Council Chair Furfaro: Two items. First of all, Ernie, would you confirm that the
way I summarized the new arrangements that if a procurement item requires the body's approval,
that the administration now understands that's in our hands and I will be presenting it to the body?
Mr. Pasion: Yes, chair. What you have done is you have requalified that
memo from...
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Kouchi. I've revisited that directive...
Mr. Pasion: Yeah, from your...from the previous council chair where it
was misconstrued that the authority was delegated to the other side.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. So, you're comfortable with my correction on that?
Mr. Pasion: Yes, chair.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. And then I would also like to say, one of the things
that surprised me when I was finance chair when we did utility audits, one of the things that we did
was not just measure dollars, but measure kilowatts.
Mr. Pasion: The audits will have both, Chair, you know, kilowatts,
because sometimes we cannot control the price of oil.
Council Chair Furfaro: So there's...you know, in my other life, we watched per
occupied room based on the kilowatt consumption, because you may not have the same people there,
but the lights are still on. You may not have the same occupancy, but you still need to create hot
water.
Mr. Pasion: But, chair, there was somebody watching over there. I don't
know if there is somebody watching over here.
Council Chair Furfaro: Well, I can be that person here, too. I just want to confirm
we're measuring dollars and kilowatts.
Mr. Pasion: Yes, we are.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. And then, again, June 1, I just want to reconfirm
with you is the council meeting that we're referring to for your plan. It's June 1, okay. If you could
just record that so we can have some dialogue along those lines. Councilwoman, did you have
questions? The floor is yours.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you for your presentation.
Mr. Pasion: You're welcome.
Ms. Nakamura: I wanted to ask you whether the capital project
implementation audit includes the roads maintenance program.
Mr. Pasion: Yes, it is. It's atwo-pronged audit. One is for the Kaiakea
fire station because it's the first one, and it took quite a lot of money to do it. And then the roads
maintenance, we are looking at...I think they're two years behind, if I'm not mistaken, and see
how...we all drive to work and we paid, you know, gas taxes and make sure that the money that we
pay for taxes and our gas are properly utilized for roads maintenance.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. The second question
that I had is the pre-audit reports that are on your work plan, are the reports public information?
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.16
Mr. Pasion; No. What we do is we look at...before we go into a full audit,
we look at the...we have a risk assessment of the project. If it warranties that it needs...it does, you
know, it warranties a full audit, then we go into a full audit. Otherwise we say, you know, maybe we
say we don't have all the reasons to go into full audit so we just close the...we just stop at pre-audit.
For example, we have the pre-audit on the personal...consolidation of personnel within the county as
requested by the Cost Control Commission. What we had to do... As a matter of fact, we issued the
report and what we did was we compared the duties of the department of personnel services for our
county versus the other counties and what their charter dictates/our charter dictates for that
department to do and compare it with other jurisdictions, and the other jurisdictions are doing more
because it's covered by their charter, but ours is not. So, we said, well, because of what you do is
when you do an audit, you compare actual to what's supposed to be done. And if they were not
supposed to do it, then...and it's not covered by charter, then there is no point for us to do the audit.
By providing the information of what other jurisdictions are doing would give a guide for maybe for
us to amend our charter regarding human services.
Ms. Nakamura:
Mr. Pasion:
council.
Council Chair Furfaro
public on the pre-audit?
Mr. Pasion:
everybody.
Ms. Nakamura:
So the information is not public, the pre-audit assessment?
That one was issued. I believe we provided copies to the
She's saying not provided it to the council, but is it typically
We are going to put it in our website so it's available to
So your answer is yes?
Mr. Pasion: Yes, all our reports. All our reports, when they're made final
will be all reflected in the... They will be included in the website.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. Then what we're seeing...this is the first time I'm
going through these budget hearings. But what I'm seeing are departments presenting us their work
plans for the year, their goals and objectives.
Mr. Pasion:
Right.
Ms. Nakamura: Which seem to be the appropriate time to be looking at it
when you're approving their budget. And yet in this case, we're waiting till June after the budget is
approved to approve the work plan.
Council Chair Furfaro: I have a summary for that.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. So I was just thinking in the future, if it could be
coincide with the budget, that I think would be helpful.
Mr. Pasion: Well, other jurisdictions, they do a quarterly update. There's
a quarterly update of the different departments work plan presented to the council. It's because it's
the council's prerogative, as the sole authority for approving budgets, to make sure that what they
submitted is what they're doing and done properly according to their plan.
Ms. Nakamura: So, maybe you'll go over that later.
Council Chair Furfaro: Again, she's asking the same question that I did. You
submitted our budget, yet we haven't seen your work plan. And they need to coincide. And what
we've extracted from you this year is a June 1 presentation. But we do have quarterly updates. As
this thing evolves, we would like to have the plan contingent on what's in the budget.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.17
Ms. Nakamura: I'll continue then.
Council Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Ms. Nakamura: So, the other goal that you have for next year is to complete 3
to 5 audits. And because of the limited resources of the office, I think the selection of these audits is
really important that we get all the feedback that we can upfront from the community, from the
different personnel within the county, from within, and then the county council members. I would
like to see a process by which we are selecting and prioritizing these audits. Your internal process...
Mr. Pasion: We do have an internal process.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. Would it be possible to get a written version of what
that process looks like? It doesn't have to be now, Ernie.
Mr. Pasion: It's good you ask, because we do have that.
Ms. Nakamura: That's good. I think it's important that we all understand it
and are aware of the timelines by which decisions, you know, will be made, especially because we can
only do so many per year. This is kind of like the open...compared to the open space commission,
and they go out to the public, they solicit feedback, they have surveys, so forth, and then through a
process they narrow it down. I would like to see what criteria you use to make that decision. Also, to
follow-up on the chair's comment about the audit committee, the charter says that the council may
establish an audit committee. So, we have the authority to do that, and it lays out the composition of
the committee and the role of the committee. And I think before we ask Ernie to do that, that we
have a discussion among ourselves about how we go about doing that, if we want to go down that
path, which we haven't done up to now, but to have an open discussion about that.
Council Chair Furfaro: No, and I think you're right on target with that question.
That's why I gave it to Mr. Bynum, and that discussion needs to come from finance as an agenda
item so that we can have the discussion, but that is very, very important to point out in that piece,
there is one member from the council that makes up that audit chairmanship and other members
from the community. So, that was the whole mission I had when I passed that on to Mr. Bynum. We
need to have that as a separate agenda item.
Ms. Nakamura: My final question, Ernie, has to do with the budget line item
on consultant services. So, your initial request of 911,000 was reduced to $615,000?
Mr. Pasion: 915 is the adjusted for this year.
Ms. Nakamura: For this year. And I was wondering what... as a result of the
reduction, what aren't you able to do?
Mr. Pasion: Well, the reduction basically is for us to engage an outside
auditor to do our audits...financial audits. We got to have the money in this budget in this fiscal
year. So, we came before you with a money bill. The money bill was approved, so then the money
was then encumbered and added to our budget for fiscal year 2011. So, when we use that for the
next auditor, outside auditor, then we will not need that for the following year. So, that's the reason
why you see a big drop there, but that's part of it.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay, thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, Mr. Bynum, any questions for Ernie?
Mr. Bynum: I don't know if it's a question, other than I wanted to respond
with... Councilmember Nakamura said that I was aware of this amendment of the charter, but it
says we may adopt this committee and it requires us to adopt rules. I have a list of things I'm going
to ask for help from staff on, and on that list now is council rules for the audit committee. But, you
Apxil 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.18
know, whether we choose to do that, when we choose to do that, I agree with you it should be a
decision of the body, and so, I assume that would be out of...
Council Chair Furfaro: Did you hear what I said?
Mr. Bynum: Yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: I'll give it to you because we need it as an agenda item.
Mr. Bynum: I guess I just wanted to concur.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Bynum: Because it's not a requirement under the charter; it says may.
And then the timing I think would be important in terms of establishing a committee and rules will
take time. And, so, which fiscal year's audit plan are we trying to recommend on, so that we can
have that all in a future discussion. Other than that, I didn't have a question. I just wanted the
floor to concur and talk a little more about process.
Council Chair Furfaro: So, just so you understand, the charter allows us to have an
audit committee. We need to agenda it so that we have discussion.
Mr. Pasion: I'll be...I'll make an appointment with the finance chair to
talk about it.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. Mr. Chang?
Mr. Chang: I just had one quick short question. What would be an
example of utilizing an outside auditor?
Council Chair Furfaro: Let me respond to that. We have the ability...we have the
mandate to have an outside company audit the county every other year. Currently we audit
ourselves annually, which is a good policy. But I think at some future point if we're going to save
some money, we would like to hear from our internal auditors if it makes any sense not to do that
because we feel comfortable about the internal controls. We're not there yet. But we have a change
now. That audit selection used to be made by the council as a body. It is now in Ernie's kuleana.
Mr. Pasion: And what we do is we go through the selection process, and
when we make the final selection, we submitted it to the chief procurement officer of the council for
his approval.
Council Chair Furfaro: I hope that helped you with that process.
Mr. Chang: Yeah.
Council Chair Furfaro: And as the chief procurement officer of the council, I will
agenda that item so that everybody can participate.
Mr. Pasion: And for my office, it doesn't really...I mean, we could go with,
you know, biannual, however, there might be concerns from the department of finance, because
when you go and...
Council Chair Furfaro: I only mentioned that because that's what the charter says.
I'm not using that as a discussion. Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: I'm taking off of Councilmember Chang's question. I believe
of the 615,000 in your budget for the financial audit, there's 250, is that correct, 250,000?
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.19
Mr. Pasion: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: But I think his question was what else do you use it for? Can
you give a few examples?
Mr. Pasion: We use for forensic auditors, special counsel, special
investigations, different kinds of, you know, expertise that we don't have within our department.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. You're okay?
Mr. Chang: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Mr. Pasion: We have to have engineering consultant to help us with the
Kaiakea and road maintenance, because we are not, you know, we are engineers. We don't know
asphalt from tar or whatever.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, at 4:10 we must change the tape. But I also want to
reiterate two things. The fact that if you come with an item that's in that line, I am as chair,
although I'm the procurement officer, I will be posting that for the entire body to look at that
spending. The other thing I want to point out, as we get to a point where we're selecting an audit
company from the outside, it's not presenting us with the bids; that's your kuleana.
Mr. Pasion: That's correct.
Council Chair Furfaro: It's presenting us with your choice.
Mr. Pasion: That is correct, for your...
Ms. Yukimura: I do you have another question, chair.
Council Chair Furfaro: Go ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: On the road repaving program audit, when the public works
division came...roads division came before us, it seemed like they had very little data, very... I
mean, they were beginning to collect it, but...and, in fact, I think one of the funding requests was for
a software that was going to collect it. So, how do you conduct an audit where you don't have very
well organized data?
Mr. Pasion: We have selected 2007 and 2008, because that's where they
had the data.
Ms. Yukimura: You're using the year...the fiscal year 2008 because they had
the data at that time?
Mr. Pasion: That's what we are looking at. Because a key personnel of the
roads maintenance left the county go back to work for the state. I believe it's... I forget his name
now, so
Ms. Yukimura: Right. I do remember... Yes, okay. So, what do you mean by
that? What's the significance of that?
Mr. Pasion: We're finding that...we're finding that we have selected that
fiscal year because that's where they have more data for us to...
Ms. Yukimura: That was before this person left, you had the data?
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.20
Mr. Pasion: They have the data. You know, that's... I should not be
saying that because I'm not the audit for doing that. One of my staff auditors is assigned to do that,
and I only know that we selected 2007-2008.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Well, I'll be interested to see the report.
Mr. Pasion: Well, like I said, it's in progress.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, I mean because it seems to me like in so many instances
in the county, we don't have a good data gathering system. I mean planning is an example of that.
Everything is still in files that are on an uncalibrated or, you know... And so, when you have poor
data management and collection systems, you know, how do you begin to audit something like that is
my question?
Mr. Pasion: Well, we have apre-audit on permitting and planning.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, and I guess you could have an audit conclusion that
says your data is a mess, and that's first thing you should do to clean it up, something...
Mr. Pasion: Could be.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Council Chair Furfaro: I just want to say one thing on that. You're going to be doing
audits and you're going to be making reports across this county that policies may not exist.
Standard operating policy may not exist. So, one of the tasks in is having an audit department is
first to be making those recommendations because the standard operating procedure doesn't exist.
Mr. Pasion: That's correct.
Council Chair Furfaro: Am I correct?
Mr. Pasion: That's correct.
Council Chair Furfaro: And therefore, that is another benefit of an internal audit
department. Hey, we've been practicing this for several generations, and we need to create a
standard operating... And I want to make sure that is only a finding that we can make an
improvement on; that's not a finding that should be punitive in any way. Now, on that note, I just
want it recap. We're going to Iook for your plan by the first of June, at that meeting, it's understood.
Mr. Pasion: Yes, chair.
Council Chair Furfaro: We are going to be continuing to schedule quarterly updates.
Mr. Pasion: That's correct.
Council Chair Furfaro: It is our goal in future budget years to be able to see the plan
simultaneously as we see the budget, because the budget supports the plan. We do not want to
relive last year when we got to it, and I know this is our first time, We got to it two days before the
end of the fiscal year. So, we're constantly going to make improvements on that. You also are going
to try and take, Ron, the format that you gave and see that we get it into the outline that we're
getting from all other departments. I thought your presentation hit on all the key points, with the
exception of talking to me about a conclusion on an audit manual. We need our own audit manual. I
think we've discussed that what you gave us from Honolulu and what you gave us for Maui or the
Big Island looks good, but we need one that has our brand on it.
April 12, 2011
Office of the County Auditor p.21
Mr. Pasion: Well, as we speak, chair, Stephanie is working on it right
now. So, thank you very much for, you know, my staff for all the work that they do, because they do
a good job, and they make me feel good. Look good, too.
Council Chair Furfaro: Well, very, very well. I am going to say that we're going to be
in recess, B.C., for today. The budget reviews will be scheduled again on Thursday morning. We
have a special council meeting, B.C., at 4:30, and we're going to be in recess before we call that
special meeting to order. We are in recess.
The County Auditor's departmental budget review concluded at 4:05 p.m., and there being no
objections, the department budget reviews was in recess.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.l
The Committee reconvened at 9:10 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
Councilmember KipuKai Kuali`i was noted as present.
HOUSING:
Chair Furfaro: Aloha, good morning I'm calling back from recess the budget
presentation for the County of Kauai and today we do have the Housing Agency first, Agency of
Elderly Affairs, Transportation Agency, Finance Department and the Planning Department on our
missions for today. I'm going to also indicate to members that as we go forward I would remind you
that we have a four (4) hour session set aside that will cover the capital improvement plan. So
questions that relate to CIP projects will be conducted in that meeting which comes up on April 15th
so if you have CIP questions for Housing, Transportation, etc., please note I'm going to make certain
that we reference the CIP meeting for those kinds of questions. This is about policy, about staffing,
budgeting, contractual issues that we have within the Housing Agency and on that note I'm
suspending the rules and it is yours sir.
There being no objections, the rules were suspended.
ENGENE K. JIMENEZ, HOUSING DIRECTOR: Mr. Chairman and members of the
Council thank you very much, I'd like to welcome our new Councilmember KipuKai Kuali`i, we look
forward to working with him. I understand that he'll be the Vice Chairman for the Housing
Committee and welcome. l did submit to you our Housing Agency budget which includes the various
programs but before we go into the Witty-gritty of the various budget items in the different program
administered by the County Housing Agency, I want to take this opportunity to introduce my
resource personnel in the back of me. They are the people that work real hard in the Housing
Agency. I have Avis Hirahara and Fay Kimura who is part of my... our Accounting staff. I have
Sandy Kaauwai who's the manager of the Section eight (8) program, and Gary Mackler who's the
Housing Development Coordinator. I guess I have everybody, so they are the people who will be able
to answer specific questions which you may have.
I'd like to start off by just going through the mission of the County Housing Agency as you
well aware we've been in existence since 1976, we've been a Housing Agency for 31 years. Our
mission is to provide greater opportunities for Kauai citizens to choose and secure affordable, safe,
decent and sanitary housing and this comes directly from the HUD overall goal and objectives. We
started off with the Section eight (8) program which was I think we first began in 1976 and also the
Block Grant Program. Primarily under Section eight (8) Housing Choice Voucher Program the goal
is to assist very low-income with their rental programs. I have an explanation here but the specific
objectives are to continue to assist approximately 700 eligible families under the program and this is
what we have now, we provide and I've mentioned this in the past to the landlords through housing
assistance payment contract the balance between what the tenant pays and what the rental amount
is and we've been averaging five hundred... half a million dollars... so five hundred thousand dollars
per month in rent subsidies to the landlords. Under the Section eight (8) program subsidiary or a
section of the division is the Family Self Sufficiency Program which is a program which deals with
trying to get the lower income families under the section eight (8) program to become independent
and we're servicing anywhere from eighty (80) to eighty-five (85) families per annual.
Moving on under the Housing and Community Development Division, we have two (2)
divisions right now... section eight (8) and Housing and Community Development Division, this
division is headed by Gary Mackler and it primarily has to do with the Block Grant Program, the
Home Investment Partnership Program, these were the two (2) programs that you just recently
passed by way of Resolution last week for funding for the year. We approximately receive 1.8 million
from both of these programs. This division also is involved in the Rehabilitation program which we
administer and the Home Buyer Loan Programs and there are other activities or other funds that
become available which is administered by the Housing and Community Development Division as an
example the EDI grants or any other federal or state programs in which having to do with
Community Development is under this division.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.2
We have just recently completed a study done by SMS research of implement to Fair
Housing. One of our functions of the Agency is to assure that there's equal housing opportunities for
families on Kauai as a matter of fact I did mention last week that next, tomorrow we have Fair
Housing Workshop, it's done every April and that is one of the functions that we undertake. We
have a person specifically responsible for Fair Housing opportunities and she's called the Fair
Housing officer who is also in charge of the sales within the agency.
Chair Furfaro: Could you revisit the times of that... for tomorrow.
Mr. Jimenez: Tomorrow it begins in the morning until 3:00 and it will be
held in the Piikoi Building and in June we are also be having a housing fair with in joint partnership
with the Kauai Board of Realtors.
Chair Furfaro: And I just want to point out unfortunately during that time
until 3 p.m. this Council will be locked up in budget meetings, so I'm very sorry that we couldn't
show ourselves.
Mr. Jimenez: Well I think what's good is that we'll be having a lot of
handouts as I mentioned the Civil Rights Commission, Legal Aid and you know there will be other
presenters. Whatever you know the new laws or whatever is handed out, we'll be sure to send you a
copy.
Chair Furfaro: Would you make in particular the new Vice Chair's role that
he gets a briefing from your Department.
Mr. Jimenez: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: Now that we have that freedom to go to certain department
heads or our counter parts, I would appreciate it. So sir, I think you acknowledge for you that
they're going to do that for you.
Mr. Kuali`i: Thank you.
Mr. Jimenez: Okay. Moving on we'd just like to briefly cover some of our
successes and achievements, you know we can discuss it further but I just wanted to gloss over it
until we get to the budget items. Number one (1) as you are aware we completed the acquisition of
75 acres in `Ele`ele for the development of a master planned affordable community. We have also
acquired from Kukui`ula Development Corp four (4) acres for the development of 50 rental units in
the Koloa area which is Paanau Phase 2. We just recently completed construction of three (3) single
family dwellings on a property that was owned by the County for sale to eligible buyers on our
homebuyers list. And just for your information in concert with the Hawaii Housing Finance and
Development Corporation and the other four (4) counties, we have embarked on what we term the
2011 Hawaii Housing Policy Study. They have been given notice to proceed and we expect this
study to be completed somewhere at the end of this summer, August or September. This is through
the SMS research and we did add some additional moneys for specific studies relative to the County
of Kauai and the various districts. It should give us at least data base as to what the County
Housing needs are on our island. I think what's important is one of the functions also has to do with
the provision of various funds to either private non-profits or private developers for the development
of affordable housing projects. One of the successes and achievements in that we've been successful
in providing Habitat for Humanity you know nearly six (6) or seven hundred thousand ($700,000.00)
for their phase two (2) `Ele`ele I Luna phase two (2) project which is comprised of 107 units for
various infrastructure offsite/onsite waterline improvements, and also roadway improvements.
Under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program commonly referred to as the NSP program we have
purchased through the banks six (6) foreclosed single family properties for sale to eligible people,
these were foreclosed properties and we purchased from the bank and we're going through the
process of qualifying people to be able to buy this... we've been utilizing our homebuyers list which
we have approximately three hundred fifty (350) people. Under challenges, I think what is
important to let the Council know is that we as a Housing Agency and in terms of budgeting, the
federal sources that we've been able to obtain you know represents 95.7% of our budget. Clearly 4%
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.3
is from general fund so we see ourselves as pretty much self sustaining and you know our success
and the ability to continue this program is on our ability to keep on receiving these moneys and also
to look for other sources of funding. So I just wanted to throw that to the Council that you know 96%
is other sources and 5 or 6% give or take is from the general fund. What we've been very proud of is
under improvements, what we try to do in the Housing Agency is to really increase communication
not only between different divisions but between the staff by way of weekly staff meetings, we have
well each division has their own meetings but we have a monthly staff meeting. We completed
policies and procedures manual which, with input from all of the staff as to how the policies and
procedures for the' agency will be implemented and that's working out pretty well and we revisit this
annually to see if there's any changes that the staff may want. And we've been fortunate and we've
tried to fund, we feel that it's very important that the staff within the different divisions have the
training and the knowledge in their respective division, so we've been fortunate in funding some of
the training sessions which include management training for the section 8 program and Block Grant,
Sustainable communities, training for a couple of the staff, GIS training, so we feel that it's very
important that we stay ahead of the game. We have put in funds for training for the staff.
As I mentioned earlier some of the upcoming initiative that we're looking forward to is that
because... we are all aware that the cuts from the Federal Government will be coming now and at
this point in time ever with this continuing resolution, we really don't know how deep the cuts are.
But we need to stand ready to make adjustments within the agency, so I think one of the things that
I'd like to emphasis is that we really, really got to start focusing on our core programs which were
implemented, which we know how much we're going to get but we know we're going to get cut but we
don't know how much. Should the cuts get any deeper what we feel that we may have to look at our
staff and maybe embark on some cross training between (inaudible) areas?
Page three (3) we put together some graphs for your information, we believe that a picture is
worth a thousand words and what it does it gives you an indication of the funding that we have or
anticipate in year 2012 both for the total funding and also for the general fund. On page four (4) you
have our grant funding and what it and the percentages are relative to the various programs in
comparison to the salaries and benefits.
Chair Furfaro: I have a question on your graph on page three (3)?
Mr. Jimenez: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: Do you have under the salary section that is your entire
Housing salary?
Mr. Jimenez: Okay, we'll address that on that first... we have a summary
page of our budget which indicates the total salary fringe benefits and programs for each of the eight
(8) or nine (9) programs which we administer and there's a line item as to how much the salaries and
benefits are. So we'll be reaching that.
Chair Furfaro: You were very polite in telling me to hold my horses.
Mr. Jimenez: Thank you Jay.
Chair Furfaro: But I do want to point out on this chart your PT&E is
seventy-eight percent (78%) of your salary and wages but I'll wait for the answers as we go forward.
Mr. Jimenez: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Jimenez: Okay if we go to page five (5) it's just a comparison, total
funding for fiscal year 2011 as compared to the total funding in 2012. For the present fiscal year the
total funded funding was 18,404,194, this year we're anticipating a total funding of 19,355,315 which
equates to a five percent (5°l0) increase and on the next page, page six (6) is just a comparison
between the various funding sources for fiscal year 2011 as compared to fiscal year 2012. By way of
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.4
memo, you know it was requested by the Council Chairman that we provide the following
information relative to staffing and so what we've done is to... you had wanted the listing of all new
positions or changes in existing positions for our submitted budget and our response has been none.
Number two (2) a list or current or anticipated vacant civil service and contractual positions and just
for your information, we do not have any civil service positions. We have twenty-five (25)
contractual positions and these are annual positions which end June 30 and begin July 1 to coincide
with the fiscal year.
Mr. Rapozo: Can I just get clarification?
Mr. Jimenez: Sure.
Mr. Rapozo: This request and I'm not sure if the Council requested this of
new positions or changes to existing changes... was that in the last year or going forward?
Mr. Jimenez: Going forward.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay because in our recap I'm showing a substantial increase
in salaries of about forty-three percent (43%) so that would not... obviously there's got to be some
new positions.
Mr. Jimenez: Okay when...
Mr. Rapozo: I'm showing an increase of a 140,912.00 in just salaries, I'm
not talking benefits, just the straight salaries, that's reflecting of forty-three percent (43%) increase,
so that doesn't coincide with your response that there are no new positions.
Chair Furfaro: We'll raise that as a first question when we get to your payroll
summary here.
Mr. Jimenez: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: When we go down the job codes. Okay? But I think you hear
what Mr. Rapozo is saying.
Mr. Jimenez: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: I raised the question about benefits; he raised the question
about raw payroll so~we'll wait until we get to that sheet if you don't mind Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, that's fine.
Mr. Jimenez: And just for your information the third question which was
posed to us in your request for information was you know the list of contractual so we have it listed
with position number from one (1) to twenty-five (25).
Chair Furfaro: Got it.
Mr. Jimenez: Are there any questions relative to the narrative which was
submitted to you?
Chair Furfaro: None of your contracted positions, they are for the full year as
you're showing here, there's no partial contracts?
Mr. Jimenez: No there's not and we have two (2) vacancies which we will
not be filling.
Chair Furfaro: Questions up to this point on the narrative? Councilwoman
Yukimura.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.5
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you Eugene.
Mr. Jimenez: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: On your mission is to provide greater opportunity for Kauai
citizens to choose affordable,-safe decent housing.., when you say greater is that from year to year? I
mean so that you want every year to provide more opportunities than the year before?
Mr. Jimenez: Well I wouldn't say an increase because in a matter of ten (10)
years it can be completely out of hand but I think what it is to the extent possible to provide increase
opportunity and you know we cannot quantify that increase at this point in time. I spoke about the
seven hundred (700) units under section eight (8), fifty (50) units under construction, we've did a
hundred and eighty (180) in Kalepa which started off with JoAnn's Administration so you know it's
very hard to say that for every year we're going to increase by x percent.
Ms. Yukimura: Well for every ten (10) years you're going to increase, give
greater opportunities?
Mr. Jimenez: Well I would imagine so but I couldn't give you a specific
number.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so about the seven hundred (700) eligible families in
the program, this is the HUD rental voucher.
Mr. Jimenez: HCB program the Section 8 Housing...
Ms. Yukimura: So there are approximately seven hundred (700) eligible
families who are receiving these vouchers yeah?
Mr. Jimenez: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: So how many people are there in need of HUD vouchers?
Mr. Jimenez: In terms of need I can just tell you that and I'll go back to our
waiting list for the program. We have over a thousand people who are on our waiting list. We have
stopped taking applications for this program, primarily because you know the waiting list is
anywhere from three (3) to five (5) years and it wouldn't be fair of people waiting for this program if
we cannot provide.., you know we didn't want to give them false hope.
Ms. Yukimura: So there probably more than... there's a thousand people on
your waiting list so there are probably more than a thousand on the island?
Mr. Jimenez: I would imagine so.
Ms. Yukimura: So is this survey that's going to be done, is that going to give
you the figures that show how much are in need?
Mr. Jimenez: We are hopeful that it'll give us figures per district as to what
the needs for the various income categories are.
Ms. Yukimura:
biannually?
And is this survey something that is done yearly or
Mr. Jimenez: I think it's done every five (5) years; the last one was done in
06.
Ms. Yukimura: Is this survey giving you enough information to get an
accurate picture of the housing needs on Kauai?
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.6
Mr. Jimenez: I think it does. We look as to what the service would comprise
and we also added some extra money for the survey to be specific to Kauai.
Ms. Yukimura: Is this? Yeah... is this the survey that about four (4) years
ago I think it came before the Council and it interviewed heads of household or it did surveys of
heads of household? Because there were a lot of flaws in that survey as I recall.
Mr. Jimenez: But we think that a lot of the problems will be addressed also
in light of getting the new census data to...
Ms. Yukimura: That's true you'll have the census data. Do you folks have
maybe from this an ongoing data base that gives you an accurate picture year to year of what the
housing needs are of the island?
Mr. Jimenez: I wouldn't say that we have an ongoing data base but I would
say that you know with the help of studies like this it gives us a starting point as to you know where
we should be going and in what area.
Ms. Yukimura: Is it important, do you think that good data is essential to the
implementation of your mission?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes I do.
Ms. Yukimura: So do you feel that the study is giving you sufficient
information?
Mr. Jimenez: I think it will. I think it will give us sufficient data.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Then can you give us over the last ten (10) years
using the data base you have the Housing need over the last ten (10) years or even five (5) years?
Mr. Jimenez: Well we can look at the 06 study which was done, it was a
housing policy study and I think it will give us an indication as to what the various needs are.
Ms. Yukimura: Well I mean I'm just thinking that your work will begin with
assessing need and having a clear idea of what the Housing need is on the island and you know how
quickly it can change when the big 2008 bus came, ali of a sudden and the contractors and the
worker left and you know real estate crisis dropped, the housing crisis diminished somewhat, they
didn't disappear for sure but it did make more houses available at lower prices. So how do you
monitor that in terms of doing your work and signaling oh wow we're headed for... the prices look
like they're coming up, we got to... looks like it's going to be a crisis ahead or nows... how do you
know what the need is and how do you plan for providing housing for people without knowing
accurately what the need is?
Mr. Jimenez: Yeah but I think you know your comments are well taken
JoAnn and I'm not going to be one to say that we'll be able to provide all the housing that is
necessary on this island. We have an indication or will have an indication as to where the units are
needed and the type of unit. And I think too to a large degree having the data gives us a direction to
go but more importantly it's based on the available funding to a large degree. The county is not in a
situation where say if we need five hundred (500) units in Waimea or something that we'll be able to
provide that, the need is there and efforts can be in trying to encourage people to through (inaudible)
etc., to develop these units but to a large degree I think it's based on funding sources and what's on
the table at this point in time.
Ms. Yukimura: So...
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.7
Mr. Jimenez: You know we can tell you after this study how many units are
needed in rentals here, fee simple here, lot sales... but to use that and say this is the direction, we
have to look as to what... do we have the (inaudible) to do it?
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so I guess I tend to think in a reverse way which is if
you can get a good handle on what the needs are and develop a plan for meeting those needs, then
you will go look for the money and you'll have justification to ask for the money. And so that's the
way that you address problems rather than say we're stuck with what we have so we can just do this
and no matter what the need is, we'll just do this?
Mr. Jimenez: I know what you're saying, I know what you're saying JoAnn
and you know we in the Housing Agency want to be proactive and that's why we like to find out what
kind of policy directions the Council is looking for. After this budget hearing session that you know
we offer to sit down and do a workshop with you to tell you what we're doing specifically, you know
go into more of this needs analysis thing, this study and then we can come up with something that
we both can agree on.
Ms. Yukimura: Well it's not for me to agree to it, it's something that I think
as a body...
Mr. Jimenez: -Sure, sure. No, I'm speaking about the Housing Committee.
Ms. Yukimura: ... and a County, we're all concerned about it and it's kind of
about best practices. I've always been quite disturbed about the lack of good housing data and I
think there have been some efforts to provide it but I don't see a good housing data base really
developed. If this 2011 Hawaii Housing Policy Study's not sufficient for our needs then we need to
fund more specific data gathering and I can see some of that initiate in this additional money that
you're piggy-backing on to this study which is very, very good.
Mr. Jimenez: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: And in fact I would like to ask for a copy of the contract and
also a copy of the additional work. I don't know if that's an addendum contract.
Mr. Jimenez: Yeah each county had the opportunity to include their specific
county and what the kind of data they wanted for their county.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So I'd like to ask, it's sounds like you... because you
think data is important that you have some data goals that are not articulated here and so I mean,
you know kind of what your end in mind is as an agency for establishing a good ongoing data base
that's going to give you a good basis for developing the housing programs for the county. So if you
can kind of work with your staff to develop or articulate what the data goals are, that would be really
great.
Chair Furfaro: Eugene on that note also and for the benefit of the other
Councilmembers here, please submit the 2006 housing survey that was done if you recall that
initiative was done by Mayor Baptiste who in fact got many landowners on Kauai to participate on
the cost where they all contributed for that very specific data for us but since we had so much dialog
on the 2006, would you also add copying the Council on that survey, in addition to the two (2)
questions that Councilwoman Yukimura had asked? On that note, if she's finished I'm going to
recognized Mr. Bynum and then KipuKai.
Ms. Yukimura: Actually I have a lot more questions but I don't want to
monopolize this so I'm quite okay to yield the floor, if I can come back if other questions are...
Chair Furfaro: Certainly.
Ms. Yukimura: ...still necessary after everyone has asked their questions.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.8
Chair Furfaro: Very good. Thank you since the Councilwoman has agreed to
yield the floor and have a second opportunity, I'll ask Mr. Bynum for his questions and then after
Mr. Bynum, we'll go to Kualii.
Mr. Bynum: Good morning Eugene. I'm also going to have a number of
questions but I want to start by saying during the course of this year we had a lot of issues in
Housing that I know challenged you and I want to start by saying and some stuff that wasn't on the
floor, the constituents were asking why are these policies this way and I just really want to recognize
your staff and yourself as being very responsive to my inquiries and.helping me understand some of
the questions that constituents were asking about the HUD policies and so on and so forth, and I
don't intend to go into any detail on that other than acknowledge that you guys were very
professional and responsive. My first question is last year the Administration applied for a grant
that would combine Housing, Transportation and Land Use Planning... you know it was an EPA I
think it was an EPA... I know it was housing...
Ms. Yukimura: HUD.
Mr. Bynum: HUD... that put out this and the Administration applied for
that because of the way of the world is to not plan in (inaudible} to not say well here's our housing
plan, here's our transportation plan because it's all interrelated and I really appreciated the
Administration's efforts at applying for that grant unfortunately we were not successful. But it
would have brought more planning money but in a matter, in a manner that integrated those plans
and so even though we didn't get that grant, I wanted to ask what efforts we're making to integrate
our planning efforts especially with the upcoming General Plan, transportation planning just
because we didn't get extra money to accomplish that goal doesn't mean the goal is not a good one to
collaborate on planning so I wonder if you have any response to that?
Mr. Jimenez: Well I just have a generalize response Councilmember Bynum
that we're all aware that planning involves a lot of sectors as you mentioned transportation and aII
that and we know that it is the way of the future that you know that we be collaborative with the
various agencies. We in our planning (inaudible) housing project we have tried to incorporate those
ideas, we did receive some money's from the Health Department, the CPPW program which will be
implementing some of the ideas... the safe streets thing, you know it's all part of our plan whenever
we talk about any housing project and green technology, I've sent staff training you know to study
about these things and to gather information as to how we can incorporate it many of these ideas
into our housing projects here on the island.
Mr. Bynum: I just really want to encourage your department and the
Administration.
Mr. Jimenez: Sure.
Mr. Bynum: To really have...
Mr. Jimenez: In fact I have staff that sits on this Committees.
Mr. Bynum: And I know you have on the Built Environment Task Force
you have Barbara coming and that's great because she has knowledge- and expertise but it's really
important that when we make housing plans and spend money on housing that's it's integrated with
our transportation and general plan ideas and I don't think we've done that traditionally. We kind of
have been in silos and so I don't know how we break that down and I'll get more specific in a minute.
I want to ask some questions about the 75 acres we acquired in `Ele`ele, you're moving ahead with a
plan for that, right?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes we're moving ahead with a master plan for the area and
just for your information this is a long term plan. You know it's not, we have to go to the Land Use
Commission and see if they want to rezone this, this is a... I would say seven (7) to ten (10) year
project.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.9
Mr. Bynum: Right and I don't want to go into it today in a budget hearing
but I want to know who is working on that master plan, what kind of public input is there, when and
at what stage's is it appropriate for Councilmembers to be updated on the goals and objectives of that
plan? Are we going to have an ongoing dialog with this long term planning, those are questions that
I have.
Mr. Jimenez: Sure. Maybe you know my development coordinator is more
in tune to the specifics on that, maybe he can address you relative to the planning phases and the
process that we'll be going through and rest assure that the Council will be kept apprise as to where
we're going. The contract has been let and we do have some (inaudible) and I think Gary could give
you some information.
Mr. Bynum: Wait a minute... the contract... what contract?
Mr. Jimenez: For the master plan for the community.
Mr. Bynum: For...
Mr. Jimenez: For the 75 acres.
Mr. Bynum: For the consultant services?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And who's the consultant?
Mr. Jimenez: It's... RMTOW?
Mr. Bynum: RMTOW ?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And so that's already acquired and procured?
Mr. Jimenez: Correct.
Mr. Bynum: And are there public meetings as part of that?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes that's part of the plan once we receive some initial
renderings; we'll be touching basis with the community the senior citizens down there which is close
in the area and also the business community.
Mr. Bynum: And are we anticipating a mix of housing types in this
development?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes we are.
Mr. Bynum: Are we anticipating there are any commercial aspects to this?
Mr. Jimenez: No. Not at this point. Just for your information A&B is
coming up with their master plan for their commercial zoned lands.
Mr. Bynum: When we required the 75 acres was there any contractual
obligations either way to the county or in terms of what we develop there or do we just have fee
simple ownership of that land to do it as we choose?
Mr. Jimenez: Well it has to be for affordable housing project. It's specified
in the deed documents.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.10
Mr. Bynum: So we told the purchaser we committed contractually to use it
for specific purpose?
Mr. Jimenez: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: And did that agreement preclude like commercial use of that
property?
Mr. Jimenez: From my understanding and I would have to get back to you
Tim relative to this that it's for... you know there maybe some like I know there maybe some...
Mr. Bynum: And we can follow up on that.
Mr. Jimenez: Yeah sure.
Mr. Bynum: It looks like we decided `Ele`ele is going to be where we put
houses all over the workers for 2/3 of the island I mean it's a working class community now, it's a
great one, it's mostly developed by past housing exactions right? And we have the Habitat project
going there and I'm happy that the county is collaborating with them and it's in your report and now
we've required 75 acres and that's why my earlier thing about transportation and land use plans is
really important, the integration of those things. I really had encourage my time on Council that we
look at housing developments that are closer to the job creator's but we have the 75 acres and... but
I'm very interested in being involved and understanding what our vision for that is, what impacts it's
going to have on transportation and traffic and that kind of thing. Are we looking at our
transportation plan in trying to make transportation alternatives for the workers, for the people who
eventually live there, it's already a hub and like middle class housing. So I have some questions
about SMS research, this 2011 housing policy study is it under way?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes it is. It's being administered by the state (inaudible)
Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp.
Mr. Bynum: There parameters about what questions are being asked?
Mr. Jimenez: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: Can you supply that to us?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And its funding is from counties and the state?
Mr. Jimenez: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: Are developers involved in funding this study?
Mr. Jimenez: You know, I don't know but I can find out.
Mr. Bynum: I'm pretty sure I have this correct but when I was here in
2006 and SMS presented the findings of the housing study, I was very unhappy. Not so much with
the data but with the conclusions that came from the -SMS people about that I thought were just
outrageous, they basically said and I'll never forget this that basically the market will take care of
the need, that we didn't have to have housing exactions and I thought they were making political
statements that wasn't supported by their data and you know so I'm a little comfortable that the
same research firm is this research firm because I think that 2006 study was really flawed at least in
the conclusions that they presented to us. I just was dismay at some of the things that the people
from SMS research said and the conclusion that they put forward on the Council floor, I guess you
weren't at Housing at the time but... I'd really like to see what the questions are that they're asking
because I know enough about research is the way you ask questions can influence the outcome. And
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.l l
bias the responder if they're not properly worded so that research and those things are happening,
I'd like to see what that...
Mr. Jimenez: Councilmember Bynum on many, many occasions throughout
the course of coming up with the survey instrument I've had my staff look at the questions and we
did provide input as to what the specifics questions would be and I think it was something that we
feel would be relevant.
Mr. Bynum: And I think Council Chair Furfaro requested that we get the
2006 study so that we can review it again, is that correct?
Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And there was a PowerPoint presented by SMS regarding
that study and I would like that to be included as well if you have access to that, we may have that
here in our files.
Mr. Jimenez: I'm not sure whether we have that.
Mr. Bynum: I see Gary nodding.
Chair Furfaro: We have it.
Mr. Bynum: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Or they have it actually.
Mr. Bynum: Because it's really been a pretty... a lot happening in Housing
over the last couple of years and for instance we procured stimulus funds under neighborhood
stabilizations programs and I thought I might see kind of an analysis of what stimulus funds we
receive and what's the status of their use, have they all been expended?
Mr. Jimenez: Okay, we did receive some Block Grant ARAA money's, are
these the ones that you're talking about?
Mr. Bynum: I'm sorry?
Mr. Jimenez: For job creation...
Mr. Bynum: ARAA, yes.
Mr. Jimenez: Okay. It was almost like a formula grant program where
each county there was x amount and we had received only two hundred fifteen thousand (215,000.00)
and with that and this primarily was for the creation of jobs. We funded both under Child and
Family Services, two (2) of their (inaudible) childcare facilities and also we did some ADA work with
the new Kapa`a Ball Park, so those moneys were all expended.
Mr. Bynum: I believe there were funds in neighborhood stabilization as
well. Can we get any reports on what funds we receive and what the current status of...
Mr. Jimenez: Sure we'll be able to get you that. We purchased six (6) single
family dwellings with that money, for sale, for resale to eligible families.
Mr. Bynum: Because I know...
Mr. Jimenez: And also we built three (3) to on County property, so that
would be a total of nine (9).
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.12
Mr. Bynum: Also during the course of the last term we made changes to
our housing policies, our affordable housing policies that... at Kauai Lagoons and Kukui`ula or at
Waipouli and I think that was a really difficult time and in my view you guys are kind of stuck
between a rock and a hard place and in my view we made some bad policy calls there but I think
your agency was very responsive to the questions that were asked by Council. The other question I
have is about our housing, about... in our Housing policy for affordable housing, I believe we've had
some income come into the Housing Agency as a result of exactions related to our Housing policy
correct?
Mr. Jimenez: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: And is that reported in anything that you've sent us or... I'm
specifically thinking of agricultural subdivisions, was that whole process completed?
Mr. Jimenez: You know to my knowledge I don't know any moneys being
receive from any agricultural subdivisions to the Housing Department.
Chair Furfaro: If it did, where would it show up in the budget?
Mr. Jimenez: It would show up under the Housing Revolving fund, you
know to continue...
Mr. Bynum: A few months ago we had a item on our agenda that we
received because we decided we didn't need... you know it wasn't... it didn't need Council action but
it was related to housing exactions on agricultural subdivision so I'd like information about that.
Mr. Jimenez: Okay.
Mr. Bynum: I was assuming that we had completed that transaction and
we can report on that. And my other question would be are there any, currently any projects that
have housing exemptions that were processed?
Mr. Jimenez: Not.
Mr. Bynum: Or anticipated?
Mr. Jimenez: There maybe some anticipated but at this point, there's
nothing concrete. And whatever should come to fore of course we'll be submitting to the Council for
final approval.
Mr. Bynum: I think we're also starting to turn the page where there's the
potential for new resort development and our housing policy really has no exactions for affordable
housing related to resort development. To me that's an undone item in our housing policy, you know
right now it just requires a study but I still don't understand how that study turns into having any
kind of contribution to workforce housing. So those are issues I'm interested incoming term and I
wonder if we could anticipate any initiatives from the Housing Agency related to that.
Mr. Jimenez: We will be able to respond to that, from my understanding
that they are some portions of the housing policy study, not the housing policy study but the policy
ordinance which specifies the amount of units that would be necessary for various zoning conditions.
Mr. Bynum: Well if that's the case I'd really Iike to see that.
Mr. Jimenez: Sure. And if not then we'll be able to respond to you.
Mr. Bynum: If there was a new... and I'm just making this up, there's a
new hundred room resort development, what would the housing exaction be?
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.13
Mr. Jimenez: Well from my understanding is that there are alternatives
that the resort developer would come under.
Mr. Bynum: Well I hope somebody can explain to me what those
alternatives are?
Mr. Jimenez: Sure.
Mr. Bynum: Because... I don't know if the staff is getting this but I want
to specifically know were there any housing exactions as a result of agricultural subdivisions on
Kauai and are there any projects whether regardless of zoning that are currently in the works that
require an assessment of housing under our policy? Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Kuali`i. But I do want to say I looked at the financials and
there is a $630,000.00 difference in fee collected in that line item just for Mr. Bynum's information.
Mr. Kuali`i: Aloha and good morning. Mahalo for the work that you and
everyone at the Housing Agency do.
Mr. Jimenez: Thank you.
Mr. Kuali`i: It's very important work for our people. I'm going to keep my
questions brief and to the narrative as you ask for now and I have more questions later... this
specific bullet point under your goals and objectives of assisting 80 plus families under the Family
Self Sufficiency program, I understand you know rental assistance and the subsidy and the HUD
and section eight (8) but-what specifically happens there? If you can give a brief summary of what
kind of assistance you actually provide there with those 80 families?
Mr. Jimenez: Okay under the Family Self Sufficiency program, it's a
voluntary program for low income families that are under the Section eight (8) program. We have
two (2) staff that administer this program as mentioned there's eighty (80), what it is, is that these
families voluntarily agree to get into this program. This program provides counseling in terms of
budgeting, in terms of families matters, and you know it's like a social worker addressing the various
needs of our low income section eight (8) tenants. What they do is they are referred to various
agencies to assist them with that and what they do is sign up for specific goals as to how to foster
their independence. The goal of the Self Sufficiency program is to get them out of public housing
and into market housing or be able to purchase their own home and the way the program works is
that say they pay a hundred dollars for their rental as part of their... if we subsidize, to make it very
simple, if they pay a hundred dollars for an eight hundred dollar rental, that's seven hundred that is
given to the... should they work and find employment, anything. in the hundred dollars they agree
that this would be put into an escrow account for them in a future date, either for a down payment,
for you know and they have to stick by their plan. The staff gives them counseling as to how to reach
their specific goal. Essentially that's how it works and we do have brochures, I can submit to you as
to how it works.
Mr. Kuali`i: When you talk about they putting money's away for future
down payments and stuff, do you also go after matching funds from different federal programs?
Mr. Jimenez: No it's strictly, you know any increase over that amount when
they signed up for the program is put in escrow account and these money's can also be used like if
they want to go to school and they don't have enough money.
Mr. Kuali`i: Maybe start a business.
Mr. Jimenez: Sure.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay my second question is...
Mr. Jimenez: It's left up to them.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.14
Mr. Kuali`i: Is regarding... you mentioned impediments to fair housing
study that was completed?
Mr. Jimenez: We just received it last month.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay and has it been distributed to the Council?
Mr. Jimenez: I would imagine but if not, we'll be sure you have a copy.
Mr. Kuali`i: I would like a copy.
Chair Furfaro: We'll make that request in writing.
Mr. Kuali`i: And then your last bullet point under successes and
achievements you mentioned the purchase of six (6) foreclosed single family dwellings for resale to
eligible buyers that's the Neighborhood Stabilization Program?
Mr. Jimenez: Correct.
Mr. Kuali`i: Who are eligible buyers?
Mr. Jimenez: Okay. We do have a homebuyers list within the agency which
I think it's about three hundred (300), three hundred fifty (350) people who have already gone
through the homeownership counseling course. For any family wanting to purchase a home through
our agency, this is a requirement that they go through the homeownership class. This class teaches
them how to budget, explain what escrow is and just... they work on household budgets and things of
this nature and so we have a list that any available projects that are available under our program
they're able to apply for and once they have a standing within the three hundred fifty (350), they
maintain that because they might not want to live in Waimea or Anahola or Kapa`a so we do have a
homebuyers list.
Mr. Kuali`i: So based on this Neighborhood Stabilization Program and
federal funds, I'm assuming that you get for that.
Mr. Jimenez: That's correct.
Mr. Kuali`i: Are you restricted to only make that assistance or at available
to somebody else, not the person who is losing the house?
Mr. Jimenez: Ah we...
Mr. Kuali`i: And then my other question is...
Mr. Jimenez: Yeah we purchase the units directly from the bank.
Mr. Kuali`i: Oh from the bank. So it's already a lost?
Mr. Jimenez: That's correct.
Mr. Kuali`i: Lost to the former owner. I wonder if in the Housing Agency
anywhere there's any kind of way to help families who are actually losing their homes before the
bank takes it.
Mr. Jimenez: Well under the Block Grant Program we funded several
entities that one of the primary goals are to provide foreclosure, pre-foreclosure counseling which is
the Hawaii Housing... HHOC agency and they specialize in this and they have specific measures
that they have to meet under this program. So it's happening right now.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.15
Mr. Kuali`i: You know...
Mr. Jimenez: You know if you know of anybody what we've done is that we
referred a lot of people to them.
Mr. Kuali`i: Because it's important to keep families in their homes as it is
to get families into new homes.
Mr. Jimenez: We agree.
Mr. Kuali`i: So my last question is you mention that you know the
Housing Agency continued self... the ability to be self sustaining and it depends pretty much on your
ability to perform well and show the federal government that you're spending the federal funds,
ninety-five point seven percent (95.7%) so the huge chunk is almost entirely from federal sources.
Basically our county's ability to address affordable housing problem is reliant on your performance
so that we continue to get these federal funds and we know what the situation is in the economy as
a whole so probably the most important thing for us going forward and making budget decisions
about the Housing Agency is to know what it's been like as far as receiving federal funds, so could
you or have you looked at our sources of federal funds for the last five (5) years and can you tell us if
there's a trend you know, has it been going up, has it been going down. If it has been going down, by
how much and also similarly related to that is I assume every year you make request to federal
government and you know you have success rate on how much you get based on what you request
and so what about a trend on that?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes. We have that information as to you know the funding
sources, the amounts for the last five (5) years and many times it's based on congressional action but
I just wanted to state at this point in time that you know being a recipient of federal money's...
HUD, EDD, you know... there's a lot of restrictions. We are constantly monitored, we go through
audits like you wouldn't believe not only financial audits but program audits as you're well aware
you know with your background with social services and so I really have to commend my staff for
keeping up with the new laws, with the new restrictions, with the new policies that are constantly
coming up and that's why I emphasize that you know the staff has to be trained because it changes
every year. To a large degree much of the money's is based on congressional appropriations.
Chair Furfaro: We will send over his question on the five (5) year trend.
Mr. Jimenez: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Kuali`i: Your point on that is so well taken and that's why I'm so
appreciative of all the work that you and your staff do.
Mr. Jimenez: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: On that note, Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: I don't know when...
Chair Furfaro: You can talk about your staff questions.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh okay. That's the question I have as far as the increase in
salaries if you would be able to explain that right now.
Mr. Jimenez: Okay the increase was under which funding source?
Mr. Rapozo: I'm looking at our overall recap and it says... and all 1 have
are the numbers so I don't know what funding source, it just says its... what our staff does, they put
together all the departments and all the variances in the budget whether its positive or negative and
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.16
as I look at this I see that the salary account in Housing and I'm assuming it's all different parts of
Housing, you reflecting a hundred forty thousand, nine hundred twelve dollars ($140,912.00)
increase in salaries so... but in your narrative you're saying that there are no increases so... I'm just
curious as to what those positions are?
Chair Furfaro: Or how much of that was effected by furloughs if your
department was effected at all because you're dealing with a lot of grant positions that were
federally funded. So did you have any lower payroll numbers based on anyone being furloughed in
your department?
Mr. Jimenez: Okay. I would need some assistance from my accountant.
Chair Furfaro: Fine. Mr. Rapozo, I'm going to leave you with the meeting, I
have to go to return a phone message.
Mr. Rapozo:
over in writing.
Okay, thank you. Then I guess we'll send it over, I'll send it
Mr. Jimenez: Okay. I think that would be better because than we can look
at the whole thing.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah.
Mr. Jimenez: As you know we have nine (9) different funding sources and
some may have gone up, some may have gone down.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Mr. Jimenez: But I think we can digest it by way of letter.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah we'll add it to our questions.
Mr. Jimenez: Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: And then more importantly and I wasn't here for the Mayor's
presentation on Friday, I was off island unfortunately at a meeting so I wasn't able to ask the
questions, I know there were several moments within, in the restructuring process and this question
will go across to the administration but for you, provide us the justification if you can on the changes
in your positions. You know I guess my concern is we got to look at cutting someplace in the budget
and taking all the personalities and names out of the equations I think we as the Council go to look
at it objectively and decide hey is there a duplication of service. I mean Housing operated very well
for a long time and to see that substantial increase in salaries, that's a red flag for me. And when I
look at your goals and objectives I don't see the increase in what you folks will be doing, I mean it's
pretty much maintaining and sustaining what you've been doing. So the increase in salaries for me
anyway, I'm just speaking on behalf of myself, so if you can provide the justification for the increases
there and every department will have that same request from myself because I think it's important
as we move forward into decision making that we got to start looking at reducing our expenditures
and I think we're all hearing from the public, you know you guys keep tagging us with more taxes
and rubbish fees and yet you guys keep hiring more people... where you know... and again this is
only because yours and many other departments are experiencing the same thing, I just want to see
that justification as far as what in fact net benefit did you receive and is it a necessary expenditure?
We'll provide that in writing.
Mr. Jimenez: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Can I do a follow up to that?
Mr. Rapozo: Yes.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.17
Ms. Yukimura: Looking at the budget sheets that you provided the very first
sheet and I guess the third sheet which has positions that are funded by the General Fund, which
position was not approved by the Council last year?
Mr. Rapozo:
Oh you're asking? Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: If you want to have your people come join you that would be
fine.
Mr. Jimenez: If you look at the General Funded positions which is page...
you see a lot of the positions are partially funded you know per.
Ms. Yukimura: I know but which ones were not approved by the Council last
year?
Mr. Jimenez: Okay the one position which was not approved but was filed
in a vacant position was the Special Assistant to the Housing Director.
Ms. Yukimura: And what was the vacant position that was filled?
Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry Councilwoman, what was your question?
Ms. Yukimura: What is the vacant... he said that the Special Assistant to the
Housing Director was a position that was not approved by the Council and I don't believe that it was
entitled that position so I'm asking what is the position that was approved by the Council?
Mr. Rapozo: Oh I see. The position number nine, five, three, six (9536).
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: If we can get the last year's budget and we can take a look at
that line number nine, five, three, six (9536). That will tell us what that position used to be. And
I'm not sure if that question could be better answered by the Administration, we can get someone
here... Gary.
Ms. Yukimura: Well I think the Director of Housing should know what he's
positions are and the rationale for it, I mean...
Mr. Rapozo: That's an appointed position correct?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: But not your appointment? You did not appoint that position?
Mr. Jimenez: Well I...
Ms. Yukimura: Why not if he's the Housing Director, this is an assistant to
the Housing Director.
Mr. Rapozo: Right but it's not a Deputy.
Ms. Yukimura: Does it matter?
Mr. Rapozo: The fact that it's a Special Assistant doesn't state that he did
the appointed?
Ms. Yukimura: Well I hope he had some say in it?
Mr. Rapozo: I hope so too.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.18
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah that's why we're asking the question.
Mr. Rapozo: But my point... it's not necessarily his appointed.
Ms. Yukimura: I don't know that.
Mr. Rapozo: Program Support Technician two (2}, fifty percent (50%).
Ms. Yukimura: And what was...
Mr. Rapozo: So that was a dollar funded position last year.
Ms. Yukimura: What was it called again?
Mr. Rapozo: Program Support Technician two (2).
Ms. Yukimura: And what is the level of funding for that if it were to be fully
funded?
Mr. Rapozo: I'm not sure. Jade has it right next to you.
Ms. Yukimura: Program Support Technician, so that was obviously
reallocated?
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah.
Ms. Yukimura: So?
Mr. Rapozo: And it was dollar funded so that would mean that... that
position would account for sixty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars ($69,999.00) of
the one, forty-nine, twelve (140912).
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So that's one of the reasons for the increase.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes. So that leaves us with seventy thousand nine hundred
and eleven (70,911.00).
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So I guess I would like to ask what the roll of that
position is and what is the added value that is being added to the Housing Agency and what are the
results you hope to gain from that position.
Mr. Jimenez: Number one the position, when this position was filled... we
came up with a position description like everybody has to for a new position and in that position
description it describes what the specific responsibilities would be. Prior to us coming up with the
position description, I held a meeting with all the supervisors to find out, to review as to what their
various positions, what their responsibilities were for their positions. Okay with this, with this new
position what happened was we tried to fill in the gaps in which nobody was responsible fox and
we... and there were some areas. Number one was is that we had a memorandum of agreement with
Hawaiian Homes to look at six (6) properties which we had through the former Mayor Baptiste had
acquire for future housing studies... housing development and what happens is that we've been
(inaudible) in not being able to do a feasibility analysis and it's quite a comprehensive feasibility
analysis having to look at each of these sites as to its feasibility for a housing project. So this person
was given the responsibilities to complete this feasibility analysis. We also were lacking in the
Housing Department someone who had technical expertise relative to building, construction, green
technology and so as part of the responsibilities for this position it was to look at number one (1) I
already mentioned the feasibility analysis for the six (6) state properties and to also assist the
development and the sale staff in coming up with some rehabilitation, see some of the units that we
purchase need to be rehabilitated. This pexson is able to give input into the department as to how
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.19
best to do it and. also one of the primary responsibilities has been to look at what cost saving
technologies can be implemented within the agency in-the development of affordable housing project.
Essentially that has been the major criteria for this person.
Ms. Yukimura: So why is the six (6) properties and the agreement with
Hawaiian Homes not part of your goals, it's nowhere seen and what is the goal?
Mr. Jimenez: It's to complete the feasibility analysis and to come up with a
recommendation for each of the properties.
Ms. Yukimura: Well that sounds like a step towards the goal but what is the
end in mind here?
Mr. Jimenez: To come up with a specific recommendation for the properties
that is deemed feasible for development. See at this point there are some properties that are in the
flood zone, some are (inaudible) and all that so we need to come up with hard data...
Ms. Yukimura: Okay but end goal is to have some affordable housing on these
properties or not?
Mr. Jimenez: If it's feasible, correct.
Ms. Yukimura: So you don't have the expertise in your department to have a
feasibility study done?
Mr. Jimenez: Well this has been languishing for several years and this was
one of the primary responsibilities for this position.
Ms. Yukimura: Well can you provide then a description of the job that... well
you have a job description already?
Mr. Jimenez: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And do you have a contract then also?
Mr. Jimenez: No it's not a contract.
Ms. Yukimura: With the person?
Mr. Jimenez: No it's not a contract, it's just a...
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, it's a contract position.
Mr. Rapozo: It's appointed position.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so can you give us then a description of the work that's
going to be done, the timeframe for the work to be done and the results of the work that you expect,
long range. I don't want that it's going... unless it's going to end, once the feasibility study is finish,
the job will end? If that's the case then the feasibility study is the end result but if the feasibility
study is just a step towards an end goal of providing affordable housing then we would like to know
what the end goal is.
Mr. Jimenez: Alright we can provide you that.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Anyone else with questions pertaining to the
salaries? If not, any other questions for Housing? Councilmember Nakamura.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.20
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you Eugene. You mentioned you're suggested
conducting a workshop sometime after the budget session is completed and I would be very
interested in following up on that suggestion. I think for me some of the objectives of such a
workshop would be to Iearn about existing and proposed projects that Housing Agency is working on
to find about existing and potential funding sources and to have a discussion about outstanding
affordable housing conditions, if there are any? I would be, I think that would be a useful task for
the Housing Committee to try to schedule. I also wanted to follow up on just a very basic question
about you know we are so dependent on the federal housing programs to implement our projects and
given the allocation that Kauai receives each year which is pretty much flat line, you know it doesn't
vary too much but what... about how many can we actually build? If it's not leveraged, how much
can we actually build per year? If we were to assume rental housing unit of two hundred fifty
thousand dollars ($250,000.00) or something, about how many can we actually build per year?
units.
Mr. Jimenez: I would say approximately maybe ten (10) to fifteen (15)
Ms. Nakamura: Yeah. See and there in lays the one of the limitations and
that's why you have to use multiple year allocations to make some of the projects work, and leverage,
rental housing trust funds, tax credits, and so forth. So we really are, the county is limited, the state
is limited... with the number of truly affordable low income housing that can be built. I think this
type of workshop would be helpful to talk about what's really possible. I also think under the
challenges, this is a good analysis what you have in here about the internal challenges and I think
what I'm hearing from some of the Councilmembers that we're also interested in Looking at the
overall challenges within the affordable housing market so looking at the continuum of housing, the
challenges with our homeless shelters or transitional housing, or single family housing... I know you
have a whole study on that alone but sort of picking up the key pieces within those areas but that's
why I think a workshop would be helpful because...
Ms. Yukimura: Maybe several workshops.
Ms. Nakamura: Yeah. Under your upcoming initiatives I think it's really good
that you have in here the cross training and this is the first time that we're seeing this in one of an
agency's strategic plans because this whole issue of succession planning within the county has come
up with the meetings with the Personnel Department and I think we need to really plan ahead for
upcoming retirements and just a loss of institutional knowledge that's so important to carry on our
work. I'm happy to see this in here and I'm hoping that other agencies will also be thinking
strategically about how they do it so you don't end up like in Planning Department three (3} high
level staff members leaving in the same year, three (3) or four (4). So good to see that in here.
Strategies to actually do that would be good to see. And I think that's all I have for now, thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Back to you sir.
Chair Furfaro: We're going to go back to Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you Chair. On page two (2) of your narrative in your
program for habitat for humanity, what is the income group that that houses there will be provided
for?
Mr. Jimenez: Eighty percent (80%) or lower.
Ms. Yukimura: Eighty percent (80%) or lower, okay.
Mr. Jimenez: Of the median income.
Chair Furfaro: It's eighty percent (80%) to forty (40).
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so between forty (40) to eighty percent (80%) of median
income?
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.21
Mr. Jimenez:
Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So in our audits do we audit to make sure that those
are the families that are receiving the houses?
Mr. Jimenez: Thank you very much for the question Councilmember
Yukimura, you know as part of, as some of the statements that were given why Councilmember
Nakamura, this is part of our functions also with the cross training, we have staff that's part time
and go and do regular (inaudible) for all of the housing projects. We also .have one of the staff also
has to do for construction projects that (inaudible) and all that. And we have to satisfy HUD that
this is being done on an annual basis.
Ms. Yukimura: So whether you are the developer or someone like Habitat for
Humanity.
Mr. Jimenez: It doesn't matter.
Ms. Yukimura: It's the developer.
Mr. Jimenez: We have to make sure.
Ms. Yukimura: You are auditing the end user and buyer.
Mr. Jimenez: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. On your purchase six (6) foreclosed single family
dwellings under the Neighborhood Stabilization program, oh wait maybe that's not related... let's
start with your Homebuyers list, you said you have about three (300)?
Mr. Jimenez:
Ms. Yukimura:
been able to buy a home?
Mr. Jimenez:
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Jimenez:
Yes.
How many have been able, how many people on that list have
I would have to go back and find out.
Could you provide that?
Sure.
Ms. Yukimura: For the last five (5) years? So we want to know every year
how many people on the Homebuyers List have been able to come off the list? Because they've been
able to buy a home.
Mr. Jimenez: I can provide that to you.
Chair Furfaro: Going back to 2006.
Ms. Yukimura: Right. I mean if you can go back ten (10) years, I would love
to see that.
Chair Furfaro: But at least 2006.
Ms. Yukimura: But at least five (5) years. You said that the seventy-five (75)
acres are a seven (7) to ten (10) year project; do we have the capacity to do that project within our
Housing Agency?
Mr. Jimenez: We haven't reached the point yet but it may have to be
incremental.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.22
Ms. Yukimura: Well it will have to be incremental no matter what I would
suspect but do we have the capacity to do it?
Chair Furfaro: I think he already answered. The maximum you could do is
ten (10) a year. All of our attention went to that project right? So that's seven and a half years.
Ms. Yukimura: And I'm not convinced that you can do ten (10) a year, I mean
I'd like to see the documentation of that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. I'm only trying to summarize...
Mr. Jimenez: No I think the question posed was based on our federal
money, see not all the money's can be used for the development of housing. The majority of the
money is out for the rent subsidy program, so even if we have budget of nineteen million dollars but
out of that, out of the home project and some of the other development portions is substantially less
and that's where that amount came from. The type of money's we receive from state and/or federal
sources that can be used for the development how much can we do with that amount.
Ms. Yukimura: Well that's why I'm asking the question. The Big Island
received three hundred (300) acres of land free in the late 1970s and they have not yet developed it.
And so my question is, is this going to be a thirty (30) year project and where are the houses going to
be that are our families need? So I want to know what we... if we have a seven (7) to ten (10) year
goal in the seventy-five (75) acre project, what is our two (2) to five (5) year goal? How many houses
do we plan to produce in two (2) to five (5} years? I mean are we not going to do anything in two (2) to
five (5) years, now I know we have Paanau.
Mr. Jimenez: That's fifty (50) units.
Ms. Yukimura: And I'm very grateful and thankful for the initiative and the
energy that has gone into that and I look forward to seeing it come to fruition but again if we have a
thousand people that are qualified for HUD subsidies and moxe than a thousand except that we
stopped excepting applications, then what... I mean fifty (50) units in three (3) years, where does
that leave us in terms of the housing need of the island. Unspoken thus far is the fact... well no
we've actually referred to it is the fact that we cannot produce housing ourselves and that's why the
requirements of developers who are using the infrastructure, the general infrastructure of the island
and making a profit using lands on Kauai need to do their part in providing affordable housing
except that we've watered down a lot of the provisions so that a Iot of the housing that we were
counting on, out of Kukui`ula and Kauai Lagoons is now none existent. We're having to spend
county money to buy them back.
Chair Furfaro: Let's leave it at that.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Because you were on the Council when the ten (10) years was
set, now let's move on.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you. I wasn't but...
Chair Furfaro: I'm sorry I disagree, let's move on.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So... I just want to say regarding the SMS study that
Councilmember Bynum inquired about, I refer to the head of household problem, I don't know if it
was that developer's survey or the other survey that was done but they sent writing or verbal
questions to the head of household and I think it was actually Ms. Iseri-Carvalho who brought it up
that we were questioning heads of household and they were answering to their household but when
there's three (3) or four (4) households living in one (1) single family house, you weren't getting the
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.23
data on the two (2) other households. So that was a survey, a potential flaw that I hope is not going
to be repeated in this survey that's being done.
Chair Furfaro: You know on those notes... I do want to say that
Councilwoman Yukimura is the Chairman of our Housing/Transportation Committee and I think the
point she's making now are very good discussion points for her to have with your staff. The agenda
item here is the operating budget but I would certainly encourage her to continue this discussion as
Chair of Housing directly with your Agency.
Ms. Yukimura: I do intend to do that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Okay so going to your graphs, your pie charts,
we're showing eighteen million dollars, nineteen million dollars... approximately... so what are we
getting from this? I'd like a complete list of what the expenditures of these money's is producing for
people on Kauai in terms of housing and you don't have to answer it now, I mean you have portions
of it. You have...
Mr. Jimenez: Yeah I think if you look at the next graph where fiscal year
2012 funding, what we can do is provide to you as to the amounts...based on that 19.4 million we
have under which program it's allocated and what the goals of that specific programs are. So we can
provide you with that.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. That will be good.
Mr. Jimenez: If you look at page six (6).
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Jimenez: You have the funding sources.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Jimenez: You have the amount of money's allocated to that source.
Ms. Yukimura: Alright.
Mr. Jimenez: So with that we can provide you as to what the goal or
objectives are for that specific funding source.
Chair Furfaro: I think this is different from the goal, she's asking if you gave
us a pie chart for eighteen million dollars, give us another pie chart that says that that eighteen
million is going to seven hundred section eight (8) rentals, nine (9) subsidize homes purchased,
infrastructure building for Habitat, you know putting it in a pie chart. I'm going to check with the
Housing Chair to make sure I got it right.
Ms. Yukimura: That is helpful, yes. And you know to a certain extent you
have it on page six (6) where you say Kalepa, Paanau but you can show that Kalepa has a total of
one hundred forty now, a hundred twenty?
Mr. Jimenez: A hundred eighty.
Ms. Yukimura: A hundred eighty (180), alright. So a hundred eighty (180) at
Paanau, we have...
Mr. Jimenez: Sixty at...
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.24
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah and then... now see Home and CDBG what housing is
coming out of that or has come out of that, or is being maintain by that... Okay and then HDF is
your... is what?
Mr. Jimenez: Dwelling unit revolving fund.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So how many dwelling units per year are coming out of
that? And then section eight (8) is seven hundred families rental subsidy and you know this may
show maintenance which is great, I mean without these units our homeless problems would be
astronomical. But then what into the future, what about those thousand that are still on the list?
And you can show that some of those moneys are going toward mitigating those thousand on the list
by the housing you have slatted for in two (2) years, in five (5) years, in ten (10) years.
Chair Furfaro: Okay and you are allowed to use multiple colors and more
than once use the same color.
Mr. Jimenez: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: And then you may want to also if there are houses that are
not really maintained by your agency but are contributing to the affordable housing inventory such
as, I don't know how many units right now at courtyards at Waipouli? There are a certain
percentages of those houses that are, well they maybe section eight (8) right now so you don't want
to count them twice but you know they are allocated to affordable housing although they'd only be
allocated to affordable housing for another seven (7) years and then they're going into the open
market. Whereas the rest of them are already in the open market against our original intention but
it will show us that there is housing that is provided by zoning conditions and otherwise. I mean
maybe there's still houses across from Kong Lon that was a County Housing Project that's still under
buyback.
Chair Furfaro: I think these are all good items for the Councilwoman's future
workshops as agenda items within her leadership as the Housing Committee Chair, I like to get back
to focusing just on the operational and budget items that are the agenda items for today. If not, I'm
going to recognize Mr. Bynum and then Mr. Rapozo. Will the Councilwoman yield the floor?
Ms. Yukimura: Oh yes of course.
Mr. Bynum: I didn't ask this question earlier, we continue efforts about
homeowner education, we continue to have a list that people can get on by completing education
programs for in terms of preferences for affordable housing opportunities, is that correct?
Mr. Jimenez: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: And in the budget what, so we're still doing the homeowner
education?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes we are, it's under the Block Grant Program which they
receive...
Mr. Bynum: It's under Block Grant, the funding for that?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And I could be wrong about this but it seems like there was
more kind of outreach PR in the past, we had housing... and maybe I'm just missing that, is part of
that element... are we trying to actively let young families know that this is available to them?
Mr. Jimenez: That's correct.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.25
Mr. Bynum: I remember attending housing fairs in the past, is that still
happening?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes we have one in June.
Mr. Bynum: I'm sorry I spaced it...
Mr. Jimenez: This coming June.
Mr. Bynum: Oh coming up in June.
Mr. Jimenez: We have our Fair housing workshop tomorrow under the
Block Grant Program. We did community meetings to entice private non-profits and persons who
were interested in applying for funds, we went to the Westside, the Eastside, Lihu`e and we also did
for all the county departments, so it's an ongoing thing. I mean I feel that it's very important that
the public be made aware as to the types of programs made available and we always encourage them
to apply.
Mr. Bynum: And I agree. Whenever I talk to young families that are
renting, it's like... I'm like have you talked to our Housing Agency, do you know that we have, that
we do a lot of efforts at providing affordable housing through a variety of methods and so I just want
to make sure that you have adequate funding for that and it's a ongoing, it hasn't diminished in
terms of its activities?
Mr. Jimenez: As far as my knowledge I don't think it has diminished, I
think we have at least maintained and maybe even slightly increased it.
Mr. Bynum: Okay. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo stepped out.
Mr. Rapozo: I'm here Jay.
Chair Furfaro: Oh stepping back in. Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Sorry.
Chair Furfaro: No, no and I'm going to make an announcement if I can right
now... I'm going to see if I can have the Office of Elderly Affairs come back at 1:00 and then
everybody will be bumped back thirty minutes from there. Not to keep you... 1:00 is the time I'm
going to put you back on. Thank you so much. Okay we're going to go to 11:00 and then go to
Transportation. Mr. Rapozo the floor is yours.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. And I actually have a budget question and my
Chair I humbly request that you know we don't have much time in the budget and if we start
discussing policy matters, we're not going to each of us going to have the opportunity to ask the right
questions... I've been waiting...
Chair Furfaro: And I think you make a good point and as you heard me there
are things on policy that can go to Councilwoman Yukimura as Chair of Housing and I think we
want to focus as I said on operating issues which is the intent of the budget. And you have the floor
now.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. On page fifteen (15) of your budget your buyback
account what's the success of that, I notice that we haven't spent anything in that account in the last
year. We had a 1.7 million and looks like the Mayor reviewed dropped it to 1.5 but, is that
something that we're going to use or is that something that we don't need? We haven't purchased
any homes, I know we bought some according to your narrative under the Neighborhood
Stabilization program, is that a separate funding source?
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.26
Mr. Jimenez:
Yes it is.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. So this is General Fund money that, is there with the
housing market as it is, I don't know it would appear to me that in fact now would be a good time to
buyback some of these homes. I know and I've seen it come through where we requested... you folks
have requested to extend for the homeowner to sell on their own, where I'm thinking if we have some
money we should be buying some of that back so at least put some local families in homes.
Mr. Jimenez: Your comments are well taken and you know we've discussed
this issue back and forth with our staff and what we found and the reason why we've been declining
buying back these units is because based on our analysis and the way the mortgages are today that
we're not able to sell it to our cliental because the prices are too high.
Mr. Rapozo: I understand but 1.5 million dollars sitting in the bank... it's
like 75 acres of land sitting out in `Ele`ele, if we're not doing anything with it, even if we got to
purchase the house at a higher rate and sell it at a lower rate, yes it's a net decrease, a net loss for
the county but you're putting a family a home. I guess that's just my philosophy that half of
something is better than all of nothing and we have all this land and we have all this money, and we
still not putting people in homes. Just food for thought that if in fact there's a desire to utilize the
funds and I don't have the problem leaving the 1.5 million in there but if you're forecasting...because
it's not going to get any better in the next year then maybe we don't need the 1.5 million in the
buyback and should the opportunity arise we can go find the money from some other source. Just
my opinion because, I've seen the opportunities come through and I haven't really voiced my opinion
because I'm relying on your expertise but it seems like we're letting some opportunities past and
again there maybe, unless it's illegal to do so and I'm not aware of that that we can purchase the
home and sell it to a family that can qualify and at least get that family a home. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum did you have something?
Mr. Bynum: No.
Mr. Kuali`i: Just one quick additional question if you can provide
(inaudible) of the rents and concession revenue collected over the last five (5) to ten (10) years. I'm
assuming it's only Kalepa and Paanau, is there more? And then be sure to list any change in the
number of housing units each year to account for added unit attain through expansion. I just noticed
that over the last year, there was no change so I'm wondering if the federal restrictions require that
or it's the exact amount of units and it's the exact amount of rent, or it's just the forecast at this
point perhaps.
Mr. Jimenez: It's part of a forecast because we do have a property manager
that manages these projects and you know they manage for fee and should one family go out,
another comes in and those vacancies factors but we can provide you with...
Mr. Kuali`i: And I'll submit it in writing. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: We'll put that question over in writing. Councilwoman
Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: On page 233 of your budget it says under construction there's
EA and project feasibility two (2) sites, where are the two (2) sites?
Chair Furfaro: The sheet she's referring to is actually the NCR sheet which
is the budget book page two hundred (200), unless you have your budget book, it's page... what
number JoAnn?
Ms. Yukimura: Two, three, three (233).
Chair Furfaro: Does anybody back there have a budget book you can share?
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.27
Ms. Yukimura: I hope so because this is what we're discussing today.
Mr. Jimenez: No but it's a total compilation.
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Jimenez: I have it here but it's not by H two hundred (200) or...
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah it's just a matter of page number.
Chair Furfaro: Maybe you want to look at that page number and make sure
it isn't, it's in balance with what you have in your report.
Mr. Jimenez: I can go back and check for this specific item but from my
understanding it was...
Ms. Yukimura: Does your development division head know?
Mr. Jimenez: There were two (2), we were anticipating doing two (2)
projects, this may be part of the state lands and also part of maybe the 75 acres for the EA there.
Ms. Yukimura: Well you already have three hundred fifty thousand and
ninety-six thousand separately for `Ele`ele...
Mr. Jimenez: Yes that was primarily for infrastructure.
Ms. Yukimura: And that's why I asked about the EA and project feasibility
two (2) cites thinking it was something separate from `Ele`ele and I just wondered what sites you're
looking at?
Mr. Jimenez: We can research this and get back to you.
Chair Furfaro: That will come over in a question.
Mr. Jimenez: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: And I do want to acknowledge that you do compress your
detail in the NCR book you do compress it into your strategic plan so I'll leave it at that. Anyone else
have questions for Housing? Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: I have one more follow up question relating to loans, I think
you have one point two (1.2) million in your original budget and it was reduced to eight hundred
thousand twelve thousand in the Mayor's review...
Ms. Yukimura: Where?
Ms. Nakamura: And in the year to date is zero, I was just wondering...
Ms. Yukimura: What page?
Ms. Nakamura: Page two, thirty-two (232).
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Ms. Nakamura: Of our budget. I was just wondering.
Chair Furfaro: Let's give him a second to get to that page.
April 14, 2011
Housing Agency p.28
Ms. Nakamura: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Just so everyone knows I do plan to have a caption break
before we go to Transportation. Do you have the page? Councilwoman Nakamura would you repeat
the question now that he has the page.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. On page two, thirty-two (232) under loans... there's
a 1.2 million dollar budget in your original budget and then in the Mayor's budget it was a hundred
and twelve thousand but year to date there has been zero expenditure, so I was just wondering what
that, what the loans are for?
Mr. Jimenez: The Ioans are for the homebuyer Loan program that we
administer and also the gap loans which are to assist with the down payment primarily.
Ms. Nakamura: Down payments?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes.
Ms. Nakamura: So is that a reflection of people not buying homes in the first
few months of this fiscal year?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes but we expect that... we'll be needing that money's to
provide loans... yes.
Ms. Nakamura: You anticipate?
Mr. Jimenez: Yes we do.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Kuali`i did you have another question?
Mr. Kuali`i: No.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum did you have another question? If not, we
probably are sending over multiple pages of questions but we will end this review. Hold on... you
now have a question?
Mr. Bynum: I just wanted to say that depending on the answers to some of
these questions we might need a call back.
Chair Furfaro: Yes I'll determine that when we see the satisfaction on the
responses. Okay but I'm going to end Housing's review now, watch for our questions coming over.
Mr. Jimenez:
Thank you very much.
There being no objections, the Committee recesses at 10:55 a.m.
April 14, 2011
Agency on Elderly Affairs p.l
The Committee reconvened at 1:02 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
ELDERLY AFFAIRS:
Mr. Rapozo: Now up is Agency on Elderly Affairs, Kealoha, we have a half
an hour block for you, so why don't you go ahead and do your presentation and we'll open it up to
questions.
KEALOHA TAKAHASHI, PROGRAM ADMINSTRATIVE OFFICER: Okay great, thank
you. Councilmember Rapozo and members of the Council. I'm thankful... thank you for this
opportunity to share our budget with you today. If you look at our mission statement, goals and
objectives... are the same goals and objectives that are in our area plan and I'm sure your familiar
with them but let me just go over just the main goals that we will address this coming year. Goal
number one is to develop Hawai`i's Aging and Disability Resource Center or what we call the ADRC
to its fully functioning capacity to serve as a highly visible and trusted place where all persons
regardless of age, income and disability can find information on the full range of long-term support
options. We have indicated the objectives that we will accomplish in a year and I must say it'll be
every year during the duration of the area plan. Goal number two enable older adults to remain in
their homes with a high quality of life for as long as possible through the provision of home and
community-based services, including supports for family caregivers. Goal number three empower
older adults to stay healthy, active and socially engaged, using prevention and disease self-
management strategies. Goal number four, manage funds and other resources efficiently and
effectively using person-centered planning to target public funds to assist persons at risk of
institutionalization and improvement. Goal number five ensure the rights of older people and
prevent their abuse, neglect and exploitation.
Let me continue with our successes and achievements... two programs that I indicated here.
The first program is better choices and better health formally known as the chronic disease self
management program of which we receive one hundred fourteen thousand... actually... we receive
grant funds for this program, we've completed in the year four (4) workshops in Port Allen, in Lihu`e
and in Kapa`a. We have a goal of holding nine (9) workshops in 2011 and we are planning to
schedule more workshops in the North Shore, Kapa`a, Lihu`e, Koloa and Westside areas. The current
breakdown of facilitators are four master trainers and four lay leaders. As we speak we have a lay
leader training today which we have ten people enrolled. We also are developing partnerships
Kauai Community College, Office of Continuing Education, Department of Health, Public Health
Nursing, Kauai Community Mental Health Center, Hoola Lahui, Alu Like to offer workshops.
The next program EnhanceFitness where we have county support in the amount of one
hundred fourteen thousand dollars. The number participants enrolled and wait listed as of March
24, 2011 in the Kekaha site we have 21 and we have one enrolling, the maximum participants we
can have in a class is 22 and we have six on the wait list. In Waimea we have 20 enrolled, 2 more
enrolling and 1 on the wait list. Kaumakani 20 enrolled, 1 enrolling and 4 that want to remain on
the wait list. Koloa 20, 2 enrolling and there's 4 people on the wait list. In Lihu`e, it's very popular
so we have 2 classes in Lihu`e, one we have 21 enrolled, 1 enrolling so we have a 21 wait list. Lihu`e
second class 21 enrolled, 1 enrolling and 15 on the wait list. Kapa`a 22 enrolled and 13 on the wait
list. Kilauea 19 enrolling, 3 more enrolling and 2 wants to remain on the wait list and you see on the
bottom there's a notation that 10 are on the wait list but for both Lihu`e one and Lihu`e classes. We
have just trained 5 new instructors who just completed training on the 5 and 6 of this month and
they are added to our list of substitute instructors. To date we serve 185 participants and the charts
really interesting as you see below shows the impact of the program. The first chart you see reported
improvements in strength, balance and flexibility. Here you see in the graphs shows improvements
in the upper and lower body strengths, so you have the chair/stand and they repeat the chair stand
for 30 seconds and we count how many chairlstands they do. So if you look in the blue before the
program enhance fitness they were doing maybe about eleven or so, after four months into the
program you have a repetition of 14. And then arm curls again for upper body strength it's same
repetition for 30 second period. In the up and go time is reduced and that the seniors are doing it
quicker so if they just time the amount of seconds it takes for them to stand up in their chair, go
April 14, 2011
Agency on Elderly Affairs p.2
around the cone and come back and sit down. So they're doing it fast time from when they first
started which is really good.
The next chart shows report more exercise minutes and reduction of falls. This is based on
the 185 participants. Some of the comments that are really gratifying to see that the participants
are really enjoying the program and their comments to us are meeting new people who are so nice. I
was not exercising at home but doing it with other is fun. Notice I had improved in my golfing
distance-wise. Made new friends. Variety of movements to keep joints moving. I have strengthened
my thigh muscles, etc., so I'm able to stand from the portable, foldable fabric chairs easily. And then
the other two (2) comments... the combination of cardio, balance and strength is very good and the
last comment... feeling better, sleeping improved, getting stronger.
Some of the challenges that we faced again I'm sure that was mentioned in other
departments is our staff turnover challenges. In the past year we had retirement of our Secretary
with 37 years of experience and the retirement of our accountant and Case Manager. And we'll be
faced yet another retiring Program Specialist with 32 years of experience, that would be Naomi
Sugihara.
Improvements all I could think of is just the little things that we do program wise that would
help in terms of our RSVP is a volunteer program and their mission is to improve lives, strengthen
communities and foster civic engagement through service and volunteering. So the RSVP staff is
increasing volunteer recognition in the community through posting just simple things like RSVP
signage at the stations where they do volunteers, so to give them recognition that we have volunteer
RSVP program. Just recently this past last week or so we are honoring volunteers who provided four
thousand plus hours of lifetime service and then we're also planning to have talk story activities with
volunteers and volunteer supervisors.
Our upcoming initiatives is the Aging and Disability Resource Center or ADRC that serves
as a one stop source of information that offers a full range of long term care support options and
services. And that's the same goal we had as goal number one (1) and so the goal here is really to
empower older adults or people with disabilities and family caregivers to make informed choices and
to streamline access to long term support. I failed to mention and part of the handouts and you see
there's class of seniors exercising, that's with the Kapa`a site and so you can just see... and then I
also attached a couple of handouts, oh in the back of that flier with the seniors exercising is the new
schedule that they have. We have instructors there, so with the training with the new instructors,
they act as substitutes so we have backup. The next comparative graph just indicates our salaries,
wages, benefits and our operation. I've also included the positions or change in positions, we had a
secretary position change to administrative specialist two and one vacancy is our program specialist
two and that's our case manager. This position is funded one hundred percent by the State Kupuna
Care funds. It's been vacant for two months and we hope to fill that position hopefully in four (4)
months, that's my goal. We have a listing of our contractual positions funded with State/Federal
grants. I just want to mention another support that we receive from county is our Older Americans
Month and so ever since May of 1963 people in towns and cities across the country have come
together to celebrate the enormous contributions of older Americans borne of wisdom, experience and
the -will to realize their dreams and speak their minds. Older Americans Month is our chance to
show our appreciation and support our seniors as they continue to enrich and strengthen our
communities. This year the County will be honoring the following and you have a poster that is
attached also to the packet and let me just read the names, Mrs. Francis Cachero, Mrs. Lola Cruz,
Mr. Basilio Fuertes, Mrs. Mildred Fuertes, Mr. Jim Jung, Mrs. Rogerlyn Kanealii, Mrs. Perlita
Mararagan, and Mr. Vernon Paler.
Chair Furfaro: Very nice job Kealoha. Kealoha on some of these vacancies
may I ask for example there's one that's going to take four (4) months to fill?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes. We just started the process now of submitting and doing
the recruitment.
Chair Furfaro: Do you anticipate it taking that long?
Apri114, 2011
Agency on Elderly Affairs p.3
Ms. Takahashi: I hope not but that's just a estimate for me.
Chair Furfaro: Okay I think that's probably fair to be able to guess the
length of the vacancy in terms of a longer period of time but you are moving on the process right?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay and the other thing I want to say is thank you very
much for understanding our tight schedule earlier this morning and your willingness to come back.
Questions Councilmembers?
Mr. Rapozo: I have a question.
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Thanks Kealoha, I just have one (1) question and it's the in
the salary position the secretary changing to administrative specialist two.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Is that the reason for the increase in your salaries, forty-one
thousand and thirty-eight dollars?
Ms. Takahashi: Forty...
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, I'm showing forty-one thousand and I'm sure in there
it's probably the furlough adjustments?
Ms. Takahashi: Right, yes.
Mr. Rapozo: But aside from the furlough adjustment. that is an increase in
that position alone?
Ms. Takahashi:
Mr. Rapozo:
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: And the four (4) month vacancy comes back on the radar
screen again because that means you're not going to fill it until the new year.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Councilwoman Yukimura did you have a question?
Ms. Yukimura: I do.
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you and actually Councilwoman. Nakamura is the
expert to this but to my lay eyes your goals and objectives are really excellent and probably should
circulate it to all of the departments as an example of well done goals and objectives so thank you for
that.
Ms. Takahashi: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: On your better choices, better health program.
April 14, 2011
Agency on Elderly Affairs p.4
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: What did it used to be called?
Ms. Takahashi: Chronic disease self management.
Ms. Yukimura: -Yeah the new name is much better.
Ms. Takahashi: Oh.
Ms. Yukimura: Better choices, Better health. Very nice and again really good
work and of course very impressed with your enhances fitness program and this is a pilot project or
is it?
Ms. Takahashi: No.
Ms. Yukimura: Now it's an ongoing one?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and you're limited only by your limit staff?
Ms. Takahashi: And.
Ms. Yukimura: And money's.
Ms. Takahashi: We're at capacity.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah you're at capacity now but your waiting list suggest that
there's more of a need or desire than what you're able to handle?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: One of these days it'll. be interested to evaluate the cost or the
savings that come from reduced falls and better health, that would be •an interesting thing to do.
And then my one (1) question from your budget line item.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: On your home delivered meals and in home services.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: That's a hundred seventy-six thousand five hundred.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: How many... perhaps you said it somewhere but I didn't see,
how many meals does that serve and how many individuals?
Ms. Takahashi: Individual we're serving, I'm just guessing now, around three
hundred seventy-five that's a guesstimate but I can get you the numbers for what we server up to
date.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: We'll send that over in a question.
April 14, 2011
Agency on Elderly Affairs p.5
Ms. Takahashi: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: And in terms of need, do you have a sense of whether we're
meeting need or whether there's a need beyond this that's considerable?
Ms. Takahashi: We are meeting the need, certainly there are needs out there
but we're really... not restricted, we have a certain criteria, they want to be sure that those who
receive the meals are the ones that are in need.
Ms. Yukimura: Are needy?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: So you do have that applied criteria?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And then people go off and others come on so it's not like just
continue services although it maybe for some. Okay, thank you very much.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you for the presentation, I think you have a wonderful
program. I'm concerned that you have these great employees that were there for so long that are
retiring so just on a personal note I hope you get really good people that you feel comfortable working
with. Because they have an opportunity to work at a really great job, good luck with ariy recruiting.
To refresh my memory the enhance fitness program started as a grant.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: Then we funded it and it's really the only program expansion
funding for a long time that came from County budgets but it's been so well received. So I'm really
glad to see it's in here at the same funding level. basically right and so I know it's a really successful
program and I'm going to void saying...
Ms. Takahashi: Well you still have the schedule in case you decide you
wanted to visit any of our classes.
Chair Furfaro: Good one.
Mr. Bynum: Yeah, I got to put it in the calendar. Good job and oh the last
thing at looking at your newsletters yes I know it's more difficult to find a parking place at Big Save
and I now understand why there's RSVP because the volunteers have to come in.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And you know this is for another department but we need to
control the parking there better. We actually have a county ordinance that we're not following
regarding that. But that's going to be a challenge as we're starting to build the new fire station and
we're going to have more people there and it is getting more difficult... so great that you have those
RSVP spaces and you're letting them know about it and their using it.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo did you have a question?
April 14, 2011
Agency on Elderly Affairs p.6
Mr. Rapozo: No I don't...
Chair Furfaro: And thank you for starting the meeting, I'm sorry I was late.
Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Just out of curiosity because the enhance fitness waiting list
for Kapa`a and Lihu`e are so high, what would it take to offer, what would it cost to offer more
classes?
Ms. Takahashi: Money.
Mr. Bynum: Money.
Ms. Nakamura: Yeah that's what I was wondering... how much more?
Ms. Takahashi: For just... offhand I can't tell you... I don't know.
Chair Furfaro: We'll send that over in a question.
Ms. Nakamura: I was just curious because it seems like it's a long waiting list.
Ms. Takahashi: It is and it involves getting the right instructor, they have to
be certified and trained in the protocols of the program and then it's staff time to monitor these
classes, we have eight (8).
time?
Ms. Nakamura: Are you satisfied with this level of service at this point in
Ms. Takahashi: The need is out there but right now for purposes as far as
staffing, yes.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay we won't send that specific question over to you then.
Anymore questions from anyone here?
Ms. Takahashi: I just wanted to thank you for your support that you have
given us throughout the years, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Nakamura had one more question.
Ms. Takahashi: Sure.
Ms. Nakamura: This is more of a comment and I said this before when we
were reviewing your area plan but I really believe that your goals and objectives are very clear and
understandable and I really think this should be the template that other agencies use in creating
their strategic plan, so thank you.
Ms. Takahashi: No... thank you. I just wanted to make a comment that
really it's to the hard efforts of Naomi who spearheaded this whole project. She's the master mind
behind the whole plan. Kudos to her for her good work done.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for sharing that phrase Kealoha. Councilwoman
Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: I have to go back to that lunches... It was three hundred
seventy-five people?
April 14, 2011
Agency on Elderly Affairs p.7
Ms. Takahashi: Yes approximately.
Ms. Yukimura: In a year?
Ms. Takahashi: In a year.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you.
Ms. Takahashi: And I'll get those figures current.
Chair Furfaro: That one, we will send over in a question.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, thank you. Oh one (1) other question.
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: Have you consider giving bus passes to your RSVP, where it is
you know usable I mean like certain people...
Ms. Takahashi: (inaudible)
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah but that might be where they are close to easily
accessible bus stops and they're used to riding buses that maybe as valuable as a parking space...
Chair Furfaro: Councilmember Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: Aloha Kealoha. Mahalo for the work that you do and to all of
your staff as well, it's important work that you're doing for our people.
Ms. Takahashi: Thank you.
Mr. Kuali`i: I just have one quick question and I think I'm going to explore
it further with maybe Finance and maybe with the Mayor's Office but it's in regards to the line item
that is other post employment benefits, so just from your standpoint have you had... I think
somebody made a comment about losing some senior people, have you had... what is your total staff
level and how many senior level positions... you know how many people just recently retired in the
last year or so.
Ms. Takahashi: Okay, besides the three (3), looking at a combination... oh...
years... that's a lot. We have eighteen members in our staff and this is including the enhance fitness
coordinator, eighteen (18) so out of that eighteen (18) we had three members already retired.
Mr. Kuali`i:
retirement cost is involve
Ms. Takahashi:
Mr. Kuali`i:
Chair Furfaro:
wanted to...
And they're all benefited county employees or... I mean is
d? Yeah, okay... not with contract, okay.
Yes.
Thank you that was it Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chang did you have a question? No. Kealoha, I just
Mr. Rapozo: Clarification... and it's on the chart on page four (4)... and
this is really... very minor but on the left side on the... it says minutes sent in exercise I'm assuming
days?
Ms. Takahashi: Minutes spent in exercise days per week, so they send...
April 14, 2011
Agency on Elderly Affairs p.8
Mr. Rapozo:
Ms. Takahashi:
Mr. Rapozo:
Ms. Takahashi:
So they went from...
This is interesting.
Is that minutes or hours?
I need to get that clarified.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, I'm assuming it's hours because... I think I know for a
fact because I've been to their functions and in the day I was at their function, they exercise more
than two and a half minutes per day... so I got to believe it's hours.
Ms. Takahashi: Hours because you looking at per week.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah because they wear me out, they're in good shape.
Ms. Takahashi: They are.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you very much for those programs for them, thank
you.
Chair Furfaro:
per week and so forth.
Ms. Takahashi:
Chair Furfaro:
Ms. Takahashi:
Mr. Rapozo:
that to three and half hol
So... two and a half hours a week equal thirty minutes a day
And that's the recommended amount thirty minutes...
Yes.
...a day.
And actually Mr. Chair the programs they have has increased
irs per week so they're even doing more.
Chair Furfaro: Well we're beating the national recommended average.
Ms. Yukimura: They're probably beating the Council average.
Chair Furfaro: Now, now... now, now...
Ms. Yukimura: Especially during budget sessions.
Chair Furfaro: Kealoha, I want to thank you for an excellent presentation, I
think a few of the Councilmembers gave the appropriate praise on how you are reporting for your
department. I think we have a hand full of questions that will be coming over but I just want to say
mahalo, I think we're done with Elderly Affairs today. Oh Mr. Chang.
Mr. Chang: I just wanted to say if you can just let Naomi know happy
retirement on behalf of the Council and let her know that she got high praises in her goals and
objectives... and if you can get high praises from Councilmember Nakamura, she's got really, really
good high praises so... please tell her congratulations and we appreciate her going out in a bang.
Thank you Naomi...
Chair Furfaro: Again my appreciation for you coming back today. Okay...
There being no objections, the Committee recessed at 1:29 p.m.
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.l
The Council reconvened at 11:10 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
TRANSPORTATION AGENCY:
Chair Furfaro: We are back from a break and Celia thank you for being here,
I'm sorry we're running a little bit behind. May I have a moment just with all the members, at the
beginning of the meeting I reiterated that for capital improvement plans which might include the
purchase of materials for this department, the acquisition of new vehicles and so forth, that is a
discussion in a separate meeting under CIP. If our discussions about fleet age and rotation and so
forth, understood we'd like to see some of that. If you're wanting to talk in terms of philosophies
about transportation and so forth then that can be held in Committee meetings of which five (5)
members are in fact Committee members. This is a meeting for the Transportation Department on
their operating budget, payroll, benefits, fuel cost, etc., and even discussion about their routes but
please philosophical changes in what is being presented to us and CIP items are held either in
Committee Meetings in the future and/or when we get to CIP in this budget review. On that note,
I'm going to give you the floor and we'll go from there.
CELIA MAHIKOA, EXECUTIVE ON TRANSPORTATION: Thank you Chair Furfaro.
Good morning.
Chair Furfaro: Is your mic on?
Ms. Mahikoa: Should I speak louder?
Chair Furfaro: There we go.
Ms. Mahikoa: Okay. I just want to thank you for this opportunity and I
come before you and go through our goals and objectives and some of the accomplishments that we've
had as well as address any questions that you may have on our budget that we are requesting for
this year. To start out we just want to share with you our mission at the Kauai Bus Transportation
Agency and it is clearly to provide the Kauai community accessible transportation services with
professionalism and the Aloha spirit and this is shared with each incoming member of our staff as
well as our ongoing philosophy that we operate under with fellow employees as well as with the
public that we are here to serve.
For our goals and objectives for this year I did include items as Chair Furfaro had mentioned
or included in the CIP portion so that would be up for discussion at some other point but if you... I do
have them listed here as items that we will be addressing this year. For the first item that I've listed
for you is the Bus Stop shelters that we're looking at having constructed at several locations around
the island. We're still doing our preliminary assessments on all of these right now. The right-of-
entry agreement for Anaina Hou had come in recently and thank you for approving that for the
implementation of the Kilauea park and ride facility that they had establish there and we're looking
forward to setting that into play to assist with the North Shore community having an alternative
location to leave their vehicles so that they can use the transit system to get into town. In addition
to that we are very close to contract award for the multi-modal land transportation plan that has
been in the works and that we're looking at providing us with good plan for the future as far for
transit as well as the integration with pedestrian and bicycle facilities on the island of Kauai. I will
expand on that a little bit more later on in our presentation. In addition to that we are working with
the KCC student government to implement a bus pass program and we're hoping to implement that
soon as a pilot program to have that as a incentive to encourage the students at KCC to utilize the
transit service which would lighten traffic as well as the parking situations that they encounter
there on campus. In addition to that we are also looking at offsite bus pass sales agreements. We
will be working with certain merchants to see if they're willing to enter into an agreement. We're
looked into O`ahu's system that they have set up there and they were able to share some good ideas
with us that we can look at implementing here for the convenience of the public. Right now they can
do it by mail or if they're doing it in person, they need to come into Lihu`e at the moment and we're
looking at providing alternative sites in order to improve our service level for the public. As far as
our achievements for this past year... the largest one that we've recently implemented is the Service
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.2
Expansion that took place on February 14 and with that expansion we have increased the hours of
service to include Sunday service which was... we weren't serving on Sunday at all and now we have
the same service level as Saturday and Holidays. We also increased the week day service hours to
include up through approximately 10:30 depending where you're at, the last runs are leaving Lihu`e
at 9:30 headed North and headed West. You've seen a good amount of ridership on those runs, we
have documented the ridership numbers and if you're interested we have spreadsheets that we can
share with the details on that. I have summarized some of the ridership data on there, on you
presentation packet here for you.
Chair Furfaro: Celia, I do want you to know that I plan to put a agenda item
on in about three (3) months, I figure at least the six (6) month period before we get a fair evaluation
so that will be something coming up in the future.
Ms. Mahikoa: Okay. Thank you. The implementation of the service
expansion was it required the additional appropriation in which we want to thank you for approving
back in January and that included the five hundred seventy-five thousand dollars ($575,000.00) that
was to cover the items that would increase due to the service expansion. I have on page two (2} up at
the top, the primary contributors to where that five- hundred seventy-five thousand dollars
($575,000.00} has been needed to be used to provide this service of which we have salaries and wages
of approximately a hundred and seventy-nine thousand (179,000), the related benefits of a hundred
and three (103,000), the fuel of a addition of hundred and ten thousand (110,000), the vehicle repair
and maintenance 70,000 and the additional vehicle match due to the additional wear on the vehicles
that we have serving at this capacity, we're looking at a hundred thousand contributing to our
current purchase.
In addition to the service expansion that we have, we have the park and ride lot
improvement that we accomplished in Kalaheo last year which definitely was a wonderful experience
of collaboration between different departments within the county. It couldn't have been done
without everyone working together and cooperating. The department of Public Works, and Parks
and Recreation and the County Attorney's Office were more than willing to assist to accomplishing
that project where the park and ride lot was paved.
In addition to that I've listed under our successes increase ridership and increase revenue
and in particularly to me the success is more so for the people of Kauai who use the service and in
addition the ones who benefit from the increase in other's riding on the system as well. We would
want to encourage more people to use the public transit system and the rise in ridership,
unfortunately due to the fuel prices has prompted some of it but it's a good thing because many times
as we encountered back in July of 2008 when people first try it, it's almost like they're forced to
financially but once they try it, they tend to want to stay. It's unfortunate that the fuel prices need to
go that way but we end up with lessons that come from it. I have a chart there showing the increase
of bus revenue that has occurred through the years. And then reflecting the past ten (10) years on
this, showing that we're projecting approximately seven hundred fifty thousand coming in on fairs
and passes and/or contracting income for next year.
Aside from that we have some challenges that have come up, some directly related to the
successes that we've had. The implementation of the Sunday and weekend evening service... had its
challenges in operations and basically leading to start from scratch with our drivers' schedules and
reworking everything and putting it all back together again. We definitely appreciate the support of
the public, County Council and the Administration and the hard work and dedication of all of our
employees that help to make that happen. Everyone worked together to have that implemented
successfully. Another challenge we encountered this year was the bus stop improvement contract
that we've had ongoing for the past two (2) years or so. Whereby unfortunately the contractor was
unable to get the necessary supplies in order to complete the job. We've been holding weekly
meetings in order to keep in contact and stay current with the status of that project until the point
where we've notified him as of last week, that the contract time will be recommencing as of May 1
which gives it a contract completion date of June 6. We're hoping that he's able to pull together the
required materials by that time in order to get the contract taken care o£ Another challenge that
we've had come up is back in February we had a visit from Representative Inouye's office who shared
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.3
with us that because of the difficult time the Federal Government is having financially as well that
they will be eliminating the special earmarks that were awarded typically each year for capital
purchases which includes our vehicles. This award was typically made each year through section
5309 funds from the federal transit administration and it would cover over eighty percent of the cost
of the vehicles that we would purchase. What I've provided here is a chart that shows, it's a vehicle
replacement schedule that shows the fiscal year effect of vehicle replacements that we will be
requiring coming up and it also spells out that fortunately due to the stimulus funds that we were
awarded last year or purchased vehicles last year, we're able to have existing grant funds that we
can purchase vehicles with this year through the existing section 5309 funds. We also received
notice recently that the federal transit administration also has a state of good repair initiative that
they have, it was unallocated fiscal year 2010 discretionary funds that they had that they were
looking at awarding. We are awaiting authorization on nine hundred twenty-five thousand dollars
for that so that will be able to carry us through fiscal 2013. Beyond that we're hoping that the
earmarks will come back in otherwise we're going to need to be looking for alternative sources for
funding and meanwhile we are also keeping our eyes open for other sources that could provide funds
for vehicle replacement.
I would like to share with you the improvements that typically take place in our operation
and specifics ones that have taken place recently. Just sharing that we're committing to the
research and responding to the inquiries and request from the public, and when changes are
warranted, taking necessary steps to implement them. Includes simple solutions sometimes like just
changing the size of vehicles sometimes we'll get word that there's standing room only at certain
vehicles at certain times in which case it's just a simple switch out to a larger size vehicle if that's
possible. And at other times it's special request for bus stops in other areas in which case it takes a
lot more where we're investing more time in researching it, making sure that its operational feasible
to implement a bus stop at that area as well as safety concerns and engineering concerns and
accessibility concerns. Those are factors that we need to consider when we're looking at changes that
we need to make. Currently we have a scheduling system for our paratransit service that manages
the registration and reservation system for the paratransit riders who call in for rides on the
paratransit system. We recently receive notice in fact two (2) day ago that they have established a
web base version of this and it seems like it's going to be a major improvement that we would be able
to benefit from and increasing the level of service that we provide for the public that are calling in to
make paratransit reservation. In addition to that we're looking at having our agency phone system
upgraded, we're still on the old system I think just about the rest of the county has been converted to
the new system by now. We're still on the old system and we're, we've been told that it has added
features that would assist us with routing calls more efficiently, so we're hoping that that will
improve the level of service that we can provide to the public calling in for questions on schedules,
calling to make reservations and such. This past year we also purchased these new, we call them
(inaudible) buses it's a special suspension type of vehicle, I'm not sure how many people have seen
where, when the vehicle comes up to the curb it kneels, it's able to... it looks like aloes-rider bus at
the curb and then from that point, the door comes open and then a ramp comes out to ease boarding
for persons with mobility challenges.
We have been monitoring our first hybrid vehicle that we purchased last year and looking at
the fuel efficiency of it. We have been drawing data on it that for future investments we would be
looking at probably smaller vehicles, so this upcoming year we're asking to go out for another hybrid
vehicle and it will be a small one that we can use in closer areas that are smaller and more stop and
go.
As far as our upcoming initiatives the primary one I have on our scope right now is getting
the multi-modal land transportation plan completed. We're looking at hopefully having the contract
initiated by May. The beauty of this plan is that... it will include going out to the community and
asking for input from each community. We're holding a minimum of five (5) meetings around the
island in different locations to get community members input on what they value in their
communities and their priorities for that area, what they feel is important to serve their areas and
then assembling all of this information in order to get a good plan for where transit go as well as
intergrading it well with the pedestrian/bicycle elements of multi-modal land planning. Another
effort that we're going to be making with this plan is to have it also intergraded along with the
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.4
Hawaii State Land Transportation plan that's going on now currently. The State currently has
several land plans that are going on... bicycle plan, the ped plan, the regional long range land trans
plan and the State wide transportation plan. The goal is to have all of these at least taking into
account or I'm sorry just having them all being in line with each other, we want to see a consistency
among them all and that has been expressed in the contract as something important to ensure that
they axe compatible. As far as upcoming initiatives go another one we have is planning to pursue
obtaining a vehicle through a lease agreement and this is the first time we're going to be attempting
this. It's needless to say already we're kind of taking some preliminary steps to just researching
what it may take so far as far as funding and then moving into availability of these types of
agreements for an agency like ours for public transit. Also we will be looking at and we always kind
of have our eyes open to the new information that's out there for vehicle fuel alternatives that are
being publicized out there, just new information that's coming up. Being able to explore an effort to
minimize the impact our vehicles on the environment to the greatest extent possible. Research and
discussions will be conducted with different individuals here and with different organizations in
order to fulfill this purpose. Many times the challenge with it is having the supply whenever we look
at implementing new things but we also look at possibly looking at test cases and other things that
we might be able to do in order to determine if something would be practical to implement for
operations.
On page six (6) I have the graphs comparing our operating budget, we're getting more into
the numbers here and the first one is showing our fiscal 2012 operating budget. Just as far as the
allocation of certain items, showing the salaries and wages taking forty-five percent of our budget,
the benefits twenty-nine, operations twenty, and the equipment/lease six and comparatively looking
at the fiscal 2011 budget showing where it's half of our budget fifty percent is for salaries and wages
twenty-six for benefits and so on. The following page just shows a bar chart comparatively where
our salaries and wages are going which expresses the differences if you're looking at your line item
on page 183-186 I believe it is where it's comparing last fiscal year to this fiscal year and the
changes. The chart below that just depicts the numbers that are involved in this chart, one thing I
did with this and if you're looking at the totals and they're not matching it's because the, I have
added the five hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars that were the additional amount added to
our budget into our fisca12011 numbers on here. So it's actually showing where we are at right now
budget wise. If you're looking at our original budget versus the budget submitted to you for fiscal
2012, the original 2011that's showing a 1.5 million difference, if you include the five hundred
seventy-five thousand dollars, it's actually showing the difference of nine hundred and fifty-one
thousand four hundred and seventy-nine dollars, and so I'm now on page eight (8) of our
presentation booklet here. Of that nine hundred fifty-one thousand I've broken it down into the pie
chart showing where these nine hundred fifty-one thousand had an impact on for the changes for
fiscal year 2011-2012 showing that the service expansion is responsible for about fifty-six percent of
that additional nine hundred fifty-one thousand. The increase in fuel prices, I put in an additional
hundred twenty thousand, that's above and beyond the service expansion amount simply because of
we've all notices the prices going up lately on that so we've put in a hundred twenty thousand there.
OPEB- other post employment benefit line item also I'm sure it went from twenty-four percent to
thirty-one percent which resulted in a ten percent portion of that that increase. The Vehicle match,
I'm putting in an additional match requesting matching funds from the Federal funds that we
currently have in order to purchase additional vehicle.
The furlough ending accounts for seven percent of that and then the extra item the hybrid
lease that we had, that we are requesting is six percent of that budget increase that we're asking for.
Other than that I have supplied the position information that was requested.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that.
Ms. Mahikoa: You're welcome. There were many changes that we needed
to do position wise in order to accomplish the service expansion and we were at a point where we had
many, many shifts that was going on. Prior to the expansion being implemented there were many,
many shifts that were scheduled each day two to three hours, some four hours shifts that we had on-
call drivers filling at that point, just the nature of our operation is naturally morning and afternoon
we have very high use and in the middle and very early and very late its rather light and so the
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.5
benefit that the service expansion did was these afternoon shifts that were 2, 3, 4 hours were able to.
be made into 8 hour shifts at that point. What it took was the bulk of our on-call driver positions
were needed to be reallocated to full time positions to fill those eight hour shifts to provide that
service. All of the detail can be a little bit overwhelming so I just put the net effect at the bottom of
page nine, it kind of summarizes all of those transactions into groups of exactly what happened
quantity wise for each type of position. Beyond that right now we have dispatchers also that we
needed to recruit in order to fill those additional hours, they are now going from 4 a.m. until
midnight and none of these were new positions, they were all reallocated positions that were existing
prior. Needed to revamp the dispatchers' schedules as well in order to have them with sufficient
break time between schedules. Beyond that, I'm willing to address any question you have.
Chair Furfaro: I'll start because I do have to leave and turn the meeting over
to Mr. Rapozo as I am meeting with the Finance Director for lunch on some other items. First of all,
I want to tell you... the way you broke down your incremental increases is outstanding and in fact I
don't even need to go and ask the question as I have of a few other departments to give us some of
the comparisons on the changes in service delivery, the net effects of the furlough, may I just say
congratulations. Thank you very much.. I also want to say in comparing the numbers currently
your operating department is about 5.5 million dollars, we subsidize about 88 percent of it but for the
7th year in a row your income has increased almost at a rate of ten percent a year. It just really
reflects how much ridership is really responding to the expanded services and the consistently and
the delivering of aloha to our citizens in using your service that is provided in your department.
Some of the other Councilmembers may have some question about the (inaudible) fleet and so forth
but I do want to let you know, I probably will invite you back when we talk about the CIP especially
when we heard the President's message that over the next six years, he's trying to cut four trillion
dollars from the Federal budget and I can almost see transportation as being a line item which has
been the greatest resource of getting our replacement efforts. So do prepare yourself to talk about
some long term capitol but there may be some questions about the current repair and maintenance
schedule, the aging of the fleet and so forth. I have only one (1) item I would like you to revisit for us
and I don't know in your forty-one percent of your fuel allocation, I see the graph number here of a
hundred and twenty thousand related to the expanded services but when I look at the whole thing,
you maybe cautiously high... in-other words... I mean you may have given us a number that takes
fuel cost to five dollars and twenty-five cents by the year versus maybe it would only be going to five
dollars or something... I really want to applaud you for taking the employees that were in part time
status and so forth and just expanding their hours while retaining the workforce because that saved
us in a lot of training issues. Good job from me, I just wanted to say good job. I will be putting you
on the agenda in a.few more. months specifically to talk about the net results of the added service
and the ridership, not the whole ridership just what we expanded so watch for that as a future
agenda item. I'm going to give Mr. Bynum the floor and then after Mr. Bynum, please Mel will you
take over this review?
Mr. Rapozo: Sure.
Mr. Bynum: Celia welcome to budget, I think this is your first right? And
so far you're doing an outstanding job, I want to echo what the Chair said, this is a great report, it
covers all the basis, anticipate some of our questions so I think I won't have that many, and I'll be
really quick, I'll go through these quick. You noted in here your responsiveness to route change
suggestions so I just wanted to use one as an example... how does that operation...can any bus driver
or any citizen make a request or a suggestion and then how does that get responded to?
Ms. Mahikoa: We do get a multitude request for different types of service
and right now we're assembling the information and we respond back certain ones like I mention
we're very easy to implement and other ones require more thoughtful consideration as far as
operationally like I mention engineering wise and accessibility wise. But typically we do our best to
get back to people right away, get back to the public right away with whether it's something we can
implement or not or maybe just a matter of time or if sufficient demand.
Mr. Bynum: There was a constituent who had broke during our... when we
had about expanding the bus and I can't remember if I sent it to you or I encouraged the individual
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.6
but they... and I heard this one from a couple people about suggesting an on-call stop at Dynasty
Court.
Ms. Mahikoa: Right.
Mr. Bynum: Are you familiar with that?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: Is that the kind of thing that we can actually do or?
Ms. Mahikoa: It comes in and then we proceed with basically taking it
down, doing the research necessary which thankfully Public Works worked with us and responded
right away when I requested information about setting up a stop there and basically, unfortunately
it's not their property, so they did provide me with the landowners name and so we will be pursuing
information on that as far as getting a stop there. At the same time they did make a
recommendation as far as safety placement on it.
Mr. Bynum: So that's in the works?
Ms. Mahikoa: Ultimately yes but unfortunately I haven't been able to
proceed with sending a letter to the landowner yet.
Mr. Bynum: But that's really responsive, I mean this is just one I was
aware of, I talked to a couple of the elderly folks who use the bus stop at Kukui Grove, it's kind of
uphill to Dynasty Court, they have to pay their utility bills and so their making their weekly trip or
whatever and so I appreciate that responsiveness. It's also in your report that you're committed to
that. It seems that the Lihu`e and Kukui Grove and like Big Save, those are kind of like hubs or
transfer stations and so I was just curious are you aware of the ADA compliance plan for the Civic
Center near Big Save. It's something that I'm excited about where we're revamping a lot of things
in the Civic Center including putting identified pedestrian walks say from the County building out to
the bus stop. Igo to that bus stop occasionally just to talk story with the riders and is there any
plans to upgrade that particular bus stop? I know there's a shelter there and maybe your priorities
getting shelters where you don't have them but that being such a key one and it's crowded, I've
noticed that change over the Iast six (6) years that you used to see two or three people waiting for the
bus and now you see twenty, thirty people waiting for the bus. Is that anything you considered?
Ms. Mahikoa: We do have ongoing analysis on different stops that we're
going to be performing but right now there's nothing currently in the works for major improvements.
Mr. Bynum: I (inaudible) talked to Public Works and look at the drawings
of what they... and this is going to be soon.
Ms. Mahikoa: Thank you.
Mr. Bynum: I think it's about pedestrian changes in the Civic Center area
because it's going to give a dedicated pedestrian walk to that bus stop to get safely through the
parking lot because there is a lot of traffic between the Big Save and the County buildings and that
bus stop. Right now they kind of go through among the cars and so there's a real cool plan that you
need to be aware of. The hybrid bus, I appreciate that, you have any initial feedback about whether
there's any fuel savings I kind of heard informally that we weren't really seeing a big cost benefit
analysis for that.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes and that's unfortunately because the nature of our
operation here is we require the big buses on the long runs.
Mr. Bynum: Right.
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.7
Ms. Mahikoa: Typically what I learned is that the hybrid is the best fuel
efficiency in short run stop and go traffic.
Mr. Bynum: Right.
Ms. Mahikoa: So any future investments in hybrid vehicles would be for
smaller vehicles that are...
Mr. Bynum: Like the lunch shuttle kind of.
Ms. Mahikoa: Exactly or the shuttle runs.
Mr. Bynum: In your vehicle replacement thing, I'm not going into detail
but is there any Federal or requirements about how long you keep vehicles... you've outlined what is
best practice kind of replacement schedule yeah... is that set in stone that you have to retire the
buses or?
Ms. Mahikoa: No in actuality most of the vehicles we have, the smaller ones
typically are on a useful life schedule of two hundred fifty thousand or five years. We typically take
our vehicles well beyond three hundred thousand for the most part.
Mr. Bynum: So and you know I hope we can keep up with that and you've
identified that is a future challenge because we have been getting federal funds and you know if we
don't in the future that might be an impact on our budget and I hope we can keep up with that
replacement schedule. We had the police here who had brought no cars for two years and are getting
not what they need this year, they are purchasing some vehicles but they said they had vehicles that
was eleven years old and you just made the point that it's not just age, it's mileage. Two (2) last
questions is that we had some discussion about there's potential to get bike racks to hold three (3)
bikes instead of two (2), do you have any update on that?
Ms. Mahikoa: We have so far been pretty not really considering three (3)
bikes on a rack right now because of some of the narrow areas that we need to maneuver through
and we're just afraid of the scrapping hazard having a object sticking that far off of the vehicle.
We're looking at other alternatives as well. Most often what happens is someone is wanting to board
and they have their bike there and there's already two (2) on and the vehicle stops and they're
unable to board, because of that or unable to take their bike because of that, we attempt to... our
first step is to see if there's any other vehicles who can assist.
Mr. Bynum: Right.
Ms. Mahikoa: And if there's anyone down that they come in and assist.
We've been trying to find ways to provide that service that they need without jeopardizing the safety
of the operation.
Mr. Bynum: Okay, that's good. You track the use of those bike racks?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And so is there any kind of a multiyear analysis of that?
Ms. Mahikoa: I can provide one.
Mr. Bynum: If it's easy, I don't want to give you any extra work but I'm
interested in that. I don't ride the bus as much as I'd like but I came from the Homesteads a few
times and I've used bikes and I there was this one instance where I'm going to go back home and got
my bike and there's a couple kids that I know from the Homesteads that use the two (2) slots right,
and obviously it's like they got to go first because I can make other arrangements but... and I know
from talking to people that you guys really try to accommodate that.
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.8
Ms. Mahikoa: We do our best.
Mr. Bynum: So I really appreciate that. The last thing is when I ride the
bus on Oahu, I use this map thing that tells me that the bus is going to be there in five minutes and
all of these smart phones now have this route, not just for cars but for walking and for bus and I
know that... do you know where that... and are there any plans for us to use that process and get
that data? Because it doesn't work on Kauai right now right?
Ms. Mahikoa: That would be a wonderful thing to be able to implement here
but it's just unfortunate because our priorities needing to be addressed right now as far as our
ongoing stop projects that we have going on and other initiatives that have been in higher priority.
Mr. Bynum: And I have no idea what the technical problems are, I just
know... I used it in Oahu a lot and it's just great. It tells you hey you're standing here, walk over
there the bus will be there in five minutes, I've used it on the mainland and so if we can ever get
there, that'd be great.
Ms. Mahikoa: That would be wonderful.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Mr. Kuali`i followed by Ms. Nakamura.
Mr. Kuali`i: Aloha Celia. Mahalo for being here. Mahalo to you and your
staff for being here today and for all the work that you do for our citizens. First I would echo with
our. Chair that he had said earlier about this report is incredibly thorough and if this is a
representation of the efficiency and thoroughness that you provide the county then I look forward as
the Vice Chair of the Housing and Transportation Committee to working with you. I really
appreciate that the Transportation Agency is focusing on putting energy and focus towards
responding to request from the public that you're making sure that the multimodal land
transportation plan is compatible with other state plans, like the bicycle plan. My close work with
Get Fit Kauai in the past, I'm very concerned about pedestrian safety and complete streets and I
know... the connection between getting off the bus and then walking to the places you walk to or
walking from your home and to the bus stop, that all needs to be seamless and so your efforts here is
incredible. Also that you're exploring vehicle fuel alternatives and making sure that the vehicles
minimize their impact on the environment. My few quick questions number one (1) I appreciate this
graph on bus revenues and I love the idea that it implies the ridership is up. I also want to confirm
that however if you would provide the fee schedule, so for each year what was the charge to get on
the bus, so that we can see if when it goes up, it was just about ridership or there was a fee increase
as well. And it's a totally reasonable that these would increase because cost increase, the cost of fuel
and all that. But if you would provide that information. My second question has to do with, I
thought at one point you were talking about a hybrid vehicle, a second smaller one and I thought at
first it was going to be purchased but then later you talked about a lease so is there a second and
third or just the second?
Ms. Mahikoa: Just a second one.
Mr. Kuali`i: Just a second smaller one and it's going to be lease?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes that's our goal.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay and then my third and final question has to do with on
page nine at the bottom, you did a quick summary of the reallocations of positions and there were
many on the left hand column that were on-call positions and now on the right hand column they're
fulltime and part time positions so I... that's kind of clear but then when I flip over to the next page,
that very last section number three (3) you have position titles and you have bus driver fulltime and
bus driver substitute and actually the fulltime actually shows basically two positions, if I'm reading
this right and then the substitute shows a whole bunch and then the van driver substitute shows a
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.9
whole bunch, so what's the difference between a fulltime bus driver and a substitute bus driver and a
substitute van driver.
Ms. Mahikoa: Okay the fulltime bus drivers expected forty hours a week
and full benefit holding employees of the county and the bus driver substitute and van driver
substitute, the substitute positions are strictly hourly and none benefit holding and these positions
are typically used to fill in for... we still do have a few short hour shifts or short shifts that exist in
our schedule. In order to avoid, I mean say half of days work being filler times, we've needed to
continue with keeping some of the positions as on call. Because like I had mentioned earlier with the
nature of our operation where we have heavy demand in the morning and the afternoon.
Mr. Kuali`i: Now I'm not sure I understand what you mean by filler time
and with the change of later hours and so you still have a morning shift and then a gap in the middle
of the day and then a longer late shift because you're going late hours, or you're just going all day
right?
Ms. Mahikoa: Basically from 4:30 in the morning until mid night, their
shifts that start 4:30, there's some that start at 5:30, 6:30... so it's not even like a 4 shift, 8 shift.
Mr. Kuali`i: And the duration of a shift varies also. What's the shortest
shift and longest shift?
Ms. Mahikoa: I would need to confer with... The shortest mini shift that we
have is two (2) hours right now.
Mr. Kuali`i: Oh?! Wow. Okay I'm just... maybe I'll explore it further but
I'm curious as to why there's only two (2) fulltime bus drivers and that everybody else is substitutes
and you had mentioned that it was to fill in short shifts but it seems that majority is substitute?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yeah these are just the grant funded positions.
Mr. Kuali`i: So it's the grant funded?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Mr. Kuali`i: And the grants require these positions to be hourly and none
benefited?
Ms. Mahikoa: No strictly operational.
Mr. Kuali`i: There's just trying to get more bang for your buck?
Ms. Mahikoa: Basically.
Mr. Kuali`i: Bottom line, you get more drivers and more routes covered...
okay, thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Ms. Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Hi Celia, great report. I had a few questions... how many
park and ride does the county now operate and do we have data on the usage of those park and ride?
Ms. Mahikoa: I don't actually have it with me documented.
Ms. Nakamura: That's okay.
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.10
Ms. Mahikoa: But we have done informal type of reviews on different
locations, there's five right now and we're looking at what I mentioned earlier implementing Aina
Hou location within the next few months.
Ms. Nakamura: Would it be okay if we sent that over as a question?
Ms. Mahikoa: Sure.
Ms. Nakamura: I also wanted to... under your challenges you mentioned this
contract that's been two (2) years old, why is it taking long to get that supplies to improve
accessibility?
Ms. Mahikoa: The primary reason is the nature of making improvements to
transit stops aren't like a nice big construction project in one location where you can ship all your
resources there and take care of the project. What he's been having difficulty getting is the supplier
to provide these dozens of locations of just the little bit of black top and the supplies need in order to
do that as spread out as the job is. Finding a willing and able provider has been the challenge. So
we're, we've reached .the point where we needed to prompt the recommencement of the contract in
order to basically force it, that's where we're at.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay, alright, thank you. Also I just wanted to commend you
for getting the additional FTA funding to purchase more vehicles. You know that's just less county
funds that have to be spent so thank you for your good work on taking advantage of that funding
responsibility. I wanted to find out on the multimodal land transportation plan, when do you expect
that to be completed?
Ms. Mahikoa: It's a twelve month contract so we're really hoping for award
within the next month.
Ms. Nakamura: So May of next year?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes. It's probably where it will end.
Ms. Nakamura: And in your budget on page 184 there's a construction line
item that was budgeted for hundred twenty-nine thousand, I was wondering what that was for and if
it's now zero?
Ms. Mahikoa: I'm sorry... was that the...
Ms. Nakamura: Page 184.
Ms. Mahikoa: Oh okay. That was I believe our ten thousand dollar
additional, I mean original budget we had gone in for plus the adjusted I believe includes the
additional encumbrance on that current contract that we...which we just had the recommencement
letter go out. So it would be hundred nineteen thousand dollars that's remaining on that contract.
Ms. Nakamura: And it's now a zero line item.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes because the encumbrance is in this fiscal year so we won't
need additional encumbrance for next year.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay thank you and finally I wanted'to find out whether you
have any problems securing or designing bus shelters on private property where bus stops are
located, has that... are you running into any problems in designing or constructing bus stops, bus
shelters?
Ms. Mahikoa: There are quite a few challenges in... because there are
different rules depending on where the bus stop is basically.
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.11
Ms. Nakamura: Right.
Ms. Mahikoa: And we are in the early stages of planning that out within the
agency. Typically we've had it as part of contracts in the past. Our plan is to, we're looking at
having members of the public which we had a wonderful response from people volunteering to come
out and want to help us construct shelters and we're going to be looking for basically getting a group
together in each community and looking for community input to get willing people who are willing to
design and assist with construction. A wonderful example of this happening is the North Shore
alliance with the Kilauea and Princeville bus stop that they put up there that we're so thankful for,
they did such a beautiful job out there. They also taken on and pretty much adopted and maintained
them as well, so that's a wonderful example of what we can implement island wide and we're in the
early stages of getting the planning together in order to pull this off but we're excited about making
those changes.
Ms. Nakamura: And just to let you know one of my interest is to look at you
know if those bus shelters take up shape that currently use for parking and for the private property
owner to meet their parking requirement, then maybe we should take a look at the current parking
requirements and see if we can make some a variance or exemptions to reduce their parking
requirement if they are indeed providing space for a bus shelter. I just wanted to throw that out and
maybe we can talking about it later.
Ms. Mahikoa: Okay, thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Okay we're at twelve o'clock, we got to be back..:
Ms. Yukimura: I have something.
Mr. Rapozo: I understand but we got to be back at 1 and I'm not going to
extend the start time for the next session because I don't want to run late again, so we have two (2)
options we can go to 12:15 and have a 45 minute lunch or we can... if you have a burning need to
have them answer questions on the floor, versus sending it over... I have a bunch of questions but in
respect of time, I'll be sending it over in writing. I don't need it to be answered on the air, it's not
that critical but if you have, we'll go to 12:15, we'll go until 12:15... if we can end before then we'll go
but we will start back at lp.m. Ms. Yukimura, she had her hand up.
Ms. Yukimura: You have a procedural question?
Mr. Chang: I was just going to... I was going to say if it's alright with you,
I have some questions also but I don't mind putting it in written form.
Mr. Rapozo: They will be back for the CIP I heard Mr. Furfaro ask you to
be available fox the CIP so if you have any equipment, RMN questions that can be done at the CIP
session. Again if you have any burning questions, pertaining to the operating budget then we can go
to 12:15. Go ahead Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: I just have one (1) question, when you expanded bus service
that entailed in an expansion of paratransit times as well?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Ms. Yukimura did you have a question?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes. First of all, wonderful job Celia, thank you. And I know
you have your staff here and you have a new staff person so would you introduce them?
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.12
Ms. Mahikoa: Sure, it would be my pleasure. We have... do they come up, is
that fine? I have our Operations Manager Kaleo Carvalho here who's been here a long time... how
long... eighteen years in different capacities. And we have Jeremy Kalawai Ali who is our Program
Specialist three who basically took the position that I vacated when I became Executive. He's been
instrumental in getting a lot of the ground work done on the bus shelter information and vehicle
fleet replacement information for us.
Ms. Yukimuxa: Great, thank you. On your mission, I just have a suggestion
that you might include accessible and affordable transportation services because the bus is helping
people save a lot of money. On your goals and objectives your bus stop shelters to be constructed at
several locations, I just wondered if you have an overall bus stop shelter plan or maybe less
demanding of a question would be what is your bus stop shelter goal, I mean when you say several
what approximately how many are you aiming for in this year?
Ms. Mahikoa: We're probably looking at about five for this year, that's what
we're looking at. That's our... we have our hopes.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah. That's fine. And how many bus stops are we dealing
with in our transportation system?
Ms. Mahikoa: I don't know off the top of my head exactly but I can get that
to you.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. And then your multimodal land transportation, you
answered the question to Councilmember Nakamura which I had also, which is that it will be
completed by next year May is the goal?
Ms. Mahikoa: It will be twelve months from when the contract is initiated,
yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And you know you seem to have a very good planning process
in place already but this will probably provide more substance for a strategic plan for you for your
system. Okay...good. And can you provide a graph of ridership increases over time?
Ms. Mahikoa: Sure.
Ms. Yukimura: And I don't know if you measure... one measure is passenger
miles but the other one is just number of riders and I don't know how you do that, I think your
consultant would probably work with you on that but whatever measure you have.
Ms. Mahikoa: Sure.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. I was curious about your challenge in the bus stop
improvement about using mobility aids and I just needed a little bit more flushing out of what that
means, I can't figure it out in my mind.
Ms. Mahikoa: Basically the current contract that we're restarting was to
place I'm sure many of you notice the five by eight cement plate forms.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Ms. Mahikoa: At each stop to allow the safe boarding and disembarking
from the vehicle lifts that are deployed from the bus if anyone in a wheelchair or scooter or is unable
to use the stairs on the bus that needs the lift, that's to provide a safe place for them to board.
Ms. Yukimura: So that is what is involved in here in the contract?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.13
Ms. Yukimura: I see, okay. Thank you. And then this Federal Transit
Administration state of good repair initiative, is that money's that are available yearly or is it a
special one time award?
Ms. Mahikoa: That was a special onetime award simply because they had
allocated funds for fisca12010.
Ms. Yukimura: I see. Well good for you that you were able to grab it and go
for it. Are you able to say who the consultant is going to be on your.,. and if you're not then just say
so.
Ms. Mahikoa: At this point no, I'm hoping for within the next two weeks.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. And then previously we had a cost per trip graph that
showed the cost per trip for your regular passengers and then your paratransit passengers, can you
make that available?
Ms. Mahikoa: Sure.
Ms. Yukimura: And... I see that this county employee bus pass fairs is eight
thousand dollars and we use it up pretty much?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah. So there's good subscription there?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes, thankfully.
Ms. Yukimura: And is it limited to that amount once we run out of money
then it's not available or is it pretty much meeting our needs?
Ms. Mahikoa: It's been meeting our needs, it's been a good estimate.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. At one year we put in money's for an education PR line
item and for all my experience with recycling or anytime we're trying to change habits and get people
introduced to a new system in way of doing things, education seems to be a really big component of it
and I just wondered if that is something that is in your plans or in your thinking either now or for
the future?
Ms. Mahikoa: Definitely in the future. And it is something that we can
implement now and we do to a certain degree with school age children and things, we do special
visits you know see the bus and give them little goodies as part of introducing them to the public
transit system and having that as a positive experience in their minds.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay yeah because I think if you want to increase ridership
that maybe part of it and I don't know how other transit systems work that angle but it probably is
something to think about.
Mr. Rapozo: Hang on JoAnn... I just wanted to make sure... did you have
a question? Because I want to give everyone an opportunity before we...
Mr. Chang: (inaudible)
Mr. Rapozo: Do you have one or not because if you have one... I'm going to
go to you so that we can give everyone an opportunity...
April 14, 2011
Transportation Agency p.14
Mr. Chang: I'm going to try to see if we can get out of here... I'm going to
write it in a... I just thought we were going to decide whether or not we're going to get out of here.
Because I agree with you, I want to be prompt at 1.
Mr. Rapozo: We are going to be prompt at 1.
Mr. Chang: But we didn't have a clarification.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Mr. Chang: I would have asked...
Mr. Rapozo: Well we're moving on... if you're going to do it in writing Ms.
Yukimura, you can finish up.
Ms. Yukimura: Your contractual positions that are funded by State or
Federal grant, they show somewhat of a dependency on federal grants.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: To what extent... what amount of money are we talking here?
Ms. Mahikoa: For the fulltime positions?
Ms. Yukimura: No. Just for all grant.
Ms. Mahikoa: Oh for all of them put together?
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah. Approximately, I don't need to know exact figures.
Ms. Mahikoa: About three hundred and forty thousand.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you. Lastly and maybe there's time for
Councilmember Chang too... I just want to say your agency here is showing what the smart growth
advocates have been saying -for a long time that smart growth creates jobs and you know we're
meeting... we're in great need of the community to have affordable transportation alternatives to the
automobile which is very expansive and also creates a lot of problems in it of itself and we're doing...
in the process of doing it, we're creating jobs for people to support their families life. Thank you very
much, really excellent job.
Ms. Mahikoa: Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Any other questions? If not, expect a ton of
written questions coming over which will give you an opportunity to respond in private. Again as
Mr. Furfaro as mentioned, please be available for the CIP portion of the budget and if there are
Councilmembers that want you back, there is an opportunity for us to bring you back on the call
back date which I don't anticipate but I will leave that up to the Council chair to determine. Thank
you very much.
Ms. Mahikoa: Thank you. I appreciate your report, I think it was the best
we seen so far. Simply because of the breakdown of expenditures, it makes it a lot easier for us.
With that, thank you very much. I will recess.
There being no objections, the Council recessed at 12:12 p.m.
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.l
The Committee reconvened at 1:29 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
FINANCE DEPARTMENT:
Chair Furfaro: We are about twenty-seven (27) minutes behind in time so I
believe Mr. Rezentes is joining us. BC, we'll be right there I believe Mr. Rezentes is in one of the
back offices on a computer.
Mr. Rezentes are you ready?
WALLACE REZENTES, JR., FINANCE DIRECTOR: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: First of all before I give you the floor I do want to say how
pleasantly pleased we are with the format laid out in the County by the different divisions and
making a statement, a clear statement about mission, goals and objectives but in your particular
case I think if you can go back and revisit goals and objectives and give us more than a one and a
half sentences, I know IBM keeps their mission very simple, they just use the word think... but if
you can expand on this one since you have so many moving parts in Finance, I would appreciate it.
On that note we'll give you the floor.
Mr. Rezentes: Good afternoon Council Chair and Councilmembers, for the
record my name is Wallace Rezentes Jr., Director of Finance. I'm very happy to be here today to
present the Department of Finance operating budget for. the fiscal year 2012. I have a number of
folks here with me that will help and take part in the discussion today. I intend to bring up a
number of my division heads to present their own particular areas of the budget. You'll see that
there's a number of moving parts, a number of initiatives that we are going to be proposing in the
upcoming budget cycle and we hope and we intend to work diligently towards those points and those
objectives in the coming fiscal year. The County of Kauai Department of Finance mission is to
provide effective financial services to the people. of Kauai and to all that we serve by establishing
and maintaining a financial system that can properly account for its activities.
Our goal and I think you'll see this theme throughout the presentation, you know we have a
need to maximize the resources that we have by seeking opportunities to leverage these resources
through technology and partnering wherever possible.
We have listed a number of successes of recent year or a year and a half that I wanted to
mentioned but I would first would want you to know that I'm extremely proud and fortunate to have
the team of employees that we have in the Finance Department. The Department as a whole has not
grown significantly in numbers of employees in recent years as compared to other areas of County
government. Yet our employees have worked together to accomplish a .number of noteworthy
accomplishments that I will start by going over with you. First of all, we are awarded by GFOA the
Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for the Comprehensive Annual
Financial Report (CAFR) for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009. The fiscal year ended 2010 CAFR
is being reviewed currently by the GFOA and we hope to be awarded the same certificate of
excellence a few months from now. The county's external auditor had issued an opinion that stated
that the County financial statement is presented fairly in all material respects to the financial
position and the relative changes in financial position of the County in conformity with generally
accepted accounting principles.
I like to mention that the Finance Accounting Division has which is managed by Renee
Yadao who's here today has significantly reduce the time period in which we close each monthly
period to less than an average of three weeks after each month end. This initiative has helped all
departments by allowing management the ability to more timely review these actual results to
monthly and year-to-date budget allotments. In the past some of you may know that we were
challenged in this area because of how long it took to get our payroll data into the system and as you
know payroll and wages and benefits are pretty substantial portion of each department's budget.
Renee and her team has worked diligently to reallocate some of our resources to that effort and we're
really happy that we're in the position that we're in today.
April 14, 2011
Finance Department. p.2
In February 2010, the County of Kauai had achieved its highest ever credit rating from
Standard & Poor's, Moody and Fitch and it goes on , to say... you know how each of these credit
ratings agencies have amended their credit rating for the county of Kauai. As a result of these
upgrades the County will derive a savings of approximately 3.2 million of debt service of the life of
the bonds. So that is in it of itself an important that we recently accomplished and that's not only,
we don't only look at that as hours but that of the Council, past Council's and the Administration
and how we manage ourselves. The Grant Management Program for number five (5) that I've listed,
they're able to close a hundred and twenty-seven projects this past year that has been our system,
our accounting system for quite a long period of time and our Grants Manager has worked with the
fiscal staffs of the various departments to zero out or clear out the number of grants that we had
listed yet wasn't entirely closed out. So it was a huge effort on their part Anne Wooten had headed
that work for us. The Grants Management Program also developed four (4) written procedures and
conducted information sessions with departmental staff with related to increase income earned,
federal financial reporting, accounting for matching and in kind and grants to private organizations.
The County as you know was able to secure upwards of 13.9 million in ARRA funds and as
you know some of that money has been spent thus far, there's moxe to go but one of the main projects
that benefited from this ARR,A of funds was the Waimea Wastewater Treatment plant infrastructure
improvements. Our Risk Management Program processed 261 claims last year through our third
party administrator or our TPA of these 261 claims 132 were closed. Risk Management attained a
closing rate of 51% in FY 2010 which is a slight improvement over the 48% closing rate of FY 2009.
Of significance is that the statewide average closing rate was 20%.
Risk Management as part of its cost-containment program improvements utilized the
services of a third party bill review firm that audited medical bills and saved the county $390, 400 in
medical costs. Risk Management assisted departments in their safety and loss control efforts by
coordinating a 4 day leadership seminar for 80 employees to learn stress and drama reduction
techniques in the workplace. Manual material handling training was conducted for 50 Parks and
Recreation and Public Works employees covering lifting and body mechanics at 4 county facilities.
So Mr. Bynum, we did that, I heard you comment the other day that we haven't been but we actually
did it. And we will continue to do more. Risk Management performed a loss analysis of open claims
to identify the causes and nature of workplace injuries. This analysis identified the most frequent
and costliest causes of injuries were manual material handling, slips and falls, stress and on the job
training for new recruits for Police and Fire area. Risk Management will utilize this data and
expand risk management training in a manner that we will explain later and Janine will be doing
that part in a little while. One very important future initiative is the online Risk Management
training program which we will discuss later in that will be again by Janine Rapozo. It is a program
that we worked with our (inaudible) Risk Management services, we have contracted...
Real Property Assessment has also upgraded its assessment and administration software to
an updated version. This is a continuing and ongoing process where the Real Property software
vender migrates from plate form to plate form and we are in an effort to catch up to the most recent
module that's available. In FY 2010 Real Property Assessment processed 1024 qualified Long Term
Lease Applicants, 94 Circuit Breaker applicants, and 12, 428 permanent home use recipients who
received tax credits of approximately 6.8 million dollars. The staff processed or administered a
total 18,379 exemptions totaling 3.36 billion in cumulative value again not taxes, it's value. Real
Property Assessment was able to improve the accuracy of assessments and achieved a sales to
assessment ratio slightly above 90%. RPA uses actual sales data from which they compare their
assessments annually. In FY 2010 the RPA division successfully accepted, numbered and input all
transient vacation rental applications that was presented to them.
Real Property Collections assisted Solid Waste Division in utilizing the existing real property
tax billing system for the residential refuse collection assessment fee program. This fee will begin
effective July 2011, by leveraging this real property system the county has saved hundreds of
thousands of dollars in costs that would have otherwise been used to purchase a new system and
maintain a new system. This leveraging will save hundreds of thousands in future external and
internal maintenance costs.
Apri114, 2011
Finance Department p.3
The Divers Licensing Section was determining to be in compliance with federal social
security administration system security requirements. They were also successful in implementing
the Hawaii Administrative Rules covering Chapter 19-122 relating to drivers licensing procedures
affecting persons with disabilities.
IT was able to provide assistance to the Solid Waste Division with route maps and address
information for their automate curbside refuse pickup program. IT created GIS maps and data list
that will be used to create new evacuations maps that are near to potentially hazardous dam areas.
Efforts were coordinated with Civil Defense, Pacific Disaster Center, Police, Fire and DLNR. They
also helped update the Kauai County Hazard Mitigation Strategy for Civil Defense by creating 120
maps and submitting them to the University of Hawaii consultants. This work allow Kauai allows
federal emergency funds in the event of a natural disaster. They completed the FLSA act project
which upgraded our payroll system for compliance and implementing audit procedures to ensure
accuracy. In actuality this was a team effort with Finance accounting, Personnel and Ken Villabrille
in particular. IT added more online forms and interactive pages available on the Kaua`i.gov
including the Anti-drug data bank forms and views as well as police report forms for suspicious
activities and service requests.
In FY 2010 the Purchasing Division completed equipment procurement totaling nearly 5.3
million dollars. Other significant procurements for which Purchasing provided assistance included
the Waimea Wastewater Treatment Expansion Project 15.7 million dollars, Kekaha Landfill lateral
expansion and base liner, 6.9 million, Historic County Building Renovation 3.9 million, Island wide
road resurfacing 2.5 million, Helicopter Acquisition 2.2 million and Lighting System Retrofits 1.1
million in various county parks. That's what we've done in the past, what actually excites me is
what lays ahead for our respective divisions and since there's a lot of drive and energy, I'm not going
to be the one that explain that to you, it's going to be them. I'm just going to touch on a hand full of
things before I pass the mic on to our Division Heads.
In our upcoming initiatives Section that's page four (4) we will be proposing abond-
refinance of approximately 27 million in general obligation bonds. A bond underwriter and bond
counsel have been recently selected. The current bond market will allow the county to reduce annual
debt service in the 270k or more range without extending the bond amortization period. Total
savings for this initiative is estimated to exceed 2.9 million. We've talked about this next one quite a
bit and it's something that's on my plate that I need to get out and that is our reserve policy which I
intend to submit to you in June or by June. We are hoping to introduce it in a form of a draft
Resolution for Council review and formal approval.
Chair Furfaro: Well I'm very pleased to see that you'll be doing that in June
because if not, I'll be doing one in July. We'll hold you to it.
Mr. Rezentes: And I think what's interesting is we look to the (inaudible)
government finance officers associations for guidance and they have in the last couple of years
updated their recommended best practice relative to reserves. Io order to improve on the timing...
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, on that point... Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Sorry I'm very interested in what you just said .and I was
distracted, could you please just repeat the last couple sentences about who related to reserve policy.
Mr. Rezentes: GFOA.
Mr. Bynum: Yes. Can you just say it again, I'm sorry.
Mr. Rezentes: Okay. The Government Finance Officers Associations has...
what they put out from time to time best practice recommendations for City and County State
governments and in the last couple of years, I believe in 09 and just about a month or two ago, they
came up with two different revised policies or recommended policies for County and State
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.4
government so we're going to look at the two most recent guidance recommendations to help us
develop what we're going to proposed to you.
Mr. Bynum: And the reason that is I'm reviewing documents on this issue
right now and so I'd have to go back and look in my office and see if there the same ones but if there's
new documents from them, can you share them with me?
Mr. Rezentes: Yes. And I'll shoot it over to you Councilmember Bynum and
it is on the GFOA dot org website but I'll definitely forward to you.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Sorry.
Chair Furfaro: No that's quite alright, you're the Finance Chairman, he's the
Finance Director so as I told Housing earlier I will say to you, please share sometime outside of the
budget with him directly.
Mr. Rezentes: And we have.
Mr. Bynum: We do.
Mr. Rezentes: In order to improve the timing of relevant revenue budget
information, we will be proposing to change the certified tax rule date from May 1 to the February
timeframe and what this will do, it will give decision makers an earlier time in which to understand
what the budgeted figure will be for Real Property taxes and as you know real property taxes is the
largest component of our real property tax base. So from moving it up from May 1 to sometime before
our March 15 submittal, you know we will have we believe more stronger information from which we
can base our decisions and that will help both the County Council and the Administration. It will
likely help us articulate the financial condition of the county to the legislature more timely. That
task, it's going to take a sizable amount of effort because there's a lot of moving parts that go into
planning for the May 1 deadline but you know as you know we submit our budgets March 15 and
another budget usually May 8 or sooner and even on the May 8 submittal our certified tax role of
Mayl doesn't give us that much of an opportunity to really understand the largest revenue
component of our budget.
Chair Furfaro: Well I wish you much assistance on that, I think that's an
outstanding piece to be looking at the tax role in the middle of February and allowing us the
appropriate planning time with a number that's more realistic.
Mr. Rezentes: Yeah we were talking and you know huddling up a little bit
with Real Property and the first year of the initiative will be the hardest year to accomplish this goal
because it will condense the number of months in which we do our annual reassessment so I think
once we get beyond the first year, we should be in a little better place. I understand from staff doing
some of the research, was it Hawai`i... Honolulu County? Honolulu County also moved forward their
certified tax role date to assist in the budgetary process.
To improve on the accuracy in which we budget another initiative that we're going to be
proposing is an ordinance amendment that will provide for more latitude in the amount we can
legally budget estimated real property tax revenues. The current ordinance allows us to budget net
real property taxes less 50% of the taxes on appeal. Historically we prevail on quite a bit more than.
50% of the amount on appeal and our hope is to propose an ordinance or an initiative that will bring
us closer to what we actually obtain annual. This will likely increase the amount of real property
revenues that we budget for but at least we feel it will be a more accurate presentation of a budgeted
amount. I understand there's some thought about doing an internal audit on the budgetary process,
I think there's a lot of things that we can do like these two initiatives that doesn't cost us a dime,
doesn't cost tax payers a dime and we can make some in routes, there's some things that we maybe
beyond ordinance or Charter driven that we can look at changing but you know I hope that we can
huddle around for cheap before we invest money's along these lines. Maybe we can get rid of half
75% scope of an audit by working things out together.
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.5
Chair Furfaro: Wally, I just want to make sure I understand, currently on
the tax appeal we earmark what you might kind of call a anticipating the appeals of 50% of
what those appeals are.
Mr. Rezentes:
Correct.
Chair Furfaro: You're suggesting that the appeal number might be 25%?
Mr. Rezentes: The number that we come up with, we intend to come up still
with a conservative number but I think it's even south of 25% and in the amounts that we
historically prevailed.
Chair Furfaro: The intent is to put us in a better flow through position as we
manage our cash.
Mr. Rezentes: Correct and a more accurate number again for improve
budgets.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you.
Mr. Rezentes: Some of our challenges, I think like many other departments
funding... and I'm just talking general terms with these three bullets, funding is always challenge,
you can always put more funds towards addressing issues, the funding however is not always there.
I can tell you I just spent some time with Chair Furfaro a little earlier today, I had a chance to spend
an hour yesterday with the Budget and Finance Director of the State Calbert Young to get a sense
from him on the challenges that he's facing in balancing their budget and it wasn't a pleasant hour.
The state has a lot of challenges that is, that they're presented with this year. I don't think from
listening to what he had to say, I don't think the state will be able to provide us good information
this month. They're planning I think on ending the first week of May, I get the sense that because
the council of revenues not intending to meet until mid May the likelihood of having to come back
into session and rework their budget space on the updated numbers from the Council, the Council of
revenues is probably likely. What that would do for us depending on the fallout of the legislative
session, we may have to reconvened and make budget adjustments in the late May timeframe but
these are some of the budget issues unfortunately that we don't control and we have to wait and see
what happens at the Legislature.
The next few paragraphs I just wanted to mention, one of the challenges that have popped up
of recent and just kind of lay it on the table and hopefully you understand and I'm saying this in the
best intention, I'm a true believer that a well run internal audit function could bring significant
value to an entity such as the county of Kauai. I agree and encourage the active role of the County
Council with internal audit function to maximize its value and improve department efficiencies. The
recent years the county has increased significantly the funding for this function. These dedicated
resources will impact on the human and time resources on the various effected departments being
audited. It has and will continue to impact other core deliverables that preexisted prior to the
internal audit function ramping up. To give you a couple of examples that are ongoing the County
Auditor has begun a $70,000 consulting contract to review furloughs. This audit is in its infancy and
will take a good deal of resources from departments and divisions like IT, Finance-Administration,
Finance-Accounting, County Attorney's and other departments. We have begun to log the
administrative time spent on this engagement. In the end I believe it would be safe to say that we
will be spending well in excess of $100,000 in taxpayer dollars to determine whatever the outcome of
that audit will be. Another example of additional administrative time spent to assist the County
Auditor was in there recent decision to do an RFP for the County annual financial audit. Bidders
requested answers to over 50 questions to better understand the RFP that was proposed. The
Finance Accounting division provided the answers to these questions. My point is simple, we need to
acknowledge that there are significant cost to audits for the administration, we are not geared up
with staff to be as responsive as we would like and sometimes we're going to take a little while
longer to meet timelines or deadlines. We need to make sure that the decision making process in
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.6
determining what audits will be performed is done with the belief that the audits will provide long
term value to the county.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rezentes, I would like to make a comment here if I can.
Your points are well taken and I think when we did the audit review, when we did the review on the
Audit Department, a few things were shared in a point of view for example, the yellow book. They
make suggestions on the best practices, it is not actually the document that absolutely have to
comply to, okay? That is the message I've shared with the Auditors.
Mr. Rezentes: Something similar to JFOA.
Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Rezentes: As I...
Chair Furfaro: You're suggesting to us the JFOA in this general accounting
practices is somewhere as an alternative source.
Mr. Rezentes: Oh yeah, I think there's multiple sources, I think there's
JFOA, I think there's also an internal audit, I don't know the exact name, I know Renee knows it an
internal organization that is you know a National organizational or maybe even international and I
know our county internal audit folks look to them as well.
Chair Furfaro: But in understanding your concern, my response so that we
have a better understanding for the purpose of an audit to make improvements based on the fact
that currently policies lack or we have initiated things that we may not really reviewed standard
operating procedures, my focus with the Auditor is... and he has affirmed that by June we will
actually have an audit manual of which we can all review to take interest in, how we're going to
consistently make improvements. The other items that I shared with him in some of these points is
when they want to initiate a service contract whether it's a third party, whether it's legal sources,
investigative sources... I'm asking them to make that presentation to the whole body. It is the body's
decision, it's not the Chairman decision but it's the body decision and I can assure you, we'll be
weighing out those types of questions. You know are we going to spend ten thousand dollars to
figure out we have atwenty-six hundred dollar problem and the reason we have the problem is we
don't have an operating procedure. I would rather have the Auditor's come forth and make a very
strong presentation on what kind of standard operating procedures is necessary to create the twenty-
six hundred dollar problem, not to point out we need to spend ten thousand to make a (inaudible)
point, that's not what we need to do here. So I want to let you know your comments are well receive
but the body is working on it as well.
Mr. Rezentes: Yes and I totally acknowledge that and again you know the
human resource time, the time we have to perform the work that we perform, you know is already
stressed...
Chair Furfaro: Your point is well taken.
Mr. Rezentes: So I want to make sure that whatever bullets we're going to
shoot, makes the most sense.
Chair Furfaro: And I understand that there are other cost from the financial
department that has to do investigated pieces but just give us time because we're working through
this and you know we're getting there. Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: I ask this question sometime during this budget hearing
about what kind of impact the Auditing Department was going to have.
Mr. Rezentes: I recall.
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.7
Mr. Bynum: And kind of went over like a led balloon because I really
thought there might be an Audit Manager or something in your budget that reflected that. I see
your statement is kind of questioning whether an audit of furloughs has any value...
Mr. Rezentes: Well...
Mr. Bynum: And...
Mr. Rezentes: If I can comment, I mean there are I think audit initiatives
that have systemic ramifications, long term pay back, long term ROI.
Mr. Bynum: Like (inaudible)
Mr. Rezentes: Excuse me?
Mr. Bynum: Like energy?
Mr. Rezentes: Yeah I mean there are a lot of things that we get real strong
return or potential huge returns, I just think we got to make sure we're concentrating on auditing
the right things with the limit resources and funding that we have. And I know that's something
that you guys, you folks as a body are working on, working closely with our internal audit function
and I think that's great, I think you know it's a new organization, it's a new area so I applaud you
folks for taking the time and effort that you folks are investing in this area.
Mr. Bynum: Well it's a new area and so it's important that we talk about it
in dialog, the message that you just gave that said hey we need really thoughtful about what we
audit and what it's return on investment, I think we would all agree with that. I support that and
happy that we're not on any furloughs because it also impacts our economy and our workers, the
decisions that we make here and so whether it's going to have a direct return on investment, I don't
know but I was substantially restricted from having any significant dialog about furloughs and its
implementation and I agreed to back off of those questions during this whole bunch of areas because
this audit is happening and so it's an area I feel really strong about obviously but in the bottom line
the auditor set up by the Charter to be independent and to make those judgments. Now we're going
to influence his judgment by giving this message which I agree with, hey pick audits that have a
good return on investment, I agree with the statement you made but in the bottom line, he has to be
independent and I would hate to see this Council get in a position where we were trying to impact
the choices he made by restricting his funding. That's you know especially this early in the whole
operation, you know let's give them some latitude and let them make their choices and I'm glad that
they're moving ahead with furloughs, I think it's important analysis for us to have because we're
about to go, we've got the governor proposing 9 days of administrative leave which effects
productivity, I want to see some attention to how having an operation all set up with buildings, cost
and expenses and then limiting the employees hours to less than 40 hours a week to get this done,
it's got to take a hit on productivity and I really want that data. I want to make sure when we make
union contracts and that we know what the impacts is of having employees off the job in essence and
how we can still deliver services in an efficient manner, I don't think 10 employees working 30 hour
a week can get something done as efficiently as employees working forty hours a week.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that Mr. Bynum I guess this the fourth
commentary that we're really making a point about the response on furloughs. I hope in the last
eighteen weeks you weren't referring to me as stopping anything with the furlough audit.
Mr. Bynum: Not at all.
Chair Furfaro: I just want to make sure we can measure it so why don't I let
you continue Mr. Rezentes.
Mr. Rezentes: Alright.
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.8
Chair Furfaro: And let's, excuse me Councilmember did you have a question?
Mr. Kuali`i: If it's time for questions.
Chair Furfaro: If it's on these items, it time for a question.
Mr. Kuali`i: No, I'm all over...
Mr, Bynum: On furloughs.
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead then Mr. Rezentes.
Mr. Rezentes: Okay. The County Department of Finance is Chartered
department that is currently comprised of 88 dedicated employees that provide a number of essential
services to both external and internal customers. Our employees work in ten division or sections
within the Department of Finance. These areas include Finance/Accounting, Information
Technology, Treasury, Drivers Licensing, Motor Vehicles, Real Property Assessment, Real Property
Collections, Purchasing, Risk Management and Finance Administration. At present a total of our
seven (7} of our eighty-eight (88) employee count is funded by State of Hawaii Grants. Five (5) being
in Drivers Licensing and two (2) in Motor Vehicles. Three (3) of our positions are currently dollar
funded and reside in the Finance/Accounting and Real Property Assessment areas. On the last page
of my proposal you'll see further detail of the positions and what division's they're in, what are the
vacancies, etc...
The Department of Finance FY 2012 budget of ten million nine hundred eighty-two
thousand, six hundred and fifty-three dollars is 5.4% or six hundred thirty thousand eight hundred
and forty-four dollars lower than our FY 2011 budget which totaled eleven million six hundred
thirteen thousand and four hundred ninety-seven dollars. I have two pie charts that I have included
that displays the decrease in the operations section. In FY 2011 operations comprise 44% of the
budget whereas in FY 2011, I'm sorry in FY 2012 is it? I think I have a typo there... oh well... FY
2011 is 44% was in comprised in operations and 28% was in FY 2012. The main factor for this
change was the increase of 2.47 million in cost allocations from the various funds to the general fund.
The funds that are allocated out of these funds include the Highway Fund, Liquor Fund, Solid
Waste, Sewer and Golf Funds. What the intent of the cost allocation plan is to appropriately account
for cost centers basically pushes out to these respective funds the costs that is incurred by the
general fund. A lot of which is in the Finance area but there's other areas that these funds receive
services from. The Finance Accounting Division contracts out the services of a third party firm that
reviews all of our cost to federal OMB 87, is that right Renee? OMB 87 federal standards and this
cost allocation plan allows us to recover cost from the federal government for federal grant programs.
I broke out all the different divisions, the dollars... the budgeted dollars between FY 2011 and 2012.
As you can see the Finance Accounting section in 2012 includes a negative number and the reason
for that is because the cost allocation plan sits in their respective line item so the money's actually
come from those respective funds into Finance Accounting to make where the funds are realized. I'm
going to be unless you have any questions of me, I'm going to start moving off to the different
divisions.
Chair Furfaro:
departments to Finance.
Mr. Rezentes:
Chair Furfaro:
Mr. Rezentes:
mentioned to the Gener
Accounting.
The way you treat that it actually shows going from the
Right.
As a revenue transfer.
And in actuality it's going from all the other funds that I
al Fund but it just happened to be the line item sitting in Finance and
Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Chair.
Apri114, 2011
Finance Department p.9
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo go right ahead.
Mr. Rapozo: I have more of a process question... what is your intention as
far as Finance, I mean they're sche duled to go unti12:30.
Chair Furfaro: We're going to go to 3.
Mr. Rapozo: With Finance? All of their Departments?
Chair Furfaro: Yes. We're going to go to Finance till 3 today and then see
where we're at and then we'll fall back on Planning at 3 o'clock and everyone should have gotten a
notice that we are at least a half an hour behind because we took the extra time in Housing this
morning. So we're going to go till 3. We'll see where we're at, at 3 o'clock.
Mr. Rapozo: Like Councilmember Kuali`i, I've got a ton of questions.
Chair Furfaro: We'll start with you.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh okay.
Mr. Rezentes: Would you like to go through the divisions first?
.Chair Furfaro: Well, you given us the general overview.
Mr. Rezentes: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: I've touched on some commentary whether it's how we treat a
revenue transfer or how we treat audit and what we're doing as a body but I'll let the members
decide, how many of you would lik e to go on by division or how many of you would like to ask some
questions now from the overview?
Mr. Kuali`i: (inaudible).
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah me too.
Chair Furfaro: Say that again.
Mr. Kuali`i: Questions now.
Chair Furfaro: Questions now?
Ms. Yukimura: On the overview.
Chair Furfaro: Let me see if I...
Mr. Rapozo: I mean I...
Chair Furfaro: This side of the table is asking questions now.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah well I have some overall questions as well as some
specific.
Chair Furfaro: Well we'll probably end up getting more time later in the
week. So why don't I give you the floor and we'll start with you.
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.10
Mr. Rapozo: Okay let me just start with the most recent paragraph and
work backwards and my suggestion is that we get to each ask a question Mr. Chair and then that
way everybody will have the opportunity to at least share in this process but...
Chair Furfaro: Sounds like a plan. Everybody get ready to ask a question.
Mr. Rapozo: Right and hopefully by the end of the period we'll have a lot of
our questions...
Chair Furfaro: There won't be no duplication.
Mr. Rapozo: Correct. Going back from your most recent statement you
know the cost allocations and we've talked about it when we had the golf course discussion a while
back that right now we charge, the county charges the Golf Course because it's an enterprise funds,
certain funds... water, electricity and so forth and that comes out of the enterprise fund and the Golf
Course, the enterprise fund provides certain services for the County as well... the irrigation and the
treatment of the water that goes to fund some of the parks programs out at Lydgate, has that
adjustment been made and figured out in this budget that in fact... if in fact we're charging the golf
fund for expenditures, is the golf fund receiving allocations from services that the County utilizes
from that?
Mr. Rezentes: Good question.
Mr. Rapozo: It's just a yes or no.
Mr. Rezentes: No, no, no... I just asked a question, it's not as easy to say yes
or no unfortunately. I did have this discussion with Ed Tschupp and it is his belief and
understanding that because of the services, the Wastewater Division, the Wastewater Treatment
Center in particular in Wailua provides the golf course, it actually saves the golf course money.
Mr. Rapozo: No, my question is that there's a cost to produce that water
that is born by the golf fund, right?
Mr. Rezentes: There is... I think the Golf Course is the beneficiary of the
water that comes from the Wastewater Treatment Plant in Wailua. It's actually a benefit to them, if
anything it should go the other way. The Wastewater Division should be the beneficiary from the
Golf Fund.
Mr. Rapozo: I-guess my concern for Wally is when we... when the public
looks at the numbers and they look at this Golf Course as being such a...
Mr. Rezentes: Gem?
Mr. Rapozo: ...big lost...
Mr. Rezentes: Oh.
Mr. Rapozo: And yet there's some components in there that's not a very
fair assessment because there are some cost in there that are born from the Golf Course and it's not
being reimbursed and I think that's my concern.
Mr. Rezentes: Okay I understand that. What we can do because our the
cost allocation consultant is coming in very soon, we will have him Iook in that in particular but
again my understanding of it is... it's a one eighty you know.
Mr. Rapozo: And that is not my understanding so somebody needs to...
Mr. Rezentes: I know... I bet you, you was told that by Parks?
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.11
Mr. Rapozo: No wasn't by Parks but anyway that's all I have on that.
Chair Furfaro: Wally let me reaffirm this, we will have a expert in to review
some of these cost which came up at our past meetings, will you be able to share that individual with
us at a future Council Meeting?
Mr. Rezentes: Yeah I think we can. I'm not sure on his time schedule but I
will check with...
Chair Furfaro: Would you look into it for Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rezentes: Sure, yes.
Chair Furfaro: And for right now the Wastewater Plant producing our two
water that's used or even our one (1) water that's used for irrigation, it's clearly in your opinion that
the Golf Course is the beneficiary at this time?
Mr. Rezentes: That's I mean... that's from what I understand.
Chair Furfaro: We'll wait for the expert. Councilmember Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: Mahalo Wally for being here today and mahalo for the work
that you and your department, all the staff, does for the people of Kauai. Like you, I'm excited
about the upcoming initiatives but it is my sincere hope that this is something that's actually going
to happen and not things that are just being talked about. With specific to the reserve, I thought
that all along and I'm not sure why it hasn't happened in the past. And I know .there's a lot of
confusion by the public, you know surplus, carryover, I mean all this extra money... what's the
County doing and I think if we had a clear reserve policy, you know it would help... it would help.
And I know that you were the Finance Director before and then there was a new Finance Director
and now here you are again... so can you tell me if this reserve policy issue ever came up before and
perhaps some of the reasons... you know what happened, why didn't... why isn't it already in place?
Mr. Rezentes: I don't think it has ever been as (inaudible) as today. I think
with the financial market place, with the economy, it's an item that's looked at today more so than
ten, fifteen years ago when I started. I know that from meetings that we have had with our credit
rating agencies, they ask that question and it is actually a plus that we, that a county or state entity
has a policy. But more important than that the actual financial condition of the county. I mean you
can have a policy but if you don't adhere to the policy or if the policy is marginal and it's not as
important as having a sound history of reserves.
Mr. Kuali`i: But the hope is that the policy will help us paint a clear
picture so that the people understand the financial situation, circumstances that we're facing, but
that' all we're talking about going forward.
Mr. Rezentes: Yeah.
Mr. Kuali`i: Chair, if I might finish because it's with the...
Chair Furfaro: Go right ahead.
Mr. Kuali`i: On the real property tax revenue so we're not going to have
any kind of firm or figures until April 29 and we got to make some real quick decisions by early May
so... that you're going to move this to February will be an incredible help and again I don't
understand why it hasn't been done earlier. And then the last thing on this is where the 50% off
(inaudible) conservative, and I would like for you .to provide the. data on the last 10 years what the
appeal percentages were. So I would think if they were sufficiently lower than 50% like 20, 25 for 10
years in a row or even lower, then why not make the move to move it as quickly as possible?
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.12
Mr. Rezentes: And that.
Mr. Kuali`i: So we can have a more accurate figure.
Mr. Rezentes: And I think when our forefathers when they first looked at
this, they wanted a real conservative number because you know it forces you basically to under
budget revenues based on you know the history of this county, I believe.
Mr. Kuali`i: And just to end I'll say, wow. You have a big, big job and this.
is my second day... and my first day on budget... and I'm just buried in numbers and... but I'm really
excited about it because I love numbers and I look forward to everything we're going to accomplish ixi
the next couple weeks with your help.
Mr. Rezentes: I'm excited and I'm concern because we put a lot of stuff in
there, so... we got to deliver because now it's in black and white and then you know... hopefully I'm
knocking on wood, hopefuIly...
Mr. Kuali`i: And clearer we make it to the public about what we're telling
them... the more we have to deliver but we can do it.
Chair Furfaro: I'm going to add to your... this is a new Council, I've been the
Chair eighteen weeks but I can tell you, two of the questions you have asked, I have put in
ordinances with the old Council and the ordinances failed. So... we're off to a new start... okay...
we're going to go around the table with one more question for each as suggested by...
Mr. Rapozo: I have a follow up on his question.
Chair Furfaro: We have a follow up on Mr. Kuali`i's question.
Mr. Rapozo: It's regarding the Council of revenues, the discussion that... is
the Administration preparing for that bad news because I'm sure we're not expecting bad news. Are
we at the Administration level looking at sending over a different budget, a supplemental budget
with the adjustments?
Mr. Rezentes: We're not going to be, we're going to submit the revenue
budget information with the information we have as of May 6. We're not intending to say cut TAT in
half because we heard that that might be a proposal at the legislature, we're intending to budget
with the best information we have at that time. If a decision is made at the legislature to curtail the
amount of real property... I mean the amount of TAT that we receive say... we will, we are
mandated to come back to this body with. proposals to bring us back into, out of the negative. You
know if all of a sudden our thirteen million is seven million, we're seven million in the negative we
got to find a way and propose a way to come back to balance the budget.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay and let me just say that the reliable sources that I've
heard from as of late of Tuesday night was that we are going to get cap at half. That's the discussion
right now, so what I'm asking you to do is start to prepare for a reduction of at least seven million
dollars in the Administration proposed budget because I don't want to be caught with our pants
down. expecting thirteen and a half and we're only going to get seven. So I think we should have plan
(b) in place, maybe a spreadsheet separate that should we get half, this is where we're going to cut.
Because I don't want it to... we should prepare for that, that's what I'm saying.
Chair Furfaro: Point well taken Mr. Rapozo and I think that's one of the
things that as we go forward in this first review, we're obviously not aware of all the moving parts.
There's even parts that are on the table that deal with paper bags and the State charging for paper
bags now and taking eight cents out of every ten cents back into the State Treasury. Those are
things that we don't have all the answers for right now. We're going to take a tape change at twenty
minutes of three so I'll go to Councilwoman Yukimura for her first question on the overview.
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.13
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you Chair. Before I give my question I just want to
thank you again for the new format, this is first time in many, many budgets that I've been involved
in that there's been some standardize format that tries to give us the big picture and the context for
the budgets that people are coming forward to ask us for. Thank you very much. And there's been a
varying level of excellence of how the departments have responded to your request for this format.
But I can see a really good beginning.
My question is for breakdown in two areas... and... in your list of successes and
achievements Real Property administered eighteen thousand three hundred seventy-nine
exemptions totaling 3.36 billion in cumulative value. Could you break that down in terms of the
kinds of exemptions for us? And then related to the State budget discussions and the transient
accommodation tax, the Chair and I were just talking yesterday about the lack of information that
this Council has in terms of the condition of the State budget, and I'm glad for your initiative to
speak to Calvert Young but I think we're talking about asking somebody from the State to come
down and brief us because we're going to be greatly affected by this and I know Senator Kouchi has
given us a briefing early on but I don't think we have all parts of it. My request is for a breakdown
and... it's not so much a breakdown but it creative budgeting. I think that the thirteen million we
get in TAT can be justified in terms of the kinds of services we give to visitors and I would like to
show that it should be core funding for us because we support the visitor industry and whether it's
lifeguards, pulling visitors out of the waters... or it's our roads and how much visitors use our roads
or parks. Some kind of allocation of our costs that are treatable to visitors to justify and show the
state legislature that we're not asking for a handout, we're asking us for what's due to us because we
support the visitor industry and the generation of taxes. So if you could work on that and see what
we get. I think all of us think instinctively that there's or we can see on the ground in our daily lives
how the visitors do use services and how that cost us but I think that might be helpful in
establishing how critical and how justified it is. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Wally the Vice Chair and I just had that
discussion yesterday, she's very clear on what we need to ask. We need to have some dialog with
somebody from the State Administration and on the other note in all fairness I do want to give some
praise where praise is due, our former colleague and new state representative for district 14, even as
this morning, he called me to give me an update and I'm just tracking things as they get to the final
point. That's where I got the information on where we stay, where we stand with the TAT now,
that's the information I got on the state's move on the paper bag bill. So when it gets finalized, we
do have a direct person to share information but the Vice Chair's comment is one I approved on in
getting somebody down. On that note, we'll go to you Mr. Bynum for a question.
Mr. Bynum: I'm going to stick with this theme because and I want
to point out that... you have a huge department, we haven't even got to your divisions but
Purchasing, IT, Finance:.. you know it's huge and so I want to start by saying people in those
departments have been really responsive to me over the last few months. Whether it IT, or Steve in
Real Property or Ernie in Purchasing... I've asked questions and I gotten responses in a real rich
dialog and I very much appreciate that. But we have schedules...
Mr. Rezentes: The only problem I have, I got to be honest... the only
problem I get with that sometimes mine go lower than yours...
Mr. Bynum: As it should be. No, I'm just kidding. I think we're going to
end this at three, we may not get to your departments but we have scheduled on our schedule 19, 21,
25, and 26 as potential call-backs and so I think we're going to use some of that time and I think
that's great because when I first was here and did budget, we had call-backs and we used that time.
Last year's budget, we didn't call anybody back because we weren't allowed this rich of a dialog and I
appreciate the leadership we're getting and I appreciate the response that we're getting from your
departments in a format that have us look at the big picture. So this is a vast improvement in my
mind and I think it's important we do it but sticking with TAT a place where... and I also heard from
Derek today and so I really appreciate that that he's saying hey here's what happening that impacts
the county and that's the sweet part of having a Councilmember move into that position. But
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.14
regarding TAT or whatever, the place where I think we've haven't done as well this year and I'm not
blaming anybody, it's our fault as well I think is you know this time last year the four Mayor's were
sitting down there at the legislature lobbying about TAT, I haven't heard from our lobbyist that we
pay and fund, I haven't heard you know the kind of follow up, I personally haven't been to the
legislature, I've written a lot of correspondence on my own and tracking it. But if they're going to do
something as irresponsible as whack half of our TAT and I consider that to be highly irresponsible.
Last year we made that very difficult for them to do and they didn't do it, I hope. And even it's not
too late, we need to have a presence there and make sure they do it over our strenuous objections so
I don't know if you can answer that of what is the Administration doing, what are we doing to have
that presence to make that argument?
Mr. Rezentes: Well I know that they are efforts on our side whether it be
attending to meetings on Oahu or sessions or in writing as well through our consultant. I don't
have the specifics but I know that the contract that's managed through Boards and Commissions for
our consultant, you know they probably can provide more information if you needed as to what we've
done on our side to lobby as well as the Mayor in person, the Mayor's... I know that the Mayor's have
done some lobbying on their part throughout this session.
Mr. Bynum: And I want to say I concur with your answer that we should
not plan our budget on what the state legislature might do but react to that when and if it happens
but I think you would agree that we have you know many options should something dyer happens,
we have a lot of levers to try to pull to try to address that. Do you agree with that?
Mr. Rezentes: I don't know about a lot.
Mr. Rapozo: I hope you don't say yes to that Wally. I mean that's not...
Mr. Rezentes: I don't know about a lot.
Chair Furfaro: Hold on, you have the floor Mr. Bynum and the response I got
was I'm not sure we have that many but anyway...
Mr. Bynum: We have options. Right? We have ways to generate revenue
if necessary.
Mr. Rezentes: We got expenditures.
Mr. Bynum: We have ways to cut expenditures if necessary, I mean we
have ways that we can address that right?
Mr. Rezentes: There are ways that we can address short falls.
Mr. Bynum: So my guess is that we're not going to get done with the
general stuff and we're going to have to do call backs for the departmental reports because there's a
lot of meat that you provided us and thanks for providing that to us.
Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Chair?
Chair Furfaro: Let me answer Mr. Bynum's comment... Wally as you know
I've added another 4 days to the open schedule this year and I will share with the group that Mr.
Bynum's assumption is correct. I would probably say that we will be posting for the 21, your
department heads, we have already consumed one of the extra days that I have planned in the
budget which is the 19 so that is the only day we can get you back and it would be in the morning...
at 9:00 and I'm going to make 1 suggestion because I've been meeting with you and Brandon, there
are in my opinion the possibility that we won't want to see IT until May, and the reason I say that is
because there are several projects that were initiated by the previous IT manager that have or need
or are going through an overview by the new IT director who only started in the 15 of December. I'm
thinking I want to share with you with the exception of IT who I may not schedule for the 21, we will
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.15
be looking at the other department heads than. Again in my discussion I'm looking through my
notes, you know we've got payroll projects, we've got planning systems that Councilwoman
Yukimura has brought up recently that would like to do and get that started. We have document
imagining, she's already brought that up but you know I don't want to lose those numbers but at the
same time I want to make sure it's his plan so he can buy into it. I have... when is the deadline for
us to post for this visit, is it tomorrow?
Ms. Yukimura: Probably.
Chair Furfaro: So we will post this tomorrow.
Mr. Rezentes: Okay thank you.
Chair Furfara Just like we have posted the activities, okay? And now we are
on a break.
There being no objections, the Council recessed at 2:41 p.m.
Chair Furfaro: So you're okay with me asking IT to be (inaudible) presenting
a revised piece to us on May 9?
Mr. Rezentes: I think Brandon is happy with that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. We need to... okay, you're welcome. And then we also
have your other key department heads coming back for 2 hours, 9:00 on the 21 and we will post that
tomorrow.
Mr. Rezentes: Yeah.
Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: I just had a quick...
Chair Furfaro: Oh, we're not ready yet? Oh okay. On that note, Planning I
want to extend your time until 5:00 today. I just thought I saw him?
Mr. Bynum: He's here.
Chair Furfaro: Oh okay. Instead of 2:30 - 4:30, we'll go 3:00 -5? Okay, I'm
not going to repeat those messages again, just a little wrap up here. okay Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: I just want to make sure we don't forget the question that
sort of arose, we do want to hear and this may not be for you but for the Administration and Mr.
Heu, we do want to hear from our lobbyist who, we're half way through the legislative session and I
never seen nor heard from him or her, haven't received a report or anything, I don't know how much
we're paying but it does seem odd.
Chair Furfaro: Point well taken and just make a note of it, I don't want to
deal on it right now but I think Vice Chair is implying that we are paying for that person and we are
very fortunate to have Mr. Kawakami not only calling me daily but I now understand that he's
calling other members to give us his update, which is great. But we do have a time and money issue
with updates.
Ms. Yukimura: And some of us aren't getting calls from Mr. Kawakami so
we're not getting that information.
Chair Furfaro: Well perhaps he's calling Mr. Bynum because he's Finance
Chair and he's calling me as Chair out of courtesy.
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.16
Ms. Yukimura: That's good. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: So you might need to pass down.
Mr. Rezentes: I just talked to Gary, we can work on providing a report and I
think we can go back and see if it's possible at this juncture to get him here on a Council meeting day
if that is what you desired. But we can definitely we should be able to put a report together, a status
report together.
Ms. Yukimura: Or there are budget days as long as it's coordinated through
the Chair because we are in budget sessions.
Chair Furfaro: Wally, so we are all understanding that on the 21 9:00 okay?
Mr. Rezentes: Yes. I just wanted to acknowledge Sally Mata who's my new
Deputy Director of Finance and she's done a lot work with certain divisions such as Real Property
Assessment and they're not up here yet as well as Real Property Collections and a lot of effort as you
will see is going to happen and Sally is right in the mix of that providing the support and assistance.
To provide this Council the various items for consideration such as real property initiatives and
ordinance changes.
Chair Furfaro: Well it's certainly your call but Sally is very welcome here,
glad to see you in the audience and if you'd like her to facilitate the meetings on the 21, that would
be your choice and so we're good with that. Councilwoman did you have a question?
Ms. Nakamura: I'll ask one question. This has to do with the challenges you
had mention in your report Wally and I also shared that concern with the selections of the audits
and we have asked the Auditor to send us in writing a list of criteria for selecting audits and the
process by which audits will be selected and because the work plan calls for three to five audits per
year, I think it's really important that we agree that the audits that are done, bring us the most
value as a county. So I share your concern and I look forward to the Auditor's response to our
question.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Rapozo: And I had one.
Chair Furfaro: I'll give the floor to KipuKai first.
Mr. Kuali`i: Just a quick point, we were talking earlier about the reserve
and the public perception but also the perception by the state. So when we're talking about the TAT
I think the state understands because they have raining day fund, so if the county had a rainy day
fund or something of that effect, with purposes for that reserve, it would be good. We would be in a
better spot right now I think. We're in jeopardy of losing some our TAT because I think we're doing
so much better than all the other counties and it's primarily because of how it's on the books. So this
reserve policy is incredibly important and however... it's to be developed but a lot of work to be done
but we've definitely got to get that done. The one personal thing I would ask of you is in the future
when you bring us reports like this, one more column with the percentage change.
Mr. Rezentes: Okay.
Mr. Kuali`i: Would mean a lot to me. Maybe it's a lot more numbers on
the page, maybe other people don't want to look at it.
Mr. Rezentes: That's easy.
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.17
easier.
Mr. Kuali`i: But for me it will save me a lot more time and make it a lot
Mr. Rezentes: Okay.
Mr. Kuali`i: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Excellent observation. So we're looking for the percentage of
the variance in future reports. Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you and Wally all-the departments, they use the same
format and there's these operating budget discussion which list the breakdown of all the staffing in
positions if there's any changes or reallocations and I notice yours don't have that. I mean you have
a summary, kind of a summary but in all the ones that we seen so far anyway, there's been a... well
actually it's agency position information request and I assume it went out to everyone but maybe you
didn't get that.
Mr. Rezentes: No, no...
Ms. Yukimura: I think you submitted it before?
Mr. Rapozo: You did.
Mr. Rezentes: I can go.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah if you... it's a lot easier to follow than the lump sum,
because it's difficult to see where the changes were and because of your reallocation of the funds to
the different (inaudible) it's even harder to follow.
Chair Furfaro: Any more for Mr. Rezentes? Mr. Rezentes thank you for a
very nice presentation but we have more to go and we will be posting these extended sessions for the
21, we'll be posting that tomorrow.
Mr. Rezentes: Okay, thank you very much.
Chair Furfaro: Hold on Wally.
Ms. Yukimura: Can I do one more comment? And it's not a question, earlier I
was quite conservative in my comments because I didn't want to take a lot of time but this is a
positive comment and we probably shouldn't be that conservative about positive comments.
Chair Furfaro: I don't think so.
Ms. Yukimura: In your section on successes and achievements, I just want to
commend you for the very substantial achievements that your department has made and things like
the certificate for excellence in financial recording, or closing faster every month, they're not that
sexy... but there so important because they really help our departments do their work. They also
help us ensure that we have you know integrity in our financial systems and so note worthy was
your achievements in Risk Management, where we closed... our closing rate was 51% this year,
slightly over 48 but statewide average closing was 20%, so it's really showing progress and really
excellent work and I look forward to hearing your divisions come forward so that we can recognize
the work done but to also look forward to the work that's coming up.
Mr. Rezentes: Yes, thank you. And a lot of the work is done at the division
level and I just wanted to mention Finance Accounting in particular it's kind of the back office guys
but a lot of what they do is really important and like you said it's not maybe as sexy the work that
they do but because of their clients often times are internal clients and it's important, they provide a
April 14, 2011
Finance Department p.18
very important function for us and they have been making a lot of (inaudible) improvements in how
they conduct themselves.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah a lot of them are kind of invisible because some of them
are at the counters but a lot of them are not, what you would see... you wouldn't see them in their
work but they are surely doing important work for all of us.
Chair Furfaro: Just so note with her comment before I go to Mr. Rapozo,
closing it also means getting that liability off of our incident, accident reports and so forth, those
cases are closed... they stop building the reserve in the long run, that is earmark money that we
cannot use. Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo:
I didn't have a question.
Chair Furfaro: You did not have a question? Okay. Wally, I will not
duplicate all of the praises I gave your department earlier, just thank you very much for a
comprehensive overlook and we'll see you on the 21 with Sally coordinating those individual
departments, glad to see you Sally. Thank you very much.
Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Chair?
Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: I did have a comment and I wanted to just clarify that
Representative Kawakami did call me as well.
Chair Furfaro: Oh okay.
Mr. Rapozo: He does stay in touch really because of the, I was the acting
Chair the Intergovernmental Relations.
Chair Furfaro: Right.
Mr. Rapozo: And I just didn't want the people that he selectively calling
Councilmembers but... one of the things that I will be asking is with the recent reorganization of the
Council and Committees on Wednesday, Mr. Bynum has become the Vice Chair of the
Intergovernmental Relations Committee and I will be asking if we can have Mr. Bynum and through
you obviously to go to the State Capitol to testify on behalf of the County Council on the TAT
reservation and hopefully we can work with the Administration and the lobbyist or whoever is going
to be up there and show a concern effort up there to preserve that with (inaudible).
Chair Furfaro: Well so noted and Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Just a follow up on that... yeah I think Derek because he
knows our operation, he Mr. Kawakami called me regarding this plastic bag bill that you mentioned
and its'... there's some stuff going around the community that Representative Tapioca made an
amendment that would exempt, would undo our bag ban, that's it not true... that is not accurate and
you know there's other issues that are not appropriate to go into now but.
Chair Furfaro: Anyway thank you Mr. Rapozo for making note that
Representative Kawakami is in touch with you, obviously through the HSAC realignment Mr.
Bynum you being the Chair of Finance and myself as Chair of the Council, but I would like to move
to Planning.
There being no objections, the Council recessed at 3:05 p.m.
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.l
The Council reconvened at 3:07 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
PLANNING DEPARTMENT:
Mr. Rapozo: Good morning Mike.
MIKE DAHILIG, PLANNING DIRECTOR: Good afternoon.
Mr. Rapozo: What did I say morning? Okay, good afternoon. Why don't
we start with your presentation and try to get through the presentation and open it up for questions
afterwards.
Mr. Dahilig: Good afternoon Councilmembers, I do believe you have a copy
of our report. I guess just to walk you through the report as we prepared it.
Mr. Chang: Mike do you want to introduce yourself for the record.
Mr. Dahilig: Sure, I'm sorry. My name is Mike Dahilig, I'm the Planning
Director and I have with me Miles Hironaka who's our Supervisor Planning seven who handles our
in house operations. When we look at the Department of Planning and again keeping in mind what
our goal is, one thing that I always empress upon my staff is the importance of why our department
is initially the first line of defense when it comes to protecting Kaua`i's way of life. I use that phrase
quite consistently with them to try to impress upon them that this is how land is connecting to how
we live. One of our primary goals of the department is to make sure we protect and preserve our
natural resources and especially things that are tied to the land. Since I came on 4 months ago and
it's been a wild ride and in trying to understand the policy in our department but also looking at it
from the operational side. What we've done is we've taken the 6 goals that our department has
which again involves preserving and protecting our built environment and looking at innovative
approaches for land use planning, protecting our diverse and cultural resources. Provide regulatory
and enforcement efforts to achieve the long range vision, provide open communication and striving
for the excellence in customer service. If you look at page 7 of the report, we try to (inaudible) those
broader twenty thousand foot goals into 4 distinct areas that we could look at from an operational
standpoint from which we then help craft the budget and those four things were things like restoring
staffing levels, innovate customer service and intake and enforcement, improving office working
conditions including training, and focused efforts on completing long range planning initiatives.
We're taking it and drilling it down to, okay what can we bite off and try to accomplish over the next
year. What we've done in the report is taking each of the 4 goals and try to come up with specific
objectives over the next FY that we're looking at in context or try to fill out the budget. For example
in goal one which again involves restoring staffing levels, we're looking to try to fill our positions and
then also look at reorganization of the department whether that's something that's necessary given
the changes or the needs of the county. Second goal was with respect to innovative customer service.
We're looking at this from the context of improving our efficiency, as well as improving our
communications with the public and right now everything is paper and as you will see in the report,
one thing that I noticed in how our department operates, we actually record intake in 3 different
areas. We record it in a (inaudible), in maps and then digitally. This doesn't make sense and so
from a data mind stand point as well as the standpoint of being able to access information as
efficiently as possible for public information...
Ms. Yukimura: It's the tree trimming.
Mr. Dahilig: Ok. We are looking at things like trying to collaborate with
the Public Works Department, a lot of the work that we do with Sub-divisions and...
Mr. Rapozo: Hang on real quick Mike.
Mr. Dahilig: No problem.
Mr. Rapozo: Let's just take a one minute recess.
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.2
There being no objections, the Council recesses at 4:22 p.m.
The Council reconvened at 4:35 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
Mr. Rapozo: I apologize, they're doing the tree trimming and they're going
to be stopping real shortly. But if you could continue, bring the mic a little closer to you and we'll try
to get over the...
Mr. Dahilig: Can you hear me? Is this better?
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah.
Mr. Dahilig: Would you like me to start off from the goals...
Mr. Rapozo: No, no you're fine.
Mr. Dahilig: The second one was respect to this- notion of innovating our
customer service element intake and enforcement and again all these thing again are interwoven
and when I stepped into the department as I mentioned, we intake in three different areas.
Statistics and data are very important to the discipline of planning and we have to make sure that
we're able to data mind and have correct records. I cannot say the amount of times I've been at the
department and we've tried to find a file and because it's a physical file, we had to send emails
saying okay where' s the file. Those types of things, we need to be beyond that and try to centralize
and digitize our efforts. So we're collaborating with Public Works because a lot of what we do with
Public Works, helps with the planning process and Brandon since he's stepped on board has been
absolutely excellent with us and has been working with us on trying to find the right software fit for
ourselves as well as Public Works and there's many other cool things that we can look at. Including
the possibly of maybe even going paper less for permitting submittals and I think we should all
strive to do because it helps with customer service, it helps with efficiency and record keeping.
There's also been a lot of focus on inspections and enforcements and I know that the questions about
what is the Planning Department has come up quite consistently so what I want to do is take a look
in the future to try to create enforcement benchmarks, having our inspectors say okay if it's an
inspection a week, that's what you got to do, if it's two inspections, that's what you got to do but to
try to start moving towards a proactive means versus simply relying on complaint based.
We're all aware that the TVR, ordinance is going into effect and one of the authorizations
under ordinance 904 is that we can actually hold TVR certificates and so we're taking that ability
very seriously and we're look at doing another round of inspections with these nonconforming use
certificates and seeing whether they're in compliance with the CZO. If they aren't in compliance,
they have to be in compliance before we reissue the certificate. So it's a means of enforcement.
Another thing that we're also looking at is just in house, how do we handle our staff and a lot of what
I saw was a need to allow our staff to do more training. Planning is a consistently changing
discipline and I think it's important that our staff continues to have that on the job training and that
extracurricular training as well, so we're looking at, we have the approval from the administration to
actually move some staff into overflow space, I know some of you have been in the department you
can see that we're squeezed in there. And so that's what we're trying to do as well as one of our
budget line items is an increase in equipment cost and we're asking for a high speed scanner to help
try to will down the amount of storage space that we utilize, we actually store files in 4 different
places in the county. And so from a standpoint of understanding where things are and being able to
find our information and data mind, we have to be able to centralize these things and be having the
high speed scanner I think will help in that process. Finally we're looking at long range planning
and this tends to from what I seen tends to be the area of a lot of focus, from a policy standpoint
especially when we're here at the Council and what we need to be doing is rolling out these projects
and starting new ones. We have the CZO update, the East Kauai development plan as well as the
IAL study in the works right now and those need to be wrapped up and closed hopefully by the mid
or to the end of this calendar year. And then launching as and I don't want to get too much into the
CIP but what we would be doing is launching into the next round of plans so that we can get on top
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.3
and take advantage of the fact that the census numbers have just come out, they're fresh, they're
new and try to implement these updates as soon as possible.
What you will notice from our budget on page 12 is our chart here that we're requesting a
202% increase in operations. Now I know as we go into the discussion this does seem like an
anomaly but the reason why it is that large of increase is because of the implementation of ordinance
904. Ordinance 904 entails the approval of a special permit, a 205 special permit. As we've seen
with the implementation of ordinances 864 and 876, these are the precursors to 904 which again
involves TVR,, when the TVR,s approvals went through, there was attempts to try intervene and
create contested case hearing of these nonconforming use certificates. What we were anticipating
potentially is that there could be interveners as a consequence of the special permit process which
requires a public hearing. Our concern is that if the amount of permits that come through are
brought to contested case hearing and the Commission is required to hold these contested case
hearing, it would be over taxing to our volunteering board. Not to mention the complexity of the
legal issues and the fact that you're in a quasi judicial type of setting. We obviously want to make
sure that things that are done on behalf of the county and by the Commission are done right and so
we already had a contested case hearing based on ordinance 876 and that contested hearing, we did
hire a hearings officer and the hearing officer cost the county approximately thirty-five thousand
dollars. What we're hoping is that by either a consequence of denials and a consequence of
negotiations with interveners that we can widdle down that number and we're hoping as low as let's
say ten. Again we won't know until we actually start getting these things processed and whether
people intervene and we won't know until seven days before public hearing. We're estimating 10
contested case hearings at a cost of thirty-five thousand dollars apiece and that's again based on the
real figure on a previous contested case hearing. If you take out the contested case hearing, one time
item that is in the budget and we're really looking at less than a 1% increase in our operating
budget, that's really what it's coming down to. For the most part we understand the fiscal
responsibility issues that are before the council in light of these challenging times but it almost
behooves us on the behalf of the Commission to ask for this money for hearings officers in order to
not have them go through an experiencing managing what is essentially a trial as a panel of 7
judges. Beyond that particular line item the only other mention is that we did get a dollar funded
position in last year budget, funded by the administration by we actually. split the position and
created a planner one and planner two. The reason why we did that is part of the concern is
institutional history. The department over the past 18 months has experienced three retirements as
well as lost and plus Miles transitioned into another role, so we're lucky to have him in the
department but there is, there was a vacuum that was noticeable there by having these senior
members retire and so part of the long term planning for the future it almost made sense for us to
start hiring entry levels instead versus more senior staff. That way we can do is at least have an
order transition once our mid levels want to become senior levels and then those entry level people
can become mid levels. So that would be the only two I think noticeable changes that you would see
in contrast from last year's budget was again this notion of the entry level positions and then the
three hundred fifty thousand dollars for the hearings officer.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you very much. Does that conclude the report?
Mr. Dahilig: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh okay. Any questions? Councilmember Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you Mike for a very extensive Planning presentation.
One I'm not used to. How do you split one position into two?
Mr. Dahilig: We had a... I guess a reallocation in the last FY where we had
a dollar funded five and then we had a fully funded 5. And the five was created...
Mr. Hironaka: I'll just explained on that... we actually...
Ms. Yukimura: Will you introduce yourself?
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.4
Mr. Hironaka: Miles Hironaka for the record. We have in our existing
current budget we have a dollar funded planner five position and as Mike indicated due to
retirements, we also had a vacant planner five fully funded position. So in keeping in trying to stay
within the confines with the budget, what we did was we downgraded the planner five dollar funded
position to a planner one position and then we downgraded the fully funded planner five position to a
planner two position and we used the funding from the fully funded planner five to fund both one
and two positions.
Ms. Yukimura: And you didn't have any variance in your budget that allowed
you to...
Mr, Hironaka: All we could afford with that fully funded planner five was to
have a... to fully fund a planner one and planner two position.
Ms, Yukimura: So you went based on what you could do whether than what
you needed?
Mr. Dahilig: I think that is a need... I mean a one and two is a real need
and even though we had the two fives, when you look at the work that's being generated, it is
important for us to have entry levels. What I've seen the workload of the current five position, and
again this was when I was an attorney so, these were my observations... that it was almost as if the
work that the five was doing was spanning the one and the five and we needed to start creating
entry level positions that would handle more of the routine medial work but yet also provide an
opportunity for upward mobility. So the one and the two I wouldn't say... we're not what we're doing
to stay within means but it's also that the one and the two does makes sense for us.
Ms. Yukimura: I don't really understand how they make sense yet, you're just
telling me they make sense.
Mr. Dahilig: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: So how do they make sense.
Mr, Dahilig: Again it speaks to a larger issue of entry level being able to
train and bring up staff through the ranks as well as being able to more so (inaudible) the work that
the mid levels are doing that is more a tune to what the ones and twos would be doing. Because
when you look at the type of work that a five is doing, the five shouldn't be doing work that a one is
doing and yet the five is doing what a one is doing.
Ms. Yukimura: What is the work that a one is doing?
Mr. Dahilig: Things minor permits, class three permits. Things that let's
say simple use permits relating to beauty salons. Those types of minor things as well as our
subdivision elements. I mean we do have the tentacle things that involve subdivision but a lot of
subdivision is also transposing a lot of it is checking off boxes and those types of things a planner five
was doing and so it almost make sense for us to have two people working on the same item but at the
same time have most of the focus in the tentacle aspects be given to the more senior staff versus the
junior staff.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah but your plans are for, I mean let me see you were
saying you're going to initiate like about five major planning processes right after the beginning of
this FY and you have your long range planners who are already so overloaded with ongoing planning
projects. So what it seems to be doing is you're just focusing more on the (inaudible) stuff rather
than what the Planning Department, how are you going to achieve those major plans without high
level planners?
Mr. Dahilig: Part of where we attempt to address it is one we do have to
hire the 7 that is critical for us. It's a staff of three and when we look forward to the next projects
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.5
that are coming through the shoot, there are three plans on the books so it would almost in some
respects sure each long range planner can be responsible for one plan, I mean at the most simple
distribution of work. But I know it's more complicated than that and I don't know if the Council
wants me to go into discussion of the CIP request.
Mr. Rapozo: No. Not yet.
Mr. Dahilig: But there are things that are built into that that would help
address those positions Councilmember.
Ms. Yukimura: Well I guess what would be useful then would be your org
chart as it's presently stands.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Your org chart as it would stands after this budget, I mean
that is presented by your budget request and your org chart of about four or five years down the road
in terms of how you're building and organizing this department.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Because you know finishing the plans is one thing and then
what happens if you don't want to result which none of us do of just putting the plan on the shelf,
how are you going to implement the plans, that may take some long range planners as well.
Mr. Dahilig: I understand.
Ms. Yukimura: And so it's not like your long range planner finishes the plan
and then goes onto another plan, I mean I'm asking the question, I don't know what is the plan for
your personnel organization to match your mission and your goals.
Mr. Dahilig: Again this is where I'm not sure how much again I should go
into the CIP element but...
Ms. Yukimura: Well your CIP will probably have some built in planners.
Mr. Dahilig: What we are looking at is possibly using some of those CIP
funds to help support our focus effort in trying to push through these plans. And you know the
Council does authorize in budget's dollar funded project manager positions and you know we do
recognize that that is an option for us also in hiring on full time permanent staff to help push these
plans forward. I mean it's very clear that's its creating a bubble but what we're trying to do is we're
trying to focus on one bubble which is the older plans, push those things through but we are starting
another bubble. I certainly hear your concerns Councilmember but it's really when we look at the
CIP budgets we're looking at it as a temporary solution versus looking at it from a long range
institutional solution.
Ms. Yukimura: Well okay so I hear and I'll save other questions for the CIP
budget but it does interface with your personnel planning here obviously because you need bodies to
guide these plans through the planning process and oversee them and work with the consultants and
all of that. And I'm just going to leave for future discussion this whole idea you know you get the
plans done, then what... so I think we want to see, for planners who plan long range, what kind of
the long range plan versus sustaining a planning department and sustaining the long range
planning aspect of it and the interface of long range planning with permitting because that's what
the plan are for.
Mr. Dahilig: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thanks.
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.6
Mr. Rapozo:
Mr. Kuali`i and then Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Kuali`i; Aloha Mike and aloha Miles. Thank you for all the work you
do for the people of Kauai and thank your staff also at planning. I only have two quick questions.
One of them is when you were talking about the operating budget and the operation line item going
up 202%, so you said thirty-five thousand for a hearing officer there was a case on ordinance 876 so,
you're estimating that there'll be ten contested case hearings going forward and that's how your
justifying the three hundred fifty thousand?
Mr. Dahilig: Yes.
Mr. Kuali`i: What has been the contested case hearing in the past and
how did you come up with this estimate?
Mr. Dahilig: In the past contested case hearings are actually quite
sporadic so there's not necessarily...
Mr. Kuali`i: So like could you say and maybe you can't now but I'm
requesting it, for the last five years how many contested case hearings per year and how much do
they cost for each one?
Mr. Dahilig: Sure, we can provide that information.
Mr. Rapozo: Hang on... is that related to that question?
Mr. Kuali`i: No.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: I'm starting to get a little confused about the format because
I just want to focus on the two things we talked about for now.
Mr. Rapozo: That's fine, the follow ups are if it pertains to any of that, go
ahead...
Mr. Bynum: Yeah staffing and contested case.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: Because there's a whole bunch of issues...
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah I know.
Mr. Bynum: Just let me... you had a dollar funded five a vacant five, you
are now going to have a one and two instead so that means you're going to use the money that was in
the five but not all of the money, not a full dollar funded five right because those positions pay less,
right?
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: Okay so your 7, though you're looking for an experienced
planner that meets that level, you're not looking at making any internal moves or promotions or...
but you're getting somebody who meets the qualifications and have the experience and expertise?
Mr. Dahilig: We're going through an open recruitment. So we're not
looking in house, in house has been told about the vacancy and the notice and certainly if we have
qualified individuals I wish them luck as they compete through the process. But we also recognize
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.7
that you know, I could be gone in a few months if the Commission says you know we want somebody
else. What the heart and soul of the department is are these staff level guys.
Mr. Bynum: Yes.
Mr. Dahilig: And so it's important for us to get the people that we, that are
trained, that have the municipal governmental experience in planning to come in and compete for
the positions if they want. And so the position is active now and I think it closes in a few days.
Mr. Bynum: Did we do any outreach or advertising?
Mr. Dahilig: What we've done is gone ahead and gone through the regular
channels in terms of the county posting and those types of things but nothing above and beyond
what we normally would do.
Mr. Bynum: Right now you're going to have these new entry level people,
in the department you have kind of limit senior people who can mentor them right and that would be
I would assume your deputy director Dee and Miles.
Mr. Dahilig: Right.
Mr. Bynum: Are the kind of the two that are... so... you are going to be the
mentor's yeah Miles? And I think it's really important to get and if you get you know... so maybe
you can give us not now but you know what are the qualifications fora 7 as opposed to a 5, as
opposed to a one.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
Mr. Bynum: And you're going to stick to those, you're not going to under
fill right? So when you hire the 7 they're going to meet the establish criteria fora 7.
Mr. Dahilig: That's our intent, I mean there's been a period of limbo for the
department and I think stability and permanency are key and so we're looking at a full hire here,
that's what we're looking at.
Mr. Bynum: And then regarding the contested case hearings, you have
three Councilmembers on this that went through months of discussion and about the
implementation of what a relatively new regulations regarding TVRs and so we anticipated that we
were going to have contested case hearings, that it was going to be because we went from kind of free
for all unregulated to very clear strict restrictions... and with a bunch of existing operations out
there and so to come back you know it's... so that bubble is created by us regulating for the first time
in many ways, is that correct?
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: And so I just wanted to say for the new Councilmembers, we
anticipated that this was going to create stress and a burden on the department to process going
from unregulated to regulated and I think you're coming up with a pretty created way of doing that
because there's no way the Planning Commission with the tons of stuff that they're already gotten on
their plate, could handle that... where it's like you said normal course of business, every now and
then you have a contested case hearing, the Commission can handle. But when you know you're
going to have 1,2,3,4,5 likely and hopefully at one point we were thinking it might be fifty, so if it's
10, it'll be great. I see Miles nodding his head. It's a very complex issue but it's something we got to
get over that hurdle and then get to community established norms and then we can go back to the
routine. Am I characterizing this well?
Mr. Dahilig: Sure.
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.8
Mr. Bynum: Okay. I just wanted to address those two issues, I have other
questions later.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay thank you very much. I had a follow up on that, on the
contested case hearings, isn't there a deadline for them to file a contested case?
Mr. Dahilig: Yeah, it was... well for them to actually apply under
ordinance number 904, they have one year from the Mayor's signature to actually put in an
application.
Mr. Rapozo: And when was that?
Mr. Dahilig: August of last year.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay and that's when they can file for the permit?
Mr. Dahilig: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: And how long after... obviously the contested case, you're
talking about people filing for intervention as well, or interveners?
Mr. Dahilig: That would be the...
Mr. Rapozo: That would start it?
Mr. Dahilig: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: What is their deadline to file?
Mr. Dahilig: Their deadline would be seven days before the public hearing,
before the Commission. And so anytime a public notice goes out for the special permit.
Mr. Rapozo: Right.
Mr. Dahilig: And they have seven days as to declare their desire to be an
intervener upon at which time the Commission would determine whether there are unique rights or
obligations that the government cannot represent.
Mr. Rapozo: Right.
Mr. Dahilig: Then that would trigger the contested case.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay so we're talking FY starts in July.
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct.
Mr. Rapozo: So they have two months worth the ability to apply.
Mr. Dahilig: Right.
Mr. Rapozo: So you would say there were two months of opportunity to file
a contested case?
Mr. Dahilig: We've already receive in house, you know with the beginning
of the ordinance in last August, already a number and we're, I think we're over sixty applications.
Not complete but we're at sixty applications thus far.
Mr. Rapozo: Right.
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.9
Mr. Dahilig: Whether we receive another bubble, in the next two or three
months... it's hard for us to say we could potentially.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah I understand you could but I think that goes back to
Mr. Kuali`i's question what's the real, what's the probability that.... because you were talking about
you could probably narrow it down or negotiate away most of it and end up with ten in a year, but
we're talking only a couple of months of opportunities for these people to actually file, right?
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct. And I think part of what we're looking at is
the past history with the previous interveners.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Mr. Dahilig: The previous interveners came in and tried to filed contested
case hearings for every single TVR certificate that came forward and so we've already started to lay
the ground work in communication with the last interveners to say look okay we know you have the
rights, let's talk about it.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Mr. Dahilig: But in terms of what they would actually try to focus their
efforts on and what could they sustain, in a contested case type of situation, I don't know either but
what we're hoping is that they're obviously going to be some applications that we're going to deny
simply because we don't feel that they meet the test and laid out by the Council.
Mr. Rapozo: And then one last question pertaining to that contested case,
wouldn't the County Attorney's Office be, it's not something we could do in house?
Mr. Dahilig: The County Attorney's Office.
Mr. Rapozo: I mean I understand I wasn't here on Friday and neither
were you but there was an increase of the special council money in the County Attorney's Office. I'm
wondering why wouldn't the County Attorney's represent us and the Commission in a contested case
hearing?
Mr. Dahilig: The hearings officer, actually is an independent officer
separate from the County Attorney's Office.
Mr. Rapozo: Right.
Mr. Dahilig: And so the County Attorney's Office would represent the
Commission, the County Attorney's Office would represent the department so there would be a
firewall that is create between two attorneys in the office.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, understood. Thank you. Ms. Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: First a comment and then the question. I like the way you
wrote this up Mike and Miles, the way you articulated the challenges and then how you articulated
the goals and objectives to meet those challenges. So this is right up there with the plans that we
have seen. I have a question and I think it's very helpful because it clarifies exactly what you plan to
do this coming fiscal year and I haven't seen that across the boards, so thank you for your good work.
I had a question regarding to the long range planning, not long ago there was just one long range
planner in the county addressing all of the needs and I just wanted to find out now that we have two
long range planners and then one supervisory position that has yet to be filled. Do you feel that this
is an adequate funding staffing level for Kauai for the next five years?
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.10
Mr. Dahilig: Quite honestly, I would say no. And part of what our
department is blessed with is talent individuals that are willing to go above and beyond. Marie
Williams and Lea, they work their butts off and part of why we're able to get the work out is because
they believe in what they do. Yet at the same time, I need to remind them also, you know what you
guys are civil servants, I can't have you stay late, you know these types of things that I would love to
have these guys in the private sector you know grind away but every time you talk about smart
growth or you talk about get fit initiatives or even native Hawaiian planning, you know that they are
right up there and they're willing to chomp off it but how long they're able to sustain their work, I'm
not sure. Again having an additional seven to supervise will be critical in at least maintaining our
efforts but as you know Councilmember that there are a lot of high scrutiny about long range
planning and there's a bigger policy demand for long range products and to be able to do this and
actually create a more robust department and I'd like to go is actually have a division that becomes
more analytical besides just supervising the work. I think it would be incumbent over the next few
years to looking at an analysis specifically I think a data analysis to help derive census products for
the county to use down the line.
Ms. Nakamura: I'd like to put a question in writing to you.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
Ms. Nakamura: About how you see this department potentially the rolls that
need to be taken on because I think the community is concerned about our long term future and I
think for a long time we haven't spent the resources or built the internal capacity to do this work
relying a lot on outside consultants which is fine but to have the internal capacity to really guide the
consultants. I'm just going to put that in writing.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay, I look forward to it.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: Yeah I just wanted to follow up one last time, so you said
since last August there was a number of applications and I think I heard you say sixty.
Mr. Dahilig: Yeah.
Mr. Kuali`i: And then you also said the contested cases would have to
happen within so many days, so of those sixty how many were there?
Mr. Dahilig: None of the... we actually starting with our first application
at the next Commission meeting.
Mr. Kuali`i: Oh so sixty is waiting?
Mr. Dahilig: Sixty is waiting to be processed. The gate to open for the
contested case hearing happens once the application is deemed complete. And so our temporary tvr
planner right now is actually working with each of these applicants to make sure their applications
are complete. So really only excepted one.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay and further... I maybe had cut you off too quickly when
you were trying to explain what it was estimated on and then I think Councilmember Bynum sort of
confused me by saying this is like a new normal and so it's not worth looking at the Iast five years
but you're saying that you estimated based on prior tvr ordinances. So there's ordinance 64?
Mr. Dahilig: Ordinance 864, yes.
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.l l
Mr. Kuali`i: And ordinance 876. So 864 and 876, when was both of those
ordinance put in place, approximate?
Mr. Dahilig: Ordinance 864 was in place March 7, 2008.
Mr. Kuali`i: 2008.
Mr. Dahilig: Yes and then Ordinance 876 I believe it was in the spring of
2009. So I don't have the specific date.
Mr. Kuali`i: So it's only going back three years?
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay. So perhaps my request for five years of information
doesn't make sense?
Mr. Dahilig: I mean we're willing to provide you.
Mr. Kuali`i: Unless there's any other tvr ordinance five years ago.
Mr. Dahilig: No, this is it.
Mr. Kuali`i: So the contested case hearings for the last three years, the
cost of each and each ordinance they were contested?
Mr. Dahilig: Okay, I can definitely provide that.
Mr. Kuali`i: And that will be helpful, thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you very much.
Mr. Kuali`i: Oh my second one which I didn't get to earlier?
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, go ahead.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay. On the detail budget line item, I see other post
employee benefits as having nearly a fifty percent increase and I noticed all over there's over forty
percent increase for all over the county and I didn't get a chance to ask our Finance Director and I
wasn't a Councilmember when our Mayor was making his presentation but that's something I want
to pursue further and with you I think maybe you can tell me what are the changes in your
department as far as your total amount of employees and then how many of those employees have
recently retired. Or maybe there's another reason for this large increase that you know about.
Mr. Dahilig: To be quite honest we have a formula.
Mr. Kuali`i: Formula, that's what I thought.
Mr. Dahilig: And so...
Mr. Rapozo: The percentage change, the mandate change, we now pay
more. I think it went from forty-eight percent to fifty one percent, so that's where every department
is realizing that increase and it's simply because of that post employment benefit, I think it's called
(inaudible).
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay.
Mr. Rapozo: So that's something that we all got to suffer.
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.12
Mr. Kuali`i: It seems to vary so much.
Mr. Rapozo: It is a lot.
Mr. Kuali`i: Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: I think there's so many things to talk about but I'm going to
focus on one that I don't see in here and anywhere and that's my concern. I don't mean this as a
criticism because boy talk about a full plate, you guys got it. So and it's about impact fees, I believe
this council funded sometime ago an impact fee study and you know we got some breathing room
because we haven't had a lot of new development on Kauai over the last few years, but I'm starting
to hear rumblings, I'm starting to hear about things happening... are you aware that we funded an
impact fee study and I don't see it on the time table here.
Mr. Dahilig: It is something that is in there.
Mr. Bynum: Is there, I'm sorry.
Mr. Dahilig: For reauthorization of two hundred fifty thousand dollars, I
believe. I may have turned it into a user fee study rather than a county wide impact fee study but
generally it's the same principle...
Mr. Bynum: User fee study.
Mr. Dahilig: Yeah so I mean it's... if you're going to.
Chair Furfaro: Different terminology but same thing.
Mr. Dahilig: Yes. But it is something that we know that has been in the
budget in the past and is something that we do need to move on and try to get that procured out and
ready to go.
Mr. Bynum: What is our current impact fee?
Mr. Dahilig: We don't have an...
Chair Furfaro: (inaudible)
Mr. Dahilig: The impact fee ordinance if we're looking at it from a stand
point how Honolulu has that legislation that then can be implemented, is when you come in with a
project, everybody in the project has to pay x amount of money per month per month or per year to
sustain a certain level of service. I think that's one element. But then we also have the more board
brush types of things as the Chair mentioned like the fee for park use and those types of things. So
I think this was something looking at the prospective, subdivisions prospective, larger developments
that maybe something like the Honolulu model.
Mr. Bynum: Right so, you know we can't write an impact fee ordinance if
we don't have an impact fee study, right?
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: So just ballpark when can we as a county get to a point where
we implemented a comprehensive impact fee ordinance, is that twenty years, is it two years?
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.13
Mr. Dahilig: I think the message is that you'd like it sooner than later and
it's something that if we weren't prepared to move forward with procurement on the matter, we
wouldn't have asked for reauthorization again in this... again I don't want to get into CIP too much
but it is in the reauthorization...
Mr. Bynum: We have a separate time for that or?
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah.
Mr. Bynum: So I'll probably have some follow up questions at that time.
Because your presentation, you gave a really good document but we just got it right and unlike the
Finance Director who went through kind of point by point, you hit the highlights in your opening
comments so and I appreciate your sensitive to the time element but some of the questions are going
to come from me from reading this a little more thoroughly.
Mr. Dahilig: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: Mike, I do want to say to you that the item that's in the
budget has been floating there since 2006, I know that because I've introduced it. The way I
introduced it is under the Yukimura Administration, there was a draft plan to implement impact
fees and so I went digging through the archives at Planning and actually found the document and
then reintroduced this piece. Let's see Mr. Bynum said twenty years... I've been waiting five... so
you know I think we're hearing some of the urgency that maybe it's something that we really value
and looking at and I'm sorry if I wasn't here but the other one was also the hearings officer that also
came from me promoting it. Did we get that already? Yeah, okay. So I'll go around the table and
take the floor back, Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: I just have a follow up comment on this before I let it go
because we do have people in the public watching this and you know if somebody puts in a hundred
new hotel rooms or three hundred new houses, it has an impact on parks, police, fire, you know
water, waste water and you know I've talked to developers who say hey I pay this parks impact fee
and I believe we have an ordinance impact fee a thousand dollars, that's probably twenty-five times
less than the actual impact. I've talked to developers who were like, they're just dismayed, they're
amazed. I think this is a really important issue. If we think our economy is going to revived and
we're going to have development in the future, it's important that we not burden our current tax
payers with the additional police, fire, wastewater, water systems and all of that. Now the water
system... I maybe shouldn't say water because they have their facilities reserve charge, discussion
going on right now, so but it's all interrelated.
Mr. Dahilig: Councilmember, I don't want to make my previous comments
seems as if we're looking at limiting any type of study just to... with these prospective pinpointed
types of developments, again county types of options should also be on the table and so.
Mr. Bynum: And just to turn it into a question because Mr. Furfaro took
this initiative in 2006 I'm wondering if whatever funds were allocated are still adequate given our
needs and so I'll be asking that in the future as well.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: -Well the answer to that is very simple, at the end of each
year, it goes to the reserve fund who we're hoping will eventually become the reserve fund and not
just label a toss over, it's now a surplus.
Mr. Bynum: Well that CIP funding right?
Chair Furfaro: Well some of these actually appear in the operating budget
like a contract for a study. Capital improvement item actually is you're improving the value of an
asset and we built a new bath house, that asset is now considered something if we had to convert it
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.14
or so forth; it would show up in a CIP plan but I think Mr. Bynum is saying I have faith if it goes in
the budget this year you understand the urgency coming from this body about doing it. On that note
I think Mr. KipuKai had a question.
Mr. Kuali`i: It's a real simple basic question, where in your budget is
showing the permit fees?
Mr. Dahilig: Um.
Mr. Kuali`i: Or how much is that?
Mr. Dahilig: I think you... Miles, you want to...
Mr. Kuali`i: People come in for permit, they pay you for a permit.
Mr. Hironaka: The permit fees, most of the... in fact all of the permit fees
goes into the general fund.
Mr. Kuali`i: So in the big budget, the general fund I see here licenses and
permits...
Mr. Dahilig: It would be in that line.
Mr. Kuali`i: And is it none business licenses? One point one...
Ms. Yukimura: We need our Finance Director.
Chair Furfaro: That's it.
Mr. Kuali`i: Yeah okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: That's where it's going. I'm going to give the floor to
Councilwoman Yukimura, KipuKai are you fine with that?
Mr. Kuali`i:
Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. I appreciate the statistics you have given us and
I'd like to request a few more. I don't see anything about how many general plan amendments were
approved. Or they're all mixed up in that fifty, is that...
Mr. Dahilig: Yeah we can separate that out.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes. Well I'm interested in how many Ag subdivisions were
approved in the last year and how many lots and how many acres that involved.
Mr. Dahilig: Are you looking at tentative and final?
Ms. Yukimura: You can break it... I guess final.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: But I'd like to see that for the past ten years actually. And
same thing for general plan amendments you know in terms o£.. and zoning amendments and break
that down by categories of resort or commercial or from Ag.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.15
Ms. Yukimura: To urban, I'm not going to try to specify them but in a way
that we can see what has happened to our land... yeah over the last ten years that would be very
helpful.
Chair Furfaro: You know if it's the last ten years, I've said this earlier, expect
this to be appearing in a Committee Meeting under Councilwoman Nakamura, okay? This is budget
and operation issues that is good information that we need but that is not supporting the financial
parts of what this agenda item is which is the budget... your needs, your payroll, your staffing guys,
the funding of projects and so forth. So I'm going to ask Councilwoman Nakamura to Kokua
Councilwoman Yukimura by getting that information to us in an agenda item yet to be posted
because it is extremely important and quite frankly we should get it every year.
Mr. Dahilig: Yes sir.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you Mr. Chair. I mean I was seeing it as kind of
outcome of the work of the Planning Committee but that's just... of the Planning Department but
that's fine in another venue. And then I just have one other suggestion for budget hearings next
year that maybe we schedule the Planning CIP adjacent to the Planning department's budget
hearing because they relate so much but that's just for next year.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, this is a very strange approach to the capital
improvement plan which it seems when we spend CIP money it all kind of falls under the umbrella
of Clint Saiki, in Public Works because at the end of the day those kinds of items have to be
accounted for as an additional asset for the county. And Clint does a fine job, in fact he used to work
for me, he's a very good accounting guy and he understands the added assets that need to be carried
on the books. But we have given some new allocation to some additional time this year but we will
consider that in the future Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you and it's just a follow up to Councilmember
Yukimura early question regarding the organizational chart. Mike if you can further breakdown and
we'll send this one over in writing but the breakdown of the increases, I know you spoke about the
three hundred fifty thousand for the contested cases but you're showing increases in all... in the
salaries as well as the operations, so if you can just break that down.
Mr. Dahilig: In a table form?
Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Thank you.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay, we can definitely do that.
Mr. Rapozo: And I do want to just say thank you for your quick responses
from our request at the Council in the last few months. I really appreciate the very attention that
you give to our request. Thank you.
Mr. Dahilig: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: You have to give me a moment because I'm flying my memory
on all these things I said, I didn't get my book, I was away with a County Attorney. Would you like
to have to floor again?
Ms. Yukimura: No, I'm good. Oh! You want us to find something to talk
about?
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.16
Mr. Rapozo: Make a note of this date and time, please. This will never
happen again.
Chair Furfaro: Yeah I didn't get a book, I'm sorry... here we go. Nadine why
don't... since you're the Planning Chairwoman why don't I give you the floor and you can ask them to
clarify for me because I'm a big proponent of the hearings officer, did you folks cover that?
Mr. Rapozo: Yes we did. I guess if I may...
Chair Furfaro: Sure.
Mr. Rapozo: And we'll discuss it more offline but as far as the contested
case hearing officer and I'm not proposing that we hire another attorney just for that because we
really don't know what we're looking at but I guess my only concern is that like and Mr. Furfaro
mentioned whatever we don't spend, rolls over into the reserve but part of our problems with the
state is because of the size of our reserve. Because the size of our reserve, is why the state is saying
hey Kauai you guys have so much money, stop crying for the TAT. So I'm just wondering you know
how accurate are we with that estimate.
Mr. Dahilig: The three fifty estimate?
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, is that a very... I know it's a cautious estimate, safety
because we don't want to fall short but and that's just one of the numbers that is sticking out in my
head right now and obviously if that is approved, I would expect it to be approve with a proviso that
it would be limited to be used specifically for that purpose only.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay, that's fair.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: I want to follow up on that we spent in the past year over
seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars on contracted services for a hearings officer, am I
correct?
Mr. Dahilig: ...
Chair Furfaro: We spent a half a million on one case.
Mr. Dahilig: When you take into account the Sheehan Boating matter and
the other... I know the County Attorney's were handling the other ones but if you take the thirty five
thousand dollars is just based on the TVR, contested case hearing.
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me. The thirty five thousand you're talking about is
how you arrived at the three fifty.
Mr. Dahilig: It's how we arrived at the three fifty, yes.
Chair Furfaro: But what I'm saying in the County, we have contested
hearings that deal with building issues.
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct.
Chair Furfaro: The Building Department setbacks and issues about
elevations and those can all be handled through contested case hearings with our own officer?
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct Chair, when you look at some of the... I guess
the Department of Health would be a good example that they have a centralized hearing officer to
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.17
handle the different contested case hearings for the different departments, definitely under and
again I don't want to get into too much legal advice to you but...
Chair Furfaro: No and I don't want to get into it either...but what I'm trying
to point out to you and I forget where my chart was when I laid this all out... you know we should
get cleaner, quicker results. We should be able to manage our money better for the real outcome
that we want. So it's not like spending more money, it's like to spend this we anticipate saving other
money's that we currently sent out contractually. That was my point.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. I just... when you weren't here what Mike was talking
about was specifically to tvr.
Chair Furfaro: Oh.
Mr. Rapozo: And not to the contested case of the county, I mean it was
specific to the tvr based on the ordinance that was past the tvr ordinance and the estimate was at
ten of these cases would be contested at thirty five thousand dollars piece.
Chair Furfaro: Yeah I saw that in his narrative.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Yeah so I don't want to... I understand that overall
with the county.
Chair Furfaro: We can kill this but that's why I'm such a proponent of doing
it because in the long run we should improve efficiency and money. Mr. Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: Yeah but... so now I thought I just heard you say that when
the Chair was asking that it may and so earlier on I was really looking for a clear, that it is going to
save the county money so I mean if you're estimating that there might be these ten hearings just on
tvr and you spend the three hundred fifty thousand and there isn't... if that hearing officer was
available to do the others besides the tvr then it's kind of assurance that we're going to get the bang
for our buck and that we're going to save money. You know... potentially you know.
Mr. Dahilig: It's a valid point Councilmember. In our narrative we also
allot to I guess a pending bill before the council relating to civil finds. And unlike I guess criminal
finds, civil finds actually the money goes directly to the county so it doesn't go to the general
(inaudible) of the state. The Chair is allotting to the notion that you're also talking about... it
doesn't make fiscal sense to have a centralized hearing officer that can handle contested case
hearings for not only the Planning Commission but the Board of Appeals as well as the Board of
Review. It's definitely a model that's works again for like the Department of Health but it would
also allow our centralized office that would handle more minor contested case hearings if the council
was looking at the stream of revenue to levee it's authority under the state statute to levee civil
findings, so it's definitely that I believe... I don't want to give the impression that the three fifty is
the only option on the table for the council to look at from an expenditure stand point but given the
lack of a position and this would have to be done by statute from my understanding that this would
be the most prudent way to handle it given the current structure of the county.
Mr. Kuali`i: I just think that we need to get (inaudible) the possibility that
TAT is not what we want expect it to be and now this whole budget means a lot less than what we
think, so if we're able to justify saving that money somewhere else, it stands... it has a better chance
of continuing through but otherwise...
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
Mr. Kuali`i: If only there's a chance of saving money, thank you.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.18
that.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for those comments. Mr. Rapozo wants to add to
Mr. Rapozo: It's a follow up on the fines, the civil fines. We do have the
ability to administer fines... civil penalties right?
(inaudible)
IAN JUNG, COUNTY ATTORNEY: There is a draft bill pending before this council I think
it's within Committee right now so I would hesitate to deliberate any particular of the civil fine
authority as that bill should be before the Committee.
Mr. Rapozo: I believe we have an existing in the code it's sitting on my
desk right now that we past a few years ago two thousand dollar civil penalty.
Mr. Dahilig: That's for other departments for like I think Public Works has
a civil fine authority provision. Our department doesn't have a civil fine authority provision.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. I mean I'm not going to argue because you're probably
right.
Chair Furfaro: Okay I think it's best to be conservative here and before I
turn the question over to Council Vice Chair Yukimura let me just say and I think Councilmember
Kuali`i said it correctly let's make sure if we do successfully have this position, it's not about
handling ten cases a year. Maybe down in the fine print in the job description it says duties as
assigned, okay? It needs to be expanded. Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: My understanding is we're not talking about a position, we're
talking about money's for hiring a hearing officer on a contracted basis.
Chair Furfaro:
Right.
Ms. Yukimura: Because of the uncertainty we know, we don't know that
there's a full work time work for a hearing officer at this point. It makes more sense to go on a
contract, you know get special services right?
Mr. Dahilig: I think it's ultimately the Council controls the strings on this
and I wouldn't want to substitute my judgment for value in terms of whether it's appropriate to look
at a one time burn versus a sustained position because again there's pros and cons in having a
county wide hearing officer versus a temporary burn...
Ms. Yukimura: Okay if it's a county wide, we have a lot of analysis to do. But
if it's in your budget at this time, it's a proposal for money's contract services right?
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: That's the proposal.
Mr. Dahilig: That's the intent.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah and if we want to look at a county wide hearings officer,
we have a lot of work to do first.
Chair Furfaro: Well we have a lot of work to do, I just stated my position, I
think it should be a county wide person, I understand what Councilwoman Yukimura is... but
around 4:39 every evening I start to get a little wacky, I just had to put that in there. Make sure
where ever way we go there are other duties okay because there not defined at this point.
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.19
Mr. Dahilig:
Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for the comments Councilwoman. Okay, who else
have a question for the Planning Department. If not, I'm going to ask people in the audience if they
want to comment at this time.
Mr. Bynum: We're done?
Chair Furfaro: At this time I'm going to take comments from the audience.
Mr. Bynum: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: When I ask if you have questions and you don't raise your
hand, I assume that you don't have a question. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to
speak about Planning Department overview at this time? If not, gentlemen you're welcome to come
back and we'll continue going at this for the next hour.
Mr. Bynum: If necessary.
Ms. Yukimura: I don't think so.
Mr. Bynum: You don't think we need another hour?
Ms. Yukimura: No.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum was just asking if we think we need another
hour? So I'll go to him first.
Mr. Bynum: ...
Chair Furfaro: Do you have a question?
Mr. Bynum: Yes I do. Sorry... you talked about moving space into a...
yeah overflow space in Piikoi I mean well... we didn't get to ask this question of Finance last time so
because we have a space study the (inaudible) a space study.
Mr. Dahilig: Right.
Mr. Bynum: And have you gotten information from the Administration
about what the long term plan is to put you in adequate space.
Mr. Dahilig: We are from what we understand we're either number one or
number two on the docket. In terms of critical need. So...
Mr. Bynum: Expansion of the Piikoi Building.
Mr. Dahilig: Yeah exactly.
Mr. Bynum: Right now their doing the Fire Department and we haven't
gotten to them yet but I don't think there's anything in the budget to build more office space, is
there?
Mr. Dahilig: Yeah I?
Mr. Bynum: So there's a temporary plan to give you some overflow space?
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct.
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.20
Mr. Bynum: Okay and that's somewhere in the Piikoi Building?
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: I have a follow up to that about space.
Chair Furfaro: I'll give you the follow up.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Yeah you know whatever your plans are for
personnel if you don't have the space, it's going to create a lot of problems so I think we need to put
some urgency and I hope that the Administration in developing a space for the Fire Department has
an overall plan, for incremental expansion but I mean it seems like Planning Department really
needs to have that need met.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: In a way that complements your personnel plan because
that's such a key thing for good functioning of your office.
Chair Furfaro: Okay? We'll have that for a CIP question. Mike let me ask
you where is the money for the general plan update?
Mr. Dahilig: It's in the bond.
Chair Furfaro: It's in the bond?
Ms. Yukimura: CIP.
Mr. Dahilig: CIP.
Chair Furfaro: Okay and I want to make sure you understand that... and
maybe this is a question for Wally you know could you define for us our ability to put actual planning
documents in a CIP item versus using bond money to do it, what are the guidelines on that? From
an accounting stand point, if I could just ask you... you could stay there Mike.
Mr. Rezentes: I apologize Chair, what was the question?
Chair Furfaro: Yeah we borrow money for... we have bond money usually to
actually improve facilities and capacity and so forth but we have the general plan, Koloa Po`ipu
Kalaheo Development Plan, Lihu`e Development Plan and the user fee study, thank you very much
for that but do we have any guidelines on the actual funding of these projects from bond money or
other CIP. I mean is there an accounting practice that we got to be cautious with?
Mr. Rezentes: Well the original funding for studies, for the like a general
plan CIP would have been approved by the Bond Council originally.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Rezentes: But there are times that we would maneuver the funds from
general fund CIP to bond fund CIP you know for a number of reasons. But if the funding is long
term in nature whether it be a plan that ends up being put into a motion and actually a physical
building say, I mean those are appropriate for bond type funding.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. You have answered my question, I just want to make
sure and you know the general plan is a ten year plan and it includes roads, wastewater and so
forth. The visions for that, I just wanted to make sure that I understand the practice because I was
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.21
speaking about assets earlier so thank you very much Wally. You're welcome to come back. Mr.
Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: I'm trying to read through your thing, regarding the general
plan and I mentioned earlier when Transportation was here that last year the county applied for a
grant from the federal government to integrate planning on Housing Transportation and land use,
are you familiar with that?
(inaudible)
Mr. Bynum: And you know, there was a EPA smart growth office that got
restructured with funds from all three departments and that grant may get reissued or may have
already been reissued for the next year and so I wanted to encourage you, one question do you know
about it and two is that something you can look into and three... even if we don't get a grant that
integrates that planning, we have a transportation planning underway now and I just really want
to... that's the way the federal government is moving, it make sense, it's a smart growth principle to
look at those three elements together and so I think... are you aware that there may be a new grant
and you know that potentially could give additional resources and funding to the county. Are we
implementing dialog and intergrading the planning process in a way that we're collaborating?
Mr. Hironaka: Thank you. We'll go ahead and look into that because we did
try to apply this past year for the HUD grant to supplement our general plan.
Mr. Bynum: Right.
Mr. Hironaka: I wasn't aware that they reauthorized that so we can...
Mr. Bynum: And I'll try to look for some information there. There was a
EPA office a smart growth that promoted that idea and then we the Obama administration came in
they really went that way, that office has been renamed and I can't remember the name of it, it was
kind of flying under the radar when Bush was President, literally. And now it has new resources
and they really are promoting this idea of integrating, I think it's the office of sustainability or
something like that now because to have sustainable plans, you can't do it in vacuum because you
got to put housing where the workforce is, where the jobs are and that kind of stuff. If you can follow
up and I'll try see if I can get information on my end.
Chair Furfaro: So we'll send that over as a question that staff did you get Mr.
Bynum's? Thank you very much. Mr. Chang did you have something for the group? Now we have a
little bit of a challenge here since nobody's raising a question and in four (4) minutes we have to
change the tape, so we have four (4) minutes that we can close this meeting or we have four (4)
minutes before we take a ten minute recess. Seven (7) minutes, we have seven minutes... okay...
are there anymore questions, if not, BC would you mind if I take a ten minute break so that people
can actually look through their folders as long as they promise to me we will end today's questions by
5:00.
Mr. Bynum: Amen.
Chair Furfaro: So we're going to take a ten minute recess.
There being no objections, the Council recessed at 4:22 p.m.
The Council reconvened at 4:35 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
Chair Furfaro: We have two (2) questions for you from Mr. Bynum and then
I'll see if there's any more questions from the floor. Mr. Bynum the floor is yours.
Mr. Bynum: As I had a little more time to read through this, I just want to
say you not only gave goals but you gave objectives for each goal for this fiscal year, this is definitely
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.22
a great format. And I don't see it right in front of me but your objective was to bring to CZO to the
Planning Commission by June?
Mr. Dahilig: Let me see... by the end of summer.
Mr. Bynum: By the end of summer. Okay so it gives you a little bit more
breathing room. But you know I've just seen that... since I've been on the Council, I've seen that get
pushed back a dozen times and then when I did research I found out that this was a commitment
made in 2000 and then again in 2002, and then again... right... so this year? At the end of summer,
is that realistic?
Mr. Dahilig: We're almost there and we've been working with the
consultant to look at an online interface for receiving public feedback once we go out for public
comment on the draft. We did have a workshop with Councilmembers Nakamura and Yukimura on
the CZO update and part of the process was to try to again move it along I mean it's something that
needs to be wrapped up and I think one of the ideas going behind going with the web interface for
public comment is that it's more focus rather than try to get three minutes from somebody and they
can talk about things that are really technical, so that's what we're trying to work out with the
consultant right now on how to do that through some web interface.
Mr. Bynum: I really like the initiative in here about trying to get to an
electronic format for things and get rid of files all over the place, I mean I've run into that in the
questions I've asked Planning it's like well we can't get that information without going to every
permit and looking whether it was a or b... and it's like wow really? So that's a good initiative and I
believe the Council is doing a procurement of a high speed scanner right now so maybe we, you can
learn something from us. The purpose for us is to implement public awareness of our documents on
our Granicus interface that when there's an agenda item they can click and get the supporting
documents. Does Planning intend to provide that capability as well for, so if somebody's about this
zoning permit, they can click and see that staff report if they're sitting at home?
Mr. Dahilig: I think that's something we're trying to I guess move to and
ultimately in terms of online services, the overall goal would hopefully be on minor permit being able
to submit pdf copies of your plans and handle your transactions online that way and (inaudible)
review in a paperless manner.
Mr. Bynum: I just for this moment, and this is my last question I think...
you know we have that capability, Brandon is working with the Council to implement it and the
Council and the Planning Commission are live web stream and those are the two areas where this is
the biggest service to the community to allow them to have access to the supporting documents and
it will save your staff money because people aren't going to come up to ask for all this stuff because
they can get it, so I really would encourage you to really look at that and hopefully you will because
you had...we're that close.
Chair Furfaro: On a follow up to that... and I think Mr. Bynum lead up to it
for the Council, we've been very, we've been working very closely with Brandon and IT and you know
he didn't come on until the 15 of December so when we talked to him today or at least I did and I got
the acknowledgement from the rest of the staff, we're going to isolate the pieces that he has in his
CIP budget which also effect things like documents from you, the GIS information, imagining and
he's not coming back to present that to us until the 9 of May okay? So please note that date for you
and I encourage you to...we want to give him the appropriate time to look at our capital
improvement plan. Our resources are limited, we don't want to do items that we're only getting fifty
percent of the punch for and that's why I allowed him to have the extra time as a follow up Mr.
Bynum's queries. Mike could you folks try to coordinate some of this with him because he's back on
the morning of the 9?
Mr. Dahilig: We'll do Chair.
Mr. Bynum: Follow up... briefly on the same topic?
April 14, 2011
Planning Department p.23
Chair Furfaro: Sure.
Mr. Bynum: We're looking at our document you know how we manage
documents, you guys are, other departments are... and my discussions with Mr. (inaudible) isn't this
really call for a comprehensive way about how we move information back and forth in trying to
reduce the amount of paper that flows around our county and he's really anxious to do that but some
of these things are available now and so plan a get it implemented to serve the public and then plan
b longer integrate that so when you send the information to us, it comes electronically and we don't
have to scan it to make it available you know it just comes that way and it will only get more
efficient so.
Chair Furfaro: You're welcome Mr. Bynum. Mr. Chang, we're getting
towards the end of the day, are you okay, I'm going to go around the table here. Mr. Rapozo...
Nadine? I also understand that there's a query on a question out there about filling the Planning
positions and philosophically bringing in the planners at a level that we may be able to groom them,
versus bringing in a more mature experience planners that yet to be resolve by you folks, so that's
the only staff concern I had. Mr. Bynum indicated he's all pau and I'm going to go to Mr. Kuali`i if
you have anything, if not, we're going to end with Vice Chair Yukimura and then we're going to call
it a day, do you have anything for the gentlemen?
Ms. Yukimura: I'm done right now. Thank you very much, thank you for a
very extensive and well organized presentation and for all the .work and thought that you have all
have been doing together to begin to move Planning to a Planning Department, it's really great.
Thank you.
There being no objections, the Council recessed at 4:42 p.m.
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.1
The departmental budget review reconvened on April 15, 2011 at 9:06 a.m., and proceeded
as follows:
Councilmember Rapozo was noted as excused.
PARKS & RECREATION:
Chair Furfaro: Aloha, good morning, this will be a continuation of the budget review
session for April 15. I would like to point out that we have a budget review excuse for Mr. Rapozo for
the morning portion. I would also like to point out that Councilmember Kuali`i may need to step out
a little later this morning for a short period of time but when he does I want to point out that we
need to make sure that we have 5 members at the table to meet of forum. I would also like to re-visit,
this is the budget meeting, this is the budget and operational meeting dealing with staffing guides as
it relates to Payroll, PT & E and also in operational issues associated with cost that are enhanced
with the budget. This is very important for me to share that with you. If you want a philosophical
discussion on some items that are outside the budget please know that I have practiced for 18 weeks
a very liberal approach to you being able to put things on the agenda and so I would like to make
sure that if we have an item that wants to talk about future concepts and so forth that you just let
me know and we will see if we can get the chairman for that committee to expand that discussion in
a committee hearing. This morning we are going to start with a presentation from 9-10:30 with the
Parks & Recreation Department, followed by the Golf Course, followed by the Department of Public
Works at 12:30. We will be going to lunch early from 11:30-12:30 so it's like high school kind I was
always the first in line. I want to also point out that the discussion with Public Works will probably
lead into the CIP Plan with them on Monday at 9:00 and that's tentative so again that's a reminder
if we can keep CIP issues until next week Monday I would appreciate it. On that note I'm going to
ask the Parks & Recreation Department to come up and I will suspend the rules for you.
There being no objections the rules were suspended:
LENNY RAPOZO, Director of Parks & Recreation: Good Morning Council, for the record
my name is Lenny Rapozo, Director of Parks & Recreation. Earlier this morning we submitted our
budget presentation for 2012 and in it is a compilation of all of our divisions which is approximately
7 divisions and we wanted to start off with our mission for our department as being "To promote and
enhance in the quality of life for residents of our Island home Kauai". Our goals and objectives is
that the Department of Parks & Recreation comprise of seven divisions which includes the
Administration, Fiscal and Personnel, Convention Hall Parks Maintenance & Beautification,
Recreation & Planning & Development and the Wailua Gold Course. Our goal at the Department of
Parks & Recreation is to maintain the core services to the community and also to improve the quality
of these services and the repair upgrade and improvement of the facilities that are enjoyed by the
residents and the visitors of Kauai. If you look at our overall operating budget you say that we have
a budget increase from eight million six thirty six, five hundred fifty eight to ten million five hundred
thirty two thousand, six hundred sixty six, and the different graphs that will break down the
different portions of the budget. On page 3, we list or there's a little caption there to explain the
budget. First of all we understand that it is a almost an increase of almost 22 percent from the
previous year but we attribute that to the increase in wages which are now being out in from
furloughs and also there were some positions that we had that was funded only for 75% of the year,
meaning 9 months. Those are being fully funded this year so that's also in the increase and the
reason for that was we needed to meet goals and or target goals for the last two budget cycles and
although each department was directed to meet these goals, by all means that did not prevent a
department such as ours to contribute a little bit more so that the whole team or the county as a
whole could meet the overall goal, so that's why we attribute most of the increases. The other
increase is the operations and the increase in operations if you can see is an increase of about 34% or
a little bit over and we are requesting this increase because of the funding we want to restore
funding of supplies in anticipation supplies and other maintenance functions that were cut back over
the last two years. In anticipating of the cuts from the past two years we purchased as much of
supplies that we could with the allotted moneys and in hope that the supplies would carry us
through the next fiscal year and it had but it has gotten to the point now that we are running out of
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.2
supplies and we need to bring it up. Of course there's cost going up and we don't know how electricity
is going to be, oil is going up and so those increases are taken into effect with the different facilities
the big facilities that are being used by the public and the community. So with all that taken into
account that's what makes up most of the increase in the operations but I can go on in terms of sewer
fees to our facilities and we anticipate we had a higher usage in water the last fiscal year, but that's
the overall reason for the increase in operations and the salaries. Following that caption is our
listing of the vacancies within our department on the bottom of page3, and as you can see the
recruitment status of those vacancies are also on the far right. Mr. Chair would you like me to go
through all of this?
Mr. Furfaro: You can make your presentation first than I will ask members
unless they need some clarification on something right at the moment, if not we can just move
through your narrative.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay sure. Moving on after that portion of our presentation
what we did was in this booklet before you is that each division provided for you there are successes
and achievements, their challenges, and their upcoming initiatives and their particular graphs or
data for that division. If we start off with our first division and this would be in the order in which it
was presented in the goals and objectives by division, fiscal and personnel. The fiscal and personnel
division, what falls under that division that is really high profile in our community is the park
rangers. Our park rangers do a fantastic job out there considering some of the constraints and the
challenges that they face aside from just monitoring parks and enforcing ordinances within our
parks checking parks permits. As you read through this presentation you will see that they are part
of our visitor industry, they are part of our visitor representatives in the parks where by answering
questions and telling them what to look out for as it outlines in here like where's the best place to get
a plate lunch if that's what they're looking for. Everything from that like where is a safer beach, how
to get more park permits and they really go out of their way to enhance the experiences in our parks
for the campers.
They also help with events like the Marathon, they assist KPD with whatever big events that
they can contribute to in terms of in our parks such as we had the unfortunate passing Andy Irons
and we had a big celebration of his life down in Hanalei Bay. They were there because they were
monitoring the beach side and the pavilions trying to help out KPD with managing whatever we can
and also taking our responsibility in the parks at the same time. During emergency situations such
as the last tsunami or the last two tsunamis it's important for them to get out to the parks to clear
parks. Well let's take one step back, as soon as we went into the watch we had one ranger already
out there still working and his shift got done at ten contacted the park security coordinator turns
him around wherever at that time he was just coming out of Hanalei, had him go back in and went
to the park and started to inform people that we had a tsunami watch and please be on alert and this
is what might happen so just to inform people at the park. A lot of the people us included with the
inventions of iPods and iphones we don't-take our radios anymore and listen to KUAI and Bill Dolly
that we could at one time while we were growing up. Our park rangers go out and they take that pro-
active approach and once it became a warning, "Boom" back again clearing out parks. Once we
cleared out the parks Island wide and our park security coordinator has done a fantastic job of
splitting this Island up with the manpower resources that he has that we cleared the park and they
provided assistance at the different road blocks for Kauai Police and Kauai Police were able to have
that manpower to do what they needed to do. So the park rangers are extra eyes and ears for KPD,
they're our eyes and ears for our parks and recreation in dealing with the extra activities going on in
parks. Unfortunately the only time we hear about them is when they are sighting someone for a dog
violation in the park or camping without your permit or illegal commercial activities in the park and
they have to go and investigate, but they also do all this other great stuff for the department and for
the county. In their challenges, their challenges again, are sometime the negative label that they
have with the job that they are required to do. Also we really have a lot of parks, parks and
recreational facilities and we tend to think of them as just monitoring beach parks but they do more
than that. They monitor our athletic fields, some of our rangers have had to settle sometime disputes
when "eh I get the permit but what you doing over here" and they have to go there and so happen
they're in the area they check they see something and they go out there and do it. Sometimes even
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.3
having to answer to "How come get so many chickens on the Island" and we had those comments
about too many chickens. Also they work within and they have some constraints with the vehicles,
they have some really old vehicles and we've asked that we fund some additional vehicles for them.
They have been using some resurrected vehicles that were placed on the de-active list from the Police
Department and it's just that we needed to have something for them to get out there so public works
have been good enough to keep those vehicles running as best as they can. Those are some of their
challenges of dealing with what they need to get them out into the field. Also what goes on in the
park, their challenges in the park, you have to deal with the homeless, drug activity, abandoned
vehicles, those mare some of the major issues that they have done.
They have to do unpleasant task by clearing parks with the help of KPD in terms of dealing
with those that do not want to get camping permits or trying to exercise other rights that they
believe they have. These guys are on the front line in dealing with that kinds of situations and
dealing with the homeless, it's not so much about telling them to get out of the parks but also they
are encouraging the homeless of the different types of services that are available in the community.
Lastly for our rangers, they are another set of eyes in terms of risk management. If they see
something that is a maintenance issue than by all means they report it, they take pictures and there
are really good about taking pictures as you can see the nice three pictures of the different two
rangers doing some of their duties within the parks. Those are their challenges and again the
upcoming initiatives is the 3 new trucks that we are asking to help our staff to continue to do what
they need to do but in addition to the reason for trucks as opposed to cars is we also have some 4x4
vehicles cartsters for the sake of a better term that they use to patrol the beaches , so we have a
trailer for them so the truck is required to be able to tow the specified amount so we can get them to
the different places to do the monitoring that they need to do to help them do their things. Upcoming
initiatives is training is always good and I've always encourage training wherever I've been and John
or our parks safety coordinator continues to work with the Police Department or Prosecutors Office
and always giving trailers to training refresher training and recently it's not in this book but I've
spoken to representatives of the Department of Public Safety and we're going to be working out a
program where they will be willing to train some of our rangers. Its more self defense in nature and
our rangers do not have arresting powers but they are put in situations where they may need skills
to protect themselves. So with the different entities out there, they're willing to partner up with our
department to help our rangers and that's going to be forthcoming.
The other portion of this department is our personnel department. That personnel
department is responsible for the hiring within our own department and she's been tasks with the
personnel specialist retired as we all know and she moved on to other things. Right now we are
having her who was her assistant to do most of the personnel needs of our department, so we are in
the process of hiring a replacement for her as soon as possible because I believe this is a key
component of any department is to ensure all of our personnel orders are in order, not only in the
hiring but in the training records, in the disciplinary records, in their benefits records. If personnel
are in order than I believe we always eliminate a lot of-our personnel problems which the county
seems to face a lot in terms of dealing with our people at work. If their personnel orders are all in
order and their personnel records are all in order and there just there to focus on the job at hand I
think it makes for a better place or a better working environment for our people. We are working
vigorously to try and recruit for that position the personnel specialist II. Of course (inaudible) is our
accounting division she watches our money and tells us what we're doing, what we can and cannot,
how far we are and what our targets are and how close we are to maximizing. So again that's an
overview of our fiscal and personnel department, attached to that following that on page 7 is their
data involving their salaries, benefits the equipment and operations. The next division is our Kauai
War Memorial Convention Hall which is a fabulous facility that is over 40 years old and the
successes and the history of this facility is well documented. Our War Memorial Manager has done a
fantastic job in trying to keep his maintenance, trying to ensure it's presentable, trying to make sure
that whatever needs to get done is done. This gives a brief history from 1999 when than the
Convention Hall was 35 years old. Through the support of the Mayors and this body the Council, the
renovation and the re-emerging of the facility has gone through a complete change from a hundred
fifty thousand to replace outdated fire code doors, tables, refrigerators and to twenty thousand last
year to fix the curtains and the drapes. His staff works hard to maintain the beautiful floors and
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.4
keeping it up to date and what we have seen as a result of it was there was a boost in revenue, from
1999 where the revenue was about 15 thousand for that year to where we collect 80 thousand dollars
per year now. It is a facility, a theatrical facility that seats almost 11 hundred people which is twice
of what KCC does, so it's an attractive place for people to come and do their performances their
because we do have the capacity.
We have been in contact with a group from Florida that wants to bring Shakespeare here in
2012, so that's going to be a nice addition to the facility. The DOE uses the facility for their
performances and it's heavily used by the DOE actually for their performances. Bookings their now
need to be done a year in advance because it's so popular and weekends are reserved out and your
best bet would be a Monday or Tuesday which is when it seems that the bookings aren't as heavily.
It is also a place for emergency shelters if need be and not on the theatrical part but also the exhibit
halls area is being used heavily. The one thing that is left that needs to be done in the facility to
make an almost complete renovation is the replacement of seats which is one of the challenges and
that's in the CIP budget so I don't want to spend too much time there. The seats are older than I am
so I think it's time to be replaced and I'm not talking about myself but the seats. I think we need to
look at that and be mindful that with the facility of this nature and if we can take care of that I think
we will have it really nice. Aside from his other duties of managing the Convention Hall the Manager
and let's be clear it's Eddie Sarita, he also has taken on the Ho Lo'okahi and adopt a park program
and that was created in 1995. Through this program it provides a community, a partnership with our
county to do upgrades to their programs or upgrades to our parks but it's the volunteers that
contribute the sweat equity and the labor to accomplish these projects which is really beautiful: In
the last two years there have been two highly visible projects that was done through Ho Lo'okahi,
which is the Westside Business Professional Association and the Hanapepe Youth Baseball. With a
grant of 3 thousand dollars Waimea Professional Business installed a Welcome Waimea sign over at
Hoffgaard Park so that's the fruits of the Ho Lo'okahi program.
The Hanapepe youth baseball put in two batting cages for the kids of different levels so that
they can improve their skills and normally the grants from this program usually don't go higher than
5 thousand dollars, but in Hanapepe's case it was 6 thousand because they needed a little more to
complete their ability to put up the two batting cages. I thought it was money really well spent. The
adopt the park program which was created in the fiscal year of 2006 and it lists volunteers within
our organization, within our community to help to care for the 64 county parks. Graffiti, vandalism,
things that are broken and through this adopt a park program we are able to repair these things
quicker and it gives the community a sense of pride and ownership into the parks. The picture on
page 10 shows the new comfort station coming up at Peter Rayno park, its painted right now and it's
almost complete totally and recently you've been hearing a lot of publicity about Peter Rayno park
because some of the seniors have taken that park and have done help with our guys providing
materials, providing machines to do the heavy work. They have turned that park completely around
now that Hanama'ulu has a senior softball team and they call it the park of their own. Mr. Sarita
aside from being a member of that community and being at the convention hall they have adopted
Hanama'ulu Beach Park and tomorrow through this adopt a park program he has helped to organize
over 70 volunteers that have started work at Hanama'ulu Beach Park. They pressure washed the
beach park yesterday with drug court and they are good volunteers and with the other volunteers
tomorrow they will be painting, they will be cutting the over growth, they will be doing a complete
renovation in one day so a total of 70 volunteers with this effort. In the preparation of Easter for next
year, the park is currently closed to complete these renovations but Easter will be the first day it will
be open so for anyone that wanted to have an Easter picnic down there the park will be really nice.
They will be painting the bathrooms, fixing and painting the tables and doing a really incredible job
down there. Now to get to this point of with adopt a park program, the coordinator needed to plan
and work with different communities and organizations. You have individuals from the community
helping out, you have the Hanama'ulu Association helping out, you have two motor bike clubs
helping out and you just heard about the drug court program that's helping out. It's that kind of
spirit within this community and through the adopt a park and Ho' Lo'lokahi program that is
making this, and they continue to maintain the cemetery across the street. It helps parks
maintenance, it helps the community and the community gives them a sense of pride in what they
are doing and I think that is just one example. There's other examples that we continue to go out in
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.5
the community to look and I will be attacking the community because we're doing some other
projects in Lihu`e and I will be asking them if they could help us in painting this particular facility
once it's ready to be open.
Recently moving on, he have been made the liaison for our county for the keep Hawaiian
Islands beautiful and I have a brief description here from the director Jan Dapitten, she is the
Executive Director for this particular program. It's a volunteer based program and because our
convention hall manager had previously worked with her and because it's volunteer and it seems
only appropriate that he be the county liaison. That program is in its (inaudible) and we have to see
where it goes. Some of his challenges, all of these programs are well known but as the demand for
these programs become apparent in terms of we're asking for more volunteers, we're asking the
community to be more involved, we are asking more people in the community to paint benches,
Aunty Kalehua guys went down to Black Pot Park last weekend they went to plant some ti-leaves,
but she needed rakes, shovels and a water hose so as part of the adopt a park program Eddie
provided it for them. He has been asked to do more which has required more of this time and which
there is only eight hours in his work day and he needs to direct his challenges or direct his energies
too. That is I think the biggest challenge for this particular individual and for this convention hall.
His upcoming initiatives of course we had need to revisit the user fees or just at least take a look at
it, is it appropriate? The user fees were done in 1996 so you know we've explained what we're
collecting now and if we feel it is appropriate we will keep it as such and if we have to adjust it then
we'll talk about it but that's not to say we're going to do it right away but I think that's something we
need to look at in the next year and continue to provide this facility and keep this facility as
beautiful as it is. What I failed to mention here is Eddie has been also creative in working with other
state agencies by having some SECEP workers and they have come to help maintain the ground
maintenance so they are doing some work along with our public work employees, working alongside
of them to help keep that area really nice, with all of that going on...
JOANN YUKIMURA: Excuse me, can you explain SECEP?
Mr. Rapozo: My understanding of SECEP is people that are collecting
public assistance from the state and need to try to gain full employment. The job market the way it
is does not provide for them to get a job currently so we partner up with different agencies to provide
work for them, they just show up and perform the work and the state takes care of part of their
benefits.
Ms. Yukimura: Excellent.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah and we are mindful for our workers and we're not trying
to take their jobs or anything for them but it's trying to enhance the place and trying to make it
easier for them to do more.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: The data graph will describe or illustrate what our upcoming
comparisons are. Our next division is the park maintenance and beautification division which is
probably our largest division that has the most activities. They have a lot of successes, a lot of
achievements; they are out there maintaining our parks, maintaining our county facilities. A lot of
their community outreach involves prep work for the parks for different functions whether it's
football, baseball, basketball, your baby luau at the pavilion or just making sure our bathrooms are
tidy for the public to enjoy. They're also front line people that are dealing with the public. If you've
ever been to Lydgate on Easter Sunday and you see how many thousand s of people are there and
they have to step up their game and make sure the trash cans are maintained. We're lucky with that
facility being so well used that we have dedicated people specifically to that facility. We all know
there are challenge's out there where other parks that doesn't have one person per park and they
need to roam and rove and take care of more than one park in their shift and maintain it. They are
still out there on the front lines with helping our children, our family and our Kupuna out there to
ensure that they have what they need to run their organizations. In our volunteers with Ho'olokahi
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.6
or adopt a park if there is a big clean up than park maintenance also provides the necessary back up
or assets to haul away green waste. I anticipate a lot of green waste is going to be generated
tomorrow down in Hanama'ulu, come Monday morning our park maintenance guys will help to clear
that away as well as whatever trash is down there. They wear many hats and they help in any part
of our department. We are also training some of our successes or achievements in training in this
area, George Ahlgren who is the Parks Chief, also believe that training is a good thing and that
there's never enough training and these are some of the training that they have received and we
continue to do the same training every year so that they are refreshers and so that our people
understand the importance of safety and the proper use of our equipment. Also trying to keep them
positive about doing their jobs, like the park rangers they are the front line guys and they get picked
on if the bathrooms are not well maintained.
If you ever been to a park they can just finish cleaning a restroom and the next guy comes in
and totally destroys it so they do the best that they can. All the training is all part of it and we
continue to look at training everyone so that every employee in this particular division when they go
to a park will have a check list of this is what you need to look for, this is what you need to do. We're
putting together the training and we want it to be comprehensive so that not only that you're going
out to clean the comfort station, you're going to cut the grass, you're going to weed wack, but also
look at maintenance stuff and things that need to be maintained. Being part of their daily routine,
when they need a piece of small equipment that is broken and we need to do certain things so that
our mechanic can fix it and just trying to be more efficient so that not to just drop the equipment off
and our mechanic has to figure out well there's no gas or it didn't start or spark plug problem or
what happened? That's paxt of the training in trying to do things and we've moved to a more
professional grade equipment this past year and we think it allowed our performance of our
employees and also because of the type of equipment it extended the life of the equipment so with
better equipment we see that staff morale is improving. Inter-departmental Communication and
working together closely with Public Works, we see that that has improved and we help each other
out as best as we can and we rely on public works for their assets to help us with our parks in terms
of repair. They have the big machines to help us do the big stuff that we need to do and we've been
good. I think the working relationship with not only Public Works but Finance, Purchasing, Water
and the Mayor's Office, I think those have been proof in helping us to do a better job and you know
customer service like I said.
We have had customer service training and we've sent some people back to customer service
training and I think we have gotten a lot of positive results of letters and phone calls and we've
gotten our fair share of help that needed to be done. As a whole I think we've gotten more positive
feedback from the public of stuff that we're doing and how helpful and cooperative these people were
and etc... The challenges, staffing is a challenge and if you look at our staffing in our personnel
report we have some vacancies and we're moving to fill those vacancies. It's taking us longer to fill
the vacancies than we had hoped for but we're moving as quickly as we can. Personnel Department
has required us to do certain things and they have kind of changed our PD (personnel
description) that we are working to change so we can hire these people. Interestingly enough some of
the candidates that we've offered the job, some of them had taken it and then decided to pull out
some have decided to move to other parts of the country so we start the process all over again. We
have had some injuries in some of our parks that some people are on workmen's comp, in one
particular area of the Island we are down by 3 staff and it's a little different when your down 3 staff
in one area of the Island as opposed to having 3 staff down from one part, one part, one part and we
can all help out so we are hoping to beef up that area. The staff has been really good to help each
area out where needs to be helped and I have to commend them for doing that. It's an ongoing thing
and I guess you know like in any organization it is ongoing to keep our staff motivated to keep them
going as we are asking in this budget. The Mayor has if you look at our personnel, has allowed us to
hire another dollar funded position which will help the staff. As we move to get more staff placed in
it will help ease the burden on the other staff that are pushing to make up ground and also it will
help with morale boost because they see help is coming. With the equipment that we have it will also
boost this division to have them to continue to do the good work and to promote the good work that
they do.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.7
The other challenges are that we need to be real that some of our facilities are aging, they
are old and they need attention and we're doing some of that in this budget we are asking to do
repairs and some renovations on some of the facilities. We are working into that direction so it
makes it easier for the maintenance division to continue to provide what we expect to be provided. As
large as the staff that this area has, communication is always a challenge and that was really
evident in last stormy exercise. Most people now rely on their cell phones and most people have
AT&T and we had a problem with contacting our staff and some people have moved away from land
lines and rely solely on their cell phones but the system got jammed so that was a real challenge and
we see that as challenges now. We are looking and we're working to see what we can do to address
that where that's going to be a part of training now, we need to be mindful cell phone no work try
look for one landline aunty, uncle or whoever, grandma, grandpa, mother, father just contact
somebody. Those are challenges that we face and we overcome. Improvements, our improvements
like I mentioned the training opportunities that we continue to promote and that we do as you can
see in the first bullet is tailgate safety training program, how to get off and get on and how to use the
tailgate of a truck hopefully to minimize injuries.
We are looking to go that far into training, any kind of training to help do our job better to
reduce some of our costs. Playground resurfacing, equipment replacement, those are some of the
things we're looking to do in the next year. Some of our fencing really needs to be replaced, it's not
just in one particular area there's from back stops to park fencing so we're putting together a
complete package to address everything one time. We moved from just focusing on just one park, if
fencing needs to be done well let's look at all the parks than and get all the fencing done not just
fencing around parks but back stops included. We are working to do some of those improvements
over the next year and continuing existing contracts. The portable toilets and the coconut tree
trimming contracts are two important contracts that we need to continue to work and try to get the
best services so that it maintains to keep our parks, the sanitation and the safety of our park users
and the convenience for them as well. There will be some equipment replacement in this budget that
we're asking for, there's some additional equipment that we're asking for and all of this would enable
this particular division to help maintain these parks more effectively. On 15 you can see a picture of
Peter Rayno Park and you will see the light retrofits, you see the base paths that were help
constructed by our park maintenance staff with the machines and they are being maintained by the
Hanama'ulu Senior Softball. They have painted this facility and you can see the comfort station on
the other page that is being completed so it's a combination of different divisions that's making this
facility happen and the other divisions being planning and development. This is the data for parks
maintenance division and the parks beautification which is also under parks maintenance division.
The parks beautifications are those people that maintain our county facilities such as the Historic
County Building lawn around the Civic Center/Police Department, those types of facilities and the
neighborhood centers so these are the data for that particular area. Our stadiums again belongs to
park maintenance but the stadiums is their own divisions and I would just like to point out that
underneath that first data I put a note because there's a large salary increase and if you notice there
is a large salary increase.
I just wanted to point out that I discovered in working the budget was that two positions that
are in stadiums was in the park maintenance section but in our organizational chart there in the
stadiums so we took those positions out of there and put them where they appropriately belong
therefore it makes that salary increase. Organizational wise there in stadiums and they've been in
stadiums but for whatever reason in our line item of our budget text there in park maintenance and
not in stadiums.
TIM BYNUM: So that increase in stadiums is directly related to that
transfer?
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah so it's not new positions it's just positions that are being
appropriately (inaudible) in the line item of the text of our...
Mr. Bynum: Thank you.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.8
Mr. Rapozo: Yes, yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Therefore that justifies the increase in that section of being
less than 2.1%?
Mr. Rapozo: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Where you transferred then from?
Mr. Rapozo: Yes, yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: And of course there's the furlough.
Mr. Furfaro: I will come to that when we take comments.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, I just wanted to be clear on that. Recreation, success
and achievements, morale has improved or is definitely improved and is a continued work in
progress. The staff has been doing incredible stuff in our community with programs, the (inaudible)
senior programs, children's basketball programs, summer enrichment programs, winter fun. This
past spring last year they did a sports camp and this year they extended the sports camp because of
the success the first year. They help .with basically any type of program that we would want to
provide our community assisted with the UH Football manpower and basketball clinics for our kids.
All of that our staff are some of our successes and achievements. This year rather than hiring a
person to oversee the community basketball games we did it in house and it provided them an
opportunity because of the furloughs to have another means to... we would contract that portion out
but because of the furloughs we gave our staff the opportunity to work the games and that of course
is always a positive for our staff. They have gotten more support from our other divisions and other
departments in working relationships that they see as a success and achievement. They introduced
new programs or new classes for seniors, this whole craze for zumba so now they have zumba
appropriate. classes for our kids and our seniors. The drums alive program and that's something
where we went to the Hawaii Park and Recreation Association Conference with all of the different
Islands that was a new thing with the drums and whatever they brought that back and tested it out
it was good and so we have certified instructors within our staff that can do that now and that seems
to be a popular thing.
We continued of course to provide training opportunities for our staff to improve on our
delivery of services and you know I think a big and important one is the increase in swimming
classes. In the past we use to have swimming classes offered by the county just once a year in June,
now we've increased that to have a fall class and a spring class and it's been really popular and we
believe that was important since we live on an Island surrounded by oceans. Those classes are really
popular and they fill up really quickly so we see the need and will continue to provide and what our
instructors have done unbelievably. We have had a letter from a parent and they donated a check
which this body received and okayed as a result of the child was so afraid of the water, he screamed,
kicked and didn't want to go and said his stomach was sore and he didn't want to go to practice
today. By the end of the day with working with the staff, the dad called the wife and so happen the
wife wasn't able to go that day because she had to deal with another child and he said honey you're
not going to believe this, she is doing this and doing that and they put it in a letter to our
department. Those are some of the intangibles that happen that we don't often hear about but we
receive the compliments and of course we give that to the staff totally, some of the good things that
they do for our community and for our people. Some of the challenges are the constant demand of the
public to want more. You know when you make things fun and you make things good they say, well
what else can you guys do for us? What else can you do? Recreation continues to step it up and
continues to try to work with the community to provide more and sometimes the community can do
so much and then they need help to continue it and our staff seems always ready and willing to do
that.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.9
Mr. Furfaro: Lenny can I share one of our challenges?
Mr. Rapozo: Sure.
Mr. Furfaro: It is ten of ten and we are going to take the golf course
separately as I posted at 10:30, so I know we don't get to that until page 31 and we are on page 23
right now I have not been able to take any testimony from the public so I am trying to live Aloha
here by sharing with you that some of these are great stories but...
Mr. Rapozo: We will save the golf course and we have one more.
Mr. Furfaro: Golf courses are at 10:30.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah we'll save Golf courses I won't go into golf course and
that's Brother Ian's one so.
Mr. Furfaro: And I still have to take public testimony.
Mr. Rapozo: Alright we will keep going real quickly.
Mr. Furfaro: Understood, understood but I'm going to take public questions
first and I think a lot of our effort is going to be focused on the 10:30 agenda for the golf course.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay the improvements: we need to coordinate special events
and weekly management meetings and monthly staff meetings are key elements in the qualities of
the program. We opened the Koloa Teen Center to (inaudible) the youths on the south shore to go the
facility which offers various variety of activities and that's Thursday evenings if any of you are
within the area of the Koloa Neighborhood Center and you want to stop by and see the teen center
and it's operation, I think it's an unbelievable thing. There were new score boards installed at
Kalaheo and I~lauea gyms, we replaced some much needed new stoves and refrigerators and
basketball backboards and the big one is we partnered with the transportation agency to provide the
park and ride program. The facility to park and people can ride and that has transpired especially in
Kalaheo where we are especially known has the mud bowl that we were able in -house with the
coordination and partnership of public works it was a cemented house with the coordination and
partnership of public works. It was cemented and it serves as a park and ride during the day and
additional parking for other events in the evening such as basketball and it's a nicely done project
with lights, bird friendly lights.
Mr. Furfaro:
DICKIE CHANG:
but...
Mr. Furfaro:
presentation.
Mr. Chang:
missed out on the challenges
the challenges...
Mr. Chang has a comment on this subject matter.
Thank you not necessarily a comment on this subject matter
Well that's all we're taking until we get to the complete
Okay I understand but I believe that Lenny might have
I think straight from the pool he went to improvements and I think
Mr. Rapozo: We started with more programs yeah, that we wanted more
programs and the motivation continued motivation and staffing swimming pools when people are off
are challenges. We don't like to close facilities but sometimes with the limited resources with our
staffing of pool, the pool guards we do have too. Providing coverage sometimes for our neighborhood
centers when people are unable to work so those are some of our challenges.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.10
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Chang for putting us back on the right page,
for a moment we though Lenny was not going to jump into the deep end of the pool.
Mr. Rapozo: Especially without one snorkel and spear. Upcoming
initiatives and I think this is some exciting stuff and we're partnering up with good beginnings for
this summer school program which this program will target four year olds or pre kindergarten
children that has no preschool experience. During our summer program that we'll be with them and
we'll be providing a space and they will be running a program to take in these kids to give them
some kind of an additional structure and curriculum to kind of help them get ready for regular
grammar school when they're ready to go. They will be given breakfast, lunch and a snack and that's
the partnership being sponsored by good beginnings the good beginnings alliance. We `re really
excited with that so now we have programs from pre-k through up what we currently have in the
summer, the summer program. We talked about the drumming exercising and that's going to be
another initiative. The zumba craze that is currently going on and developing an ocean awareness
and activity fun day which involves our recreation staff and aquatic section with wanting to promote
ocean safety as well as educate the public with ocean activities, I think that's always an important
thing living on an Island. Summer programs, our learn to swim classes continues and partnering up
with Mokihana Aquatics for our annual swimmer swim league that will be doing. Keeping up
swimming, rehab, the therapies and looking at identifying an opportunity for a new location for
that's a CIP project but I just put it in because that is part of this department that is sorely needed
in the Kapa`a area, the neighborhood center and a swimming pool area.
Look at developing a senior specialist program, we always talk about giving our kids an
opportunity to experience things at the next level sports wise and I think we need to look at
providing our seniors to take in a senior program up to the next level. There is a new senior, the new
senior is more mobile, more athletic, more computer savvy, no longer our seniors are over there
teaching ikebana, rolling sushi or making crochet leis or doing these needle points. We need someone
within our department to look at taking the senior program to the next level and I think that is
something that we are really looking at in the year, that's an important thing so we're calling it the
21St century senior for the sake of a better (inaudible) and none of you here would qualify at this
current moment. So complete renovations again continue with the Hanalei Courthouse and that's
coming up. There's the data graphs and the planning and development sections is our guys that
move projects and I'm not sure if I'm steeping over the line Mr. Chair because this involves a lot of
CIP stuff but it briefly goes over all the success and these are projects that are either being
completed or a consultant is working on it with designs where we are in process of community dialog.
These aren't stuff that is sitting on the shelf this is stuff that are actually moving or been completed
and these are some of the great pictures, pictures of the comfort station and the softball fields are all
provided by planning and development. As you can see planning and development works hand in
hand with park maintenance working hand in hand with the adopt a park program to get the
products that we try to provide for the community.
Mr. Furfaro: Lenny I would appreciate if either you or Mr. Costa is
available on Monday? We don't need your whole staff when we get in to CIP.
Mr. Rapozo: Definitely, definitely sir. So a brief list and I can go down all
of this if you guys want it but I'm not going because I think you can go out and see the products. The
challenges, our division head of 30 plus years had retired finally and due to a technicality in the new
retirement law he had to retire, retire and we couldn't hold him on to finish two of the really
important projects I wanted to get done. He has set the foundation for these two projects which was
the lights retro-fit and the completion of Kapa`a New Town Park. That was Mel Nishihara I mean...
Mr. Furfaro: He's going to be sorely missed.
Mr. Rapozo: Big time.
Mr. Bynum: Big time.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.11
Mr. Rapozo: He retired and we asked him to finish those two projects and
those are the two major projects. He has transferred that knowledge and set up the projects with the
staff that we have and you know as you can see our lights retrofit program is moving, those
constructions are moving and we're getting great returns for what we budgeted and what the actual
costs are. The Kapa`a Stadium and working with the Deputy Director is beginning to get off the
ground and hopefully by the end of this year we can continue that project and break ground on that.
Replacing a Mel Nishihara with that kind of experience and knowledge and love is tough but we
gotta go and we going yeah and we cannot say enough about him and all of the things he completed
and all the things that he's done for this Island.
Mr. Furfaro: Go right ahead.
Mr. Bynum: So is Mel still working on contract to complete those?
Mr. Rapozo: No.
Mr. Bynum: So he's gone, gone?
Mr. Rapozo: Thanks to the (inaudible.)
Mr. Bynum: I just want to take 10 seconds to say what a lost for the
county. We wanted to do a certificate to honor all of his good work and being the guy he is he's like
no, no don't do that. He has been a wonderful and particularly his history in facilitating community
projects so I just had to say that.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes I definitely agree we had to trick him to honor him in the
office. Challenges so that's where the staffing challenge is losing somebody of Mel's caliber. Each
staff member who consists of two right now wear different hats. Some of the daily stuff that are
challenging for this is currently getting access to park plans, drawings and records and just kind of
finding well our staff is finding that to be a challenge and that's not to say we cannot get it but to get
it is a challenge. We will work with the public works guys and get it and moving towards digitizing
all the plans as our people work on a project we need to research park boundaries of EO"s whatever,
they digitize, they file it away and as we move because we will always revisit those things. Those are
some of the challenges that this particular division has. Improvements: a successful transfer of the
knowledge again from Mel to his current staff. Technological advances, the new GIS the (inaudible)
images of the parks, upgrades to our office machines, copy machines where now we can scan and
archive park records much easier and ongoing organization and important documents and
assistance incorporation with the IT, and we're working with IT to make things more accessible
electronically has helped us.
Mr. Furfaro: Just on that note, we have deferred him on the CIP pieces
related to the work he's doing that has been budgeted and he's only going to submit us a list today
but make a presentation to us on May 9.
Mr. Rapozo: And we've asked them to do some other initiatives to help
improve efficiency within our reservations of the parks and park reservations out within the
community.
Mr. Furfaro: I wanted to give him some additional time since he only
joined us on December 15tH.
Mr. Rapozo: Upcoming initiatives: These are Projects that are on our
books, haven't gotten to the final design stages or construction stages but these are definitely
projects that we are looking to move on. The next page you will see great examples of some of the
complete renovations of Vidinha Stadium that was done this past year, painting, the work, retro fit,
looks like ceiling re-ceiling so no leaks anymore. It's practically brand new beautiful facility,
Kaumakani Pavilion, working with the Kaumakani Seniors we provided the material and they put
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.12
up this beautiful pavilion facility. The current project going on with the light retro fit with Lihu`e
tennis court, this picture was taken as late of as yesterday so this is what it looks like as of right
now. We will be looking towards the tennis community that uses this facility to help repaint the
dugout, the back board that they use and so that's again in partnership with the users. Again the
data and will save golf course but lastly on page 35 is my brief summary of what we've accomplished
or we covered so far in this brief 1 hour presentation.
Mr. Furfaro: Well it's actually you know we have ear marked 2 and a half
hours for you.
Mr. Rapozo: Two and a half?
Mr. Furfaro: You are in charge of the golf course aren't you?
Mr. Furfaro: Oh I yeah golf course is separate.
Mr. Furfaro: But what we're going to do is we are going to go to this
increment and take some public comment and then we're going to talk specifically about the golf
course. If we have a little time I'm just going to ask for some quick questions but you will be provided
time to revisit your summary when we've done all the recreational areas and the golf course so we
will mark that page for your return.
Mr. Rapozo: Page 35. Well you know just before we get to the summary or
move to the next section, I understand my presentation is 35 pages long but I felt it is important to
illustrate to this body...
Mr. Furfaro: Oh don't apologize, I just want to be able to take some public
comment because we don't know when we're going to reschedule you but there's people that have
come to give testimony on parks department in general and then specifically on the golf course. We
still have 20 minutes here and I'm going to ask if you could just step to the side so I can see if there's
any public comment and you can then come back and for the next 20 minutes we will start some
questions.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay sure.
Mr. Furfaro: How does that sound?
Mr. Rapozo: Sounds good.
Mr. Furfaro: So is there anyone in the audience that wishes to testify up to
this point? Mr. Mickens.
GLENN MICKENS: Thank you Jay, for the record Glenn Mickens, and Jay, I want
to say once again how much I appreciate your openness with the public. It's never happened before
and I'm sure everyone in the public does appreciate the opportunity to be able to come up here and
say a few words anyway way without having to do it at the beginning of the hearing and then sit
there for the rest of the day and not be able to speak.
Mr. Furfaro: I just want to say that our approach is the whole bodies
approach so go right ahead with your testimony to this portion and you do know that CIP will be
taken on Monday?
Mr. Mickens: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Go ahead on what you want.
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.13
Mr. Mickens: Yes and I appreciate you telling me that. You have a copy of
my testimony and as you can see most of it is about the bike path, I'm not going to go into it but I
have a lot of questions in due respect to Tim who said it's always been given and he's got stacked up
to his head of how the public has been advised. I don't think so but anyway maybe you'll be good
enough to go over my questions here and answer this okay? I will go over this other part like on
Lydgate and the pond down there has been closed for over two weeks now. The dredging equipment
has been taken away, they were going to dredge that place and take the boulders and stuff out of it.
To my knowledge nothing is being done at this stage of the game and as you know that's a huge
Tourist attraction, it's a Local attraction people use it continually so I just want an update on that.
Lydgate will need at least two more workers once the camp grounds are open. With the soccer fields
now being maintained by the workers that are there and with the amount of people using Lydgate
more care takers are needed. The pavilions with the other one being re-built, the bathrooms and the
added responsibility with all the grounds to be maintained including the soccer fields. When are all
our parks and recreation areas going to be in an A or B rating from the league of women voters?
Maybe you remember 4,5,6 years ago I guess Carol Bain had a committee of league of women voters
and they went around to all our parks and evaluated them. The highest I think the number they got
was a C which Lydgate got and the rest of them were D and F so you know Mel brought this up
many years ago, taking pictures and showing how much in disarray our parks and recreation areas
are but I still haven't seen it. In the parks and recreation budget and vacancy listing and status I
note that six care taker positions with a total of 14 positions now vacant. With an increase of about
four hundred thousand dollars in their budget it's hard to believe that no new care taker positions
have been funded if I understand this correctly.
For years I have asked that we get a beach cleaning machine to clean the sands on our
beaches as it is done on Waikiki Beach and the Miles of beaches in Southern California. Our beaches
are the crown jewel of the Island as far as I'm concerned and for them to not be cleaned on a as
needed basis, I mean we went after a beach cleaner machine they had here on the Island and the guy
said he would do it on an as needed basis. We've heard over and over...
Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me Mr. Mickens, that's your first 3 minutes and you
can go ahead for your other 3.
Mr. Mickens: Thank you Jay. We've heard over and over that we need
volunteers to do the job that we don't have the personnel to do. Again volunteers are only a
supplement to any job but are not the solution, hired employees are. Adopting a park or a road is not
an answer, paid people are. Maintenance of sports field which you show here, blenny shows here on
his chart, salaries and wages have gone up 54%, benefits have gone up a 193.8%. Being the official
score and arbitrator for all KIF games for 15 years, there has not been one improvement made to the
Vidinha Stadium press box it's like working in a closet with radio and broadcast equipment. The
door doesn't even have a clasp on the inside to close it. When I get out there a little early I have to
look around for someone to open the door or the other visiting or home team has the key to it. To me
that's inexcusable. The score board out there for two years has been broken, we don't have a score
board that works, it's an electronic score board and people sit there in the stands and they have to
rely on somebody to be able to... yes JoAnn?
JOANN YUKIMURA: Which park are you talking about?
Mr. Mickens: Vidinha Stadium.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Mickens: Well Kapa`a park is the same way.
Mr. Furfaro: Don't stop please finish your testimony first.
Mr. Mickens: Okay. Anyway I don't quite understand and maybe you can
explain to me. What is this benefit for 193.8% increase? Is that ....
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.14
Mr. Furfaro: Finish your testimony and I will answer you I am writing
down your questions and I will answer it after your summary.
Mr. Mickens: Okay thank you Jay because I noticed the total down here is
about an increase of over two hundred thousand dollars I guess in this operating budget for the
stadiums division. We haven't even finished the lighting out there in Vidinha Stadium and I guess
because of the things that have to be shield for the birds and stuff and you heard me say one other
time and you were shocked and I said I wouldn't be in favor of lighting, only because I don't want to
see the lighting stuck in and say now we got a first class stadium out there. It's not a first class
stadium. The dugouts are going to have to be enlarged; your restrooms are going to have to be
changed and your'e going to have to have a snack stand properly done, the proper seating and stuff
for the whole place if you're going to have a stadium. Joann you pointed out many, many years ago
how that whole complex should be improved to be one thing and I'm hundred percent for that but
that died 15 or 20 years when you were Mayor I guess it died and I would be hundred percent for
that. Anyway I see this budget and Lenny was good and I appreciate all the work they did in putting
this thing together but it shows what's been done but it doesn't show what hasn't been done. My
question is? Those particular questions and I would really appreciate answers to okay?
Mr. Furfaro: Okay I'm going to answer a few right now because we're
hearing your testimony up here. First and foremost, some of your questions dealing with Lydgate
Pond, the purchase of the large beach cleaning machine and the repairs to the press box will be held
to the CIP period of time. Those are all capital improvement items.
Mr. Mickens: That's on Monday?
Mr. Furfaro: That's on Monday.
Mr. Mickens: Okay.
Mr. Furfaro: Regarding the camp grounds, we will send that question over
if they anticipate from an operating stand point when the camp grounds will be open and I'm asking
the staff to make notes as I speak here. Regarding your questions about PT&E and so forth, Glenn,
the County of Kauai is going to experience an allocation increase of retirement benefits, medical
plans, insurance and so forth a total of 9.2 million dollars. That's my quick first blush on the budget.
The number you're referring to is the Parks and Recreations Department, their allocation based on
the ratio of employees full time and part time that they have, and then I also want to point out of the
general increase although this book says that salaries and wages have increased 12.6% and I would
like to point out that there is a difference of about three hundred and eighty thousand, three
hundred and fifty eight thousand to be exactly that is related to the fact that we had furloughs that
ended. That was the furlough savings during that period so of his 12.6% almost 7% of it was the
ending of furloughs. On the other item I think we measure success by the things that are completed
and I think you can agree. Not everything has been completed but we sure have completed a number
of things including Mr. Rapozo's presentation on the successes we've had at the Convention Center
including bringing in almost eighty thousand dollars of revenue now from a low of fifteen. Some of
your questions will be answered in our discussion on Monday and the others I will be sending over
the questions to the department. I'm not prepared to give you more than kind of that summary on
wages and benefits you asked for right now.
Mr. Mickens: Is that union driven? Is that what the benefits are going up
that much for? I'm not knocking the people because I haven't seen a rich employee.
Mr. Furfaro: Let me answer your question. It's driven by past negotiations
on everything including the state agreement on retirement contributions as well as wages and
medical pieces. As you know the Governor has got into a discussion about the payment being 60/40
and we're back to 50/50 so there are a lot of variables right now, it's not just a simple question as you
pointed out and that's why we come back on May 9th.
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.15
Mr. Mickens: Okay.
Mr. Furfaro: Now I hope I've answered your questions to this point?
Mr. Mickens: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Very good.
Mr. Mickens: I appreciate it, thank you Jay.
Mr. Furfaro: Is there anyone else in the audience that would like to testify
on the recreation presentation? I will give you 6 minutes exactly for your comments. The golf course
is not on the agenda at the moment.
ROB ABREW: Thank you Mr. Chair. I would like to thank the
Parks & Recreation Department for a fairly detailed report here.
Mr. Chang: Rob could you for the record introduce yourself?
Mr. Abrew: Oh Rob Abrew for the record.
Mr. Chang: Thank you.
Mr. Abrew: The one thing that would have been nice for the public in this
release would have been each division's openings and positions that are filled and unfilled instead of
just having unfilled. Each division show what employees are filled and unfilled separately out and
that would have given myself more of a view of how many employees are in there, what's the vacancy
rate and what positions are vacant. The other thing real quick I wanted to talk about is the parks
department and the parks appearance to the public and to our visitor industry is a very important
role to the attitude of our Island and the beautification of our Island. If there clean, there clean and
people love um and everything like that but the one biggest thing I have seen lately is we're getting
all kinds of new trash cans, bright silver trash cans and we have spray painted on the side COK like
graffiti. To me that's not very professional, you have a tourist coming down the road they see this
and it looks likes someone graffiti the trash cans, isn't a stencil really easy to fix and put on it. That
signage is so important to the visual aspect of that park. That's the only thing I've seen, the workers
are wonderful they do the best they can with assignments they have it's just I think from the top up
that attitude needs to be start of visual orientation and let's make this sharp in visual and work its
way down.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you very much and as being an ex hotel person I agree.
We will send over a Question about stenciling and image for our Parks & Recreation area if we can't
make a correction on that. Mr. Rapozo I don't think there is anyone else in the audience can you
come back and I will take a few questions at this point on the presentation up until this point.
Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: In the interest of time I'm going to try and be really quick and
save. questions but I would like to ask that we have a list of equipment and lease purchase that you
have in different divisions? What equipment and what purpose it will be?
Mr. Rapozo: What we're requesting?
Mr. Bynum: Yes what you're requesting, what is equipment and what use
will or what task will it accomplish? And a list of the play ground I think you know talking with Mel
in the past there is a play ground replacement kind of thing and some information about Isenberg
Park in particular it's been closed in awhile and I've been getting questions.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.16
Mr. Rapozo: I can answer that.
Mr. Bynum: I think we out that stuff in writing and you know I love adopt
a park program I gotta mention that and there's an earth day big volunteer project that Lydgate on
earth day a week from this Saturday got a big group working in Hanama'ulu. What a wonderful
community we have and we're very much appreciative of that kind of collaboration between the
parks department and the community. I would love to talk more about that but I'm going to go real
quick, maybe just some quick notes about the status. What cemeteries the parks department is
charged with?
Mr. Rapozo: Seventeen of them.
Mr. Bynum: I know that and kind of maybe some of the challenges and
what's going on with that? And just a couple paragraphs. I was impressed to see in here about a new
neighborhood center for Kapa`a and I know the pool is going to need some work and the
neighborhood center we've had this vision of putting a big lanai on the back side the ocean side so I
was surprised to narrative about a new facility completely. I thought in my own mind the next new
facility if we can ever pull one off other than the great collaborative things we're doing in Hanalei
and stuff it might be Hanama'ulu as opposed to a new facility.
Mr. Rapozo: When I look at capacity, you look at the largest district of the
Island and look at the size of the facility. Parking lacks not only for the facility itself but the multi
use path and you know I saw some initial plans where eventually that facility once going to be two
stories but you know with what the Kawaihau District has become I think the facility doesn't really
suit the needs of that district. It's not to say we want to get rid of that no, but I think that district
would- need a larger facility for some of the needs of the area.
Mr. Bynum: Okay so you're talking about expanding not abandoning?
Mr. Rapozo: No not at all and you know during times of disaster such as
the tsunami we cannot use that facility for our people. Yes we have Kapa`a High School but we're
also taking care of the needs of our visitors as well with that one facility.
Mr. Bynum: Enough said for now.
Mr. Rapozo: So that's why we put that in there. Why not combine the
facility with the pool I think we work hand in hand.
Mr. Bynum: Also if we can get a list of the vacancies that are in the
department and kind of an ETA to fill them? Now you've got a number of maintenance vacancies.
Mr. Rapozo: More than what page 3 has?
Mr. Bynum: Oh I'm sorry.
Mr. Furfaro: It's pretty complete on page 3.
Mr. Bynum: Sorry I missed that.
Mr. Furfaro: No, no so another piece before I go to Councilmember
Kipukai. I just want to make sure, let's not conflict lists here when we get to public works we're
going to see the big equipment purchases. I think what we're looking from you is the equipment list
the smaller stuff that they don't cover.
Mr. Rapozo: You mean the small hand tools, mowers?
Mr. Furfaro: Yes.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.17
Mr. Rapozo:
Okay, sure.
Mr. Bynum: In several divisions there's lease purchase and I know you
need that equipment I just want to know what it is that you're purchasing and what the use is for?
It's in your budget and our analysis said our staff does in several categories there are equipment and
lease purchases.
Mr. Furfaro: And again my comment is not to... I understand your point
but I don't want to have them having a list and public works shop having a list then all of a sudden
we think we're buying two large pieces of equipment.
Mr. Rapozo: Right, right.
Mr. Furfaro: If you can enhance it that- would be appreciated. And on that
note KipuKai.
KIPUKAI KUALI`I: Aloha Lenny, Mahalo for the work that you do and
Mahalo for being here today and Mahalo to the entire staff of parks and recreation.. I have several
questions and most of them I will submit in writing because I do have to leave. Piggy backing on
what Councilmember Bynum said, I do want to see more detail on the automobiles. and the leasing.
There is another line item here call special projects and I'm curious to see detail on that. In
administration it's twenty four thousand and in recreation it's an increase from forty four thousand
to sixty five thousand so it's twenty one thousand.
Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry, twenty one thousand for?
Mr. Kuali`i: An increase of twenty one thousand in the line item special
projects.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh okay.
Mr. Kuali`i: From forty four thousand last fiscal year to sixty five
thousand in the new budget. I'm curious about the fencing? Would that be part of the CIP? I see a
construction line item under parks and maintenance that is increased 233% which is a two hundred
thousand dollar increase. My comments on that is your bullet here in your report about
improvements you say basically that you've determined that several of your park and rec facilities
need fencing so I want to know how you determined the need for fencing. For me personally my
family lives in Puhi and the whole area in the front of the Puhi neighborhood was not fenced for
many, many, many years and we utilized it just fine. There is a park in the back section which has a
play ground so obviously that park needed to be fenced for safety for the kids and whatever but this
large area in the front of Puhi ,was more like a beautification area and we would use it from time to
time. Maybe if the County decided to put in a smaller area with a playground it could enclose the
playground but I'm curious as to how you determined that was even a need and then spending all the
moneys to enclose that entire area. So fencing needs, how do you determine that?
Mr. Rapozo: Well if were to go to Kapa`a Beach Park, the fence is rotten.
That needs to be changed. If you went to our feedback from our staff and our community friends
Kalawai Ball Park, the back stops, we have pictures that at the base they are rotten.
Mr. Kuali`i: No I agree with you as far as replacement, but is there a
difference between its deteriorated and now we need to replace it? Or now putting a new fence
completely because the fence that was put in in Puhi was a new fence completely and that's a prior
year or a few years ago issue I'm just saying going forward in the CIP or wherever if it comes out
later. I want to know about fencing needs and what is repair and what is new.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.18
Mr. Rapozo: In parks maintenance those are repair and maintenance
issues. It's replacing backstops and so forth.
Mr. Furfaro Lenny I think what I will do is I think Mr. Kuali`i's questions
specifically about some of these increase and funding if you can visit with the staff again we will
send those over. I think on the next opportunity for a parks & recreation agenda item we might want
to talk about the difference between putting in new fencing in new areas and its values versus
normal ongoing repair and maintenance. I think some pretty reasonable questions came up about
fencing everywhere so we will leave it at that for now.
Mr. Kuali`i: And the last point Mr. Chair because I do have to leave. I
think and we're going to know better when we hear back from the state on the TAT and all of that
but I think we have to be and you might have a second option and we may see a second option on
how you line up these proposed expenses. Throughout your budget I see a lot of moneys for travel
and maybe you are looking at different training which is what you talked about. You might look at
the option of having that training locally and not necessarily increasing the travel budget so Much.
Travel and supplies are all these increase, I'm looking at the details and I want to see more details
and I look forward to that. Thank you. Mr. Chair I will be back shortly.
Mr. Kuali`i was noted as excused from the meeting at 10:35 a.m.
Mr. Furfaro: You will be back shortly so I think in the sense of time I will
take a recess here but let me go over with the group again what we're doing. First of all we're only
going to take a 45 minute lunch break because we're a little beyond our time. We're going to break
at 11:45 a.m. today instead of 11:30 a.m. The second thing is that I want to get the testimony from
the golf course out on the table, I want to let the public who came to speak on the golf course give
testimony and then when we get back together we will be open for questions on both recreation and
the golf fund. If that's okay with everyone we're going to take and please be prompt, we're going to
take a 10 minute recess.
There being no objections, the committee recessed at 10:36 a.m.
The Committee reconvened at 10:48 a.m., and proceeded as follows.
Mr. Furfaro: We are back from recess continuing the presentations on the
operating budget for the County of Kauai. I would like to ask my staff if we have anybody signed up
to speak.
EDDIE TOPENIO, DEPUTY COUNTY CLERK: We have three Mr. Chair.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay good so we're going through your presentation on the
golf course than I would like to break and let those that have come down from the public speak and
Lenny I also want to say I thought your recreational piece was very well done.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you.
Mr, Furfaro: We may end up asking you to come back.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay thank you.
Mr, Rapozo: I'm going to turn the golf course part over to my Deputy
Director Ian Costa who oversees that operation.
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.19
PARKS & RECREATION (WAILUA GOLF COURSE)
IAN COSTA, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF PARKS & RECREATION: Ian Costa, Deputy
Director of Parks & Recreation. I'm going to follow the same format that Director Rapozo did. The
Wailua golf course first of all we're highlighting the successes and achievements. We are almost 80
plus percent complete with conversion of the greens from what used to be Bermuda greens to
seashore (inaudible). We have a new restaurant concessionaire who is in the process of moving into
restaurant and doing some interior renovations to prepare for that. I think I did highlight that a few
meetings ago but our minimum bid for the restaurant was $1800.00 a month and they came in at a
little over $5000.00 a month so we're excited about that. They do have some big plans for doing
catering and attracting not only golfers but non-golfers and hopefully more of a family restaurant
type atmosphere. There is a bullet there that says the greens are the fastest they have been in years,
not being a scratch golfer that's not necessarily a good thing for me but it does show the high quality
of the course itself. We're excited to by the beginning and I think within or by the first week of May
we should have an ATM machine installed which has been needed for a number of years. I think we
turn away a number of visitors who come to the course and are not able to use a credit card at the
current moment or get a disbursement of cash in any way as well as any locals...
Mr. Furfaro: We do want to thank Mr. Rezentes for that it's been
something that the council has wanted for a long time, but I think it will also assist your new
franchise restaurant operator.
Mr. Costa: Right so thanks not only goes to the finance director but to
yourself chair for expressing the need for that as well as using the county's clout to get it. We just
recently actually on Tuesday I met with the representative from star advertiser who once again
granted us an award for Hawai`i's best of the best although we didn't take second place in terms of
golf courses on Kauai we believe they would not reveal to us who was number one. We believe due to
the recent renovation at the Princeville golf course that they likely were the recipients of that. This
is our forth year running for such a recognition and the previous three years we were number 1. I did
mention a few weeks ago that I believe golf digest also has us and is recognizing us as one of the top
five municipal golf courses in the nation. We recently completed the replacement of our fire damaged
maintenance facility which has been huge for our maintenance staff. We have all our equipment
under cover sand provides them with locker rooms, lunch rooms and all of that. Some of the
challenges we face first and foremost is always attempting to close the gap between the cost of the
golf course and the revenue we generate. Maintaining the aged facilities that still exist such as the
club house, the cart barn as well as the infrastructure and portable water lines, we are in the process
of having to replace our electrical feed which apparently is what they call a direct berry in other
words they did that before they came out with conduits, it's an electrical line buried underground
and we are working with K.E. to replace that. We have been for the last several months trying to bid
and get a new concessioner or a new contract for the golf cart concession. We just recently went out
to bid again for that service. The last bullet we listed was the residency definition; we'll probably
come back in a few months to come to propose some amendments to that. I think we did touch on
that a few weeks ago on our discussion of the golf course but that has always presented challenges.
Some of the improvements I want to highlight, we purchased a new aero fire to help (inaudible) the
greens and we are in this budget asking for a few replacement mowers, generally the equipment that
they use on the golf course should be replaced every five years and we are approaching that I believe
the equipment that was replaced due to the fire is right at that threshold. The addition of the
seashore (inaudible) is almost complete on the greens and we are about to start that replacement on
the tee's as well. Seashore (inaudible) is a much more resilient type of grass and less prone in
clamant weather and moisture and some of the problems that come along with that. Some of our
upcoming initiatives we are working with several of the so called royal coast coconut coast
association which is a number of hotels in the Kapa`a area that obviously do not have access to a
resort course so working with them to try .and develop some time of room hotel golf package to
encourage more visitors, again the conversion of the tee boxes to seashore (inaudible).
We have a line item in the proposed budget to budget for fees to add a credit card service and
we have probably needed that for a number of years now and looking at ways to promote the golf
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.20
course either through the Visitor Industry or through the other means through the Office of
Economic Development. Page 33 goes through and lists what are our budget was last fiscal year and
what it is this year and the pie chart at the bottom of page 33 just breaks down the budget into
salaries, benefits, utilities, equipment/lease and then the operations. Page 34 shows the breakdown
of our proposed budget in those categories as well as at the bottom of the page showing a comparison
of our budget request this year versus last year. In summary the department of parks and recreation
tries to provide quality facilities for the residence and visitors. The department of parks and
recreation goal is to provide these facilities in the most efficient and economical means allowed while
providing great customer service. We continue to work with our various divisions to divert reduce
cost and overtime as well as that focuses on the golf ,course as well. I guess that's pretty much
moving through the golf course presentation anyway.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Costa, Mr. Costa I do want to reference back
on some pieces that we had earlier and I guess the questions I'm going to send over are very specific
starting with 2010 versus 2011 we had an overall golf course revenue decline of two hundred eighty
two thousand, nine hundred and eighteen dollars. It seems all of that was related to a decrease in
play, whether it was Kama'aina play or it was resident play. I would like to find out how this year's
budget compares to that a little bit. Also we came up twenty one thousand dollars short in revenues
for the food and beverage operation and I heard what you said for the new lease we have some
substantial opportunities here so I want to see something in narrative that says with this new
agreement how much of that short fall because it falls under golf course, will be improved. It seems
reasonable to make an assumption that we're going too far out exceed that based on the new
forecast. What kind of marketing items are happening specifically for the golf pro shop? Also where
are we going with the golf course cart concession? That was left out and I think one of the options
you gave us dealt with the possibility of us getting into the golf cart business. I would like to see that
strategic thinking on that at than I guess driven by the economy other activities whether it was golf
ball, range balls or so forth we fell thirty two thousand short than what we forecasted. This five
revenue items over there is what I'm going to send over as five questions. It's not about anything
other than understanding how we're going to measure those improvements with the new operator,
what options to we have on the golf carts themselves and of course the operational changes you
proposed when someone can walk the course versus the cart times. And also anything else that
references the improvement of some quality issues with the operation and one of them obviously is
us getting a credit card cash ATM because people don't spend if they don't have cash and if they
jump in the car to drive somewhere than they don't come back to the restaurant. Those items I would
like to hear a little bit more specific.
Mr. Costa: Okay.
Mr. Furfaro: Now for the members we have people who have signed
up to speak on this presentation and I believe there is 3 and so if I let them each run into six minutes
of time we will get their testimony on the record for right now and then we'll start with some Q&A
from the council members.
Mr. Costa: Okay, Thank you..
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you very much. Did you have these people sign up?
Mr. Topenio: Yes sir.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay so these individuals signed up and can you read then
name by name.
Mr. Topenio: Alright Mr. Chair, we have 3 signed up. First one is Alan
Tada, followed by Bob Bradley and the last one is Ron Holt, so first one Alan Tada.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Good morning and you're going to have to re-introduce
yourself for the record one more time.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.21
Alan Tada: My name is Alan Tada representing the Thursday Hui
Incorporated. We do the Wailua cart concession. Just bringing up like how we said about the loss of
revenue.
Mr. Chang: Alan I'm sorry can you pull the mic closer up to you.
Mr. Tada: Sorry. With the loss of revenue you know the figures when we
first started this contract back in 2003. When I initially made our bid for that we paid twenty five
thousand eight hundred eighty eight a month for six tears. We paid the county a million eight
hundred sixty thousand dollars.
Mr. Furfaro: Over that six year period?
Mr. Tada: Over that six year period.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Tada: But since then the revenue has dropped down to forty two and
right now just looking at the last 7 months is down to thirty nine thousand. With a decrease with say
ten thousand, you're talking about a hundred twenty thousand a year. Seven hundred twenty
thousand dollars in a six year period so we've been going back and forth with parks and recreation
about the upset bid, and even at that you know I guess all the business man can see that you can't
make money. They dropped it to twenty two five and then to eighteen and they put up another bid
again for eighteen again and I don't know why they did that. Currently the new bid is coming up at
fifteen but honestly even at fifteen you're barely breaking even. You know in the cart business the
first four years that I project is just that we break even. The last two years after the carts are paid is
when you can make your money pending any disasters that might happen for example even
December was one of our worst months. They made only twenty nine thousand this past December,
being investing in this is a big investment with my corporate members but we still need to explain
why it's so hard to do business on the cart concessions. I was just generally looking at when the
county wanted to take over the cart business, but they really don't see the whole scope of the
business. I don't know you guys don't pay excise tax? You guys don't pay Insurance? When you lease
carts like when you buy a new car you have to get full coverage on the carts and that alone is
sixteen seventeen thousand. Minor things even though the carts are warranted for four years there
is minor things everyday and like in a week there's two or three flat tires. There are curbs at the
Wailua golf course which I brought up to Ed Okamoto when he was there. The curbs are too high,
when the people go over the curbs they either damage the steering (inaudible) that's about a
hundred fifty dollars expense but when it goes pass that it damages the engine housing and that's a
thousand dollars. This kind of things cannot be seen and we cannot just charge the customers on
that but these are the things that you go through as a cart concessionaire. People hit the
windshields, break roofs and one even went swimming in the water hazard. You have to take that
into consideration so even at the fifteen thousand I'm thinking even at that right now to make it.
I personally feel that if the county would take over you would be lucky to make twelve
thousand and maybe less because you have to deal with the union. I hire right now just to uphold the
carts and I have two full time welders that we're doing and we're on the eight year and possibly for
the next six month extension and we have not been set yet. All the frames have to be patched in
because they are literally breaking in half so just with the welding part it's added about ten
thousand including materials a month. I could buy a fleet for eleven thousand, a brand new fleet,
and I would prefer doing that rather than trying to fix this cart I would just like to sell it. That's all I
want to say right now.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay and on that note. I just want to say that the discussion
for the county will be a future agenda item on carts. Obviously we gave them an opportunity to give
us an evaluation so now when it comes to golf operations I have had some experience when I was the
General Manger for the Sheraton on Molokai. The golf course reported to the hotel operations,
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.22
Makaha as well, Princeville both Makai and The Prince. There's not a great history in actually
making profits in golf as it is right now in general. This is only one component of the county's need to
evaluate a concessionaire versus ourselves operating it. What I'm hearing from you is perhaps we
over forecast it, the types of revenues we would get from a concession who is not even breaking even.
That will be probably a separate discussion item, but thank you for your testimony on that.
Mr. Tada: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura, then Mr. Bynum. Excuse me
Mr. Tada?
Ms. Yukimura: Alan.
Mr. Furfaro: We have 2 questions for you.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you for coming and educating us about the trial and
tribulations of running our cart concession. Do you feel that you were affected by the lack of an ATM
machine?
Mr. Tada: You know as a whole with the economy as it is, the lack of
play well there's been a lack of play but now people are walking more.
Ms. Yukimura: Interesting.
Mr. Tada: I would say there are 30% more walkers. And I good idea like
in Honolulu walkers can go until after 12:00 p.m.
Mr. Furfaro: We had that discussion about that and that's what I
mentioned earlier.
Mr. Tada: That would be pushing out the carts better but like I said
there is a decrease of about ten thousand dollars a month with the cart rental sales.
Ms. Yukimura: Do you think that the increase in walking is because of an
increase in a desire to be physically fit or it's an economical thing where people just don't have
money to rent a cart or both?
Mr. Tada: I think it's more economical.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay thank you very much.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: So you're there current cart vendor correct?
Mr. Tada: Correct.
Mr. Bynum: Yes. And the bid went out for the fourth time at fifteen
thousand a month?
Mr. Tada: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: So basically that's the upset bid so minimum is...
Mr. Tada: Minimum is fifteen thousand.
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.23
Mr. Bynum: Fifteen thousand and then are the rates for rentals set in the
contract?
Mr. Tada: Currently it's eighteen dollars for eighteen holes and ten
dollars for nine. It would be nice to have it raised a little but with the economy more people won't
rent the cart anyway you know.
Mr. Bynum: So basically for fifteen thousand dollars you have the
concession, you purchased the carts, you maintained the carts, you pay the employees?
Mr. Tada: Right.
Mr. Bynum: And there's no provision in your contract for like a share of
revenue?
Mr. Tada: No. The carts alone cost four hundred fifty thousand.
Mr. Bynum: So you are working under an extension from precious
contracts right now?
Mr. Tada: We are currently on a tiered extension and possibly with this
new bid we just need a six month extension. It will take three to four months after the notice to
proceed to purchase the carts and bring this in from Georgia.
Mr. Bynum: But the eighteen dollar rate is set by contract?
Mr. Tada: For now I guess. We initially had it raised in the past; I
believe it was fourteen than it went up to eighteen.
Mr. Bynum: Well you know we had testimony here about certain
Kama`aina folks that pay an average and it sounds like a real reasonable figure but many of those
seniors have to rent a cart they don't have the option to do well so in terms of our Kama`aina people.
What the cart rate is and the ground rate has to be combined as far as in terms of affordability for
those individuals. Thank you for the information you provided.
Mr. Tada: Another thing is even with the outer town guest you know the
mainlanders they come and maybe we should charge them more for the carts. Any private course
charges just for riders twenty five dollars a rider average so you're talking about fifty dollars a cart is
what it basically is.
Mr. Bynum: So right now there's not a Kama`aina rate for carts and a
visitor rate? That's the same rate right?
Mr. Tada: No it's the same rate for everybody.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: I think that came up in our earlier conversations when we
talked golf but I just want to make sure we're clear in what we're saying. So you're opposite bid of
what the county put out the minimum would bring in a hundred and eighty thousand a year?
Mr. Tada: For the County?
Mr. Furfaro: Right.
Mr. Tada: Yes.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.24
Mr. Furfaro: What I want to make sure is we projected the previous
contract would bring in two hundred forty thousand a year and under the current number of rounds
it only brought in a hundred and fifty six thousand which is twenty four thousand less than the
offset bid, but it is seventy five thousand plus less than what they projected in their budget. There's
two parts to this equation. We have to massage our budget and make sure we understand what the
real number is and we can expect in the contract. Secondly we than have to explore some of the
things Mr. Bynum came up with. Why don't we have a mainland rate versus a resident rate? Why
don't we have a late walk time? Those are all needing to come to us from a marketing plan for golf.
Your testimony was very much appreciated today.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you Mr. Tada.
Mr. Furfaro: Oh Mr. Tada, one more question?
NADINE NAKAMURA: I just have a quick question on what is the cost of a golf cart
and what is the lifespan of a cart?
Mr. Tada: Well the cost when you buy it by the fleet if you buy them
singly probably six thousand/sixty five hundred, that's the lower rated carts like the Yamaha's or
easy go's. Club cars go up to ten thousand but they last twelve, ten twelve years and there made with
aluminum frames. With a contract of five years plus one it's not feasible to get a twelve year cart so
you go with a cheaper cart. Like the Yamaha's with a fleet price right now is about forty six hundred
dollars each buying 99 of them? The ADA cart has gone up to fifteen thousand, hopefully whoever
gets the bid I can sell them mine it was at eight thousand that time. I tell you a story about the ADA
cart, it cost eight thousand and it has 3 batteries and you have to change the batteries every two
years, the batteries are five hundred dollars. So this is the forth change we're making right now and
it's a total of 10 thousand for the ADA cart. It was rented roughly about 20 times we made 360
dollars on that cart.
Mr. Furfaro: Your point is understood. I have to allow members to ask you
questions rather than any additional commentary but thank you very much as we move forward on
the marketing of the golf course. Thank you. Next speaker please?
Mr. Topenio:
Next is Bob Bradley.
Mr. Furfaro: Bob are there two speakers? Okay so introduce both of
yourselves and will give one of you 6 minutes and the other one six minutes. But introduce both of
yourselves if you're doing joint team.
BOB BRADLEY: We should have just filled out one sheet. We both represent
the Kauai Senior's Golf Club. My name is Bob Bradley and I represent Kauai senior's Golf Club. My
name is Ron Holte I am the immediate past President and currently Vice President if the Senior's
Golf Club.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay I'm going to start your first 6 minutes now so go right
ahead and then I will ask to start his 6 minutes.
Bob Bradley: Thank you for this opportunity the Council has given us and
we've been working very closely with the Council on the Golf course. The first thing I would like to
day is that I think the golf course even being short handed should be complimented on the condition
that they have kept this golf course in. I have played golf on the Mainland and all around and I'm
here to tell you that they do an outstanding job on the Golf Course. They have just done the greens
and they've irradiated them and they topped dress them and we were playing within the next day
and it was like they hadn't done anything they were just smooth as could be.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you very much for that compliment.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.25
Bob Bradley: The way they've been keeping that golf course and I know
they are short handed. The Kaui Seniors golf club had our board meeting yesterday and one of the
things that we talked about was how we as the seniors can promote the golf course a little bit better.
I don't think the people that use the golf course have really done their share as far as promoting the
golf course. Some of us seniors and I know for myself I have been here 13 years and I was kind of
afraid to say to my friends that came over from the mainland I much I played to play golf here
because there's no doubt in anyone's mind that the seniors could not play this kind of golf and this
amount of golf and I think it's wonderful what the county has done. However one of the things that
we've talked about was the fact that if I went through the presentation that the parks and recreation
had given before and the things that they had suggested as far as promoting the golf course and one
of the things that the seniors at the board thought was an excellent idea was that if they had some
sort of a package for Kama`aina who have-their families over or friends over if there was a package
could be put together so that the people, the tourist coming over who is in the family as long as their
playing with a Kama`aina if they could pay instead of the tourist rate they can pay the Kama'aina
rate and that might help more people to play the golf because once they raise the fee of the tourist
coming over when it went to 60 dollars everybody said we're not going to play because we can play all
the other courses and now the fee has gone down. I think we've seen an increase in tourist play. The
other thing that was our concern was that some of the information that was given out the newspaper
and there was an article in the newspaper that stated basically that seniors played golf at the course
and it was like five dollars and some odd cents around really wasn't a true picture of what the
seniors pay for golf. Ron Holte...
Mr. Furfaro: I just want to tell you that there is media in the audience so
consider your comments an opportunity for them to correct any story.
Mr. Bradley: That's and excellent idea thank you. I'm going to turn this
over to Ron Holte who was involved in the 2006-2008 when we put this whole thing together.
RON HOLTE: I was involved in the...
Mr. Chang: Ron, Ron excuse me I'm sorry. Can you just state your name
please?
Mr. Holte: Yes, Ron Holte, Vice President Seniors Golf Course Club. I
was involved in the KGA Committee when we discussed a rate increase in 2008 and at the time the
cost commission had recommend a twenty five percent increase in the golf fees and doing away with
the monthly card and raising the tourist rate from 50 to a 100%. I became involved with Ed Okamoto
at that time as part of the committee for the Kauai Golf Association. We were presented with a
seven year plan and most of the seven year plan consisted of revenue projections. I kept asking Ed
well how can we come up with rates if we don't know the cost and finally what I received from Ed to
the County was a budget put together on a cash basis. The golf course is supposed to be run as
commercial basis and the budget hearings that we have and a supplemental budget like last month
the information is always on a cash basis. I think what we'd like to see are the financial statements
that are done on an accrual basis so that we know what the real deficit is each year. For example in
2008 when I went through that information, there was 550 thousand dollars in improvements that
should have been written off over the useful years but that was charged to the supplemental that we
had to increase five hundred thousand dollars. I don't know from looking at the information whether
we're running a deficit or not, we probably are running a deficit and I think if we're going to stay on
the commercial basis enterprise fund than we should be working with the financial statements and
not with the cash basis of counting. I think this will be a continuing problem if we're going to
continue with an enterprise fund. I think it would be probably less costly for our county if we
returned the golf course back to the parks commission or we set up a revenue fund rather than a
enterprise fund because it doesn't look like it's ever going to be self sustaining unless we raise the
fees to a huge amount to start with but back to the 7 year plan I understand it from the last
supplemental budget that we we're going to look at the fee increase again.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.26
I would like to continue discussing on the 7 year schedule, I know the cost commission went
from a 7 year to a 5 year but I testified at the time I thought that would be a big impact from going
more than five dollars a month which was in a 7 year schedule for the monthly card. There was some
talk at the supplemental meeting about at least it was implied that we were going to do away with
the monthly card and I think that would be losing revenue rather than raising revenue.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you very much for those comments and they have been
discussion points in the past and I have made it very clear my position is the cost control commission
is the cost control commission they are not the revenue commission. They should be submitting to us
actual operating cost that we can than prorate those costs accordingly to the number of rounds. The
other .point is and we've asked this with our financial department to make a recommendation that
the course of course does not do a lot of accrual accounting okay as you pointed out. Earlier in the
parks conversation you heard Mr. Rapozo talk about replenishing stock supplies, well they do it like
you buy twenty five hundred dollars worth of supplies and you buy it in that month and they
expense it that month versus the fact that they accrue it out over a period of time and allocate it into
the future months when the asset will actually be consumed. I agree with you we have some things
we need to visit there. Your idea about helping and residents Kama`aina to help market the facility
is very welcomed news. I know they are doing some things to peg gage with the Wailua corridor
hotels, some peg aging of golf. I think perhaps on the other (inaudible) the resident average round for
golf is $10.83, there is a small market fragment in there of the maximum exposure for super seniors
that might play all the time and they related that comment as being the Kama`aina average where
it's forecasted as a someone taking the maximum opportunity to play golf every day. So those are
things they need to visit on so your testimony but your testimony and working with us going forward
are very welcomed. We need to do the best we can to contain a business unit that's actually now not
an enterprise fund it's just a cost center and we need to fix that.
Mr. Holte: I think with the newspaper here there should be some
balance here because you're looking at the overall 7 or 8 million dollars for their park commission
and their five hundred thousand dollars if that's accurate is only 7 or 8 percent and if you look at the
general fund its ninety five million dollars of the five hundred thousand dollars is less than 1% of the
amount that is being funded out of the general fund and I think that balance would be good at the
meetings and so that gets communicated through the newspaper. The other thing I would totally
agree is we do need a marketing plan and I've been coming to play at the golf course to play since the
70s and I haven't seen much marketing out there. I think there must be people in the community
retired people that have a marketing background that could put together a marketing plan for the
course in conjunction with the other courses on the Island because I know they would be concerned
about the public play and things I think....
Mr. Furfaro: I need to say to you we didn't pose a question. I can't extend
your time. But I can say to you that's what we been pointing out to parks and recreation to get some
people that want to get involved with the marketing committee.
Mr. Holte: I think there's a lot of no cost/low cost things we can do to
improve the market.
Mr. Furfaro: Yes and of course the one intangible item is our seniors, the
health and wellness that the golf course provides as being a recreational, you can't measure that it's
important for us to provide that kind of recreation like we do at baseball fields and senior softball
and so forth. You have to take that to our Parks & Recreation Department. I need to ask if there is
anybody else that would want to testify? Hold on before you leave, councilwoman has a question?
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you very much gentlemen for coming forward and for
offering to help promote the golf course and I think we can use more ideas and I am glad that parks
has begun to look at that aspect as well. Part of marketing though is some flexibility and pricing and
right now the council sets it by ordinance and we actually loss considerably amounts of revenue
when we didn't adjust the fees upward for the visitor rate in the latter half of the 1990s and the
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.27
early 2000. Would it be something that the club would support to see if we could arrange for some
kind of flexibility in setting rates so you don't have to come to the council mall the time. It may even
take a charter amendment but it may be what is useful and more workable.
Mr. Holte: I think that would be a lot more effective if we could set rates
that way. I think the play too...
Mr. Furfaro: I think I gotta tell you again I'm Sorry. She can pose one
question to you but it doesn't broaden your narrative about other ideas. So I thought that
councilwoman posed a very good question.
Ms Yukimura: But if your answer is or what you were going to say relates to
setting of rates than I think it's appropriate as part of the answer.
Mr. Furfaro: Let's not discuss this at this time, they need to get together
and step forward as a group, bring your marketing ideas to the parks department. The agenda item
right now is the budgeted operations of the golf course not the marketing of the golf course.
Ms. Yukimura: I think revenues are included in the budget though yeah
Chair?
Mr. Holte: That's what I was going to comment...
Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me sir. Councilwoman?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro: If you could please follow me on my lead here, they are willing
to take steps forward and work with the parks department. We are not going to take this time to get
into a discussion about marketing. Your comments about revenues are well taken because I know
the golf course is short. Your revenue about raising the rate for visitors is wrong because right now
Wailua is more expensive than some of the other...
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Furfaro:
Ms. Yukimura:
can...
Mr. Furfaro:
Ms. Yukimura:
playing golf?
Oh Chair I wasn't suggesting raising the rates right now.
But I don't want to get into that discussion okay?
Yeah that's okay but I do want to point out that marketing
You may pose another question to these gentlemen.
Alright, thank you. What is the cost per round for seniors
Mr. Holte: Currently there super seniors is twenty six dollars a month
and the regular seniors is forty dollars a month.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay but per round what does that translate too?
Mr. Holte: Well the information that was given out last was $5.46 a
round but that's just reading in the front that disabled veterans and handicapped seniors that have
to take a cart no way they would pay $5.46 a round.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so what your saying is when you take into account the
total cost of golf for seniors that it's not, you just can't go by the rates?
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.28
Mr. Holte: No, No.
Ms. Yukimura: And you recommended that we find out the cost of play and
that hasn't been available to you folks and I don't remember it being available to us either.
Mr. Holte: Yeah during the negotiations of 2008 when I was involved I
kept requesting the financial statements for the enterprise fund but all I ever received was a cash
basis budgeting.
Mr. Furfaro: I will give you this document right here. It is expressed in
that and was passed part of the previous one and it isn't the senior rate. The $5.46 was based on a
potential and if you gave super senior that rate and they played at least 6 times a month that super
senior rate averaged the 5 dollars and whatever it was. That was a forecasted number just like I said
about the issue with health and welfare and you can't necessarily measure a very deserving veteran
on how many times he plays golf but you have to come up with what is referred to it as the potential
of playing sic times in the month and it could be the average rate. It doesn't mean it is but I think
that's where the translation got mixed up.
Mr. Holte: Just for the green fee only.
Mr. Furfaro: Yes. And gentlemen I m going to give you the receipt that was
calculated for us and you do with it what you want when you meet. Your marketing expertise is very
much appreciated but I'm not here to explain to the garden Island how they did a story. I'm here to
explain to you what is in the forecast and I'm going to give you my copy.
Ms. Yukimura: Apologies to the Chair because actually there is a sheet on the
average cost per round that council chair provided in a presentation. So it maybe something you all
can look at.
Mr. Furfaro: I'm going to give then a copy.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes thank you very much Chair for reminding us of that.
Mr. Furfaro: Gentlemen we are not going to pose any more questions to
you but we have another speaker that would like to come up. Thank you very much and thank you
for your volunteerism in advance to work with the parks department.
ROB ABREW: Aloha Council members my name is Rob Abrew for the record
again. I want to thank the golf course workers they keep that course in wonderful shape when I play
it, not often but I try to play it. One of the questions and I don't know if this is going to be a CIP
question or but since the maintenance has moved back into the building we have a big white tent
sitting there in the middle of the golf course along with two temporaries. Now are those golf course
assets or are there county assets? Or what are we going to do with those so they don't sit there and
rot away? I believe it's a very expensive asset sitting there that's just tearing away in the wind.
Mr. Furfaro: The County only has one set of assets whether it belongs in
the golf course or Lydgate Park, so forth... and we agree with you. There is a plan to re-designate
those temporary facilities and they will be merged into another area where the esthetics will not
upset the golf course. Very good point and so noted but there is a plan by the way.
Mr. Abrew: Thank you Chair.
Mr. Furfaro: Is there anyone else that would like to speak on the golf
course item at this time? Oh please come tight up.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.29
WALLY REZENTES Jr., Director of Finance: Wally Rezentes Jr., Director of
Finance for the record. I just wanted to make one point of clarification with respect to fixed assets
and equipment that we acquire for the gold fund. The County has a fixed asset policy where by any
equipment or any asset that is purchased for five thousand dollars or more gets a place on our fixed
asset ledger and is depreciated in accordance with the useful life of the asset. I just wanted to make
that point.
Mr. Furfaro: Wally you and I have had this discussion before. We want to
know which ones are on the seven year depreciation and which ones are on the ten year depreciation.
Mr. Rezentes: Right and it all depends on the useful right of the asset so
some may be four, five year or even seven or whatever.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you for that clarification. Is there anyone else that
would like to speak on this item? If not what I would like to say for the general group here and Wally
I might direct this to you. We're going to take a 45 minute lunch and we're going to be back here at
12:30. I think it would be appropriate for us to give the Council members at least some time to visit
their questions with Parks & Recreation. Because I can't post a new meeting knowing that I have to
give seven days because we're going to be too far out. I would rather run the chance of having Public
Works stay longer when we do start than find myself not being able to post within the 6 day window.
So We're going to break until 12:30 and Lenny that means when we come back the Q&A will be from
the council members and it will be on the parks department if that is okay with you? Then we will
actually start Public Works at instead of 12:30 it will be 1:30 and I will give these copies to these
gentlemen. Mr. Chang.
Mr. Chang: Do we have a short moment just to comment?
Mr. Furfaro: Yes you want a short minute I called the meeting back to
order just speak to the members here but you can talk in general.
Mr. Chang: I wanted to thank Susan, thank you for coming and thank you
for being involved with the process at the Aloha spirit their at the golf course. I would also like to
thank you to Craig and your staff as everybody testified it's been a wonderful shape and the things
that you do there with your resources. I would also like to thank Mr. Alan Tada, also for coming to
tell us little about the little things like people don't ride on the cart path they want to jump um. So
we learned a little bit about that so for Mr. Holte and Mr. Bradley Thank you, so what I've been
hearing from you is that you communicated from your constituents in the club and it's nice to know
that people are buying in to promoting the golf course and the days of the past you know it's kind of
like not necessarily it's our course but premier times we're being booked and I'm glad that your
group has committed to helping out the Kama`aina efforts to let everybody enjoy the course so the
county can make up for some of the losses. I just wanted to say thank you for all that you folks do for
the people and thank you Chair for allowing me that opportunity for making that comment. Thank
you very much.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay and for those of you in the back, I don't know if my staff
offered you the unaudited financial detail that was done by myself and that was part of my
presentation to the council. You have it? Mr. Rapozo I want to thank you for having your people come
back at 12:30, we're going to break for 45 minutes and also for Mr. Rezentes I want to say thank you
for making contact in advance with public works and will start with them at 1:30. We are in recess.
There being no objections, the Committee recessed at 11:40 a.m. The Committee reconvened
at 12:41 p.m. and proceeded as follows:
Mr. Furfaro: Aloha and I hope everybody had an enjoyable lunch break
couple of things for the general, general information here. I have decided that we are going to
continue now with the parks department, we have looked at all the recreational areas, we have
looked at the golf course in particular, we took public testimony and we did not have enough time for
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.30
our own Q&A. So over the next hour we're going to focus our Q&A on Parks & Recreation. This way
it leaves us an hour of opportunity at 1:30 that if we wanted to call back public works that the extra
day on the 21St would be available to them and as I earlier announced we are focusing on our CIP
budgets on Monday. I also wanted to extend apology if necessary and it was probably necessary to
me kind of raising my interest in moving us on but I also want to point out to the parks department
that when we look at questions about marketing the golf course and that is one of the reasons it
became an enterprise fund so that we can compete with public and private recreation. There are
some legal guidelines that we need on the marketing piece and so I wanted to again share with you
as we go to change this fund and issues come up where a government entity is actually competing
with private entrepreneurial activities then I think there's some guidelines that need to be followed.
Therefore it's best done by revisiting issues with our legal department on exactly what kind of
marketing we can do to increase play and revenues if we change it to simply county revenue fund.
On that note I'm going to assume Mr. Costa and the teams you have hear that you are now prepared
for the Q&A for the next hour from the council members? On that note if you could come up and
what I would like to do is I would like to welcome back Mr. Kuali`i and welcome back Mr. Rapozo
who all had to break away this morning and share with you that we are still in Parks & Recreation,
we will be for one hour because I didn't want to sacrifice rescheduling them on another date
especially with public works coming up the extra time might be needed to focus on them. So I'm
going to go around the table and ask for individual questions as we go around and I'm going to start
with you Mr. Chang.
Councilmember Kuali`i and Councilmember Rapozo were noted present at 12:41p.m.
Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Chair.
Mr. Furfaro: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Could I procedurally, would it be helpful to help us go one
division at a time and have the division head come up and sit with Mr. Costa?
KAUAI WAR MEMORIAL CONVENTION HALL
Mr. Furfaro: Okay so let's start with Mr. Sarita if we'd like to do it that
way. Mr. Sarita, pull up a chair and get comfortable and we will still talk about the convention
services bureau and whoever raises their hand first I will go counter clockwise. You have raised your
hand and you have the floor Mr. Chang.
Mr. Chang: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Any questions directed at the conference convention services
division.
Mr. Chang: Thank you Mr. Chair, Mr. Sarita. I have a question regarding
the Kauai War Memorial Convention Hall. I understand we haven't increased the rates since 1996?
EDDIE SARITA: You're correct councilmember.
Mr. Chang: Okay so not the theatre seating side but if we wanted to
throw a baby luau on the convention side. What is the current rent right now?
Mr. Sarita: Current rent for the two exhibit halls and the kitchen is
$325.00 per day. That does not include the rental and use of chairs and tables. Tables under the old
current schedule is a dollar a table and twenty five cents per chair.
Mr. Chang: A dollar a table.
Mr. Sarita: Yes.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.31
Mr. Chang: And twenty five cents a chair?
Mr. Sarita: So you can have a party at the convention Hall for 400 people
and it will cost you about four hundred dollars.
Mr. Chang: Four hundred dollars plus the $325.00?
Mr. Sarita: Including the $325.00.
Mr. Chang: So it's the best deal in town?
Mr. Sarita: Correct.
Mr. Chang: Okay. At the theatre side the eleven hundred seat theatre
area, what is that rent?
Mr. Sarita: That rents if you are a professional promoter and you use our
stage lighting and sound systems and some of our other equipment such as intercom system for
communication between the projection room and the stage, you're looking at about $900.00 and
that's for a professional promoter. If you are anon-profit organization that would be $500.00 and
that's using the current structure that you quoting.
Mr. Chang: So those are really, really excellent rates in the whole year
does that pay at least your labor? What you guys put out? What the county puts out?
Mr. Sarita: It does not.
Mr. Chang: Okay and then I also wanted to ask. It is in the CIP budget so
I won't reflect on that but I wanted to reconfirm that the number that we have here, four hundred
thousand dollars that's the amount you were requesting for the eleven hundred seats?
Mr. Sarita: Correct. That would be the demolition from the old seats and
replacement installation of new seats.
Mr. Chang: Now if you can answer this question and I don't know how
this works and I'm just going to give an example. I remember when the Kauai Community College
Performing Arts Center I think they had asked the community for donations and on the bottom of
the seats they had a name plate like a Eddie Sarita or Ian Costa for a donation they had a name
plate and I kind of liked that because when I go there I use to always put down the seat but I wanted
to see whose seat I was seating on for donations and if you know the person you want to say thank
you. Is that something that we could do in the county?
Mr. Sarita: Well Councilmember it sounds attractive but if you'xe going to
try and install eleven hundred seats and try to locate eleven hundred donors it's going to take you
more than 10 years to accomplish. The seats are already 47 years old and many of them are
deteriorating, falling apart and in fact they may be unsafe to sit on. That's a noble idea but it's not
like a church where you can have somebody to rent and put up a stain glass window. Dealing with
eleven hundred seats is just too much seats.
Mr. Chang: It was just a thought.
Mr. Sarita: I realize what you're getting at and like I said it's a noble idea
the KCC Performing Arts Center has only 500 seats and we're talking 1100 seats at the Convention
Hall.
Mr. Chang: No I understand. Thank you, Thank you Mr. Chair.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.32
Mr. Kuali`i: So just to follow up I like councilmember Chang's idea about
the donations even though you didn't find it feasible. At four hundred thousand dollars for eleven
hundred seats, even if we got a hundred dollars per seat, eleven hundred donors would at least cover
a quarter of that and it could be a donation over time. We could move forward appropriate the
moneys, make the changes and than just add those .little tags as people donate it. I think the people
of Kauai want to be a part of what the County is doing in a lot of different ways and small donations
of a hundred dollars to have your name on the seat possibly for the next 47 years. We could get that
from individuals and then businesses would clearly give a lot more than a hundred dollars. Maybe
you could have 2 different rates, one for individuals and one for businesses.
Mr. Sarita: I think with you taking it from your perspective it makes
sense. I'm just approaching it from a stand point as a manager and trying to improve the facility.
Mr. Kuali`i: It sounded like you just wanted it to be delayed until we
raised all the money but I'm saying we could just...
Mr. Sarita: Don't you agree that 47 years is a long time?
Mr. Kuali`i: absolutely, no absolutely.
Mr. Sarita: I've been...
Mr. Kuali`i: I'm just saying that the people could be a part of it in the long
run.
Mr. Sarita: I'm not closing my mind to that. I think it's a very possible
avenue but I don't want to give the impression that I'm willing to wait ten years more to have this
project accomplished.
Mr. Kuali`i: I understand that for sure.
Mr. Sarita: You see what I'm getting at?
Mr. Kuali`i: Absolutely.
Mr. Sarita: If you're going to fund it and we can do it then we go and
solicit donors. That's fine and I see no problem with that.
Mr. Kuali`i: Now another question on your repair and maintenance
building line item. The budgeted amount for last year was thirty six hundred and this year its fifteen
thousand which is like a three hundred something percent increase. What's outstanding that needs
to be taken care of at the Convention Hall?
Mr. Sarita: We're having to rather than treat some items anyway I was
advised rather than treat some items, small items as a CIP item for example. Replacing the counter
tops for the kitchen and the storage room it is treated as repair and maintenance. Again does
counter tops are falling apart and they are also 47 years old, almost as old as I am. So you know it's
things like that plus we have a broken beam on the covered walkway that occurred when someone
drove a high back truck and hit the beam and I found out and learned a very important lesson
concerning insurance. In my dealings with his insurance company they said that I had asked only for
a liability policy and not an automobile policy and now since the automobile caused it their not
paying. So it's going to cost another three thousand dollars to have that beam replaced along with
the counter tops and I think also and you may not be aware of it councilmember but there was a
complaint from someone about being ill at one time when they were in the theatre. So we had the
department of health come and conduct an inspection to make sure we did not have any mole in the
theatre. There was no mold found however they found that in the sections not accessible to the public
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.33
in the areas above the audience, those areas the drop ceilings the tops of the drop ceiling have also
not been cleaned in 47 years. It's not an area where the staff can do, you have to contract it out its
too dangerous, it's more than 30 feet high and you're going to have to do it with scaffolding. You need
a professional cleaner to do it so we treated and included that as repair and maintenance so that's
why you see it as a onetime big jump but its things that have to be done similar to the seats.
Mr. Kuali`i: Let me just finish with okay 47 years is a long time right but
we've been using the convention hall on a regular basis; I go there I sit in the chairs. If the county is
faced with a really difficult time and having to cut seriously because of TAT or whatever. Can we get
another year or two, how much or are you really hearing from all the citizens that I can't sit in this
seat because its broken and I'm falling out and it's in total disrepair and its unbearable and we must
replace it all this year or if we absolutely had to could we do it next year or the year after. Forty
seven years is a long time, I'm saying yes but it seems like we've been having events we've had
thousands and I don't know how many people it holds with people sitting in there. There might be an
occasional chair that the plastic is cracked a little I see so yeah we have to change it but if we had to
and we had to make tough choices, tough times you know call for tough choices, could we get another
year or two and maybe you're not the person to answer that but it's the thought to put out there and
it's my final point for now.
Mr. Sarita: Well Councilmember, it's like your old car you know. If you
can afford a new one you will do it, if you can't you'll squeeze another year.
Mr. Kuali`i: Good answer. Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Councilwomen Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you chair. Eddie I want to thank you for your
stewardship and management of the convention hall for many, many years.
Mr. Sarita: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Its been like your baby and you've taken such good care of it
and it's such an asset as you've said to our community so thank you for that and also for the
Ho`olokahi Program which is just a masterful way of bringing citizens in and a partnership with
Government and getting really great values. One of the suggestions I had if it's not too much trouble
would be to show how much actual hard money the county puts in this Ho`olokahi Projects and then
to give the value of the end product the actual end product. The actual market value if you will that
would show how much we're maximizing it. That's just a suggestion and I'm not asking for it this
year but just as in the future as we asses that project. I wanted to ask if you do have enough money
for the work in the coming year for the line item that you have down. I think you have $6000.00?
Mr. Sarita: You mean on the Ho`olokahi Program?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Mr. Sarita: Well you know when the Ho`olokahi program was first
organized by Brian Baptiste when he was the Manager of the Convention Hall. He requested that
the county council approve a budget for each of the five geographical areas of Kauai, a budget of
thirty thousand dollars and a total of a hundred and fifty thousand for citizens to apply for grants.
The grant fund was established and people did apply for grants. When I came on board in 1999 the
funding had already dwindled down to about thirty thousand dollars, the hundred fifty had dwindled
down because a lot of grants were made. So I did what I could and we came before this body many
times to ask for additional funding and we've been able to do things, however since then the program
has not been financed again so basically there is no Ho`olokahi funds for people to apply for grants. I
do still take the grant applications and I submit it to my Director for review and for funding. If it's
being worthy of funding they will get the funds out of the park improvement budget.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.34
Ms. Yukimura: I see.
Mr. Sarita: It's a possibility, we haven't turned anyone down and the two
applications we had last year was what was shown in the report, the wall and the two batting cages.
I think if people knew there was funding we would have more request.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay I wasn't aware of that larger vision that the former
Mayor Brian Baptiste or late Mayor had. I kind of like the way the oversight by you happens and
worry a little bit if we had a lot of grants going on without proper oversight. So I was thinking more
of the kind of way we've been doing it so far and I'm glad to know that because it's logical that we
would take those moneys out of the park improvements funds by district so that makes sense to me.
If you haven't or you were able to fund the two major applications and I think that's a good way. The
bigger way would take a lot more Administration and has a little bit more risk in terms of grant
management and maybe there's a time when that will come too. Thank you, and then... actually
that's all I have for the convention hall.
Mr. Rapozo: Eddie the security guard services for weekend events, isn't
that the responsibility of the people that are renting the facility? I notice we haven't spent anything
out of that line from this existing year and we went up a thousand dollars. Is that something we the
County provides?
Mr. Sarita: Yes the county provides that and that came about
Councilmember Rapozo because we encountered problems from people attending these events after
they consume liquor. My janitor no longer wants to work the parties because he's afraid, people have
threatened him so I've covered the events. I come out during the weekends and I open the facility, I
give people their orientation on use and I come back at 10:00 that night to close up. I have to do it
that way because many times we have events in tandem, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and if you
were to leave it to people in good faith to clean it up for the next party to be cleaned, it will never
happen. If I'm standing there they will do it. The security guard has had to come because I myself too
have been threatened by people after they drink they want to fight with me because they don't want
to go home at 11:30, they don't want to clean up because they feel that they paid a fee so why should
we clean up. Can you imagine if we had no guard there I would be all alone just like my janitor?
Mr. Rapozo: But I'm looking at the current budget.
Mr. Sarita: The current budget has no expenditure because the security
guard service bills me on an annual basis so he hasn't submitted his bill it's still coming.
Mr. Rapozo: And what is the anticipated expense for this service?
Mr. Sarita: It will be probably a little less than that. Probably about six
thousand dollars because there are some weekend dates I deemed it not necessary to have the guard
so I just... and our agreement with the guard service provides for us to determine when the service is
needed. It is not a mandatory thing so they have to work.
Mr. Rapozo: What I would suggest and something to explore and I know
it's a very small amount when we look at our entire budget but you know if you go anywhere else like
the Vet Center and now I use the convention hall simply because of the service that you Eddie
provides for us. It is a fabulous venue and it is very reasonable but anywhere else we're required to
pay for security. I guess what I would suggest and maybe it's got to be in a way of an ordinance-
amendment, but if you serve alcohol that you are required to provide either a bond or a security or
something so that... Because nobody, you or your janitor should not be subject to that and I would
suggest if anybody does that that they are forever written off the county list and not allowed to
participate in our venues again. Nobody deserves to be treated like that and if somebody does I
would hope that somebody calls the police and have them arrested.
April 15, 2Q11
Parks And Recreation Department p.35
Mr. Sarita: I have had to threaten that I-would call the police in order to
calm them down otherwise even the host person doesn't want to talk to the offending party. I have to
tell then it's your guess, calm him down or I'm going to call the police right now and then they do it
and send the guy home and the problem goes away. You don't know when it's going to crop up
because without the exception almost all of the parties serve beer and when they start to consume
the beer Ipre-warn this people in the morning. I ask them, are you serving liquor? When they
respond positively I give them the information that you are responsible for the control of these
people.
Mr. Rapozo: But we do have a deposit right?
Mr. Sarita: No there's no deposit. I collect the rent in advance and it's not
given back no amount is given back.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh okay.
Mr. Sarita: I don't ask and I'm not empowered to ask for another deposit
on top of the rental.
Mr. Rapozo: Maybe that's something we have to look into.
Mr. Sarita: And as Councilmember Chang pointed out, it is the best deal
in town. That's why we are so crowded.
Mr. Rapozo: So you can make a deposit and if they return the facility in
the same condition that you gave it to them, guess what? They get their deposit back.
Mr. Sarita: Yes but it has to be a substantial deposit; fifty dollars will not
do it.
up.
Mr. Rapozo: Because it's cheaper to just give the fifty bucks then to clean
Mr. Sarita: Yeah if we charge five hundred dollars and they have to put
down three hundred, they will be more respectful of it.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you for your report. I wanted to... I had a chance to go
to that Kaumakani Pavilion and see all the improvements made and the collaboration between the
community and the county, and you know that doesn't happen without a lot of people involved and
someone from the county coordinating it. Thank you for your good work there.
Mr. Sarita: To be honest Councilmember, that work was more of
Mel Nishihara.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay.
Mr. Sarita: Rather than mine. I was more involved the Koloa Pavilion
and the Kapa`a Pavilion.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay but in any event I think to make it happen requires that
collaboration so for the parks department that's just a great partnership with our community. I
wanted to find out from you, do you believe a rate increase is warranted at this time?
Mr. Sarita: Well you know it's always difficult to say you want an
increase and trying to present that to the public 1 realize that nobody wants to have to pay more.
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.36
When I was over at my friendly farm store yesterday buying weed eaters I saw a sign there that was
very interesting. It said due to the rising cost of fuel please excuse us for having to raise our rates.
Well 1996 if fifteen years ago and we're still using the same rate; however it's not so simple to say
we're going to raise the rates. At the convention hall we have a lot of fees that are waived. I maintain
a system where we track the contracts. I write up a contract for even the county agencies and I do
that simply because I want to see what the cost would be if that user had to pay. Whether it be a
county agency or the general public and then at the end of the calendar year I can tally up what our
revenue would have been based on those contracts. We charge everybody but as I said it's not that
simple. We have the DOE that uses the convention hall free of charge and based on the 1996 rates
the use amount this last school year was over twenty thousand dollars. Now if we charged them that
would be twenty thousand dollars additional revenue but I'm not collecting that.
Ms. Nakamura: So is that your goal to do a user fee study this year?
Mr. Sarita: I think it's warranted to at least look at it. My first year when
I became Manager Mayor Kusaka asked me to do just that, raise the rates. I conducted a study with
the other calling Hilo, Maui, and Oahu, comparing the rates when I presented it and there wasn't
very much enthusiasm for it. So I haven't revisited the raising of the rates until just this year. I'm
just... this facility is so much in demand that I feel that it should be you know we can't keep
operating in the 1990's.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay and I guess not just for this division but for others
within the parks and recreation department, I wasn't clear by reading your report as to what your
goals and objectives for this year are. So for example if it's to conduct a study or to complete the seat
replacement program or to if you had very specific goals with respect to adopt a park. It's not clear
what it is that you're trying to accomplish this year.
Mr. Sarita: For each of my areas of responsibilities?
Ms. Nakamura: Yes and it doesn't have to be done right now but we had some
pretty good examples yesterday from the Office of Elderly Affairs, Planning Department, very clear
objectives. I think your goals and objectives that lay out your work plan for this coming year.
Mr. Nakamura: Well you know Councilwoman Nakamura, I spend 70% of my
time on convention hall operations, 10% on the Ho`olokahi program, 10% on adopt a park and now
10% on this "Keep Hawaiian Islands Beautiful" effort to make up 100% and I'm just one person. I
can't devote much time for each area except the convention hall. As far as the convention is
concerned for what my goals are, is to bring it back up to what it was and that's been my overwriting
goal for the last twelve years to bring it back to what it was when it was first built.
Mr. Furfaro: We're not asking you to reconstruct your vision and goals, we
are asking you as we go forward.
Mr. Sarita: Yes I understand Council Chair and I'm sorry if I get
passionate about it but that's the way I feel.
Mr. Furfaro: That's a good thing.
Mr. Sarita: As I said improving the convention hall for this year. For each
of the other programs like adopt a park, I got 29 parks adopted out of 64 and I certainly would like to
find more volunteers. Again it will take an investment of time to do that along with Ho`olokahi and
now this Keep Hawaiian Islands Beautiful.
Ms. Nakamura: So I think given the resources you have which is basically
yourself, what is really doable for the one year? That's all I'm asking.
Mr. Sarita: I appreciate that I just want to do the best I can.
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.37
Ms. Nakamura: And we know you are.
Mr. Costa: I just want to say that your comment is taken well as far as
the entire department and we emphasize that.
Mr. Furfaro: I just want to add to that Eddie the things that you've
accomplished in your 12 years. I just want to make sure you understand you are greatly appreciated
and recognized by this body. Paying attention to items such as fractured doors and drapes that need
upgrading and you know this plan with replacing each chair in the facility and it's going to cost us
about $365.00 a chair but your point is right on. Those chairs are 47 years old and it's time to
reinvest some capitol there and I'm very pleased that we have you there driving that. Councilwoman
Yukimura we have just about twenty five minutes for the rest of the departments, would-you have
more questions for this department?
Ms. Yukimura: I do but I'm going to put them in writing. Thank you and I
just want to thank Eddie for a good report and also for incredible work. Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: So Eddie (inaudible) going to send over more questions
depending on your response and I heard the Deputy of Parks reaching out to say that they will make
themselves available to help. We will send the rest of those questions over in writing it doesn't
necessarily mean coming back at this time. I just want to personally thank you for the stewardship
you've shown at our convention center. Thank you very much.
Mr. Sarita: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay I see another department head here. Mr. Costa would
you like to bring someone up?
Mr. Costa: Any preference?
Mr. Furfaro: Your preference, you call them up. Thank you very much.
Mr. Costa: If questions can be focused on the park maintenance
beautification.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you very much. We'll have the individuals introduce
themselves again for the record and this particular is repair and maintenance of the parks
department so the floor is yours.
REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE/PARKS DEPARTMENT
GEORGE AHLGREN, PARKS MAINTENANCE OPS CHIEF: Good afternoon I'm George
Ahlgren, I'm the Parks Maintenance Administrator and I'm here to answer any questions you may
have on the budget.
Mr. Furfaro: Before we go any further I want to say you are involved for
the maintenance-for the grounds for the golf course?
Mr. Ahlgren: Not the golf course.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay not the golf course but alt other 53 parks except the golf
course? I just need to make sure I clarify that.
Mr. Ahlgren: The stadiums, cemeteries, beautification areas, correct.
Mr. Furfaro: All 17 cemeteries?
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.38
Mr. Ahlgren: Correct.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay so that the group is clear where park maintenance
covers and I will start with Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. I know we have very brief time so I will just ask
one question, cemeteries? Is there and I was trying to find through the budget if there were any
funds that were special especially designated for the veterans cemetery in this budget?
Mr. Ahlgren: Yes it's under the beautification section. I can point that out
for you its 172 -the director says.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you that helps.
Mr. Ahlgren: I would add that the cemetery receives great, great support
from our public works department and from all the other divisions and internally if Donovan needs
something over there or the veterans need something over there that's a very high priority for us in
the department.
Mr. Rapozo: Which is your line item that focuses on the veterans? I see it
but that seventy six thousand is for all the cemeteries?
Mr. Ahlgren: I'm trying to find it myself here now.
Mr. Rapozo: The six hundred dollars is for electricity but I'm trying to find
if there's any dedicated funds that's going to be used or if there's any plans to improve. I know
there's a lot of work that needs to be done out there like the termites, the structures.
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: That's a CIP project.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh that's a CIP project?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Yes.
Mr. Ahlgren: A little further down on page 172 under other supplies you'll
notice veteran's cemetery supplies ten thousand dollars.
Mr. Rapozo: Is that there normal allocation? That's for fertilizer, herbicide
and...
Mr. Ahlgren: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: That's all I have. Thank you I will wait for the CIP. Thank
you very much.
Mr. Furfaro: Do we get other moneys from the State, the Feds, the
Veterans? And how is it going in and out of your financial agreement there? Do you want to call up
your accounting person?
Mr. Rapozo: Yes, well we get per funeral that we do. They reimburse us
and then through accounting...
Mr. Furfaro: So let's hope we stay way low on the reimbursement out
there. Thank you very much. Councilmember Kuali`i.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.39
Mr. Kuali`i: Just one quick question. Earlier when Lenny was giving his
presentation he talked about why the operations costs have gone up and some of the reasons were
fuel and sewer and one of them he said was water. When I look at the line items by these different
departments they are all 30% increase in recreation, 39% in parks maintenance, 44% in
beautification and so I'm wondering are we having a dryer year? What is this water for the plants or
beautification?
Mr. Rapozo:
irrigation now on the path and...
Mr. Kuali`i:
Mr. Rapozo:
and ask for...
Yeah it was a dryer year last year and we have a lot of
Are we expecting next year to be dry too?
We cannot answer that but I don't want to come back here
Mr. Kuali`i: So again if we're thinking about what's critical and what's
not. This if we needed to we could do with a little bit of brown grass? I mean does this mean the park
grass stays green, I mean 40% increase is a lot.
Mr. Rapozo: No I think...
Mr. Kuali`i: On the Garden Island.
Mr. Rapozo: I think our people...
Mr. Kuali`i: Where we have a lot of rain.
Mr. Rapozo: If you're asking me I don't think we should reduce the water.
We've asked certain groups to help us to conserve.
Mr. Kuali`i: Right.
Mr. Rapozo: Understanding that it is.
Mr. Kuali`i: Well I'm not even asking to reduce I'm saying to not increase
so much. The budget from last year to this year is going up 40% in beautifications.
Mr. Rapozo: Based on some of our uses.
Mr. Kuali`i: The line item for water.
Mr. Rapozo: Based on some of our previous year use of water where we
needed to move moneys to pay the bill, that's what the request is for.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay so I need to go and look at what's real. You're saying
that last year's budget for water wasn't actually spent on water? You had to move moneys?
Mr. Rapozo: No we didn't have enough money for water is what I'm saying.
Mr. Kuali`i: That's what I'm saying.
Mr. Rapozo: Which someplace else in the budget had to bare that burden.
Mr. Kuali`i: Right okay I will look at that. Thank you.
Mr. Ahlgren: It might also be helpful to keep in perspective that it's not
just grass that we're trying to keep green. There are showers and restroom facilities.
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.40
Mr. Kuali`i: So how is it broken up?
Mr. Ahlgren: Its not. I get a water bill.
Mr. Kuali`i: I probably would want to see it.
Mr. Ahlgren: Yes.
Mr. Kuali`i: Either way.
Mr. Furfaro: Those are very good questions and there's some of the pieces
that I do and Iwould-like to share with you which is my own homework but I will give you an idea
here quickly. If we look at the projected amounts for 7 months by departments, I can share with you
from that from the general fund we are actually 4.1% under budget for 7 months. The highway
department is 18.7% under for 7 months, the golf fund is under 6.1% under budget for 7 months, the
solid waste division is up 15.2% form what they budgeted and the sewer fund is down 17.2%. So
what I'm saying is in Government and I wrestled with it for many years, there is a tendency to
establish trend lines that not necessarily current to the actual and I thought your question was
exceptional and that is what helps contribute to what we hope will become a reserve fund. Right now
they toss it in to a surplus but that's kind of the trend for that 5 departments that I just shared with
you. I think that's what the councilman is getting at. You go a little high on water and there's an
opportunity for us to re-visit that number and trim a little bit when we come to the final allocation.
Question well taken, thank you very much.
Mr. Kuali`i: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: May I give you the meeting for right now I have to step out?
Oh its Mr. Rapozo I'm sorry.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Go ahead.
Chair Furfaro was noted as excused at 1:15 p.m.
Ms. Yukimura: So just to finish up the question of water. I think it was in
your report that there's been a higher than usual water use. Have you analyzed why that is so?
Mr. Ahlgren: Continuously I look at every water bill we get and I get a
stack of water bills that's is really a lot and every month I look at every water bill that comes in for
payment and scrutinize whether or not it fits into the pattern and during sometimes of the year you
can expect the water use to go up because you know we are about ready to get into the football
season so they're really working on greening up the stadium. Certain times of the year you can
expect the water to go back down again and other times there is no reason at all why all of sudden I
will see a large spike and we will investigate that. Sometimes we have discovered water leaks,
broken pipes underground and we've had to put in a work request to get those things repaired. We
are constantly analyzing both utilities, electric bills and water bills and it becomes a big part of what
I do each month and memos and notes go out to the west/eastside supervisors to critique that use so
that we're always making sure we do the best we can with that really big part of our budget.
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.41
Ms. Yukimura: Yes thank you because you're right to monitor it and I
appreciate that and I'm aware that there was some leakage in the irrigation system in the park at
Waimea?
too.
Mr. Ahlgren: Yes there has been and we had a big one in Anini last year
Ms. Yukimura: And the monitoring would lead you to discover it I presume?
Mr. Ahlgren: Absolutely yes and the graphs are very graphic that we get
from the utility company it's very helpful. They show the trend from a whole year back to the same
month last year and all the way through the current year to the current billing so you can see the
number of gallons per day. There is a lot of detail provided in those reports and it's very helpful for
me.
Ms. Yukimura: Alright. So I was wondering if you have level of service goals
in maintenance of the parks? I'm not even sure what I'm asking I mean I've heard the word level of
service but is that in the park dynamic?
Mr. Rapozo: I think that's part of the training that I had eluted to earlier
that we want to get our staff as part of daily routine and as part of their job it's not just cut the grass
and comfort stations. We also want to look at maintenance issues and set that standard and if there
are maintenance issues we're not getting a request from yourself saying that the fence is broken, I
want to know that from our people.
Ms. Yukimura: That's right, that's good.
Mr. Rapozo: So those are the. parts of this training program that George
and I are working on to get that level there so that we can get to that point.
Ms. Yukimura: That's excellent and I appreciate that you're doing that. I just
wondered if there was a way to measure and I mean was that Mr. Mickens who mentioned the
league of women's voters' survey and a grade system. I don't know what the criteria was that went in
to that but I just thought for in-house purposes whether there's a way to measure and I...
Mr. Rapozo: Based on customer complaints or customer kudos I guess that
would be the way to go and our Aloha cards.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and I was delighted to see in your improvement plans
that you have park wide renovation plans for Lydgate and Poi`pu Beach Park?
Mr. Rapozo: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And you say with that including upgrades to restrooms,
showers and pavilions. Both those parks are in need of upkeep of major visibility and use in terms of
both our residential and visitor population, so I'm glad that you're looking at that. In the
rehabilitation or the renovation, do you consider life cycle costs? I'm thinking of the design of Poi`pu
Beach Park bathrooms and pavilions but maybe just the bathrooms and the use of skylights that
diminish the use of electricity and motion sensitive lights. Are they a part of your renovation or
design process?
Mr. Ahlgren: We all wanted to look at that but right now those plans for
the renovations of the park at that level are not finalized but I think with feedback like that we can
look at those things. A lot of our restrooms are really quite open air and Poi`pu for example and
Lydgate not all of them probably but most of them have a lot of natural light to begin with so we
would certainly not want to close any of that up. Skylights are great I would like to work with our
public works department to get more in the way of motion sensors or timers so that we can take
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.42
away the switch. A lot of too many of our restrooms and some of the pavilions are operated just by
the switch and people can come and turn the lights on when they want to use them and
unfortunately to often they just leave and the lights stay on all the rest of the night. More timers and
I would rather have the lights come on strictly by a time clock from dusk until a reasonable time in
the evening or park curfew 10:30-11:30 at night and then have them go out rather then have to rely
on the light switch, that's just not working well for us.
Mr. Rapozo: And that's not just in Poi`pu and Lydgate. We also have
discussions at our softball parks our baseball parks, the restroom lights should not be going on.
Ms. Yukimura: Or even the major big park lights what you call them the spot
or the lights that light the fields. That's a huge electricity draw.
Mr. Rapozo: That's what we're saying that at 10:00 it gets shut off and
than the restroom lights should also be shut off.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, that kind of forethought and design incorporation
would be excellent. Thank you I'm glad that you're thinking of that.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: My last question is. Do you have an equipment replacement
plan so that you retire equipment or you check them out? I mean we've been asking that of the bus
from transportation.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes we do have and those were put off for the last two years
and in our budget this year we are trying to catch up for the last two years so you will see a big
equipment request from parks/maintenance, well the department in general because we are trying to
replace these equipments.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay good.
Mr. Rapozo: Small equipment as well as the large equipment.
Ms. Yukimura: Alright so if we fund this year, will that catch you up? And do
you have a five or ten year plan for maintaining and depreciating and then retiring the equipment?
Mr. Rapozo: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Or is that not common for small equipment like it is for fire
trucks and buses?
Mr. Ahlgren: Less common for small equipment like a weed eater.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Ahlgren: Those things we will try. We really try to get the life out of
those things and my park mechanic stays busy everyday trying to keep those things up and running.
The larger equipment though mowers, (inaudible) and trucks those are all part of what has long time
been a equipment replacement plan basically run and generated and put in place through the public
works vehicle shop division. The pickup trucks that are in my budget this year I was hoping they
would be up for replacement because as I see them run down the road rattling and caved in and
rusty, I was glad to see that this year we were due for that equipment and that truck and that truck
to be replaced. It was agreed upon by our public works and they take the lead in that.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh yes right okay thank you.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.43
Mr. Ahlgren: And the same thing for the large tractor mowers but the small
equipment is more run by me.
Ms. Yukimura: Alright, thank you very much.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you time is up; we're going to end up with Mr. Bynum
all other Council members for parks please put your questions in writing and we'll get that sent over.
Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: So you have about 6 or 7 positions that you're attempting to
fill now in park caretakers and you know that's traditionally a high turnover position I think some
people see that as a way to get into the county and those guys are looking you know for other
opportunities, men and women. Have I got that right? Is that your experience to George?
Mr. Ahlgren: I'm not sure if I have been here long enough to see that trend,
I'm only been here a little more than two years so most of my guys I feel like I'm really lucky to have
them for the number of years that I've had them. I have some good senior staff that really knows the
ins and outs and...
Mr. Bynum: I'm glad to hear that because historically there were sections
of maintenance that had long term guys and then there were other areas that had seem to be
geographical where there was high turnovers so if it stabilizing that's a really good thing.
Mr. Ahlgren: Well I do have some vacancies that I would love to fill. We are
proposing to fully fund all of those positions that were dollar funded in the past couple of years. I
have some people out right now for other reasons, personal and workers comp type reasons that I
would like to get back, and also we are working on that from a different front.
Mr. Bynum: You confused me a minute ago though because I see two
dollar funded positions that have been funded this year in parks. Is there more than two?
Mr. Rapozo: In the parks/maintenance?
Mr. Bynum: Just parks, I'm talking about the ranger and the park
caretaker.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes there's only two.
Mr. Bynum: So two that previous year were dollar funded?
Mr. Rapozo: Yeas but I also mentioned that I believe there were 2 or 3
positions that were seventy five percent funded that are being fully funded this year.
Mr. Bynum: Right and I just wanted to say something about water. When
I first worked for the county I sat in on parks meetings every 2 weeks with the Mayor and you know
this water issue is an important one that we discussed because it's a big expense for parks. I know
we had fields that had irrigation systems in the past that we didn't turn on because we were worried
about the water bill. We have a new park here, with the co-park that has irrigation that looks
beautiful right now but I know that's going to increase our water costs to have an irrigated park. I
think as we created a parks department the public was looking for improvements in their
neighborhood parks. I really want to see us and I'm just speaking for myself, eventually irrigate
parks like Anahola Neighborhood Park and Hanapepe Cliffside because sometimes during the year
they're terrible because they're not irrigated. This water bill you know like Puhi Park right by
Halelani it's got this big grass and grass is great for people to play on but our parks get into a state
where I'm not going to play on that grass its dirt it's not grass its dirt. I know that's an expense to
get the irrigation in and then the bigger expense again is the water bill. I know if I had one
frustration that I hear from the community about parks; it's that they saw an improvement in
April 15, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.44
maintenance and I think we're maintaining that but they thought creating a parks department was
going to create improvements in their neighborhood parks. There's a list of neighborhood parks that
during that dry spell just a couple months ago not only were they not playable but what's the point of
having a big grass field if you can't play on it, or if there's no grass. Not only were they not playable
but they were so dry that it was blowing dust into the neighborhood and so... is there any vision to
improve those neighborhood parks and to make the grass playable and green and you know to bite
the bullet and charge...
Mr. Rapozo: We try to take advantage of opportunities and you had
mentioned Ulu Ko Park. By this bodies ordinance Grove Farm had to improve the maintenance of
that park which they did. Included in that maintenance was the introduction of a irrigation system
and the water that their using is not portable water, it's the old fashion ditch water that we used to
irrigate our cane fields with. Now that the one year maintenance agreement is coming to a close we
are working with them to purchase the water now. I will benefit the county and it will be cheaper it
will also benefit our community because they will have a nice park. We look at situations where we
can take advantage of those things to do the right thing and improve the parks that you just
mentioned.
Mr. Bynum: There's kind of a list of parks and I've already heard from
people driving by Ulu Ko Park and seeing the beautiful park and water spraying and how come we
don't have that kind of grass in Anahola? How come we don't have that in Kekaha? How come we
don't have that in Puhi? Eventually we need to address that and I'm a huge park supporter and
those things get back.
Mr. Ahlgren: I think as we move forward those ideas that we have to also
be mindful of water conservation and it's not okay in my mind even as a park professional to just go
out there to think you have a blank check to use water anyway you want. We have to be looking at
the most efficient irrigation systems, we need to be looking at computer controlled and I don't want
to bring up my past career on the Mainland but there's just so many things out there now we can use
water any new water that we use forward and suggesting that we use it needs to be used at the most
efficient way possible. And we need to go back...
Mr. Rapozo: Okay I'm going to... because we're beyond the time and we
need to get public works up here sir I don't mean to interrupt but if we go on we will be here all day.
I think it goes back to Councilmember Yukimura mentioned earlier about a standard a park
standard that we should develop and not rely on legal women voters but our own and say hey this is
buy usage because I know one of the biggest complaints in the community is the parks and the
condition but another big complaint in the community is that we don't want to see our taxes increase
either so we need to be cognizant of that and there's a cost to that and I appreciate what you said.
Submit the questions for parks in writing and will get that over today. Thank you very much.
Mr. Bynum: Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: I would like one minute?
Mr. Rapozo: We're done with parks.
Mr. Bynum: I would like one minute to finish up.
Mr. Rapozo: And we're done send it in writing because we have a schedule
we need to keep and I didn't make the schedule, I'm following the schedule thank you. We're going to
call public works because there is an opportunity for call back so you may be called back to respond
to additional questions by the council. Thank you and Mr. Bynum, Councilwomen Nakamura,
Councilmember Chang did not have an opportunity either so thank you.
Apri115, 2011
Parks And Recreation Department p.45
Mr. Bynum: Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: You just interrupted me, didn't let me finish the thing and
then you made a speech about making things. I asked for one minute to finish up.
Mr. Rapozo: One minute, go ahead Mr. Bynum you got one minute.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you for your response George, I appreciate it and I
agree with you and that's why we have sports fields at Lydgate that use reclaimed water
subterranean. I know if we move there we're going to move and put those kinds of sensors in so we
don't water when it's raining and that kind of stuff. Maybe you want to respond to it in writing. Do
we have a vision to move there in the future and what's the time table? Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you very much. Public Works please. Mr. Dill .did you
need some extra time or are you guys ready? You guys are ready? Okay public works why don't we
start with an overview and then Council members prepare your questions and upon completion of
their presentation we'll go ahead and ask the questions by division if possible. Mr. Dill you have the
floor.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.1
PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT
LARRY DILL, COUNTY ENGINEER, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS: Larry Dill,
County Engineer, Department of Public Works, with me today is Lyle Tabata, Deputy County
Engineer and Glen Saiki our Public Works Fiscal Officer. Just to confirm Councilmember Rapozo
what I would like to do with your permission is I will give an overview of the department and then do
the administration for public works. I would like to take questions if we may after each so we can do
division by division with the presentation and then questions to allow the heads to return back to the
office?
Mr. Rapozo: That is exactly how I would like to do it. I will caution you
that when Mr. Furfaro comes back he may have a different process but right now I want you to
complete your presentation and then we will go to questions.
Mr. Dill: Okay and we can always circle back of course to the divisions
if we have questions. You have your presentations and report form in front of you. Lyle and I have
had the pleasure of being here and I have been here four and a half months and Lyle three and a half
months so in that relatively short time we've been doing our best to get our arms around this large
broad very department named public works. We've being doing a lot of assessments to establish
where we are in a lot of places and also beginning to move forward with implementation of some of
our ideas and goals to get things moving forward. I will begin with the first page and I will start with
the mission of the department of public works is to deliver excellence service to our constituents and
support the health and safety of their community with sustainable services and solutions. I know
you've seen this report format throughout so it will be a reoccurring theme. We've established goals
and if there are specific objectives to those goals with each division then they're also reported in the
report in front of you. Overall department goals that you have in front of you include, the
department of public works administration team seeks to support the goals and objectives of the six
divisions within the department. Ensuring manpower, equipment and material needs are met
adequately so that they can meet their various goals and objectives. It's also important for us to
implement the goals and objectives of the Mayor, including Holo Holo 20/20 which I know you're
familiar with. We will be touching on a lot of those specific goals and they are more related actually
to the CIP budget that will be following up on later or in the operations budget. Generally our goal is
to ensure the Health, Safety and Welfare of the public and one more specific goal perhaps that has
come to our attention since our time here is that we are working on the continuance of
implementation of systems that will serve to reduce complaints and emergencies that will allow
hopefully to begin to focus more on proactive planned measures.
We do have some successes and achievements we would like to share with you. We have
commenced with the implementation of some reorganization and streamlining of the department to
create accountability within the department and to clarify the responsibilities of various parts of that
department. We have commenced implementation of the structure to improve the management and
delivery of county wide CIP projects. Specific success and achievements thanks to our public works
fiscal folks that have been largely involved recovered 6.8 million dollars in Federal Grant
reimbursement funding and leverage county CIP funds in various projects. We've also made some
moves to strengthen the management the management of the roads division and to improve .their
capability to respond to complaints and proactive efforts in road way maintenance. Of course some
challenges remain and some of them that we've highlighted here include the planning for future
improvements while continuing to meet the day to day needs and demands of the community. One
thing that we've really come to understand is that we get phone calls every day and we get a lot of
fires to put out every day and it distracts us a lot from the goals we are trying to achieve in the
overall moving forward of the department. We have to meet those needs and address those requests
for information etc... that we're addressed with. Challenges: to continue utilizing funds in the most
efficient manner especially in light of today's economy and budgeting while maintaining satisfactory
levels of service. Success and planning, we were trying to bring that a little more of the forefront
within our divisions because we have folks that are retiring that have been long term employees and
we need to make sure the transition happens as smoothly as possible. We are working to continue to
maintain a positive working relationship with our union partners, a lot of our efforts involve of
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.2
course the union and so we've been in communication with them and working to build that
relationship.
We do have some personnel issues in our large department with no surprise we have over
300 employees so responding to those issues in a timely and positive fashion is one of our challenges.
One that has been ongoing for awhile is we continue to look at opportunities to do what we can to
expedite the building permit approval process. A couple of the improvements I would like to touch on
are one thing and this is largely through efforts of our division in coordination or our department in
coordination with the CIP Project Manager is we have done I think a very thorough assessment of
our CIP Projects that are out there. When we came on board there wasn't perhaps a coherent
location where we could readily understand the status of various projects so I think we do have that
now and that's the first step towards implementation of management and delivery methods of
moving forward. In the reorganization and we have done, I think that employees do have a clear
understanding and it's still a work in progress of course but they do have a clear understanding of
their rules and responses within the organization. Upcoming initiatives, we continue to seek
opportunities for grant funding and low cost loans and will touch on some of that later on some of the
achievements we have been able to reach specifically within the divisions. We're working with
personnel to identify short term and long term needs and to lay the foundation for succession. If you
noticed we've made an effort by the way in our upcoming initiatives to address the challenges that
are existing within the department and the division, so our initiatives are often related to those
challenges. We are working to establish transparency with our union partners by sharing with them
our long term department goals and objectives to create partnering opportunities, because we want
to work with our union partners to move towards achieving those goals. We are looking at
addressing personnel issues in a timely fashion to help to improve out departmental morale. And we
continue to work on the building permit approval process including looking at the one stop shop to
see how that can continue to be improved to help our customers. Finally as I mentioned we have
done a good assessment I think of our CIP projects and we want to move now from a largely
assessment mode to implementation of systems to deliver and manage those projects.
Following and typically in aIl of these sections you'll see we have these graphs and I`m sure
you're very familiar with them by now. We have a comparison from fiscal year twelve to fiscal year
eleven and you can see that for public works overall there's very little change in the actual
( inaudible) of cost in those first two pie charts. It's pretty consistent, you'll notice if you look at the
bar chart columns they indicate salary and wages and following that we have a few bullets under the
operating budget discussion so I will relate my comments to that. You will see across the board
pretty much a common theme that the increase in salaries, wages and benefits is due to elimination
of the furloughs and in public works overall. In one of the divisions you will see we have funding of
what was two previously dollar funded positions and also a consistent theme. There are increased
contribution requirements for employee benefits that are affecting those line items. Increased in
operations department wide was due to additional programs in the various divisions and I think
we'll touch on the specific of those as we go through the various divisions. I will point out those a
little more particularly. That's department wide and now we talk about finances for administration
and the fiscal side of public works. Similar between the two fiscal years you can see the pie charts
indicate that the apportionment of cost remains pretty steady not a great deal of difference there a
few percent either way. Similarly increased in salaries, wages and benefits due to the elimination of
furloughs and increased contribution requirements. In public works administration is where we
house a lot of the cost for training within the department wide so we do have some increased training
costs. This particular one we have auto cad training and we'll talk about that more when we get to
the engineering division.
The effort to increase efficiency in the engineering division by using auto cad on a broader
basis than is currently being used and also increase in operation cost, we have some increase cost
related to collective bargaining specifically for example pre and post employment testing. That's our
overview and also public works admin and I would like to take any questions regarding that area if
you have any.
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.3
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you very much Larry. Do we have any questions? And
again let's follow the format, one question and will take one question from other council members
and will move on to the next council member. Who wants to start with public works administration
questions on the budget? Councilmember Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Actually I mainly just want to say thank you for this
presentation it's very clear from you report that you've done a lot in the 4 months that you've both
been aboard. You've got Clint's able assistants but I'm thankful and appreciative of this organized
report.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you very much. Mr. Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: It's more of a quick comment. I like the way you took the
challenges on the very next page there your upcoming initiatives and the second bullet challenge,
utilizing funds in the most efficient manner while maintaining satisfactory levels of service. That's
really my mission and I think it's our entire mission in this county in this council, really, really
important. I think that's it for now.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay thank. you. Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: It seems like we're not asking any questions but making short
comments but I've met with you several times since you've been there and the reorganization is not
complete I heard is that?
Mr. Dill: Yes many of these things are our work in progress including
the reorganization that's right and we've made some initial steps and I will talk about that a little
later as we get to the divisions we've impacted so far.
Mr. Bynum: I appreciate your fast forward style because we got a lot to
cover but...
Mr. Dill: I'm going to talk as fast as I can.
Mr. Bynum: -. The changes that you've made so far that I'm aware of you
know make a lot of sense and I'm already seeing some of the clarity from people in public works.
They are like okay now I have more clarity as to what my priorities are and what specific role I'm
playing in it in the department so good luck with that ongoing effort. That's it for now.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you any other questions? If not I do agree with
Mr. Bynum you do have this unique ability to speak very quickly and fast but be so articulate that
we even understood what you said so thank you. Let's go to buildings division, can we get buildings
up here.
Mr. Dill: Actually if I can ask your patience on this, our Buildings
Division Chief is over at State Highways at a meeting so would you mind skipping him and until the
end and we can come back?
Mr. Rapozo: That's fine, Automotive. Automotive is next right? I'm going
in the order of the report so I think it's the most... Thank you again Larry.
AUTOMOTIVE
Mr. Dill: Thank you. Joining me now is Dwayne Adachi, he is the
Superintendent of our Automotive Division. He was instrumental in all the things that you see
before you today, again I will just go through the report. The mission of the automotive division is to
manage and maintain the equipment and vehicle fleet of.the department of public works as well as
other County of Kauai Agencies in ambling the county to provide core services to all communities of
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.4
Kauai. Goals for the automotive division include modernization and maintenance of the county of
Kaua`i's vehicle and maintenance fleet, providing all agencies with economical and reliable vehicles
and equipment that are allowing the county to operate effectively and efficiently. The automotive
division offers support and disaster relief services to all agencies and the community in emergency
situations. They have a lot of heavy equipment that we rely on in our disaster response efforts. They
also provide vehicle and equipment maintenance and support for all departments and agencies to
ensure a safe environment for both employees and public citizens. A couple of their successes and
achievements recently, the automotive division has been successful in meeting the demands and
request of the various departments, agencies and the community in regards to equipment supply and
vehicle and equipment maintenance and repairs in spite of a limited staffing situation. Dwayne
really gets the most out of his employees and his budget believe me. Procurement of new vehicles
and equipment in 2010 has helped us to continue to update and improve the status of our vehicle
and equipment fleet. Challenges facing the automotive division include being able to meet the
demands and request of the many different divisions that he supports, departments and agencies we
service on a daily basis. Keeping up with the increased demand of maintenance as a vehicular and
equipment fleet, and this is amazing to me that the equipment fleet for the county has increased by
30% over the last thirty years while staffing levels have remained constant.
It's also been a challenge to in a timely fashion to hire fully qualified replacements for the
vacancies that he does have and also a challenge to operate efficiently and effectively within our
limited space of eight working days for ten technicians. The daily challenges they face as a the
vehicle and equipment fleet has increased by 30% over the last thirty years and we are outgrowing
the current facility. The main improvements you see in the paragraph is during the last few years
have included widexung the main gate to thirty feet, relocating two hundred feet of the western fence
line ten feet to the west and paving the area and also paving approximately four thousand square
feet of unpaved area within the facility. Perimeter fencing has been repaired, security has been
restored and these improvements have given us six thousand square feet of additional operating area
and provided some much needed relief to our (inaudible) situation. Dwayne has taken the initiative
to directly address some of those problems head on his self. Some upcoming initiatives including
continuing to update the equipment and vehicle fleet with energy saving environmentally friendly
units. You may be aware that it's a state requirement that we look first at energy equipment and
hybrid vehicles now when we look to replace vehicles in our fleet. In the (inaudible) of man power
needs and addressing the need for transitioning from retiring employees to new hires. Doing analysis
of the workplace facility capacity as we talked about that he's got a limited space and we had to take
a look at that to see if there's anything else we can do to either improve his existing side or looking at
other sites.
We also want to implement some performing metrics for 2012, for example and he's already
doing this so we want to make sure we look at this on a regular basis to look at where we have room
to improve and try to continually improve our performance. Maintenance service interval on time
completion percentage is currently at 40% and the average vehicle repair turnaround time is
currently about 3 days. The average equipment turnaround time is currently about 13 days and
industrial accident rate currently averaging 3 per year and having said that I would be happy to
take any questions.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you very much. Mr. Bynum.
Mr.. Bynum: I'm glad to hear you got that extra six thousand square feet I
know in that kind of operation that's really important. You mentioned looking at other facilities, is
that an active engaged thing? And my question there is and I'm making an assumption so I want to
see if it's correct. You do ongoing maintenance when you're talking about maintenance service
interval right the things we all typically do? Oil change, and safety and safety check and stuff and
forty percent doesn't sound that great but then I thought hey I dint keep up on those intervals that
well either. Do we set the same intervals that the manufacturer recommends or do you make a
judgment based on where standard practice as to what those intervals are?
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.5
DWAYNE ADACHI, SUPERINTENDANT: Right now the interval is five
thousand miles.
Mr. Bynum: So-had you thought that what if there was a smaller facility
that took all of the routine maintenance and got that out of your main facility, would that help give
you breathing room for the more larger repairs?
Mr. Adachi: That would actually free up one bay for us.
Mr. Bynum: So you have one out of ten that's dedicated?
Mr. Adachi: Dedicated to service.
Mr. Bynum: You have one facility in Lihu`e right?
Mr. Adachi: Right.
Mr. Bynum: So we have a lot of vehicles. How many vehicles do we have?
Mr. Adachi: Right now about three hundred.
Mr. Bynum: Three hundred, okay and so...
Mr. Adachi: Vehicles that's license on the road but if you count the
equipment fleet its closer to maybe five hundred.
Mr. Bynum: So I'm just curios because the hybrid cars have a real
different maintenance kind of needs, do we have the hookups to maintain like the prius and that
kind of thing?
Mr. Adachi: Currently we don't. We had those vehicles only for a few years
yet so basically the warranty is still in effect.
Mr. Bynum: I heard we had over 20 now hybrid vehicles right?
Mr. Adachi: We have about fifty five.
Mr. Bynum: Fifty five see that's more than twenty. The Mayor said in a
couple meetings recently that we received a grant to purchase electric cars. Are you in the loop on
that?
Mr. Adachi: Right.
Mr. Bynum: So isn't that going to be a need if we move more to hybrid that
we get the specialized equipment to maintain those at some point?
Mr. Adachi: Right it will be.
Mr. Bynum: Okay I'm trying to stay in fast mode too. Good job I think
things have improved in vehicle maintenance a lot over the years that I've been here so Thank you.
Mr. Adachi: Thanks.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, any other questions pertaining to the vehicle
service schedules? Interestingly the list of public vehicles, the list of equipment that you folks
provided states all vehicles to be hybrid if possible so it looks like we are making that move to hybrid
so that's a good question. Councilmember Nakamura.
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.6
Ms. Nakamura: Hi thank you for providing these metrics. I think this is a
good foundation to start off with and it takes time to gather this type of data. Is it your goal then to
kind of continue on with this level of service for this coming year?
Mr. Dill: Well the purpose of the metrics is obviously to continually
improve until we reach a level where more improvements are possible I should say. So we certainly
want to beat this as our goal for the next year. We will continue to monitor these metrics and the
implementation of performance metrics is something we haven't firmly established yet so we're going
to be exploring there may be other metrics that we can add to this lease these are just examples we
have come up with so far with Dwayne but it's work in progress.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you, any other questions on the metrics?
LYLE TABATA: Just another point of information for the metrics, for the
record, Lyle Tabata. The forty percent is represented of equipment and vehicles. The vehicles is
closer to hundred percent because at five thousand miles if they don't come in to service they get
locked out and they cannot fuel anymore. The majority of the deficit is on the equipment side so
getting the equipment out of the field to be serviced has been a challenge and especially if we have
their spares or other equipment in the shop being repaired so I wanted to make that clarity.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay thank you. Follow up question Councilmember
Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: I would recommend that you break it up so that we can see
that you really are tracking well on the vehicle side.
Ms. Yukimura: Good Idea.
Mr. Rapozo: You have a follow up question on that?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Councilmember Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: So when the police were here there was some discussion about
them not getting timely servicing of their cars and it may depend on peoples definition of what
timely is. I guess it may have been that they didn't get it on a one day turnaround because they
talked about knowing that they would have to wait 3 days so waiting until they had their days off
that they could get the car serviced. Maybe that's the kind of coordination that's needed or maybe it's
something you have to discuss with the police I don't know. It was an issue that was raised during
our discussions with them.
Mr. Dill: If we can we'll follow up with the police department about
that and address that directly with them if that's alright?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes that would be great.
Mr. Dill: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: I think that with the police it's a whole separate set of
circumstances because of their day off schemes and- the fact that their day offs don't necessarily fall
on the day that the five thousand number is triggered. The other problem is if it is on their day off
and their day off gets cancelled they cannot they cannot take the car in and that messes you folks up
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.7
because now that car that was scheduled for service is now not being brought in. There's a lot of
variables with that and...
years.
Mr. Adachi: That also goes back to the increase in fleet over the past 30
Mr. Rapozo: Right.
Mr. Adachi: That contributes a lot to our work load.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah and I think that was the discussion we had with the
police was whether or not they should have their own service tech that can just take care of the cops.
It's like the cops I mean. the population, businesses, complaints all have increased over the last
twenty years and their staffing hasn't increased either so it's a problem that is county wide.
Mr. Adachi: If you remember...
you.
Mr. Chang: Dwayne I'm sorry can you grab the mic closer to you, thank
Mr. Adachi: When we first started servicing police vehicles we had like six
we started off with way back when we first started servicing blue and white vehicles. Now the fleet is
the whole police fleet is up to almost like a hundred seventy or a hundred eighty vehicles. With the
same manpower we've been servicing these vehicles over the past...
Mr. Rapozo: Do you feel that the need is there for the .police fleet that
would warrant another position in your shop to just focus on police? Do the police provide you with
enough vehicles on a daily basis to keep a service tech busy?
Mr. Adachi: More than enough.
Mr. Rapozo: Would it be a part time position or another position that
would just take care police cars, would you think there is enough work load for that right now?
Mr. Adachi: One or two even.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay well we're asking for one first and then we'll see. That
would be one of the questions Dwayne that if you can respond with maybe the numbers that could
justify that. That is something that we did discuss with the police fleet because we need to keep
those cars not only on the road but on the road in a safe condition. One more real quick question, as
far as the five thousand mile trigger, is there much of a difference- in not police cars but in your
regular county fleet between the three thousand which is what the manufacturer suggest versus the
five thousand which we're implementing? Is there that big of a difference in maintenance and
longevity of the vehicle?
Mr. Adachi: Not really because the oil the manufacturers now days the oil
quality is much greater than it used to be.
Mr. Rapozo: Right.
Mr. Adachi: Well actually it can last over five thousand miles.
Mr. Rapozo: Right okay thank you. Mr. Kualii.
Mr. Kuali`i: Just a quick one on this list of equipment and vehicles. So this
is just a list of additional vehicles you'll have to be caring for? I think what I want to see and I'm
tying it back to the budget and it probably has to go to the different departments that are buying the
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.8
vehicles. Is it whether it is replacing all the vehicles that are coming offline? Or whether it is new
vehicles because there's a new service that we're providing?
Mr. Dill: We will address the specifics of the vehicles as we get to the
divisions.
Mr. Rapozo: Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: I have a metrics question? If you do get a mechanic, will you
have room for that person?
Mr. Adachi: Right now no because we are already pressed for space. It
would be hard to fit another technician in our facility right now.
Ms. Yukimura: So your upcoming initiative of analysis of workplace facility
capacity that's what you intend to analyze?
Mr. Adachi:
personnel.
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Adachi:
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Adachi:
but all these issues have
This would have to be an overall improvement, a facility and
Okay so what...
We have totally outgrown the facility we at right now.
Yes.
It's going to take a while before we can develop a new sight
to be addressed at the same time.
Ms. Yukimura: Right and the only other thing you can do is see if there is
some kind of a patch on which I think you've already done so that you may not have any other short
term remedies. The only remedy you have is a long term one of finding another sight and building a
whole new facility or finding a facility that you can renovate into something that would meet your
needs.
Mr. Adachi: That's where we're at right now.
Ms. Yukimura: That's quite a stumbling block.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Dwayne or Larry would you guys be able to
provide for me a cost estimate of what it would cost utilizing KPD? I believe they got some room
there with a portable hoist that we could use temporarily. That service tech could work out of the
police department even if it's a tent with one of those inflatable hoist I've seen those and there
relatively cheap considering. If you could provide that for us and what the cost would be, I would
appreciate that. Thank you very much, any other questions on the vehicle fleet? Go ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: One more question on the metric.
Mr. Rapozo; Sure.
Ms. Yukimura: Your industrial accident rate, do you have a five year tally of
that?
Mr. Adachi: Yes.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.9
Ms. Yukimura: Can you provide that and as you look at this rate and if youx
goal is to always improve, what kind of measures well it's an upcoming initiative so will you be
developing some safety oh that's Lyle's expertise.
Mr. Adachi: We just implemented a safety program this year for the first
time and so we're just moving forward with that right now.
Ms. Yukimura: Well that's great to hear. Congratulations and we look
forward to seeing how it unfolds in the subsequent years, thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Any other questions for vehicle maintenance? Any comments?
If not, thank you very much. You know what I'm going to do this time is anyone in the audience
wishing to testify on public works? I apologize I should have asked upfront because I know I see
some people here. Anyone interested in testifying? We're still going to get into Engineering and Solid
Waste or Roads but if you're here and you wish to testify on any component of Public Works I will
suspend the rules now so that you don't have to come back in the event we go beyond today. Okay
Mr. Dill do you mind if we ask for a few minutes to suspend the rules and then will take the public
testimony? Okay rules are suspended I don't know if we have anyone wishing to testify, Mr. Bulatao
and Ken are you going to testify as well? Okay, you got 3 minutes and then you will have a second 3
minutes after everyone is complete. Thank you.
There being no objections, the rules were suspended.
JOSE BULATAO: Good afternoon I think, Jose Bulatao. I'm here to raise some
questions from a personal point of view on the matter of the Host Community Benefit allotment that
was arranged quite some time ago. My question really focuses on what we haven't received annually
after the initial amount had been set by the Council I think back in 2009. Since then a yearly
allocation of eighty thousand I believe has presumably been sent to our funding allocation and so far
we have received a hundred and sixty thousand dollars and possibly there may be another eighty
thousand dollars allotted to the community if it goes on the usual premise that has been set
previously which is fine. My question is this, when we had our papers informing us that an allocation
would be forthcoming a distinction was made between the possibilities of a dollar per ton up to five
dollars per ton and if it were at a dollar a ton the amount was eighty five thousand dollars. Yet when
the allotment amount was allocated to the community it was reduced to eighty thousand dollars? I
would like to know about the differentiation between the eighty to the eighty five thousand dollars
and the accountability of why it was reduced from eighty five to eighty thousand dollars for
informational purposes? The other one is if there may be the possibility I think there is that the
residents will hence forth be charged an amount whenever that might begin and that will make a
difference of the income that solid waste will be receiving in addition to what it already is getting?
Will that make a difference with the allotment consideration for the community should there be an
additional amount given to solid waste? I would like to have clarification on that, that's all.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you Mr. Bulatao we will definitely send that questions
and get an answer to you as soon as possible.
Mr. Bulatao: I would appreciate that thank you very much.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro was noted present at 2:10 p.m.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo on that note since Mr. Rezentes walked in I just
want to restructure that question so he's aware of it. The initial fund that we set up for the
communities facilities district was six hundred fifty thousand dollars approved by this council and
we were of the impression that the amount equaled to one dollar a ton or approximately eighty five
thousand a year would be set aside and the previous documentation said that for the last two years
that is the amount that has been earmarked. The question has been raised that the amount is now
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.10
eighty thousand dollars annually? The question coming over from the council would be, when was
that number revisited and renegotiated as I don't recall it coming to the council? We will be sending
that over as a question. Mr. Bulatao did I summarize that appropriately?
Mr. Bulatao: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo I'm going to have to step out again in about ten
minutes we are taking care of another piece of business right now so why don't you continue.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Taylor you wanted to testify? We took some public
testimony and I forgot to ask upfront.
Mr. Furfaro: My apologies to you Mr. Taylor I just wanted to summarize
that last question.
KEN TAYLOR: Chair members of the council my name is Ken Taylor and
thank you for that summary. My issue at this moment and reading the mission statement from
buildings divisions, It says that the mission from the division of buildings is responsible for code
enforcement facility development and so on... My concern is a health and safety issue relating to
code enforcement. This particular hearing room, the planning commission hearing room and the last
I checked the liquor control hearing room are not properly posted for adequate capacity of people
being in them. It's been very difficult to get this taken care of and it is a health and safety issue and
I think it's a very important one. I think the county should be setting the example of following the
county code and I hope that as we go through this process and move on in to the next year that we
can see the county abide by all of the rules and regulations that it requires of others. This is my
opportunity to raise this issue and the code I understand that the numbers I had some time back
have been changed but the international building code which I have been told that the county follows
now is 1004.1- design occupancy load. I hope that you can give direction to the proper departments to
get the county to be in compliance with the code. Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you Ken. Mr. Figueroa. For your information Ken the
fire chief is working on that draft proposal which will come to us in the next few months that clearly
defines the occupancy requirement for the county of Kauai.
Mr. Furfaro: Before we go on I would also like to say Ken if you look at our
postings all the requirements for ADA are on each posting for sign language, hearing impaired, etc..
And as Mr. Rapozo said we will be following up and we did have the posting of 93 seats in our old
location. Mel is going to send this question over to the fire chief. On all of the other ADA questions
you had it is posted in each six day posting notice that special arrangements can be made.
Mr. Taylor: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Go ahead Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Go ahead just introduce yourself for the captioner.
JOSEPH FIGUEROA: For the record Joseph Figueroa. I don't really have major
statements or anything for you all today but it is in regards to the Kekaha Landfill and the Host
Community Benefit and basically I have a few questions. According to my knowledge the host
community benefits program was created to financially assist the host communities across America
who had and have to deal with the environmental impacts created form the designated landfills. Is
this true? That's my first question. When the CAC was create was it the intention for the county of
Kauai to create a board to assist in facilitating the distribution of funds from the host community
benefit program to the host community? Also with the provisions written in November of 2007
according to the County of Kauai Host Community Compensation Study associated with the Kekaha
Landfill, it states in article 5.4 headed, types of host community compensation for Kekaha direct
lump sum or annual payments to area residents and effected property owners. Why has the
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.11
county of Kauai after receiving this request and receiving this request and on December 2009
by E Ola Mau Na Leo O Kekaha, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit community organization created by the
Community of Kekaha. Not address this motion basically to exercise the direct lump sum payment
and also my most recent information given was meeting 1 (one) April 11, 2009 it also states in page 6
paragraph (5) quote unquote. One CAC member asked if the allocated funds could be awarded to the
community in one lump sum so that the money can earn some interest while the CAC is deciding
what to do with the money (action requested) so that was basically one of my next major questions
and I guess the last one is, what step in the process is withholding the County of Kauai, Department
of Finance from distributing the funds to the community of Kekaha? I just wanted to keep it general
and...
Mr. Furfaro: Can you give us those pieces in writing so we can respond to
you. I verbally can tell you what we have and hadn't agreed to but most of that dialog really has to
happen between the administration and your group. The County Council is in fact acknowledging
setting up a fund and I think Mr. Kawakami addressed a question about interest and that was
resolved. I sent a question over and it was pretty much resolved about the next step informing who
would actually oversee that fund.
Mr. Figueroa: So is it clear that I'm not going to get any questions answered
today?
Mr. Furfaro: I'm going to say to you that the answers to your questions
most of them don't come from this body, we will send them to the administration and share them
with you later. I can also tell you and I don't want to back track because I did attend with
Mr. Rapozo one of the advisory meetings in Kekaha of which we answered many of those questions
from the administration and I need to re-visit them.
Mr. Figueroa: Okay well according to my knowledge I was at the same
meeting and the reason why I wrote these questions down was because they weren't answered at
that meeting. Just to let you know.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay well very good, I believe they were. I believe the interest
question has been answered, I believe setting up the fund...
Mr. Figueroa: Well it wasn't the question on interest. It was the question of
distributing the funds to the community and what step in the process is withholding that from
happening?
Mr. Furfaro: Okay and I can tell you right now you need to establish with
the administration the -legal body that represents the community through the establishment of
whether it's a 501(3)(c) and or another mechanism and that answer comes from the administration
and the finance department, not from this council.
Mr. Figueroa: So the department of finance is the responsible body in which
they can answer these questions and they can respond properly. Is that or am I clear with that.
Mr. Furfaro: We're going to send your questions over to them and so that
they can respond to us as we will be the vehicle to answer your questions and when we get them
back we will share them with you. -This body cannot answer those in that...
Mr. Figueroa: I guess I just need a yes ox no answer. Can the department of
finance answer my questions? And do they have the authority to say a particular answer and yet
back up that answer? I just need...
Mr. Furfaro: We have two vehicles we can do here. You can send those
questions directly to Mr. Wally Rezentes and he can answer you. Your question about who is the
legitimate body to receive those is something that the administration and the county attorney will
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.12
review or you can use us as the vehicle, I do intend to send your questions if you give them to us
directly to the administration and when we get those responses we'll be willing to share them with
you.
Mr. Figueroa: Okay.
Mr. Furfaro: I'm sorry I haven't satisfied you but that's the way it needs to
work.
Mr. Figueroa: I just wanted a direct answer that's all and that's okay I
understand that I can't get a direct answer. Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: I don't think I can just give you a direct answer. Please give
us a copy of those questions, please give us a copy.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you anyone else wishing to testify on public works? If
not I will call the meeting back to order.
Chair Furfaro was noted excused at 2:24 p.m.
There being no objections, the meeting was called back to order.
Mr. Rapozo: We are 5 minutes away from a caption break so let's go ahead
and take a 10 minute caption break and when we return Mr. Furfaro should be back.
There being no objections the Committee recessed at 2:24 p.m. The Committee reconvened
at 2:34 p.m. and proceeded as follows.
Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Dill we will proceed with engineering.
Mr. Dill: Good afternoon again, for the record Larry Dill, County
Engineer. If you notice I'm all alone now, Lyle of course had to leave for a previous engagement and
our Chief of the Engineering Division Wally Kudo suddenly was called away on personal leave so I'm
carrying the ball this afternoon for engineering. Mission of the Engineering Division is the protection
of the public's health, safety, property and the environment through proper planning, development,
maintenance and operation of the counties infrastructure and administration of sediment and
erosion controlled measure, storm water runoff systems, driveway approaches, land use codes and
ordinances. Goals and objectives are protection of public health and safety by planning and
developing safe and cost effective roadway and drainage systems, protection of the public safety and
assurance of high quality of life by administering and enforcing subdivision grading and drainage
ordinances and regulations. Protection of public safety and investment through effective
maintenance of county facilities, roadways and drainage systems and we've listed some of our
objectives here some specific projects that we plan to complete this year. We also plan to improve the
management and delivery of capital improvement projects which is another one of our goals. So
some of our specific projects that are objectives to complete this year include, Puhi Road ultra thin
white topping and that's from Kaumuali`i Highway to Kaneka Road, it's on the (inaudible) plan this
year. We are leveraging county funds to get some federal funds to complete that project. Kokee road
resurfacing federal aid project will be an extension of a previous road resurfacing we did for Kokee
road again I think we have in our CIP that will get to on Monday about a million dollars of county
funds which we're leveraging to get about six million dollars of federal funds to support that project.
Upcoming this year is the Hanapepe Bridge and pedestrian repair project.
Some of our recent successes and achievements include that we've completed the in-house
design and construction services for the repair of the hauala (inaudible) crossing which was
undermined and damaged by severe storms and flooding in November of 2009. We completed
in-house design procured emergency construction and completed repairs in October of 2010 for that
project. Also the engineering division personnel completed a filed sampling and testing qualification
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.13
program in August of 2010 so that our staff is now qualified to conduct inspections on federal aid
projects. We've completed in-house design work for the Kokee road resurfacing project that I just
mentioned and received authorization from federal highways administration and the state to
advertise the project and call for bids. We anticipate advertising in May 2011 with notice to proceed
to follow shortly upon execution of the construction contract. We also procured and completed the
Piikoi office modification for the Fire Administration folks to develop construction plans to construct
additional office space in the Piikoi Building for the Fire Department . We have open bids and made
a recommendation of award and hopefully will be moving to construction shortly after that. Those
are some of the things we achieved recently. Some of the challenges that remain and I will deviate a
little bit from our agenda here to indicate that some of the restructuring we've been talking about
earlier involves the engineering division. We clarified the engineering division so it's broken up into
3 sections now that you can see are listed separately under these challenges. We have the
surveying/drafting and document section. We have a regulatory compliant section and regulatory
compliant deals with subdivision reviews, grading permits, road permits, flood ordinance related
issues. The project management section and project management will be focusing on development
and managing of our CIP projects so we're looking to build that project management crew to enhance
their ability to deliver the CIP projects.
So backing up again into our challenges in the first section we have many projects in the
works right now but limited drafting abilities. I mentioned earlier that we have some budget
proposed for auto cad which we had recently acquired more licenses, we went from one license to four
licenses and we're encouraging not just drafting but also using it as a design tool. As you maybe
aware auto cad is a powerful engineering software which is not simply a two dimensional drafting
program but it's got three dimensional design capabilities, so we're trying to get in the 21St century
and trying to implement more of that sort of thing in the engineering division. Regulatory complaints
and one of the challenges that's been existing for a little while now in the engineering division is that
most of the subdivision review which is a lot of the time consuming effort has been done personally
by the Chief who is very well versed in that, but as we've also been talking about succession
planning and he's been around for a long time a quite a number of years and has discussed in vague
terms retirement in his future. We have been looking at transitioning some of those subdivision
review responsibilities to the head of that regulatory compliant section so we're moving in that
regard. That section as well as you'll see in the project management section we're looking for more
staff and I will be talking about that too and a couple more positions to enhance their capabilities.
Project management 1 specific item there as far as the challenges is one of our two inspectors retired
within the last year and we're down to one inspector to inspect all these county things for us. We
thought we had one but he bailed on us at the last minute and so we're recruiting again and trying to
fill that position right now and hopefully will be filled shortly.
Improvements in the engineering division, the department has looked at engineering support
tech to assist the workload within the engineers and construction inspectors. As I mentioned we
purchased 3 auto cad licenses and these weeks our engineers and engineering support technician
had been attending training over at Kauai Community College twice a week for the next few weeks
to learn more about the auto cad and get that implemented. Currently there is one engineering
drafting technician that supports eight engineers and one surveyor. As I mentioned it's a bit of bottle
act for us we're trying to open up that bottle act and with training it should lessen the work load for
that drafting technician. Upcoming initiatives as we talked a little bit about the minor restructuring
that's happening in the engineering division, surveying/drafting of documents and increasing the
auto cad capabilities. We're also exploring the need for a survey crew and we have a license surveyor
on staff that who has no crew so in order to perform any surveying we occasionally get request for
surveying to support other divisions. We've had to ask other divisions to supply them with a team
member so they can go out and conduct the necessary survey work, so we're looking at that.
Regulatory compliance group I mentioned that the subdivision review responsibility we're working
on gradually transferring that from the Chief division to the head of the regulatory compliance
section which will build their capacity and also free up the chief to address some of the management
issues related to that division.
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.14
Regarding the project management group, again this is the group that we foresee and are
planning to transfer the vast majority of the CIP efforts not only in public works but county wide. In
an effort to support that group the engineering program administrator has physically moved from
the public works admin office down to the engineering division and is heading that group. He's
played a major part so will see when we get to the CIP review on Monday in getting our arms around
the status of all our CIP projects and plans for moving them forward. As you are aware we have a
CIP Project Manager position actually connected to the Mayor's office now and he will be physically
moving to the public works admin office so we can enhance cooperation, communication and
coordination with the CIP project manager on the work that we're doing. Take a look at our
financials. We are at a budget meeting right? As you can see again there are some variations within
a few percent fiscal year over fiscal year so not a great deal of change as far as the portioning of cost
on a percentage basis. If you take a look at the operating budget discussion as it relates to those bar
charts and the table of information. The same theme again we have an increase in salaries, wages
and benefits due to eliminations of the furloughs as well as increased contribution requirements for
employee benefits. Additionally specifically with regards to the engineering division the personnel
that are in charge of the flood plain management are certified flood plain manager has been moved
over from the building division so he's showing up in the engineering division budget now rather
than building which is another reason why the salaries in budget has increased on the engineering
division budget.
Mr. Bynum: Can you say that again, I just missed it. Who moved where?
Mr. Dill: The Flood Plain Manager was previously in engineering and
got moved to building and now it's moved back to the engineering division. I don't know a lot of the
history of why that's happened but I'm just letting you know that budget wise that's why we're
seeing a bit of a hit in the engineering division budget.
Mr. Bynum: I will have a question about that later.
Mr. Dill: Okay. Also this is where we're proposing the funding of two
previously dollar funded positions, a CE6 and a CE1, Civil Engineer 6 and a Civil Engineer 1, one
each and six in the project management group to help us with the management of projects and the
Civil Engineer one on the regulatory compliance side to help with that staff. You will see also an
equipment budget that's related and those are lease payment requirements and the lease is for two
new vehicles for the engineering division. I will touch on the list that was provided to you earlier and
mention that all of those vehicles that we're proposing in this budget are replacement of existing
vehicles as recommend by the automotive division superintendent that those vehicles are worthy of
repair at this stage. The amount you see in the budget are not purchased amounts there is also our
reflecting lease payment amounts, they're all being leased under a wide ranging lease. That is it for
the engineering division and I will be happy to take any of your questions.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: So you're looking at more support technicians and you've
made these three kinds of chunks of the engineering division right?
Mr. Dill: Well this year specifically in the budget we're proposing the
funding of two engineering positions, a civil engineer 6 and a civil engineer 1. We are using existing
support technicians to do other things than they were doing before to assist in for instance in
inspections where we're missing some staff right now.
Mr. Bynum: So hiring those positions than will free those technicians to do
more what they were originally intended to do.
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.15
Mr. Bynum: Okay that's clear now. In terms of the ongoing regulatory
compliance they'll be a person who's in charge of that?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: Is that Wynn?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And just about Mario going here and there.
Mr. Dill: That's not Mario.
Mr. Bynum: It's not the flood, the flood person.
Mr. Dill: No.
Mr. Rapozo: Let's try not to use the name, that's not appropriate.
Mr. Bynum: The flood person.
Mr. Dill: Yes the flood person is in the engineering division now and I
would be happy to share with you offline more particulars about that if you'd like?
Mr. Bynum: Yes I have a few questions I will ask finance.
Mr. Dill: Okay.
Mr. Rapozo: Any other questions on engineering? You have another
question?
Mr. Bynum: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Is it a different question?
Mr. Bynum: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo Okay anyone else has any questions pertaining to his first
question? Okay anyone else have another question? Mr. Chang.
Mr. Chang: Hi Larry. Goals and objectives bullet point number (3)
protection of public safety investment through effective maintenance of county facilities, roadways
and drainage systems. Can you explain what your goals are for the drainage systems? And if I can be
more specific. I chatted with you the last time you know the man holes and when you lift up the
manhole and go down there's always leaves and mud or sludge and sticks or what have you.
Remember I was telling you a lot of those man holes because there plugged up from all of the leaves
and the opala that the water was actually backing up because it couldn't make its way out. In the
place and time when you folks do your drainage, it's more maintenance like clearing out the drainage
so the water can make it out to the ocean or wherever its heading out. Was that part of the drainage
system for your goals and objectives?
Mr. Dill: Yes and actually that specific maintenance as you described it
is more pertinent to the roads division than engineering and in looking at these from an engineering
perspective to make sure that when things are designed that they will continue to operate effectively
and efficiently. The actual work to go out and clean the drains etc... is the responsibility of the roads
division and so yes that's within their scope of work.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.16
Mr. Chang: Okay and I'm not going to ask you how are you going to
improve management and delivery but the big thing is obviously the capital improvement projects.
Also lastly Puhi Road (UTWT) Ultra Thin White Topping, What exactly is ultra thin white topping?
Mr. Dill: Ultra thin white topping is paving not with asphalt cement
but with concrete. You have recently seen the state do some ultra thin white topping out by the
airport and they're also doing it right now by the Kaumuali`i Highway by Kuku`i Grove. Actually
ultra thin may be a misnomer because it's actually a six inch thick layer of concrete that they're
using as the driving course as opposed to asphalt cement.
Mr. Chang: And that's from the main road, the intersection traffic light to
Kameka Road?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Mr. Chang: Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Anymore questions on goals and objectives? Ms. Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Actually no.
Mr. Rapozo: Than go ahead you have another question?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes. I'm so glad that you're doing the Kokee Road resurfacing.
We did talk in earlier sessions about how you even out the shoulders and not have these big ledges,
how you put in base course where you need base course so you're not just paving over dirt and grass.
Were those included in the specs for this Kokee Road?
Mr. Dill: I would have to get back to you on that one Councilmember.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay I mean it's a big project. What is it 6 million dollars?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And I just want to make sure that... because I think the last
time it was repaved was during my administration so it's been a long time but I may be wrong.
Mr. Rapozo: I think you're probably right. Councilmember Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you Larry for this report and your work in
restructuring this division. I think it's a very good frame work that you set up here and I have one
question or concern about the regulatory compliance? It says here will be reviewing the subdivision
has the responsibility for reviewing subdivisions and also what comes through that individual is
environmental assessment, planning reports, it's roadway transfers and there's quite a long list of
things that one individual has been doing up until now.
Mr. Dill: That's correct.
Ms. Nakamura: And it's quite overwhelming I think. I was wondering how
many positions in your restructuring will end up in this division? And anothex question that I have
is I think what's missing in here is the whole transportation planning piece. I'm not sure where it
belongs within the county, but I know that was one of the functions that the individual working here
handled and you know in waste water you got people looking at planning and water you got people
looking at planning for the infrastructure and transportation has been one area that I'm not sure
where or if this is the place that it belongs.
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.17
Mr. Dill: A lot of that resides in planning actually they have a big part
of that because there the land planners. But as you mentioned the individual who is the chief of the
engineering division has participated in that. We envision that is a big picture item that he will stay
involved with but we're trying to get off of his plate a lot of the regular day to day reviews of the
subdivision permits, roads permits, flood permits and that kind of stuff. But we want him to be a big
picture guy and be looked at as a big picture kind of item.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Any other questions pertaining to...
Mr. Dill: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. In the regulatory compliance group we
have five staff in that group right now.
Mr. Rapozo: And you're adding one to that?
Mr. Dill: No that includes the one that we're proposing.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: So this is a new question now?
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah.
Mr. Bynum: I know this division, you're not talking about them putting
out the contracts and doing the work you're talking about them doing the planning and engineering
for the work right?
Mr. Dill: On the project management side they do the planning and the
engineering. Sometimes the engineering is done in house sometimes its consultant.
Mr. Bynum: Kokee road resurfacing?
Mr. Dill: That one was done in-house but we also do the contract.
Mr. Bynum: The planning was done in-house?
Mr. Dill: Planning, engineering and the contract were.
Mr. Bynum: So that's not going to happen in roads?
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Mr. Bynum: So regarding the Piikoi building that's just for the fire
section?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: So we're not moving forward with (inaudible) out the rest of
that vacancy?
Mr. Dill: No, you will see when we talk about the CIP project we have
plans for further build out of that and funds being requested for CIP work for that.
Mr. Bynum: So this is like Phase 1 then?
Mr. Dill? Yes.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.18
Mr. Rapozo: Is that it?
Mr. Bynum: Yes for that one. Were taking one question at a time right?
Mr. Rapozo: Yes I want to give everyone an opportunity. Anyone have any
further discussions on the Piikoi Building? Any other questions? Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Actually it is about the Piikoi office modification. How many
square feet is involved?
Mr. Dill: I don't know the answer to the question I will need to get back
to you.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so then I mean we discussed our concern about the
planning departments need for space and so I am aware because it was my administration when
they first renovated that building. There is a lot of space potential in that building and my question
is do we have an overall master plan that will guide our build out of that building and what priority
and time table is there for planning?
Mr. Dill: My answer to the first part of that question is yes there is
enough office space and a needs assessment was done and identified all the areas for the various
divisions to move into there for build out of that space. We have as a work in progress as schedule
we're putting together to try and identify priorities and also impacts of various moves. That place
has been used for a lot of storage right now so we've got to look at storage places to move that out
before they can build it out.
Ms. Yukimura: Or maybe go paperless with I.T.s help?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Dill: There is also a lot of stuff besides files that's stored over
there. There's all kind of stuff.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, okay.
Mr. Dill: But you're right, files is part of it.
Ms. Yukimura: I see, sorry to assume it was only files. Okay so we will send a
question over on that and get your answer back?
Mr. Dill: Sure.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you very much.
Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Just a comment and probably not here during budget and we
have to decide which committee because it could go planning or public works but what's the time
table with that building and actually moving people? When we started with the Fire Department It
was like lets go lets plan the whole thing because it's a really valuable asset that's been sitting idle
for a very long time and we're paying lease payments for the fire department right now for instance
so I know the priority is there because it's not like we're squeezing people like we are at planning.
We're actually paying county dollars for a private building so this is a thought for whoever is
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.19
listening. I want us to have a more systemic discussion about how we build out that building, how we
get people moved in and I think that's probably going to come in a future committee meeting.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, any other questions for engineering and the
budget? Thank you Larry we will be sending over questions to the administration and I know one of
the things as you described it somewhat in your report but as far as all of the departments I think
what I would like to see is a the matrix of all the personnel changes and reallocations. Some of the
departments clearly put it in a chart form and some described it a narrative but we will be sending
something over to clearly define all the different increases and the salary lines for each department.
Okay if no more questions for engineering lets go to roads.
ROADS DIVISION
Mr. Dill: Joining me now is Mr. Ed Renaud, Chief of our Roads
Division. The mission of the roads division is to maintain county roadways in a manner that will
safely convey vehicular and pedestrian traffic-and to maintain drainage facilities and provide county
wide support with equipment and labor. Goals are to keep county roads and bridges safe for public
use, to anticipate and address road, bridge and drainage needs, to make the best and most efficient
use of the division's resources, to improve internal and public communication and to instill pride in
the jobs that we perform. Program description; the roads maintenance division performs roadway
pavement, shoulder, bridge, sidewalk, driveway, curb and gutter, levee and (inaudible) maintenance
and repairs, installation and maintenance of traffic and safety devices, installation maintenance and
repairs of signs and road markings. The road maintenance division supports the department of parks
and recreation and the solid waste division on a regular basis and also supports other agencies on an
as needed basis. The division also plays a key role in disaster response. Some successes and
achievements recently are that we've been implementing improvements in the recording and
tracking of public complaints has improved response and accountability. We have ongoing training to
improve base yard maintenance planning, scheduling, reporting and supervisory management of
roads, projects and assignments. We've been implementing documentation of the road division
maintenance procedures and standard operating procedures and we completed the 2010 bridge
inspection for the 23 county bridges and required by State. Some of the challenges as you aware are
accomplishing the annual Island wide resurfacing requirements has been a challenge for us as we've
been moving on.
The economic downturn has been limited to spending in road maintenance, the status of
roads in limbo and paper roads and drainage maintenance is an interesting challenge that we face
actually fairly often an interestingly legal question which ends up in our laps a lot of the time as we
try to address the needs of the community while also understanding any possible liabilities we get
into with roads we may not actually own. Meeting new regulatory compliance requirements; there's
a new traffic sign reflectivity requirement that's coming down I believe from the Feds, that we are
required to upgrade all of our signs on the Island to meet that new reflectivity standard. Also
meeting the bi-annual every two year bridge inspection requirement imposed by the State as a
challenge we keep up with and generally speaking increasing public expectations. We have a public I
think that's more educated more akamai and more willing to call us when they see problems out
there so it generally creates more time and energy for us to address those things. Some
improvements in the roads division; we've conducted a detailed inventory- an assessment and
evaluation of the 2009/2010 Island wide road resurfacing in order to ensure road conditions from an
objective standpoint. Our roads maintenance management information tracking system; we've
completed evaluation and selection process for procurement of the system and training and data
implementation soon to take place so as we implement that. We have also completed procurement of
the micro (inaudible) software as we've discussed before you before and training and data
implementation is also taking place. We recently completed some discrimination and harassment
training for all the roads employees. Roads supervisors have taken and been certified in the
emergency response course sponsored by the Civil Defense Agency and all of our base yard facilities
have recently been made ADA accessible and our vehicle equipment training has been caught up to
cycle and we're now assisting county wide agencies in their training.
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.20
Some upcoming initiatives; continue the implementation of the micro-paver program and the
roads maintenance management information tracking system using the data from these systems we
can conduct a cost benefit analysis of road maintenance programs. We included repair work in
repaving projects to reduce overall roadway lifecycle cost again as we've discussed previously. We are
working with the County Attorney and Legislative bodies to adjust the roads and limbo and paper
roads questions. We plan to bring supervisor training to a higher standard to address planning,
scheduling, report writing, cost analysis, purchasing systems, morale motivation training and
accountability within the division. The roads division will be working with I.T, to use geographic
information systems or GIS in our roads maintenance programs to identify problem areas and
pinpoint public safety concerns. Finally we have hired additional staff for our traffic signs and to
help in assist in meeting the new reflectivity requirements I mentioned and to reduce the back log.
We can take a look at from a purely budgeting standpoint, the compared to budgets between 2012
and 2011 indicate basically again that the percentage apportionment from the various activities is
pretty similar to what it was in the current fiscal year. If you take a look at the operating budget
discussion again the same theme we have an increase in salaries, wages and benefits due to
elimination of furloughs and the contribution requirements for employee benefits.
You can see a decrease significant in our increment lease line item and that's due to the
completion of some payment on some of our equipment leases last year or this year. A significant
item in our increase operating cost in our line item was an increase in our indirect cost central
services allocation from our finance department. And with that I would be happy to take any of your
questions.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you very much, any questions for roads? Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum; I will start with my pet question that I asked the last 3
budget times. In our road marking and I know you made a commitment to do the thermo striping in
new construction or new road works but have you looked into getting the equipment for when we do
this and implementing it for the in-house work we do?
ED RENAUD, CHIEF ROADS DIVISION: Ed Renaud for the record. No we
haven't looked into it because of the economy and the budget I want to go forward first but we have
implemented that in the new resurfacing for (inaudible) roads but for our county roads I'm going to
go with striping because there's not that much and most of it is at the beginning of intersections
where we stripe and most of our roads don't have the striping. Very shortly maybe in the next budget
not this one we would be ready to maybe venture into that area.
Mr. Bynum: Okay, I've had that answer at 3 budgets and I will accept it
again because we all agree that it has better long term cost benefit analysis and safety is what I'm
focused on. It is more visible for long periods of time and it keeps our roads safely.
Mr. Renaud: Right.
Mr. Bynum: Can I ask about GIS?
Mr. Rapozo; Go ahead.
Mr. Bynum: I only have a few questions total.
Mr. Rapozo: Go ahead.
Mr. Bynum; I'm glad to see that you're working to integrate GIS and I'm
just curious and maybe you don't know but like the police I know tracks traffic accidents and where
they occur and injury accidents and that kind of thing. Do they do that on GIS and will that
integrate with our GIS?
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.21
Mr. Dill: There is an existence on existing county wide GIS systems
and I've only had some preliminary discussions with the I.T. folks but our plan and I know that
micro-paver has GIS capabilities so we would use the GIS that exist with the county to track
problem areas. We would be able to see where we're having a lot of pothole repairs that are being
required that might be an indicator of a requirement to do some pavement restoration as opposed to
just pothole fixes. We will be incorporating that and using GIS to tract that sort of things.
Mr. Bynum: The GIS is an extremely powerful tool, I have been to a bunch
of training over the last 7 years and then I hear periodically from all these departments saying well
if we can ever get on GIS, but we have one GIS guy in I.T. and they're coming later. We have
invested a lot in that system and I want us to use it.
Mr. Dill: We have had conversations with our I.T. folks and we will be
incorporating that in what we're doing with roads.
Mr. Bynum: That's good news and my last question is about roads in
limbo. I read a study that was done 25 years ago by Warren Perry about roads in limbo and this
comes up all of the time. Is there a new initiative now to actually try to resolve this 30 year old
question as to who owns these roads? The State says you own them and the County says no you own
them and...
Mr. Dill: I don't have a good answer for that and in the four and a half
months that I've been here it's a new issue for me personally. All I can say is that we get complaints
sometimes about roads and we discover that we don't own clear title's those roads and we are very
careful then about moving on those roads. To understand for sure what our liability might be with
going forward and what kind of precedence we set and unfortunately I don't have a good answer to
you for that question. We are raising the issue with the attorney's office for some help.
Mr. Bynum: On your spare time can you get that 30 year old report from
warren because it bubbles up as an important issue and then it kind of bubbles down so it was kind
of interesting to see it come up in your report here.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you I have Mr. Chang and then Mr. Kualii.
Mr. Chang: Thanks Ed for being here. I'm just going to say the same
question that I did regarding the drainage needs when you mentioned you were coming to roads. Can
you and I have talked with you for a long time about the concerns I had so can you maybe walk us
out through the principal about clearing the drainage? Like how do we go about clearing the
drainage?
Mr. Renaud: If it's an open drainage we do the normal thing with our
excavators and everything but we first need to be sure that we own that property before we can go
in. Now for the closed drainage through lines and stuff, this is what we are discussing right now
within administration on equipment and stuff and where we're going to go. So the only thing and
with all honesty, if there is a problem with asserting closed drainage we go in and our sewers
department or wastewater assists us.
Mr. Dill: If I can add to that as Ed is mentioning wastewater division
has a vector truck which is what you need in order to clean storm drains and so they've been
cooperative with us in allowing us to schedule our work around theirs, We are looking for other
opportunities and the department of water also has a vector so we've had some discussion with them
about sharing that piece of equipment with them.
Mr. Chang: Okay and I'm only thinking that as we approach the summer
season it's obviously a good time to be thinking about things as such because when we get to the
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.22
rainy season then at least we will know that the drains are proper so it doesn't back up. Thank you
Chair.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, Mr. Kualii.
Mr. Kualii: Just a quick question you have a bullet here on the last
upcoming initiatives that talks about hiring additional staff for traffic signs and marking sections.
Are those new positions and how many? Is it showing in the budget?
Mr. Dill: We're showing that and that was a previously dollar funded
position that we're showing in this budget.
Mr. Kualii: One position?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Mr. Kualii: What's the position?
Mr. Dill: .That's traffic sign painter.
Mr. Renaud: He is the person on the computer that makes out the signs
itself.
Mr. Kualii: Okay thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay Mr. Furfaro your back.
Chair Furfaro was noted as present at 3:15 p.m.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you very much for letting the meeting progress
forward and we will start with you Mr. Rapozo since you were chairing this do you have any
questions you would like to direct to engineering?
Mr. Rapozo: Just as a follow up really to Mr. Kualii's question regarding
the sign maker. Do we have a sign maker currently? What is his title I'm sorry I hate to call him a
sign maker?
Mr. Dill: Traffic signs painter.
Mr. Rapozo: So you have a traffic signs painter currently in the budget?
Mr. Renaud: No we don't have one currently, we got that position
administration but it back as dollar funded or vacant so now I'm working on the job description
because it's a very hard position to fill. So very shortly I'm hoping in a month I can get that out so
that we can go through personnel.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay so we had that position before?
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Rapozo: And it was dollar funded? When was it dollar funded I don't
remember? So who was doing the signs while that position was dollar funded?
Mr. Renaud: Well we had to scramble and talk to different individuals
there and I'm sorry the original person who had the position is now advanced to a supervisor so I had
to beg on my knees just to get him to come back down to assist.
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.23
Mr. Rapozo: Okay so there's a traffic signs and marking supervisor right?
That's where that person went?
Mr. Renaud: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: And there's and I'm assuming (TS) is traffic signs and market
crew leader?
Mr. Renaud: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Then you have a traffic sign painter?
Mr. Renaud: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Then you have a traffic marker? And then you have a traffic
sign and marking 2 traffic signs and marking helpers? How many signs do we produce? Is that every
sign, street signs, parking signs?
Mr. Renaud: Every sign countywide, parks and everything.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay and with this new regulation, all of these signs are
going to have to be replaced?
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Rapozo: And we didn't get any funding for that?
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you that's all I have.
Mr. Furfaro: Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Just a follow up to Councilmember Rapozo's question. Do we
have a time frame by which we have to be in compliance?
Mr. Renaud: I don't have one yet but the thing is I'm working with
engineering and that's another agency that is assisting us on the regulatory side so shortly we will
be scheduling meeting and moving forward with that.
Ms. Nakamura: So we just don't know at this time.
Mr. Renaud: No not yet.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Ed may I ask you why would you say that position is so hard
to recruit for? I'm going to give you my version of it. In life you want to accomplish things on a
regular basis and so forth and I always thought with painting you can see your progress and at the
end of the day you know exactly where you left off.
Mr. Renaud: It's not really about painting it's more of going on the
computer and doing the program.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay so their cutting signs?
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.24
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Furfaro: For like even the signs that go on our door?
Mr. Renaud: Everything.
Mr. Furfaro: Jay Furfaro chairman and stuff?
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Furfaro: Did you say that earlier.
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Furfaro: Did you say that to the body here?
Mr. Renaud: Oh no I did not.
Mr. Furfaro: Oh okay so that was my whole point.
Mr. Renaud: The question wasn't presented to me.
Mr. Furfaro: You have to be able to cut all of these signs, you have to
program it in the computer so it's not like just oh I left off here at 3:45 and I will be back tomorrow
and start here?
Mr. Renaud: That's right.
Mr. Furfaro: You actually have to have some computer skills and you have
to be able to program and make sur e the documents are centered and all of that?
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay I understand why it's a little more challenging to recruit
now. So that's a skilled position?
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Furfaro: It's a skilled position? Okay.
Mr. Rapozo: I just want to know where I can apply.
Mr. Dill: Right here.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Unfortunately I missed some of these meetings but I think
the fire chief reported that the beach safety signs were out of whack. Does this position do those as
well?
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Bynum: Because I never got to ask that follow up question with fire
but I'm really worried about those being out of compliance because it increases our liability so maybe
I will ask the county attorney.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.25
Mr. Furfaro: That's how we left it with the fire department. The role of this
person making signs, there is an urgency to get that position filled and get that person making and
creating the signs that we need that helps us defend ourselves for any liability. Did you hear me Mr.
Dill? That's how we left it and that position is important to fill because we want to get beach safety
signs updated so that we don't have an issue with public notice on liability and safety issues. Mr.
Kualii did you have any questions? Councilmembers? Councilwoman Yukimura did you have
something?
Ms. Yukimura: Just one question?
Mr. Furfaro: Go right ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: You folks take care of the maintenance of county roads which
is affected by how the roads are designed and constructed and that is in the hands of the engineering
division. Is part of the regulatory process where private developers first create the roads and is there
any problem with feedback loops to if there are problems created in the design and construction
phase that cause maintenance problems later to where there is then feedback to how roads are
originally created?
Mr. Dill: That's possible and generally speaking many of those
criteria's are very standard and they are applied that way by our engineering division according to
the rules, regulations and ordinances. Occasionally situations do arise in which the engineering
division flags a situation that may be non-centered or maybe recognized as a potential to become
probomatic from a maintenance stand point. In those situations the roads divisions is brought into
the loop for their input on those.
Mr. Furfaro: Councilmember Kualii.
Mr. Kualii: I do have a quick one -after all. So in your opening remarks
when you talked about generally what you do, you did mention sidewalk and driveways. Is there any
way to see how much resources the county is putting into sidewalks? I know you talked about roads
a lot and over the years I participated with Get Fit Kauai and we did several things like the great
weigh out with Hoolalahui Hawaii and we walked around Lihu`e town and I know this is a problem
for many, many years 10-20 years what have you but obviously the Island is growing and the core
city here is getting busier and we're encouraging people to walk more and many of our sidewalks are
deficient, too small, too narrow and they end in places.. Where can I look in the budget to see what
time and effort and moneys are being dedicated to improving sidewalks?
Mr. Dill: Interesting question. First I understand the roads division is
a maintenance division so they maintain what's out there and as far as the provision of new
sidewalks and widening or extensions of existing ones is not their Kuleana. I do know that we've had
some meetings between myself, as the county engineer, planning department head, housing agency,
and this is all very new to where we've looked at some smart growth concepts which would include
enhancing pedestrian facilities in various places. That's a very new initiative so I don't have much to
report to you on at this stage. I know there's a smart growth workshop coming up this month that
will be attending to try to enhance some of those things.
Mr. Kualii: But the existing sidewalks are being maintained?
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Mr. Kualii: Whether they are deficient and providing for the public to
east least keeping it at that level.
Mr. Dill: That's correct.
Mr. Kualii: Okay thank you.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.26
Mr. Furfaro: Just for both of your benefits I think that was a very good
framework of a question. There is first and foremost an ordinance that talks about complete streets
and sidewalks and so forth. For new roads going forward versus the retrofit of many sidewalks and
so forth I want to remind you when I first got on the council 10 years ago we used a lot of community
development block grant moneys especially on our sidewalks in town where we made those
adjustments for the ADU use, and having the yellow grips and we lowered the extremes of the
corners and so forth. I look forward to the workshop as well but I think we need to follow up on
councilmember Kualii's question that we have the retrofit issues and we also have the ordinance that
deals with new subdivisions and sidewalks.
Mr. Dill: Actually something will be coming up with the CIP discussion
on Monday as part of our Lihu`e Civic Center improvements as a lot of those sorts of things included.
There will be ADA improvements as well as enhanced pedestrian opportunities.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Dill. Councilmember Bynum did you have a
question?
Mr. Bynum: Yes, I think two final ones and one real quick about because
it's very clear if you have an existing sidewalk that's in need of maintenance that you right?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: So take a look at the one that fronts Mahelona Hospital for
me okay. You've mentioned in your program description that roads division supports parks and solid
waste on a regular basis and other agencies and is that always going to be the case? Have we come to
the point where we say roads are going to provide major support to these 2 agencies forever or is
there a long term goal to diminish that? In the past the concerns about roads maintenance was
hey this maintenance isn't happening and the answer has been brah you know what we gotta do
we've been pulled off maintenance all of the time to do these other tasks for other divisions. Do we
resign now that we're going to provide that support on ongoing basis?
Mr. Dill: Well first let me say you're exactly correct that the roads
maintenance division supplies a lot of support for other departments and agencies within the county.
They are really a work horse that's within the county.
Mr. Bynum: Definitely.
Mr. Dill: I can speak to the refuge collection side and solid waste side
that we are in the process of making a move to move the staff from the roads division to solid waste
in an effort to make solid waste more of an independent division so we are working on that. On the
parks side maybe a longer term effort.
Mr. Bynum: I appreciate that answer because roads just gets pulled into
all kinds of million directions and whether its drainage or sidings or sidewalks, that's a good answer
thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Just out of curiosity because Mr. Rapozo ran the last 45
minutes of this for me, are we going to go to solid waste next?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Is that the plan Larry?
Mr. Dill: We're going in the order so actually wastewater I have next.
Mr. Furfaro: Wastewater next okay then solid waste okay.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.27
Mr. Dill: Well actually when Doug got back I mentioned that Chief of
the Building Division had to be at a State Highways meeting this afternoon so if we can pick him up
before solid waste and then move on to solid waste. If you could be flexible there I would appreciate
that.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay are we willing to go there now?
Mr. Dill: If we're done with roads can we move on to wastewater? Is
that alright?
Mr. Furfaro: I thought you just told me... weren't you referencing a...
Mr. Bynum: When he arrives.
Mr. Dill: When he arrives.
Mr. Furfaro: When he arrives okay.
Mr. Dill: Yeah I haven't seen him back here yet.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay, okay, now I understand why you took a turn over your
shoulder. We will go to wastewater then.
Mr. Dill: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chang do you have one more question?
Mr. Chang: No I don't have a question. I was going to ask if we could take
a 5 minute recess.
Mr. Furfaro: Where are we at on our tape? We're good. Do you need a 5
minute recess for the group?
Mr. Chang: Yes to stretch and...
Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Chair are we going to five today? Is that what you said?
Mr. Furfaro: We can try yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Then I would suggest taking a caption break and it will take
us right to five if not we're going to have to come back before five to do a caption break.
now.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay we're going to take a 10 minute caption break right
There being no objections, the committee recessed at 3:30 p.m.
The Committee reconvened at 3:42 p.m. and proceeded as follows.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Dill we're going to go ahead and call this session back to
order and we are going to five o clock today and the idea being we will do capital improvements on
Monday. I know this is your first budget process but in a discussion with councilmember Nakamura
I do want to let you know that one of the practices we're probably looking at next year is maybe do
some strategic planning in the process in February so when we come to the budget we are dealing
with the numbers so that we can see your business strategy, your business plan for your department
and maybe have a week of narrative in February so that we can anticipate some things coming up. I
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.28
just thought I would share with you that in a discussion I had with councilmember Nakamura that
you and I are clearer on that in the private sector as well. Councilwoman...
Ms. Yukimura: I think that's a wonderful idea and I'm also remembering
that's a time when they're putting together their budgets for the administration to send to us so that
actually having the workshops maybe even in November or December as just before they begin to
prepare for their budgets might be...
Mr. Furfaro: Well we can have more discussion but I thought that was a
wonderful suggestion and its one that I certainly concur with but we need to deal with some of that
strategic thinking and business plan. I just see that you have switched full backs on us?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay so we're not going to waste water?
Mr. Dill: Will do building please if that's alright?
Mr. Furfaro: Okay we're going to go to buildings. Mr. Haigh your boss is
watching out for you here and your time schedule so I will let you do the introductions Mr. Dill and
we'll go from there.
BUILDINGS DIVISION
Mr. Dill: Larry Dill, County Engineer for the record. With me here is
Doug Haigh, Chief of Buildings Division. The mission of the division of buildings is responsible code
enforcement, facility development building construction maintenance and janitorial services. All
programs are responsible for providing the people of Kauai with safety constructed public and
private facilities and well maintained county facilities. Our goals and objectives include developing
new facilities to replace old (inaudible) overcrowded buildings and structures. To ensure that the
minimum construction standards contain within the Kauai County Code and referenced building
trade codes are hereto. To continually update the Kauai County Code to meet current building
industry codes which reflect the latest industry standards and changing technologies. To provide
effective training and adequate staffing to increase the efficiency of services to the public in their
view, issuance enforcement of building, electrical, plumbing and sign permits. To maintain and clean
county office buildings and neighborhood centers. To provide, repair and construction services for all
county facilities and to prolong the life and maintain the value of a variety of structures. To provide
necessary services in the preparation and management of construction and service contracts and
specifically a couple of objections project wise for the building division include, the completion of the
Historic County Building renovation to provide your home back to you folks. Also to start
construction of the Lydgate/Kapa`a bicycle pedestrian path Phase A. If you want to note some of our
successes and achievements of lately include some of the following projects. Wailua Golf Course
maintenance building project, the Lihu`e Carriage House project, the Police evidence storage area
mechanical renovation project and the Kaiakea fire station.
You can see that the building division does a lot of work for the various different agencies
and Departments County wide. So they do a lot of support for various county agencies. Some of the
challenges existing over with the building division include, filling vacant positions in a timely
fashion and managing the multiple projects that they do manage with a minimal amount of staff. It
is pretty impressive the amount of work they get done with the staff that they have. Some
improvements we're aiming at are including our building permit tracking, I'm sorry some
improvements we have accomplished. We've improved our building permit tracking and we've
trained multiple agencies for more accurate data in our tracking. Upcoming initiatives this coming
fiscal year include the adoption of the 2009 international building code and international residential
code. We are as we mentioned with other visions we're exploring with the building division the
identification of new as well as existing performance metrics to assess the performance of buildings
maintenance and construction, our custodial work, our inspectional work, and our plan review and
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.29
approvals. So moving to the budget side of this now, you can see again if you compare fiscal year
2011 this year to fiscal year 2012 the apportionment has only changed by a few percent so we're
basically the way we're spending money in that regard hasn't changed significantly. If you take a
look at the operating budget discussion and this is now for the inspectional group we're looking at,
again same theme about increasing salary and wages and benefits due to elimination of furloughs
and the increased contribution requirements for employee benefits. Specifically for building on the
operation side for our building inspection we have some hardware and software cost there for our
work order facility maintenance program and also training cost for code enforcement and safety.
Again that's associated with the inspections group.
If you look at the repairs and maintenance group once again you can see that our
apportionment of cost between the years hasn't changed very significantly only a few percent in each
area. As far as increased in salary, wages, benefits and again the same thing there. The elimination
of furloughs increased contribution requirements. I will note that you'll notice a decrease in the
operations budget and that's largely due to the fact that we are funding our non recurring R&M
projects and a lot have been moved to our CIP budget. Some big painting restoration to fire station
sort of projects which aren't a regular recurring event have been moved for budgeting purposes over
to CIP which is why you see a decline in the operations budget year over year. We go to janitorial
and again the apportionment hasn't changed that significantly a few percent and looking at the
discussion it's the same story about the increase in salary, wages and benefits, elimination of
furloughs and increased contribution requirements. We do have a decrease in operations a slight
decrease it just happens that this year we've got fewer items in smaller increments that needs
replacement. Interestingly we have a decrease in our projected utility cost and that's based on our
current lower conception rates and we're also hoping that the implementation of (inaudible) projects
will reap some benefits there and lower the utility cost. That's the end of the building division
presentation and I would be happy to entertain any questions.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Dill thank you I know that Doug will introduce himself
but I did want to share a couple of things with Doug since he's here. Doug you missed some
discussion about having the appropriate signs in our building, especially those that disclose the
seating capacity and if you could make a note because I would like to get that cured pretty quickly.
We do not have a seating capacity for this room, we do not have a seating capacity for the liquor
conference room and we do not have a seating capacity for the planning conference room. If you could
follow up on that and that's just a footnote from discussion that came earlier and I guess put in on
your list for our August 22nd move back to our own hometown and make sure we got a capacity notice
on the old County Historic Building. Would you give us a little bit of an overview on one of the things
that has come up in the past and it's about the allocation of project management when you're doing
project upgrades and so forth. I think we have an understanding now that we're building in some
supervisory project scope in the major projects especially those over five hundred thousand dollars.
Could you touch base with us a little bit as to how that's progressing?
DOUG HAIGH, BUILDING DIVISION: We've had mixed results but we've been
funding construction management funds in our CIP projects and we've been utilizing those funds for
our projects. We've been doing contract hires primarily for construction management but we're
having a real hard time retaining the high quality professionals we're hiring because as soon as
there's an opportunity coming back up on the private sector they can make considerably more
money. So far only 1 out of 3 we're looking at as a long term retain age of an employee. It's a real
challenge to do that but...
Mr. Furfaro: I just wanted to give you an opportunity to speak on the
challenge because it's worked for us during this down time but it's something that's probably on your
radar screen going forward.
Mr. Haigh: And what we're doing actually with our larger project we have
coming up we are hiring an outside construction management firm to provide the construction
management, its more expensive and more costly to do that but we have to do what we have to do in
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.30
order to move the projects forward. Larry is helping us to look at ways to make sure that we are
going to give adequate compensation for the skill level that we're trying to hire.
Mr. Furfaro: So those won't be permanent staffing positions but they'll look
at contract management of a project in the actual project release?
Mr. Haigh: That's correct and basically when we're bringing in people
they're managing multiple projects for us we're not just single project people. They are managing
projects from design through bidding through construction we're getting a full realm.- I've been really
happy with the people we've been able to hire they have worked out well it's just a hard time keeping
them.
Mr. Furfaro: Understood but it was something I just wanted to raise on the
radar screen and the other thing Mr. Dill with the building department, you and I have had
discussion on this but I'm looking for us to develop a different type of public release that breaks
down as you know the scope. Here's the project we want Finance to sign off of it we want the Mayor
to sign off of it we want the Chief Engineer to sign off on it but we want to break things down to the
portion of the construction budget that identifies the electrical portion. The plumbing portion if
necessary if it's major, the design cost versus the actual general contractors bid so that we can see
the components when we sign off of the projects. Larry you're not having any second thoughts about
my request of us getting there someday are you?
Mr. Dill: No.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay good, good so I think in that line item there has to be a
line item that says project management so we can record the proper earmarks. I think as we
constantly make improvements in any major projects or investments it would be nice for us to see
the breakdown when the project is finally there. If we have a change order we know it's directly
related to the general contractors bid, the electrical work or going back for a second opinion on
design so that is something that needs to be developed over the years coming forward. I'm going to go
axound the table right now to see if we have other questions for you. Councilmember Kualii.
Mr. Kualii: I just have a couple quick questions. On the building repair
And maintenance line item repair and maintenance building, the original budget or current budget
is two hundred and fifteen thousand and then the proposed budget for next year is eighty thousand.
In between there is a huge one point four million adjusted budget so obviously something big
happened. Did you say something quickly that had to do with the fire department?
Mr. Haigh: I'm not seeing the exact line item.
Mr. Kualii: On page 148.
Mr. Haigh: Okay 148.
Mr. Bynum: That's the same question I was asking offline.
Mr. Haigh; This is a repair and maintenance issue.
Mr. Kualii: Okay.
Mr. Haigh: There's a decision this year a financial decision to fund these
larger non annual maintenance projects in this capital improvement budget so that's those projects
will now shift to the capital improvement projects. We will be discussing those projects on Monday.
Mr. Kualii: Okay so that also serves why it has gone down just for the
year from two hundred fifteen thousand to eighty thousand?
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.31
Mr. Haigh: Yes.
Mr. Kualii: The other question and I'm just curious is under public works
janitorial there's a huge expense for electricity, one point four million and one point two million in
the new budget. Is that the electric cost for?
Mr. Haigh: Its pretty much all facilities that have multiple users. We pay
the electrical bill for all facilities that have multiple users except for council; we pick up their bill to.
Mr. Kualii: And you put it in the division that is janitorial?
Mr. Haigh: I deferred our fiscal guys and where they plug in the
accounts.
Mr. Kualii: Okay just curios.
Mr. Haigh: Its not that the janitors since they put the switch on in the
morning we're paying for the electrical power now.
Mr. Kualii: Right.
Mr. Furfaro: No but a very observant question and it's something that
going forward we do have George Costa soon in econ development of which we have our energy
specialist, but we need to make sure we're measuring these increases in cost not just only by dollars
but keeping track of the bill on kilowatts. The way the rates are moving we manage it by reducing
kilowatt usage so thank you very much. Are you finished with your questions?
Mr. Kualii: Yes thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Councilmember Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: I think I only have 3 and I'll go back to this construction
management as you said 1 out of 3 contract people like that's the individuals that are managing our
county building?
Mr. Haigh: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: So you're looking at a way for somebody who's been around
for awhile to make them civil service or pay them a better compensation when their known quantity
to retain that kind of quality person.
Mr. Haigh: Particularly our history on those positions has been to keep
them on 89 day contracts. Our personnel department has strongly encouraged us to move away from
that because we've been doing that for this gentlemen for five years, almost five years so obviously
that's not a temporary situation even though he is project funded. All of his funds for paying his
position come out of projects so you could say it has a temporary nature to it.
Mr. Bynum: So what will it be?
Mr. Haigh: Right now we're going to keep it project funded but we're
going to go with a one year civil service contract.
Mr. Bynum: Okay and I remember in the past there was building division
people that were in that status for 15-20 years and we eventually made them civil service. That's just
a question and I'll leave it up to you and we can talk later and the other thing was just about
janitorial. Basically janitorial is for the civic center and the council right? Or are there other
facilities that...
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.32
Mr. Haigh: I'm trying to think, yeah the neighborhood centers we have
and maybe shifting them over to parks a little bit. I think we take care of the police and office of
prosecuting attorney and civil defense.
Mr. Bynum: So that's civil defense facility...
Mr. Haigh: And we take care of the sub stations and fire they take care of
their own fire stations.
Mr. Bynum: Okay I just want to say that I think they do an outstanding
job and they work really hard and our county facilities look good and clean. Those major facilities
you know that's a standard I hope we can get into our parks facilities someday. Why wouldn't the
restroom that we use at the county building have a good a one as in Poi`pu beach park with that level
of service.
Mr. Haigh: It has to do with your users too.
Mr. Bynum: And then the international I thought well I guess it's been
over a year since we adopted the international energy conservation building code or is that an
achievement?
Mr. Haigh: Maybe that's an achievement we should have put in.
Mr. Bynum: You should have put that in.
Mr. Haigh: I should have put it in, I apologize it just seems so long ago.
Mr. Bynum: The international building code and residential code is a
initiative for this year and that's different right?
Mr. Haigh: Yes it's different and right now the State has adopted the
2006 international building code as a State code. The 2006 international residential code and their
looking at public hearings after the legislative session so I think in May or June. We are also on the
State level working on the 2009 and we've actually completed our initial review of the 2 codes so far
the County of Kauai. Our thoughts were to go ahead and jump right up to the 2009 as long as we
have the amendment language done at the State .level we'll be able to make sure that we're
consistent with that to the degree that we need to be and if we need to make changes appropriate for
Kauai. We can make those rather than go into 2006 its 2011 already so we might as well jump up to
the 2009 and then we'll be the leader in the State so that's kind of exciting.
Mr. Bynum: Yeah and you know I wanted to highlight that international
energy conservation code because that was a big achievement for the county that's going to pay real
dividends to all of our citizens. Every time I go to one of these energy conferences I say what can the
county do and they say get a better building code so we did that and that's a big achievement.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Dill I just wanted to share with you and Mr. Haigh this
project manager piece that we did started back in 2005 it was kind of a net result of our performance
that did not meet what I thought was the appropriate standards on managing the Kilauea Gym. We
moved and I moved in particular because I was Finance Chair than a project by project management
understanding per project so that would relieve Mr. Haigh of some of these duties. Now I'm hearing
that we're looking at based on what personnel has told us we might look at having a full time person
there to manage these projects. If you want my vote on that you're going to have to get a lot more
factual stuff to me because it's a position that if we slow down in project management you've got
another body. If we accelerate as the Mayor is wanting us to in putting in capital projects to make
improvements so we can keep our workforce going than I like the way it was done by a project with a
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.33
project by project manager accountable for that project and I think when the Kilauea Gym audit
comes out you will find more rationale there. I just wanted to share that with you.
Mr. Dill: I just want to respond a little to that because the effort to go
from 89 day contracts you know our projects and I can't think of any that aren't 89 days projects and
so in the move from going to an 89 day contract to a yearlong contract I don't think should have that
much impact on the position because some of the projects takes multiple years to accomplish. It's not
a permanent commitment to that position because they are annual contracts and I understand what
you're saying we don't want to have a bunch of extra bodies when things ultimately do slow down as
they will and so we recognize that when we made this decision in trying to .meet personnel's
requirements as well as meet our needs without burdening us with a bunch of extra dollars at the
end of the day.
Mr. Furfaro; Okay I would strongly suggest you read the Kilauea Gym
audit and I would also like to point out when you have an opportunity to hire an 89 day employee
you can take him off the contract for one day and put him back on Okay that's within the realm here
of your discretion as the manager of the department and the only reason we all haven't seen
anything more than the draft of the Kilauea gym is because it's sitting in our auditor's office. I would
strongly suggest you make reference to that. If it's about Kilauea gym audit I'm not going to accept
that now I'm just want to ask him to read it. Next question councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes thank you. Could you explain to me why you have zero
utilities right now?
Mr. Haigh: Excuse me.
Mr. Furfaro: You have zero utilities.
Mx. Haigh: Which page is that shown on?
Ms. Yukimura: Well it's ten of your presentation. Page ten of your
presentation. Is it just because it's in another budget
Mr. Haigh: Well because they only show in the janitorial side and in our
operational budget we funded the electricity in the janitorial side.
Ms. Yukimura: Which is what councilmember Kualii asked about?
Mr. Haigh: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: I was thinking maybe it was because the (inaudible) was
going to take away all your energy cost.
Mr. Furfaro: Wishful thinking.
Mr. Haigh: We're trying.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay thank you and then just one more I know that when
parks was first formed there was some talk about creating a facilities crew or division in parks and
are we still having the buildings repairs mainly under your division?
Mr. Haigh: That is correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay I think that's a much better system in my mind than to
duplicate a service in two different departments but I've been out for a couple of year so I didn't
know exactly how things evolved. Thank you very much.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.34
Mr. Furfaro: Councilmember Chang.
Mr. Chang: I was going to ask you, the Lihu`e Carriage House is that the
old Westin Kauai Lagoons property?
Mr. Haigh: That's correct.
Mr. Chang: What are we using that building for?
Mr. Haigh: It is a asset that was acquired through wastewater when we
acquired that land for our wastewater needs. We are now looking at a multiple agency use and
wastewater is the primary tenant and we're going to try and help out fire and police there also and I
think even maybe our auto shop.
Mr. Chang: Okay thank you and my second question was in the goals and
objectives we have the completion of the Historic Kauai County Building renovation, so was there a
line item or was there anything budgeted like for example when we move in you know the historic
society has been well that's been there home and I'm a little concerned because what would be a
brand new renovated majority of the building but does that historic building get. treated or sprayed
you know because it's an old building so there were I guess termites or other things here and there
so when we move in is there a potential that some of the stuff there would spread out to this quote
un quote new renovated building?
Mr. Haigh: The building is a concrete structure and where we do have
wood we have some wood up in the wood structure but actually it's primarily concrete there also. We
don't expect a lot of termite issues but we are repainting the whole building and redoing the whole
air-conditioning units in the historical society also to make sure we get the highest efficiency of our
system for the whole building. There may be, in some of the mill work there might be some termite
but nothing that we expect to be a problem.
Mr. Chang: Okay but if it does eventually become a problem I mean...
Mr. Haigh: Well almost all our facilities we treat for ground termite and
we have an annual system that we use for our facilities to assure that we don't get ground termite
damage and we've been really good on that.
Mr. Chang: Okay.
Mr. Haigh: We've been very successful so if anything it would be airborne
termite and it could be coming from somewhere else also and we've used special treatments on the
new material that we're installing so we should be in pretty good shape I'm not really concerned
about it because there's not that much there to be sending and we're not seeing active termite
damage in the historic area but now that you mentioned it I will have Pat take a look at that also
and make sure that's a good idea because if we do see something in there that is actively with
termite activity we need to get on it right away and there sensitive to that too because they have a
lot of historic documents that there saving for us and that's our heritage that there saving for us so
that's real important.
Mr. Chang: Thank you Doug, thank you Chair.
Mr. Furfaro: Doug I plan to put the status of the Historic County Building
on a late May agenda item so you can give us an update and I think along the lines of those flan
windows and mill work on the exterior windows it's very obvious that no work has been done on the
exterior windows at the historical society and that might be one of the questions. Are they going to
be replaced and so forth? But we will have that on the May agenda item. Mr. Rapozo.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.35
Mr. Rapozo: It's really a follow up to Mr. Chang's questions and what is
the current arrangement with the Historical Society and the County? What is our obligation to
maintain or what is the arrangement?
Mr. Haigh: Well the department of finance manages the lease with them
and I believe there is a minimal fee that their paying and I don't think there's any termination date
to that lease but the department of finance manages that lease. We do minimum maintenance there
and they take care of almost all the maintenance within their facility. We are and as part of the
renovations replacing one of their exterior doors because that is part of our structure and we were
having problems with water intrusion so we do that kind of thing. The windows that would be
something we would maintain and we have not maintained their existing air conditioning system
but with this project we are putting in some new units there just to ensure we have a balanced
system for the entire building and the highest efficiency we can get.
Mr. Rapozo: I guess I heard Mr. Furfaro say we didn't do the windows and
we're not renovating the windows?
Mr. Haigh: We are not hardening the windows in those offices but we will
be painting the exteriors of those windows as part of the exterior paint.
Mr. Rapozo: I guess I will wait for the...
Mr. Furfaro: Yeah and we'll have an agenda item there and Doug you need
to be checking- with the Administration because the only part of that you should be focused on is we
have a hundred and fifty six dollars a month charge for utilities which over the last twelve years of
the lease we had the ability to do a six percent increase managed by finance per year and their lease
is up through 2020, so you should follow up with H.R. Councilwomen Nakamura indicated to me that
she's going to send her questions in a written form over to you and if we can stay away from the
historical building because it is going to be a May item. You might want to re-visit the lease as it
relates to Mr. Rapozo's questions and we'll talk about some exterior mill work later too.
Councilmember Kualii.
Mr. Kualii: Just another quick question on the building inspection
section. So you're not proposing any new positions?
Mr. Haigh: No we are not.
Mr. Kualii: So you have one position that is a code enforcement officer?
Can that one position handle the code enforcement? Are they .getting out there and enforcing our
codes in building, electric, plumbing, and sign ordinance?
Mr. Haigh: The code enforcement officer is the overall supervisor of that
section and as of Monday we will have that position filled it's been vacant since July. So as of
Monday we will have a new person in that position.
Mr. Kualii: Since July of 2010?
Mr. Haigh: Yes it took us a long time and it was a difficult process but we
finally have someone to fill it. We have a supervising building inspector, a supervising plumbing
inspector, a supervising electrical inspector, and we have plumbing, electrical and building
inspectors working under those supervisors so we're pretty well staffed for right now, we're in good
shape with the current volume. We do have the building permit revolving fund which allows us new
contract hires of new positions as we get busy but what we're looking at right now and our biggest
problem we're looking at right now is that we have a lot of people ready to retire especially in our
building inspectional side. Were concerned about that and we're trying to take some pro-active steps
to prepare for that.
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.36
Mr. Kualii: I still have a lot to learn about what all needs to be enforced
as far as the codes go. I'm just worried when the public complains about something and then the
counties response is we're over worked and understaffed and we don't have enough people to address
the different concerns. I would be interested in knowing specifically where all the concerns are
coming from by different areas and how they're being addressed, and if like the TVR is that being
addressed in planning not true code?
well?
also?
Mr. Haigh: That's correct.
Mr. Kualii: So there's a code enforcement sort of function in planning as
Mr. Haigh: Well planning ordinance they enforce planning ordinance.
Mr. Kualii: But there's a position in planning that...
Mr. Haigh: They have field inspectors in planning.
Mr. Kualii: So the only other thing is what about (inaudible) the county
Mr. Haigh: That would be primarily in planning.
Mr. Kualii: Planning also, okay.
Mr. Haigh: Anytime my door is open anytime you want to come into my
office I would be happy to talk to you.
Mr. Kualii: I will be coming right after budget so sometime in June.
Mr. Furfaro: I just want to say that the staff was very helpful for me in my
rookie time and Doug made time for me and people in the water department made time for me so feel
free to do that.
Mr. Kualii: I will do that.
Mr. Furfaro: We have to do wastewater and solid waste today before five
o'clock. I don't think other than this last question I'm going to direct to Mr. Rapozo, oh you're going
to write it down okay. So Doug thank you very much and on that note we're going to ask
Mr. Tschupp to come up, Ed.
Mr. Haigh: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Ed I'm going to go ahead and ask you to introduce
yourself.
WASTERWATER MANAGEMENT
ED TSCHUPP, WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT DIVISION, PUBLIC WORKS: For the
record Edward Tschupp, Wastewater Management Division, Public Works Department.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay do you have a little over view you want to give us or did
you do that Mr. Dill?
Mr. Dill: Yes I will be doing that.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay Mr. Dill we have two wastewater experts here.
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.37
Mr. Dill: Based on what Ed has written up for me. Wastewater
management, the mission statement for the division of wastewater management is; to protect the
public's health, safety and environment by developing an operating the county's wastewater
infrastructure. The division's goals include improving of operations by completion of planned CIP
projects, maintaining and improving existing facilities and operations through budgeted equipment
and supplies and continued regulatory compliance and staffed development Some successes and
achievements to note recently include we have broken ground and started construction on the
expansion of the Waimea wastewater treatment plant. We have completed a rate study and will be
adopting new rates and ordinance updates. We also achieved recognition from the United States
environmental protection agency and in fact they flew all the way out here to present Ed with an
award for project success for the Waimea wastewater treatment plant expansion project which is
known as the Pisces award which is an acronym that we might ask Ed to explain because I don't
know what Pisces stands for.
Mr. Furfaro: Will ask Ed to explain Pisces because he needs a round of
applause. Congratulations Ed.
Mr. Dill: And also via a public private partnership with Kauai Lagoons
the Lihu`e wastewater treatment plant has been up grated to and R1 facility.
Mr. Furfaro: Terrific.
Mr. Dill: I will note also that wastewater division is doing an excellent
job in leveraging county funds to get these projects accomplished. Some of the challenges associated
with the wastewater division as is with any utility infrastructure is the aging of infrastructure and
we need to keep on top of that. We need to develop and maintain required specialty skills and
licensing for our wastewater operators. We are looking at an option for bio solid disposal diversion to
take it away from the Kekaha landfill and for our system we have a very thinly spread customer
base compared to some other parts of the world. We have limited funding versus a small customers
base. Some of the improvements to note are the construction of the Waimea project which is ongoing
and progress we made on CIP design projects and further construction. Some upcoming ixutiatives;
we are seeking new venues such as the Hawaii Rural Water Association to address some of the
maintaining some of the required specialty skills we talked about under our challenges. We are going
to be implementing some customer outreach as we implement our new user rates to educate the
public about that. We are also looking to improve our energy efficiency via our energy audits and
renewable energy products. We are looking at procuring very soon an ESCO (Energy Service
Company) to look at opportunities to be more energy efficient at out wastewater human facilities. We
are also looking at improving our bio-solid handling to develop beneficial alternatives for bio-solid
management to reduce cost and save landfill space at the same time and we continue to seek funding
opportunities for grants and low cost loans to support CIP needs in wastewater.
If you look at our graphs for our budget again we see that if you look year over year our
apportionment of cost is pretty similar year over year so not much change in that. If you look at the
next page including the operating budget discussion and we have the same theme again about the
increase in salary, wages and benefits being due to elimination of furloughs and increased
contribution requirements for employee benefits and also we're including the funding of a previously
dollar funded position from wastewater. You can see we have a decrease in our equipment lease line
item due to the completion of payments on certain leases for some equipment that we required in the
past and you'll see that our operations line item is increased basically due to two things we have
some additional state revolving fund debt service payments so we're encountering this year at some
of that low cost loans I was talking about that we're using to fund our AIP projects and also we're
experiencing an increase in our indirect cost central service allocation from the finance department.
That's a quick overview of the highlights of the wastewater division and will be happy to take your
questions.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.38
Mr. Furfaro: First of all congratulations on your accomplishments for your
division this past year well done.
Mr. Dill: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Councilmember Kualii.
Mr. Kualii: What is the dollar funded position that you're bringing back
to full time is that what it is?
Mr. Dill: We are using funding from that position to actually fund the
environmental services officers' position. Actually what we didn't get included in this submittal to
you which will be updated in the May submittal will show that half of that cost will also be allocated
to the solid waste division as the environmental service officer has oversight on both of those
divisions.
Mr. Kualii: And the last thing is on the page two, line item called
temporary assignment for fifty thousand dollars. Is there anything specific on that or is there money
available for the need?
Mr. Tschupp: Basically whenever somebody is off on vacation the person
underneath them ends up getting paid the higher rate and so it's a temporary assignment and it's
probably common in most operations in the county.
Mr. Kualii: I get it now thanks.
Ms. Yukimura: Just a clarification of your answer to councilmember Kualii.
You're using the dollar funded position and upgrading the amounts to create what position did you
say?
Mr. Dill: Environmental Services Officers position that has oversight of
both wastewater and the solid waste division.
Ms. Yukimura: For compliance?
Mr. Dill: Among other things yes.
Ms Yukimura: Okay so you're sharing it with solid waste?
Mr. Dill: Yes that cost will be allocated so it will be shared with solid
waste that's correct.
Ms Yukimura: And it's called an environmental services officer?
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. We talked earlier about when parks was here
about the usage of water and the cost of usage of water for parks and the need to keep our parks
green and I believe there is and you have here under your successes and achievements the public
private Kauai lagoons project. Is there water soon to be available for the Lihu`e stadium?
Mr. Tschupp: Right now the terms and conditions of their agreement with
the county long standing is that they will take up to 1.5 million gallons a day of treated (inaudible)
for their golf course and other purposes. Now that it's up grated to Rl they have a little more
latitude How they can use that water around their campus. Right now the capacity of the Lihu`e
plant is creating around 12 MGD, so we don't have access irrigation water at this time however the.
overall capacity of the Lihu`e plant is 2.5 MGD, which means Kauai Lagoons and Grove Farm
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.39
Developments come on line we are anticipating at some time we will exceed the capacity of the golf
course irrigation systems needs. At which point in time we would believe that connecting back to the
gateway irrigation system or other and that's probably the logical thing to do would be to run a line
over to supplement or to be a supplemental water source to the gateway irrigation system. That
would open up a potentially doing the stadium or other purposes.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, I have another question but do you want to ....
Okay. On your challenges of aging infrastructures will your rate increases address that challenge?
Ed Tschupp: Well in the rates study we looked at both operational cost
going forward as well as what our facility plan updates of the last few years identified as
replacements and improvements and so on so I think the short answer is yes. That's the intent.
Ms. Yukimura: Very good and your bio solids disposal problem at the landfill,
are you exploring the solution that Maui has looked at where they have a contractor who will take all
the sewage sludge and turn it into a high level compost that is sold on the private on the market.
Mr. Tschupp: There are a couple of different ways and right now we're
exploring with a couple of private entities who there are at least a couple of people who have come
forward with land application proposals. Also there's been a couple of different individuals who've
come up with we would like your bio-solids as feed stock for our compose operations or our energy
production digester kind of operation. We are in a little bit of a chicken and an egg situation because
with those kinds of things where their looking at capital expenditures on their part they want to tie
up their feed stocks contracts which will be us and have a committed source of yes this is our
(inaudible) this is our financing and we cannot commit to somebody who doesn't exist. It's a little
tricky to actually go through and procure in the appropriate fashion as to what that bio-solid solution
is but our goal and intent here would be to no longer go to the landfill with our bio-solids.
Ms. Yukimura: So why wouldn't you explore the possibility of an existing
entity that's already doing that or using the solids on Maui or somewhere else in the state.
Mr. Tschupp: Shipping off Island would be tricky.
Ms. Yukimura: No it would be to establish a plant her.
Mr. Tschupp: Right, right and that falls back into the procurement issue
and what we're actually planning on doing is putting out an RFP to throw it out to the public
because there are probably a half a dozen entities who might be cost effective and appropriate to be
service providers to us and to take care of our bio-solids program.
Ms. Yukimura: Well an RFP sounds like a good idea and hopefully it's
structured well so that you actually get what you need. What its showing is that waste is not waste,
it's really a resource that people are now waking up to see that they need and want. I would hope
that because it's such a cost and problem for our landfill which we are trying to reduce in terms of
the input into the landfill that we can move fairly rapidly on this. Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Bynum you had a question?
Mr. Bynum: Yeah just to follow up on that I visited the Maui plant and a
number of other plants around the country and I'm hopeful that that's something that we do with
our composing with our solid waste that we develop a similar thing and for food waste eventually to
compose with green waste and create theses high quality soil amendments and I hope eventually we
do that in-house and in the mean time if there's some other way to divert it from the landfill, more
power to you. I had just one other question?
Mr. Furfaro: Go right ahead.
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.40
Mr. Bynum: .There's this main line that's at capacity and someday we're
going to get another line with Grove Farm Development in the future right? Is our- main line at
capacity? Are we worried about that because I think Grove Farms plans due to the economy is
probably not moving as quickly as they would like. Are we okay in the meantime?
Mr. Tschupp: We are the short answer is we are and that line is at capacity
but it's very deep so what happens is you start surcharging into the manholes.
Mr. Bynum: Yes we've had that discussion and I just wanted to know if the
status has changed. Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: There might be a follow up question on Monday when we get
into the CIP. So we'll carry Mr. Bynum's question over. Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: I had a question on your upcoming initiatives, I think all of
them are very good initiatives to attempt to do and I guess I just wasn't clear on what actually can
be done over this next fiscal year? I think what would be helpful would be clearer objectives on what
for example; improving the energy audits and energy efficiency through energy audits and renewable
energy projects. That's a great initiative but how are you going to go about doing that? Are you going
to do it internally or contract it out? Do you have funding in place to do that?
Mr. Tschupp: That's actually a very interesting project we're in a RFP
already and we're using the states list of and they have already established a short list of energy
service companies that we have the ability to contract with. We are currently in the RFP stage and
the proposals are due next month so we'll see what they got to say and we'll hire someone and go
forth with an audit. One of the really cool things about that particular system is that the audit the
energy audit is under the terms of the way the state set up the procurement originally is that's a no
cost to the county for the energy audit and where that energy company would make their money is
on working out the financing through a performance contract. So there looking for the low hanging
fruit that really makes sense that will finance itself.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you.
of this.
Mr. Furfaro: Please keep Mr. Costa's office and Glenn Sato involved in all
Mr. Tschupp: We wouldn't have been able to do this without Glenn Sato's
assistance he has been the person spearheading this.
Mr. Furfaro: He is our energy specialist and we just want to give credit
where credit is due and he's in the loop.
Mr. Tschupp: He is absolutely...
Mr. Furfaro: He might actually be rolling the (inaudible).
Mr. Tschupp: He is rolling the (inaudible).
Mr. Furfaro: Are there any more questions before we go over to Solid
Waste? I see councilwoman Yukimura you have a question go ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes your division goals say improve operations by completion
of plan CIP projects because the planning and design of well I'm just wondering whether there are
any discussions about sewage treatment in the Hanalei area? I'm aware that there have been
discussions and for a future project which I don't think is on the horizon right now. Or is it?
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.41
Mr. Tschupp: No we're a very operational kind of organization within our
current service areas. I would view that as something that if Hanalei Community were to approach
Kauai County as the logical entity to operate a system up there than that would be a policy decision
and your organization would take the lead on and you would presumably assign it to the wastewater
division.
Ms. Yukimura: Ok.
Mr. Furfaro: I would like to add to your question and we're very fortunate
to have Mr. Dill, Mr. Dill as well as myself know that there has been an attempt to identify some
lands from possible treatment facility in Hanalei. Hanalei probably will require a 7-9 acre site and
there has been some preliminary discussions to see if that could be an opportunity for us as Hanalei
has great value and we have Mr. Dill now with us who understands even the water system and the
redundancy for water from Hanalei is something that the Princeville and Hanalei people have
supported over the years. The first move is an acquisition of 7-9 acres so we should leave that at this
point right now but Mr. Dill is very familiar with potential sites.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: On that note we're going to start with the solid waste people
and I want to thank you Ed for all you did and your great accomplishments this year so thank you.
Mr. Dill we will go to Solid Waste even if it's only for 30 minutes.
SOLID WASTE DIVISION
Mr. Dill Okay joining with me is Troy Tanigawa our Environmental
Services Management Engineer and Alison Fraley our Recycling Solid Waste Program Coordinator.
The mission of the solid waste division is to maintain public health and safety by providing reliable
programs to properly manage municipal solid waste for the Island of Kauai and to maximize waste
division on Kauai by providing cost effective convenient and reliable waste diversion opportunities
to Kauai residents through source, reduction, reuse, and recycling. Our goals are to maintain a
balance of reliability, efficiency and cost effectiveness of county solid waste management and
diversion programs. To identify and implement integrated municipal solid waste management
programs to divert waste from municipal solid waste landfills and to conduct county waste
management programs and operations in accordance with applicable government regulations.
Mr. Furfaro: Do you need more water?
Mr. Dill: I'm good thank you. Some successes and achievements to note
recently from the solid waste division is that we have recently implemented the automated refuse
collection. We've delivered 96 gallon carts and educational literature, commenced automated refuse
collection in July of 2010 for approximately 3000 homes in the Lihue/Puhi area. The automated
collection has maximized deficiencies and expanded the number of allowable units per shift prior to
incurring overtime from the count of 600-1000 units. We've also commenced the pilot curbside
recycling pilot and delivered 96 galloon carts with blue lids to identify them as recycling carts and
educational literature on commenced curbside recycling pilot September of 2010 for one thousand
three hundred homes in the Lihu`e/Puhi area. Residents receive every other Thursday and all items
currently accepted in the Counties Kaua`i's recycled drop in program are accepted in the recycling
carts. Thirdly our landfill expansion. cell 1 construction was completed in July of 2010 in time to
receive municipal solid waste for phase 2 which reached capacity in November of 2010. Cell 1 will
provide approximately three and a half to four years of municipal solid waste capacity for the Island
of Kauai. Fourthly we will be shortly implementing our residential refuse collection assessment as
recommended in the integrated solid waste management plan. County Ordinance 902 passed in
September of 2010 allowed the division to asset charges for refuse collection. Beginning in July 2011
this assessment will be billed with the real property tax. All benefited properties will be charged a
six dollar base assessment which is mandatory and serves to defray the operating cost of the refuge
transfer station plus a six dollar collection assessment for a curb side service which owners can opt
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.42
out of if they wish to haul their own garbage to the transfer stations. The RRCA is anticipated to
reduce the division's reliance on the general fund by approximately by two and a half million dollars
per year. Some of our challenges for the division include our collection routing implementation of
automated refuse collection required re-routing of garbage service across the entire Island. Although
notice of the change was massed mailed to all residents, many people were still caught off guard on
garbage day and very upset. We had to deal with that challenge as it occurred that is improved and
much better than it was in the beginning. Our automated collection rule out phasing of the
automated collection requires establishments of roots, work conditions and positions which must be
reviewed and approved that's related to our expansion of that program that we're continuing to work
on. Landfill sighting, the environmental impact statement consultant has been selected and will be
commencing with the EIS. The process will re-evaluate the initial 8 recommended sites in the
Mayors selection group and I'm not sure what that acronym stands for please forgive me, and
provide a recommendation to precede with the new landfill site at a preferred location. And fifthly
electronic recycling to Hawaii electronic waste recovery law that went into effect in January of 2010,
did not mandate any on the ground programs on the neighbor Islands. Attempts to amend the law in
the 2011 session were unsuccessful hence the county remains responsible for coordinating and
funding efforts to divert this toxic and ever growing waste stream from the landfill so they continue
to manage that on our own from the county level.
Some improvements, some additional staff and key positions will allow the solid waste
division to implement new projects such as a residential refuse collection assessment and diversion
programs to increase the life of the limited airspace at the Kekaha landfill. Some of our upcoming
initiatives include expansion of our existing diversion programs and acceleration of the development
of new programs to extend the life of the existing Kekaha Landfill., for instance development of the
construction demolition diversion ordinance targeting materials for adequate processing capacity
and markets currently exist. Development of a commercial mixed paper recycling ordinance for
businesses generating a significant amount of mixed paper to set up recycling programs. Initiation of
implementation of curbside green waste collection in conjunction with the automation of refuge
collection, expiration of the construction of a material recovery facility a (MURF) to allow the
expansion of existing recycling efforts on the development of Island wide curbside recycling.
Providing technical assistance to the commercial sector and private recyclers as we encourage then
to participate in these recycling efforts and providing publication in schools and the community at
large and to include them in their educational efforts and outreach and enhance and improve our
recycling capabilities. We are also working through the procurement and EIS consultant contract
now for a new landfill site one of our important initiatives.
The actual budget portion here if you take a look at the comparison to fiscal year (11)
compared to (12) the apportionment is very similar no changes in the way the cost are allocated on a
percentage basis. If you look at the numbers on .page 29 in the operating budget discussion, once
again the same theme with the increase in salaries wages and benefits is due to the elimination of
furloughs and increased contribution requirements for employee benefits. We have an increase in
equipment and lease which is due to new lease payments for heavy equipment that we are proposing
with this budget and that's included I think on the listing of vehicles and equipment that we passed
out earlier. We have an increase in our operations and that's largely due to an increase in our
allocation from the department of finance indirect costs and central services. That completes our
brief overview and highlight of our solid waste division and I would be happy to entertain any
questions.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Dill, thank you very much. I do want to ask if you are
prepared on Monday when we talk about CIP to present a flow chart for us or a critical path chart
which deals with the EIS, the selection process on the eight sites. What happens when we get to the
final site? What application process we have with environmental protection? What period do you
need and what time for the design? When did the bids go out? When does the actual construction
occur and show that on a window which I've been hearing is a 7 year window. I would like to see that
on Monday and I'm sorry it's such late notice but that needs to be part of our discussion on Monday.
Apri115, 2011.
Department of Public Works p.43
Mr. Dill: We do have a schedule showing perhaps not in the detail you
just mentioned those items but include some of those. We can certainly share that with you but I
can't identify those particular items you're talking about but they are within the scope of some of
those things so we can speak to that.
Mr. Furfaro: I'm really just looking for the timeframe, that's the outcome
that I would like to have. The other thing is I would like Troy to have a discussion with the finance
department as we launch this new refuge collection and so forth. I want to make sure we don't create
a receivable that is not collectable because the escrow companies were not made aware that some of
this might actually turn out in the tax bill. Many people who have mortgages in fact find themselves
in a situation that their property taxes are collected by the escrow company and then paid to the
county. I just want to make sure we are notifying the escrow companies the major ones of this
collection process so that they can evaluate and I can see Clint is shaking his head yes. They can
evaluate the facts that not only do the property owners get notice of the fee but the escrow companies
did as well. If they didn't collect it and we send the first bills out we could end up with a very large
receivable. As I understand it this collection process is something that will appear in people's
property tax bill. Now if that's different please tell me but I'm just throwing it out there to make sure
that we consider that option in notifying the escrow company. The last piece before I ask some
questions, are you going to give us more detail on the critical path for MURF? Are we going to see
that on Monday?
Mr. Dill: No we do not have a specific plan for the MURF yet.
Mr. Furfaro: You don't have specific plans for that yet?
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Mr. Furfaro: But we have to pretty much go through the same sighting and
so forth and I assume with the expertise that we have from Mr. John Harter, his available to help
you work on that?
Mr. Dill: Oh absolutely, yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay, okay. Let me go around the table and Mr. Bynum let
me start with you.
Mr. Bynum: TMC rear load refuge twenty.
Mr. Dill: I'm sorry what was that?
Mr. Bynum: On your equipment purchase or your vehicle purchase there
are two GMC's rear load refuge. Is that the old style trash collection truck?
Mr. Dill: Yes, that's right those are pieces of equipment that are still in
use because majority of our collection is still done in that way and those are trucks that are revolute
and gone before their useful life.
Mr. Bynum: And we have a plan to do automate trash collection but we're
buying the old style trucks.
Mr. Dill: Yes because we have not been able to implement automated
collection as widely as we can. We will always have a need for a manual truck because not the entire
Island is possible to pick up trash with the automated vehicles.
Mr. Bynum: Well for some of us this discussion about solid waste issues
goes back many years.
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.44
Mr. Dill: I understand.
Mr. Bynum: When we approved the first automated trash collection truck
I distinctly remember being told that we would only have limited use for these rear loading trucks in
the future and that we were unlikely to purchase any new ones. That was a question from
Councilmember's including myself at the time was that we wanted to make sure that any new major
equipment purchases you use that you knew are consistent with the integrated solid waste plan.
In the long run when we fully automate all we intend to automate, how many of these kinds of
vehicles are we going to need?
Mr. Dill: We will need to have two of these types of vehicles.
Mr. Bynum: And you're purchasing two?
Mr. Dill: Were purchasing two.
Mr. Bynum: And this other one it says side load, that's the automated
collection type?
Mr. Dill: That's the semi automated.
Mr. Bynum: That will be consistent with the carts we're purchasing?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: I'm glad the answer was two because I was going to have a
real problem buying. Okay so what is our delay about rolling out automated collection? Did we
initially plan to be further along?
Mr. Dill: Absolutely, we have been in negotiations with the union 105
negotiation to implement the automated collection and it's been challenging to work out all of the
details of that.
Mr. Bynum: You know that's a frustration because we've seen this coming
for a very long time and in several instances. We did a money bill earlier this year and one of the
reasons we needed the money was because we anticipated working out the union stuff and didn't. I
don't want to blame the union but we need to be proactive about that and we had discussions a long
time ago about getting in front of that and now it sounds like we're not in front of that and I'm just
sharing some frustrations. I've been saying for some time that this division has a very ambitious
project orientation. We had big debates about hiring a recycling coordinator and I know we finally
came to a conclusion about a contract person and that's great. The whole argument was what are we
waiting for? Can you meet these timelines? Looks like we really haven't got that far down the road
and we're going back and so maybe not for budget but soon after I would like to a timeline
spreadsheet for all of these projects, landfill expansion, sighting new landfills, MURF, composting
facilities. That's why I'm saying why are we waiting on this recycling coordinator? That's why I
support that you have an environmental services high level position now and you talked about
earlier about converting a civil engineer position to oversee wastewater and I've supported all those
initiatives because there's a big job to do in this division to get from point A to point B. It makes me
uncomfortable to be buying old style equipment and it makes me uncomfortable to hear that it's not
rolling out quickly. I know it's not CIP day but I wanted to see that we were ready to (inaudible) a
MURF and spend that CIP money not take it out of CIP. I will Iet you know now I'm not happy about
this and I won't be here on Monday so I'm going to ask my colleagues to ask some CIP questions in
my absence but I'm sure they will have similar ones. This is important to all of us and then I have
another question to ask.
Mr. Furfaro: Go right ahead then will go to Kualii.
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.45
Mr. Bynum: Just in retrospect the trash collection fee which I also
supported and I think we all did unanimously and it's. not easy for us but one of the things we didn't
talk so much about was the perception because it's on the tax bill that we increase property taxes. So
on the tax bill is it going to say here's your property tax, this is a user fee?
Mr. Dill: It will be clearly identified separately yes.
Mr. Bynum: Right and so that's a first step but the perception is eh you
increased my property taxes by X amount and in reality in the consumers mind they don't really
make those kinds of distinctions.
Mr. Furfaro: Alison had some feedback for you on that, so Alison?
ALISON FRALEY, SOLID WASTE PROGRAM COORDINATOR: I just want to
let you know that I've been on the frontline fielding phone calls from people who received their
assessment and we really have had pretty positive feedback in fact and we haven't heard them
complain much at all, very, very rarely have people said that we're raising their taxes. I just want to
let you know that that's what we're hearing when people call into the office.
Mr. Bynum: Well that's nice to hear apparently we don't get those kinds of
calls.
Mr. Furfaro: We get the other ones. You get the good ones and we get the
"hey what happened to my bill" and I think that's what Mr. Bynum was saying.
Mr. Bynum: I really thought we were at the end of buying these
(inaudible) things. I believe for our workers it's going to be an improvement, it's going to reduce
injuries, it's going to reduce overtime, it's going to make and I hope life better for them and makes
their job better. Whatever it takes to engage in a real productive way with the union and move
forward on these things so maybe I will leave this with a question. Did we kind of announce a move
on some of this stuff to soon without doing that background consultation with the union? Was that a
mistake in retrospect?
Mr. Dill: Well I'm hesitant to say it was a mistake because I wasn't
around when that happened but I believe it was understood at the time that agreements were going
to be made in very short order and obviously that was not correct in retrospect.
Mr. Bynum: Right and I know for us those are at least a couple of year ago
we had this discussion and so...
Mr. Furfaro: We will have more discussion on this and I will keep you
posted as we get to the CIP. Mr. Kualii.
Mr. Kualii: I again have some quick line item inquiries and I'm realizing
it's probably because we don't really have an actual narrative to some of these variances, to me
where there's large variances it needs to be explained even briefly. So I have to ask because some
line items just jump out like indirect cost central SE, what was SE? The budget this current year is
three hundred and eighty thousand and next year is one point three million so it's nine hundred and
twenty thousand dollars difference. So it just would be good to have more detailed information even
briefly just provided upfront.
Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me Mr. Rezentes did you want to answer his question
very quick. I'm sorry Councilmember Kualii.
WALLY REZENTES JR., DIRECTOR OF FINANCE: If the question was related to
the indirect cost allocation form solid waste fund to general fund I explained that yesterday and it's
part of our annual cost allocation plan that we contract out for. The analysis is done and we have the
Apri115, 2011
Department of Public Works p.46
documentation in writing from our consultant and basically what we're doing is we're recouping cost
that the general fund provides the respective funds including solid waste, waste water.
Mr. Kualii: I know I just think it would be a good idea to footnote it, it
only happened in 4 or 5 different places right different funds so footnote it on the other side and I
wouldn't have asked that question. The other two on solid waste collections there's a line item called
"other supplies" and it was three hundred forty five thousand, five hundred and seventy last year
and this New Year it's fifteen thousand. What...
Mr. Dill: What page are you referring too?
Mr. Kualii: I don't have the page number. Its solid waste collection you
have a detail on solid waste collections on the line item other supplies. We have a summary line item
analysis. Maybe Jade can help? And you're here 4 months so you wouldn't necessarily know but it
seems like there's a line item called other supplies something...
Ms. Yukimura: It's page 222.
Mr. Kualii: So something big happened last year that's not going to
happen this year. Anyway other supplies when its big it needs to be explained a little further and
that's all I'm getting at. I would like it explained a little further.
TROY TANIGAWA, SOLID WASTE DIVISION: The difference in the appropriation
amount is primarily due to the fact that we're not ordering automated refuse carts this year. Last
year we had approximately four thousand refuse carts that cost roughly a hundred dollars per cart.
Mr. Kualii: It's just huge and just to explain it up front. The last one is in
solid waste recycling there's one called "other services" So I'm just wondering when I see the word
other it kind of jumps out at me unless I have any kind of breakdown or detail I don't know what it's
about.
Mr. Furfaro: It is similar to last year, last year was six hundred and eleven
thousand and this year it's seven hundred and fifty six thousand. I just wanted some idea of what
that is.
Mr. Dill: The big number in there is under recycling programs?
Mr. Kualii: Yeah other services, solid waste recycling. The salaries line
item is eighty nine thousand and the other services are six hundred and eleven thousand. Is that
contract services?
Mr. Dill: Its contract services that's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Which line item? What page?
Mr. Dill: I'm looking at page 226.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Dill I think Councilmember Kualii is bringing up a very
important point to the table. Things that he's finding in the other category or the miscellaneous line
in some point in private practice as you know if you have a miscellaneous line that exceeds more
than 1.5 percent of the total operating department's budget it usually gets an explanation on it or
you create a new line. We feel uncomfortable and I want you to clearly here this from me and I don't
mean to take any thunder away from the council members but solid waste is 15.2 percent over
budget for 7 months of this year. Every other department in the county is trailing like two and a half
percent, four and a half percent. We are 15.2 percent and those are my statistics from reading so
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.47
when you have these big numbers as the council members are pointing out that comes in a category
called "other" or a category calle d "Miscellaneous" it suspects to a better understanding and I think
that's what you're saying.
Mr. Kualii: Yeah I'm only asking for more information so I can make an
informed decision on behalf of the people.
Mr. Dill: Sure, absolutely.
Mr. Furfaro: I'm going to give the floor to councilwoman Yukimura. Thank
you.
Mr. Kualii: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you those were very observant questions.
Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you and as a follow up why wouldn't you call the five
hundred and one thousand curbside recycling?
Mr. Dill: It also includes the cost for the Kauai recycle store.
Ms. Yukimura: Can you speak in to the mic and explain.
Mr. Dill: It also includes the cost for the Kauai recycles program.
Ms Yukimura: What's the breakdown?
Mr. Dill: The Kauai Recycle Program I believe was three hundred and
twenty six thousand of that.
Ms. Yukimura: So the curbside recycling is the balance?
Mr. Dill: We budgeted the remainder of that and brought the balance
to...
Ms Yukimura:. Two hundred thousand?
Mr. Dill: I think it's about one seventy five.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So my question is on the curbside do you have a report
on it that tells us what the cost w as for the year or whatever period it's been the first phase?
Mr. Dill: It's not part of this report. Do you want a fiscal year 2011
report?
Ms. Yukimura: Could you provide it?
Mr. Dill: Certainly.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes we would like to know what happened and how much was
recycled and what cost per ton an d what exactly happened to the waste?
Mr. Dill: Sure we can provide that absolutely.
Ms. Yukimura: And do you have one that breaks down the projected cost of
one seventy five is?
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.48
Mr. Dill:
Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And that is to be for a year?
Mr. Dill: That would be since we don't know what that bid would come
in at yet that's just a rough estimate for perhaps ten additional months beyond the existing
extension.
Ms. Yukimura: So why...
Mr. Dill: I'm sorry through the end of the next fiscal year.
Ms. Yukimura: Why are we continuing this when it is really against the time
table that is recommended in our integrated solid waste management plan?
Mr. Dill: It's an extension of the pilot program so as we continue with
the pilot program we've seen improvements because as the initial pilot turned out to be much lower
rates at recycling than was anticipated by the integrated solid waste management plan. We believe
that with additional outreach efforts we can ramp that up as people get more use to the program so
we want to try and see if that pans out which is necessary for us in planning our recycling facilities.
It has also shown strong community support so it's something that the community wants us to do.
Ms. Yukimura: But is there really a competitive bidder on this?
Mr. Dill: There are not many bidders on this you are right about that. I
believe we only had 2 bidders i n the initial go around.
Ms. Yukimura: And aren't the bidders somewhat limited in capacity so that if
you expand it you're going to run into some capacity problems?
Mr. Dill: .Yes this isn't an expansion this is an extension of the existing
pilot program.
Ms. Yukimura: So you're not expanding it?
Mr. Dill: Correct not with this.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and so...
Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me on that note councilwomen. I will give you the
floor first thing Monday because we did post for public works again Monday morning as well as CIP.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Dill how many more departments do we have to review?
Mr. Dill: This is the final department.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay good so we're coming close but I want to let you know
that at 9:00 when we come back, Councilwoman Vice Chair Yukimura will have the floor and we will
continue on questions at least for half an hour and then we will go into CIP. Now also Alison I want
you to know that Mr. Rezentes indicated to me that they have begun the notifications to the escrow
companies and some of the others on our plans. My concern has been addressed by Mr. Rezentes and
Sally Motta. On another note we are going to be posting today. What sessions did we add for today
Jade and I will repeat it loud. We added for call back and a reminder to the group we are now using
April 15, 2011
Department of Public Works p.49
some more consumption time on further dialog and we will post today the appropriate notice to come
back to the department of finance for what date was that?
JADE TANIGAWA: The 21St.
Mr. Furfaro: The 21St which is Thursday and I hope to keep it until eleven
o clock because the next day is Good Friday and I think we have a holiday in there. Thank you for
today Larry and all of your staff. Clint you've heard we're to the first half an hour on solid waste and
then we'll start on the CIP items. Mr. Chang.
Mr. Chang: Yes Chair I just wanted to say thank you to the division but I
really wanted to command Larry Dill on the way he was going for it all day and for being around for
just four and a half months I think he himself got up to speed with everything. I really want to
command him I thought I talk fast but he's a pretty good talker.
Mr. Furfaro: I would also like to commend the Mayor for hiring him. We
are in recess (it's 5:05) until Monday 9:00 and we will resume with solid waste.
There being no objections, the budget reviews recessed at 5:06 p.m
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
The departmental budget review call-back reconvened on Monday, April 18, 2011 at 9:07 a.m., and
proceeded as follows:
Mr. Bynum was noted excused.
Mr. Chang was noted present at 9:30 a.m.
PUBLIC WORKS (OP cont'd &CIP):
Chair Furfaro: I'm going to call this meeting on the operating budget back to
order from our recess from Friday and we'll continue with Solid Waste. Mr. Dill before you get
started I want the record to show that Mr. Bynum has been excused from today's meeting and was
have a tardy request from Mr. Chang. But we do have four members and we left off with solid waste
and so I'll let you give some narrative to enhance our starting point.
There being no objection, the rules were suspended.
LARRY DILL, County Engineer: Good morning. Again for the record, Larry Dill, County
Engineer. What I'd like to first touch base on, we've distributed to all the Councilmembers this
morning this schedule and timeline for the landfill as requested last week. Council Chair Furfaro,
you had mentioned a bunch of very specific milestones, I think, in the processing or pursuing of the
new landfill site. We didn't have something that detailed yet, but I did want to share with you what
we do have prepared that we've been working on to indicate to you the plan of attack we do have for
that landfill. We entitled this "Kekaha landfill airspace options." It reflects our attempts to make
sure that we're making the most efficient use of the airspace available at the Kekaha Landfill and
showing the various phases of that operation in comparison to the plans and timeline to develop the
new landfill, to make sure we know deadlines and milestones we have to meet. Again this is pretty
conceptual in nature, but briefly, it indicates we have three spaces at the Kekaha Landfill we
continue to work on. Cell 1 is active. You also have an associated colored map, I believe. Did you
receive this?
Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Dill: There we go. Cell 1 in green shows that's the active cell we're
working on. We anticipate that that cell will get us through end of calendar year 2013
approximately and then after cell 1, there are several short bars on there that indicate efforts we are
making to make more efficient use of the landfill, and I would be free to answer any questions about
those in particular, I just wanted to cover this briefly, if I may. And then after Cell 1 we xoll into
Cell 2, and then if necessary we also show what would be gained by a vertical expansion over
Phase II. Down at the bottom, you can see we have a separate timeline for compar'ison's sake, which
shows what we were talking about last meeting about what we anticipate will be the required steps
and schedule to develop and bring online the new landfill. What we're about right now, we are in the
planning phase, conceptual design, and EIS, which we are projecting right now through the end of
calendar year 2014, getting us through land entitlements, land acgiusition, design, permitting,
procurement, construction, and DOH certification. We are anticipating right now mid-calendar year
2020. So generally speaking in broad-brush terms, this is what we're looking at right now. We
continue to refine this thing right now in our solid waste division, but I wanted to respond to your
requests from last week to show you what we do have.
Chair Furfaro: This is very much appreciated for critical path and aging.
think we have a question from Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Dill: Sure.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Did you mention vertical
expansion of Phase II, which is the existing landfill?
Mr. Dill: That's correct. If you look at the ID numbers in the left-hand
column, line 20, those are options to increase life, vertical expansion to 100 feet. So that's an "if
necessary," we wanted to look at that as something that may need to be done.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, well, I know you weren't here back then, but I can
vividly remember as if it was yesterday, Mr. Furfaro, along with the rest of the councilmembers at
that time, when we approved the last vertical, and I know Councilmember Yukimura was there, in
fact the three of us that we stated pretty clearly that there would be no more vertical expansions. I
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
think the existing Phase II if I remember correctly, the navy came in and said we're about five feet
away from the flight path of PMRF and I think just the public policy was no more vertical
expansions. Mr. Furfaro, I'm not sure you remember that?
Chair Furfaro: No, no, I remember it. I would hope someone in waste
management would remember that.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, I know, because it was pretty clear. It was difficult to
approve the last vertical and it's kind of surprising to see that on again. Maybe I'll be out of the
council by then, but I just want you to know that there was a discussion and we'll definitely pull the
minutes. Peter, if we could get the minutes of that expansion and get it over to public works that
would be appreciated. Like I said, you weren't here. Lyle, you weren't here.
Mr. Dill: I can respond to some of that. That was made known to us
from our solid division folks that that discussion had happened. However, because of the way this
schedule laid out, we felt we wouldn't be disclosing everything if we didn't show all of the available
possible things we would have to be dealing with. So I wanted to show it anyway.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Mr. Dill: And it's definitely something, believe me, that we are working
to avoid. But as a last-case scenario, we felt it was necessary to show it here.
Mr. Rapozo: Well I guess, Larry, and this is speaking just by myself, my
own opinion and my own position, when we approve certain things on this council with conditions,
then we expect those conditions. to be upheld. So in other words, when they came to us the last time,
this was probably 2006-I can't remember the year. That was it. This is the last vertical expansion.
Now I'm not so sure what the council would have done if in fact the option was to go vertical
expansion now and we'll be-back later to expand again. I'm not so sure you would have gotten the
same response because I think our decisions are made based on reliances that we're given by the
administration. So if that has changed, I appreciate you telling us today, but I guess it's news to me
and that is something I will tell you now, whether I'm here or not, as of this moment, I simply would
not approve another vertical expansion out there on Phase II That's just my own position. Thank
you.
Chair Furfaro: So I guess the way we'll leave it at this point, has something
changed since 2006 with the navy aviators and their protest of adding height? Or has something
been negotiated with them because they have been able to see your conceptual plan, Larry? That
needs to be clarified. Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: I'm sorry that this landfill overview is not on a PowerPoint so
that the public can see it, but I do appreciate it. Can you explain this map to me?
Mr. Dill: Okay, well Phase I, if you look at the bottom left corner, the
code in the box, Phase I beneath Cell 3 was the original phase of the landfill and it's been closed as of
October of 1993.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Mr. Dill: Maybe I should allow our chief of the division to make sure
we get the story straight. I'll ask Troy to...
TROY TANIGAWA, Environmental Services Management Engineer: Troy Tanigawa for the
record. Where Larry left off at Cell 3, if we work clockwise, to the right of Cell 3, where you see in
pink, you have an area that's colored yellow. That's Cell 2. That has a projected capacity of, I
believe, roughly 3.2 years that would take us into, I guess, the second phase of the lateral expansion.
Again, clockwise, Cell 1 in green is the area that's been developed and permitted, and we are
currently using. Now to the bottom of that, at the bottom of the green area and with the yellow area
to the left, you have Phase II. It's shown in that... there's a square right below the green area. Phase
II capacity to August 2010. Okay, that was the existing Phase II footprint. And now with the Cell 1
and Cell 2 expansions, the Phase II footprint will expand out to the westernmost boundary, and
overlapping Phase I.
Ms. Yukimura: And Cell 3?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Tanigawa: Okay, Cell 3 is conceptual.. That- hasn't been either designed
or developed at this point in time.
Mr. Dill: Cell 3 is a possible expansion on top of Phase I, and that's not
even reflected in the timeline we gave you, as it is something that we definitely don't want to pursue.
But nevertheless, it's part of our job, we feel, to identify and share with you all possible avenues here
for creating and extending the landfill.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, especially because if we're really, really lucky we can
have the new landfill ready in six to seven years, and right now we have a capacity for five years up
to Ce112, right, if it's going to be done by October 2016?
Mr. Tanigawa: This is a map that reflected information we had in a prior
presentation to the council. Since then we've identified some initiatives for capacity savings that
would extend the life of the current expansion cells and future expansion cells.
Mr. Dill: So if you refer to the timeline we've given to you, you can see
that the end of Cell 2 now gets us to the end of about 2018 by implementation of those efficiency
measures.
Ms. Yukimura: Which gives us the average, if we're very lucky, time to
expand, I mean to start a new landfill and have it ready.
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: I mean it would be kind of by the skin of our teeth.
Mr. Dill: Right, so we're looking at maximizing a portion of that
timeline to extend that landfill life as much as we can. That bottom schedule, the timeline to
develop the new landfill, we're looking at shrinking that one to address the exact issue you're talking
about.
Ms. Yukimura: And if we don't make it?
Mr. Dill: Well, if we don't make it, that's why we include such things
as...there are two things shown on this timeline. If we don't make it, the options that we're trying to
avoid are vertical expansion, as we talked about, another one, you notice we have this off-island
option with H-Power of shipping it to H-Power to dispose of our trash as a bridge to give us time
until the new landfill is open.
Ms. Yukimura: At a cost of $67 million?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, either way...
Mr. Dill: That's if it operates for 728 days. So it would be...
Ms. Yukimura: Two years?
Mr. Dill: That's right. -There are some assumptions in there. As I
mentioned, this is a work in progress.
Ms. Yukimura: So two years' operation would cost us $67 million?
Mr. Dill: That includes a lot of equipment and capital costs in order to
take advantage and tipping fees at H-Power.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, why aren't we doing a MRF and accelerating our
diversion?
Mr. Dill: Well, that's part of the scope of the EIS will be looking at a
resource recovery park. That's in that original...
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Ms. Yukimura: Well, I know, but what is the timetable and the estimated
amount of diversion you can do if you do an accelerated diversion? It certainly will be cheaper than
$67 million.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Dill, I think I'm going to ask that we move this to an
agenda item in the future, okay. I do want to state my comments though, so that you know now.
We're funding a MRF and we were told we were going to run out of capacity in seven years, but the
seven years would allow us the appropriate time to develop a new facility. That is what we were
told, and that is what I'm going to hold the department to.: Shipping trash to Oahu to me is a
fallback position if we got ourselves into that predicament. But we also gave a green light to the
'MRF. So we could sit here and discuss this for most of the budget time today, which I think
Councilwoman Yukimura's questions and Mr. Rapozo's questions will probably take us a good part of
the day. Mr. Rapozo, would you mind if I moved this to your committee for a discussion on critical
path and options in the near future? Would you have a problem if I did that?
Mr. Rapozo: No.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Councilwoman Yukimura?
Ms. Yukimura: I don't have a problem except that we're being called to make
budget decisions on this issue, big budget decisions. So it seems incomplete to not have a full
discussion so that we can know what kind of budget decisions to make.
Chair Furfaro: First of all, I want to say I requested this schedule from you.
It didn't seem to be part of your past plan. Secondly, the decisions we're making in this year are for
this year only, okay. The charter prevents us from making these commitments. Now we could have
more discussion on this when we get to CIP items, but Mr. Dill, there are legitimate questions and
past commitments made to this council about identifying and being in a new site in seven years. We
need to hear that, too. Councilwoman, thank you for letting me share that. You have the floor, then
Mr. Rapozo.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, chair. I mean we just got this two minutes before
this meeting. So I'm not sure if I'm absorbing this or understanding this correctly. But at a glance it
looks like if we run out of space and we're not ready for the new landfill, it will cost $67 million to do
a shipping option or it will cost $67 million or $68.2 million to go to Ce113. So...
Mr. Dill: I'm sorry. What did you say the cost for Cell 3? The cost for
Cell 3 is...
Ms. Yukimura: Well, yeah, but $12.9 million, plus $16.34 million, plus
$9 million, plus $30 million is $68 million for this landfill and it's not even including the cost to close
it and maintain for 30 years.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, on that note here, the agenda item is your operating
budget. I appreciate you answered this question about critical path. But this definitely needs to be
in a committee meeting, and we need to focus on today's operating budget. That's where we need to
be.
Ms. Yukimura: Chair, I'm willing to do that, but I do want to bring it up
when we talk about CIP because this is related to CIP.
Chair Furfaro: That's fine.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo, you have no problem if we put it in your
committee?
Mr. Rapozo: No and I think...
Chair Furfaro: And I'll give you the floor. I just want to reconfirm that.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, thank you, and really just to address Councilmember
Yukimura's concern I agree with that we are going to be asked...the budget decisions we make this
year will obviously affect the operations going forward. So my only request would be to have that
discussion prior to our decision-making, if possible.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Mr. Dill, is there any more we want to cover on solid
waste, which is the agenda item? And I want you to know I appreciate you surfacing this critical
path with us.
Mr. Dill: You're welcome and again, .this is something we've been
working on for a while. This was just something generated since Friday. So it's definitely on our
radar and we're pursuing and working to address all of these concerns that you do-have. I believe on
Friday we were responding to requests for information or questions, so I'd be happy to entertain any
questions that the council has.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Now it is our pleasure to put this soon on a committee
agenda meeting, but are there any other questions regarding operational issues? Councilwoman
Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, on page 215 of our sheets under "other services," which is
a hne item for $4,700,000.00 plus. I'd like to know what your plans are to use a million dollars for
green waste processing and $2 million for Kekaha Landfill operation.
Ms. Yukimura: 215.
Mr. Dill: I'm sorry. Which is the line item you were trying to track
down?
Ms. Yukimura: It's line item 208-2031-641.24. Excuse me, 641.30, sorry.
Mr. Tanigawa: I'm sorry, Councilmember Yukimura. Could you repeat your
question?
Ms. Yukimura: What are the plans for the million dollars that you're
proposing to spend for green waste processing and the $2 million that you have here itemized for
Kekaha Landfill operations because that's not labor and regular operating costs, right?
Mr. Tanigawa: Okay, no it isn't. The million dollars for green waste will be
utilized for contract services primarily to have someone receive unprocessed green waste and
manage that materials for us and also to shred green waste at our transfer station and our landfill
diversion site, and remove that processed green waste and manager that material as well. The
$2 million budgeted for Kekaha Landfill operation, that's funds that are appropriated to fund the
contract with waste management of Hawaii, to help the county manage the landfill and maintain
regulatory compliance.
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Tanigawa:
believe.
Ms. Yukimura:
contract?
Is that part of an ongoing contract?
Correct. We've had that contract in place since 1993, I
And we've always spent $2 million a year as part of the
Mr. Tanigawa: It's varied from year-to-year primarily because we pay the
contractor based on actual tonnage received at the landfill.
Ms. Yukimura: So that's a figure that's going to be calculated by actual
tonnage to the landfill?
Mr. Tanigawa: What we anticipate and I believe last year the amount
budgeted was approximately $1.8 million.
Chair Furfaro: I'm sorry you faded away from the mike? You said one
point...
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Tanigawa: $1.8 million and that's just a figure off the top of my head.
Chair Furfaro: Well, it looks like we've got a book coming close to be shared
with you.
Mr. Tanigawa: I'm sorry. I was just corrected. The actual figure was
$2,008,000.00.
Chair Furfaro: $2.8?
Mr. Tanigawa: No, $2,008,000.00 last year.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: So that amount would go down if we had more diversion?
Mr. Tanigawa: It could go down, but the contract has a provision. Because
the contractor has fixed costs at the landfill, when tonnage drops down below 6,000 tons, the unit
price goes up. We actually pay a higher unit price and although we receive less tonnage, the amount
we pay the contractor remains relatively the same unless the tonnage drops down below, I believe
the number was, 5200 tons a month, then we will end up paying less.
(Mr. Chang was noted to be present.)
Ms. Yukimura: Wow, isn't that a great incentive for us to drop below 5200
tons a month or whatever you said to cut our cost? So what is that figure again, the threshold figure
for a lower contract cost?
Mr. Tanigawa: If tonnage drops below 6,000 tons a month, the unit price
bumps up to a higher amount.
Ms. Yukimura: But if it goes below what?
Mr. Tanigawa: We can look at...it looks like you're looking for an accurate
tonnage break...
Ms. Yukimura: Well, you just gave me a figure that said if it goes below that
figure, then our contract price drops. Am I incorrect in hearing that?
Mr. Tanigawa: When the...
Chair Furfaro: When the tonnage drops, the contract price goes up.
Ms. Yukimura: Unless we get to a figure and then it goes down. So what is
that figure?
Mr. Tanigawa: As I recall, and this is not an exact figure, it's roughly
5200 tons.
Ms. Yukimura: You can confirm that later. You're thinking that it was
5200 tons, then our contract price with waste management would go down.
Mr. Dill: Can I request, please, that you send that question to us
among your questions and we'll make sure we get an accurate answer back to you.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, staff please make sure we get that question in.
Chair Furfaro: Larry, I want to see the step cost for the tonnage, and I want
to know who reconciles it at the end of the month. Very specifically who reconciles it?
Ms. Yukimura: Okay then, so your green waste processing, is this is a cost
that we've regularly paid every year as well?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Tanigawa: Yes. We've actually used contract services for several years
now.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So I guess one question I would like to know is the
past 10-year cost of that. And are you looking at green waste curbside pickup in the future, near
future?
Mr. Tanigawa:
integrated waste manage
Ms. Yukimura:
curbside collection.
Mr. Tanigawa:
Ms. Yukimura:
Chair Furfaro:
Ms. Yukimura:
Chair Furfaro:
Yeah, that is one of the things .that was identified in our
went plan update.
So please give me the timeline for that green waste collection,
I'll have to get back to you on that.
Yes, yes.
We'll send that as a question.
Okay, thank you.
Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: It's a follow onto that question. I'm more interested in what
your cost analysis going forward is for green waste? Obviously the data from 10 years ago is
important, but I think the green waste volume has increased substantially and I'm beginning to
wonder if in fact it would be more feasible for this county to do its own green waste processing at the
sites currently and this is some of the complaints I've heard from the public is that they don't have
the opportumty to get compost or the green waste, the composting material or whatever it is. What
do you call it when it comes out of the shredder? '
Mr. Tanigawa: Mulch.
Mr. Rapozo: Mulch, obviously I'm not a farmer. But they don't even have
an opportunity to get mulch from the county's green waste processing, and as I made my rounds
around the different facilities here in the county a few months ago, it seemed like it would make
sense if we could process the green waste at the site and provide the mulch to our citizens for free.
We would basically kill two birds with one stone. So using data for the past 10 years as well as
projections going forward, there has got to be a point where it's more feasible for this county to
process its own green waste than to contract it out. And I don't know if that's possible. I put that
out to you and I don't expect an answer now obviously because I know there is a substantial cost that
comes with green waste processing, but I'm looking long-term, not is it cheaper to do it this year?
No. In the next 10 years would it be feasible for us to continue to contract out at a million or so a
year versus doing the green waste processing in-house.
Mr. Dill: Okay, thank you and we will look into that.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, thank you very much.
Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: As a follow-up to that, we discussed when sewers were before
us the issue of sewage sludge, which is increasing and contributes to our problems at the landfill. So
Maui's solution to their green waste and sludge problem has been to put an RFP or RFQ and to have
this private contractor from, I think it's called EKO Compost, that takes care of the sewage sludge
and the green waste and creates ahigh-level, commercially-marketable soil conditioner so that
creates a business, creates a product that people can use. I mean at least we need to look at that
option as well.
Mr. Dill: There are a lot of things involved with that. We are looking
at that as wastewater's RFQ will be looking for various options including aerated static pile
composting that they do over on Maui. So that's one of the avenues we're looking at to see if that's
the most viable solution for that.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so...
Mr. Dill: So I will be looking at that in conjunction with the green
waste and the sludge.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so I'd like to know the decision-making timeline. I
mean this issue has been a problem in our budget year after year after year. It's addressed
somewhat in our integrated solid waste management plan and while I see a lot of activity dealing
with landfills, I don't see a lot of activity or action dealing with diversion, when diversion could not
only set us on a course for a new future in solid waste management, but it could also extend the life
of the landfill and reduce what is going into the landfill and our cost of operating the landfill. So, I
need to see more emphasis on diversion than I have in the past. I mean, diversion is the key and yet,
we've been so slow, and I see under MRF, explore a MRF. That is not what the plan says or the
council said about a MRF. They said, do a MRF. So okay, we'll discuss that in CIP.
Chair Furfaro: And we'll also discuss that in committee meeting under
Mr. Rapozo. Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Hi, good morning. This is a follow-up to Councilmember
Yukimura's questions and I think it has to do with the way the strategic plan...and I think the
initiatives that you've outlined are really good and it sets a direction. But I think what we're looking
for is what can be accomplished over the next year. So with respect to the MRF, the materials
recovery facility, what will be your objectives for this year? We know that's the direction or policy
that the council has set in the past. So what is it that can be done this year to get us toward that
goal? I think for all of these initiatives, that's what we would be looking for. Also, it seems like the
key to diversion is education, and one of the things that I noticed in your budget on page 215, under
public education, there's a $50,000 line item there, and I was just wondering how did you intend to
use those funds.
ALLISON FRALEY, Solid Waste Programs Coordinator: Aloha council, for the record
Allison Fraley, Solid Waste Programs Coordinator. Actually, we have two line items for public
education for the solid waste division. There's $50,000 in the solid waste budget. There's also...is it
$10,000 in the recycling budget? I believe it's $10,000. And so in the combination for all of our
recycling programs, we plan to do radio ads and television ads, and we have our ongoing efforts. For
the $50,000, a lot of that is going to be allocated towards educating about the rollout of our
automated refuse collection. That is kind of an expensive line item. So we're going to be doing direct
outreach to that group that is going to be getting that automated refuse collection.
Chair Furfaro: KipuKai?
Mr. Kualii: Aloha. So following up on Councilmember Yukimura's
questions, I was interested too, in those big items of $1 million and $2 million. You talked about the
$2 million being waste management of Hawaii. Who is the contractor for the green waste
processing? And at this point, is it all that they do is shred it and process it and then it goes to the
landfill? All of it? Are they doing anything else with it?
Chair Furfaro: Troy, why don't you head up here?
Mr. Kualii: And it's not available. I mean 100 of what they process of the
green waste is all going to the landfill?
Mr. Tanigawa: No. None of the green waste they process ends up in the
landfill. What ends up happening is the contractor either composts the green waste into a usable
product that can be applied to soil or they use it directly on the soil as some type of weed abatement
or erosion-control measure.
Mr. Kualii: So what happens to it, though? If it's usable, who's using it?
Is it the private contractor's resource now and then they turn around and sell it? Because if they do,
then those are all the types of information we would want because Councilmember Rapozo's idea
about the county taking it on ourselves would mean that it's not just an expense, but it could be an
expense possibly that is offset by some potential revenue.
Mr. Tanigawa: For a number of years...
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Mr. Kualii: We need that information.
Mr. Tanigawa: Okay.
Mr. Kualii: Not that if it's free, but it could be free to the citizens, but not
free to contractors or businesses. I don't know. It's just we need information to know what is
possible and that's just my basic questions.
Chair Furfaro: We'll send that over as a question. Allison, I think we want
you back. Troy, thank you for coming up to answer that question. I think we're back on educational
items, Allison. Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, Allison.
Ms. Fraley: Sure.
Ms. Yukimura: So if a portion of the money is going toward automatic pickup,
how is that related to diversion?
Ms. Fraley: Well, actually the $50,000 budget is in the solid waste
programs budget and that's what would partially be spent on the outreach for the automated refuse
collection. And I stand corrected, there's a $20,000.00 budget in the recycling programs budget for
the diversion public education. And that is a $10,000.00 increase from last year or this current fiscal
year, I should say, because we have more programs. We have the shopping bag program
surrounding the new law and other programs that we want to continue to educate the public about.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, you know, I do want to congratulate you-I was going to
write a letter to the editor and never got to it-on your year-round hazardous waste, so people don't
have to wait for your annual...is that true?
Ms. Fraley: It's actually household batteries, which is something that we
get a lot of public calls about and we just started that program last month.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so thank. you for the clarification, which is important
for the public to know. It's about batteries are a portion of the hazardous waste stream.
Ms. Fraley: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And they are the ones that people would just toss into the
trash rather than save till your six months hazardous waste collection, right?
Ms. Fraley: Yes, annually actually.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, your annual one weekend or two weekends collection. So
it's a great thing that people can...how do they do it?
Ms. Fraley: They can bring household batteries to the Kauai Resource
Center, which is open Monday through Friday.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, all right, thank you. That is a big step forward and you
need to educate people about that. Okay. Isn't it true, however, that an educational program alone
does not increase diversion?
Ms. Fraley: Yes, it needs to be there so people know what to do. But of
course you need convenience, economic incentive, and legislation to really drive behavior change.
Ms. Yukimura: Right.. So that's the part that's been missing for a long time
in this county. There's no systemic system that really makes diversion, i.e., recycling, reuse and
reduce easy and economically or financially the better move for our citizens. Pay-as-you-throw is not
a CIP matter. It's a policy matter in your operations. So after this discussion on education, because
I think others will want to still ask some questions on education, I'd like to go to pay-as-you-throw
and where that stands right now.
Ghair Furfaro: Any other questions at this time?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Ms. Yukimura: On education?
Chair Furfaro: Allison, thank you very much. We're going to go to pay-as-
you-throw. Are you involved inpay-as-you-throw?
Ms. Fraley: Yes, I am.
Chair Furfaro: Very good, you can stay right there. Councilwoman
Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: So where are we on instituting that program?
Ms. Fraley; Well, actually there's an agenda item on this Wednesday's
council meeting where we're going to be asking. your approval to have consulting services that are
going to be offered in kind through an EPA grant for us to look at that, to get assistance with
planning that for the future.
Ms. Yukimura: And what kind of timetable do you have for your pay-as-you-
throw line item policy?
Ms. Fraley: That's what we'd be determining once we get this assistance.
Ms. Yukimura: You don't have something that says I'm going to use the
consultant for so much and then based on their decisions we're going to implement, you don't have
that? You don't have a goal to institute pay-as-you-throw by a certain time?
Mr. Dill: We don't have a firm timeline established yet, but it's part of
the work that the consultant will do for us, will help us establish a scope and a timeframe for all
that, which we'Il be happy to share with you when we get that.
Chair Furfaro: We'll wait for that on Wednesday.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, all right. I'll look forward to that item. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, I think this is going to put us in a position that we're
going to wrap up solid waste and we're going to go to CIP. Some solid waste issues might come up
again in CIP, so I appreciate you staying close by Mr. Dill. And I will pass out to you folks an outline
for CIP budget programs and I guess we'll start with an overview from Mr. Rezentes. Does that
sound appropriate? Okay, and then also I want to let you know that attached to the material that
I'm send to you is the detail from the IT department. As you know I asked to defer that until May,
giving him time to study those particular systems, IT systems that were planned in the budget, but
he did, at my request, return the appropriate narratives. So if we can give this just to the members.
We're going to take aten-minute break here.
There being no objection, the departmental budget review recessed at 9:47 a.m.
The departmental budget review reconvened at 10:05 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
PUBLIC WORKS -CIP
Chair Furfaro: Okay, we're back from our recess. As we shared with you
folks, the next item we're going to go into is the capital improvement program. I have an outline
that I'll let you know that we'll follow. It will start with an overview from Mr. Heu and Mr. Wally
Rezentes. And then also attached to the piece I handed to you folks is the agenda by department
with IT being excused until May with the written highlights that they sent in. I think I shared that
with you folks last week. Mr. Heu, welcome, and we'll start with you with CIP.
There being no objection, the rules were suspended.
Mr. Heu: Good morning, Chair Furfaro, councilmembers. For the
record, Gary Heu. With me this morning is Wally Rezentes, our finance director. We want to thank
you for the opportunity to lead of this discussion on our capital improvement plan for the upcoming
year. First of all, I thought it might be somewhat useful to explain to you how we would like to lay
April 18, 2011
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out the presentation this morning. As the chair said, Wally and I are here to give you kind of like
the 30,000-foot view of the CIP as far as the management and the overall proposed budget. And then
once we're done with that portion, which hopefully won't take us that long, we'll move into the more
traditional review by department and by division of the various capital improvement program areas.
And so to get us started, again, I thought it would be a little useful, especially since we have a few
new members to start just with a little history relative to the management of the capital
improvement program. In previous years and this was probably before my arrival with the county,
when you talked about CIP, capital improvement program, it was basically in terms of
implementation basically managed out of public works and the reason for that is that nearly all of
the CIP projects were public works types of projects. So it made perfect sense that they
implemented, they managed. Things changed. Things evolved over time as everybody's aware via a
charter amendment, the department of parks and recreation was created and that carved out a fairly
significant piece of public works in terms of the parks division now falling under the department of
public works and thereby a chunk of the CIP also now was related to another department outside of
public works. Over time, you found other types of initiatives that were funded out of the CIP that
didn't necessarily, again, fall under public works. So what this did it created a situation where there
needed to be a broader oversight over the capital improvement program as opposed to previously,
where, like I said, everything was pretty much consolidated under public works. So that's the
situation that was created. It's also important to understand that any given CIP project in order to
make that proposed project a reality, many, many hands touch that project from inception through
completion. They include the finance department, procurement, the county attorney's office, contract
administration, permitting, project planning and detailed engineering, project and construction
management. And it's a good thing because collectively we're able to make things happen. But it
creates a challenge because each of the areas that I mentioned represent potential hiccups, potential
roadblocks. So it's become apparent over the years in terms of when we look at why certain projects
don't move as quickly as we would want-them to is because a lot of times there are these roadblocks
and we haven't effectively been able to remove them. So understanding that challenge,
understanding the need for broad oversight, and for a way to better manage the overall process in
terms of removal of barriers so that we can successfully complete CIP projects in a timely manner,
we came before this body last year and we proposed the funding of a CIP manager position or an
executive assistant in the mayor's office, working title being, CIP Manager. And so the good news is
that we proposed that the council, the legislative body, agreed that that would be a good thing for the
reasons that I've mentioned. And again, the good news is that we were able to staff that position in
the December/January timeframe, late last year, early this year. That also coincided with some
other staffing type of initiatives that the mayor put forward, and we also have, as you folks know, a
new leadership team within public works. And so this whole thing begins to come together as we
have gotten a public works leadership team and a CIP manager in place, looking for better ways to
help us manage this overall program. So the bottom line is that though this is a work in progress,
what we see is that at a point in time, we will have a single point of contact, being the CIP manager,
for all approved and proposed CIP projects. That's not something that we've had as long as I've been
with the county and I'm not sure if anybody in recent memory can tell us of a time when we did have
that. So that's very hopeful. That's something that we look forward to, the point in time where
we've got that single point of contact established. What's interesting is that as we have, for a lack of
better terms, new blood, new energy in public works, it's also come with new ways of looking at how
we manage. So that has been very exciting, specifically as we've looked at how we're going to better
manage the CIP program. One thing that we came before this body, I think it was last year, when
we were discussing CIP at some level was we talked about a project initiation document. And that
project initiation document has morphed into a project information document, and you will be able to
see copies of those for some of the projects that we'll be reviewing with you in more detail later this
morning. And I think the last time we were before this legislative body talking about the project
initiation document, we indicated that this was simply a first step in a journey that was going to
take us a while, but it was a good first step. What it forced us to do was to be able to articulate what
it is that we wanted to do with any given project. And so at a certain level it speaks to
accountability, in terms of, okay, this is the scope of the work, this is the timeframe in which we
intend to complete this work, and this is the estimated costs for completing that work, and it was all
documented. That's a good thing. And we have expanded upon that this year and I would say that
most of the projects that we're proposing for this upcoming budget, if PIDs have not already been
established, they are in the works and will be completed soon. And again, this is simply a first step
towards a much larger vision. And the much larger vision that I'm talking about is really a capital
program management system. What this system is and I don't recall if I've had this discussion on
the floor with this body, but it's a mechanized or computer-based system which will track projects
from inception to completion. This is not something for which we need to reinvent the wheel. Many,
many, I would say most private sector companies who are involved with capital projects and the
managing of capital projects use these systems. In fact the City & County of Honolulu uses a
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system, which I believe they call FileMaker Pro, and Larry Dill, our county engineer, and deputy
county engineer Lyle Tabata have already visited with the Honolulu folks and been able to see what
that system can do. It's very exciting. It's quantum leap stuff for us at the county, but it doesn't
mean that it can't happen in the very near future because, again, it's a system that already exists. It
has the potential to allow for online approval of projects and/or change orders, thereby reducing the
paper shuffle that we do on a daily basis. For me, the real exciting thing is that the system is able to
integrate our financials with our accounting system so that there resides the potential to have real-
time access to where our projects sit from a financial and accounting standpoint. Again, we look
forward to further discussions with the City & County of Honolulu. At the same time, we know that
there are other systems are out there that are used by other government entities and we would like
to do our due diligence to make sure that we're not jumping at the first available system that pops
up at us. But those things are in the works. Well, this past year, what we did is we had what I
would call prototype CIP reviews, we had a couple of those quarterly reviews, and what we did was
we had at the table all the people that we felt wexe necessary, the internal folks that were necessary
to be able to identify and remove roadblocks. In other words, during those CIP discussions we had
the county attorney there and/or the relevant deputy. We had finance and we had the procurement
folks at the table. We had our project people at the table. And the bottom line is if we can get in a
room and we can communicate with each other and we can understand what the problems or the
roadblocks are, we have a much better chance at resolving or removing those roadblocks. I've been
here long enough to see roadblocks pop up, and then sit on someone's desk because there are more
important things, maybe, to take care of as we deal with the many fires that we deal with everyday.
And before you know it, months have passed and that roadblock still remains and then a project
languishes. We come before council and the council will say, well, we've seen this project on that list
for the past three years and we haven't made any headway with it, and why are we tying up capital.
And that is a concern for us also and so we think by institutionalizing these meetings and we tried a
couple quarterly meetings and the intent now that we've got the resources available with the CIP
manager is for those meetings to be done on a monthly basis. So a monthly basis seems like a good
interval in terms of being able to identify potential roadblocks and then if something can't be
resolved on the spot, certainly three to four weeks seems like a reasonable time to make some sort of
headway with that particular roadblock. So that is our intent on agoing-forward basis, again, to
conduct monthly CIP review meetings, to continue the use of the PIDs until we are able to
incorporate that or transition that into a more comprehensive and robust mechanized system fox
managing our projects. Finally before I turn the mike over to Wally, I think one of the big things
that we did as we approached the budget this year, and it goes back to what I previously mentioned,
seeing CIP projects languish year-over-year. That's always been a frustration for the
administration. It's been a frustration for this body. So with the best information available to us at
the point in time that we needed to submit the budget for your review, you will see that the CIP
budget has been reduced from previous year and part of that is that we said, hey, look, this is the
bar. If we don't intend to use these funds within the next 12-18 months, then we shouldn't be
allocating those funds to a given project. And so we went through these projects and said, hey, look,
are we truly going to expend funds within the next 12-18 months and if we weren't, then we said, it's
not like that project is going to go into a black hole because obviously those projects were relevant at
one time and are probably still relevant. It's just that for whatever reason, we may not be expending
significant funds on that given project within the next 12 to 18 months. So why should we tie capital
up, allocated to a project that we know is not going to be able to expend funds in the next 12-18
months. So that was the filter that we used. And so that set of projects that was submitted reflects
the use of that filter in terms of how we got to that list of projects.
As we go along, we may be able to do a better job as we get a better handle on the CIP in
terms of narrowing that window. I mean I think there would be people who would say, hey, if we're
allocating $100,000.00 to a given project and we're not going to use it within the next 12 months,
then should we not identify what's going to be used in the next 12 months and then carve the rest
out. We gave it a little more flexibility going in this first year trying this approach and we said in
the next 12-1$ months, so that we wouldn't necessarily be going through a revolving door kind of
thing with council into the next fiscal year coming before you with money bills, when in fact we were
providing for a little longer interval, being the 12-18 months. So I hope that makes some sense to
you in terms of the overall and the high level management, in terms of how we are choosing to
approach the capital improvement program on agoing-forward basis. Again, like I said, it is
certainly a work in progress and we want to be able to entertain and to vet new ideas and new
concepts as we work through this. Again, the way I look at this CIP program management is it's still
in its infancy stage and it's a long road for us. If I were to characterize how we have been operating,
I don't want to say archaic, but we're behind the times. There's no doubt. We're behind the time and
what we are showing here in the budget, what we're showing in our proposal is an effort to bring us
up to speed as quickly as we can move. But again, you're talking about system changes, you're
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talking about changes in processes that are deeply embedded in our organization and as we know,
change takes a lot of effort and we are committed to making that effort because we think this is so
important, because the capital program represents such a large chunk of our overall county
expenditures in any given year. So we think that the investment in the CIP manager position, as
well as subsequent investment in the system requirements to support the program will be
investments well-made in terms of allowing us to better utilize our capital. So with that, I'm going to
turn the mike over to our finance director, who will take you through a little bit more of the specifics
relative to the proposed budget. But I see the vice chair's hand is up, so.
Chair Furfaro: (Inaudible) how we process. How's that?
Mr. Heu: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: I would like to make sure that you're in agreement with the
handout that I set with the schedule, Gary, by departments?
Mr. Heu: Yes, yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay and I appreciate another overview from Wally, but
we've given almost 25 minutes to your presentation...
Mr. Heu: It's been that long?
Chair Furfaro: ...and we have Dean Hirata coming at 1 o'clock to give us an
overview in economic development for the state as we go into Mr. Costa's department later. So first
and foremost, Wally, to reconcile this sheet, it looks like you identified by department a total
between grants and bonds and other contributions $113 million, roughly? Okay. And I assume that
you would like to give us an overview. But if we start first with the parks department section, as
pointed out, we can have an overview of those specific projects. And I also understand we have a
new CIP manager on board to kind of conform with the things that Mr. Heu has shared with us.
Will he be coming up as part of this presentation?
Mr. Heu: Actually, only as far as it...in terms of supporting any of the
divisional presentations and I apologize, Chair. I would like...I mean for the purpose of...
Chair Furfaro: It would be nice to introduce him?
Mr. Heu: Yeah, I apologize for that. Our CIP manager, executive
assistant to the mayor, is Mr. Tommy Contrades. He's pasted up against the back wall. He's a little
probably shy, his first time out. But anyway, on agoing-forward basis, again, once this management
process has gelled, Tommy will be the point of contact for all CIP inquiries. If there are updates that
are requested by the council, I know in the past Councilmember Bynum has asked for periodic
updates on the CIP, Tommy would be coordinating and leading those discussions with the support of
the other CIP members.
Chair Furfaro: Okay and could you submit for all the councilmembers a
sample of the PIDs as we have new members here that actually reconciled the project release format
that you're talking about and I guess one of the things I want to make sure in there, if we're talking
about a critical path dealing with, you know we're 18 months into something, certainly we'd like to
make sure that some corner of the document that indicates what the start-time was for that project,
so we can, in our minds, clearly understand scope and timeline balance as we go forward. So on that
note, Mr. Rezentes, I'll give you a few moments on the floor.
WALLACE G. REZENTES, Finance Director: I'll try to be real brief. I just wanted to touch
on a few points, one involving...kind of following up on what Gary had mentioned with respect to
timing of projects and the other on the procurement portion. Basically, as finance director, I'm
trying to determine the best method in which to meet the financial needs of the various departments
with respect to CIP. The goal should be always trying to match as close as possible the need for the
financing and whatever financing mechanism we're going to use. It's not healthy to, for example,
float a bond and let it sit for seven years and the fund's not being utilized for the purposes intended.
In the PID process and the whole project management piece that we are trying to make
improvements on will help us not only with the construction aspects to it, but the financing, timing
aspects to it. I've had discussions with bond underwriters, as well as commercial lenders, and one of
the methods in which we think we can improve upon the timing is, in the future, is to try to utilize
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bond anticipation notes where again we're meeting the need closer to when the need is and we can
consolidate or pull together funds and then go out with a timely procurement in the bond market to
finance long-term. So it's kind of a bridge that we hope to improve upon, when the projects are
needed, as-needed. And we understand, you know other counties, the state has used bond
anticipation notes in the past and based on our conversations, we feel that we would be a good credit
for the commercial lenders and there is definitely an appetite locally even with our financial
institutions to work with us. So I'm not going to go into that much further, but that's part of how I
think the PID process and the management piece will help us decipher timing.
The other part, I think most of you know, procurement is a challenge. The procurement code
HRS 103D is time-consuming, is labor-intensive and over the years the departments, as well as
purchasing hasn't made improvements in understanding the intricacies of the law. But
nevertheless, it takes some time. I just want the councilmembers to understand and the public to
understand, as well, that oftentimes one procurement, one project, takes multiple procurements.
First you would need to go and secure professional services. You do a professional services request,
you do a professional services advertisement, you go through a selection, a negotiation piece, finally
you get the contract, and you set the consultant up, and they do their good work. Their work
includes, oftentimes, the EIS/EA permitting, making sure that we dot our I's and cross our T's with
state, county and our federal requirements. And sometimes they also assist with the bid or RFP
preparation. If they don't, we do the bid or RFP preparation in-house and we start a whole other
procurement for the actual construction activity. And it follows pretty much the same steps that I
laid out. So the lead time, before we actually start hammering, set a hammer to a nail, is quite
extensive and oftentimes the challenges are determined after you are, say, in the EIS or EA process
for unforeseen things.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that. I think most of us understand that part.
I think this benefit also is for your department heads. We have $113 million CIP budget of which
$63 million comes from a bond. The bond, of course, has the most rigid timing for penalties and
returning money. So it's extremely important that the staff realize that those projects do trigger
penalties if they're not followed through on. And the other moneys we have certainly do not do a
great deal of good to us sitting in funds that only pay 1.5 percent interest. So that is all well-taken,
Wally. And I would like to move into some specific areas. But before you leave, I am going to see if
any of the councilmembers have questions specifically of you before we go to parks. Councilmember
Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: I just have one question. In the spreadsheet, there is the
proposed CIP. Is that new? You know all the bold proposed CIP funds that are in the bond column?
Mr. Rezentes: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Is that the existing bond or are we intending...
Mr. Rezentes: Existing.
Chair Furfaro: Existing.
Mr. Rapozo: So we were able to amend the bond fund?
Mr. Rezentes: None of this here is adding new money on the bond side. So
yeah, we are able to move moneys from a project to another project as long as it's capital in nature.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, so for example, the Isenberg Park bathroom 109, 135,
you just moved that from the general fund and you can do that?
Mr. Rezentes: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Councilmember Yukimura? Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so the $60 million bond that was floated, the
requirements are that we use the money by when?
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Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Mr. Rezentes: There's no specific requirement. When we float the bonds, we
do it with the intention and when we discuss it at the credit rating agency presentations, it's
always...the intention is to spend it within three years. Sometimes it does not happen. When it does
not happen, we have to make sure that we're not in an arbitrage situation, whereby we're earning
more...our rate of return on the investment of the bond funds is not in excess of the rate that the face
of the bond holds. So if our bond is at 5 percent, we can't earn 6 percent. It would be considered
positive arbitrage and that 1 percent difference would be potentially having to be paid back.
Chair Furfaro: That could trigger a penalty in paying it back.
Mr. Rezentes: Like what the Chair said, the rate of return on our
investments is very low. right now because of that's marketplace. So we're not in an arbitrage
situation as we speak.
Ms. Yukimura: So the greater concern is that we're losing the benefits by not
having these infrastructure items up and running?
Mr. Rezentes: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, in time. So then related to Mr. Heu's presentation,
okay, so we have this point of contact, but what are the results that we can expect from this new
system? And I do commend you for taking on this bottleneck problem, which is of enormous
proportions, but I didn't hear we're going to deliver projects under budget and on-time or whatever.
Is that what we can expect?
Mr. Heu: Well, I think what the commitment is, whether it was stated
or not, was I think what we can expect is we can expect to see a more significant drawdown on what
was approved in this year...what you will approve in this year's CIP. As we provide periodic updates
throughout the year and we can show the drawdown on the various projects and when we're here at
budget next year, we should be able to see a marked difference relative to our ability to spend down
the funds that you folks will approve.
Ms. Yukimura: So how can we be ensured that we're barking up the right tree
or we're actually going to get the projects that move this county ahead done? I mean I'm looking at
the MRF and it's out of the budget right now. And that was one of the top priorities for the reasons
explained earlier today. So it's nice to get projects done, but how do you know that those projects are
really connected to what your needs are and your priorities are? I mean I just looked at the solid
waste priorities. It's not very clear to me what the priorities are. And that's partly one of the
reasons why diversion has been constantly lost in the process. You want to try and answer that?
Mr. Heu: Yeah, speaking specifically about the MRF, I think...and we
can have...
Ms. Yukimura: You don't have to speak specifically to the MRF.
Mr. Heu: Oh, okay, okay, I'm sorry.
Ms. Yukimura: I'm saying how are you tying these projects to know that they
are, in fact, the top priority projects that are going to get the departments...I mean if you have a list
of projects and you just say okay, get `em done, get `em done, but they may not be the top priority
projects that this community needs. How are you making sure they are the ones?
Mr. Heu: Well, that's a real good question and there's a number of ways
that that vetting takes place. Number 1 is we've got the, I don't even know if we have the time to go
into this right now, but as you're aware, Vice Chair, we've got the county's six year CIP which is a
document that is historically generated out of planning based on their interactions with the- various
departments as well as their understanding of the longer term requirements for the island based on
development plans and based on what they see coming in, in terms of through the application
process. So that's the thirty thousand foot view of it.
Ms. Yukimura: Which has been, excuse me, the missing link, so I don't want
to draw out this conversation much longer.
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Chair Furfaro: I appreciate that.
Ms. Yukimura: But if we're spending $60 million or $113 million and we're
not clear that it's getting us the projects that we need as top priorities, we need to have an extended
conversation some other time.
Mr. Heu: Yeah...
Chair Furfaro: I can tell you for the purpose of this meeting, the
councilwoman brings up a very good point, and we should have regular quarterly updates. I'm
hearing from you, the administration, that you're going to be working with your department heads
monthly on project status and so forth. This council should have an opportunity to get an update
quarterly.
Mr. Heu: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: I think that is very appropriate as priorities could change in
the community that drives us to ask you to reconsider a project here and there. And on that note, I'll
give the floor to Councilmember Kuali`i, if you don't mind.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, I have just one last follow-up.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, councilmember.
Mr. Kuali`i: Aloha, welcome to our new CIP manager Tommy Contrades, I
look forward to working with you. My question is to you Mr. Heu and it's because I guess we won't
be hearing from IT and in the general sense I'm glad to hear about the 12-18 months because I think
we need to start looking at it that way is like as the administration is implying to make sure we're
getting the work done and that we're moving and not letting things sit for too long. So my specific
question is and first I wanted to say I'm pretty excited to hear you talk about this capital program
management system and I think it's critical for all of us in our decision making and it's critical for
explaining what we're doing to the public that we have a mechanized, computerized system that
tracks projects from the inception to completion. Then we can proudly say when it's completed what
it took and how efficient we were along the way. You mentioned FileMaker Pro as what Honolulu
uses. Actually when I was executive director of Pride at Work in the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.,
like ten years ago like in 1999, I couldn't have done my job without FileMaker Pro. We used it as our
basic membership database and all the powers that was a part of that system then, I can't imagine
what it's like now. So it's great to hear we're moving in that direction. So the one thing on the
budget is in the IT area I see Jine item IT infrastructure improvements and the IT SOA project, and
money was removed. I'm just curious as to what amounts from that spending line item for IT is
actually being spent then in the next 12-18 months on making this happen because it's exciting to
hear it, but it's more exciting that it's put in place and that it's work and serving us.
Mr. Rezentes: Yeah, Councilmember Kuali`i, our hope with the IT pieces is
to have that discussion in the May timeframe. And we are under new management in that area and
he is looking broadly at all of the different project funding sources and trying to come up with the
best plan that he sees meets the most pertinent demands in the various departments. So it's not
we're avoiding it, we're kind of just punting it to the May timeframe to have the kind of discussions
that I think you'd like.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay, I think I'll submit questions too and hopefully the
pieces, the questions that you can answer in advance, you will. Because I think by the time the May
timeframe comes, we'll be flooded with all of this additional information, possibly large modifications
to the entire budget, almost to a certain degree like starting all over again, and then we'll just have a
couple of days.
Mr. Rezentes: Okay, I think we have a white paper or something that we
have prepared.
Mr. Kuali`i: And to hear not only...like from Mr. Heu was saying this is
what we're...with the CIP piece I mean there's managers that are making this request of IT, so we
can hear from that side too. But the more information the earlier the better. Thank you.
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Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Chair Furfaro: Councilmember, I just wanted to make sure I did get a
communication from Brandon Raines. I see it might not be attached to your...okay, you've got it,
good. And this is an overview from him...
Mr. Kuali`i: About the transfer.
Chair Furfaro: Yes, and he will be back in May to have further discussion
with us.
Mr. Kuali`i: Yeah, I just want- to see that the money's being spent on the
things that we need and that it helps us do our job better.
Chair Furfaro: No, understood, but I wanted to make sure you did have that
correspondence. Councilwoman Yukimura, do you have another question for these gentlemen?
Ms. Yukimura: My last question. I like the rule or the rule of thumb that
12-18 months, you want to spend the money in 12-18 months, but what happens if you cut out the
important projects and there's no money left then?
Mr. Rezentes: That's when an additional financing piece would come into
play. I think, as Gary had mentioned, our intention is not for these projects to go into the black hole.
It's to keep on progressing with the project, but when it becomes more evident on the financial need,
the funding need, we're going to try to marry up the funding timing with the project timing.
Ms. Yukimura: Well isn't there a chance that it might not be an appropriate
time to float another bond when we need the moneys?
Mr. Rezentes: That's always a possibility, but the reverse to that is should
we finance something today, pay debt service on it for two, three, four years, and then at that point
do the project? Should we be paying dept service for that portion of time?
Ms. Yukimura: Exactly, but that's why doing all the lead-in to the selection of
the projects is so critical to make sure that you have your top priority projects already to go, designed
and done, you know, so you can do a PID. And I guess that's what I'm asking. There's a huge lack of
that happening.
Mr. Rezentes: If there are...you're talking about soft cost needs. You know
the soft cost needs...
Ms. Yukimura: I don't know if I'm talking about soft cost needs. I'm talking
about...oh, okay because you're talking about planning and design?
Mr. Rezentes: Right right.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Rezentes: Even that it's part of the process. If we know for sure that the
soft cost will start in month 20, 20 months from now, I'm going to try to put together a package
where I'm going to get the funding necessary close to that 20-month date.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, well then when did we pass the integrated solid waste
management plan? At least two years ago. The MRF was one of the top priorities in phase 1 and it's
not ready to go. I mean that's my concerns that there's a flaw somewhere that's not moving
correctly. Anyway, that's holding us back.
Chair Furfaro: We'll have further discussion on that with Mr. Dill.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: And I guess the real message here is when we have those soft
costs that deal with concepts, design, engineering fees, and so forth, they should be showing up, I
guess, by this time, when we approved a plan 24 months ago and we're not seeing it. So that'll be a
discussion item when we talk to Mr. Dill within Mr. Rapozo's committee. Those are very good
questions. Councilwoman Nakamura?
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Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Ms. Nakamura: Hi, I have a question about the bond fund. I'm looking at the
comparison from last year. So it shows that there was $73 million approximately in the bond fund
and this year the budget is $64.5 million. And so there's a $8.4 million dollar difference. Now what
happens to...I'm assuming because you're applying the criteria what can be done between 12-18
months that some projects sort of fell off the list?
Mr. Rezentes: Well again, if it fell off the list, it went to another bond
project. The difference between what you see, if you're look at fiscal year 2011 CIP versus fiscal year
2012 is the spend down. So there's been activity that has been accruing since then where projects
have been let, contracted out, moneys spent. So we are spending down as we speak, it's not as in the
velocity we had hoped. But, again, the difference between those two amounts is what we've been
spending down or have spent down.
Ms. Nakamura: And the $8.4 million difference, what happens to those funds?
Mr. Rezentes: It's contracted out. It's moneys that went out via contracts for
services or construction.
Ms. Nakamura: They have already been spent?
Mr. Rezentes: Yeah.
Chair Furfaro; So like the historic county building. As we progress here,
we're now at 80% completion. The funds spent with the contractor, FF&E and so forth were
depleted. They don't reappear on the plan.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Did I reconcile that appropriately? Thank you, I think we're
ready to go into the parks department.
Mr. Heu: Chair, just to wrap up and before we get to parks, you had
mentioned earlier wanting to see a sample of the PID.
Chair Furfaro: Yeah, if we can circulate it to all the members and I think all
of you should have...you folks all have a copy of this for parks and recreation? Yeah, it's more than a
sample. This is the real-Life PIDs that are...
Chair Furfaro: So is this going to be your sample of what comes to us from
parks?
Mr. Heu: Yeah, I don't think you need the sample after you see.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, if your sample in there covers everything, for myself, I
think the handling of CIP in parks is extremely different from handling CIPs for buildings that deals
with items like train, air conditioning systems, building modules, and so forth, but if it's the same
one, I'll consider the question answered.
Mr. Heu: Yeah and also just to let you folks know that, again, and
setting out expectations not only for what you will hear and see today, but also in the future, it's our
intent and I guess I will allow you folks to hold my feet to the fire in terms of setting this expectation
out for next year, it's our intent that when we come before this body in our next budget cycle for 2013
is that when we get to CIP, you will have a binder and it will have all the PIDs in there broken up by
sections, okay? As we go through today, you're going to get it section by section. So in other words,
parks and recreation was able to consolidate all of their PIDs into this nice little booklet for you.
Public works has a binder, which will be for their reference. And for some of the miscellaneous
pieces they will be handled on an individual basis. But next year, we intend to consolidate all the
PIDs prior to hitting our first day of CIP budget review. Each councilmember will have their own
binder. You will have all the PIDs in there to step through as we review the various projects, much
in the way as we talked about the operating budget. This year we were able to get to a standardized
format, something that we had not been successful in doing in previous years. But we got to a
standardized format. Next year we intend to take that a step further and again before we get to the
review of the Operating Budget, you will have all that information up front divided by all the various
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
departments and divisions prior to us entering into those budget discussions. So again, we're not
there yet, I think it reflects our philosophy of attempting to do things a little bit better today than we
did yesterday, the incremental improvement type of approach. So again, just so that you'll
understand what you'll see today, today parks has a consolidated PID booklet for you. As we go
through some of the other departments, divisions, the projects will be spoken to, but rest assured
that like for public works, they have their PIDs, those just were not...we weren't able to circulate
those. So anyway, I just wanted to kind of lay that out there before we start with the detailed
reviews.
Chair Furfaro: And just so that I can share this with you, Gary, because it's
an important part, you know a PID, as you say, is a Project Initiation Document. Many of these
initiations deal with the rationale why the upgrading compliance to codes, design, architectural
features, and so forth. So we're approving the initiation of a project. But I think the part that I get
hung up on and I'm going to be very honest here especially with the building department, is we never
get to a point that I understand clearly what the bids are on a project release document. In other
words we've done the planning, we've done all the initiating because not once since I've been on the
council has building come back to this body to say, hey, we have a change order of X-amount of
dollars because we're not fulfilling or we overlooked something in the actual project release piece.
That's what I'm looking for, not what initiates the project and what the scope is. But now when
we've actually approved the project and there's change orders, it doesn't seem to need our review and
that bothers me, okay? That bothers me. So, you don't have to answer it now. I don't think it was
worth a chuckle. I'll have to tell you what I think it was worth. I think it was worth finding out that
after the fact you have to come back to the council for a money bill. But it's like now, okay, there's
been this change order and we need another $300,000 for some portion of the police department and
we're not really getting aheads-up because we're not referring to actually a project release document
that says the electrical, the plumbing, the general contractor is this much, this much, this much and
then all of a sudden building negotiates a change order and we never see the change order. I tell you
that still concerns me, but I know this is work in progress, so.
Mr. Rezentes: And sometimes that even starts before we even start the
project where we have estimates, cost estimates. I remember years ago when there was a lot of work
in the construction industry. They weren't as hungry and we would estimate bid prices. Well, when
we actually let the bid, it came out ten, twenty, even higher.
Chair Furfaro: Because everybody was working.
Mr. Rezentes: And then we would have to come back to the council even
before we started for funding.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, gentlemen, I thank you very much. Mr. Rapozo had a
question for you before you left.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, right, just, Wally, you're saying before in the old days,
if there was a substantial change in the contract, it would have to come before council?
Mr. Rezentes: If there wasn't sufficient funds for a project and then we bid it
out and say we estimated the project at $1 million, the project was bid out, the number now is
$1.1 million, we would have to come back to the council to get the appropriate funds if we feel the bid
was in fact in line.
Mr. Rapozo: And now you don't?
Mr. Rezentes: Well, now fortunately, I don't see it as often because I think
the construction industry is a little hungrier and the prices are sometimes lower than we expect or
estimate.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, but I know we've had several projects that have had a
lot of change orders and I would agree with the Chair. I think when we approve a project for a
specific fund amount, I think we need to be held to that, and if in fact it changes, and maybe...I don't
know if it's something we put in the budget, Mr. Chair, if it changes by a certain percentage, that...
Chair Furfaro: We put into the budget a contingency fee, but the change
orders seem to happen after we've exceeded the contingency fee.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Mr. Rapozo: Well, it's...from what I understand that it's quite common
now, the change order process in our projects. It is an acceptable way to do business and I have to
agree with the Chair that I think we should be kept abreast.,.I think the public should be kept
abreast really of those change orders because it does cost money and I think it sends that message
like hey,' you know, bid low, we'll go ahead and get the change orders later and I think that is the
perception I've heard from several contractors outside saying hey, Mel, we bid right, we bid what we
think, and then all of sudden this guy comes in, he bids low, but the change orders make up the
difference, and that's not fair, so. I'm not sure what the mechanism is for us to stay on that,
Mr. Chair, but I guess we can explore that before we get into decision-making. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Gary. I think our point was made and I do expect
there to be a line on the budget for a contingency if you exceed something. But just coming back and
chatting with our staff about something and so forth, to me, doesn't authorize the work. If it's
substantial, it needs to be reviewed by the council. I think that is fair?
(?): That's fair.
Chair Furfaro: That's all I'm asking for. Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: I just wanted to say that looking at this sample that you
provided, that there is a lot of disparity in the level of detail provided and I know that you're starting
off and there are some that I think are very detailed-oriented that lays out the picture. The one for
Kamalani Pavilion, especially, I think is a good sample that really lays out the project, where a lot of
the other ones have missing information or staff that no longer work for a certain department. So
and the other part, too, I think that would be helpful to have on this is just to know what are the
upfront environmental and permits required because oftentimes that's what takes up so much of the
time to get these projects through. To know upfront for each of these projects what types of permits
are required could easily take 3-5 years just to do that piece, so just a suggestion.
Mr. Heu: Absolutely. In fact, the FileMaker system that public works
has been in discussion with City and County on, they've got specific areas within the system to
assure that those have been identified. And so again, a system is a system, it's not a cure all, but
having those kinds of tools in place certainly will help to make for a more efficient process. So we're
hopeful.
Chair Furfaro: And I want to make sure you understood my message. I am
not asking about control for the purpose of this body having control. I'm asking for controls to be in
place so that we can be part of managing reasonable decisions on expanding projects for change
orders. I think you know that Gary.
Mr. Heu: Yes. And then also to respond to Councilmember Nakamura
relative to maybe the inconsistency in the level of detail provided by the PIDs, we recognize that and
in part of our organizational overview, again, having a new public works management team in place,
one of the things that we're looking at is whether or not we bring everything back into public works
relative to management of any type of CIP. Those things are all up for discussion, but certainly we
think that public works should be involved at some level with each PID and even if that's to provide
that level of consistency to assist departments in the development of the PIDs, those things are all on
the table and being looked at at this point in time. So down the road hopefully all the projects for
which PIDs are developed will have a fairly consistent level of detail provided in them.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that comment, it's much appreciated.
Mr. Heu: I'm sure we've been on the stand much longer than you or we
would want to and I know you...
Chair Furfaro: Well I'd measure how long you're on the stand based on the
value we got out of it. I think we got a lot of value out of today.
Mr. Heu: Okay, great.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, so let's...I'm going to ask you one favor because I know
there's people that want to testify on the roads issues. I'd like to go to parks and then see if we can
go to roads before we go to lunch. It's a little out of order than what we just talked about but is that
acceptable to you?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Heu: Yeah, and the only reason why we set it up the way we did
was because parks has a...there's a set of projects within parks that parks is totally in control of, and
then there's a certain component of those projects for which they receive project management out of
the buildings division. So that's why we kind of kept them together so that once we were done with
that we could get rid of...not get rid of, we could excuse parks and recreation as well as and the
building division. But however you folks want to do it, we're more than open to go with that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, well we're going to start with parks and then if you
don't mind, I would like to go to the roads division after that.
Mr. Heu: Okay, got it.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, gentlemen. Lenny, welcome.
LEONARD A. RAPOZO, Jr., Director, Parks & Recreation: Good morning, Mr. Chair,
Council.
Ms. Yukimura: Good morning.
Mr. Rapozo: Before you, you should have a copy of our capital
improvements projects for parks. I'm not real sure how you want me to present it.
Chair Furfaro: Maybe just run through some of the high priority items you
can and then we'll open it up for some questions.
Mr. Rapozo: Sure, okay. Really the...
Mr. Chang: Lenny, you want to...I'm sorry, you want to just state your
name for the record? Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo; For the record Director of Parks and Recreation, Lenny
Rapozo. The no. 1 priority right now for parks is the retrofit of lights because we are under federal
court oversight. And our staff has been moving to complete the retrofitting of lighting at stadiums
and outdoor facilities, basketball court, tennis courts. -Right now we are going through the...we just
completed a bid process for the light retrofits at Kilauea Softball BasebalUBaseball/Soccer Complex
or field. And I cannot help but mention that hearing the discussion prior to us coming up here that
we had allotted over about $1.3 million for that project and the bids came out a little over $400,000,
so we are getting good value right now for the work that we are doing. That's the latest retrofit
lights. We're in the process of completing the lighting at Lihu`e Tennis Court, and right now we're
completing the contract for a design consultant for the next set of retrofits, which involves Kapa`a
Stadium. Under court oversight, we are required to complete retrofitting of our three stadiums by
September of 2011. And with the Kapa`a one we're going to make it just...they're giving us about a
year to do it, but with the design and the construction for the Kapa`a, we're going to just make it, I
believe, by September 2011. That's the number one priority for our department. We are working to
complete the Kapa`a New Town Park Football Stadium, the locker room facilities, new restroom
facilities, and food booth facilities. That's another priority that was placed. Initially that was a
community/volunteer-driven project. Since then, now we are looking to upgrade the designs to
current building codes and then move forward with a contractor to complete that facility. It's been
too long taking to complete it. Those are the two number one priorities.
We continue to do other projects, such as ADA transition that we're required. It's a
regulatory requirement throughout our various parks. In our PID, we'll show the next set of
transitional ADA requirements of parks that we're looking at.
We have completed...just recently completed taking over the new Peter Rayno Comfort
Station that was burned down. That's another project that we completed. We're moving towards
Isenberg notice to proceeds, we're working with the contractors to get that started, new ADA scorers
booths, I can go on and on.
The last time I came, yeah.
Chair Furfaro: Just the highlights.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Rapozo: Those are the major projects so far that we're doing. Those
are just some major projects, but we have a lot of other projects are in the pipe as we speak.
Chair Furfaro: Lenny, I just want to say to you, there are two ways we can
look at the numbers when you put in some project numbers in here. When you have a project that
was estimated by engineering costs and so forth to be $1 million and the bid comes in at $400,000,
that tells me two things. No.l, how much homework did we do before we put the million dollars in
the budget because I think we could sharpen the pencil a little bit.
Mr. Rapozo: Right.
Chair Furfaro: And then obviously, just revisit and make sure the specs that
you required, they're meeting all the specs. Those two items are really important
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, yes, definitely.
Chair Furfaro: So I just wanted to give you aheads-up on that.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, let's see if we have...and all of-our parks items on the
spreadsheet we got, the parks is on pages 4 and 5.
Mr. Rapozo: You know, on my page 3 is the copy of what you have before
you. I just took out the blank columns so that I could make it nicely fit into my little presentation for
you.
Chair Furfaro: You did a good job hitting that delete line, so.
Mr. Rapozo: I have a wonderful secretary who does that.
Chair Furfaro: Good, good, good. Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, I want to thank your administration for the work on the
lights because, as we all know, it's so important to the community and to the wildlife, so thank you.
On that item, if your bids come in, you're still needing the $2.4 million?
Mr. Rapozo: We have other projects that we're still moving forward. We're
not sure what the bids will come in for the next set of outdoor facilities, which would include Kapa'a
New Town Park and some of the other tennis courts and other facilities that we have out there.
Ms. Yukimura: So you would be able to give us a rundown of the next...the
bids that came in are encumbering some of this $2 million?
Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry?
Ms. Yukimura: The bids that you just talked about coming in low, they're
encumbering some of the $2 million that are in the line item?
Mr. Rapozo: Correct, correct, correct.
Ms. Yukimura: So that means you'll have a remaining $2 million, if you came
in at $400,000?
Mr. Rapozo: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so you'll be able to tell us what you're slated to do with
that $2 million? You can itemize that for us?
Mr. Rapozo: Per project? You want to know it per project?
Ms. Yukimura: Well, I'm looking at your...on page 30 of your project
initiation document.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Rapozo: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Is this the complete list of the ones that are going to be fund
with the $2 million?
Mr. Rapozo: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And some of them have just gone out to bid?
Mr. Rapozo: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: The stadiums, yeah.
Mr. Rapozo: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Okay, good.
Chair Furfaro: So we're very cautious that the other bids haven't been
opened yet.
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Rapozo: We haven't gotten to that point yet.
Chair Furfaro: But obviously everybody on the island knows those bids came
in low and there's still money there.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: So that's the down side of this whole process.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so then your objectives were that park facility lighting
system will be retrofitted with shielded fixtures which may reduce light nuisance and I remember
that uncertainty was part of our question. So we don't know yet whether they will in fact, but we
think this is our best path and we're trying it?
Mr. Rapozo: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: At the price of $2 million?
Mr. Rapozo: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: So if they don't succeed, then we're going to have to do
something else?
Mr. Rapozo: That call is not a park's call. That call is a regulatory call by
the Federal Fish and Wildlife.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so the Fish and Wildlife.
Mr. Rapozo: There is no existing known data that would suggest this is the
fix. However, with what we did last year with our football games at night and turning off all the
other parks, that at least established what some data of what we had without shielded lights. This
year in working with the federal prosecutors and probation and Fish And Wildlife will give us a
better read of better...more data as to the effects of the shielded lights. So that's why it's worded in
such a way.
Ms. Yukimura: So but by our agreements with the enforcing agency, they
have said that by doing this we are meeting their standards and therefore, will not be subject to the
penalties?
Mr. Rapozo: Correct.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so I guess I just wanted to request that you look at
including the Convention Hall parking lights. I believe they're off for now and they do raise some
risk factors and so...
Mr. Rapozo: They're back on.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, they are back on?
Mr. Rapozo: As of December 15th everything returns to normal or what
"normal" is as normal can be.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and they are sufficiently covering the parking lot
because I think there was some question earlier and because of this issue of birds, there was kind of
just a moratorium on fixing of any lights?
Mr. Rapozo: Not moratorium, but as part of our agreement between
September and December...
Ms. Yukimura: Just in terms of the convention hall, I made a personal
request to make sure that the lights would be properly done and maybe look into...I'm remembering
now, also doing photovoltaic light fixtures that would reduce our energy cost.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: So the Convention Hall light are included in this plan?
Mr. Rapozo: No they're not. First was all sports facilities and stadiums
first.
Ms. Yukimura: I see and then we would go to a next level?
Mr. Rapozo: We can look at facilities thereafter.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, all right, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Lenny, I just want to summarize. So the agreement for the
Civic Center was that we were going to reduce during high-peak months, October, November,
December, we're going to reduce lights wherever we could, that was part of the agreement.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes, yes.
Chair Furfaro: And that's what was happening at the convention center.
Mr. Rapozo: In parks and recreation the agreement was no lights on.
Chair Furfaro: Understood, okay. Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks Lenny for this PID folder.
It makes it a lot easier to follow, very easy to follow. I just need some help. With the Lydgate
campsite ADA improvements?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: There is a bond amount of $23,363 and then the PID is
reflecting, that would be on page 33, it's reflecting a cost of $126,637.
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Yeah.
Mr. Rapozo: Am I to assume that...
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Some of that money's been...
Mr. Rapozo: Has been (inaudible)...
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Because construction is .ongoing already.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, it's ongoing.
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: I believe the numbers you have is the latest as provided by
our trustee, Mr. Capital Improvement in the back.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay. So the $23,363 is sufficient to complete that project?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: That's one of the projects that is being project managed by
public works for parks, so...
Mr. Rapozo: Oh, okay, I'll wait.
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Yeah.
Mr. Rapozo: It's on your list, though.
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Yeah, because it's a parks project and I believe it is sufficient.
Mr. Rapozo: I see, project manager building division, okay, got it, thank
you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, any more questions? Mr. Chang?
Mr. Chang: Can I go back to lights?
Chair Furfaro: Yeah, if you'd like.
Mr. Chang: Thank you, Lenny. How many bidders did we have to retrofit
the lights, about?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: For the Kilauea?
Mr. Chang: Just...I mean when it comes out to bid, how many people
actually bid on retrofitting?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: For example, this last bid for I~lauea was six vendors.
Mr. Chang: Are they all from Kauai?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: The last award was a contractor from Honolulu.
Mr. Chang: The last award went out to a contractor...
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: The Kilauea one, a Honolulu firm.
Mr. Chang: So they got the bid?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Correct
Mr. Chang: I know it's a new process, so it's difficult because nobody has
ever done this in the country, correct? Retrofitting?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Yeah. It is new, something new in Hawaii, yes.
Mr. Chang: Okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Councilmember KipuKai?
Mr. Kuali`i: I might be missing it, but I don't think I see anywhere in
here, like for example, at the Salt Pond Beach Park, there was some recent sewer-plumbing type
issues, septic, I mean I'm not sure what all of the problems were. But if there are problems like that
at our different parks, beach parks especially, and the county is having to react and do some kind of
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
fix, you know, is it a temporary fix? And what is the plan because I would think it would be a high
priority too, much like the lights, to make sure that all of our beach parks' wastewater systems,
isolated though they may be, septic, I'm not sure what they are all, that it's being addressed in a way
to ensure that there's no public safety hazard or environmental hazard for...
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: With reference to Salt Pond Beach Park, what you just
described is a repair and maintenance. And with that we depend on public works, who did a
fantastic job of assessing that, and we expanded the leach field. Now when I say "we" it's we as a
county, and with public works as our partner did the expertise to do that, to make it a permanent fix.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay.
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Yeah, so it wouldn't appear in here, but that would be a
repair and maintenance.
Mr. Kuali`i: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: You're quite welcome. Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: But Lenny, in your spreadsheet, there is $250,000 for Salt
Pond Beach Park repairs and painting? That is not including the...
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: No.
Mr. Rapozo: That's a separate item?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, so that $250,000 will be basically for the...
Chair Furfaro: Roof, paint...
Mr. Furfaro: Pavilions and stuff at the Salt Pond?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Which one is this now?
Mr. Rapozo: It's not in your book, but it's in your budget. It's in proposed
Salt Pond Beach Park. It's general fund CIP for $250,000.
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: It's not in my book, but it's in my budget. It's in my operating
budget?
Mr. Rapozo: No, no, no, it's in your CIP, in your spreadsheet or you know
the...
Mr. Kuali`i: It doesn't have a dedicated page?
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, like you do for all the other projects...
Mr. Kuali`i: A PID.
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: That's public works. I just was informed public works is
handling that one.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, got it.
Chair Furfaro: Because it's buildings, Lenny?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Building, I'm not sure because I guess building, yeah.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, we just want to get consistent here. Councilwoman
Yukimura?
Ms. Yukimura: I want to go back to the stadium lights.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: With the completion of the shielding, will the night games be
able to resume or are we under restrictions?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: As part of our conditions of probation, we're still under four
night games out of the seven. What the effects, again, will have is we're not sure because again,
there's no base data set. So what we need to do is once shielding is done is have the federal
overseers or people monitoring our probation to come over and see what the effects are.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Oh wait, the county attorney.
Chair Furfaro: Al, if you want to contribute to that, please introduce yourself
for the record.
ALFRED B. CASTILLO, County Attorney: County Attorney, Al Castillo. Under the
Endangered Species Act, we must comply and work our way towards full compliance. Now the fact
that we are engaging in trying to do our best in Bing our lights or doing the shielding does not
necessarily mean that it will clear the way for all of the games to return.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Castillo: How much we comply under our probation right now is
critical in what we're allowed to do. So it's not...I don't want this council or the people out there to
think that just because we do shielding, then all of the games will return. It's a delicate process that
we're going through. So it's not a full yes to all of the night games.
Ms. Yukimura:
I appreciate the information
Mr. Lenny Rapozo:
Ms. Yukimura:
Chair Furfaro:
department? If not, I'm goin
Thank you for that clarification. I wasn't clear myself and so
That was probably my fault for not being as clear.
No, no, you both helped to clarify it, thank you.
Okay, any more questions as we go over the parks
g to move into roads.
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Are we done? I saw on a particular schedule, we are 1 and 2.
Is my no. 2 done as well?
Chair Furfaro: Two, are you going to be partnering with public works?
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: .Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. And I'm going to ask you to come back then. We'll go
to roads next.
Mr. Lenny Rapozo: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Dill, I had announced this earlier.
LARRY DILL, County Engineer: Good morning again, Larry Dill, county engineer.
With me is Ed Renaud, Chief of our Roads Maintenance Division. Chair, if you can give me a
moment, I know Mr. Heu and Mr. Rezentes gave a overview this morning of the CIP program, an
introduction to the PIDs and their use, I'd like to...we've also provided to you a sample of one of the
PIDs that public works has been working on and prepared for you. It's the one for the Waimea
Wastewater Treatment Plant. So if I can just take a couple minutes and just to get you up to speed
on public works (inaudible) hopefully that will benefit us all.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, well the reason I went to roads is we have people in the
audience that want to testify on roads.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Dill: Okay.
Chair Furfaro; So if we can keep this piece...
Mr. Dill: Very brief.
Chair Furfaro: In an overview, I would appreciate it.
Mr. Dill: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: So I'm going to check on no. 7, public works wastewater and
that's where we're at now.
Mr. Dill: I'd just like to use this as an example PID document, so we'll
save wastewater till later in the day when we're ready for that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, but your example is a wastewater item.
Mr. Dill: Correct, for the Waimea Wastewater Treatment Plant
Expansion Phase I. I believe you all have that PID.
Councilmembers: Yes, we do.
Mr. Dill; Okay, so the PID is, generally speaking, called project
initiation document at the outset of a project. So when we originally draft up a PID it is by its
nature going to be somewhat conceptual and somewhat vague because we're putting it together to
scope out a project at its outset and we're trying to do some preliminary cost estimating. It will
include at that time of course because things are preliminary in nature, the contingencies will be
larger and the scope of the PID will be less detailed, less defined. Of course then as the project
grows, the funds get appropriated, and we get into the project, the status, as you all know, for the
Waimea Wastewater Treatment Plant, we are actually now under construction. So this is an
example of a pretty detailed PID, thanks to the chief of our wastewater division who has kept it up to
date and you can see in here, if you Iook under no. 1, 2, 3, 4 objectives, he shows a lot of the
objectives have been completed and others he shows the status. Now the last status, of course, is to
complete construction. He shows under "deliverables" when certain milestones were met and
accomplished. He shows how the business case was built for justifying the. project, all the risks
associated with it. It shows the project team on page who, I guess, is the title of the page in the top
left, the roles and responsibilities, and then it shows the various stages of the project, including the
bottom of the "how" section no. 2, the assignments and milestones, EA, conceptual design, procuring
of the contractor, completion of the design, etcetera, etcetera. And then also partnering with each
PID is a Gantt Chart associated with it. Now this is a very detailed Gantt Chart we have here
because at the end of the day we actually got this Gantt Chart from the contractor, who's doing the
work. So we have his construction timeline associated with this particular PID. So we have a very
detailed effort here. Of course many of these lines can collapse into the various subtitles to get a
more concise document, but this shows you all the level of detail that goes into the PID by the time
until the end of its life or towards the end of its life. But the PID is a document that evolves as the
project goals is established from its outset and moves forward to completion. So you will you see
PIDs that are like this, that are very detailed on occasion, some, though, will be a lot less detailed
because they're very preliminary in nature and that's the state of the project therein. So I just
wanted to share that with you to help us aIl understand.
Chair Furfaro: I appreciate you sharing it with us, but you'll agree that the
critical flow chart is something you've added from the contractor, but is that considered an
information document or is it actually considered as a release document? And all of my questions
there, Larry, tie back to the fact we have not been seeing change orders. And that's, to me, where
my concern lies.
Mr. Dill: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: You're showing me great things. You selected a contractor.
When you select a contractor and he's giving you the critical panel, to me, that's the actual project
release, okay? It's still not the project information document. I want something that I saw a project
gets released for $2.6 million and I gave another 10 percent as the contingency fee, so now the
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.1
project get released for $2.9 million, but then when the final document is done, the project is a
$3.2 million document. I never saw a project release form. What I saw was a project information
form. So I think that's still a work in progress.
Mr. Dill: I understand, yes.
Chair Furfaro: I think you understand me.
Mr. Dill: Mm-hm, sure.
Chair Furfaro: You and I have gone through this in another life, but we're
not reporting to a group of owners or a board of directors. We're reporting to taxpayers and so we
need to know about those change orders. But great, great summary and I like the way we're going.
Councilwoman Nakamura?
Ms. Nakamura: Just to follow up on your point, Chair, on a previous board
that I was on, change orders were triggered by a policy set by the body. So if it was over a certain an
X-dollar amount, at that point the board saw the rationale and justification and request for the
change order. And I'm not sure whether we have that:..
Chair Furfaro: The county doesn't have that.
Ms. Nakamura: ...and whether we want to establish that policy.
Chair Furfaro: Well, we have the policy. The policy is they have to come to
us to get money approved. It doesn't matter what form you look at, but I'm saying, and I'm.
suggesting, we have gone through two change orders at the historic county building. That's never
come before the body. But the policy is that if you exceed a project fund, you should be coming back
to us and I just wanted to make my point. We don't have that form. But the policy exists. We keep
the purse strings. Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: How can you exceed the project line that's been approved
without coming back to the council? I'm confused about that.
Chair Furfaro: Don't be confused. Just know it happens.
Mr. Dill: Okay, my understanding...
Ms. Yukimura: I mean I can understand change orders that are working up
to the amount approved. If it comes in below bid and then you have change orders, I'm not sure that
we need to see those, although Councilmember Rapozo's point was sometimes the process can be
abused.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, let me summarize it again, so you and I are very clear.
You have a project release for $2.6 million. In the project you put a contingency fee and that
contingency fee might be 10 percent. So we're releasing a project for $3 million. Did I ask to see the
change orders if you came were within the contingencies? No.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: But we have projects that then exceed the $3 million and
they're not coming back to this body. That's not acceptable.
Ms. Yukimura: How can they do that?
Chair Furfaro: And so that's what I want to make sure when we come up
with something that says this is the information document. It's not the approval document.
Mr. Dill: Okay, I'm sorry, Chair, it surprises me that my
understanding is when funds are appropriated and we have contracts that say come in, the bids are
less than the appropriation amounts, we do issue change orders. Those are reviewed by the
respective departments and the finance director to make sure that they are consistent with the
original appropriation as far as the scope of the work, etcetera.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Chair Furfaro:
Okay.
Mr. Dill: But once it goes over or if it is does go over the funding that's
appropriated, that certainly would come back to council.
Chair Furfaro: Well, I have to say thank you because you and I have the
same agreement.
Mr. Dill: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Okay? And I don't want to confuse an information document
with something that requires our approval.
Mr. Dill: Absolutely.
Chair Furfaro: Okay?
Mr. Dill: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: There's a missing link there. Larry, thank you very much for
that update and I'm glad to hear you and I are on the same page.
Now we're going to go to roads or back to roads.
Mr. Dill: Okay, what you have before you, of course, the ordinance,
which shows the highway fund and all the projects submitted for CIP purposes for the fiscal year and
also the spreadsheet before you, which identifies the road projects. So, I'm not sure how you want to
proceed with this, Chair.
Chair Furfaro: I want you to tell us a little bit. We have an agenda item
coming up on the 26th, do we not?
Mr. Dill: Twenty-sixth?
Chair Furfaro: August.
Mr. Dill: Is that 26th, is it?
Chair Furfaro: Update on our current?
Mr. Dill: Yeah, that's correct.
Chair Furfaro: Am I correct?
Mr. Dill: Is it?
Chair Furfaro: It might even be tomorrow?
Mr. Dill: I think it's the 20th, no, it's Wednesday, this Wednesday.
Yes, it's this Wednesday.
Chair Furfaro: And so now we're talking about new moneys that are going to
go into that fund and I wanted to hear your conceptual presentation on the new moneys that we're
putting in for roads and highwa ys. And I want to see if there's public testimony in that.
Mr. Rapozo: I have a process question?
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead.
Mr. Rapozo: Larry, you know, on some of the other projects?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Rapozo: There appears to be some bridge projects and shouldn't that
be...is that part of highways as well?
Mr. Dill: That's part of the scope that the roads division is managing,
yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, I just, I guess I would...
Chair Furfaro: But it's not in the roads division is what Mr. Rapozo is
saying.
Mr. Rapozo: Yes, it's hard to follow because in the other projects, we have
bridge projects, we have IT projects, we have planning projects. So I guess I would ask in the future
if you could put all of the highway projects that you manage or you supervise in one area, then it's a
lot easier to follow because there are some substantial projects in other projects that I believe belong
to you.
Mr. Dill: I understand. We'll make an effort to do that better in the
future, councilmember. Some of the projects are somewhat joint projects. They may begin in
engineer and end up in roads as they get to construction. And that might be one reason why they're
not all located under roads. We'll make an effort to clarify that in the future.
Chair Furfaro: And I guess for us, clarification, the topic is not just roads, it's
highways, and those include the bridges and so forth, that the councilmember's (inaudible}. So go
right ahead, Larry.
ED RENAUD, Public Works: Is there an order you guys want to, excuse me, Ed Renaud,
-Public Works, for the record.
Chair Furfaro: It's your meeting presentation. You go through the pieces. So
for all intents and purposes, in the future we're going to see things associated to roads like bridges
and guardrails and so forth in roads...or highways?
Mr. Dill: Yes. Thank you, Larry, thank you very much for that.
Mr. Renaud: The levees, we're going to discuss the levees first.
Chair Furfaro: Turn the mike towards you.
Mr. Renaud: How's that? Okay, for the levees, Hanapepe-Waimea Levees,
Grass and Irrigation, we have allocated $500,000. This project is mainly to get an irrigation system
going up there. We tried, if you know from the past, we tried some other method, but it did not
really work well. So now we're going to put it out for design-build, so we can move this project.
Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry, which one...
Mr. Dill: This is actually under "drainage projects."
Mr. Rapozo: Oh, drainage project.
Mr. Dill: It's the very first drainage project, Hanapepe-Waimea levees
Irrigation Erosion Control.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh, okay, got it. So that's highways too, that's roads, you
guys take care of that. Okay.
Chair Furfaro: So where...did I understand you right? You're going back out
to bid on this piece?
Mr. Renaud: We never did go out for bid. We tried to do it in-house, but it
didn't really work out well.
Chair Furfaro: But now you're convinced that you have to look for an outside
source on that?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Mr. Renaud: Yeah. It looks good out there, but the thing is for longevity, it
needs an irrigation system for dust control, yeah?
Chair Furfaro: Yes. Councilwoman Yukimura..
Ms. Yukimura: Related to this project then, you say this is erosion-control. Is
this pursuant to Corps of Engineers recommendations or? I've received some concerns from citizens
about the whole levee project and the fact that it's old and there's potential for it failing. So is this
related to that issue?
Mr. Renaud: You would have to tell me what is failing. What this is about
is really irrigation on the main levee. There are other areas that everybody thinks it is the levee, but
it's not the levee. Okay, so this portion is the levee itself.
Ms. Yukimura: And how does that relate to the proposed CIP just below that,
Hanapepe and Waimea levees where you have $150,000?
Mr. Renaud: That's a study that is being done by engineering.
Ms. Yukimura: A study for what purpose?
Mr. Renaud: Erosion control.
Ms. Yukimura: And this is an in-house study or hiring of consultants?
Mr. Dill: No, this is a flood study that's being done for Hanapepe and
Waimea, yes.
Chair Furfaro: Is the Corps of Engineers involved with that study?
Mr. Dill: Yes. This represents our share of the contract work with the
Corps.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you. I'll do some follow-up questions on it.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, so I'll give Mr. Rapozo the floor and thank you for
asking that question, Councilwoman Yukimura.
Mr. Rapozo: I noticed the proposed budget is a reduction, so it's basically
amending the original $300,000 down to $150,000?
Mr. Dill: You're looking, I think there, councilmember, that's the Corps
study that engineering is invalved with. So the maintenance of the levees, we had $161,000, we're
adding $338,000 to get us up to $500,000. -
Mr. Rapozo: Right, that's the irrigation erosion control.
Mr. Dill: Right.
Mr. Rapozo: And then right below that, and all we have is Hanapepe and
Waimea levees. There's no mention of a study or what. So you're saying this is a...
Mr. Dill; We'll cover that in the engineering division CIP. The whole
study...well, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I know that we're funding half of the study.
So I believe the 150 that we're reducing that leaves our share of the $150,000.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, let me just restate again. We're going to do highways
and roads now. Somehow we have things that have bled over to other areas. So I'm leaving the
choice for you to pick those out, if they deal with roads and highways. If not let's stay focused on
roads and highways.
Mr. Dill: Yeah, let's leave that till engineering division, please.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chang, did you want the floor?
Ms. Yukimura: I have other questions.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, Councilwoman Yukimura. Well, I have some questions
about roads. Is it appropriate to ask now?
Chair Furfaro: Roads is now, yes.
Ms. Yukimura: The `Aliomanu Road Erosion, $3 million? I know that it's
been a major emergency problem. And it sounds like we're doing some major revetment or control of
it. But $3 million is a lot of money, and if there's going to be continued erosion, will that $3 million
improvement just erode away too?
Mr. Dill: Councilmember, that's an engineering division project.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, I'm sorry.
Mr. Dill: So we can pick it up then, please.
Ms. Yukimura: It's under highway projects, so.
Mr. Dill: Right and as was pointed out by Councilmember Rapozo,
there is relationships between the two divisions, but that's an engineering division CIP.
Ms. Yukimura: All right, all right. I have a question. Is your northern leg of
the Koloa Bypass, is that a road project.
Mr. Dill: That's an engineering division project.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, which are your road projects then?
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, I tell you what, why don't we do this because since it's
all under the highway projects in our list, which is the budget list; why don't you guys give us a
presentation on your list and then we'll ask questions. Start with your first item. If there's any
questions, we'll go ahead. If not, we're going to waste time just...why don't you start with your
projects...
Ms. Yukimura: Where's your list? Can we look at it too?
Mr. Dill: Yes, we bounce around, my apologies for that.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, go ahead and start with your first capital improvement
project for roads and highways.
Mr. Dill: Okay, the first one was the levees. The next one under
highway projects, you'll see complete streets, safe routes, Kawaihau Road for $100,000.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, hang on. The automotive shop is not yours?
Mr. Dill: That's correct.
Mr. Rapozo: Where is that?
Mr. Dill: Right underneath the automotive shop.
Mr. Rapozo:. I understand, but who does that belong to? Is that buildings?
Mr. Dill: That's automotive.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, okay. So complete streets for $100,000 that's a bond
fund, that's nothing new, that's existing.
Mr. Dill: That's correct.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Rapozo: Why don't you go through your new proposed.
Mr. Dill: Okay and also, councilmember, the reason it's listed this way
is because these are highway funded projects. But even though they're highway funded, sometimes
they're managed by other divisions.
Mr. Rapozo: Understood.
Mr. Dill: That's some of the confusion there, my apologies.
Mr. Rapozo: No, no problem. So this way, you'll tell us what you manage
and then we can ask the questions. So why don't you just, in the interest of time, start with the new
projects, the proposed projects and then we can get the questions answered.
Mr. Dill: Next would be a comprehensive road maintenance plan.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay and this is again removing $100,000 from the general
fund item.
Mr. Dill: Yes, we had $242,000, we're moving $100,000, so we're
leaving $142,000.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, any questions on that? Go ahead, Mr. Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: I actually had a quick question on the one before. You just
kind of moved too quickly for me on complete streets, safe routes, Kawaihau Road. I was talking
with councilmember Bynum before and I'm a1so...I've been working with Bev Brody and the Get Fit
Kauai group and we've been doing some work for the kids walking to school and everything. So
there's a concern with that immediate area. So this $100,000 has been there. Is that for a study?
Mr. Dill: No. In the PID we have it includes efforts to restripe certain
crosswalks, install updated signs, striping edge of payment, paint school zones, and pedestrian
crossing and locations, and it might include installation of ADA ramps at crosswalks.
Mr. Kuali`i: So to a certain extent it sounds like a good start, but there's
probably going to have to be a lot more investment in that area, considering it's our largest
concentration of residents on the island and we have those multiple schools. We're going to have a
lot of...
Mr. Dill: And the effort here will be around the schools areas for that
(inaudible).
Mr. Kuali`i: And so that major intersection there, where it's like athree-
way intersection right at the high school and then St. Catherine's is just on the other corner, there
must...hopefully there are plans and investments thought of going forward to improve that whole
area so that Kawaihau can perhaps be our island's first complete street heavily utilized by our
residents.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, councilmember Yukimura?
Ms. Yukimura: I believe councilmember Bynum thought it was to do a
feasibility study for a roundabout there. That is not in the plans? Because that is one of the major
problem areas, the crossing of the roads that all come together there, which is along the routes to the
school.
Mr. Dill: That is certainly not part of this project's scope.
Ms. Yukimura: So, I guess I'm really appreciating parks right now.
Chair Furfaro: We'll send that question over then.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Ms. Yukimura: So you do not have a PID for this project. Do you have a
general description of the work that will be done for $100,000 that is earmarked here? So you will
submit that to us?
Mr. Renaud: Could I explain, please?
Ms. Yukimura: Sure?
Mr. Renaud: This job has been ongoing right now. The $100,000 is mainly
for materials and what-not. We have been doing it in-house. Our deadline is at the end of October to
have everything up. So we are waiting for other materials to come in and that place is going to be
brightened up. The project is from the 15-mile marker to the 15-mile marker in the back street.
Ms. Yukimura: 15-mile to 15-mile.
Mr. Renaud: 15-mile marker sign to the 15-mile marker sign. So between
that corridor, that's the project. And we have walked with the community with Bev involved.
Ms. Yukimura: And so the October deadline is...you said the deadline for
completion is this coming October?
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry, Councilmember Yukimura, I don't understand that
15-mile marker to 15-mile marker.
Mr. Renaud: Okay, when you enter Kawaihau Road from the...
Mr. Rapozo: Is it the 15 miles an hour speed limit?
Mr. Renaud: That's what I said.
Mr. Rapozo: Not the mile marker.
Mr. Renaud: Excuse me, the 15 miles per hour sign. Correction, thank
you.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and how long of a segment is that?
Mr. Renaud: Pardon?
Ms. Yukimura: How long of a segment is that?
Chair Furfaro: What is the distance?
Mr. Renaud: I understand. I'm trying to think right now...maybe a mile.
Ms. Yukimura:. Okay, all right, well thank you. So you will send us in writing
what the plans are for that?
Mr. Renaud: It's been ongoing. We're almost through with it, except for
signs and some lighted signs that w e have to bring in yet.
Ms. Yukimura: Then you don't need $100,000?
Mr. Renaud: No, we need $100,000 because there are a lot of signs there.
See, the $100,000 is for materials. If we had to put in labor and all that, it would not be there. So
we are doing part of that repair/maintenance and the other part is for materials.
Ms. Yukimura: $100,000 sounds like so much for materials for a mile.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Mr. Renaud: Oh, there are a lot of signs that goes in there. There's a lot.
Ms. Yukimura: Signs cost that much?
Mr. Rapozo: We'll send that over in writing so we can get a much better
breakdown of that $100,000.
Ms. Yukimura: All right, thank you, yes.
Mx. Rapozo: Any more questions, Mr. Kuali`i?
Mr. Kuali`i: No.
Mx. Rapozo: If not, we're back to the Comprehensive Road Maintenance
Plan.
Ms. Yukimura: I have a question.
Mr. Rapozo: You have a question, go ahead, Councilmember Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Now is this what you talked about in terms of getting the
software to do proper assessments and detailed assessments of each road that is under county
jurisdiction?
Mr. Renaud: The software is part of this program, also. But first, the
software is really for resurfacing, maj or repairs and what-not, and then everything else will go into
place, signs, crosswalks, you name it.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, $142,000 is not going to go very far for resurfacing.
Mr. Renaud: Okay, there are two components there. Let me get my papers.
Hold on.
Mr. Rapozo: Is there a...you folks have the PIDs for these projects?
(?): Yup.
Mr. Rapozo: Available?
Ms. Yukimura: You do?
Mr. Rapozo: Is there a possibility we could get a copy of it because parks
was so much easier because you can follow exactly what the...because we don't know, I cannot tell
you what a Comprehensive Road Maintenance Plan is. The next one, Hardy Street, I have no clue
what Hardy Street, but that's a $900, 000 item. So if we could get a PID and I'm sorry, Mr. Furfaro,
you're back, so you...
Chair Furfaro: (Inaudible) the situation on these projects that we're jumping
back and forth, and I don't know where you left off, so.
Mr. Rapozo: Well, we're trying to just stick to what the proposed CIP
projects that are being proposed by the administration, but it's very difficult when we don't have a
write-up on the specific line item and we're basically fishing to find out what a Comprehensive Road
Maintenance Plan is.
Chair Furfaro: Larry, let me ask this then. Can you provide us these project
information documents for everything in roads?
Mr. Dill: We can. We have to go run copies for you.
Chair Furfaro: My staff can run copies for you.
Mr. Dill: Okay.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Chair Furfaro: Can we do that? Just...
Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Furfaro, do you have a 1 o'clock scheduled?
Chair Furfaro: We have a 1 o'clock with the state coming on economic
development, so.
Mr. Rapozo: Right, so how did you want to handle that? We do have
public...
Chair Furfaro: I'm thinking what we should do is get a copy of the PIDs, and
maybe just take public testimony, and break for lunch. It'll take all of us time to look through those
as well as the fact that we still have to do our plus/minus projects based on good information the first
week of May. So we'll make copies of this. If you just want to give us a few minutes of some
significant projects that we should look in for there and then we'll break for public testimony. Are
there any significant highway and road items that you want to give us narratives on?
Mr. Rapozo: I guess, Mr. Chair, if we could ask about the $900,000 Hardy
Street?
Mr. Dill: Okay, that is ahighway-funded project that's being managed
by building division, so we'd like to cover that in the building CIP, please.
Mr. Rapozo: Let's try, how about Puhi Road? I think that would be...I
don't think that could fall in any other place but highways.
Mr. Dill: Actually, that's engineering division.
Mr. Rapozo: Why don't we take public testimony.
Chair Furfaro: Larry, did you block off the whole day for your group? Okay, I
want you to anticipate coming back here. We're going to have a state economic development
presentation, George Costa, and I would ask you to be back here around 3 o'clock, if you could and we
can continue. In the meantime, we can make some copies of the proposals. Does that sound fair?
Mr. Dill: Yes, yes, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Okay, Mr. Rapozo, I'll take this back for the public
testimony. From this morning's sessions, is there any public testimony? Mr. Mickens? Mr. Mickens,
you do understand that the repair and maintenance on the past roads project is on for Wednesday's
council meeting.
GLENN MICKENS: Yeah, I saw that, and I thank you for keeping up it at the top
of the agenda, Jay, or even keeping it on the agenda, okay. As you know my frustration shows after
15 years of being here. Each time I see something definite happen on this thing, I do appreciate it,
okay. For the record Glenn Mickens, you have a copy of my testimony. See how fast I can read it.
I'll give a copy to Larry too so he can go over this. As I've previously stated, our new engineer Larry
Dill has a herculean job ahead of him to correct the many years of inappropriately paved roads by
repaving them correctly. These are all my opinions. I have asked many questions that still need
answers. Larry has a copy of some of them, but let's review a few of them and hopefully since this
item is on Wednesday's agenda, thank you Jay, answers can be forthcoming.
(1) Why was the method of resurfacing our roads on a yearly basis suddenly changed in 2008-
2009 when no resurfacing list was given to the council for approval to this accumulated method for
2009-2010? In other words, it's being said that we now have accumulated $5.5 million to resurface
22 miles of road instead of continually repaving each year as has been done over the years. This new
method makes no sense at all as the roads left unpaved only deteriorate further without the yearly
resurfacing schedule, so why this change? And since Larry is new and may not have the answers,
maybe Ed can tell us what the administration's rationale was for changing?
(2) How were these roads on the 2009-2010 list chosen? They certainly were not picked on a
most used/most needed basis. I agree that all of them may need resurfacing, but since I'm not
familiar with many of them, I cannot answer that question. But the example I previously gave of
Kahuna Road being chosen over Olohena is, for me, highly questionable. And I'm not sure all you
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
guys know where Kahuna Road is. I know you do, Jay, so it's only about atwo-mile road and I think
it's about 12 feet wide. Two cars can't even drive on it, but it's been recently paved, as you pointed
out, Jay. The road choosing method now being used, whether it's political or otherwise, must be
changed. Our public works department and the people all know which roads are most used and in
bad shape. So there should be no other reason to choose the roads to be paved except on a prioritized
basis. Funds are a finite resource and they are the engine that drives this issue.
(3) When this 2009-2010 list is approved by council, we'll be assured that an RFP is written
to include HAPI standards. Will we be? Since our basic problem with past non-HAPI paving
methods has been the lack of longevity of our roads, then we will remain penny-wise and dollar-
stupid by not using these national standards to pave by. And yes, Larry wisely pointed out in one of
his question-and-answer sessions that the cost of HAPI will be greater upfront, but in the long run it
will save big tax dollars and it will make driving on our roads more pleasurable for the public. And
with the cost of oil skyrocketing and using HAPI standards...
Mr. Nakamura: Three minutes.
Mr. Mickens: ...meaning cold planning the bad sections of road and putting
a leveling course before laying down the final lift, the cost per mile will probably be more than the
current $250,000 to $280,000 per mile. Thus, this council will have to considerably increase Larry's
budget if we will have to stay on a path to pave all 300 miles of roads on the 20-year or greater
schedule instead of a 10-year or less schedule that is badly needed, the proposal that Jay once
brought forward.
(4) National paving standards show that one ton of AC asphaltic concrete is used for
180-square-feet if a compacted 1.5 inches is required for repaving. According to the 2009-2010
resurfacing list, we're using one ton of AC to pave 95 square feet. Why are we not using the
asphaltic paving job calculator to figure our needs? Is the contractor really giving us another
13 square feet in their paving or are we paying for it some other way?
(5) Will there be an inspector on every paving job to see that the proper amount of AC is
being laid down?
(6) And on page 19 of your 2012 budget presentation, under success and achievement, bullet
point four, it says, county conducted 2010 bridge inspection for 23 county bridges. And Mel, you're
going to like this, I have no idea which bridges were chosen for inspection, but I do remember
Councilmember Rapozo in 2008 prodding his colleagues to approve an emergency appropriation to
repair the Opaeka`a Bridge, that was in horrendous shape with huge holes in the beams that support
it. And for you councilmembers that weren't here, these are pictures taken of that bridge. This is in
2005, remember that it was taken by an engineer from Acrow. He went underneath the bridge and
his words were that this is the worst bridge he has seen that cars are still driving over. From the
time Mel tried to get emergency funding to do this, it's still being driven over. I think they lowered
the tonnage of the bridge, but they should remember the Olohena Bridge was in far better shape
than this and yet they had cars bypass it for two-and-a-half months while they put in this other
bridge. So anyway, that definitely needs addressing and it hasn't been. This bridge has never been
repaired and my question is why. It was sandblasted in 2002 and never repainted and thus has
rusted out over the years.
Again, we're going back and Larry's got this huge job trying to correct some of this stuff.
This bridge and the Pu`uopae Bridge were to be repaired at that time, but even though DOT and the
police department had facts showing that one-lane bridges have three times more accidents that two-
lane bridges, there were certain factors-I call them feel gooders-who felt that historical
importance was more important than safety and stopped alI action on these bridges. The feds would
only put up their 80 percent funds for repairing these bridges if they were built to standards, which
was two lanes. Thus, since the plans for action were stopped by the county...
Mr. Topenio: Six minutes, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Mickens: ...they had to repay the feds $151,700 plus they wasted
$37,900 of our money which was spent on the design stage. I have enclosed backup information that
you can read there, for all of you to read and I want you to look at the pictures of the Opaeka`a
Bridge taken by an Acrow engineer.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, Glenn, your six minutes is up, but I know you
have a little but more to read, so go ahead.
Mr. Mickens: Thank you, I appreciate that, Jay. Now I see that the 2012
budget, we have another $498,317 for this Opaeka`a Bridge and this is design only, if you'll notice.
This isn't construction. We're probably talking...well, it depends on who does it. If you put an Acrow
Bridge in there, it'll be far less than it's going to cost for the steel structured bridge that they want to
put in there, probably several million dollars unless it's done by Acrow.
And finally in closing, and again this is my opinion, I would suggest that public works
consult with Greg Schleper about all our paving work. He once offered to be a gratis consultant for
public works while he worked and lived on Kauai, but was turned down. He did a lot for our
community, Food Bank and everything else. He has 37 years of experience in the asphalt paving
field and those in public works who had him do a few jobs for them before he was stopped being
given asphalt and had to leave Kauai, will attest to his outstanding work. The few dollars it would
cost to consult with this experienced person would save the taxpayers a lot of money. So anyway, I
could go on for a half hour or more. My six minutes and you've extended that and I appreciate it,
Jay. But to be able to...maybe you guys can review it, you new members, KipuKai, Nadine, Dickie. I
don't think you guys were here. Mel was, JoAnn was, Jay, you were here too. So...
Chair Furfaro: First on the status on the bridge, I think it's appropriate to
note that the previous engineering team downgraded that bridge and changed the tonnage.
Mr. Mickens: Right, they did.
Chair Furfaro: We had another group that wanted to have an evaluation of
its historic value, but at the same time I think what you're seeing in this new capital program from
Mr. Dill and his staff is they do have it surfaced as a design issue, but under no circumstances was
the capacity of the bridge increased during this time. So I kind of think that's where we're at, but
you might want to get this gentleman's name over to Larry, off on the side that he had some pretty
interesting recommendations and they should be considered by Larry, so.
Mr. Mickens: And as you know, Jay, to build that bridge, if you're going to
get an 80 percent match from the federal government, it's going to have to be their standards. The
standards will be it'll be a two-lane bridge. It won't be a one-lane bridge.
Chair Furfaro: Understood.
Mr. Mickens: So we're talking about, again, I can't believe anybody would
not want safety over historical importance, but there are people that want that.
Chair Furfaro: I just wanted to revisit where we're at. The one-lane bridge
was downgraded, the highway and the engineering group in Mr. Dill's new capacity have identified
some design work for that bridge. So I think we're on top of it right now. But please continue a
discussion with Mr. Dill off-line.
Mr. Mickens: Well, as you remember too, Jay, at that stage of the game, the
Pu'uopae Bridge was almost ready to be built. We had put $157,000 of federal money in the thing.
It was ready. The mayor wanted it. I was on a committee to propose it and they shut it down. And
then we kissed of that kind of money. So now are we going to go back and redesign this thing again?
It just seems like such a waste of money. Anyway, thank you very much for...
Chair Furfaro: Your testimony is well taken. And I will share my history
with that with Mr. Dill.
Mr. Mickens: And I'll give Larry a copy of my thing, okay?
Chair Furfaro: Please do, yes.
Mr. Mickens: Thank you, Jay.
Chair Furfaro: Any more testimony from the audience on highways, roads or
any earlier comments?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
KEN TAYLOR: Chair and Members of the Council, my name is Ken Taylor. I
also want to say that it's nice to have new, fresh blood in public works with Larry and Ed working
diligently on trying to catch up with our road work. It is a monumental problem and not only for the
task but to figure out where the money's going to come from to do it. And this is always a problem
when you get behind in your maintenance activities and with at the same time escalating costs. And
so, Glenn, over the years has paid a lot of attention to the roads and has asked a lot of questions.
Some of them have been answered and some of them have not been. So I hope as we continue
through this process that you will see to it that all of the questions that are asked by Glenn and any
others get answered from public works or you ask public works yourself for the answers.
But I think it's important in this time, we're at a point in history when our economics are
changing and it's going to be a very different world in the years to come compared to what it has
been in the years past. And one of the concerns I have about this whole process is that it's really all
of these things are nice and they are good things to have done 20 years ago, but when you really look
at the end of cheap oil and the changes we have to make in our lifestyles and everything else, I think
that the real issues and concerns are what are the real basic needs that we have, and once those are
taken care of, then we can start dealing with all these other things. But as I see it, the two things I
need most in life is food and water. You can't grow food without a good water supply. And we're
really short on that, on the island in getting adequate water out to different properties because we've
lost some of the irrigation ditches, etc. And so I have a real problem with this whole money
expenditure thing. As I say, I think we should be making sure that we're capable of supplying the
water needed for agriculture and the agricultural activities.
Chair Furfaro: Ken, that was three minutes. You go right ahead.
Mr. Taylor: Thank you. Then, like I say, once we take care of our basic
needs, water and food, then we worry about roads, we worry about parks and where we can spend
some money. But until these other two issues are completely dealt with, I think we're being very
foolish with what's coming down the pike. And I know some of you are a little more familiar with
what might be happening and some of you may not be. But this is a freight train coming full speed
ahead and it's not for us older folks but for the younger generations that we really need to be
planning for, so thank you very much for your time.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, thank you very much, Ken. On that note it is
six minutes after 12. Mr. Dill, I'm going to ask your group to come back at 3 o'clock. In the
meantime my staff is making copies for each member on the PIDs. And my assumption is they are
PIDs for all the projects that we're proposing. So we'll have good material to review. I also should
point out we're coming to kind of the close of the week of the reviews and we won't get to decision
making until May 6. So the material you're giving to us is very much appreciated when we get to
that point. We'll follow up with engineering, building, solid waste, and wastewater when we come
back this afternoon. So at 1 o'clock, we're going to start with our economic development posting and
we do have Dean Hirata here from the state level because so much of our budget is contingent on
state revenues and positions that they're taking that it would be good to hear from them as we go
into economic development. So we're in recess, folks, until 1. o'clock. And Larry, we'll see your staff
back at 3 o'clock. Thank you so much. We're in recess.
There being no objection, the departmental review was recessed at 12:08 p.m.
The meeting was called back to order at 3:32 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
There being no objection, the rules were suspended.
Chair Furfaro: We're going to go right into engineering now until 5 o'clock.
We are about a half an hour behind. But, Mr. Dill, we're going to look towards you for some
direction. And before I go any further, I want to let you know your PIDs are not finished being
copied. I'm very sorry about that, but I wanted to make sure they were all covered in confidential
memorandum from me because they do lead up to issues dealing with bid process. And we'll get it
back to you as soon as we possibly can. Did you see a copy of my letter to the members?
Mr. Dill: I did, thank you for that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Dill: For the record, Larry Dill, county engineer. Well then, if it's
all right with you, Chair, then we'll proceed in the list in the CIP binder, which you have yet to
receive, and we'll locate each project as we go along in the spreadsheet that's been distributed to you
folks.
Chair Furfaro: And just a reminder that now that each member will have
kind of an overview of the project, we can also take time to read it on our own initiative through
May 6.
Mr. Dill: Okay, sure. Perhaps, then, I'll just touch base on some of the
larger budgeted items, okay? So...
Chair Furfaro: You call up the people you want to sit next to you, but you
take us where you want to take us up to 5 o'clock.
Mr. Dill: Okay, so we're looking at the roads projects for the highways.
I'd like to talk about islandwide resurfacing. As you know we've been up here before talking to you
about islandwide resurfacing. So we do have...let me see if we can find that on our list. Where is it
in our list here, Ed? It's under highway projects, appropriately enough. And we have, you see, from
previous years encumbered over $5 million...$5.1 million and then we're proposing another
$1.4 million for this year. So, we will have the fiscal year 2009-2010 road resurfacing plan to you
shortly and then we'll be going right into the fiscal year 2012 with afollow-up to that one with the
next list of roads to do.
Chair Furfaro: And the new year you budgeted at $1.4 million.
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Chair Furfaro: Which is typically about $280,000 less than what we typically
do in a year. Is there some rationale there on the resurfacing?
Mr. Dill: Well, that's, I think, a function, partially a reflection of
moneys that are available. So we are budgeting as much as we can in light of other projects we're
trying to fund this year. Okay. If I can move on?
Ms. Yukimura: A procedural question, Mr. Chair? So then we'll get to ask
questions about the resurfacing project after they're through?
Chair Furfaro: Well, I think we're going to focus a bunch of questions to them
on May 4 regarding resurfacing, but the point I wanted to make out is you have $5.1 million that's in
an account that was earmarked with some special funds that we gave that we didn't accomplish the
work. But for this year in this budget, when we put these numbers together, $1.4 is about $280,000
short of what we typically do.
Mr. Dill: Right.
Chair Furfaro: So, if you have a question on that, I'll take it right now. If
not, be ready for a full query on May 4.
Ms. Yukimura: And that will be before our budget decision making, so okay,
that fits.
Chair Furfaro: Yes, yes, it will be.
Ms. Yukimura: All right, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Go right ahead, Larry.
Mr. Dill: Okay, we have a project (inaudible) Pu`u Road safety
improvements. Where is that, Ed? And that's budgeted at $125,000 for miscellaneous safety
improvements along Pu`u Road. The scope of that largely incorporates some guardrail work and
some revetment wall work. We'll be doing that in-house, with in-house forces, plus largely material
costs. All right?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.1
Chair Furfaro: Okay, any queries on that one?
Mr. Rapozo: I don't even see it on our list. Where is it?
Mr. Dill: That is...actually, that was a previously budgeted amount,
councilmember. It's right below Puhi Road construction.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh, Pu`u road.
Mr. Dill: Yeah, Pu`u Road, yeah.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, got it.
Mr. Dill: Okay, again continuing in the order that the CIP binder is
that you'll soon have, next is the Wailua Emergency Bypass. Actually this is a project that we have
budgeted at $1 million to do i mprovements on the bypass road. We've requested matching funds
from the governor's office, so w e're awaiting the release. So we are kind of in a holding pattern until
we hear back from the governor on that one, okay.
Chair Furfaro: Got a question here on the holding pattern.
Ms. Yukimura: So is this going to take some design work? And is that
completed? Or is this construction money?
Mr. Dill: This is construction money.
Ms. Yukimura: And the improvements have been delineated and designed?
Mr. Dill: They have been scoped out. Hang on, let me see.
ED RENAUD, Chief, Field Operations & Maintenance, Highway & Road Construction:
Ed Renaud, Public Works. Everything has been scoped out. We're kind of ready to go. We're just
looking for that matching fund. That's the bottom line, yeah.
Ms. Yukimura: So, once the release or once the state moneys come through
you will proceed?
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And expect to complete it in this year?
Mr. Renaud: That's the plan.
Mr. Dill: Depending upon the timing of the release of the funds.
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Nakamura: And what is the prognosis on the availability of state funds?
Mr. Dill: I don't have a prognosis on that. We've made recent request
in writing to the governor's office and are awaiting a response.
Ms. Yukimura: Was it an earmarked on appropriation that came forth from
the state legislature at some time?
Mr. Dill: I'd have to defer to the director of finance. I don't know.
Ms. Yukimura: I see Clint nodding his head.
Mr. Dill: Okay, there you go. If Clint's nodding, that's what it was.
Ms. Yukimura: So, okay, so we're waiting for release of an appropriated... an
approved amount that requires the governor's release.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Chair Furfaro: Okay, Larry, I think we're close to having our own packets
here from the staff. Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: Regarding Wailua Emergency Bypass, what needs to be done?
Because that road was done once before, years ago. And and I mean they had the full ribbon cutting
ceremony, big press release, and then we never used it and it kind of got overgrown. So what is that
going to entail to bring that back up so we can use it?
Mr. Renaud: Okay, there are some major repairs on the road. There's
guardrails that needs to be added, and also delineators and traffic safety signs. We did an inspection
with KPD and we need to repair those problem areas.
Mr. Rapozo: And what is the anticipated cost to do that?
Mr. Renaud: It was 1.9.
Mr. Rapozo: $1.9 million?
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, I guess, we'll find out what the status...I'm not sure
if...we got the nod that it is appropriated funds? It is appropriated and just waiting for the governor
to release?
(?): Correct.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Larry, thank you for letting us make copies of all of these, but
as you can see, I've identified the documents as being confidential for internal use only. JoAnn, did
you have another question?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes. I'm realizing I'm not exactly clear where this road is,
and it's not the one that is our regular bypass road that we're using right now.
Mr. Renaud: It's the same one. I don't know if that's...let me explain.
Wailua, the new bridge, there's a heiau right there, that one gate. It starts from there and it goes all
the way to Roberts.
Ms. Yukimura: The heiau? By the Wailua river? Okay, so we're going
between Wailua river and Hanama'ulu is the road we're talking about.
Mr. Renaud: Correct.
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and it's the one that gets opened up if there's a traffic
problem on the main Kuhi`o Highway in front of the golf course, that stretch, which it would make
sense to have a suitable emergency road. Okay, thank you for the explanation.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for identifying the location by the marae in
Wailua, so okay. Next?
Mr. Dill: Okay and then finally, the Kapaia Swinging Bridge, which is
one project that you're pretty familiar with, I think. The project actually scope-wise, we are still in
the process of determining, but there is money set aside in the CIP for some level of work. I
anticipate, depending on the scope of work, that is established, we may be coming back with a money
bill if that's the direction we decide to go.
Chair Furfaro: Well, I guess there are a few other options there. We need to
take the lead from the administration on because they may want to end up deeding something too,
with a stipend for some in-house work. So I think that's an internal discussion you folks have to
have and I think that was one of the suggestions by Mr. Rapozo at one point too, so okay.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Do we have any more on highways?
Mr. Dill: No, that is it.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, what's the next division?
Mr. Dill: Engineering division.
Chair Furfaro: Engineering division. Thank you, Mr. Dill. Larry, if I can
ask you, when you give us a division such as engineering, give us a little overview of what
engineering covers.
Mr. Dill: Engineering division, as I mentioned, covered a little bit
during the operations budget, it consists of three sections. It's a survey and document section, and
they do land surveying, of course, and also manage the filing system that we keep all of our maps
and construction drawings, metes and bounds, legal descriptions, etcetera, and that's also where we
have our drafting personnel that supports the other section. The other sections include regulatory
compliance: they review and approve subdivisions, grading permits, road permits, flood review,
things like that. What we're going to be talking about in the CIP is pertinent to the project
development section. So, those guys...well, it's a really broad, broad section of various projects
including roads and highways. They do some building stuff, a lot of floodway stuff, and I think you'll
see that...
Chair Furfaro: As well as the resolution on complete streets would come
under their scope?
Mr. Dill: Yes. Complete streets is a fairly new initiative in the county,
and as we've talked about before, we have a county council resolution. The next thing we'd move
towards would be an ordinance. I think it would be probably spearheaded by planning with strong
input and support from public works. So as that develops, the engineering division will be very
involved in that.
Chair Furfaro: So, thank you for that overview. Now you go ahead and lead
the projects that you want to cover with them.
Mr. Dill: Okay. The engineering division has very many projects on its
plate. What I'd like to do is I'll go through all the projects that have either new funding or change in
funding or scope this year.
Chair Furfaro: Can I ask this first question? How are they staffing wise?
Mr. Dill: Staffing-wise, in our operating budget we've requested an
additional engineer in the projects group, an additional engineer in the regulatory compliance group.
I don't have the total numbers to the staffing I thought I had.
Chair Furfaro: But that's in your budget to fill those vacancies?
Mr. Dill: Yes, right. Also with me today is Ken Teshima. Ken's sitting
in because he's TA-ing for the chief this week who's off on personal Leave. Ken's also now fulltime
with the engineering project group and he's the guy that's coordinating that entire effort down there.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, thank you for that.
Mr. Dill: Okay, so I think we've touched on already the levee
recertification for the Hanapepe and Waimea Levees. We have contracts executed with the Army
Corps of Engineers and those two projects actually are shown under the drainage projects section of
your spreadsheet. It's the first PID in the engineering PID section of your binder. And so the Army
Corps of Engineers will be doing that work for us that (inaudible) for recertification of those two
levees, okay? Next.
Chair Furfaro: Did I hear the right term, recertification of the two levees?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Dill: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Dill: Okay, next I'm going to skip ahead to the Kanaele road
shoulder stabilization project. And that's under highway projects in the spreadsheet. It's a few
projects ahead in your CIP binder. So, you can see that's a project we have had appropriated
$200,000. We're requesting an additional $300,000 this year to bring it to a total of $500,000 and...
Ms. Yukimura: (Inaudible.)
(?): Kanaele Road...
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Dill: Kanaele Road Shoulder Stabilization.
Mr. Chang: Page 2.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Larry, can you give us some justification of the increase in the
funding for that shoulder stabilization? What's driving it?
Mr. Dill: The scope has expanded as we've come to understand more of
the project and the cost estimate has revealed that the design and construction necessary to fix that
road is a lot more significant than originally anticipated. There are some unstable, nearly vertical
shoulders along there that need reinforcement and stabilization.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chang?
Mr. Chang: Yeah, Chairman, can we...Larry, can you tell us exactly
where is this Kanaele road?
Mr. Dill: If you're able to see the PID, it's the makai side slope of
Kanaele Road between Laipo Road and the cemetery.
Chair Furfaro: So the description of its location is in the diagram.
Mr. Dill: It's in the PID.
Ms. Yukimura: And where is it in the PID?
Mr. Dill: It's in the engineering section.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, in the engineering, okay, that helps.
Mr. Dill: We're going to engineering projects now, so I'll be going
through them in order in the PID binder, but I'll be skipping occasionally just to touch on the new
ones.
Chair Furfaro: I just want to tell everybody in all of their books they're
tabbed.
Mr. Dill: It's after `Aliomanu Road Erosion Repair.
Ms. Yukimura: Please go ahead. Don't let me hold you.
Chair Furfaro: Councilmember Kuali`i, do you have a question? No? Okay.
Mr. Dill: I believe it's the seventh PID in engineering.
Ms. Yukimura: Got it.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Chair Furfaro: The seventh project, behind that tab.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you.
Mr. Dill: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: So that project is going from $200,000...
Mr. Dill: To $500,000.
Chair Furfaro: Increased by another $300,000 to $500,000 based on some of
the evaluations of the topographic area, the steep cliff, I presume guardrails.
Mr. Dill: Actually we have concrete barriers now.
Chair Furfaro: Concrete barriers and the width of the turn itself?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, that makes up the extra $300,000. Okay, thank you.
We'll go on to the next one.
Mr. Dill: Okay, I'm going to skip one, two...
Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Chair, may I ask real quick, is Hardy Street an
engineering...
Mr. Dill: Building Division.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh, that's building.
Mr. Dill: Because we associate that with the Lihu`e Civic Center site
improvement overall project.
Chair Furfaro: We'll do buildings very shortly here.
Mr. Rapozo: It's difficult because they're all connected and they're
intertwined and the automotive shop is buildings as well for is that...
Mr. Dill: Automotive shop is automotive by itself.
Mr. Rapozo: And the only reason I ask is because it looks like we moved a
million dollars in the bond fund from the auto shop to accommodate some of these other projects.
But, I mean, from what we heard from the auto people was that they desperately need space, so.
Mr. Dill: It's true there was a million dollars there. All I can tell you,
councilmember, is that we're not ready to move forward with that. So, as we mentioned in our
operating budgets, we are looking at the automotive shop and facility for opportunities to formulate
a plan to move forward. Dwayne's doing a great job with the facility he has, but he definitely needs
to have a better facility, a bigger facility. But I cannot sit here today and tell you today we're ready
to spend that million dollars.
Mr. Rapozo: Right and then I also heard, though, that the Honsador
building was a site that was going to possibly be used for the auto shop.
Mr. Dill: We're looking at that site, yes.
Mr. Rapozo: But when I look at the Honsador line item, that $198,000 also
was also removed from the CIP.
Mr. Dill: I think that line item, I'm not sure where that is, but the
Honsador building was completed, so that's a complete item. So that's probably the unencumbered
balance of funds.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Mr. Rapozo:
Okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: And the urgency there, if I remember, was the stabilization of
the roof on that facility itself, right?
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Chair Furfaro: So you're pretty certain that's completed?
Mr. Dill: Oh, yeah, that is. I know that's completed. The last thing
actually was the fire protection sprinkler system, which is...I don't know if it's 100% complete, but
they're finishing that one.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that question, Mr. Rapozo. You-can move on,
Larry.
Mr. Dill: Okay, so if we're flipping through our CIP binders, two
projects down the road is the Puhi Road Ultrathin white topping. This is a...I think we mentioned
this project. We were talking about resurfacing Puhi road from the Kaumuali`i Highway down to
Kaneka Road and that's a STIP project, so we're using 20% county funds, 80% state match on that
one. Okay?
Chair Furfaro:
Ms. Yukimura:
doing?
Mr. Dill:
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Dill:
Chair Furfaro:
actually come in at a bett
Thank you.
Excuse me, that was a concrete surface, right, that you're
Correct, yes.
Okay, that's good.
Next, we'll skip...
Larry, are we now at the point that certain concrete roads
er price than the oil-base asphalt?
Mr. Dill: I would say it's very competitive.
Chair Furfaro: Very competitive.
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, that's a good enough answer for now.
Mr. Dill: Okay, thanks. I'm sorry, I lost count, but about five PIDs
down is the Bridge Inspections, federal highways administration mandate. This is a project I think
we mentioned before, we are required to conduct a bridge inspection of all of our county bridges, of
which there are 23, every two years. So last year we completed all those inspections. We need to go
out and reinspect. And this is also a STIP project, so, it's 20% county, $25,000, and 80% state,
$100,000.
Moving on to the next one is the PID following that, I believe, Hanapepe Bridge, pedestrian
walkway and bridge repairs. It's another STIP project.
Mr. Rapozo: (Inaudible.)
Mr. Dill: That's under other projects.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, got it.
Mr. Dill: So it's a STIP project, again 20% county match and the total
cost of the project is $580,000. Of that $480,000 is state, I believe, and 100,000 is what we're asking
for in the county budget.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Ms. Yukimura: $100,000?
Mr. Dill: If you look at your spreadsheet, you can see we have already
$28,434. We're adding $71,566 this year to bring the total appropriation to $100,000 for the county.
It's on the spreadsheet.
Ms. Yukimura: So the one you gave us dated 4/11/11 is different than the
spreadsheet?
Mr. Dill: The spreadsheet, it's under "other projects" at about the
middle of the page.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, I have it on this one. It's $98,000 and it doesn't have a
total.
Mr. Dill: The $98,000 is the previously encumbered amount and
we re...
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, it's $500...
Mr. Dill: Wait a minute.
Chair Furfaro: Clint? When in doubt, call Clint.
(?): That's right.
Mr. Rapozo: It looks like they removed it from the general fund and put it
into the bond fund.
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead.
Mr. Dill: Total encumbrance is $100,000. We're transferring $70,000
from general fund to bond, and then adding another $1,566 to get us to that total encumbrance of
$100,000, which is the county m atch.
Chair Furfaro: So we just have to assume the transfer from the general fund
to use the bond fund is based on the urgency and the fact that we can get this done within the
36 months.
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Chair Furfaro: So that's what I perceive.
Mr. Dill: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, moving right along.
Mr. Dill: Next PID in your binder, we have Hapa Trail Improvements.
Hapa Trail was originally included in the budget when we understood that Hapa Trail was a county
road and therefore was funded. So at least for this budget, we're showing that as being unfunded as
we realize now that is owned by the state.
Chair Furfaro: Well, that's what the state claims.
Mr. Dill: Yeah.
Chair Furfaro: So I understand you're unfunding a project that was very dear
to this council based on the fact that all of a sudden the state stepped forward and said, oh, no, that's
our road. Okay, I understand.
Mr. Dill: We'll be right back here as soon as we find out otherwise.
Chair Furfaro: Very good, so you'll check in with the county attorney's office
where we stand with that. Thank you, Larry.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.1
Mr. Dill: Yes, okay. Next PID is the Kamalu Bridge Stream Erosion
Repair Project. That's staying on the same page as the Hanapepe Bridge Project.
Chair Furfaro: Clint? Clint, you're welcome to sit in the front row. Okay,
Mr. Dill.
Mr. Dill: Okay, so these are all construction funds here. We actually
removed part of the funding we had because we didn't need that much for our county match for the
STIP project, so total project is $300,000. Our portion is $60,000 and the state's portion is $240,000,
okay? All right.
Chair Furfaro: So that's 80/20 again?
Mr. Dill: Correct. Next project, the PID is the Kapahi Bridge. This is a
design project, excuse me, total budget around $600,000...$600,243, so the same 20/80 percent. Our
match is about $120,000. Remainder of the state is $480,000 to make up the $600,000. So we had
$48,000 and we're asking for another $72,000 to make up our 20% match.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Dill: And I think that may be...that's the last of the new projects
that we're proposing.
Chair Furfaro: So, Larry, let me ask you, Mr. Dill. On these state portions
on matching funds, what is our conduit to the state to make sure, after we got our briefing on their
money challenges today, how are we staying current with those state funds being available to us?
Mr. Dill: The STIP program, it's actually federal funds that are
conduited through the state to us.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, so shall I go back and re-mark everything as
20% county and 80% federal?
Mr. Dill: Well, the state is actually the delegated authority for
administration of the funds. So effectively for us it's the state, though it's federal funds.
Chair Furfaro: Yeah, it's federal funds, but it goes to the state. And then
when you have funds over there, the reality is it's called cash flow.
Mr. Dill: I understand.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, so who is your conduit at the state that we're kind of
staying in touch with?
Mr. Dill: It's the department of transportation and they have...the
STIP is a multi-year plan that goes out (inaudible) 5, 6, 7 years, and so we have regular, I think
quarterly meetings with them where we touch base about the status of all our projects and they
confirm for us where they have funding allocated for their share of our projects.
Chair Furfaro:
Mr. Dill:
Chair Furfaro:
Mr. Dill:
Chair Furfaro:
Mr. Dill:
Ms. Yukimura:
Okay, is that Mr. Fong?
Yes.
Okay.
Pat Fong is part of that process.
He's part of that process.
Yeah.
But he's going, right?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Dill:
I don't know.
Chair Furfaro: We understand he's ashort-timer maybe, for retirement. But
I guess my biggest...as the federal government cuts $4 trillion off of their budget, who is our conduit
that is making sure what moneys are coming into the state over the next four to six years?
Mr. Dill: I'll have to get back to you on that one, Chair.
Chair Furfaro: Very good, thanks, thanks, Larry. That's all I want to know.
I want to make sure we stay on top of it. Okay, next call is yours.
Mr. Dill: Okay. We'll go to building division.
Chair Furfaro: Sounds like a plan.
Mr. Rapozo: Hang on real quick.
Chair Furfaro: Hold on, we have a question still.
Mr. Rapozo: Is Opaeka'a Bridge on yours or...
Mr. Dill: Opaeka'a Bridge is engineering division.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Is it in Ken's?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, Ken, we have a question for you.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh, I'm just trying to get an update on that. I guess we were
told earlier that these projects all should be started within or paid out within 12 to 18 months. And
Opaeka`a's been on there for q uite a while. Is that something that we're ready to roll on or ready to
move on?
Mr. Dill: Opaeka'a Bridge...
Chair Furfaro: Opaeka'a was in the 12 to 18 month target range, Larry?
Mr. Dill: You have a schedule with you attached to the PID for
Opaeka'a and we have the design scheduled, planning and design by the end of 2012. So that's right,
that's correct.
Mr. Rapozo: And the $498,000, you guys feel will be sufficient for that
bridge?
Mr. Dill: That's the design.
Mr. Rapozo: Oh, that's only the design?
Mr. Dill: Correct. Yeah, so the construction is on the STIP at a later
date, which is why it's not before you today.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: So 18 months at $495,000 is, in fact, the design module
portion?
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Chair Furfaro: And we'll be on target for that?
Mr. Dill: Yes.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Ken. Excuse me, Mr. Dill, we have Mr. Heu here.
GARY K. HEU, Managing Director: Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to answer a question
that I heard come up as I was entering the room. There was a question on the state funding for the
emergency bypass road. And I just wanted to update the council. We've written to the governor, two
governors now. We wrote two letters to Governor Lingle and one letter to Governor Abercrombie
asking for the release of those funds. We received a letter from...well, Governor Lingle based on the
state's fiscal position, declined to release those funds. So again, when Governor Abercrombie came
into office, we again appealed for the release of those funds. We initially got a letter indicating that
they would not be releasing those funds. However, the mayor has been in contact with the governor
and I think that request is now being reconsidered. So I think suffice it to say that the mayor's office
is working with the governor's office to see if there's any opportunity to get those funds released.
And so they've asked for a little additional information, which we will be providing them and then
we'll kind of see where that goes. So I just kind of wanted to provide that update.
Chair Furfaro: So obviously you understand our earlier concern about who at
the state is the conduit on some of these projects, even if they are federal moneys put in the hands of
the state. We'd like to make sure that there is ongoing dialogue.
Mr. Heu: I think there are a number of individuals that public works
typically works with regarding the STIP. And then this other concern with the...
Chair Furfaro: Emergency Bypass is it?
Mr. Heu: ...emergency bypass was funding that was appropriated by
the legislature a few years back, but it has yet to be released. And on that one, typically what
happens is a letter goes to the governor's office requesting release. That letter gets kicked down to
budget and finance, and they would make a recommendation back up to the governor relative to the
release of funds. So clearly, we know that in terms of release of legislatively approved funding that
our conduit is the governor's office.
Chair Furfaro: We appreciate that, Gary, especially since you earlier
committed these projects, some of them are 12 to 18 months on the radar screen, and yet you have
these other hurdles. And we understand and we appreciate your feedback. This emergency bypass,
two times from Governor Lingle and one time from the current governor indicate that with more
information they may reconsider, so.
Mr. Heu: Yeah, we're hoping it's just a misunderstanding, but we'll
clear it up with the governor's office.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, thank you, Gary. Mr. Dill, you have the building
department up? You start where you want to start, Larry.
Mr. Dill: Okay.
DOUGLAS HAIGH, Chief, Building Division: Douglas Haigh, Building Division. The first
project that's got new funding is the Moanakai Road/Seawall Repair. Last year we funded the
design, and this year we're funding the construction. We're just about getting ready to publish the
draft environmental assessment. And we will require a department of health 404 clean water permit
and Army Corps of Engineers permit. So those are some unknowns that it's hard to say how long
that permitting will go, but we're fairly confident within this next fiscal year we'll be able to fit out
the construction.
Mr. Dill: And you see that's under highway projects, actually a
highway funded project that Doug's managing for highways under that $1.5 million. We're
requesting $1.5 for construction.
Mr. Haigh; And then we actually missed one project that's on the chart
before that highway project which is the Hardy Street Project. We are now funding the...it was my
first PID.
(Inaudible.)
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Dill: We'll come back to that.
Chair Furfaro: We'll come back to Hardy Street?
(?): Yeah.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, let me go back to Moanakai. Is this plan now one way
north, one way south or both ways?
Mr. Haigh: Okay, that is a separate project. We have a traffic resolution
submitted to council that hasn't been put on the agenda yet. And as part of the bike path project, we
are looking at it making one lane and it would be one lane northbound.
Chair Furfaro: Okay and I hope you can appreciate since we're trying to
build something to protect what area we have there from the seawall and so forth, that it's yet to be
determined, but it will be coming up on a council agenda, whether it's going north, going south, or
both ways, yet to be determined.
Mr. Haigh: We've submitted our plan going north.
Chair Furfaro: And so your plan is one way north?
Mr. Haigh: One way north, yes.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much.
Mr. Haigh: I thought I said that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, very good. We'll follow up on seeing it on a future
calendar item. Okay. We'll skip Hardy.
Mr. Dill: Well come to Hardy in a moment.
Mr. Haigh: Okay, Hardy Street is the next on Larry's list. That one we
have added in $900,000. We got it approved on the STIP federally highway funded, conduited
through the state, a $4.5 million total project. We have just recently, finally executed our contract
with our design build procurement consultant. And PB Americas is a very- good firm. And what our
goal is is that in this federal fiscal year, obligate the construction funds, but we're going to need to do
some environmental work, not a full environmental assessment, but confirming the categorical
exclusion that you get for this type of project that's within an existing road right-of-way. So it's not a
full-blown environmental, but we're actually taking it up a step higher. We used to just write one
letter and say assume it's a categorical exclusion, but we're going to do a little more detailed work on
that. And so our goal is to be ready to go out with our design build procurement process by August
this year. And that would just be the first steps, and then be able to secure the $4.5 million.
Because the federal highway funds these projects, they're funded on an annual basis. There is a pot
of money each year that the feds give to the states, and then the state distributes out. And the key is
to have the projects ready no later than August because September is the end of the federal fiscal
year. Then you start a new fiscal year. Now the thing that's undetermined is how much money the
feds will have next fiscal year as we see in our media reports.
Chair Furfaro: As we see in the CNN reports.
Mr. Haigh; Yeah, but this year we're really working hard to make sure
we're securing this year's funds that we have. And we're in a good position because some other
larger projects from other counties have fallen out. So they're actually looking for us to put projects
up and get funded for this fiscal year.
Chair Furfaro: So when you said this $900,000 has received approval, we're
certain?
Mr. Haigh: It's on the STIP, but we need to obligate it, and we need to
close this environmental process, the categorical exclusion, to enable to take that next step and
obligate. That's one of the advantages of the design/build process is we obligate the full amount at
closure of the environmental work rather than going through the planning and then being ready to
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
advertise and then getting to construction work. So especially in this fiscal environment, the sooner
we can obligate these funds, the better off it's going to be for us because it doesn't seem as though the
pot is growing.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, so the environmental piece will be done, we'll get these
things obligated by August.
Mr. Haigh: That's what we're working for. It's a challenge for us.
Chair Furfaro: That's the goal.
Mr. Haigh: Yeah, it's gotten delayed through different issues in the
contract, procurement contract phase, but our goal is to get it obligated.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. I think Mr. Rapozo might have had a question.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah just, Doug, the $4.5 million, what does that get us?
Mr. Haigh; Okay, we are looking at Hardy Street starting at the Kuhi`o
Highway-Hardy Street intersection, and we're going to try to incorporate a lot of the complete streets
components that were developed in the Lihu`e Civic Center Site Improvement Project. And our goal
at a minimum is to get from Hardy Street to a new traffic circle at Umi Street. And with the
design(build, what we're going to be able to do is set our priorities of what we want and then let the
design build con...one of the concepts we're looking at-well I'm pretty sure we may go is-have a
list, and the design build contractors, these are on the list. How far down this list can you take us?
And that's going to be a big part in the selection of the design/build team. And ultimately we would
like to do the entire Hardy Street from Kuhi`o Highway to the Rice Street intersection. But
depending on the funding and how far those funds can go will determine how far we go.
Chair Furfaro: And within compliance of our complete streets resolution,
you're going to include all that of?
Mr. Haigh: Well, we're going to be inspired to do as much as we can.
Chair Furfaro: Inspired, I like that. I would like to inspire you too, okay.
Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: So I understand that the consultants that Get Fit Kauai and
the UH Project are bringing down are looking at sample streets, and I just wondered if this
particular street was going to be one place where we bring Dan Burden and the other experts to look
at. Are you aware of that?
Mr. Dill: That's a good idea, and we'll suggest that to them as one of
the sites to visit for them, thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: Because he's a walking genius and expert in these kinds of
things.
Chair Furfaro: Gentlemen, just remember $900,000 is riding on this for
August. Okay, let's not get to the point that...I mean it's a wonderful idea, but the kala, what we
need, we need it committed. Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. I know one of the issues that was present in the
past and it may have been resolved over the last two years, but was whether or not Hardy Street was
going to be...not Hardy, but `Eiwa was going to be closed or not. Has that been resolved with the...
Mr. Haigh: As we last reported to council many years ago, we're
suspending the closure of `Eiwa Street to sort of the end of the Lihu`e Civic Center site
improvements. And really Hardy Street is kind of the beginning. So it's been quite a few years that
we ve has this project on the books, but we are still at the beginning of that total improvement. So
actual closure of `Eiwa Street is father down in time.
Mr. Rapozo: But that would be condition of this project?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Mr. Haigh: Well, what we will be doing is we'll be designing this project
with `Eiwa Street still there but in mind that we will eventually look at closing it.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: In fact I remember our discussions were to delay `Eiwa Street
so we could see how Hardy Street wou ld work.
Mr. Haigh: That is correct and the other traffic improvements that are
planned for that Lihu`e area.
Ms. Yukimura: Right, because part of the thing was access to our county civic
center by Hardy Street.
Mr. Haigh: (Inaudible) Rice Street, `Umi Street, Hardy Street, Kuhi`o
Highway block that we're concerned about. And as we do these other improvements, we'll see how
the traffic works. And what we actually said is that we would temporarily close `Eiwa Street once
these other improvements are in and then see how it affects (inaudible).
Chair Furfaro: Do an evaluation.
Mr. Haigh: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: But it will be the last phase?
Mr. Haigh: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, next item?
Mr. Haigh: Okay, another project we have is Various Repairs to Kalaheo
Fire Station, which is newly funded. In the past, it would have been an R&M type project in our
budget, but we are now looking at it a s anon-annual type of improvement, so it's in the CIP budget.
Basically we're looking at doing roofin g and painting, and pretty much kind of a rebuild.
Chair Furfaro: Any actual expansion for the space for the firemen
themselves?
Mr. Haigh: No, not in this project. It's a...
Chair Furfaro: So it's an R&M, it's not an expansion project.
Mr. Haigh: Yeah, not an expansion project.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, next item.
Mr. Haigh: And then the next one will be the Koloa fire station, which is
very similar.
Chair Furfaro: All R&M, but now transferred into the CIP
Mr. Haigh: Correct.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, next item, Mr. Dill?
Mr. Haigh: RPA Office Renovation, this is a very small project, real
property assessment office renovation, basically looking at some counter improvements to provide a
better flow for customers. And then the next new project would be the Mayor's Office Security
Renovation, again a very small project, more of the R&M type where we're looking at some
heightened security for the mayor's office.
Chair Furfaxo: Councilwoman Yukimura?
Ms. Yukimura: You skipped over, maybe it was intentional, the Pono Kai
Wall, that's not in your jurisdiction?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.1
Mr. Haigh; No, it is. What Larry is focusing on today are the newly
funded projects. Pono Kai has existing funding. There may have been some shuffling of funds, but
it's still the same funding, the same project that we reported on last year.
Ms. Yukimura:
skipping over it because i
Mr. Haigh:
Ms. Yukimura:
Chair Furfaro:
project.
Okay, but we're not going to cover it at any other time. You're
is apre-existing project.
That's correct.
So if we have any questions we can ask you before you leave?
Or we can put it on as an agenda item because it's a current
Mr. Haigh: Whichever works best for you folks.
Ms. Yukimura: Or even follow up with a question, okay.
Mr. Haigh: We have the information on the PID.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, if you could, I'd appreciate it if you can on Pono Kai,
what's the status.
Mr. Haigh: Okay, we are currently in with the Army Corps trying to
finalize the permit. We started that process I think in December...November/December and my
consultant tells me any day we'll complete the Army Corps permit, and then after that hopefully at
the same time we can close out the department of health permit, and then we should be in the final
design, and hopefully be able to go out to bid shortly after that.
Chair Furfaro: So when you get the indication, would you give us a heads-up
so we can put it as an agenda item and we can hear the outcome?
Mr. Haigh: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Would that work?
Mr. Haigh: That's appropriate.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Okay, Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: Yes, fine, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: So as soon as you get the heads up, we want to get it on the
agenda. Next item, Mr. Dill.
Mr. Haigh: The Waimea Dispensary Renovation Project. This is for the
police.
Chair Furfaro: Through the police, yeah, we saw it in the police presentation,
the renderings and so forth.
Mr. Haigh: They have not really turned the project over to us yet. We are
a service organization and we help the other agencies. And a lot of times, like this project and OED,
they do the initial leg work to get their project going, and then once it's ready for actual design work,
and then we will apply our...they'll come to us for our expertise. For police, I would assume they'd
come to us for planning and design and of course construction.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Mr. Rapozo, then Councilman Kuali`i, did you have a
question on that one? No? Then Councilwoman Yukimura. Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: The Waimea Police Substation, we just approved the CDBG
resolution that included funding for them to move over to that old dispensary building.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Ms. Yukimura: This is it.
Mr. Rapozo: No, this cannot be it. That's CDBG funds. This is separate,
right?
Mr. Haigh: Okay, it's a very interesting project. I happened to be at the
Historic Preservation Review Committee with the planning department and I believe the state
agency that Maddy is with now is involved in it because it's amulti-agency renovation was the
impression I got. And so they are looking at improvements and there is a state grant or state funds
to do some initial improvements to the facility. So I really haven't gotten a feel yet of how much
specific improvements we're going to need to do for the police.
Ms. Yukimura: It's actually the federal CDBG moneys. Aren't you talking
about that?
Mr. Rapozo: Right.
Mr. Haigh: It could because Ron was involved there, so I figured it must
be our senator's representative was there.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, part of the requirement was the county to be a partner.
That's the briefing that I got, and thus hence the $250,000 or...I guess it was 250 that was in that
resolution. But this is bond money, this is not CDBG money. So, this is a separate funding source,
and I'm wondering, is this going to be used in...
Chair Furfaro: In addition to?
Mr. Haigh: They haven't turned it over to us, but I assume they're going
to need significant improvements in their own space in order to make it appropriate for the police.
And so I assume it's those internal improvements.
Mr. Rapozo: That's not...I guess that's not...
Mr. Haigh: It's utilized for furniture, equipment, and hardening of the
entry/exit point and holding cells.
Mr. Rapozo: Of the dispensary building?
Mr. Haigh: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Mr. Haigh: That's what the funding is for.
Mr. Rapozo: Got it, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: So all the new FF&E, Larry, is in there. Okay,
Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: I guess it's pretty clear in your description. It is a joint
project. Easter Seals will be developing...it says will cover the basic renovation of the dispensary
and any special construction to meet the needs of KPD will have to be county funded.
Mr. Haigh: Yeah.
Ms. Yukimura: So we're doing...our part of the building is for the police
basically, right? And these are the moneys that will go toward that.
Mr. Haigh: And this is the first...to be honest, this is the first time I've
seen this PID. Like I said it's...
Mr. Dill: It was prepared by the police.
Mr. Haigh: By the police.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, you're saying that it hasn't come to you yet.
Mr. Haigh: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so I just have afollow-up question. In terms of all
these buildings that you're working on, is there an item on your checklist in terms of energy
efficiency and life cycle cost of energy?
Mr. Haigh: Absolutely.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Haigh: That's a priority. Normally when we do consultant contracts,
we tell them as a goal to try to do 20% better than the existing energy code and since we adopted the
2009 international energy conservation code that really puts the level up. Whether or not they can
meet it, it's not a requirement, but it's a goal and it depends on the different buildings, different
situations. But it is a goal of ours to be as energy efficient because capital improvement does not
match your long-term maintenance costs, and long-term maintenance costs is what costs the county
the big ticket.
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Haigh: So the more money we can save on energy and we work
closely with Glenn on different energy projects, Glenn Sato with the office of economic development.
So we're always...we're searching for energy conservation.
Ms. Yukimura: I'm glad that it's part of our regular design and procurement
process because unless it is, we'll be doing retrofits in the future that could have been avoided.
Okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Oh, no, we just won't approve the project. How is that?
Ms. Yukimura: Sounds good to me, Chair.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, so we're committed 20%. It is scope that you're going to
be reviewing and we'll see we get the best outcome but...
Mr. Haigh: Now like on a project like this with the budget and we're just
going in, there is very little opportunity for us to do it. But when we do a new project, that's when
we really have the opportunity. It's like the fire station. When we did the Kaiakea Fire Station,
with the design, we left the rough in to bring in the photovoltaic. So we do steps today to bring in
future improvements.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. I'm not going to focus on any more than you committed
to 20%. Whether we have Easter Seals involved, the police department involved, and then
eventually the building department, the goal is 20%. Okay, do the best you can on the 20%.
Mr. Haigh: I may just be building a holding cell, so.
(Inaudible.)
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, even that takes energy.
Mr. Haigh: Maybe I can put some tinting on the window. That will help.
Chair Furfaro: We're open to it, Doug. Next item.
Mr. Haigh: Salt Pond, various repairs at Salt Pond Beach Park. This is
another project that typically would have been R&M. Brian wrote up this PID. Basically we're
looking at painting and general maintenance, a lot of it to bring it up.
Chair Furfaro: Now, I'm sure we're going to come to it here, but I'm just
making some notes to myself here. As we look at new projects, it's always been my understanding
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.1
that as we look at the Lihu`e Annex, in this order we were looking at fire first, planning, and finding
a place for our county auditor. Where are we on the annex?
Mr. Dill: Chair, are you talking about the Pi'ikoi Building?
Chair Furfaro: Yes, I'm sorry I used the wrong terminology, for the Pi'ikoi
Building. We had it in this sequence, fire, planning, audit. Eventually we're all supposed to be in
the Pi'ikoi Building Phase II and III.
Mr. Dill: Let's see, the project under construction or going into
construction next will be fire. That is...I think we're going to be issuing notice to proceed within the
next couple of months, and scheduling completion by early next year. So, fire is on the way.
Chair Furfaro: Good.
Mr. Dill: Actually, the next project, I'm unfamiliar, I don't have the
history that you do, obviously.
Chair Furfaro: Let me give you the history. Three years ago we were
presented with a master plan for the Pi'ikoi Building. It included those organizations.
Mr. Dill: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Where are we?
Mr. Dill: Well, I know our next effort was focusing on the solid waste
and wastewater divisions, and that was based on the fact they were bursting out of their office space
in their present space. So that was the next item on the agenda.
Chair Furfaro:
Okay.
Mr. Dill: Beyond that we have a tentative plan. I don't have it in my
head.
Chair Furfaro: I'm okay with that because at that time I thought the area
that was going to be vacated by fire upstairs in the existing building, the next office right next to it,
there was fire and...I forget who's right next door.
Ms. Yukimura: Are you talking about the Hale Pumehana?
Mr. Haigh: Probably finance.
Ms. Yukimura: RC&D?
Chair Furfaro: No, I'm talking about the county building right now, so. But
anyway, you're going to give us a new summary?
Mr. Dill: I can do that, sure, yes.
Chair Furfaro: And I'm fine with you guys looking at solid waste, I mean
wastewater next or...
Mr. Dill: Solid waste and wastewater.
Chair Furfaro: Solid waste and wastewater. I just want to make sure we get
it in in order.
Ms. Yukimuxa: After the auditor. The solid waste would be after the auditor?
Chair Furfaro: No, I'm hearing it's before the auditor.
Mr. Dill: I'm sorry?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Chair Furfaro: Let me rephrase it. At one time we were told fire, planning,
audit. Now I understand solid waste and wastewater are your next priority.
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, can you give us something that tells us that?
Mr. Dill: Sure, I can do that.
Chair Furfaro: Because we need to find a place for the auditor.
Ms. Yukimura: And...
Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman, go ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: And based on planning's budget hearings, they desperately
need space too. So I had thought they were next in line to the fire department.
Chair Furfaro: They were at one time. It sounds like they just got bumped.
Ms. Yukimura: Is this going to be another agenda item?
Chair Furfaro: Oh, no, just respond to the question and we'll have some
discussion. I mean planning was pleading with us, okay. They were pleading with us. They need
space.
Mr. Dill: We recently did an interim needs assessment, so we took care
of planning's needs on an interim basis, but I concur with you that in the long-term we need to
adjust their needs.
Chair Furfaro: I just want to hear where you're at. It's okay. And I just also
want to point out that three years ago we paid for a study on a needs assessment. And now if we're
deviating from it, in the future I'll remember that because that's not the best way to spend money is
to go out to a contractor to give us some evaluations and then we modify the plan. So if you can just
tell us the sequence on those four departments. Councilmember Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: You know, it was probably a year and a half ago, I think, I sat
on that side of the railing testifying when the fire department was here for approval to go rent
private space. And I thought we were assured back then that it would only be a year, and it's
obviously beyond that. My question is how much space does this county have that we're leasing out
to, whether it's the state, private, or...I mean we lease out space or we allow other entities to utilize
our space.
Mr. Dill: I think that's a finance director question. I think I'd have to
defer to him.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: It's coming up because we have...(inaudible) no, no, we'll wait
till Thursday, we'll wait till Thursday. Wally, we'll wait till Thursday. We have finance on
Thursday. I'm just asking you for right now for public works, give us some kind of a sequence, Larry.
Maybe we'll send it over in a question. Councilwoman Yukimura?
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah and I don't know when you did your interim plan that
involved planning, but they have new leadership now, and there was a period where their natural
expansion was really limited. So there's a potential now for them to possibly...I mean I think one of
the things we're looking at is a more rapid expansion than past history would allow. So it's just that
somehow there needs to be...
Chair Furfaro: We needed to get an updated plan, Larry.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Dill: I can tell you, though, that the interim assessment needs that
were addressed this year, so it included the recent folks over there.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that, thank you for that. Then we'll cover the
other parts in finance on Thursday. We have 9 to 11 a.m. with finance. But if you could respond to
me before Thursday, I'd appreciate it on that one question. What is the sequence for the Pi'ikoi
Building Phase II and III?
Mr. Dill: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, any more?
Mr. Dill: That's it for building division unless you have any questions
for us.
Chair Furfaro: No, we're in good shape on them. Who do you have next?
Mr. Rapozo: I have one question, real quick.
Chair Furfaro: Oh, Mr. Rapozo has a question.
Mr. Rapozo: I'm assuming that the police room, the evidence room
humidity control was completed and that's why the reduction of the money in the budget.
Mr. Haigh: That is correct.
Mr. Rapozo: It is complete, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: And thank you for taking care of that.
Mr. Haigh; You're welcome.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, next.
Mr. Dill: We'll go to wastewater and I'll ask our division chief
Ed Tschupp to come up.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Hi, Ed.
ED TSCHUPP, Chief, Wastewater: » Good afternoon.
Chair Furfaro:
Larry? Take it.
Mr. Dill: Again, we'll go through the projects in the order that you have
them in your PIDs and we'll touch on the ones for which new funding is being requested this year.
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead.
Mr. Dill: Of which there is one.
Chair Furfaro: Well, that means Ed is going to be home in time for dinner.
Mr. Tschupp: For the record...
Ms. Yukimura: Can you talk into the mike?
Chair Furfaro: Into the mike, Ed, please.
Mr. Tschupp: For the record, Edward Tschupp, chief, wastewater
management division. I just did a little double take when the statement was that we were adding or
requesting one additional project with new funds. Actually, it shows up as a minusing of one of the
projects. We're actually in the process of encumbering those funds. So I think that's a later finance
director relative...those are bond funds from the 2010 bond float and those are for design of the next
phase of work at Wailua Wastewater Treatment Plant. And we have negotiated a contract this year
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.1
with the design firm to proceed with those, and actually are in the process of contracting for those
funds as we speak.
Mr. Dill: (Inaudible.)
Mr. Tschupp: The construction on that one will be _SRF, SRF funding. So I
think that if there's an adjustment to be made to address the reduction in funds for the division,
that's something that will probably end up with some of the projects that are either ongoing and may
be able to be replaced with SRF funds. `Ele`ele project design work is one of those projects and
another one is we actually just opened bids for the lab, and it came in appreciably under our
estimated cost, so.
Chair Furfaro: And just for some of the newer councilmembers, we're talking
in terms of applying for state revolving sewer funds that is not showing up as our numbers on some
of these phases that you've already got going forward. And, Ed, I just want to take this moment to
tell you how very delighted I am with the direction that you're taking the department, the work
that's been done in Waimea, the considerations and thoughts that are going into Lihu`e and this next
design step for Lydgate, it's much appreciated. I just wanted to say that.
Mr. Tschupp: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Any questions? Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: Ed, Wailua, that's the one the Lydgate area? That's the big...
Mr. Tschupp: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: I know we've had communication regarding the station by
Coco Palms.
Mr. Tschupp: The pump station?
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah. Is that anywhere in here?
Mr. Tschupp: No, that is not. We have not...
Mr. Rapozo: Are we planning to fix that or?
Mr. Tschupp: That could be a capital improvement project.
Mr. Rapozo: I think it needs to be some kind. of project because it's not
working. It's stink, it pollutes that area. It's every day. You know we get a lot...and it's been that
way for years.
Mr. Tschupp: Right.
Mr. Rapozo: And I guess I really didn't understand what you said when we
removed $12 million from your Wailua Plant, and you're expecting to replace that and have that
project done within 12 to 18 months using SRF funds? Is that what you said?
Mr. Tschupp: The $1.2 million change here relative to last year's list would
have been essentially to shift funds, and I believe that's something that the finance department felt
they needed to do.
Mr. Rapozo: Right, so I see they needed your money, so they took the
$1.2 million and they put it somewhere else. I'm asking, how do we get that $1.2 million back?
Because if you're asking me what's more of a priority, wastewater, our public's health and safety
versus some of these other CIP projects, I can tell you where I'm going to go. It's not going to be with
the...it's going to go wastewater first. But what I'm trying to ask you is how do we replace that
$1.2 million so that you can do what you need to do?
Mr. Tschupp: Right. Well, the timing...the finance director just pointed out
that timing was one of the issues that was being addressed with removal of those funds. But it turns
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.1
out that the timing ended up being something we were able to encumber and complete the
negotiations this year. So it will end up initiating with bond funds this year.
Mr. Rapozo: And from which account; I guess, is what I'm asking?
Mr. Tschupp: From the 2010 bond account.
Mr. Rapozo: I understand, but it's in which line? It has to be in a line.
Maybe Wally can come up and help, but somebody's got to...something's got to pay for $1.2 million
worth of improvements because again, I'm hearing these are projects that are going to go forward.
Mr. Tschupp: Right.
Mr. Rapozo: And we had $1.2 million allocated and $1.2 million is being
removed, then somebody has to put that...and we can do it, but it's going to come from someplace
else.
Mr. Dill: Okay, councilmember, we are going to be coming back to you
in May with the May submittal with probably a reduction and you see the $4.2 million for the
islandwide SCADA System? We won't need, we believe, all of that $4.2 million in this fiscal year, so
we'll use funding from there and a combination of that and SRF funding we'll be pursuing will be
used to fund the Wailua Wastewater Treatment Plant Improvement Renovation. So we'll come back
to you with clarification on that in the May submittal.
Mr. Rapozo: So you don't need $4.2 million for the islandwide SCADA
System?
Mr. Dill: It looks like that may be the case, that's right.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay and then I guess the other question is the pump station
at Coco Palms. We need to get that addressed. I don't know what that's going to cost, but I think
the residents have lived with that for long enough. And it's time that we, again, as we go through
these projects, many of them are projects that yes, I'd like to see, but I think we have to prioritize
and get rid of that problem in Wailua. It's there. I smelled it today. You don't even have to go near
it. You just have to drive past it. And even with your windows up and your air condition on, you still
smell it. That cannot be right.
Mr. Dill: I hear you, message received. I know that Ed's been looking
at some solutions, but we haven't scoped it out sufficiently to...
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Well, I'm sure Ed is limited too because if they're
using the money for other projects. I guess I'm asking, please take care of wastewater, take care of
public health and safety first before we start looking at parks and rec and all of that. If we're
limited, let's put the money where it needs to go and prioritize accordingly. And that's all I'm
asking. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, I just want to follow up on that for both of you
gentlemen. We have been told in the past that that lift station was going to be addressed in repair
and maintenance, which is not a capital item. And we were also told that it took a little evaluation
of the Coco Palms needs for that lift station, but the reality is the Coco Palms plan has been deferred
for such a long time. So that might be a future agenda item for us to find out where we are with
those permits, but everything that Mr. Rapozo said about that lift station, pump station, certainly
requires repair and maintenance urgently, and/or some capital money to do whatever we are
supposed to do now. Okay. We're going to need to take a caption break to change the tape, and
we're not going to leave where we're at. This isn't a break, this is a tape change.
(Tape change at 4:45 to 4:50 p.m.)
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Dill, I just want to recap something for you and you can
verify it and send it back, okay. As far as space for leasing in our property, we have Big Save, we
have the Disabled Unit and we have the Historical Society. I don't know of anybody else that's
leasing from the county. We heard in the police department-and you need to verify this for me-
actually, we heard it in police and fire, that this phase in the Pi'ikoi Building that we're going to will
also be the redundant back-up system for emergency telecommunications at the request of fire and
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
police. They're actually going to take time where they'll move operators there to operate aback-up
emergency call center, okay. So I just want to make sure I'm telling you this because I'm still looking
for you to write us an update.
And then the question is, you know, at one time it was fire, planning, and audit. But you
need to check into the status, and I'm sorry the building division has left, because we are also
refurbishing the basement at the historical society. And as I remember it going into hurricane
exercises, you come down a set of steps, there's a mezzanine on the side, you have some offices there,
you have meeting space all the way down at the bottom of the steps. There's lavatory facilities there
and so forth. I don't know if that's where the auditor could possibly end up because we'll all be in
that building, too. But it seems to be changing rather rapidly, and it's a little different than our
space planner had proposed. And I'm going to ask Mr. Rezentes to expand on this a little bit more on
Thursday. But if you didn't hear...if you didn't know all those pieces, I just shared it with you so you
can do a follow-up. Okay and now we're going to solid waste. And it is my intention to finish
tonight, okay, this evening because I will recap, we've already committed Tuesday and we've already
committed Thursday and Friday is a holiday for the county. So let's go through solid waste, Mr. Dill.
Mr. Dill: Again, Chair, what I'd like to do with your permission is move
through the projects for which we show a new or changed fundings for the fiscal year.
Chair Furfaro: It sounds like a good plan.
Mr. Dill: On the spreadsheet, the first line item shows removal of
funding for the new landfill site acquisition study. That was the remaining balance for the mayor's
advisory committee that's already complete. The next line item, the adjustment to the cost for the
new landfill site and resource recovery park acquisition, that's actually related to the new landfill
we're siting and resource recovery park. The first phase of that work will be...we are going to be
soliciting an EIS from a consultant to go ahead and do the work to conduct the EIS for that landfill.
And the first phase of that work will be to review the results of the siting study that was done to
confirm the selection of the site that came up in that study. That will include looking at a resource
recovery park as well with its necessary components, like a MRF, composting facility, etcetera.
That's all in the PID you have for siting and constructing a new municipal solid waste landfill.
That's in your CIP Projects or PID binder.
Chair Furfaro: Go right ahead, Councilwoman.
Ms. Yukimura: So what is the amount for the EIS?
Mr. Dill: The EIS or the portion...you see we have over on the right
where we have the new landfill site and resource recovery park acquisition?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Mr. Dill: Over on the right there's an amount of $4,234,677.
Ms. Yukimura: I have $4,500,000.
Mr. Dill: Well, we're moving some funds around there. So for this year
actually we're proposing removing $265,323 on the spreadsheet, which will leave that balance you
see on the far right of the spreadsheet of the $4,234,677.
Ms. Yukimura: And that's for the EIS?
Mr. Dill: A portion of that is for the EIS. We estimate the EIS right
now we're budgeting approximately $2 million.
Ms. Yukimura: And the assumption of the EIS is going to be that the resource
recovery park and the MRF are going to be part of it? Is there any analysis as to whether that's the
best site for the MRF?
Mr. Dill: Yes. The first portion or phase of the EIS will be looking at
all the sites that were considered previously, first of all, to make sure that that's the best place to
site the landfill. And then we'll also be considering whether it makes sense to co-locate the resource
recovery park with a MRF or to have it at another location. So that's all part of that EIS.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Ms. Yukimura: So what if you...I mean that's like a preliminary study
because if you decide that the MRF's going to be somewhere else, that it's better off closer to the
harbor places and to places of transportation and so forth, then you don't continue the EIS with all
its detail, including a MRF.
Mr. Dill: I agree and we've been here a few months. But what's come
up is that with our new waste diversion specialist on board, one of the things he's been tasked with is
he's looking at, for us, an analysis of does it make sense rather than proceeding with the MRF as
part of the resource recovery park. If we proceeded with astand-alone facility MRF, what stands to
be gained, what are the ramifications of that. So actually, we have a PID for that that's very recent,
and therefore not in the CIP budget. So if that did come to fruition, we would come before you with
our request for approval to fund that.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. I'm glad you're looking at that because I raised early
on at King K's hearing with the mayor when he first unveiled his project, a question about the life
cycle costing of operations. And there's a lot of complex factors. But to go inland and then have your
trucks come out again to bring stuff to the harbors, that is an additional travel. So that's just one
aspect of it and I'm glad you're looking at it. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Larry, you can proceed.
Mr. Dill: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: What's the other $2 million for from the...to finish up your
line item? $2 million for the EIS and then?
Mr. Dill: The remaining amount of that budget...
Ms. Yukimura: Or maybe it's in here, huh, I'm sorry.
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead and continue answering the question, Mr. Dill.
Mr. Dill: The remaining amount of that budget would be preliminary
engineering or dependent upon the results of the EIS and how fast they come. We've got that
budgeted in there in anticipation of moving forward with that project. I'm not sure exactly if that
would occur within the next 12 to 18 months that we've been shooting for, but we want to have it
there in case we do get far enough along in the EIS so we can trigger some of that work as well.
Ms. Yukimura: Maybe you can use it for the MRF.
Mr. Dill: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: You have a question from Councilwoman Nakamura, Mr. Dill.
Ms. Nakamura: This is a follow-up to Councilmember Yukimura's question. It
seems like they are two very different facilities that may have some complementary activities, but I
guess being new to the council, I'm not clear about the policy direction that was given with respect to
the MRF. Has any study been done as to what it actually entails or the scale, what's done with the
products that are separated out? Is there a market for these products? Sort of a feasibility study of
the MRF itself, has something like that been done?
Chair Furfaro: We'll have Allison come up and answer you.
ALLISON FRALEY, Solid Waste Program Coordinator: Allison Fraley, for the record, Solid
Waste Program Coordinator. Our integrated solid waste management plan update had a section
about the MRF development. And so there has been some preliminary analysis about the flow
through of materials, the cost to construct the MRF, and, you know, the material can be marketed
and our current recycler on-island has proven that. It's just the cost of the MRF and the flow
through, which is in that plan, but it's not that detailed.
Ms. Nakamura: So can I do afollow-up question?
Chair Furfaro: Sure, go right ahead.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Ms. Nakamura: It's not that detailed, so is the scale, the size, the amount of
potential products that might be diverted to this facility...
Ms. Fraley: Yes, that's all in the plan.
Ms. Nakamura: They're all in there?
Ms. Fraley: Yes.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay and is there also a discussion about desirable locations
for this facility?
Ms. Fraley: No.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay, so that gets to your question and is it most appropriate
doing it within the EIS process or is it a stand-alone study? And I'm not sure. I think what I'm
hearing is that you want to do it as part of the EIS
Mr. Dill: Right now we're looking at it as part of the EIS initially
because whereas Councilmember Yukimura brought up good points about locating it say close to a
harbor is great for transportation, there are arguments to say that it's best to have it within the
resource recovery park situated by a landfill where you have synergies exist because you have all of
your solid waste issues occurring at the same location. So we have to kind of weigh all those things,
but that may be outweighed by the benefits that could be achieved by moving forward sooner on a
stand-alone basis with the MRF, and I just don't have that answer for you right now.
Ms. Nakamura: I guess my concern too is that if through this EIS process
we're linking the two projects, should one get...let's say there's a stumbling block on one of the
pieces, then it might hold up the other piece. So, I'm just thinking strategically what's the best way
to proceed.
Mr. Dill: Good point. We are including MRF as part of the process for
the EIS right now, but if we move in a different direction, there's no reason we can't remove that
from the EIS scope of work. So, we wouldn't be married to it. It wouldn't hold us back.
Chair Furfaro: Councilmember Kuali`i?
Mr. Kuali`i: Just a quick additional follow-up. So how much land is
required and does it change if you're not doing the MRF with the landfill? And this line item for new
landfill site acquisition is $4.5 million. Is there a site already selected?
Mr. Dill: There are 8 sites that are being considered.
Mr. Kuali`i: They all have similar costs? I mean is that $4.5 million
paying for how much of land or is there a partnership or?
Mr. Dill: Well actually, the $4.5 million is all planning, permitting, and
preliminary design. All those sites have various costs depending on how far they are from
transportation, infrastructure, etcetera, development costs. So all of that is looked at when we do
these reviews. A MRF, we're estimating will need about a 4-acre site if we do a stand-alone MRF.
The resource recovery park, if we look at all the various components, we are currently
considering...we're estimating up to 75 acres.
Mr. Kuali`i: So being that the CIP is just the next 12 to 18 months, the
cost of land or the potential cost of land is...
Mr. Dill: Down the road.
Mr. Kuali`i: A future problem.
Mr. Dill: Yes, correct, challenge.
Mr. Kuali`i: Unless we have partners. Thank you.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Councilmember Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Last I remember, the integrated solid
waste management plan also had a recommendation for waste to energy. Is that being looked at at
all? I don't see it anywhere in hexe. Is that part of your plan or have we kind of strayed away from
that?
Mr. Dill: Okay, that is not part of the current plan. I understand
before my time that follow-up research was done on that and that our island didn't provide the
necessary economy of scale to make that feasible. I can ask our chief to come back up and speak to
that if you like.
Mr. Rapozo: Well, we can that...I don't need...I mean. I wasn't aware of
that analysis, the post study analysis. But if you folks have that and you could provide that to us,
we'd appreciate that.
Mr. Dill: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: You know part of our problem here, Mr. Dill, and first of all I
want to say welcome. We're delighted to have you. But every time we have a change in the council,
every time we have a change in engineering and key result areas and so forth, we keep falling back
to another study. The studies are done. We're looking for the plan, okay. Then that plan reflects a
when and how in the future we're going to actually implement it. Because every two years we can be
going through this and it was very clear to me, as Allison pointed out, no exception was made where
the MRF would be or so forth, but it talked about the kind of volume we had, whether it was a sorted
MRF that came to us with independent cans versus cardboard or if it was a dirty MRF where we just
dumped everything and the people there that sorted it. You know we can't study these things to
death. It costs us too much. Anyway, I just wanted to share that because the books are sitting on
the shelves.
Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Chair, were you aware that a post analysis was done?
Chair Furfaro: Yes, yes.
Mr. Rapozo: And that effect? Okay, and that was last year?
Chair Furfaro: About a year and some, we had a couple meetings. Yes, it
was done.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, I apologize.
Chair Furfaro: No, no, but that's my point. You couldn't know if you're not
on the council getting the briefing. But we could procrastinate forever here, Larry.
Mr. Dill: I understand.
Chair Furfaro: And do another study. We need some recommendations from
you folks, and I think you'll get the council behind you on that. Okay. Along those lines, let's move
on.
Mr. Dill: I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, can I ask fora 5-minute recess, please?
Chair Furfaro: Absolutely.
Mr. Dill: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: We'll take 10.
There being no objection, the meeting was recessed at 5:08 p.m.
The meeting was called back to order at 5:21 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
There being no objection, the rules were suspended,
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.1
Chair Furfaro: Okay, gentlemen. So Mr. Dill, I want to finish up solid waste
so that we can go to the miscellaneous postings that involve planning, finance, and transport.
Mr. Dill: Okay, thank .you, Chair, for allowing us the recess. I'm
moving down our spreadsheet. The next item you see on there, Kekaha Landfill Lateral Expansion.
And you can see that we've actually removed $4.219 million of previously encumbered funds. I
believe that was one bond issue and then we're putting back in from another bond issue $654,000.
And what we're doing there is we're leaving in there an estimate of what we estimate will be needed
to finish the Cell One Construction Project, okay.
Ms. Yukimura: And where is that on your project initiation document? It's
Cell One, not Two? You have things about Two here.
Mr. Dill: That's Cell One, councilmember. That's an old project that
we're just removing some funding and leaving sufficient funds to complete. So actually we don't
have a PID for that because that's a project near the end of its life.
Ms. Yukimura: You have no PID.
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And it's at the end of its life, but it has...you're going to use
$664,000 for it today...I mean, this year?
Mr. Dill: Yes, $654,000, yes.
Ms. Yukimura: For what purpose?
Mr. Dill: That's the remaining budget for construction of Cell One.
Cell One is the current cell that we're working on in the landfill.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, okay, thank you.
Mr. Dill: Okay, moving on, excuse me. Cell Two design, you can see we
have $1.439 million previously encumbered. That design is going out shortly, Troy? Okay, we
anticipate awarding in order to proceed May of this year. Those are previously encumbered funds.
The $3.814 million recognizes that we anticipate we'll be finished with that and ready to go to begin
some of the construction phases of that work, the Cell Two design. And that's outlined...
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, I see that.
Mr. Dill: That's recognized in the PID for design and construction Cell
Two of the Kekaha Lateral Expansion.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Dill: Now, the remainder of these items where we're proposing
changes, Puhi Metals Recycling actually is just returning unencumbered funds there, the leftover
from the construction of that project. So we're just zeroing out that balance.
Ms. Yukimura: Excuse me. You just talked about $1.439 million for Cell Two
design, but there's also $3.8 million?
Mr. Dill: Correct. The $1.4 was encumbered in a previous year
actually, so that's moneys in this fiscal year that we're currently in that we'll be, I just mentioned
that we're going to be giving notice to proceed an award next month, yes.
Ms. Yukimura: So it's not going to be in our fiscal year 2011-2012 budget,
right, our fiscal year 2012 budget? If it's going to be encumbered?
Mr. Dill: The 3.8 is new for this fiscal year.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, but the 1.4 is going to be out effectively. I mean...
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Dill: Correct, it's previously encumbered and it will be expended
this year. That's right.
Ms. Yukimura: So we should actually minus it out of our budget.
Mr. Dill: No because it hasn't been expended yet.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Dill: Whatever residual, we can return that when we know that
amount. Yeah, we'll do that.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, right. Okay and then the 3.8 is for this next coming
fiscal year.
Mr. Dill: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And that's going to be for the remainder of the construction
cost for Cell Two?
Mr. Dill: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, all right, thank you, go on. I'm sorry.
Mr. Dill: Okay, so Puhi Metals Recycling, the $89,000, we're returning
the residual there. The project's pau. That was for construction of the site.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Dill: Waste reduction consultant services, the $385,000, again
we're returning the residual, zeroing out that line item.
Ms. Yukimura: What did we get for that?
Mr. Dill: I know that that was part of the study that we talked about
earlier, I believe, where we determined that the waste-to-energy wasn't feasible for our economy of
scale.
TROY TANIGAWA, Environmental Services Management Engineer: What that study
looked at was specific to the technology that was recommended in the integrated waste management
plan update, mass per and type technology. So the bottom line of that study, it concluded that we
didn't have enough volume to make it feasible.
Ms. Yukimura: That's kind of what we were saying before the integrated solid
waste management plan was done.
Mr. Tanigawa: The thing is during that time there were a lot of vendors that
came out that said and made claims that they had the type of processes to make it more feasible
because of the advancements in technology. So what that study did for us was it evaluated those
systems and determined that they weren't cost-effective.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, at least we didn't spend $2,000,000 like the Big Island
to find that out.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: Who did that second study? It wasn't RW Beck?
Mr. Tanigawa: R.W. Beck did that study for us that we're talking about.
Mr. Rapozo: So we spent $385,000 back to the people that told us that it
was feasible to tell us that it wasn't feasible?
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd & CIP) p.l
Mr. Tanigawa: No, no, that's just the residual amount that we're returning
back.
Mr. Rapozo: Because it was them that told us that we could do it. And I
think Councilmember Yukimura who ran them through the coals about how wrong they were. And
to come to find out they were wrong.
Ms. Yukimura: How-much did we spend on that study?
Mr. Tanigawa: I believe the figure was $114,000.
Mr. Rapozo: We should probably take them off the vendor list.
Chair Furfaro: Well, look we're back to my original thing. We can study
things to death, okay. But at some point we've got to make some decisions about where we're really
going with some tangible results here. So, okay. That's pau. Next item.
Mr. Dill: I did want to touch base back on the Cell Two Construction so
we're clear. In the PID it outlines the construction items to make up the $3.8 million, which is
basically the leachate collection system and the landfill gas management system. There will be a lot
more construction, though, involved in Cell Two, and if you look at your PID, you can see that we
show that in the subsequent fiscal year for Cell Two Construction costs and construction
management costs related to that and the total of that is another $10 million to build Cell Two. So I
just want to make sure you're aware of that total cost there. Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, total of $16 million is what your little chart here says.
Mr. Dill: Yeah, there you go, okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Can I ask a question?
Chair Furfaro: Yes, go right ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: In your management of the landfill gas management system,
are you anticipating the study that's been languishing for at least 10 years that was mentioned by
Mr. Costa to capture the landfill gases and turn it into energy?
Mr. Tanigawa: There are preliminary discussions occurring with the Navy.
We've had a few meetings already. They're interested in using the landfill gas. They're moving
forward with some preliminary design on their side, but what we're doing on the county side is
basically just looking at satisfying the regulatory requirements. As things develop and the Navy
gets more information, they're going to share with us that information and we can determine what
the optimum thing to do is at that location.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, well I hope it does move forward because it's been
"moving forward for 10 years."
Chair Furfaro: I think our points are being clearly heard. I've been on the
council 10 years. I've heard it for 10 years. Mr. Chang. No? Go right ahead, Larry.
Mr. Dill: Okay, we have our annual contribution to the Kekaha Host
Community Benefits, $80,000 we're showing there. That is based on an estimate of the tonnage that
we're going to be receiving at the landfill this coming year. So that's adding to that line item. And
then the last two items as I touched on will be removing funding from those items as we plan to
address those under that earlier item I mentioned, the landfill site and resource recovery park
acquisition. Okay.
Chair Furfaro: So Larry, I need to say that we had an understanding that the
community benefit contribution was fixed at $85,000. You've now done a study based on the
anticipated volume which adjusted that down to $80,000 a year. Could you give us some back-up as
the community is anxious to understand what adjustments were made on what rational
determinations based on volume and tonnage cost and so forth?
Mr. Dill: Okay, will do.
April 18, 2011
Public Works (OP cont'd &CIP) p.l
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, Allison wanted to speak?
Ms. Fraley: It had been 80 for the last three years, though, Chair, not 85.
Chair Furfaro: Oh, a lady reported to us it was 85, it was reported them at
85. So we'll go back and do our own research.
Mr. Dill: We'll follow up, yeah.
Chair Furfaro: But please give us the background on the 80. Yes,
Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: What Mr. Bulatao said was based on the calculation that they
were provided, based on the tonnage and the price per ton, it should have been 85, but we only gave
them 80, so they're asking, they're inquiring about the $5,000 that they should have received, but by
their calculation and I don't know the calculation offhand, but whatever the calculation was, it
was...I can't remember. It was $5 a ton or a dollar a ton.
Chair Furfaro: I thought it was a dollar a ton.
Mr. Dill: Dollar a ton.
Chair Furfaro:. But I think they had estimates that the volume was at 85.
Mr. Rapozo: Right. He testified to that the other day, so if we could get
that...
Mr. Dill: Yes, I was present.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay, good, good.
Chair Furfaro: You were present. But you can see why I want your rationale,
Mr. Dill, so we can send it back to him in a communique that justified the $80,000. And Allison,
thank you very much, but some of the information that they had indicated it was 85. Do we have
any more here on solid waste? If not, it is 5:30, and I want to share this with the group.
Tomorrow at 9 o'clock we have acall-back for liquor. At 10 o'clock we have a reschedule for
the prosecutor's office. And at 1 o'clock we have the county clerk's office. On Thursday we have
finance coming back from 9 to 11 a.m.. And on that note, under the miscellaneous items on capital
improvements, we will let finance give their presentation on any CIP that they have. I will post, and
I was hoping we could move forward on this, but I will post a revisit from planning and a revisit by
transportation on their CIPs for Monday, the 25th. Unfortunately, it gets dragged out because
although these committees have been in recess, we've heard from transportation, we've heard from
planning, but I'm going to post for 9 o'clock on Monday, and that will complete our reviews on the
budget.
I do want to encourage all members when Q&A comes back, study them on your own
initiative because we will get to a point after May 6th that when we review the budgets, it will take,
to protect us from any potential veto from the administration, it will take five votes to make changes,
both on adding and removing items. So please, take advantage of the responses we get from the
administration as we move forward on actually the plusses and minuses that we'll do after this
resubmittal in May. But the way it stands now, tomorrow Liquor at 9 o'clock is on a call-back.
Prosecutor's office from 10 a.m. to 12 with a PowerPoint presentation, the county clerk at 1 p.m.
Thursday in the morning we have finance. Finance I'm asking to incorporate anything with the CIP.
then the county is on holiday Friday. And Monday morning we will be back with CIP for planning
and transportation.
This meeting is going to be recessed for today until tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock. Thank
you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you to the administration.
There being no objection, the budget review call-back was recessed at 5:36 p.m.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.l
The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 1:14 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
Mr. Bynum was noted excused.
OFFICE OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT:
Chair Furfaro: Aloha, good afternoon, we're now back to our session after a
lunch break and we are going to go into economic development. So I am going to ask Mr. Costa to
come up, starting first with Mr. Costa and at the same time, I do want to thank Councilwoman
Yukimura for working on us having a representative here during economic development through the
governor' s office, Mr. Dean Hirata. I'll let you introduce the particulars on that, but first I just
wanted to acknowledge Councilwoman Yukimura for working with the governor and having
somebody here that can help us as we go through economic development, not only at the county level
but also as an overview with the state. So on that note, Mr. Costa, I'll give you the floor.
There being no objection, the rules were suspended.
GEORGE COSTA, Director of the Office of Economic Development: All right. Aloha, Council
Chair Furfaro and Councilmembers, for the record, George Costa, Director for the Office of Economic
Development. I'm here obviously to present our office of economic development budget. But before I
do so, and just to preface our budget presentation, our main economic engine, obviously, is the visitor
industry, and for the last two years in not only the initiatives that we've presented from the office of
economic development and our visitor industry partners,. but through the state economy and
DBEDT, we've shown significant progress. So the news is good; however, looming large is the state
budget picture. And before I go into the office of economic development, our budget for the fiscal
year 2011 and 2012, I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce Dean Hirata, who is the deputy
director for the state budget and finance, to give us an overview of the state budget picture. I'm sure
most of you are aware of some of the particulars, obviously the budget deficit, the TAT tax that we're
concerned with, also some of the services that the state is faced with having to reduce in order to
address the budget deficit. So without further ado, I'd like to call on Mr. Dean Hirata to come up at
this time and he will give us a PowerPoint presentation and lead us through the current situation
with the state budget.
Chair Furfaro: George, you can stay right up there with him. And just a
small housekeeping item for the record, Councilmember Rapozo will be joining us shortly. He's on a
conference call and Councilmember Bynum is on an excused absence for today. Dean, welcome, very
happy to have you with us.
DEAN HIRATA, Deputy Director, State Budget and Finance: Thank you for giving me the
opportunity to meet with the council. Good afternoon, Chair Furfaro, Vice Chair Yukimura, and
Councilmembers. I have a PowerPoint that basically starts with just an overview of the state budget
starting with what we term the all means of financing for all funds. And this is looking at the
biennium budget specifically for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, in total $11.4 billion in each of those
years. As you can see, the largest piece is the general fund, which represents about 50%, and this is
the area here, 50% in fiscal year 2012 and 52% in fiscal year 2013, followed by special funds. This
represents about 25% and 23% in 2013, and the federal funds just under 18% in both fiscal years
2012 and 2013
Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Hirata, do you have a hard copy of your PowerPoint?
Chair Furfaro: I think the clerk's office is making copies.
Ms. Yukimura: They're making copies, okay, that' s fine then, if they're
making copies already. We are? Okay, thank you.
Mr. Hirata: I have a few copies.
Ms. Yukimura: There are a couple here.
Mr. Hirata: Yeah.
Ms. Yukimura: Please, go ahead, thank you.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.2
Mr. Hirata: Okay, now looking specifically at the general fund, which is
approximately $5.7 billion in fiscal year 12, and just under $6 billion, $5.9 billion in fiscal year 2013,
this is broken up by the various departments and agencies. Starting with the largest piece up here
at the top for budget and finance represents about 32% or $1.8 billion of the $5.7 billion. Keeping in
mind that all the debt service, the retirement benefits, the healthcare costs related to the EUTF, all
of that is budgeted in the budget and finance piece. And I'll go through some of the more significant
cost components in a subsequent slide. The department of education at 26%, and the human services
about 19%. So those represent the largest components in terms of departments and agencies of the
general fund.
This is the operating budget for the general fund, specifically fiscal year 2012. And just in
ascending order, listing out all the various departments and agencies starting with the office of the
lieutenant governor at $1.2 million and then moving up down at the bottom to budget and finance,
which I talked about earlier at $1.8 billion. But as you can see, the largest agencies would be human
services, education, that's the department of education, as well as the budget and finance.
This pie chart breaks out the operating budget by what I call major cost item. So this piece
here which is the employee related expenses, wages, about 35% or just under $2 billion. The piece
related to the EUTF which is about 9% for the healthcare cost and the ERS or the retirement
benefits about 12%. This in total represents, like I said, about 56% of employee related costs. And
it's about 55% in fiscal year 2013. The next big piece is the debt service which represents about 10%
and 11% in the respective fiscal years.
This is now taking a look at the general fund revenue sources. So as you can see, the largest
piece is the general excise tax, which is about 49% of the entire revenue source. The next largest
piece is the taxes that we coIlect from individuals, the individual state income tax, which is about
28% for both fiscal years. So you can see that in terms of the overall impact, in terms of revenue
sources, unless you target either one of these two revenue sources, changes in other categories don't
have a very significant impact on the overall budget. So you will see, some of the proposed bills that
I'll be talking about targets both the general excise tax as well as the individual income tax. The
general excise tax is more indirectly through the suspension of certain general excise tax
exemptions, and I'll get to that in a subsequent slide.
This is a bar graph that shows a breakout between what we call nondiscretionary, and that's
the bar, the light green shaded at the top. And this would be the debt service, fringe benefits and
entitlements. And then down below is all other expenditures. So you can see the breakouts,
approximately 50-50% between these two categories.
What this slide illustrates is starting first with the executive branch or the administration's
proposal and I'll start first with. fiscal year 2012, in the general funds, the budget is about
$5.7 billion and that's what you saw on some of the earlier slides and pie charts. The house draft
proposal is about $252 million lower than the administration's proposal at $5.4 billion, and then the
senate proposal is at $5.4 billion or about $277 million less than the administration. And then when
you look at fiscal year 2013, $5.9 billion, the house draft is lower by about $242 million and the
senate draft about $377 million. This is just to give you some perspective as to how the
administration's proposal compares to both the house and senate proposals.
In looking at the general fund financial plan for the biennium fiscal years 2011 through
2013, up at the top you have your total revenues compared to the expenditures. And then as you can
see the expenditures exceed the revenues by about $24 million in the current fiscal year, and then
that goes up to $410 and $362 in fiscal years 2012 and 2013. These numbers here in the middle, the
$72 million deficit, the $410 million deficit, and the $362 million deficit or a total of about
$844 million.
This is what we term the base budget or the budget that was presented by the governor back
in January. And the assumption that was used at that time was based on the latest estimate from
the Council on Revenues, which was a 2% growth for fiscal year 2011. Subsequently, the council met
on March 10. As we all know that was the day of the earthquake in Sendai. And at the meeting,
and the meeting actually occurred the afternoon of March 10. So this was prior to the earthquake.
At that meeting the council reduced its estimate from 2% down to 0.5%. Now because of the
earthquake, the governor asked the council to reconvene a special meeting and that meeting was
held on March 29. And based on the data and recognizing that there wasn't a lot of new data that
was available subsequent to the earthquake, but using what data that was available, the council
reduced its growth estimate from a 0.5% to a negative 1.6%. So if you look at the impact to the
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.3
biennium shortfall, the base budget was at about an $844 million shortfall for the biennium. It's
now at just under $1.3 billion with the growth estimate moving to a negative 1.6% in fiscal year
2011, and then looking at growth of 11% and 6% in fiscal years 2012 and 2013. -The 11% and the 6%,
these estimates were not changed by the council. They basically went with their estimates. And I
believe that the rationale behind this is that at a negative 1.6%, the base that you're starting from is
much lower than where it was at previously. So at this point, they've determined that it's still
appropriate to keep the 11% and 6% increases. So keeping in mind that we're looking at a shortfall
of about $215 million in the current year, $539 million in fiscal year 2012 and $498 in fiscal year
2013, these are the shortfalls that I'll now try to address in the subsequent slides.
Starting first with the current year shortfall, the first three items, the utilization of the
Rainy Day Fund, the Hurricane Relief Fund, and portions of Special Funds, these are going to
require legislative actions. So we are working very closely with both the house and senate in order
to utilize these funds. So let me start first with the Rainy Day Fund of $46 million. The current
balance in the rainy day fund is the $46 million. So the plan would be to utilize .the entire amount.
If you look at the purpose when this fund was first set up, these are the circumstances that we're
looking at currently. So as a result, we will utilize the entire amount. The source of funding for the
Rainy Day Fund comes from a tobacco settlement years ago. That generates about $7.5 million each
fiscal year, so $7.5 million goes directly into the rainy day fund. I'm trying to just go over in terms of
what's already set in place as to how the fund would begin to grow, once we utilize the entire
$46 million. The other source or potential source of funding is during the legislative session last
year, the legislature enacted aset-aside of 5% of the general fund for any excess...if the general fund
has an excess of 5% or more, that 5% of the general fund would go into this rainy day fund. Now,
there are certain conditions what would have to be achieved in order for that 5% to go into the Rainy
Day Fund and it's basically a look back in looking at the previous three fiscal years. So if there's any
point where two consecutive fiscal years, the look-back and the current year exceeds the prior fiscal
year by 5%, and this has to occur for two successive fiscal years, then 5% of the current year's
general fund would go into the Rainy Day Fund. So this enactment occurred last session. So the
earliest that this could occur would be fiscal year 2012. Just to give you some idea as to some of the
steps that the state has taken in order to have an appropriate level of emergency or reserve funds.
The second item is utilizing the Hurricane Relief Fund. Currently the balance in the Relief
Fund is $117 million. So the plan would be to utilize the entire amount. However, with that we do
have a plan as to how we would recapitalize this fund in the event of another hurricane. So if there's
another hurricane, the homeowners currently have hurricane insurance. So that insurance would
protect you in the event of the next hurricane. What this fund was set up for is that in the event of a
hurricane, similar to what happened during Hurricane Iniki, if the insurance companies were to pull
out of of the market, and homeowners would not be able to buy policies from insurance companies
locally, the fund was then created and the fund then started issuing policies. What the plan would
be is that we would issue about $75 million in general obligation bonds and what that would provide
is what we call reinsurance. So the fund would be capitalized at the $75 million dollars. The fund
would start taking in premiums from homeowners and with that $75 million, we would use that to
buy reinsurance. So the funds issued by this Hurricane Relief Fund or the policies issued by the
Hurricane Relief Fund would be backed by reinsurance from insurance companies. So that would be
the plan and this would not occur until such time that we would actually need to reestablish the
Relief Fund. So I think this is a point that and I know at times there is some confusion when people
hear that we're going to utilize the entire fund, the first thing is well, how does it protect us in the
event of another hurricane? The fund itself is not issuing any hurricane insurance policies. The last
policy that was issued was in the early 2000s, because now there are companies that actually issue,
like companies like Zephyr that issue the hurricane policies. So like I said, this would be in the
event that similar to what happened previously, we would need to reestablish the fund.
The next item we've identified certain special funds where there are excess balances that we
would then transfer from the special funds into the general fund and that would be approximately
$16 million. The 10% restriction on fourth quarter allotments, that has actually begun. So what the
state has done with all of its departments and agencies, for discretionary expenditures we restricted
10% of those expenditures for the fourth quarter and that will generate about $15 million. The
Medicaid drug settlement, this is due to drug companies that had overcharged the state and we
reached a settlement previously. This represents the state portion of the settlement, about
$16 million. The DOH or Department of Health, third party administrator contract cancellation,
we ve been able to cancel this contract, bring these services in-house and there's some moneys that
were set aside in a special fund. So in the aggregate, we'll save about $4.7 million dollars. The
$7 million for the fiscal year debt service, we don't anticipate issuing any general obligation bonds in
the current fiscal year. We had budgeted approximately $7 million in connection with that issuance,
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.4
so we'll save that moneys for the current fiscal year. And then the $15 million just represents a
number of other miscellaneous savings. So in total we're targeting about $238 million, which would
address the shortfall for the current fiscal year.
These are the Council on Revenues estimates: This is the negative 1.6% that I talked about
earlier and these are the estimates that were used to generate the fiscal years' 2012 and 2013
budget.
So now looking at the expense side of addressing the deficit for fiscal years 2012 and 2013,
the first item is a reduction in Medicaid, approximately $25 million in fiscal year 2012 and that
would then ramp up to about $50 million on a go-forward. What we're looking at here is basically
skinnying down the Medicaid benefits that are currently provided, which would enable the state to
save $25 million because it would take some time to start the programs to reduce the overall
benefits. And like I said we're looking at about $50 million on a going forward basis.
The reduction in TANF or Temporary Assistance for Needy Family services is $28.5 million.
What we've identified or what we will keep in place are those services that are tied to either helping
families either gain employment or retain employment. So that was the major criteria that we used
in what services do we want to continue and then looking at other services that we would reduce,
and that results in the $28.5 million.
The collective bargaining labor savings is $88.2 million. This represents just under 5% of the
state's payroll. As you know, the state, there is a tentative agreement with the HGEA, and in fact
that agreement is being reviewed and ratified by the members beginning this week and I believe
that process is going to take this week going into next week. So in that there is a 5% pay reduction
that's part of the tentative agreement with HGEA. So the $88 million would represent the
entire...so it would also include agreements that the state has with the other unions, such as the
HSTA and the UPW. But the HGEA represents the largest of the unions.
The fringe benefit cost savings of $30 million as part of the tentative agreement, in addition
to the 5% pay reduction, it also provided for a sharing of the healthcare cost with the EUTF of 50-
50%. Currently it's at 60% employer, 40% for the employee. With the tentative agreement, that
would save approximately $30 million for the healthcare cost.
The Medicare Part B savings is just under $7 million. This is a proposal or a measure
to...the reimbursement would be capped at the base amount, currently which is about $96 per month
that the retirees receive as a reimbursement. If the Medicare Part B was capped at that amount,
that would save approximately $7 million in the fiscal years 2012 and 2013.
And then the last item is the Employee Retirement System contribution expense. There are
a couple of measures and these are prospective measures in reducing some of the ERS benefits.
What that would provide for is that would then reduce the amount of the contribution that would be
required to continue the funding for these plans. Just very briefly, the state has a requirement
under the Hawaii Revised Statutes that for the liability associated with the ERS, that liability in
terms of what we call the amortization or the payout of that liability cannot exceed 30 years.
Currently based on the unfunded status of the plan, which is the plan is about 61% funded, so there's
an unfunded portion of the remainder, the amortization is closer to about 41 years. So as a result of
that, the contribution would have to increase in order to reduce the amortization down to 30 years.
What this measure does is by reducing the benefits on a prospective basis, so this would apply to
employees that are hired after June 30, 2012, by the reduction in those benefits that would then
reduce the amount of the contribution that the state would have to make. So instead of having to
increase the contribution, which is currently at about 15% up to 17.5%, it would still have to go up to
17%, but that increase would occur over a longer period of time. So what the $13 million represents
in fiscal year 2013, the contribution would go up from 15 to 15.5%. So that's the half a percent
impact. So the total of all of these measures on -the expenditure side would be approximately
$193 million.
Now looking at the revenue side and starting first with the senate bill, and I'll go over the
senate version or senate bill that caps the county TAT at the fiscal year 2010 levels. In fiscal year
2010, the TAT that was allocated to the counties totaled approximately $90 million. So Kaua`i's
portion of that $90 million based on this bill would be approximately $13 million or about 14.2%. So
$37 million would represent the rest of the counties that capping it at the 2010 levels would bring in
additional revenues to the state of about 37 million dollars.
~:
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.5
The next item, the suspension of certain general excise tax exemptions, this would be a
temporary suspension specifically for fiscal years 2012 and 2013. These businesses or transactions
that are currently exempt from general excise tax would now pay the general excise tax of 4%. So
that would result in additional revenues of $160 million in fiscal year 2012 and just under
$200 million in fiscal year 2013.
The alcohol tax, this is a proposed increase of 20% and that would be about $10 million.
The state tax deduction, this is repealing the state tax deduction. And this measure calls for
a phase in on this repeal. So let me explain first what I mean by the state tax deduction. Currently
for state income tax purposes, for those taxpayers who itemize their deductions, they can take what
they pay out in state income taxes as an itemized deduction. This measure would repeal that
deduction, however, allowing taxpayers to plan for it. So the first year would basically eliminate
about 50% of that deduction, the second year 75%, so by the end of the third year it would be 100%
repeal of this deduction.
The pension tax, this is a measure that would start taxing more what we call traditional
pension plans. These are defined benefit plans that are currently not subject to taxes for state
income tax purposes. But with this measure, there would be a threshold to help taxpayers below
those levels, starting at $75,000, for a single taxpayer, and about $150,000 for taxpayers that file a
joint return. At those threshold levels, it would generate additional revenues of about $50 million, so
in total about $321 million. So you can see that the combination of the expense savings of
$193 million combined with the revenue enhancements of $321 million, would then address the
shortfalls of $410 million in fiscal year 2012 and about $370 million in fiscal year 2013. That
concludes my presentation.
On the rest of the slides in the appendix, it's just providing you with more detail behind the
calculations for the pension tax as well as the repeal of the state tax deduction.
So, at this time I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have with respect to the
presentation or any other questions you might have.
Chair Furfaro: Dean, we will get the lights on in a minute here. Thank you
very much for that overview and summary. It's obvious as we look at our economic development
plan, we do want to have a better understanding of the impacts of the TAT, the union contracts, the
general revenue policies of the state that might trickle down to the counties. And again, I want to
take this time to thank you, thank the governor, and thank Vice Chair Yukimura, who made these
arrangements for us We're very thankful and on that note, I will open for some questions. And
Councilmember KipuKai.
Mr. Kuali`i: Aloha, thank you for being here. Just one quick question on
your last slide, on the slide where you had cap county TAT. You said capped at the fiscal year 2010
levels.
Mr. Hirata: Yes.
Mr. Kuali`i: And then I think you said $90 million to all counties, and
Kaua`i's portion was $13 million.
Mr. Hirata: Yes.
Mr. Kuali`i: So that is all the information for the 20101evel?
Mr. Hirata: Right. Beyond the cap to the counties, it would also have a
cap with respect to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. So the combination of the...and that would also
be at fiscal year 20101evels. So the combination of the cap on the counties combined with the cap for
the Hawaii Tourism Authority would be approximately $37 million in fiscal year 2012, and of that
approximately $13 million specifically for Kauai county.
Mr. Kuali`i: So that $37 million represents four different counties?
Mr. Hirata: Represents right. All the counties plus the cap on the HTA.
Ms. Yukimura: That would be the savings to the state.
~i -
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.6
Mr. Hirata: Yes, the savings to the state.
Chair Furfaro: What we're looking at in the column is actually the state's
savings.
Mr. Hirata; Yes.
Mr. Kuali`i: Right.
Chair Furfaro: So from the Hawaii Tourism Authority and what seems to be
the senate version of the TAT...
Mr. Hirata: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Am I correct?
Mr. Hirata: That' s correct.
Chair Furfaro: This would mean $13 million to us.
Mr. Hirata; Right.
Mr. Kuali`i: I guess when I took the $37 million figure and tried to think,
okay, four different counties, our portion seems high. So that means we are saving the state a
disproportionately higher amount of money than the other counties?
Mr. Hirata: No, let me clarify that. So the $13 million, so if we start with
the cap is going to be based on the amount of the TAT that was allocated to the counties in fiscal
year 2010, which was approximately $90 million. So based on the formula and let's see if I have
that.
Chair Furfaro: Kauai county gets 14.2%.
Mr. Kuali`i: Of that $90 million.
Mr. Hirata: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Hirata: So based on the allocation formula, so if you start with just
the total TAT for the current fiscal year, the amount that would have been allocated to Kauai or to
the counties are going to be capped at the $90 million dollars based on fiscal year 2010. Of the
$90 million dollars, Kaua`i's share was $13 million, or approximately a little over 14% of the
$90 million. $37 million represents the, because of the cap to both the counties as well as the HTA,
any excess over those amounts would go into the general fund of the state, And that represents the
$37 million.
Ms. Yukimura: It's actually an income figure for the state?
Mr. Hirata: Correct.
Chair Furfaro: It represents the counties, all counties having a cap for
approximately five years or yet to be determined?
Mr. Hirata: Yeah, I know for sure that it applies to fiscal years 2012 and
2013. I'm not sure what the term is on that.
Mr. Kuali`i: Thank you, Chair.
Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.7
Ms. Yukimura: So these budget deficit options, we're looking at the same
page that Councilmember KipuKai referred to, are still alive or there are still possibilities at the
legislature today?
Mr. Hirata: Yes, these measures are either in the house and/or senate,
and these measures are alive, and these are the bills that will be going into the conference meetings.
Ms. Yukimura: And what happened to the soda tax proposal?
Mr. Hirata; The soda tax proposal did not make it out of the initial
hearings.
Ms. Yukimura: And how much was that supposed to generate?
Mr. Hirata: That was going to generate approximately...on arun rate,
once the tax had been established, it was going to generate close to $50 million, between $50 to
$60 million. But in the initial year in order to establish it and set it all up, we were targeting closer
to $25-$30 million.
Ms. Yukimura: I just saw a Newsweek article that said if you want to live
longer, don't drink soda. I thought it was a very creative proposal of the governor to think about
that. We tax liquor; we tax tobacco; it makes sense to me to tax soda.
Mr. Hirata: Yeah, so that one there, if I can just...it was really a sugary
tax. And a number of states, in fact, there is a little over 30 states that have some form of this type
of sugary tax on beverages with sugar. So the proposal was in addition to raising the...the reason
why we would raise revenues is to establish prevention programs and starting with some of the early
childhood type programs, so it was a combination. And naturally it was going to generate some
revenues, but we had set aside at least 50-60% of that to start these types of programs. And then
based on the revenue picture going forward, those programs could be funded with further increases
in revenues.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, I hope that you're able to fund those programs. It would
be a shame to reject the soda tax and then not initiate these early childhood programs which have
been shown to be critical in terms of our young people's education, as well as things like drug
prevention and so forth. May I continue?
Chair Furfaro: Yes, go ahead. No, no, I'll raise my hand when we need to
share, but you go right ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. In Chart 12, which talks about expense side
programs, your Medicare Part B savings, could you explain that a little further and tell us what the
average- sacrifice would be or what a normal person that's entitled to Medicare...I guess this is for
state and county workers too, right?
Mr. Hirata: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Can you explain this program and the proposal?
Mr. Hirata: Okay, all right. So currently, what the Medicare Part B
reimbursement represents is social security...your premium for Medicare is deducted out of your
social security and this is approximately $96 per month at what I term the base level or the lowest
level of premiums. And then the other levels are based on your overall incomes and it could be at a
higher level. However, approximately 95% of retirees that receive this reimbursement are at the
base level. So the amount is deducted out of your social security each month. And then what the
state does is it reimburses you on a quarterly basis, this premium amount. So what this proposal
would save is basically where we would save on this reimbursement at the base level, which is about
$96 a month.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, most of these...these are for state retirees basically?
Mr. Hirata: It's a combination of state as well as county.
Ms. Yukimura: State and county retirees.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.8
Mr. Hirata: And it also applies to spouses.
Ms. Yukimura: So, so...
Mr. Hirata: It's approximately 30...it's about 30,000 combination,
30,000 for the state, I believe about 35,000 in total.
Ms. Yukimura: 35,000 people affected?
Mr. Hirata: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: And most of these are getting free retirement, their medical
premiums are paid completely by the state?
Mr. Hirata: Yeah, it depends on how many years of service that you had
within the system. So yeah, I don't have the break-out, but there are retirees that do receive 100% of
their medical paid. But depending on the number of years of service you had and this had changed
some years back where it's now based on the number of years of service as to whether you get the full
100% or whether it's scaled back either to 50% or...
Ms. Yukimura: But for those who are getting 100%, that's about $8,000 to
$10,000 worth of benefit, right that the state is paying for completely.
Mr. Hirata: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And this proposal would be to not reimburse a total of about
$1,200?
Mr. Hirata: What this proposal would do is it would cap the
reimbursement. So there would still be a reimbursement but it would cap the reimbursement at the
base amount of $96. So the savings...where you get the savings is the...
Ms. Yukimura: Anything in excess.
Mr. Hirata: Anything in excess of the $96, which was part of the budget in
fiscal years 2012 and 2013 because there are...I believe there are five levels of reimbursement
depending on that your income was. The base amount is the $96, but there are higher amounts. It
goes as high as $180.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, it's $180, but it's for people who are getting retirement
amounts that are much, much higher as well?
Mr. Hirata: That' s correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And they're getting free health insurance or a portion of them
are, not all.
Mr. Hirata: It could be, right, a portion of them, right.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, and this would save the state $6.9 million.
Mr. Hirata: Right, for fiscal years 2012 and 2013.
Ms. Yukimura: So it's for atwo-year period. It would be $6.9 million each
year or...
Mr. Hirata: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: I hate to be the spoil sport here, but could we always reiterate
it's state and county because this is a county meeting and the reality is that our contributions are
growing and the follow-up question to that is I know you said that only 61% of the ERS contributions
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.9
are actually being contributed to it, but I do want you to know, the County of Kauai has paid our
100% share into the employee retirement system. And obviously one of our concerns is being that
we're paying our full liability. We want to be in a situation that we don't get a cash call when the pot
needs to be revisited over the next 30 years. Is there any way you could indicate to us since we have
been very responsible in paying our 100% of our ERS, how we would go about earmarking that we're
a 100% contributor? Is there a way to do that?
Mr. Hirata: So the numbers that I'm talking about here specifically relate
to the state.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. I couldn't help but take advantage of making that
statement that we pay our full share into the ERS.
Mr. Hirata: Okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Are there any other questions from other members
here before I go back to Councilwoman Yukimura?
Ms. Yukimura: May I then, Chair?
Chair Furfaro: You have the floor, yes.
Ms. Yukimura: So there will be some...if this Medicare Part B savings gores
through, it's coming from state moneys. The counties are not involved at all in the Medicare
reimbursements, except to the extent that our employees are involved.
Mr. Hirata: Yes, this savings that I'm referring to here is specific to state
retirees and does not impact the counties.
Ms. Yukimura: So county retirees-will get reimbursements? Or we don't get
reimbursements anyway?
Mr. Hirata: I believe that the...well the EUTF is for both state as well as
county retirees. But what I am trying to say is that the savings that I have calculated here is
specific to the state. However the proposal itself would apply to all retirees which would include the
county retirees.
Ms. Yukimura: Right, but the county moneys are not used to make this
reimbursement. So the county would not experience any savings.
Mr. Hirata: Yes, if...
Ms. Yukimura: Right?
Mr. Hirata: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Regarding your collective bargaining labor savings,
which involved this 5% pay reduction in the initial agreement with HGEA, this did involve some
administrative leave days as well?
Mr. Hirata: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: There was some concern on the part of the counties that this
is kind of like a furlough day by another name. Since it will be involving allowing people to take
time off and be paid for it. So did the state consider, for example, just removing just one day of paid
vacation instead so it wouldn't involve a dislocation to the public in terms of services?
Mr. Hirata: Yeah, so maybe if I can start there as far as the governor's
objective going into collective bargaining, first and foremost he wanted to eliminate furlough days
and he wanted the state and county services to be open to the public, unlike the current situation
where two days a month, due to the furloughs, in essence the state and county offices are closed. So
as part of the negotiations, there was a 5% pay reduction that was negotiated. And maybe if I can
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.10
distinguish the 5% pay reduction from the current two furlough days a month. So currently with two
furlough days a month, the employees are not working on those days and as a result are not paid for
those days.
Chair Furfaro: I think in all fairness, Dean, I do want to say on the 15th of
December, this council ended furloughs for Kauai County.
Mr. Hirata: I recognize that.
Chair Furfaro: I want to make sure you're aware of that.
Mr. Hirata: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, very good.
Mr. Hirata: Yeah, I recognize that.
Chair Furfaro: And our position is we want to have a supplemental
agreement with the mayor so that we can visit that independently.
Mr. Hirata: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: I just wanted to make sure you are aware of that.
Mr. Hirata: Okay, yeah, thank you for that. So with the 5% pay
reduction, so the tentative agreement calls for no furlough days. So basically the state government
will be open, but on top of that you have a 5% pay reduction.
The administrative leave that you refer to is six hours a month or nine days a year. And that
will not have any financial impact on the payroll costs. So the financial impact truly is the 5% pay
reduction. So if you look at it for an employee looking at an hourly rate with the 5% pay reduction,
their hourly rate is reduced by 5%. The administrative leave has no impact on the overall hourly
rate for an employee.
Ms. Yukimura: And why is that?
Mr. Hirata: Well, similar to other like vacation days, right, so if you
have...and the state currently has 21 days of vacation days. That by itself does not have a financial
impact meaning that your salaries, and these are for salaried employees. In your salary it provides
for the vacation days. With this additional administrative leave, your salary is still going to remain
at that level with this 5% pay reduction. So it doesn't further impact your overall salary with these
additional nine days. But at the same time the state government will be open and there will be no
more furlough Fridays two times a month.
Chair Furfaro: Can I interject here for a second? I understand what you're
saying, but the way we look at it, perhaps, is a little different maybe because it's a little father to
swim across the channel here, but we see those six hours a month as being equal to nine paid
nonproductive days. And you see in the government process in the counties, we don't make up for
vacation when the department is...when someone is in the department on vacation, we don't have
somebody who covers that productivity. That slot just goes vacant. So I think...I don't mean to be
framing your question, but you know, we're saying we took the 5% payroll in this recommendation,
the 5% payroll cut, but we gave six hours a month for 12 months or equal to nine nonproductive time
of work. And we have a much smaller workforce. So when you have this nonproductive time, we put
ourselves in a position that we could fall behind on collecting taxes, special fees, and so forth. And
that's why I think our mayor has taken the position that we understand that'll be the fall-back
position. But we want to see if we can't negotiate a separate agreement if we can stay focused on the
productivity issue.
Mr. Hirata: Yeah, I fully understand what you're saying.
Chair Furfaro: I just wanted to share our point of view on that.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.l l
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. So there is also the part if employees are not
there, that may incur additional overtime to cover the work that needs to be done. So that's not a no-
cost item in that respect. And I doubt if the state is so well covered in their employees that they're
not going to be in a situation like that too, which would then be really self-defeating.
Chair Furfaro: We just need to stay really focused on the county's budget.
Mr. Hirata: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: And I think the point that councilwoman made and that I
summarized, we have relatively in government, a small group of employees. Nonproductive time
actually creates situations that we could have a work lag. Councilmember Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: Just one quick point to add. So when you say no financial
impact, if it's admin leave and it's in the employee's bank, and they leave employment, can they cash
it out? What happens if they don't use it? And then are you tracking it as a future liability cash,
where you actually have to spend money.
Mr. Hirata: So the nine days a year have to be used within the two-year
contract. If an employee leaves prior to utilizing the nine days per year, they are not cashed out. So
it really needs to be used through time taken.
Chair Furfaro: And I think you can see from the councilmember's question
that needs to be really defined in the smaller counties as we don't want to be accruing a liability
because he didn't take his six hours off. That presents a whole new issue of bookkeeping almost. I
need to shift our gears a little bit here, if you don't mind? You have a plane to catch? No, we're not
finished with you, but I want to go to the projections, the visitor industry projections because I notice.
the state is basically saying we're going to take this big hit on the eastbound traffic the first year.
And then the council on revenues is indicating that take the hit the one year, but then they feel it
will level off. Could you expand on that a little bit more? You know it's concerning because in the
other statement we just said, we're reducing. I think it's $168 million that comes in from the TAT
tax. But we're reducing marketing dollars. So what is the council on revenue saying about getting
us back to that level with less dollars?
Mr. Hirata: So the council felt, and this is based on the meeting that they
held on March 29. So at that time when they did reduce the growth for the current fiscal year from
the 0.5% down to negative 1.6%, they felt that at a lower revenue base, that it was still appropriate
to keep the increase of 11 % for fiscal year 2012 and 6% in fiscal year 2013. Now keeping in mind
that what impacted the...just the...if you start first just going back to the initial projection by the
council which was a 2% revenue growth for the current fiscal year, what impacted that projection
was due to going back last fiscal year where the state had delayed the income tax refunds, and that
was approximately $250 million. So as a result of that with the delay in those refunds, the revenues
were higher for fiscal year 2010, which is why the growth for fiscal year 2011 was at 2%. So the way
to look at it is if you want to look at it on a more normalized basis is to really look at initially the 2%
and the...at that time it was 10%. You're looking at about a 6% increase for each fiscal year. In the
current fiscal year, if you normalize for the income tax refunds, the growth is a little over 6%. So
that gives you, I think that provides some basis for the out years in terms of the 6% growth, but at
the same time recognizing that with the earthquake and more maybe a shorter term impact that the
council felt it was prudent to reduce the estimate down to a negative 1.6%. The state economists, the
initial visitor arrival projection for fiscal year 2011 was about 4%. With the impact of the
earthquake, the estimate is going to be lower and it's going to be closer to between 2% to 2.5%. So it
is going to have an impact; however, the projection is that Hawaii will still show growth and I'm
talking about overall visitor arrivals.
The other thing I want to put in perspective is that the international traveler and specifically
the travelers from Japan make up about 18% of the various markets that come here to Hawaii. The
impact specifically for the Japan travelers for the first half or actually from April through June of
this year, we are expecting a drop of about 10.5% post the Sendai earthquake. But if you take a look
at just all destinations, which makes up the 4%, that number, the 4%, will be impacted naturally due
to this 10.5 % drop, but we're actually looking at increases in the other markets; overall it'd be about
2% to 2.5%.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.12
Chair Furfaro: I would like to send you two questions because we do need to
move on and I just wanted to express them for example, is someone in DBEDT keeping track of what
Golden Week will mean to Hawaii this year? That's that week in May where we hit the highest
level of eastbound visitors along with...we have to be honest, our eastbound visitors pay a higher
average rate.
And then the other thing I'd like to know about is the average rate, the average daily rate of
a room rate. Since this...well, it' s larger in the state, but for us it's somewhere between 8% and 11%
of our business on Kauai is in that higher rate category. And the transient accommodation tax is
not a tax on occupancy. It' s a tax on the rate. It's 4% of the rate. And so what is the thinking
about, have we discounted rates to get the occupancy and that would have an effect, I think, on the
total pot. So I might send two separate questions and if you can forward that over to DBEDT, I'd
certainly appreciate it.
Mr. Hirata: All right, I'll do that, thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: May I add another question to the pot?
Chair Furfaro: Yes, go right ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: On your Chart 12 again, you show a fringe benefit cost
savings of $30 million. And we have noticed a marked increase in fringe benefit cost this year to the
county actually exceeding salary increases, and I've asked for the reason for that. I don't understand
it, but how is this program, fringe benefit cost savings happening?
Mr. Hirata: Okay, so in the fiscal year 2012 and 2013 budget, it provided
for an employer/employee ratio of 60% being paid by the employer and 40% by the employee. And
that was approximately $54 million that was budgeted in connection with the EUTF. So with the
tentative agreement and moving to a 50/50, that would save approximately $30 million. But what it
also reflects is...so the $30 million would be in fiscal year 2012. That would drop to about
$11 million in year 2013. The reason for that is there was an 11% increase in healthcare cost that
took place on April 1. The projection for the biennium budget, assumed that there would be
subsequent increases of 11% on January 1, 2012 and another 11% on January 1, 2013. So as a result
of those increases that why what we see as $30 million projected savings in 2012 will then go down
to about $11 million due to the subsequent increases.
Ms. Yukimura: But this will definitely affect our budgets as well, right.
Mr. Hirata: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Because we're affected by the 60/40, 50/50 ratio.
Mr. Hirata: Correct.
Ms. Y.ukimura: Okay, so we need to know from Mr. Rezentes what that
possible reduction in our expenses will be too.
Chair Furfaro: It' s a fair question, yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: And at same time, we got to remember, some of the other
counties are only paying in 61% of their retirement plan, and we're paying 100%. So it's something
that Mr. Rezentes needs to hash out with us. Dean, I have to tell you how grateful we are to have
you here today. We need to go and spread out economic development into George's area, but before
we do so, you've given us a lot of material to study that will help us in our May decision making. But
I need to ask if there's members of the public that have questions specifically on your presentation.
And then we'll go on to Mr. Costa's more focused economic plan here. So I can only say to you thank
you, very, very much for making yourself available with this budget summary information.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.13
Mr. Hirata: I'd like to, on behalf of the administration and the governor,
also thank you for giving us the opportunity to meet with you because I believe that the more that
we can talk about what's happening and working together, and we're all working for the same
common goals. So I want to just thank you for giving me this opportunity to address the council this
afternoon.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. And you can share with the governor,
we're still looking for him to have a couple of days of R&R on Kauai.
Mr. Hirata: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: It's nice for kama`ainas to see the governor here, so.
Mr. Hirata: I'll be sure to let him know that.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you, thank you very much. I'm going to ask for public
testimony now before I go into the county's section. Is there anyone in the audience that would like
to offer any testimony? If not, George, you can just change seats. Do we have transportation for you
back to...
Mr. Hirata: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Yes, okay, okay, thank you again, Dean, very much so.
Mr. Costa, I am going to ask you to introduce yourself and you can begin the local presentation of
economic development.
GEORGE COSTA, Director, Office of Economic Development: Okay, mahalo nui loa, Chair
Furfaro and Councilmembers. Again for the record, George Costa, Director for the Office of
Economic Development, and I also have here with us today some of our staff members from the
Office of Economic Development and I certainly want to acknowledge them. We have Bill Spitz, who
is our agricultural specialist; also in the audience we have Glenn Sato, who is our energy coordinator
specialist; and Nalani Bruhn, our tourism specialist; and Art Umezu, our film commissioner.
Chair Furfaro: Hello, everyone.
Mr. Costa: As far as the office of economic development, our mission is to
work in partnership with the community, business and government sectors, to create economic
opportunities towards the development of a healthy, stable and balanced economy for the county of
Kauai. OED or the Office of Economic Development promotes, nurtures sustainable economic
development within Kauai county that is consistent with the community's needs and priorities.
As far as goals and objectives, the office of economic development is a government entity that
interfaces with business and community leaders, as well as other government agencies, programs to
enhance Kaua`i's economic development opportunities. The objectives of the office are: (1) To assist
businesses of all sizes, emerging industries, and organizations in providing technical and financial
support as feasible in an effort to provide full employment for all of Kauai residents. (2) Utilize the
guiding principles of the Kauai Economic Develop Plan, Comprehensive Economic Development
Strategy, otherwise known as the CEDS, to help improve Kaua`i's economy over the next 10 years.
And those guiding principles are economic diversification to strengthen selected industry clusters to
to minimize dependence on a single industry; economic self-sufficiency to minimize imports and
promote import substitution; and economic opportunity for all to offer an appropriate K-20 education
and adequate training opportunities to give workers choices and to promote living wages. (3) Collect
data and maintain statistical information and reports to be used as a library resource for
individuals, businesses and organizations. The general public is provided access to materials,
documents and publications in the OED library and to some extent on the county's website. In
addition, publications on federal and state grants, loans or tax incentives and information on other
websites are also available. (4) To carry out the functions of the office of economic development, five
sections are managed by staff specialists under the direction of the director in the areas of energy,
tourism, agriculture, workforce development, film and through special grants to specific economic
development projects. Each sections duties and responsibilities are directed towards
accomplishment of the agency's overall mission. One secretary, and an accountant and apart-time
clerk-typist funded by grants provide support to the director and the five specialists.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.14
As far as our fiscal year 2010 successes and achievements, they include but are not limited to
in the energy sector, completion of the Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan; representing the county on
the PUC dockets related to energy planning; supporting state clean energy initiatives; implementing
energy savings performance contracting for improved efficiencies at wastewater facilities; installing
photovoltaic systems at the Lihu`e civic center which amounts to $379,000; installing photovoltaic at
the Kaiakea Fire Station $267,900 project; and securing electric charger and electric car funding for
county facilities and that's another $276,259 project.
In the area of tourism: (1) Successful completion of the $500,000 Kauai Visitors Bureau -
Visitor Stimulus Plan Phase I. Partnership that collaborated government with the visitor industry,
businesses and community organizations. And some of those goals that were reached, we had set
certain goals and for room nights it was a little over 16,000 room nights; we achieved over 28,000
room nights. We had a goal of 38,000 visitors, and the goal of 66,000 was achieved. We had a goal of
$157.40 per day per person in expenditures, and that one, actually during that time due to the
economic we were under, it wasn't achieved and we came in at $147.52 per person per day
expenditures. For the overall direct economic benefit goal we set was a little over $6 million. We
actually beat that by achieving the $9,768,146 direct economic benefit and the overall economic
impact, we set a goal for slightly over $10 million and we achieved over $16 million in economic
impact, and that includes the state 1.66 multiplier.
(2} Visitor numbers ending the year 2010 increased over 2009 and continues to improve. We
experienced a 3.8% increase over the year 2009 with having slightly less than a million total arrivals
to the island of Kauai. Our total visitor days increased by 53%. We had...
Chair Furfaro: I think that's 5.3%, not 53%.
Mr. Costa: Excuse me, 5.3%. And we had over...
Chair Furfaro: I'd say you're hired again with a 53% increase (inaudible).
Mr. Costa: We had slightly over $1 billion in visitor expenditures, which
was an increase of 12.4%. The per person per day spending increased by 6.7% at $156.30. And for
the domestic arrivals, we experienced a 2.8% increase with over 880,000 domestic arrivals. And for
international arrivals, we actually experienced a 16.4% increase at slightly over 83,000 international
arrivals. And our length-of-stay was 4.6 days length-of-stay, a 1.4% increase. We also accomplished
through our HTA grant funding, we managed over 31 HTA and county festivals and events, and
project grants that totaled over $400,000. We also secured the extension on a $75,000 grant from
HTA Natural Resources Program for the Po`ipu Sands Study or Po`ipu Beach Study. We assisted
grantees who have shown improvement in grant writing, marketing, advertising, and public
relations. Special acknowledgement to Nalaru Bruhn, who besides administering the grants also
helps our community and grantees. The kauaifestivals.com website improved and continues to be a
clearing house for all events and festivals scheduled, which helps community organizations plan
better for their events. Promotional materials for the Ambassador of Aloha Program is a great
service for Kauai organizations and community groups to assist in promoting Kauai. And lastly,
secured a CDBG grant of $37,500 to purchase Mobi-Mat Rec-Path to utilize at upcoming festivals
and events to help with ADA compliance.
In the area of agriculture, (1) the Kauai Grown Program was launched successfully at the
Kauai County Farm Bureau Fair. We also had working with agricultural producer organizations to
assist their members in improving their businesses to preserve irrigated farm land owned by the
public. Also, the Sunshine Markets continue to be a great opportunity for farmers and vendors to
sell locally grown produce at reasonable prices.
In our area of workforce development, we successfully managed the (1) WIA grant funding,
the WIA Adult Program, which is a $133,000 program, also the Dislocated Workers Program and
Youth Programs respectively. (2) The relocation and opening of the WorkWise - Kauai One-Stop
Job Center in the county's Lihu`e Civic Center effectively linked the WIA funded workforce,
equipping programs with other county services and improved the Center's visibility.
(3) Communication between the office of economic development and the one-stop center has been
substantially enhanced due to its proximity. And we also have special programs that have infused
additional funds into the one-stop intensive and training services. The state workforce development
council and Kauai Rural Development Project (KRDP) in collaboration with the county are
aggressively pursuing training funds through grants on an ongoing basis.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.15
In the area of film, (1) it was a banner year. We experienced, well in all four counties
throughout the State of Hawaii over $300 million was realized through the film industry. And
specific to Kauai, we enjoyed the likes of Sony Pictures Bethany Hamilton's Soul Surfer which
brought in $100,000 revenue to the island of Kauai, and filming employed 10 fulltime or part-time
jobs. And I must say the film Soul Surfer is getting a lot of press at this moment and. is one of the
top gate producing films in the nation. We also experienced the filming of Descendants starring
George Clooney. That was another economic benefit to Kauai, about $5.5 million, and 30-40 full or
part-time jobs. Just Go With It starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston brought in another
$3 million in revenue and another 35-40 full or part-time jobs were provided. And then last but not
least, the Pirates of the Caribbean starring Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz followed right behind
Just Go With It and we experienced over $21 million for the island of Kauai and provided over 150
fulltime or part-time jobs. Along with this, we do experience quite a bit of smaller film productions.
Those include some of the shows that were shown on MTV, Style Network TV, the Golf Channel
which highlighted Kauai as a premier travel destination.
(2) 2011 started with a number of small productions, filming for TV including sci-fi movies
and wrapped this week on Kauai spending over $165,000.. For the film producer, it is his fourth
time to the island of Kauai, and so we're very appreciative of the film industry, as it is a clean
industry.
(3) We've also updated the Kauai-film.com website.
For the office of economic development, I won't go through the list, but we collaborate with
various businesses and organizations throughout Kauai, pretty much on a daily or weekly basis, and
we want to acknowledge all of these agencies and organizations for collaborating with us to help
Kaua`i's economy.
As far as challenges, in the energy sector over the years Glenn Sato has been our energy
coordinator and his position has always been grant funded. Basically Glenn is out there every year
working with the state DBEDT to fund his position, which has been a huge benefit and an asset to
the County of Kauai. And so having to go out and look for grants to fund his position has been a
challenge over the years.
And also another challenge is that the one-person operation has little clerical support and
they're basically aone-stop shop operation in themselves.
As far as tourism, a lot of interaction is experienced through our website, Kaua`i-
Hawai`i.com. It garners a lot of questions. Potential visitors want answers about their vacation from
a reputable source and so keeping up with these a-mails is a challenge, and we'd like to acknowledge
our part-time clerk for assisting us with that. The loss of key people at the Hawaii Tourism
Authority who have helped support Hawaiian culture, natural resources, and well-known CPEP or
county product enrichment program, will make it a challenge as we lose these valuable partners for
the upcoming year 2012.
As far as agriculture, state and now federal finances have eliminated some of the best
discretionary programs and most effective for developing and assisting new farming enterprises.
These programs are the non-regulatory tail of the state and federal departments of agriculture.
Community interest for improved sunshine markets and value-added products will require
additional resources and change the present operations. Like the other specialists in our
department, they are aone-man operation. Also our specialist in agriculture also attends about
30 after-hour meetings of agriculture organizations per year.
In the area of workforce development, some of the challenges include some of the potential
grant application requires significant staff time to research and compile meaningful data to support
each application whether pursued or not. And each new program has increased workload for
existing staff but no additional staff to hire to oversee the programs. And so that also also is a
challenge.
In the area of film, access for film productions in key properties and film locations on the
island of Kauai are becoming increasingly difficult and that poses a major hurdle for future
productions.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.16
In the overall office of economic development, we're a source of grants for programs that
benefit our economy, promote and preserve our diverse cultures, and assist much needed social
services. We have a few of the organizations who have approached us that are not part of our budget
but would probably be coming to the council for lobbying for funding going forward. And some of
those include our YWCA programs, the Kauai Independent Food Bank, and the East Kauai water
users, and the Kauai Tropical Flower Association.
As far as improvements, some of the improvements-and I won't go through them all-in the
tourism sector, we had a computer upgrade. We initiated a pilot program for implementing new
surveys in festivals and events to attendees and suppliers and vendors to better assess the economic
impact from these festivals and events. We also upgraded the the kauaifestivals.com website for
easier download of information for travelers and extended out the calendar to 18 months into the
future for travel planning. We also added new photos and videos to our resource library for
advertising Kauai and our events.
In workforce development, operating efficiency for the adult and dislocated worker programs
due to the relocation of the WorkWise One Stop Job Center into the Lihu`e Civic Center and
increased program staffing at the one step center with well-qualified individuals despite being
temporary positions.
Chair Furfaro: George, before we turn to the next page...
Mr. Costa: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: I'm just going to ask one question. I hope my colleagues
can... with this funding for APEC, this is a one-time funding?
Mr. Costa: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, did it encroach on funding from some of our other
programs?
Mr. Costa: Yeah, bottom line it didn't make the cut, yeah.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, just for now I want to make sure I understood that, so
that one time cost forced us to cut maybe past practices with other programs.
Mr. Costa: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, we'll go on to the next page.
Mr. Costa: And in the area of film, the film commission website was
updated and ungraded in late 2010, the first since the year 2000. We still have a lot more
improvements to do and as part of our budget, we actually have an upgrade of the website. And
again, the improvement was an update and not an upgrade.
For upcoming initiatives, in the area of energy. for the Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan
recommendations, we plan to work with the county council, the energy planning advisory committee,
KEDB renewable energy committee, and energy coordinator on implementing short-term
recommendations. We also are looking at energy savings performance contract for the building
division and parks department with their electric bill close to $2 million on an annual basis, a
conservative 10% savings would equate to $200,000 alone. Installation of the electric vehicle
chargers at county facilities. Purchase of five electric vehicles for our county fleet use. Completion of
the Kaiakea photovoltaic system, and close out of the ARRA grant, which is $267,900. Construction
of a photovoltaic system for the police and civil defense and prosecuting attorney's office building.
We're also looking at photovoltaic systems for the I~lauea and Kalaheo neighborhood centers. And
also we're working with the Navy for the use of methane at the Kekaha Landfill.
In the area of tourism, continuation of building the Kauaifestivals.com program and
calendar. Funding capture for the restoration and rock wall building and training for Kaneiolouma
Heiau in Po`ipu. We continue with the CPEP and county grant programs. Continued support for the
visitor industry partners and complete purchase and receipt of the Mobi-Mats, as I mentioned
earlier, the ADA compliant mats to use at our festivals and events.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.17
In the area of agriculture, one of the top priorities is the Kilauea Ag Park to complete our
environmental assessment process as well as the farmer application criteria, application form,
selection process, design and construction of the ag park. Also complete sunshine markets value-
added ordinance amendment, revise the administrative rules, and bring all farmers and vendors into
full compliance, and complete a five-year business plan. We're also looking at the papaya
deinfestation facility to continue maintenance and look at other uses including a commercial kitchen
and a Kauai produce distribution center while papaya farmers are being trained and crop planted
and farmed. Also work with the Kauai Cattlemen's Association on improvement of beef quality.
Also a slaughter, chill, and processing facility for the island of Kauai, and working with the planning
department and other agriculture organizations on the important ag lands.
In the area of workforce development, to roll out the SESP or state energy sector partnership
training programs on the island over the next 14 months, which is critical to Kauai attaining and
exceeding its performance targets. The SESP is a state grant that was provided and working with
the Kauai Community College, it's to help displaced workers to retrain them in the area of
photovoltaic energy and installation of photovoltaic systems, so it's a great program. Also revitalize
currently inactive WorkWise consortium and youth council, and also to update the consortium
management, MOU and secure support from all partner agencies.
In the film sector, we continue to make improvement on the newly updated film website.
And our goal is to work closely with three to four film production and local coordinators to address
filming procedures and guidelines, especially with aerial filming by helicopters and basic courtesies
when working with production companies. And in the overall office of economic development,
promote the APEC, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation USA Conference, which is being held this
coming November. Coordinate with the APEC 2011 Kauai stakeholders committee, also the
member of the APEC neighbor islands committee, and the APEC host committee. Also work with
the chamber of commerce and Rotary and other business organizations promoting the Kauai
business showcase, which is one of the main opportunities that we have for Kauai businesses to be
showcased at the APEC conference in November. We also have the...working with the APEC
committee showcasing business tours and activities and other organizations here on Kauai, not only
for their delegates that we hope to have visit Kauai, but also the press corps that we hope to
entertain.
In the area of workforce development, excuse me, now getting to our budget. What you have
before you are two pie charts, which basically shows the difference between fiscal year 2012 and
2011.
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, George, before you get there, may I ask your
office, because we owe a visit to Kaneiolouma Heiau as a body, as a council, and considering there
are items that appear in your .department as a project, could I ask you to work with Rupert and the
county clerk's office so that we could have a visit and post it as a meeting.
Mr. Costa; Okay, that's Rupert Rowe?
Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Costa: Of Kaneiolouma.
Chair Furfaro: Yes and the stewards and trustees of the heiau.
Mr. Costa: Okay, very good.
Chair Furfaro: Okay and I'm sorry to have interrupted you and your charts,
but go ahead.
Mr. Costa; For the office of economic development, obviously, we're a
small department, so basically I'll get -right to the point. There are three areas of variance between
the 2011 fiscal year budget and the current budget before you. In the areas of salaries and wages,
we have an increase of 29% or $101,630. And basically that's broken down to...we are proposing to
fund our energy coordinator for his salary of $75,000. Presently there's close to $19,000 that's
currently funded in this year's budget and difference between what we're proposing is about $56,000.
Then we also have an economic development accountant, and we proposing another $10,000 increase
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.18
from this year's budget. And the third item is the two-day furlough. It was actually a reduction on
our present year budget. So that would be an additional $35,000. So that equates to $101,000
variance.
Chair Furfaro: George, I very much appreciate the way that you reconcile the
difference in salaries and wages from one year to the next. And it certainly should be a model for the
other departments as you broke it down this way.
Mr. Costa: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much.
Mr. Costa: Hopefully, it makes it easier and then we can get right to the
point. And the benefits, again, there's a difference of a little over $95,000, and that's broken into two
areas. One is obviously the increase in benefits from both the energy coordinator and accountant
position. And then we have the increase of the other employee benefits, which equate to $60,495.
And then the last one, if you look at the detail of the budget for the office of economic development,
we have different variances, but the bottom line, the net variance on our operating budget is
$120,000 or slightly less than $120,000. And the bottom line, it is the Kauai Marathon. And we're
working with the Kauai Marathon coordinator, who's approached us to help fund the event, which
for the last two years has been a very successful event, and has asked for athree-year subsidy in
which the county would help to participate in funding the event or providing a subsidy for three
years, and after the third year for the event to become self-sufficient. And so I actually have a
money bill before the council that is coming up on May 4 is the public hearing for a request of
$150,000. But for the benefit of this budget, the second year funding, we're asking for $120,000.
And I've broken down the...
Chair Furfaro: George, what I'd like to do, your Iast page, it's page 15 and
since that is coming up to us on May 4?
Mr. Costa: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: I would like you to get together with the chair of economic
development. We have been posed some very specific questions on this request and I don't want to
duplicate that discussion now since it's already an agendaed item. But the chair of economic
development, Mr. Chang, should get together with you in anticipation of some questions being
surfaced.
Mr. Costa: Okay, so in a nutshell that's basically our department budget,
and hopefully I've been able to explain the three main variances that we have. Any questions?
Chair Furfaro: George, a very nice presentation, very nice. I do need to tell
you that we need to take...see if there's any public testimony.
Mr. Costa: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: And then we need to take a tape change and an intermission
for 10 minutes.
Mr. Costa: All right.
Chair Furfaro: When we come back, we'll see if we have some Q&A for you.
Mr. Costa: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: And then we're going to go into engineering, and then we
have several members that have to leave early that may or may not be attending other meetings of
importance. So on that note, let me ask, is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak on the
office of economic development's presentation? Mr. Mickens, come right up.
GLENN MICKENS: Thank you, Jay, for the record Glenn Mickens. Just briefly,
George touched on the Food Bank. I just want...Judy's here...I just want to thank her for all her
hard work. I know she's been honored before for taking care of the hungry people on Kauai. I know
that she's...from what I understand anyway, the amount of people being fed now are much greater
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.19
than there were before, but I think that her budget has been zeroed out. So I just hope that
someplace moneys can be found to be able to help her because I think she does a tremendous job.
Thank you, Jay.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that testimony. That was the reason I raised
the question about the APEC funding. If that took away from other programs, but when we get to
our deliberation, we'll be able to surface that again.
Mr. Mickens: Is that one of the programs that took away from APEC?
Chair Furfaro: We didn't take it away from her totally, but we redistributed
the moneys that are usually there.
Mr. Mickens: Tliank you, Jay.
Chair Furfaro: You're quite welcome. Anyone else who wanted to give public
testimony? Ken? We're going to take a tape change right at 3 0' clock, BC.
KEN TAYLOR: Chair and Members of the Council, my name is Ken Taylor. I
want to address the issue George mentioned, the county getting five electric vehicles and putting in
charging stations at the county. When this item was talked about some time back on the council
agenda, there was talk about hooking up those charging stations to the existing building and using
electricity. So what I see in that process is trading gasoline vehicles for electric cars that are then
going to use diesel to generate electricity. And I would really like to see us take a look at making
those charging systems with solar collectors on a roof top so that we really do look at changing from
gasoline vehicles to electric, all electric, and not just go from one source of fuel to another source of
fuel. So I would hope that that would happen and I think that George has done a fairly good job of
laying out what he's had to deal with in this economic downturn. But as I said earlier today, I'm
really concerned that the county is not...is not paying attention to what's really coming at us and
working at changing our attitude as to how we are going to be doing things because it's going to be
very different. And we owe it to the children of the future and if we don't start working on it and just
keep putting it off and putting it off, we're not going to have anything to offer the young people of
today, and that would be a shame. And I think there's more time and more effort needs to be put
into the reality of this freight train that is coming at us.
Chair Furfaro: Well, I'll send that over as a question.
Mr. Taylor: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much, and that question will be posed to
Mr. Costa and Glenn about the possibility of phasing in the electric charge carts with actually some
other opportunities attached to solar. So on that note, if there's no more testimony, we need to do a
break for the tape and we need to take atwo-hour caption break.
Mr. Chang: Two hours?
Chair Furfaro: Two hours, did I say that? George, that was my naptime.
Ten minutes and then we will be back for Q&A and then we'll go to engineering again.
There being no objection, the meeting was recessed at 2:59 p.m.
The meeting was called back to order at 3:14 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
There being no objection, the rules were suspended.
Chair Furfaro: So, Mr. Costa, thank you very much for a very complete
presentation. I'm encouraging members to send additional questions to you in writing, but I want to
compliment you on also the report you did, the little report you did on payroll variances. That was
well done compared to last year's budget. We do have a big item coming up on May 4, which was in
your presentation today dealing with the marathon.
Mr. Costa: Okay.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p,20
Chair Furfaro: And so, we'll focus questions on the marathon for that May 4
meeting. And again, I'm going to encourage members to send you questions in writing. Mr. Chang,
did you have something?
Mr. Chang: I don't have a question, but I actually have a comment.
Chair Furfaro: We'll hold comments for the end. Mr. Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: I'll submit questions in writing except for the one big one that
I have. And first I'll say that I'm looking forward to going out to Kaneiolouma Heiau. The big
question is on page 66 in the budget, there's a line item called "other services" and in the original
budget, current budget it's $583,000 and then in the mayor's fiscal year 2011-2012, $637,000, a
reasonable 9% increase. But in the adjusted budget, adjusted amount, what's been adjusted for the
current budget that we're in, it went up like $372,000 or 63%. So, something big happened that I
would like to hear about. The fact that you now have that additional moneys on that line item
means that in the year-to-date expenditure, you're all right. But without that additional moneys,
you would have been 99% spent up already...exhausted your current budget. So what happened that
there was such a large increase/transfer, if you will, to this $372,000?
Mr. Costa: What line item are you looking at?
Mr. Kuali`i: Page 66, the line item is "other services" about the middle of
the page, closer to the bottom. In the first column the figure is $583,753 and the adjusted budget
second column is $955,829. So that's an increase of $372,000, 63.7%. Is that something that you...
Mr, Costa: Yeah, I'll have to research that.
Chair Furfaro: So, we'll send that over as a question.
Mr. Kuali`i: Thank you, the rest will be in writing.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr, Rapozo: I have a follow-up.
Chair Furfaro: Okay and there's afollow-up from Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: I just...under "other services," the increase of $53,000, that's
just spread out throughout your different programs?
Mr. Costa: Yes. You're looking at the bottom of the budget worksheet,
$53,000?
Mr, Rapozo: Well, that's just the variance that we show in that line item
from the last year's...the $577,405. I mean I'm sorry, the $583,753...
Mr, Costa: Oh, okay.
Mr, Rapozo: ...and the $637.
Mr. Costa: Right.
Mr, Rapozo: The variance is...
Mr. Costa: The overall variance and then we break it down by line item.
Chair Furfaro: So we're going to send that question over.
Mr. Costa: Right.
Chair Furfaro: Ladies, did you get that? Thank you, Jade.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.21
Mr. Costa: And Chair, if that format that I used in this budget
presentation works, I can do the same for any of the questions that are posed to show the variance
and the explanation.
Chair Furfaro: Well, that would be appreciated, but what we're doing here is
we're sending over questions that will help members review what is coming back to us in the new
budget format that we're not going to just continue going through issues and formats, but rather
obviously approve department by department after May 6. We'll do our pluses and our minuses. So,
answering the question gives us all a general feeling of how important that item is when we want to
vote on adjusting it in the budget, leaving it in the budget, or increasing it in the budget.
Mr. Costa: All right.
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead, Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: And then just the other one I have is the other commodities
line. That would be on page 60...it starts actually on page 68 where the other commodities line, last
year we had $15,258, year-to-date expenditures is only $3900, but we're upping it to $75,250 and I
noticed $70,000 is in another line called "other services" and do you have that available as well?
Mr. Costa: Yeah, that's basically for our...our film, upgrading the
website. That's where most of it...
Mr. Rapozo: The $70,000?
Mr. Costa: Yeah.
Mr. Rapozo: Wow, okay.
Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, thank you for a very thorough report. And I just want to
say the tourism report out is astounding. I haven't seen any other department being able to report
out the outcomes like you have, and they're very impressive outcomes too. And my question is about
the outcome you mentioned in No. 2, the 16.4% increase in international arrivals. I wondered if you
could explain that.
Mr. Costa: Sure, well, we had...basically, that comes from the Canadian
arrivals and Japan.
Ms. Yukimura: I see.
Mr. Costa: You know Japan was up, even though our Japanese numbers
aren't significant compared to Oahu. It was up quite a bit from previous years, but more
significantly is the arrivals from Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, with WestJet flying directly
into Lihu`e. You know those flights are coming in full and we've seen a tremendous uptake from the
Canadian market.
Ms. Yukimura: I know there's...well actually, there's a great love for
Canadians of Kauai, I think, although I know that inflow of tourists was affected late in the `70s by
some incidents that made it go down.
Mr. Costa: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: So, do they tend to stay long-term and also spend money here
or not?
Mr. Costa: Over the years the Canadians have, I guess, built a
reputation, but for the most part, the Canadian visitors that we see nowadays, usually they average
about 8 to 9 days. So, they've helped our length-of--stay numbers. And their economy is such that
they're spending money too. So I guess they were maybe unfairly given the moniker that they don't
spend much.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.22
Chair Furfaro: They were seen as a budget client. Now they're seen as a
moderate client.
Mr. Costa: Right, right.
Chair Furfaro: And it's offset by longer stays.
Mr. Costa: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And some of the money went toward advertising in the
Canadian market.
Mr. Costa: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Mr. Costa: Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you. And then your Kaneiolouma tourism
initiative on your page 9 of your report, does that include fencing?
Mr. Costa: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: It does include the fencing amount.
Mr. Costa: Yes, we have a concern there with the...
Ms. Yukimura: Rupert Rowe mentioned it when he came before us recently.
So I just wanted to make sure it was in the budget.
Mr. Costa: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you very much.
Chair Furfaro: On that note, George, let's make sure one of the site visits we
do out there, we're all on the same level about what kind of fencing, you know, chain link versus
picket, and so forth, So Mr. Chang and then Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Chang: It's not really necessarily a comment, but it's more of a
request. George, on tourism, page no. 2, when you talk about tourism, if you can just under the
results, because it is impressive numbers, can you just do us a favor and put the percentage
increase? You know like you did below, you have the increase for percentage because I know we're
going to be going over the visitor stimulus plan Phase II on Wednesday, so that would be a good
comparison that we can do Phase I and Phase II. So I think the percentage would help us.
Mr. Costa: Okay.
Mr. Chang: Thank you. Thank you, Chair.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: I have one request we'll send over in writing, and George, you
don't have to answer today, but it does pertain to the marathon, it is coming up. But also what I'd
like to see is a complete breakdown of the revenue that the Kauai Marathon generates from the, no
the external sources, but what the Kauai Marathon itself generates in income as a result of the
event.
Mr. Costa: Okay. Maybe...well, a point of clarification, when you say not
external...
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah, not the impact to the community.
Mr. Costa: Oh, okay.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.23
Mr. Rapozo:
requires us to subsidize.
Mr. Costa:
Chair Furfaro:
Mr. Costa:
Chair Furfaro:
Ms. Yukimura:
business incubator, who i
What moneys are generated by the Kauai Marathon that we
Exactly, okay.
You'll be prepared for that on May 4 as well.
Yes.
Councilwoman Yukimura.
On your ag feasibility study for a commercial kitchen
s the partner that we're working with here? Is it the Farm Bureau?
Mr. Costa: Actually, the Farm Bureau is part of it, but more importantly
it's been John Latkiewicz, who's with the small business development center. He's been an integral
part of our discussions and our meetings. He's actually leading the charge to look at the feasibility of
a commercial kitchen small business incubator.
Ms. Yukimura: So that's KCC as a partner or no?
Mr. Costa: No, small business development center, yeah.
Ms. Yukimura: I'm glad to see that in the budget. I recently visited the
Pacific Gateway Center on Oahu.
Mr. Costa: Impressive, yeah? The one in Kalihi?
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Costa: Yeah, I know, I...
Ms. Yukimura: Very, very impressive and they've been...they've accessed
resources around the country in order to plan and develop their site, and now they're being a
resource to other places around the Pacific, and they would seem to be a really excellent across the
channel resource for us as we develop that.
Mr. Costa: Yeah, they're a very good resource, and they, I think with
Councilman Kuali`i, he's been actually a resource too in looking at commercial kitchens.
Ms. Yukimura: Because I think the next level for our Sunshine Markets is to
find a place to develop value-added products.
Mr. Costa: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: So, I mean my eyes were really big and opened when I went to
visit them because that's the link. So, thank you for starting to look into this. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. Councilwoman Nakamura?
Ms. Nakamura: Hi, George. You know, a couple months ago you came to brief
us on the economic development plan for the island and I was just wondering, in your proposed
budget do you see that you have the resources to begin implementation of the plan with respect to
the six industry clusters that were identified and the priorities identified?
Mr. Costa: To be honest, no. Some of it is there. One of the
organizations that we grant moneys to is the Kauai Economic Development Board. And Susan Tai,
who's part of that organization, she and I have looked at at least three of those clusters in looking at
the projects and seeing what can be done, either a feasibility study or some kind of strategic plan to
move some of those forward. But as far as the other clusters, no, we don't have the resources, at
least in this budget right now.
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.24
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. And I think that's one of the areas that I'm interested
in seeing, and we'll be trying to do a little bit more research in that area. I also feel that Kaua`i's
unemployment rate is much higher than the state's unemployment rate. It's 9% and with one out of
ten people without jobs that diversifying our economy is really important and it should be a priority.
That's why to hear that your high-level or high-paid staff don't have clerical support to help with
grants or, you know, try to leverage our county funds, it's very...it seems like we're not using our
resources wisely or we need to maybe try to find some resources so that your office can have greater
capacity . So, I'm also concerned that when we look at the amount of savings that our energy
coordinator is bringing to this county through the grants that he's able to get, the projects that he's
able to do that Iower our long-term operating costs, that we need to be doing more of that, and do it
more efficiently, more widespread than one person can handle. And I think that came out pretty
clear in our energy sustainability plan. So I guess I kind of see a disconnect and I'm not real...you
know, where I want to see this county go with respect to energy sustainability, I just don't see it in
the actual implementation piece in this plan, but we can talk some more.
Mr. Costa: You know, I appreciate that comment. I mean a good
example is Glenn Sato. He's been with the county over 20 years, and every year trying to find grant
moneys for his position. So having his position in the budget this year for the first time, is
monumental. I have to say for me personally, when you hear the hue and cry of reducing
government, sort of the yin and yang, where I totally agree that you hire the right people, put the
effort in the right resources like an energy facilities manager who can look at the entire county
operation and if you were to look the county spends over $7 million annually on energy...electricity,
and 10% were to be saved, that's $700,000 right there, so, more than pay for the person. So I agree.
Chair Furfaro: Let's also put some emphasis on that. We don't know, you
didn't ask for the support because the budget we're seeing from you came via the stamp of the
administration. So let's make sure we understand, if we're going to push for you, we all have to push
together.
Mr. Costa: Yes, okay.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, and I do know in the sustainability plan, we do
earmark a new energy specialist for you. We've got to make sure everybody buys into it and I believe
Councilmember Chang and Councilwoman Yukimura will be part of an upcoming discussion on that.
But...
Mr. Costa: Okay, very good.
Chair Furfaro: I want to make sure everybody understands. And fair to the
division heads, what you're presenting to us already had its first pass by the administration.
Mr. Costa: Right.
Chair Furfaro: So, we can be a supporter for you.
Mr. Costa: And just for clarification, I did put in for the energy specialist
position, but I didn't put in for the facilities manager because I thought after 20 years that was a
good first step. But, you know, maybe no ask, no get, huh?
Chair Furfaro: You heard my message: no ask, no get. Okay. So let's stay
away from baby steps. If the opportunity works out for us, we'll look at the facilities manager as
well, okay.
Mr. Costa: Okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: That will be later in the budget process. Councilwoman
Yukimura?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, your slaughter, chill and processing facility, I think that
is part of your CEDS economic development plan.
Mr. Costa: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Could you give us, not today, but in writing, the status of it?
April 18, 2011
Office of Economic Development p.25
Mr. Costa: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: And this workforce development was not really clear to me. It
just may be that I'm not familiar with the acronyms. I don't know what a CEM training and
certification program is.
Mr. Costa: Certified Energy Management. Is that the one relating to
the...
Ms. Yukimura: Workforce development on page 10.
Mr. Costa: Yeah.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so all right, maybe just a little bit more explanation of
that.
Mr. Costa: Okay, some clarity on that, okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: George, can you give us an update on the slaughter house?
Today or I think...
Mr. Costa: I'll provide you an update on what I know so far because I met
with the Cattlemen's Association. That's something that...there's two proposals right now, and
that's basically what it is, proposals, and hopefully one of them can get some traction because
working with the Cattlemen's Association, there's various opinions and...
Chair Furfaro: So Mr. Chang, you heard the request?
Mr. Costa: So anyway, I can provide you an update.
Chair Furfaro: To get an update on the slaughter house onto a council
agenda. Okay, on that note, we're going to send you over some questions.
Mr. Costa: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Again, thank you for the presentation. I hope I didn't put you
in an awkward position when I said what you're showing to us got the stamp of approval from the
administration. But what you share with us, we can come back and encourage to take a little bigger
step in energy.
Mr. Costa: Okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, George, thank you very much. We're going to go right
into engineering now until 5 o'clock.
There being no objection, the departmental reviews was recessed at 3:32 p.m.
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.l
The departmental budget review reconvened on Tuesday, April 19, 2011, at 9:07 a.m., and proceeded
as follows:
LIQUOR DEPARTMENT
Council Chair Furfaro: Aloha and good morning I'm calling back from recess the
Committee of the Whole Budget review process. I want to first thank Mr. Honma for returning to the
council for some follow up questions. Our agenda today also takes us to the Prosecutors office at
10:00 a.m. and the County Clerk's Office at -1:00 p.m. so specifically I was wondering if
Councilwomen Yukimura would want to be recognizes first as a follow up questions or should I take
questions from the other members.
ERIC HONMA, DIRECTOR LIQUOR DEPARTMENT: Council Chair, excuse
me for the record Eric Honma. I believe my first presentation was just basically going over the
department's goals, objectives and those kinds of things and if any of the council members want to
revisit those areas that's fine, otherwise I ...
Mr. Furfaro: But you have a continuation of your presentation yet to be
done?
Mr. Honma: Just a short one getting into the financial aspect.
Mr. Furfaro: Ok it's just been suggested why don't we let you finish your
presentation first?
Mr. Honma: Okay.
Mr. Furfaro: And then we'll go to questions. The floor is yours sir.
Mr. Honma: Aloha and good morning Council Chair and Vice Chair
Yukimura, and to the newest member Kualii, your brain must be sore already it's kind of overloaded
but you have a great group of colleagues and I'm sure they will all help you with the transition. To
continue the presentation as I mentioned in my first segment the administrative directive was
basically to keep the budget flat as it was the previous year. To that extent we've accomplished that
and if you noticed that those comparisons between the 2011 and 2012 budgets are almost identical
percentage wise. This current fiscal year salaries and wages are 39 percent and next year its 38
percent for the proposed budget. Operations this year are 34 percent and upcoming budget is 33
percent. Utilities and benefits are 26 percent this year and 28 percent for the coming proposed year.
You have the pie charts in front of you that show the breakdown of the departments operational cost
and also on the second page you also have some pie graphs that also could be used as a comparison
between the 2011 and 2012 budgets. That's basically what I have for now and I will open it up for
questions from the council members. Again if you want to revisit any of the statistics or any of the
things that I brought up at compliance checks or goals and objectives we can also do that or continue
on with any other questions that the council members have.
Mr. Furfaro: I know it's only been a week Eric since you advised us about
filling the vacancies but are we still status quo for the vacancies that you?
Mr. Honma: Yes in fact we have one of the candidates coming in I believe
Thursday to notarize employment papers and those kinds of things. The other one will be coming
from Texas relocating here so we will take care of his papers after he moves here. We are on track to
fill those two vacancies.
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.2
Mr. Furfaro: And that's the SR-16 as well as the SR-14, am I correct?
Mr. Honma: The trainee and the investigator one.
Mr. Furfaro: Councilmen Kualii.
KIPUKAI KUALII: I had just one quick message. Aloha to you and thank you for
those kind words. On the budget I see a line item for general liability and last year this current
year's budget it was zero but for next year, oh wait it was adjusted to four hundred and fifty
thousand. What was that for?
Mr. Honma: That was to pay out a settlement.
Mr. Kualii: Okay thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Were you able to receive the four questions we had?
Mr. Honma: Yes I did.
Mr. Furfaro: You did okay.
Mr. Honma: I believe I already transmitted the responses although they
weren't required to be until the 29th I believe but I believe the council members should have the
responses already.
Mr. Furfaro: I don't think we've seen them yet.
Mr. Honma: It's probably being compiled by Lorrie right now with the rest
of the departments.
Mr. Furfaro: On that note Mr. Rapozo.
MEL RAPOZO: Eric you said you have someone coming in from Texas?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: We didn't have qualified people on Kauai?
Mr. Honma: We did but he interviewed very well and came very well
qualified. He's a former border patrol officer and he currently has his own private investigator
license as well as a K9 training operation that he uses dogs for drug and alcohol interdiction in
school campuses and those kinds of areas. We did have qualified people but he was just very well
qualified.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay well just for me personally I always cringe when we
bring people from the mainland when we have qualified local people because... and what are the
residency requirements on these things? Aren't they required to residents of Hawaii when they
apply?
Mr. Honma: No.
Mr. Rapozo: Really.
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.3
Ms. Yukimura:
Yeah it's not unconstitutional.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay it's just you know we have a lot of people out of work
here and I think that message should go to everyone County wide. If we have opportunities to hire
local qualified people they should probably get priority but obviously it's not our place to say we're
just the Legislative body. Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Well in all fairness obviously there is the tendency for a
preference for local hire's but as far as an obligation to the Civil Service procedure we need to look
for the most qualified via criteria set for us by personnel services and we use that process fairly for
all.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chang and then councilwomen Nakamura.
DICKIE CHANG: Thank you so just to clarify this is a liquor inspector position?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Mr. Chang: Can you describe what the job description of that liquor
inspector is?
Mr. Honma: Investigators are primarily responsible for visiting the 200
liquor license establishments. There shift varies from day to day, generally Monday through
Thursdays the investigators will start at about 4:00 in the afternoon and work until about 12
midnight. Fridays and Saturdays are the busier nights when the establishments have a tendency to
stay open until 2:00 a.m. which is the legal time like Robs and the Tavern so investigators will start
at 6:00 p.m. and work until 2:00 a.m. That's their job 7 days a week there out there checking the
liquor license establishments to ensure that the licensee's are conducting their business lawfully.
Mr. Chang: I wanted to .comment also because I agree with Council
member Rapozo in trying to keep and I understand he's the best qualified but trying to keep the jobs
local because the Aloha spirit and the Kauai way goes along ways. To me it can defuse a lot of
different tensions and I think when people kind of know one and other they'll tend to be a little more
mellow instead of not necessarily being harassed but I just feel in that night scene I don't think
anybody's working undercover but it's kind of nice to be known if you're in that world and you know
what that world is all about. Here on the Island of Kauai and myself personally I just think a lot of
tension can be defused by understanding the local way or the local or the Aloha Spirit and I just feel
relationships are real important and people that are out there know the night life scene and they
know where you know people tend to talk and people tend to tip off someone in a good positive
manner. I just for myself personally and a job as such especially here on Kauai I would have myself
personally I think a local person could probably blend in and be a little more understanding but yet
abiding to the law so that just what I wanted to say.
Mr. Furfaro: Councilwomen Nakamura.
NADINE NAKAMURA: Hi Eric can you explain to me how revenues are generated by
your office?
Mr. Honma: We have 2 primary sources of revenue, the first is called an
annual license fee and each of the two licensees by June 30th need to renew their license and based
on the category of license they have being a restaurant, retail store, hotel, wholesale, tour & cruise
vessel. They have set fees for example Big Save will pay 480 dollars for each of their Big Save outlets
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.4
as well as their Menehune operations. Restaurants such as JJ's, Kalapaki Joes they will Pay 480
dollars also annually. That total comes out to about a hundred thousand dollars combined. Along
with that each licensee by the end of July needs to report to us how much liquor they sold for the
past fiscal year, the whole twelve month period. We don't care about the t-shirts or the food or
anything just the liquor sales from JJ's to Robs to Big Save. We don't care about the groceries just
the liquor sales and the licensees has a way via there registers to categorize out the liquor sales only
and we compile that and that's where in my first presentation I mentioned that there was an eighty
three million dollar sales a total on the Island of Kauai. That's how we come to those figures, when
the licensees submit to us what their gross liquor sales were for the previous fiscal year. From there
we assess the percentage based on how much you sold. Smallest store that sells two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars will get assessed the same percentage as a hotel that sells five million dollars
but based on your volume obviously the hotel fee will be higher than the two hundred and fifty
thousand dollar restaurant. That is primarily our two sources of funding that we have. We don't
have any state grants, we don't have any federal grants and we are self supportive by the 200
licensees and no general fund. Any balance that we accrue at the end of the year goes back to the
licensees in a form of a credit so it doesn't lapse the general fund it goes back to the licensee in a
form of a credit.
Mr. Furfaro: Now besides June 30, the hotels, restaurants, etc... there
reporting to your commission quarterly?
Mr. Honma: No we use to have the rule in place.
Mr. Furfaro: I guess I'm showing my age.
Mr. Honma: Well I'm not going to say when we amended that rule but yes
we use to but now they do it on an annual basis. It was becoming real conversional for them and we
could understand but for the past 2/3 budget cycles now based on our economy I'm thinking that I
would prefer to have at least one semi-annual in about December as we get into the budget cycle and
at that point January/February and essentially I think we're all guessing and me in particular
because I'm dealing with potential sales from the licensees and so generally what I've done in the
past two years is I've called some of the major licensees and just have them give me a approximate
number of what they've done for six months. That helps me to prepare and anticipate what the final
sales will be in June. The budget is as I mentioned and all of you know is crafted in the beginning
part of the year and six months prior to the end of the fiscal year.
Ms. Nakamura: Are you saying it would be more convenient to do it twice a
year rather than assess only once a year?
I have.
Mr. Honma: Yes because I get the figure at the end of July and that's what
Ms. Nakamura: What would it take for you to make that change?
Mr. Honma: I would have to go to the commission and ask them to
promulgate a rule and they can do it administratively via Chapter 92.
Ms. Nakamura: That seems to make a lot of sense.
Mr. Honma: It will give me at least that 6 Month indication of where I
might be for the end of the fiscal year.
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.5
Ms. Nakamura: The other question I have has to do with alcohol prevention
and can any of your funds be used for alcohol prevention for the youth.
Mr. Honma: Yes there was a bill that was passed in the Legislature last
year that now currently allows us to use 10 percent of our fine monies only our fine monies for public
education.
Ms. Nakamura: What would that come out to be?
Mr. Honma: I believe the beginning of this fiscal year we had four
thousand dollars at our disposal based on the forty thousand dollars that we collected in fines for the
previous fiscal year. I believe we used about twenty five hundred of that in collaboration with
Theresa Koki in sending down trainers for this very effective program called... its very effective but I
can't remember when we simulate crashes. It's called "shattered dreams" the shattered dreams is
brought to the high school and it simulates a traffic crash and what a high school junior or senior
may come across seeing their own classmate in a fatal car accident as a real result of underage
drinking. Our goal is to take that program to each of the high schools on a rotating basis and the
difficulty is in getting people trained so we brought trainers down, we had medical staff from KVMH,
from Mahelona, we had high schools counselors the peer programs the ones that helped us
coordinate and we did a massive two day training and now we feel comfortable that we can put these
programs on, on a annual basis at least to the campuses. This year we're going to go back to where
we started which was at Kapa`a High School.
Ms. Nakamura: Does your budget reflect the four thousand dollars in this
upcoming year for prevention like this type of youth programs?
Mr. Honma: No it's just in our fines account and then we are able to
allocate it out depending on the need is. We don't have any specific line item expenditures. We can
use it for public education like PSA's and I have been contemplating supporting the DARE program I
know they've been cut severely and so a thousand dollars would go a long way as far as things they
could bring to the classrooms for the kids.
Ms. Nakamura: Yeah it seems like there's a lot of different county agencies
doing prevention. The Police, the Fire, Parks & Recreations doing the teen center in Koloa and it
would be great if they could expand that concept then different communities around the Island and it
seems like small grants here and there could help to bring equipment.
Mr. Honma: Especially when you leverage it with other agencies and the
funds are available out there through the (inaudible) Grants and those other programs.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay and final question has to do with the... and I think this
was one of the questions we asked but why were there no off premise compliance checks in
2009/2010?
Mr. Honma: We contract with the University of Hawaii cancer research
center. They provide the chaperones as well as the minor decoys and the minor decoys are generally
research assistants at the cancer research center. By State statue we can only use those that are 18,
19 and 20 years old for this compliance checks and that's primarily for the safety of the individuals.
We don't use 14 year olds or 16 year olds and so they are trained and they are part of a statewide
program and they conduct compliance checks also in Honolulu as well as Maui. Through those
compliance checks they collect statewide data that helps us but that contract year was only for on
premise.
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.6
Ms. Nakamura: I looks like on premises were cut.
Mr. Honma: Well it was only for the off premises those years and so they
have a contract with the department of health, alcohol drug abuse division and there funds that they
use to fly the minors down to do the training, rent cars and all those things comes through the ADAD
program. They sign a contract saying what kind of compliance checks we're going to be doing, off
premise on premise and so we kind of piggy back with them along with the Kauai Police Department
and use those funds that they have to help us with the compliance checks. That year it just was not
for that specific purpose and therefore we use to and we're trying to alternate every other year. This
year we do on premise next year we do on premise and then back and forth. The research data shows
that to be consistent and to have the impact necessary it was better for us to do two compliance
checks back to back years in to successive years and then go two successive years with off premise or
on premise whatever it may be. By switching back and forth you kind of lost the impact and the
continuity of going to the retail store and then next year they don't see you for the whole year and so
human nature being what it is you get (inaudible) and you kind of fall back in to some of your old
habits. The research data has shown us that to do two consecutive years it has a better impact in
maintaining the lowest percentage of non-compliance rates.
Ms. Nakamura: Is there any way to develop on Island capacity to do those
types of inspections?
Mr. Honma: EssentiaIly we started doing that the first time about 12
years ago when we did the compliance checks. We had youths from Kauai and one of the situations
was when one of the clerks really took offense to being caught at the compliance check and
recognized who that minor was. As a safety issue and the fact that the cancer research center
provides to us at no cost trained minors with a very specific protocol it's just as convenient for us to
use their minors although we have to work around their schedule. Since we're working with junior
research assistants it's generally when they have spring break that they are able to come for the
weekend. During the course of the school year and that's why you'll notice it's kind of clustered its
either going to be summer or spring break or Christmas break and then will have a two week period
where we may have two consecutive weekends and it's at their availability and that's the only
drawback that we have.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Other questions from members? Councilwomen Yukimura.
JOANN YUKIMURA: Can you repeat for me this is a follow up to councilwoman
Nakamura's, the bill that was passed last year allows 10 percent of fine monies?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and so could you provide us a copy of the bill?
Mr. Honma: Sure.
Ms. Yukimura: And then your fine amounts are how much a year?
Mr. Honma: Previous fiscal year was about 40 thousand dollars and it will
vary depending on compliance checks and other factors.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.7
Mr. Honma:
It's very hard to predict.
Ms. Yukimura: Alright, I wanted to congratulate you on your successes and
achievements which was on your first page on the goals and objective page. I think that giving more
information to your website and is it a new website to as well?
Mr. Honma: No.
Ms. Yukimura: It's been around but you're just putting more information on?
Mr. Honma: We have just been more consistent in uploading the
information we have.
Ms. Yukimura: Right and you're also allowing certain license and permits to
be applied for online through an online process?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Those are really good and reduce non-compliance rate to
below 10 percent. That's the compliance rate that is influenced by your checks right?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Honma: Those are directly related to the compliance checks.
Ms. Yukimura: So is there a possibility of taking teenagers from different
Islands and training them to do more compliance checks and even using the department of health's
training program or the people you contract now but paying them more money or supplementing the
money from the department of health to do more compliance checks on Kauai? And maybe using
people and I'm trying to get around all the issues that you've been telling us about like getting
around that identification process by using kids from other Islands?
Mr. Honma: That's a possibility.
Ms. Yukimura: Or like mutual aide so Maui County provides some and you
folks provide some for Maui and vice versa I mean it's actually a great experience for young people.
Mr. Honma: It is and initially when we started the compliance checks
using Kauai kids one of the primary issues identified was the liability. We weren't paying them and
because they were in our care and part of our operation it exposed the department as well as the
county to any liability issues because they were part of our program so we don't have those liability
issues with the students from the University of Hawaii Campus.
Ms. Yukimura: Sure I'm sure the University has their own liability coverage.
Mr. Honma: Yes and those liability issues would extend to students that
we bring from Maui or the Big Island also because if they incorporate it into our program as subjects
that we're using and I think it would be...
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.8
Ms. Yukimura: Well what I'm suggesting is that you pay the department of
health to include more people in their program and train more... I mean I don't know you don't have
to get the kids from our Island but just train more kids and do more compliance checks.
Mr. Honma: And that would be to just try to maintain the compliance rate
as low as and the failure rate as low as possible?
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Honma: We do conduct and the next one that's coming up is the
second of three for this fiscal year alone. On an annual basis we've been doing again 2 or 3 broken up
in segments but we've covered every licensee on premise licensee, we will cover 100 percent of them
also.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so do you feel that's what's keeping your non-
compliance rate below 10 percent?
Mr. Honma: I think it's a combination of two things, one is an increased
education that we've been doing and the second is the good coverage that we've been getting in the
newspaper as far as what the licensee have been fined. And the fact that also for the cahiers KPD
started last year which again some cashiers thought was really (inaudible) but previously when the
cashier sold liquor to the minor the liquor department would cite the licensee, the Big Save or the
store and KPD would cite the cashier. They would issue then what is called a complaint and a
summons which is basically a ticket. Two years ago they started physically arresting the cashiers
handcuffing them, transporting them in the car and it was fifty dollars bail. It was a very traumatic
experience for a lot of people and I think it did accomplish as far as the shock factor because the
word got around as to how serious we are.
Ms. Yukimura: Well you know and sometimes it may not be the cashiers fault
but the employer for not properly training, I don't know. It's interesting that John Martin was telling
me and he's our Parks Inspector a lesson that he learned a long time from the judge that don't bring
people here who haven't or if it's the first time you talk to them. The judge was saying the first time
should always be a warning and then the second or the third time is when you would take more
drastic measures. I'm not sure is I agree with this first time handcuffing and so forth because there
may be other factors to consider but the main thing is that I mean I think a factor of enforcement is
very important we know that availability of alcohol or perceived availability of alcohol is a risk factor
for alcohol use. I love the idea of newspaper coverage because that's what they found in drunk
drivers that if you identify them in the newspaper and there's this community and you allow the
community pressures to work. We are all members of the community so that's good. On your first
goal which is to reduce the availability of alcohol beverages to minors from a liquor license
establishment, how do you measure that?
Mr. Honma: Primarily through the compliance checks. The liquor license
is our primary responsibility. KPD can also enforce liquor laws as well as (inaudible) officers but
KPD would not on a regular basis go and visit a licensed establishment and for the same reason we
don't do sweeps down at the county beach parks you know that's primarily what KPD does with its
youth services group there are always out looking for minors drinking at out of the way places so we
kind of have our own responsibilities and in combination we're hoping we're being effective by
reducing KPD by monitoring...
Ms. Yukimura: So one is availability of alcohol beverages to minors from
liquor establishments but minors get alcohol beverages through other means as well right?
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.9
Mr. Honma:
Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Do you have a breakdown of how they get it I mean what
percentage gets from establishments.
Mr. Honma: We don't have any facts but we do know that yes older friends
or siblings will purchase for younger brothers and sisters.
Ms. Yukimura: Parents and adults will make it available through the home.
Mr. Honma: The social norms are something also that's a factor in
contributing to underage drinking. Parents still feel like why are you folks bothering the kids down
at the beach they are just having fun over there and without realizing the dangers they are putting
themselves in as well as the minors and so... But again that's only one component they can have
availability through friends, mom and dad's refrigerator in the garage, the kitchen cabinets and
those kinds of things. Those will be very hard to control but I feel that the realm that I'm working in
which is the liquor license establishments is a direct responsibility of our department.
Ms. Yukimura: Right so you have on your upcoming initiatives the
establishment of underage data base for underage data base for multi agency use?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And that's really, really, important for grant writing and
other needs well also for finding out whether we're having any impact by what we're doing right.
Mr. Honma: So what is the status of that? I mean how is this going to
work and who's going to do it? What is the timeline?
Mr. Honma: The project is currently under the offices under the anti drug
office and Theresa has one of her workers there that is specifically responsible for that information
and has started identifying the key agencies to gather that information from like us, KPD, DOE
Care, anyone who comes in contact with alcohol use and are contributing towards that one data base
and as you mentioned. If someone wanted to apply fora (inaudible) grant or (inaudible) grant, they
won't have to go through all the different agencies to try and get what kind of information you have
everything will be centralized.
Ms. Yukimura: That's excellent so who in the offices do you know?
Mr. Honma: Brenda or the new hire Rebecca Smith.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Honma: I think she's the one that took over.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so you're the role of your office in this project is
primarily to supply data?
Mr. Honma: Yes and coordinate and help them identify .other sources of
potential data that could contribute to a sound air base.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, I think that's all I have.
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.10
Mr. Rapozo:
Thank you. Mr. Kualii.
KIPUKAI KUALII: Piggy backing on what councilmember Rapozo and what
councilmember Chang talked about regarding the hiring. I think we should consider that because
these are positions with so much public contact that we should look at measuring qualified
applicants on familiarity with local community and current social challenges and also cultural
awareness and sensitivity. Those would be two factors that if you determine them scored I think it
would help and you would see that the local and the people that have familiarity here would score
higher. I am curious to know if the civil service hiring process that you have to follow allows for
measurements on some of those factors?
Mr. Honma: No the only bonus points that we were able to give an
applicant was veteran's preference points.
Mr. Kualii: And my second question sort of piggy backing on
councilmember Nakamura's points was to just have a little more detail on what you said as far as
revenues and. the annual license fee. You said and I think you mentioned there were categories and I
heard you say restaurants and retail and in both cases it was 480 dollars?
Mr. Honma: Yes and a wholesale licensee for example is twelve hundred
dollars for the year.
Mr. Kualii: Wholesale is twelve hundred?
Mr. Honma: Yes and I can forward you the breakdown from our
Mr. Kualii: I would appreciate that so like a hotel would be under what
category?
Mr. Honma: They have their own category of license they would be...
Mr. Kualii: What is the rate?
Mr. Honma: Off the top of my head I believe it's also 12 hundred I'm not
sure.
Mr. Kualii: Well I will see it when you provide it.
Mr. Honma: We have sixteen classes of license.
Mr. Kuala: Sixteen okay. And then on the second piece where you said
it's basically a percentage of the gross liquor sales by licensees?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Mr. Kualii: So you said smaller and hotel and two hundred fifty thousand
but they all have the same percentage rate is that what you're getting at?
Mr. Honma: Yes so...
Mr. Kualii: And what is that percentage rate?
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.ll
Mr. Honma: It has varied from year to year but traditionally it has been
below one percent of the gross liquor sales.
Mr. Kualii: Traditionally below one percent?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Mr. Kualii: So when you say it varies from year to year, how is it
determined each year?
Mr. Honma: On the total gross liquor sales combined for each of the
licensees categories. The previous year was eighty five million and it dropped down to eighty three
million.
Mr. Kualii: No that percentage that is one percent? Is there a body that
determines what that percentage is?
Mr. Honma: We have a formula that is used all four of the counties on
assessing the percentage for each of the license establishments.
Mr. Kualii: Okay.
Mr. Honma: Each Island based on its budget and its total gross liquor
sales will have a different figure but the formula is the same.
Mr. Kualii: Can you provide that information.
Mr. Honma: Sure.
Mr. Kualii: I would be interested to see what that formula came out with
for like the last five years or so.
Mr. Honma: Okay.
Mr. Kualii: And then you made the statement that your department is
fully supported by two hundred licensees and that the balances by the end of the year would have to
go back to the licensees?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Mr. Kualii: So were there any balances returned to the licensees in the
past five years and if so how much?
Mr. Honma: Yes and It varies from year to year depending on how much
we restrict in spending and those kinds of things.
Mr. Kualii: Can I have that information to as far as what was returned to
the licensees over the last five years?
Mr. Honma: Okay.
Mr. Kualii: Perhaps the last thing and its piggy backing into that. So how
you operate is determined by Legislative decisions? I mean you said this 10 percent of fines collected
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.12
is what you can or allowed to be used for alcohol prevention for some of these youth programs. Is
there another way to use more money towards important programs that the county is doing or
supporting?
Mr. Honma: We could depending on which area of the statutory
requirements. If for example the fine money comes from section 281-17 which I believe comes
through Ms. Yukimura, so in order to amend that to change that you have to go through the
Legislature.
Mr. Kualii: So it is the Leg? See because I'm curious if we're collecting
monies and if we're returning it. We still have such a large problem in the community with teenage
drinking or whatever I think it would be in the public's best interest to utilize those monies to
address the problem. I think perhaps we could get the legislature to support that as well. It's for our
families, it's for our kids. It's for our community so I just kind of curious to know the mechanism and
I appreciate your patience with the new guy trying to figure it all out.
Mr. Honma: When we're supporting the bill we did get opposition from the
licensee and their primary concern was that if we were going to have access to the fine monies for
other purposes as opposed to the previous statue, that the fine monies could only be used to educate
the commission, commission employees and licensees to provide educational information for them.
But opening it up to public education the licensee were concerned that with that avenue now open,
would we in turn go out and start issuing more citations as opposed to warnings and having larger
fines to build our pot if you will and that was their primary concern so it was trying to find the
balance.
Mr. Kualii: I'm not necessarily talking about fines I'm just talking about
the annual license fee or the annual gross liquor sales and it might just be I'm dreaming but I just
want the information. Thank you.
Mr. Honma: Point well taken.
Mr. Rapozo: The limitation the ten percent limitation only pertains to
fines not licenses right?
Mr. Honma: No.
Mr. Rapozo: And your fines you said was only like forty eight thousand
dollars?
Mr. Honma: Again it varies from year to year.
Mr. Rapozo: Right so I think what Mr. Kualii and I agree with that is the
licensee money that gets returned not the fine money.
Mr. Honma: No., no so it's a bigger chunk your fine or the license pool is a
lot larger than your fine pool so there is a lot of opportunity for public education through that money
and not the fine money. Councilmember Nakamura, oh I'm sorry go ahead.
Mr. Honma: There again by statue we are required to return any access
funds at the end of the fiscal year. It would require a statutory amendment to section 281 that would
allow for greater use or expanded use of that money, if you will and maybe just put in public
education as a line item.
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.13
Mr. Rapozo: So on the licensee money the licensee fees, there is a
limitation on that as well? You cannot use that for public education?
Mr. Honma: There's no it's not either allowed or prohibited let me put it
that way.
Mr. Rapozo:. Right so what are you restricted to use that money for?
Mr. Honma: Department operations.
Mr. Rapozo: Which could be public education?
Mr. Honma: Could be.
Mr. Rapozo: Yeah I would think so I don't think it's prohibited, I don't
think it's prohibited at all.
Mr. Honma: Again it's governed by section 281 as far as what I can use the
license use monies for.
Mr. Rapozo: Ok, Ms Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: It's so funny because the questions that Councilmembers
Nakamura and Kualii are asking, I've been asking for like 30 years and I think Mr. Honma will
remember. I've been trying to figure out how you can use these monies for drug prevention. There is
a theoretical line between taxes and fees and fees are suppose to be for operations although
councilmember Rapozo's idea that part of the operations will be education is a good one except if you
want to use it for education by others, besides the commission than it starts getting a little more
vague. But this leads me to ask you the question that the Governors proposing an increase in liquor
taxes, do you folks have or you're Commission Department has a position on those taxes that you've
taken?
Mr. Honma: No.
Ms. Yukimura: Do you know or will you be affected by those higher taxes
either be affected by those higher taxes either negatively or positively or neutrally?
Mr. Honma: Collaterally we probably could under the assumption that
alcoholic beverages are more expensive licensees will in turn be selling less either through hotels or
retail which in turn will reduce the total gross liquor sales and then in turn will reduce the total
amount that...
Ms. Yukimura: So is there evidence that increase in taxes actually affects
liquor sales?
Mr. Honma: Not necessarily but I would suppose that the level of increase
their talking about this year is pretty substantial. Normally you would see a five percent/ten percent
increase but they've been (inaudible) our numbers of 35-50 percent depending on the category of
alcohol whether its beer or wine or spirits which is hard liquor.
Ms. Yukimura: Does that begin to approach tobacco taxes because I have no
idea what tobacco taxes are?
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.14
Mr. Honma: I don't know but I think I saw something where 60 percent of
the cost of an alcoholic beverage is in taxes alone. Whether it's collected at the Federal level or the
State level through the wholesale tax and then down at the 4 percent GE level. I believe cigarettes
are something close to that and how much a pack of cigarettes is actually in taxes alone.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so I didn't think to ask Mr. Hirata yesterday who spoke
on behalf of the Governor about the Governors proposed reduction budget balancing process but it
seems to me that there was some thought about using the liquor tax money for offsetting the impacts
of liquor on the society which is what we're all thinking about too. Was there or are you aware that
that's part of the plan?
Mr. Honma: Again I haven't kept up with the Legislation so much but I
guess from my perspective the assumption is I don't believe they would specifically identify the
liquor tax it would go into the general fund which would shift the responsibilities from department of
health being able to use that money and the general fund is just one big pot for them and the more
you throw in the less you can...
Ms. Yukimura: Yes okay and what you're saying is it's likely that they will
just follow the general budgeting process which is all monies go into the general fund and then are
allocated by legislative and gubernatorial action?
Mr. Honma: Unless it contains specifically in the legislative...
Ms. Yukimura: Unless it's earmarked?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Like the legacy land monies.
Mr. Honma: Like the gas tax or fuel tax.
Ms. Yukimura: For the highway funds, okay, alright thank you very much.
Mr. Rapozo: Any other questions for... I just had one on your submittal of
your questions or answers did they contain the final dispositions of the cases that you've had in your
report?
Mr. Honma:
Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: The other question I have is the licensee fees they pay based
on its self reporting right?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: Do we audit or do we do random audits, do we check to make
sure that you know what they reporting to the county are the same as what they're reporting to the
State?
Mr. Honma: From time to time we do but what we do more is internally by
comparing the annual sales to see if all of a sudden there's a tremendous drop. If you've been
reporting annually about let's say a hundred thousand dollars and then one year now it's only fifty
thousand than that would trigger a red flag for us that would initiate an audit.
April 19, 2011
Liquor Dept. (Call Backs) p.15
Mr. Rapozo: Okay but other than that you don't any routine audits?
Mr. Honma: No. Not unless we get some complaints or some information.
Mr. Rapozo: What if you get a request from council to do x amount of
random audits just to make sure that in fact... do you guys get copies of tax returns as well?
Mr. Honma: No.
Mr. Rapozo: Are you authorized to get tax returns from the licensees?
Mr. Honma: No.
Mr. Rapozo: To compare? I just want to make sure that what they're
reporting to you the County is what there reporting to the State. I want to make sure that they're
reporting the actual numbers and not just submitting.
Mr. Honma; When they do submit their gross GE tax I don't know if they
break it out as opposed to lumping together their food and beverage sales.
Mr. Rapozo: I think GE they charge a separate liquor tax right for GE?
I believe liquor might be separate.
Mr. Honma: Generally how we would conduct the audit is we would
request invoices from the wholesalers and then there is a formula to calculate you know one bottle of
beer if you buy it for a dollar you sell it for three and then we can extrapolate those numbers out.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay but that only occurs if you have a red flag?
Mr. Honma: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: You don't do random audits?
Mr. Honma: No.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay any other questions? If not thank you very much sir.
Mr. Honma: Okay I will follow up with the responses.
Ms. Yukimura: - Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: Okay just for the staff I will be or like to submit a
communication over to Civil Service regarding the hiring practices and hiring out of State candidates
over qualified local residents. I think it's probably not a good idea but if it's illegal to do so I just
want to hear it from civil service, so thank you. With that we will take a 5 minute recess and we'll
reconvene at 10 a.m. for the prosecutor's office. Thank you.
There being no objections, the budget reviews recessed at 9:53 a.m.
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.l
The departmental budget review reconvened on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 10:33 a.m., and proceeded
as follows:
Councilmember Rapozo was noted excused.
OFF_I_CE OF THE PROSECUTING ATTORNEY
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much we're back from recess and on that
note, we have the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney and her team here. Shaylene welcome and
thank you for giving us a few new minutes and I will turn the floor over to you for your presentation.
SHAYLENE ISERI CARVALHO, PROSECUTING ATTORNEY: Thank you and good
morning Council Chair Furfaro and the rest of the Council members. Thank you for the opportunity
to provide you with some over sight and insight into the operations of our office. We have a rather
lengthily presentation as we wanted to ensure that the county council was given all of the
opportunity to ask us questions as well as provide you everything in writing. We have provided to
you and the rest of the audience an 89-slide presentation as well as a narrative that consists of 26
pages. We have approximately over a hundred pages of documentation that we have provided for
your approval and again we are free to answer any of the questions you may have. During the
presentation as well as after the presentation and I would also like to introduce my first Deputy
Jake Delaplane, who is present here and will be assisting with the presentation as well as my second
deputy Lauren McDowell, who is also present on my left side who will be doing a portion of the
presentation. Again, if you have any questions that you want to ask of any of us we're more than
happy to answer your questions. I would note that we did receive a memorandum from the Council
Chair yesterday that reflected 6 questions and what I will do because those questions came after the
preparation of our slides we will address those questions individually after the presentation.
Mr. Furfaro: That's fine and thank you so much.
Ms. Carvalho: All right and without further adieu, we will begin with our
presentation thank you. Is that good B.C.? Okay, thank you. When I was inaugurated back in
December of 2008, we came up with a theme of our office and our office has got in principal in our
operations as "Pono Kaulike" which is equal rights and justice for all. We immediately set up our
goals and our mission for the term 2008-2012 that we would zealously protect the rights of victims,
strive to promote the fair and partial and expeditious pursuit of justice, partner with law
enforcement to ensure the safety of our neighborhoods and actively engaged the community in the
awareness and crime prevention efforts. This gives you an overview of what we expect to provide to
you during this presentation. The structure and role of our office, the achievements, challenges, our
proposed fiscal year 2012 budget, any new programs and initiatives and our, vision for the future.
Our authority to prosecute cases comes under the county charter and in essence it states that it is
the prosecuting attorney that is responsible to handle and prosecute all cases on behalf of the people
which is why when we come in on cases it's the State of Hawaii versus the defendant. The
prosecuting attorney's office has the sole responsibility for prosecuting criminal cases and giving
advice regarding criminal-cases. This is solely within the domain of the prosecuting attorney and
there has been some confusion sometimes with the public and just for clarification purposes we have
set out the differences between the Prosecuting attorney's Office versus the County Attorney. The
County Attorney is responsible solely for giving legal advice to county agencies and handles solely
civil matters related to county business. It has absolutely no jurisdiction over any of the criminal
laws or criminal advice to any of the agencies. You will see later in the presentation that we received
a volume of calls from our own county agencies, whether it may be the Planning Department, the
Parks Department, Liquor Commission, etc... regarding the enforcement of criminal laws so
definitely within the agencies they are fully aware that the sole person responsible for giving advice
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.2
to the agencies of the county as well as the public regarding criminal laws rest solely with the
prosecuting attorney's office.
Based on the charter we have absolutely no authority to hire special council except if there is
an approval where there is a conflict case otherwise we handle all of the cases. This differs again
form the county attorney's office who has the opportunity to hire special council when they have
complex litigation. There is also what is very important to distinguish between the prosecuting
attorney's office and the county attorney's office is that the burden of proof is different. What this
means is that in a civil case where the penalties can only be monetary damages the burden of proof
in a civil case handled by a county attorney that represents the county is preponderance of the
evidence which means more probable than not. If the person they feel is responsible more likely
than not, the county will win. This is very different from the burden of proof in a criminal case
because if a jury found that a defendant was probably guilty they would have to come back and find
the defendant not guilty. The standard of proof that is required in a criminal case is much, much,
higher scholars have noted it to be in the 90 percentile although you cannot qualify what reasonable
doubt is, it definitely is between probably guilty and you have a standard called clear and convincing
evidence and then you have another standard which is the ones that the prosecutors are bound by
which is proof beyond a reasonable doubt which is again a very, very high burden of proof. This will
also signify the difference in the type of arrest that are being made and when you have the police
officers out on an arrest they can arrest with a burden of probable cause meaning if they were
probably guilty or not. That is sufficient for an arrest but is insufficient for a conviction by a
prosecutor and again therein lays the difference in the burden of proof and the differences in the
types of duties that are allocated with respect to the police department, our office, and the county
attorney's office.
We have engaged in a management of cases deemed vertical prosecution, this is a term that
is used across the country in prosecuting attorney's office. It is however a type of management style
that not much prosecuting attorney's office are able to use because it requires a lot of staff and what
that means is vertical prosecution means that each prosecutor is assigned to a specific type of case
where that one attorney handles the case from inception meaning from the very beginning when the
case come into our office from the police department all the way through a change of plea or a trail
and then to sentencing and then even at the parole hearing. That would be handled by one attorney
and the difference in vertical prosecution as opposed to horizontal is that horizontal is where you
have attorneys that handle a case based upon the courtroom. Attorneys are assigned to the
courtroom and whatever courtroom you're assigned to or whatever case that comes there at that day
is what you handle. This allows a lot of frustration for victims because they don't know who the
attorney is going to be handling the case at any given time, and by having this vertical prosecution
model in place in our office we have been able to provide a much higher level of service to the victims
because they know absolutely which attorney is going to be handing that case, which legal clerk is
going to be handling that case and also which victim witness counselor is assigned to that persons
case. It resolves in continuity of the case, a much higher convictions and especially these attorneys,
victim witness counselors as well as legal (inaudible) gets very specialized in the unit that they are
assigned. These are the units that we have currently in our office. We have a traffic safety unit that
handles driving without license, no fault type of offences, misdemeanor criminal cases and we have a
special attorney that is assigned to handle all, and this is the term OViJII that they currently use
but this is what most people refer to as your dui prosecutor. We have a juvenile family division that
handles all juvenile cases which are confidential; we have a domestic violence unit, a crimes against
person unit, a property crimes unit, drugs offences, sex assaults, and career criminals.
We also have a specialized applet section that handles appeals and forfeitures cases.
Basically how a case progresses through our office is there is an arrest and after the arrest by the
police department a report is delivered to our office and we have previously discussed with other
council members about the time constraints that is imposed on a prosecutor's office that if it's an
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.3
arrest and the person is unable to bail, on that case we would have to prepare a report with the
police officers within 48 hours of that persons arrest. We would screen the case meaning we would
determine what would be the appropriate criminal charges and then we would set up the case fox an
arraignment and again this has to be done within the next business day of the 48 hours. After the
arraignment there are hearings that are set and a hearing could be a preliminary hearing, a grand
jury indictment or we can also charge by felony information charging and all of those determine
again whether there is probable cause for a person do be arrested and to be held and detained in
custody. Once the person is arraigned from that date you have 180 days in order to bring that case
to trial. A 180 days would apply whether that case was a DUI case or whether it was a murder trial,
we are all still bound by the 180-day time imposition, and at last it is waived by the defendant.
During that time we have plea negotiations, sometimes we have motions and hearings to suppress or
dismiss ultimately if the hearings or motions are not dispositive then the defendant has an option to
seek trial. Atrial proceeding may be had and if that person is found guilty then that person is
sentenced before a judge. Once that person is sentenced they have an opportunity within 30 days of
that sentencing in filing an appeal and if they do not file an appeal then and they are sentenced to
the maximum term and in an open term and sent to the department of public safety then there is a
parole hearing. If they are sentenced to probation then they become under the jurisdiction of the
adult probation division who monitors their compliance while on probation. We have built a huge
felony section of specialized attorneys and when we look at as I indicated we have a sex assault
attorney, we have one that does offences against person and we have one that does career criminals,
another one that specializes in drugs, and another one that specializes in property crimes. Our
second deputy Lauren McDowell who is present here has extensive experience and she came highly
recommended by Judge Valenciano who she had clerked previously with. She has been highly
successful in her property crimes and in fact have won all her jury trial cases and her statistics will
be coming up shortly.
We have Sam Jajich who handles all of the drug cases who has been practicing law since he
graduated second in his class in 1998; with a 3.82 GPA he has clerked for Judge Nakea as well as
Judge Masuoka. He also has been in solo practice and you'll see his accomplishments when his
statistics come up. I spoke to you about Lisa Arin, Lisa Arin has practiced as a defense attorney as
well as a prosecutor, she has over 14 years of experience in criminal cases having handled murder
trials, capitol murder trials, sex assaults and any other type of cases both in California as well as
Hawaii and is licensed in both districts. Lauren is also licensed to practice in Boston in
Massachusettes. We also have Melinda Mendes who came to us a graduate of Kahuku High School
and Richardson School of Law. She also has practiced on Maui as well as Arizona and Oahu as a
prosecuting attorney and as a United States Attorney and as well as a public defender's office. She
has done over a hundred jury trials and has extensive experience almost 20 years of experience in
prosecuting criminal cases. We also have Jake Delaplane who is present here who has handled
capital murder cases and is licensed to practice in Alabama as well as Hawaii and then myself who
has practiced law since 1989, have done extensive trials and murder cases as well as sexual assault
which I specialized in for four years. I have just an impressive team that I'm extremely proud of
their accomplishments and you will also be proud of their accomplishments when you see the
successful convictions that they've been able to achieve. We have despite the fact that we have been
successful in achieving these conviction rates it is almost impossible to sustain this level of
prosecution with the amount of case loads that each attorney handles while they are experienced
which has assisted at the office tremendously it is definitely something that we need to address as it
has been before I came in over a decade before there has been any change in the attorney staff and
you will see the amount of cases that they handle that's coming up. We seeing more serious offences
offenders and they are receiving a lot more serious penalties because- of the experience of the
attorneys that are prosecuting these cases and the time and dedication to their victims. We have
streamline office operations when we first began the office, there were actually clerks that were still
using typewriters and that was just as recent as two years ago typing out subpoenas. This made it
extremely difficult for them to operate. We process thousands of subpoenas in any given year so we
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Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.4
needed to develop certain types of forms which we were able to do and in fact what has been an
average of what took them 3 hours to do they now are doing in a half hour to an hour to do. We have
utilized a lot of opportunities for volunteer services, we have had Lauren Chun who is currently at
UCLA Law School that got a full scholarship and she did excellent work almost over a 6 month time
period and she worked for free. We had Tyson Chihara whose family is a bunch of attorneys and
wanted to come to come and work for our office and he worked thousands of hours for free for our
office. We have also had another person who is licensed in another jurisdiction, Cummings that
ended up getting a job in Denver that worked hundreds of hours for free in making our office operate
a lot more efficiently and at the same time giving them the opportunity to add us to their resume.
We are again looking at hiring or I guess it's not hiring but having volunteer services again at our
office this upcoming summer session when these students get out of school, it's an extremely
wonderful success with our recruitment in getting volunteer services especially for the kids that
were born and raised here on Kauai. There has been (inaudible) partnership with law enforcement
agencies and the various community groups again will discuss this more thoroughly as we go
through the presentation. Just to highlight a few high profile cases that had occurred over this past
year and a lot of times what you see in the newspaper is one case and during that week in any given
week when we talk about felony cases we handle 20-40 cases in any given week.
This is just a mere snapshot as opposed to a video of the amount of work that goes into each
deputy prosecutors or myself each day that we handle or prosecute cases. We had the recent murder
conviction of Joseph Hoapili which I handled. He came in and pleads guilty which was a wonderful
thing for the families because this involved a domestic violence where Joseph Hoapili had stabbed
his wife 18 times in her heart while she lay sleeping in front of her son. It was a brutal attack and it
was a very difficult case because again it was a husband and wife and so there was a lot of torn
emotions between the families and we were able to discuss with the assistance of the victim witness
personnel as well as the entire office in putting all these efforts in making sure that the family was
ensured that justice was served. He came in pled guilty and saved the State and the County a ton of
money because this trial would have taken at least a month in order to do. It saved all the times for
the witnesses having to wait at court fox them to testify and so a conviction on someone coming in
and pleading straight up guilty is a great achievement for the County. We went to the parole board
and I testified at the parole board hearing and he got a lengthily sentence having to sexve 30 years
before his release and him being almost 50 years old that is pretty much a life sentence. I also
prosecuted this sex assault case where a tourist from Canada who had arrived on the Island for a
day and a half before she was brutally kidnapped and assaulted sexually assaulted down at marine
camp. This happened over 6 years ago and he appealed his case and unfortunately the Supreme
Court granted the appeal so he was retried 6 years later and I ended up prosecuting this case along
with Lisa Arin and he was convicted of all counts. He was given a sentence of two 20 year
consecutive terms amounting to 40 years and he is currently awaiting his parole hearing.
Nelson Olshefski was handled by Lisa Arin and this was a case where he had sexually assaulted a
underage victim and this again was a great achievement because it resulted in the highest penalty
of 20 years mandatory open term where we did not have to put the victim on the stand and have her
having to suffer through the trauma of reliving a horrific event.
Kenneth Bray also got 10 years maximum term for multiple sex assault in the second degree
charges and he also pled to gun charges again saving the trauma of having a victim come in to testify
against the defendant while the person is in court was a verdict or a disposition that was very
pleasing to the victim. Eaton Rivera involved a sexual assault of a child that was 6 years to 8 years
and the sex assault when on for a period of two years and he was also one that came in and I
handled this case as well and he pled to multiple sexual assault in the second degree charges
resulting in a 10 year open term. Taekyu U was a cased handled by Lauren and then by
John Murphy. Taekyu U was a shooting that occurred a drive by shooting that occurred on around
in Kapa`a McDonalds during business hours. He came in and his attorney was Michael Greene and
he also pled to his charges resulting in a 20 year open term. Roderick Bagaoisan was also one with
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.5
firearms and drugs and he was also a career criminal and he was sentenced to a full maximum open
10 year term. Career criminal Kevin Louis, his currently awaiting sentencing and this was a case
that there were multiple parties involved that went up to Kokee and stole numerous Koa trees and
was a case that the DLNR had investigated and brought to our office and we were able to get
convictions after a jury trial on Kevin Louis and the co-defendant Dominic Vidinha also
was convicted for the theft of the valuable Koa trees. He is currently awaiting sentencing. David
Maainauopu got 10 years and Joby Pia had multiple prison terms, five years here he was also being
prosecuted federally. You'll see that in a lot of these drug cases we work extensively with the DA as
well as the US Attorney's Office and if we can get better sentences over on the federal level we
usually transfer our higher publicity cases to the Feds. John Figueroa was one with multiple, Class
A felony amounts of ice and we sent his case to the feds and he was sentenced to 20 years.
Zahn Bandmann is pending sentencing and his looking at 10 years to life again for meth possession
and trafficking. The property crimes were Laurens so I will have her discussed these.
LAUREN MCDOWELL: Property crimes Timothy Buechler was found guilty after a
jury trial and he was sentenced tot consecutive 5 years sentences. Brad Kubish and Li'i Cook both
accepted plea offers and were sentenced to 5 years. Brad Kubish was sentenced after his parole
hearing and it was determined that he will serve the full 5 years and Tyson Yadao also accepted a
plea offer and was sentenced to 10 years.
Ms. Carvalho: These cases were highly publicized in the paper and so I think
there was some information that the public had and so we highlighted a few of the cases that people
had already received information about but may not have known about the sentences that they
received. District Court stats are humongous and there is no way to explain if you ever go down to
district court you would see on any given day a hundred people waiting outside for their hearing.
They are on the benches, they're on the floors, they're some inside the court room and then they call
the second half of group of people to go inside the courtroom and then they call the second half of
group of people on the floors, they're some inside the court room and then they call the second half of
group of people to go inside the courtroom and then they call the second half of group of people to go
once the first half of people is done. A ton of District Court cases and when we discuss District Court
we're talking about cases that involve traffic cases as well as misdemeanor or petty misdemeanor
type case and over twenty thousand cases just on Kauai that our office handles. We have discussed
opportunities that Lauren will be going over with you about you about ways we have strategized to
try to reduce the amount of cases that are being processed. When you come to court and I don't know
if any of you have ever been in court but usually when a person comes to court there's at least 4
appearance dates. The person comes in and they plead not guilty, they are served with a complaint
and they are referred to a public defender. They come back into to court the second time to
determine if they have a public defender and if they want to or if it's a misdemeanor trail, a jury
trial, or a bench trial which is one that is held before a judge. Once they determine that than there's
a cop or trial setting date that is being set, then they are coming back for a fourth time and they
determine whether they want to change their plea to guilty or whether they want to maintain their
innocence and plead not guilty. If they plead not guilty the sentencing may happen at a next hearing
so we are now down at .that fifth time that the dependent needs to appear on any given case so
there's a lot of appearances, multiple appearances on any given case so when you multiply that 20
thousand by the amount of times that a person has to come to court you're talking about a lot of
hearing dates.
Again we have looked into initiatives to try to reduce the caseloads that are being handled in
District Court as well as trying to make it more beneficial to the community to handle these cases in
the community as opposed to through the Judiciary. Look at the amount of cases that we've handled
before I came into office there was six thousand five hundred ninety five, again district criminal
cases are non traffic, and these are the petty type of thefts and criminal property damages, assault
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.6
cases, dangerous dogs, planning violations. These are the case loads we are talking about the types
of cases we have gone up against. Yes?
NADINE NAKAMURA: What do you attribute this large increase in?
Ms. Carvalho: One is the economy. In every jurisdiction I sit on the Hawaii
Prosecuting Attorney Association where I'm the President and we discuss this phenomena but it
always gaes through whenever the economy goes down you will see a spike in the increase of cases
automatically. There was also in 08/09 a large increase due to the back log of cases that hadn't been
filed and so that was again a factor in the increase in numbers but definitely the economy plays a
huge role in the amount of cases that come in through the police department and then they refer it to
us to prosecute. Just in the District Court cases you're talking about three thousand three hundred
cases just in a two year period of an increase and that's an increase of thirty five percent. Again
we're again talking about three thousand type cases. The juvenile case statistics, juvenile cases in
07 and 08 again this was pre- my inauguration and they had sixteen hundred cases after again with
the economy and the various other factors that we'll discuss later you see a huge increase in the
amount of Juvenile crime. From sixteen hundred cases to forty three hundred that's an increase of a
hundred sixty five percent. There has been a lot of I think increase in the schools and one because I
think there's officers in the schools now and so I think that accessibility in having an officer there a
lot of times the teachers will depend on the officers to get the child off the property or get them in
detention. Yes?
TIM BYNUM: How many defendants do four thousand cases represent?
Ms. Carvalho; Four thousand has four thousand defendants.
Mr. Bynum: Four thousand separate individual people?
Ms. Carvalho: Well when a person comes in and let's say in January and
then they come in December that's going to be a separate case even though it may be the same
person. But they are one case and when we talk about the statistics and I mentioned earlier about
how we keep statistics it is one person per case even though each case you can have five or six
counts. We had discussed this where there is a burg of a school for example a person goes on campus
and breaks into a classroom, so he trespasses on campus that may be a criminal trespass and then
he breaks into the building which is a burglary in the second degree and then he breaks a window
while he broke into and broke a lock that's a criminal property damage in the fourth degree and
while in the building he stole a computer and stole other items that's a theft in the second degree or
theft in the fourth degree. So from each one of these you may have five, six, ten twenty or multiple
counts but it's only counted as one.
Mr. Bynum: That answers my question thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: I do have another question? It's possible well certainly the
number of individuals causing the cases are fewer then the cases because like you said one
individual might have generate several cases.
Ms. Carvalho: Oh yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Do you know how many individuals that represents?
Ms. Carvalho: You know on the juvenile cases it's real difficult because their
paper work is confidential so we don't actually have the numbers of repeat juveniles. I see a lot
because I've been handling juvenile court for the last month and will be handling it because I see this
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Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.7
trend as being very disturbing and there has to be some intervention. I've actually taken on the role
of handling all of these juvenile cases to see why there are so many cases and we've actually had
meetings and trainings with the Vice Principals and the Principals because of this. A lot of it I see
again there's a lot tied to the economy I believe and I see a lot more thefts, I mean we see thefts of
shoes, we see thefts of candy from people's back packs. While people would say that is a crime and is
being prosecuted we are handling of course the sentencing and the depositions differently but you do
see things that catch your eye. There are a lot of issues that are going on here, there's a lot of social
issues as far as the financial (inaudible)that people are facing because there's a lot of peer pressure
and you want to have nice shoes and you want to... and you know people are hungry and people are
stealing food.
Ms. Yukimura: Also it reflects the inability of the institutions that deal with
juveniles to handle it in house.
Ms. Carvalho: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: There probably calling out the police and prosecutor more
often because they are not able to handle it themselves and there are ways to handle it but we could
get into complex things.
Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me just for a second if I kind of remember. I would
like to see if we can finish this power point presentation first we are on page 7 of 29 slides. I could
say since we started late it is very possible. that we'll take up the lunch time to see this slide
presentation. We obviously need to call the Clerk to order at 1:00 p.m. and then put him in recess so
that we can continue at 1:OOp.m. On the narrative and Q&A, Is that acceptable to you?
Ms. Carvalho: Yes definitely thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay let's go through the whole cycle.
Ms. Carvalho: These are our felony case statistics and felony cases would
mean all the circuit level and the attorneys that I have discussed with you handling all those types of
cases anywhere from murder to property crimes that consist of taking items that are over three
hundred dollars or breaking into residences etc... So when you look at a thousand cases to when we
see the economy going down there's a definite increase and we're talking just about the two years
that I've been in office. The felony cases for the last fiscal year show an increase of six hundred cases
which is an increase of fifty four percent. Definitely we see the trend and it transcends all different
types of crime whether it is a petty crime by adults which is your district court criminals or if you
have your juvenile crime sand then you have your felony case statistics. Property crimes this is
Lauren's specialized unit, there were 72 percent that came in and automatically pled guilty and
again the benefit of having an experienced attorney handling these types of cases means that you
will get a lot of people more people pleading guilty. We have here the terms dismiss without
prejudice and dismissed with prejudice. Dismiss without prejudice or cases that we have discussed
where the judge allows us to re-file the cases because we have not located the witnesses and so you
know in property crimes we have a lot of victims that are tourist and they done want to come back.
Some of them are not even within the continental US, in fact they are from other countries, and so if
the opportunity comes back that they do come back that they do come back to our Island the judge
allows us within the statue of limitations to re-file charges on these matters. There was a trial
which was the (inaudible) trial which he was found guilty and so her conviction rate was 99% of all
the cases that she's handled. Crystal meth of course has been a huge problem on the Island for the
past decade and we can see a trend in the drug usage of what use to be almost 99 % meth use. We
are seeing that transform into prescription weds which seems to be the new drug of choice. Only
currently now we are tracking those prescription drug cases but the meth cases which we've been
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.8
tracking we received a grant for a person to prosecute meth trafficking cases a portion of their
salary. Eighty two percent of those cases they came in and pled guilty and again saving the county
resources, State resources, Judiciary resources, the Prosecutors resources, the Police department's
resources and also the Civilians that may be involved. There was a trial and he was found guilty,
there was an acquittal one acquittal and so he's conviction rate and this was (Inaudible) was 98
percent. Other drug crimes and this would be like your cocaine, your heroin and some of it includes
the prescription drugs like I said from the next fiscal year we are tracking the prescription drug uses
because we see that emergent trend but for other drug crimes that did not include crystal meth 77
percent came in and pled guilty to those offenses. Again much kudos goes to our Kauai Police
Department, especially the Vice unit who has an assembled a very professional team that consults
with us on a daily weekly basis whenever there's a big case that's coming up. The police department
also has input into the type of sentence that we advocate for and this allows for better collaboration
on these types of cases.
We see that with the other drug crimes Sam has achieved a hundred percent conviction rate.
Career criminals are one that is deemed to be on probation or parole at the time they commit a new
offence and that is the factor that makes that person a career criminal. In these cases all of the time
they are looking at mandatory penalties and automatic open jail terms and therefore these are the
most heinous criminals and they usually do not have any sort of particularity as to the crime that
they commit. We have sex offenders coming in and committing drug offences, committing firearms
offences, committing property offences. They are indiscriminant at to the type of crime they commit
and we had with John Murphy's cases they pled guilty 78% and also because they are looking at
mandatory time a lot of these cases go to trial and I believe there were two cases he took to trial and
his conviction rate was 97 percent. Lisa Arin has handled the sex assault cases in addition to
myself, there was one acquittal by trial, one guilty which was the Mundon case and out of all those
cases 76 percent came in and pled guilty or no contest.That is a totally awesome rate and again it
saves the victim from being victimized over again by having to testify in front of a perpetrator in an
intimidating environment like a courthouse which is public. So having the ability of the experience
of Lisa having almost 20 years of experience in doing these types of cases had led to a lot of people
coming in and pleading guilty. Her conviction rate which is extremely high if you compare it to any
other jurisdiction is 93 percent. Domestic violence cases again it has been on a rise and these are
difficult to prosecute because a lot of times once the case comes to trial what happens is that the
victim usually wants to recant because the victim has already reunited with the defendant, whether
it be a spouse a boyfriend or any household member and yet we've been able to convince a lot of the
victims to continue to prosecute so that the perpetrators can get anger management counseling. The
counseling that is imposed is a 6 month course which is very intensive and the YWCA does an
excellent job in their anger management, it's a very intensive program where they have individual as
well as group sessions and despite the difficulty of prosecuting these cases 81 percent of those came
in and pleaded guilty or no contest.
There were trials and three percent were guilty and one percent was an acquittal. Dismissed
without prejudice is again why you would have this high number of fourteen percent is because a lot
of the victims avoid service. When you cannot serve these victims you cannot simply just introduce
the police report as evidence as the police report is not evidence, you need a witness to actually come
to court to testify under oath, and that is one that is guarantee to the defendant by the sixth
amendment right to confrontation. Without the victim and they give us only so much of a period of
time in order to serve the victim the Judge will dismiss the case without prejudice and despite this
again we have been able to achieve a 98 percent conviction rate. Our. relationship with the police
department is simply excellent. The detectives meet with us on a weekly basis and on some serious
cases on a daily basis. You can come in on any given day of the week into our office and you will see
a parade of officers walking in and out to get assistance in the types of cases they are working on and
getting assistance for search warrants, 48 hour packets, etc... and we provide advisory assistance
during the phase with respect to laws and elements of offenses and so definitely an excellent
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Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.9
relationship with the police department. We have initiated what we call a cold case unit where we
have a prosecutor who solely works on the cold case and so we have reunited all the cold cases that
had been pending that has not been solved despite the fact that persons. We have heard from the
community as to why are these cases not going anywhere? Well they are and we've been doing a lot
of work on these cases especially in re-interviewing witnesses, looking at the digital evidence,
scientific forensic evidence, sending those kinds of things out to the lab. There has been a lot of
extensive work being done by our office as well as the police department to bring these cases that are
currently unsolved to (inaudible) and hopefully to obtain indictments. We had 2 attempted murders
and one murder in less than a week in December 2010. Both our office as well as the police
department worked 24/7 in order to get these cases through the Judicial system definitely by having
the officers work in collaboration on these serious cases as well as any other case ensures a better
success in convictions as it results in a safer community. As we explained earlier if we did not bring
forth a hearing within 48 hours on the murder case that murder suspect would have gotten released.
We feel very appreciative because the Chief himself as well as several detectives have been
consistently not only verbally how great of a job that they've had but definitely appreciating the fact
and this was detective Miller who came from the traffic safety unit that he was really honored to
have the opportunity to have this kind of collaboration because it had been unprecedented as far as
he had been concerned in the time I believe he had worked over ten years with the Kauai Police
Department. Randy Chon Tim was another detective who sent us this letter and I believe they also
cc the county council about how the morale at the police department. In his nearly 20 years is at an
all time high and that the bond and chemistry between our office and the police department has been
something that he had not experience and that it was an honor to have this kind of relationship.
Again definitely this interaction and constant interaction between the police department as well as
our office has led to a lot of successful convictions that you have seen and definitely that is the model
that works and we will continue to work with that type of model. This was from Chief Perry at the
end of last year a couple of months ago where he sent a special commendation to our office regarding
our efforts in working with the police department. We work with the police department a majority of
the time but we also work with a huge bunch of other agencies that constantly call us and meet with
us regarding cases and enforcement of County laws, Administrative laws, the State HRS Statues.
What we have done because of the interest of a lot of these agencies they have requested training to
be done and in February we held a whole day training where myself and first deputy Jake Delaplane
did a whole overview of the laws that effected these various agencies.
We went through fourth amendment rules and laws and there were a lot of questions and a
lot of them did not have this type of intensive training with respect to the constitutional issues as
well as the different types of laws and the collaboration that all of them can have in making each
other's job easier. We worked with DLNR again they were involved in the theft of the Koa case, the
planning department always sends over the violations and we meet with them and we follow up and
in fact last year we had two persons come in and plead guilty to violations for improper use and both
of those got 30 days in jail. Humane Society we have built an extensive bridge with the Humane
Society and again their efforts in trying to curb the leash law violations as well as well as the
dangerous dog's violations in different types of penalties. We will be coming in jointly with some
changes with Legislation to make their job a lot easier. Parks and the enforcement in parks as they
have provided valuable assistance because a lot of the persons with bench warrants etc... the reason
why the officers can find them is because they are hidden in these parks and so they've been able to
provide us the tools in order to try to get these bench warrants served as well as us providing them
information on how best to serve or how best to site persons who commit offenses in parks. The
Liquor commission we've been asked and have done training when they held their annual convention
here at the Marriott Courtyards. Again going in to the different types of laws and how they interact
with the fire department laws and the types of penalties where we've done stings on juvenile
purchases in bars. We have curbed that and provided a work in conjunction with actually having an
arrest of a person which was the bartender serving minors and that seem to have been a huge
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.10
deterrent to people in ensuring to make sure that they ask for the appropriate identification before
serving any liquor to minors. This is a huge project and was very successful and this was with
Captain Ken Carvalho as well as again working in conjunction with the Mayors program on
underage drinking. Public works we have again worked with the grading violations and have
provided training with respect to their ability to enforce these grading violations and structural type
violations. We work in conjunction with State agencies and the State agencies like the department
of public safety, we work with the Sheriffs department to ensure the transportation and also the
prosecution is quite amazing how many of the offenses that we get are people going through the
security door at the courthouse. Because it's at the judiciary it comes under the jurisdiction of the
department of public safety and we are responsible for prosecuting those cases as well. We provided
training to the probation department as, to how to best testify in cases where there probation officers
are assigned to defendants. We have also worked with the probation department on extradition of
criminals who have been given courtesy supervisions in Out of State and are non compliance Out of
State and having them transferred back here to face the consequences of their actions.
DLNR we've talked extensively about them and the sheriff's department. We also work
collaboratively with the Federal Agencies which is the FBI and the DEA, the federal probationers
this assists us that if we find that a person is being looked. at in a target in a search warrant
regarding drug offenses, The federal rules are a lot stricter than ours and they are able to pull their
probationer off the street immediately even if we don't have probable cause in order to charge that
person with a criminal offense or arrest that person for a criminal offense. We work conjunctively
with the US Probation department in taking off the streets probationers that we feel are not
providing safety in our community. The US Marshalls office, we utilize them to assist us in serving
bench warrants on persons that are no longer on the Island. Postal inspectors assist us in making
sure that they report all of the import and export of drugs through federal or through the mail
system which would be through the UPS Services and Federal Services. The alcohol tobacco and
firearms again working with them if they get a higher penalty because there was a firearm involved
or an alcohol or tobacco involved than will forward that case to the Feds for prosecution as well as
the Secret Service on corruption type cases. We've consulted with them on various types of cases
here on the Island. Local organizations that we work with the YWCA is an extremely excellent
partner that provides crises counseling where we sub-grant part of our federal funds to assist us in
providing that service to sex assault victims. The boys and girls club, Hale Opio, the Mayors anti
drug program which is made up of businesses across the Island where we discuss the initiatives that
the prosecutor's office are doing as well as the police department. Its goal is to provide information
to the hotel's entire etc... as to the operations of both offices. We also do a lot of prevention on how to
give information to residents as well as well as tourist that come and stay at these hotel properties.
The Anti Drug Enforcement Committee which is with Theresa Koki who works with the
underage drinking as well as the anti marijuana bills that we've provided numerous testimony on.
Kauai Juvenile Enforcement Committee is again made up of the Prosecutors Office, the Police
Department and the Department of Education. In these agencies we discuss what is best for the
children and what kind of grants or diversion programs are appropriate to refer juveniles to as
opposed to the court system. Rotary Club we've provided again training with respect to prevention
efforts on identity theft, theft related crimes, how to protect yourself against these types of crimes.
The senior centers was again how to protect against identity theft and the children's justice center
which is a partner where we have all of our sex assault victims do their interviews and provide
services via that agency which is an arm of the judiciary. We partner with State Organizations, the
Hawaii Prosecuting Association which is made up of the four county prosecutors, the law
enforcement council, mediation advisory board which is here on Kauai, the child death review board
where we review all of the child deaths whether it was a SID death or one that was actually reported
as a criminal case. Likewise the domestic violence death review board, whether it's a child or an
adult, Department of Education where we provide training on search and seizures and the types of
offences that warrants criminal prosecution as opposed to non criminal prosecution which is the
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Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.l l
truancy and runaway type cases. The sexual assault response team which is a state organization
made up of all medical professionals as well as the prosecutor's office and the police department
where we have come up with legal medical protocols to provide a standardized process in order to
prosecute and respond to sex assault cases. We have VASK (visitors aloha society of Kauai and it's
made up of the Kauai Visitors Bureau and other victim witness agencies and it provides support for
victims especially tourist or visitors that have come here, whether it be an unattended death or being
a victim of a crime. To provide accommodations and services and to hopefully make their experience
to minimize the negative experience that they had whether it be providing shelter or providing
services or referral for service. Hopefully discussing with them the value of returning to the Island
and not having this experience affect them in not coming back to the Island and so a very important
organization. National organizations that we partner with and consult when we have necessary
cases especially when we had the huge computer crime on-line luring type case recently we have
discussed and held trainings with the Internet crimes against children task force, the national
association of district attorneys a lot of computer forensics institute and especially with our cold case
we are working with the International Association of Cold Case Investigators as well as the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The Judiciary is also a component where despite the fact that most of the cases that are
handled at the judiciary are in the traditional modes of prosecution. We do have diversion programs
which your team court which is run through Hale Opio and that if persons comply with the different
conditions that is imposed by teen court. One of the conditions is usually to serve so much time as a
juror and so they have a specific program that's run by Hale Opio and that program if they complete
they will have their charges in juvenile court dismissed. There is also a juvenile drug court that is in
place as well as an adult drug court where we send first time offenders or non violent offenders to
drug court and if they comply with their conditions their charges get dismissed and I believe most of
the council members here have attended the drug court graduation and they have another one
coming up on April 29th, with a lot of participants who are graduating. Again a great successful
program to divert away from the court and statistics have shown that it cost approximately fifty one
thousand a year to house a prisoner. So to have that prisoner that normally would have gone to
prison and drug court and back into the community working and paying off his restitution is
definitely not only a financial benefit but definitely a great benefit to the society as a whole. We also
have partnered with the community mental health program and we're seeing a lot of this and this
seems to be a trend where we're having a lot of people having what we call duo diagnostic symptoms
where you have a component of drug abuse and you also have this component of mental psychosis.
We have partnered and have I believe fifty five people that have gone through the mental
health diversion program. It's a very extremely successful program, it diverts the mentally ill from
having to be incarcerated by insuring that there is some supervision and compliance with their
medication and as we found once they are put on that track and they follow the terms of being on
this diversion program they become successful. They graduate from this program and in fact we
dismiss their charges if they are in full compliance with their mental health treatment plan. We
have also worked extensively with the Mayors communication team in order to get the press releases
or information out via-single source. That has worked again tremendously to the benefit of the
entire county and as more information gets out they immediately send it out to the media outlets
and they also post it on the Kaua`i.gov website so all of the workings it's up and running and we hope
we will get more staff where we will be able to provide a lot more information so the people are
aware. We are definitely aware that knowledge is power and the more that the people know about
their safety and how to prevent cases or them becoming a victim is something we would like to get
out especially in also seeing what our office does. Sara Blane has done an excellent job in making
numerous phone calls at all hours of the morning to get the information as quickly as possible to the
Garden Island or any other media outlet so that people are informed as quickly as possible as to the
operations whether it is our office or any other county agency. We have developed again with the
theme in mind of knowledge is power developed our website where you can specifically link on
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.12
prosecuting attorney and this is again a new initiative that our office has done and its again a work
in progress but what we want to inform the public is that there's all of this various websites that can
provide you information. Okay so I will just pass this on to Jake as he developed this website.
JAKE DELAPLANE: Essentially, Jake Delaplane first deputy. Essentially what
we were looking to do with our website at least from an initial standpoint was to provide a jumping
off point for people who needed information about their criminal cases. We provided links to the sex
offender registry and on that site it's maintained by the attorney general's office but you can go in
and type in your address and you can search for sex offenders that live within a certain radius of
your house. You can pick from drop down menus and it shows you the pictures it shows you the
addresses and it gives you a brief blurb of about what they were convicted of. Its definitely an
important tool for people living in our community who have concerns that there may be some sex
offenders that are living in or around the areas where their kids are hanging out. We also provided a
link to Hoike which is the criminal case information system for the state. On that website you can
go and search for a criminal case by either criminal number or by the name of the offender and it will
give you all the court minutes up to the minute actually records of the court cases that were going
on. E-Court Kokua, that's traffic case information and its similar to Hoike and it gives you all
information related to traffic cases so that's a very important one that you can see. I know a lot of
people have mentioned to our office lately about the problem with abandoned cars especially out on
the Westside and one way to identify an abandoned vehicle could be to go to E-Court Kokua which is
a public database and it will allow you to enter in the license plate information and if that car has
been cited before than likely it will have the information for the person, at least whoever is on record
for that vehicle. We've provided a link to the Hawaii State Legislature and we've encouraged people
over the past couple of months especially during the Legislative session to visit the website and
provide feedback to some of the bills that are going through our Legislature. There are quite a few
bills that relate to law enforcement and public safety including the marijuana bills and a very
important domestic violence bill that actually looks like it has a pretty good chance of passing this
Legislative session.
We have also provided a link to the Hawaii Victim Compensation Commission which is a
very good resource for individuals that are victims of crime and even if there just a witness of crime
or have had a family member affected by crime it gives them all the information they need to go
forward and get compensation if its applicable in their case. Hawaii Saven, I gave this a little bit of
special recognition because this is one of the most important resources that we linked to our website
and actually its one of the most important resources for both victims and witnesses and community
members who are interested in criminal cases that are going on right now. It's called the
"Saven System" it stands for Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification, and
essentially what it does is anyone who's incarcerated for any kind of offense within the State of
Hawaii and it will give you automatic notification if that persons incarceration status changes. That
means if they are shipped to another prison, if they are released, any change what so ever even if it
comes in the middle of the night this system will notify you either by text message, by cell phone,
home phone, email. It has a wide variety of ways to get in touch with you but it does so immediately
and it's a fantastic system and I can't say enough about it. The issue that we're running into is that
this system was developed using federal funding but the State is now going to have to take over and
it's looking like the money may not be their form the state over the next fiscal year. I know they put
some sort of stop gap measures in place in order to keep this going but I know Shaylene is working
with the HPAA (Hawai`i Prosecuting Attorneys Association) and also our partnership with the law
enforcement council we are looking to find ways for state funding for this important project because
it is something that we don't want to see lapse and we want to continue to have that available for
victims of crime.
Since I mentioned the HPAA I will go ahead and mention that Shaylene was unanimously
elected as President of the HPAA and is going to be serving a 2 year term on that. I know she
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Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.13
mentioned the organization earlier but it consists of the four State Prosecutors so from Kauai,
Honolulu Prosecutor, Maui and the Big Island and then also the US Attorney who's assigned to the
District of Hawaii. The HPAA works on a state level to ensure the safety of our community through
initiatives, awareness initiatives, and legislative activity and provides a unified voice against crime
throughout the State of Hawaii and actually I'm going to let Shaylene take over for that point
because she has a few ideas for the next year.
Ms. Carvalho: Okay so we've been working and everyone knows that the
bills at the State Legislature just last for a period of two years and so you have that opportunity in
order to get your bills through. We are in the process of discussing a whole bunch of bills especially
having to do with the juvenile systems. We partner with the Department of Defense, however the
Department of Defense under the state legislature is not one of the partners that usually are
engaged or recognized by our legislature as one that is out looking for the best interest of the
children. Because we have lost an agency like the Hawaii Youth Service Agency in order to be the
flow through organization for federal funding the department of defense had stepped in and so
there's defiantly that issue of whether or not the Department of Defense can still be that flow
through agency and what happens if we do not have the Department of Defense as the flow through
agency. All of the funding from the Federal level will not be spread out through the State and in fact
had the Department of Defense not stepped in after the furloughs and severance of the Hawaii
Youth Service Department had they not stepped in we would have lost over 1.2 million dollars. We
are very appreciative of the Department of Defense for stepping in however we need to change the
laws in order to list them as an agency in order to accept funding on behalf of State agencies. We
have been advocating aggressively for the passage of this House Bill 1003, and we did a press
conference with all of the Prosecuting Attorneys that belong to the HPAA as well as the US Attorney
and the State Attorney General to request the Legislature to look at this bill carefully because it is a
bill that was one of the actually it was the only bill that all of us agreed on that we wanted to make
sure that would get some recognition and hopefully passage.
We have done extremely well in testifying and meeting with our Legislatures in support of
this bill. What this domestic violence bill does is to allow better protection to persons with
restraining orders. We have seen a huge increase in the amount of restraining orders that are
imposed and most of the victims say I don't want to get a restraining order, I don't want to get an
order of protection because it's just a piece of paper. The person that I wants restrained continually
violates and by the time the police comes nobody is there and it's my word against his word and it
doesn't help me. What happens in this bill is that if you have a offense that's is committed for
example, if there's a murder in the 2nd degree if there was a TRO or order of protection that was in
effect at the time then it raises that crime to a murder in the 1St degree. If it was manslaughter and
there was a TRO that is in effect then that raises that offense to a murder in the 2nd degree. If it's a
terroristic threatening in the 2nd degree which is a misdemeanor, it would raise that if you had a
restraining order to terroristic threatening in the 1St degree which would be a felony offense. It
would also raise it if you had an assault to assault in the 2nd degree which would be a felony offense
so it's extremely helpful for victims of domestic violence who continually try to get away from their
perpetrator and have been unsuccessful. We hope with the passage of this bill there will be added
level of protection for domestic violence victims and that it would not be simply a piece of paper when
they go out to risk their lives to get a restraining order. Hawaii Law Enforcement Coalition,
extremely important again it's made up of the Police Chiefs, the US Attorney, the Prosecutors, the
Attorney General, we provide bills like this domestic violence bill we also provide criminal law
updates and its ever so important. This is the coalition that decides who gets the grant funding and
I sit on this committee.
Victim Services; we currently have four victim witness counselors and we also have a victim
witness clerk, just last year they served 714 total victims and we can see that half of those were
more for crimes against persons then property crimes. There are those offenses where you have a
~ -
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.14
crime against a person as well as a property crime. They provide a huge variety of services that
include education, advocacy counseling, (inaudible) preparation, transport court accompanying and
things like that. They provide a lot of services to the victims. Emergent Obstacles and Trans; this
was a category I believe that we were told to address and we've already seen the economic downturn
has led to an increase caseload. We also see that the types of crimes that would normally have been
an assault with a fist turn into an assault with a machete. We see cases where people use to target
cars down at the beach with no persons in it, we now see people targeting cars that are parked in
driveways with our residences. We use to see people again targeting the tourist in different types of
hotels where the doors were open and nobody present and we are now seeing a lot of the cases where
persons are actually sleeping in the hotel rooms and the sliding glass doors are being broken into.
We also see a lot of homes invasion type burglaries in our own residence which use to be a rare case
so definitely times are changing and the safety and there needs to be a lot more protection to the
community and a lot more awareness of having to lock your doors because I know Dickie Chang is
one that is seeing this type of change as we have discussed this before. The furloughs for our support
staff again thank you for the council members that supported giving us the funds that were taken
away by the furloughs that we're given us back and we have since received the funding which was a
couple of months ago. We have addressed a portion of the back log of cases and have screened about
200 of those and so we continue to be on this path and hopefully we'll be caught up with the back log
that has accumulated because of the imposition of furloughs when we start the new fiscal year.
Emergent Trans and we discussed this earliter where crystal meth was a drug of choice but
we see now that prescription drugs seems to be the drug of choice or the new drug of choice. We see
in one given 2 month period we indicted over 12 or 13 people solely with prescription drug cases and
so there's definitely again Legislation that needs to be imposed because this was something that was
not on the radar screen of the Vice Department nor us up until maybe 6 months to a year ago.
Definitely prescription drug crimes have risen and we also see not only prescription drugs arrest in
the adult cases but we see a lot of sales of prescription drugs that are going on within our schools.
White collar crimes and identity theft is a very sophisticated type of crimes and the office of the
prosecuting attorney fifteen years ago is definitely not the same type of office that you need. You
need a lot more partnerships with different types of agencies; you need a lot more training in the
development of how to prosecute these types of cases because they're very, very sophisticated
especially with the advent of the computer and the different type of IP addresses and the type of
structures and inscriptions that you can impose. It is extremely difficult to prosecute these types of
cases to know who the actual culprit is that's using that computer so very complex type of work is
required and very extensive and intensive type of work. Right now we have Lauren assigned to do
all property crimes which is all your burglaries and thefts and white collar crimes as well as identity
thefts, as well as your embezzlement type cases, just this year alone we had two major white collar
cases and in one case it was almost a 100 and in the other case it was over 200 counts that were
charged. Again this was an embezzlement scheme that went over for more than several years and
very difficult to trace where the money was being funneled and how it was being funneled and this is
the job that is being done by the white collar attorney, I mean this is a job that was not done by the
police department but it was done by our office and the attorney.
We have to be really up to date with the type of training that is available because you could
not prosecute these types of cases fifteen years ago. In these cases there's hundreds of thousands of
dollars that had been stolen. Internet crimes as we discussed earlier are huge, the tracking of the
usage of the Internet crimes we see in the juveniles whom we will be starting up also a new program
that will address the fourth graders about cyber bullying and sexing. This seems to be a major
problem in the schools as we've discussed with the various committees and the DOE as well as with
family court and we will be coming out with training sessions with respect to these types of offenses.
Looking at the operations of the office, this use to be the old court house and in this old court house
there was one court room for all circuit court cases and there was on court room that was shared to
do family court and to do district court cases. Then we had the monstrosity which is humongous I
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Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.15
mean this is the new court house and there is vacant court rooms but currently we have 2 Circuit
Court Judges and we have a Family Court Judge and we have a District Court Judge so we now have
doubled the amount of court rooms than previously existed prior to the development of or the
building of this new court house. We also use to share a court house to do grand jury proceedings or
court room to do Grand Jury proceedings in the old court house and now with this new court house
being built we actually went from 2 court rooms to 5 court rooms and they go on at the same time.
We definitely see the trend that we definitely need more attorneys to be or more bodies to be in these
courtrooms because these courtrooms are operating with twice as much of the judges or courtrooms
that they had previous to the old courthouse.
Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me Shaylene?
Ms. Carvalho: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro; On that note we are coming up at 5 minutes to twelve. As I
had mentioned earlier my intent is at 1:00 p.m. to have either Ricky or Peter come up introduce the
Council program recess and then give you additional time, another hour starting at 1:00 p.m. I want
to thank you for the presentation to this point because for us to understand your funding sources,
your grant services, partnerships, agency collaboration, victim services and even the political
subdivisions that you cross over was very important for us to understand how your department or
division functions. We do need to take a lunch break and I know we will all be back at 1:00 p.m. to
summarize this presentation, then we will go into some Q&A and for the clerk's office I don't think
we will start until 2:00 p.m., and many of us have to be on the road at 3:30 today because we have
other appointments to be going to. So if we can take a lunch break on this note and be back at 1:00
p.m., it would be much appreciated.
Chair.
Ms. Carvalho: Thank you, very acceptable and thank you so much Council
Mr. Furfaro: We will now be in recess until 1:00 p.m.
There being no objections, the Committee recessed at 11:56 a.m.
The Committee reconvened at 1:06 p.m. and proceeded as follows.
Mr. Delaplane: Okay before we broke for lunch we were talking about
emerging trans affecting the OPA and there are a few coming up that I would like to mention
specifically because they deal with line items in our budget this fiscal year for the fiscal year 2012.
The first of those is file storage and you can see from the slides I have up and these are a couple of
slides I have up. These are a couple of shots from our office that show what our file storage situation
is at the moment. We are basically drowning in our own files, a lot of the files that you see in that
picture and I can probably point there. See the boxes there these stack of files here and then you can
see additional boxes here and here. Those are all closed files that have already been handled,
they've been prosecuted, the sentences have been imposed and in many cases the sentences have
already been served already but we do have retention policies that require us to keep these cases for
a number of years depending on the type of case. For our more serious offences like sex assaults and
murders we keep those files forever so we have files dating back quite a long time that are stored in
our office right now. What we're looking at doing just like the other county agencies have done is
moving to electronic storage of these things. We've been in talks with the county as to what it would
take to get that done and we have estimates or page numbers which are provided in our budget
narrative but it's an urgent issue that we need to get on right away. We have included that in a line
item in our budget this year so we can get that started and hopefully get to the point where not only
are we only archiving our old files but we move more towards a paperless office where we implement
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Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.16
a case management system that is based on document imaging and so instead of actually going to
grab a physical file out of the filing cabinet to check on something we pull it up on the computer and
we would be able to track it and we wouldn't spend any more time looking for lost files. This is a floor
plan of our office and the areas in red is where our files are currently being stored and when we
estimated to be about 15 percent give or take a little bit of that the problem that we have is not the
actual square footage that the case files are taking up but it's the fact that its usable office space.
You see this area here in our back hallway, this entire back hallway is pretty wide but the way its
set up now with this big bank of file cabinets right there and all along the back wall. We are just
simply not utilizing the space in the best way that we can and its actually quite cluttered for any of
you who have came to visit our office and actually I would welcome any members of the council that
wanted to come to our office to take a look around and see what our file storage situation is like.
You can see here this is our conference room and lining each side of the conference room are
our banks of file cabinets and they also have boxes of old files sitting up on top of this cabinet. It's
quite daunting when you look at it and it's going to be a big task to get these things scanned but
we're already in the process of getting those things organized and prioritized so that the scanning
can begin. Rule 9, this is a very big one and it's a big one across the state and it affects us as much
as it affects any other office throughout the state but Hawaii Rules in the Supreme Court Rule 9, Its
going to require all personal information to be redacted from court filings. What they define as
personal information is pretty broad and it includes things like telephone numbers, addresses, date
of birth, all the typical things that you would expect to find in a police report now have to be redacted
if they're filed with the court. When Shaylene talked about earlier the process by which a case comes
to our office she spoke about a forty eight hour packet and I've spoken about that to the council
before and as you remember it's a packet that contains the probable cause for the offense and most
times it takes the form of a police report which does contain all that information so before being filed
with the court it has to all be redacted to make sure that none of that personal information shows up.
Right now we have to redact by hand on any of the ones that we touch that haven't been redacted
yet. KPD is going to have a big issue coming up with their case management system as well when
they change over because the way they do citations, there citations contains a lot of this personal
information as well so when you talk about the thirty six thousand five hundred cases that were
handled last year that's both in District Court and in Felony circuit court I can tell you that pretty
much all those cases in some form or another contain some kind of personal information in the court
filings. We're talking about a big task and we're trying to figure out a way to work smarter and not
harder and that's why our solution has been a case management system that is capable of automatic
redaction so taking the fields that usually contains that personal information and redacting those
out electronically instead of having someone sit down and go through them manually.
Our current case management system that we have cannot do this, it's simply not set up and
honestly I don't think with any modifications that would be available wouldn't be able to do this. It's
essentially obsolete for this purpose. The person who was responsible for maintaining the software
was an employee of the Honolulu prosecutor's office and he's no longer with that office since they've
had an administration change over there and so he's no longer providing support for this case
management system so what we have right now is a management system that is not going to meet
our needs in the coming year and it's also not meeting our needs well as it stands at the moment. It
served its purpose while it's been there but it's definitely time for us to upgrade so we can track our
cases better and so that we can handle these emerging Trans effectively. The case management
system that we've been talking to a vendor on and the vendors name is New Dawn Technologies and
I believe their out of Utah and that company is currently being utilized by both the Maui Prosecutors
Office and the Attorney General's Office and it is actually capable of information sharing between
systems. What that does is it reduces duplicate entries; we would be able to pull from criminal
justice information systems, Juvenile justice information systems, and not have to do that duplicate
entry. If we put in a vendors name in and they're already in the system than a lot of that
information is going to be sucked down automatically and we're not going to have to enter it. It also
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Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.17
allows for closer monitoring of case statistics so we would be able to give up to the minute tracking
information about where we are with our statistics throughout the year instead of waiting until the
end of the year while all the annual reports come up. We would have up-to-date statistics to be able
to provide both for the council if the council needed it for any specific purpose but also for our grants
to make sure we're on track for our grant funding and meeting the goals like we're supposed to. The
(inaudible) management system that we're looking at also integrates with the Microsoft office
(inaudible) so it sends out automatic alerts to your calendars and emails whenever there's action on
the case. It's pretty good stuff and it seems like it's going to meet our needs and I think from a call
stand point what we're looking at is very reasonable. We already talked archive files taking up
space, our tracking system and the next really important thing and there's been some reference to
this before is that our grant funding has decreased at an astonishing rate. We have 11 Attorneys, 19
full time support staff until recent Federal and State cut about half of our attorneys and about a
third of our support staff were funded by federal and state grants. Some of those individuals were
funded fully and some harshly but grants were definitely supporting a big part of our offices
operation and they actually still support a lot of our offices operations but to a little bit lesser extent
because of recent cuts by both the feds and the state.
You can't see the (inaudible) there very well but it says the DOJ property crimes justice
assistance grant program, the reason that's in red it's because it's been cut. We're still receiving
money from the stop violence against women grant and the VOCER grant the victim against crimes
grant act. The Attorney General Grants that we have a few State Grants, there are the Justice
Assistance Grants and the Career Criminal Prosecution Program again it's there in red it's a little
tough to see and the reason it's in red it's because it's been cut drastically. The funding from the
state just is not there like it use to be and we're having to sort of shift some of those costs over to the
county in order to keep our career criminal prosecution program going. We're still receiving money
from the department of transportation grant and the highway safety program and now that doesn't
fund an attorney but it does fund equipment training and things like that so we are definitely
utilizing that grant to the fullest extent possible. Because of these federal and state cuts grant
funding is at a 5 year low and its down 68 percent from last year so we took a big hit from last year
as far as the grant funding goes and we are still making diligent efforts to make sure that we're
seeking out every grant opportunity that we can. Jamie Chong our grants coordinator does a
fantastic job with that and she really is out there really hitting the ground running and trying to find
those grants and make sure that the funding for opportunities are out there. If we are eligible for
them then we are applying for them actively as much as possible. We're expecting though grant
funding to decline in 2012 and this is mainly based on the projected I don't want to say budget but
the financial climate with the federal government, there's just not a lot of grant funding available
and they've cut across the board and I think it says something pretty dire when public safety starts
getting cut at the federal level and then it's definitely time to act. Here we have a graft showing our
reduction grant funding from 2006, 2007 all the way up until now and as you can see our total grant
funding level here shows at 581/541 for the 2010/2011 year and again that a five year low and we
went as high as 856 during the 2009/2010 year. That included a pretty significant grant that was
our justice assistance grant but again it's not going to increase our funding the way that we need it
to in order to sustain operations and continue the good things that we've been doing.
Here's the number of grant funded attorneys, the number of attorneys that were funded by
grants you can see back in 2007/2008 we were up to almost five and now for this current year that
we're in we have about two and three quarters that are grant funded and we expect with the cuts in
grant funding for that to go down slightly it will probably stay around the two attorney mark but it
is possible that it could go down further. With these projections we're anticipating the need for more
county support.
Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me Jake.
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney -(Call Backs) p.18
Mr. Delaplane: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro: When you had 4.9 of your attorneys were funded through
grants, was the size of the office still eleven than?
Mr. Delaplane: No the size of the office was smaller and I don't have the
number of attorneys that we had...
Mr. Furfaro: But it wasn't greater then eleven?
Mr. Delaplane: It was not greater than eleven no and that was prior to the
current administration so I can tell you quite certainly that it was not greater than eleven. This is
the number of support staff funded by grants so again not quite as sharp of a change here. From
2006-2007, you're looking at around five and it hovers around the five mark and then this past year
it went down to 4.2 and that's largely as a result of that career criminal prosecution grant being cut
so drastically from the state. We did receive quite a bit of money from that grant in 2008/2009 and I
believe there was a significant amount in 2007 as well. Over the past year alone that's absolutely
been slashed so we haven't been able to utilize grant funding in our career criminal prosecution unit
like we've done in the past. This gets us to our proposed budget and the main focus of what we're
trying to do with this year's budget is to bring us into parity with the other counties and reduce the
overwhelming case load on our deputy prosecutors and staff. What we we've done is we've gone and
looked at the other counties mainly Maui and the Big Island to see what there structure was, the
number of county funded attorneys that they have and how that relates to their caseloads. In
looking at that and comparing it with ours what we saw was that our attorneys are extremely
overworked in terms of caseload. I can tell you right now in full confidence that most of our
attorneys are working between 50 and 70 hours a week and that's standard at our office and that's
just to make it through. Most of our attorneys want to do more than make it through, I mean they
do this job because they love it and they are devoted to it so to have to go that extra mile so above
and beyond. A lot of our attorneys are willing to do that and they do that right now but that level of
accomplishment and that level of dedication can only be sustained for so long.
Our proposed budget is asking to alleviate some of that and we're not even asking to bring us
down into the lowest levels its simply to put us at least within a reasonable range so that our
attorneys can focus on the more serious cases instead of just basically trying to get through the work
week and get all the files off of their desk. Here's a population comparison and the reason I point
this out is because I think it's rather telling of what the break down is. If you look at the Big Island
and Maui, Maui has a little over double the population of Kauai but if you look at the number of
county funded prosecuting attorneys they have 29 and that's about 4 times the amount of attorneys
to handle their criminal cases. With the Big Island there a little bit under triple the population of
Kauai yet again you have almost quadruple the amount of attorneys there so population doesn't tell
you a whole lot but crime rates really tell you more. The way that we measure what we do is mainly
with case load and that's what the next slides go over and this is a breakdown on cases and how it
divides up between our Island and the other neighbor Islands. What you see here is we have 6.5
county funded attorneys and that's not including myself or Shaylene in that number because these 2
numbers from both Maui and the Big Island do not include their first deputy or prosecutor mainly
because those prosecutors and first deputies are not maintaining active caseloads. We are both
Shaylene and I are handling caseloads at the current time but in the interest of making things sort
of apples for apples we took those out for comparison sake. What you can see is that the number of
county funded attorneys here are 6.5, Maui is 29 and the Big Island is 27, but then look at the
average caseload. You are looking at fifty six hundred cases per attorney on Kauai and the closest
one to us in case numbers is the Big Island thirty six seventeen but there not even really that close.
Its more than double the amount that Maui is handling per county funded attorney and I think it's
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.19
very clear that given the number of cases we definitely do not have or we're not on par with the other
neighbor Islands as far as caseloads go.
Ms. Yukimura: Jake I have a question?
Mr. Delaplane: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: It's definitely very striking figures. Are you measuring
caseload in the same way?
Mr. Delaplane: Yes. Caseload and these numbers here are taken just like the
other slides for the statistics it's from the judiciaries annual report so the caseloads are measured
exactly the same in each one of those. Again we're only looking at county funded attorneys we're not
including our attorneys that are grant funded and we're not including theirs that are grant funded.
We are strictly talking county funded attorney for county funded attorney and we're very careful to
make sure that we're comparing apples to apples here.
Ms. Yukimura: But if they have a lot more grant supportive attorneys than
their caseload would go down.
Mr. Delaplane: Well they have access to the same number of grants that we
do I mean it's the same grants out there in the grant pool. Shaylene may have more to say on that
issue.
Ms. Carvalho: The reason why you can't really add grant funded attorneys
in this formula is because grant funded attorneys are limited in the purpose and the type of activity
that they can do. They cannot transverse like if you have a property crimes grant, that person can
only do property crimes. If you have a domestic violence grant that person can only do that so we
would not be able to have comparitivley argue those different cases because everyone has different
types of grants and their all running at different periods. All of the grants usually run fora 4 year
period and it goes down usually significantly after every year because grants are seed money.
Basically you come here and apply for your grant with the understanding and the approval of the
county council that after the 4 years the county council will take up those positions. You have to
than look at other grant opportunities and what other type of crimes are the trends during that time
period and that's why there's only certain types of grants for certain types of crimes and then they
expire and they either have to be county funded or you need to look for another purpose with a
different mission on the different type of grant that you apply. So even for your Jag grants they'll
supply like the property crime grant and the DV grant for 4 years and after that you need to look for
other funding sources to support that position.
Mr. Delaplane: I think what Shaylene says it illustrates where we are right
now with a lot of our grants and we're nearing the end of the grant period so we have some grants
that are just ending. The property crimes grant was a good example of that, its ending and so that
was money given by the federal government with the assumption that at the end of the grant period
the county would be picking up the cost in order to continue that program. We're in that situation
with some of our grants and other grants are just being flat out cut its not that it's been expiring or
that we knew it was coming. I think the career criminal grant is a good example of that, it's just
simply been cut by the state so we're in a situation where we have to make that up somehow in order
to continue the level of service that we're providing to the county. This is a comparison of clerks so
again we're talking about county funded legal clerks compared with other counties by caseloads. You
will notice here that the caseloads and you'll notice that the caseloads here are the same it's the
same numbers that we pulled from the annual report from the judiciary. We have 6.45 currently and
Maui has 39 and the Big Island has 24.90, and again you look at the average caseload per county
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.20
funded clerk and you're talking about a massive amount of cases again fifty six hundred and fifty
nine. The Big Island is closest to us with thirty nine hundred but again that's not all that close.
Here is what our proposal is for this year and essentially all we're asking for is and I believe each of
you have the Mayors review of what our budget submittal was and what came back from the Mayor.
Our bottom line budget proposal that we're asking for the next fiscal year is what the Mayor has
authorized in his review plus one deputy prosecuting attorney. The bottom line is that brings us up
to 10.5 and it gets us down into this thirty four hundred range which is reasonable slightly lower
than the Big Island and quite a bit higher than Maui but definitely well within the range of what's
reasonable based on comparisons with other counties.
We don't think that's an unreasonable request we are simply asking for parity between our
office and the other offices throughout the state. The same thing with the legal clerk caseload, we're
not asking for any new positions for legal clerks but we're asking that the number of county funded
clerks so meaning the number of clerks that are fully county funded go up from 6.45 to 8 which
would result in an average caseload, of forty five hundred. Again still well above of what the other
Islands are handling but a little bit more down in that reasonable range with a reasonable amount of
work that would be expected from these clerks. So again what our proposed budget does is it simply
asked that our clerks and deputies handle more reasonable caseloads in comparison to other
counties. There is only one new position requested and that's one deputy prosecuting attorney
position and the Mayor has already represented to our office that he would dollar fund a law clerk, a
senior clerk and one deputy position in the May budget. Changes to existing positions, you will find
in the budget narrative and I believe its page 26 of the budget narrative there's a chart that goes
over each of the change to the existing positions that we are asking for in the 2012 budget. You will
see over in the right hand column that each of those changes are explained and some of them have to
do with grant funding expiring, others are for other reasons that... and let me give you an example
for position number 2807, currently being funded by the domestic violence grant and only 15 percent
funded by county we're asking that this be taken over by the county to a hundred percent because
that grant is being reduced as of April 15th from seventy five thousand seven hundred and seventy
one to forty seven thousand zero zero two so that's a pretty extensive grant cut and we're hoping that
the county will be able to pick that up. I think that we've definitely shown the need for one new
deputy prosecuting attorney I mean it's going to reduce attorney caseload bottom line it's going to
make office operations run a bit smoother and reduce those number of hours that the attorneys have
already working.
They are handling quite a caseload and their doing a great job with it as you saw with the
conviction rates and the big cases that they've closed out this year so we're asking that they be given
the opportunity to continue that and continue working but have a reasonable caseload to deal with.
With such high caseloads and with such daunting task in front of us we're always looking for ways to
decrease the amount of cases that we're handling, decrease the amount of cases that come in. One
way we do that is through prevention efforts but you know prevention efforts they done always
address the problem fully you are always going to have these cases that actually come through and
actually come through our office. What we're looking at it's a nationwide trend that about half of the
district attorney's offices throughout the nation are utilizing some form of this but its community
prosecution and essentially the idea here is to divert cases from the traditional judicial process
through a program focused on community restoration restitution and reducing (inaudible). I'm going
to turn the presentation over at this point to Lauren McDowell our second deputy because she's
going to be talking about that and she's also actually I take that back I'm going to turn it over to
Shay for a second to give an example of community prosecution at work because we've already
actually done this in our community we've seen it work we've seen some great results so it's
something we want to start on a bigger scale and we're really excited about it so I'm going to turn it
over to Shay now to give you an example.
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.21
Ms. Carvalho: This was an example of how we utilize this different form
of prosecution that is totally something that works. This was one that we developed with the
Hui' Malama O Koloa a nonprofit organization out in Koloa under the leadership of Teddy Blake and
the rest of his family members and other members of the Koloa/Poi`pu Association. There was an
incident that had occurred back in the early 2009 period where Goodfellow Brothers had breached
the Hapa Trails eastern wall with a bulldozer while he was working on its preparation for the village
at Poi`pu Project site. Prior to this incident as late as the 1980's there was hard rock wall linings
along its entire length from Poi`pu Road to Saint Raphael's Church, however throughout the years of
construction the walls began disappearing either through fallen rock robbers and or construction
activities. We prosecuted this case and it began in the court system but the disposition really was
something that the community had wanted. This is where we worked with the Koloa/ Po3`pu
Association as well as the Hui' Malama O Koloa and also with the administrative department of the
Goodfellow Brothers which was there project manager and the president of there company who was
very cooperative throughout this whole prosecution of Goodfellow brothers. What resulted and I
handled this case personally this was the first ever of its kind that had occurred on the Island of
Kauai. It indicates here where Goodfellow's had been charged with altering or injuring the Historic
property site which was the Hapa Trail. Goodfellows were looking up to twenty five thousand
dollars in fines and when a fine is imposed none of that money gets turned into the county, what
happens is that the fine goes to the state general fund. So in essence while there is a penalty that is
imposed on the defendant really the beneficiaries who should be the county obtain really nothing of
that fund because it goes into the state general fund.
We negotiated with Goodfellow and again with a lot of input and meetings with the
Koloa/Poi`pu association as their spokesperson Teddy Blake, who was present in court really during
the entire time that this case was making its course through district court we ended up coming up
with a disposition that was amenable towards both parties and what in essence happened was that
we were not of course seeking any type of jail offence that would do absolutely no good for the
community or for Goodfellow who has been a good partner for the Island of Kauai. We had worked
out an agreement to restore the Hapa Trail and Goodfellow has agreed graciously to donate twenty
two hundred cubic yards of pohaku for the restoration of the Hapa Trail. This was on condition that
we got the commitment from Hui Malama O Koloa to obtain the necessary documents for the
transfer of this twenty two hundred cubic yards. I'm no engineer but if anybody here knows the
measurement of twenty two hundred cubic yards it involves 22 -25 huge trucks in order to transport
all of this pohaku for the restoration of this project. As a result we also had gotten the commitment
from Grove Farm because there was really not enough sufficient land around that area in order to
store this much of cubic yards in order to restore Hapa Trail. We got the commitment again
involving the community, involving the business organizations and non-profits all in one prosecution.
Grove Farm allowed the Hui' O Malama to have this rock stored on their property which was
immediately adjacent to the. site of where Hapa Trail was going to be restored. We also with Hui' O
Malama and Teddy Blake was able to get the necessary permits in order to allow the transfer of this
material.
Hui Malama O Koloa in the beginning was really a dedicated but very loosely organized
group that had always wanted to work towards maintaining the Hapa Trail and preserve its
standing as bike and pedestrian way for the residence of Koloa and Kauai. Teddy Blake who had
written this in an effort to relate to the county was very thankful for the prosecutors efforts as well
as to the courts. What it did was it helped establish the creditability of Hui Malama O Koloa
cultural and restoration efforts and revealed Hui Malama O Koloa desire to work for a win win
situation within the local resort community of the greater Koloa area. Since .this time of prosecution
which was the late 2009, really they got a whole bunch of volunteers and the organization has been
revitalized, its membership has increased dramatically and it has uncovered much of the valuable
and unique history of the (inaudible) of Koloa, Belly Belly Pa'a and Maha`ulepu, a tremendous
amount of effort and community involvement in the restoration which the project is ongoing. It
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.22
really has by the fact of this incident happening and the bringing together of all the community
organizations, the developer as well as the prosecutor's office. We really were able to provide a
catalyst for the Hui Malama O Koloa to again re-focus on its cultural and Historic efforts in
maintaining what the Old Koloa Town use to look like. There are again as will be discussed when
Lauren talks about how we are partnering with this organization in order to bring more volunteers
to help work the Aina and help in the community as volunteers and hopefully will be more successful
as they start to work on selected projects that involve the building or rebuilding of the area of going
through the trees. There is also some different projects that we're working on in cleaning up and
maintaining the Historic value of the Makau Wahe Caves and a lot of these projects are going on and
we're partnering with them in order to provide the necessary volunteers or work efforts in our
community based programs.
Lauren McDowell: Lauren McDowell, Second Deputy Prosecuting Attorney. Our
office is currently prosecuting approximately twenty thousand cases each year in the district court
and these are the lower level petty misdemeanor and misdemeanor crimes. Our strategy
traditionally was a reactive one. The case would come into our office and it would be screened and
either charged or declined. Once it's screened it's sent to the court and each case itself would have 4
to 5 court hearings. There would then be an arraignment and plea when the defendant is first
informed of the charges against them, they would come back after applying for the public defenders
or obtaining a private attorney and they would appear for a change of plea trial setting or an entry of
plea hearing, at that time they can accept a plea offer or plead out at trial or request trial. Trial and
even sentencing sometimes are additional court dates and as you can see twenty thousand cases in
one year can turn into sixty to eighty thousand court appearances in our district court. We have
developed the Pohaku diversion program initiative which is a preventative approach and it would re-
direct first time non violent offenders away from the judicial process and into a community center
diversion program. As Jake mentioned we found that the trend is approximately fifty percent of the
counties throughout the entire United States and moving towards this diversion programs and this
is as a means to handle the financial crises and the immense caseloads that are occurring in the
district courts across the country. The idea behind the Pohaku initiative is one of restorative justice
and the focus would be on the individual offender and teaching that offender to respect the
community. Right now with the traditional community service when a defendant is ordered after
sentencing to perform community service there's generally no connection between the type of crime
that they committed and the community service which they are ordered to perform.
The Pohaku Diversion program would link the different community organizations that
Shaylene spoke of along with neighborhood centers and civic groups. Many of these groups have
already indicated they have an interest in working with the offenders to perform service and this
service that they perform would be connected to the type of crime which they committed. The
offenders would give back to the particular town in which they offended and in a way which would
right their wrong. An example of this is the Hapa Trail that Shaylene just spoke of. In exchange for
the service the offender would not be subjected to the judicial system and they would benefit by
maintaining a clean criminal record. Additionally the Pohaku program would implement a bad
check program and through that initiative and individual who wrote a bad check would participate
in the program which would teach them about social and financial responsibilities. They would pay
restitution to the victim and in exchange they also would not be subjected to the court proceedings.
We believe that the Pohaku initiative is a program that would allow us to utilize our resources to
alleviate the judiciary from the caseload created by these first time offenders. It would provide the
community with meaningful service and the offender with the restoration that they need to prevent
them with re-offending in the future.
Mr. Delaplane: We haven't told her yet but Lianne I know a lot of you know
Lianne who was with the Council for quite awhile but is now with our office as a victim witness
counselor. She actually named the program "Pohaku" and it came out. just right with the example
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.23
we gave the Hapa Trail. I think it fits and again it's an acronym for productive optimism and it
helps all Kauai unite. The symbol that we're using for the program is the poi pounder and meaning
stone in the Hawaiian language Pohaku is represented here by the stirrup style poi pounder unique
to the Island of Kauai. Basically what it symbolizes is that in order for positive change to occur in
criminal behavior one must hit rock bottom or Pohaku bottom and take full responsibility and make
a conscious decision to turn one's life around for the better. I think that was a really good way to say
it symbolically and also through the acronym that Lianne came up with. The poi pounder is a
symbol of hard work and productivity which is a value we hope becomes important in the lives of the
program participants and most importantly it's a symbol of strength and persistence in to the future.
We hope that is something that persists here and that it gives hope to the future of our community.
We are really excited about this program it's going to cover a lot of the issues that we talked about
today with our caseloads and those massive numbers that we're looking at right now and the
massive increases that we've seen over the past few years. This is basically our vision for the future
and I'm going to pass it over to Shaylene for this.
Ms. Carvalho: This is something that is really not new because it's been
happening across the Country and it was also one of the initiatives. that I had mentioned in my
inauguration speech back in 2008 and we hope that with more resources we are better able to utilize
the minimal resources that we have for those serious offenders and the ones that are not so serious
to rehabilitate in the community and actually restore the community to something better than what
is was originally before the offender went and devoted time and effort into making it a better
community. We hope that with this project Pohaku will be within 6 years reduction of twenty
percent of all the district court cases. We are hopeful that if we are successful in diverting a lot of
the different court cases than we can than further move on to minor felony type cases or property
offences where there is no involvement as far as any kind of injury to any party. This again the
benefit of this is if all of the conditions are complied with anyone who is subjected into this program
or accepted into this program will not face criminal prosecution. Those charges will be dismissed
and that person will be able to represent if that is the only offense that person is facing than there's
basically a second chance. There will be able to represent that they have never been convicted of any
offense and they would be able to represent that-they have a clean record. We are hopeful through
this program that once they find the benefits of being in the program and being successful that they
will continue to provide volunteer services to the rest of the community. We've talked to various
providers across the Island who have shown an interest and are excited because they are in very dire
need, especially the Hawaiian Civic organizations that are doing a lot of these restorations in the
(inaudible) as well as on the Loi and all of these (inaudible) forms etc... They have sought us out in
essence in basically saying we are here, we would gladly accept people into our program we would be
able to provide the monitoring that is necessary and we have assured them they will be non violent
type of offender and they will monitor them and do all of that all of a benefit at no cost to the county.
The initial cost that we actually have already put in this budget and we expect to have
already gotten it funded for the next budget already by the Mayor's office. I think with this
partnership we've continually bridge the gap between the community and other law enforcement
agencies, we've talked about the various projects that we have going on between the Community
Organizations, the County Officials, Law Enforcement Officials, the various County Wide
Department agencies, the State Sheriff's Department, Department of Public Safety, the Federal
DEA, and all those agencies that we currently work for in our everyday lives. We are constantly on
the telephone or via a-mail or even through a lot of meetings that I attend and the rest of my staff
here attend that were able to make Kauai a safer and a happier place to live, work and play and
we're here to make things better and we hope that with this presentation you have had the
opportunity to learn a little bit about the operations of our office and are able to see what the needs
are, what the wants are, what the community wants and how best we can fulfill our obligations
under the charter. We thank you Council members for all the time that you've given us in explaining
the reasons for why we need the funding that we are requesting and also to give you an insight to the
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.24
upcoming new strategic plans that we have in place. We also have here we've answered some of the
questions and if the Chair would like us to address those questions that came in a form of a
memorandum yesterday we have answers for those as well. Thank you Council Chair.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you very much. I'm asking Mr. Heu if he can make
himself available so I can understand your request and what you're actually got from the Mayor's
office. On the six questions that I sent over Shay I can accept them in written form it doesn't have to
be today and we've asked some of the others and I do want to touch base with them before we go too
far along on a couple of them but... thank you very much on the logo presentation with Pohaku and
obviously very unique to Kauai but also that traces the population to the Markesan Islands where
you find the stirrup poi pounder only in the Markesan's and before they were anointed with the
name Markesan's they were the Manahani Islands where we actually get the name Menehune from.
They were the common workers the people that built the fish ponds the people that built the roads
and so forth and so I think that's a very unique symbolism there for taking care of the common man
and its connection in Polynesia. I also want to say is it possible that Jake could make us a
comparison? We've been going through various comparisons like on the fire department we have 8
stations on Kauai but we have only on third of the population of the Waianae coast where they have
only 3 stations. We understand at some point in time there's this break of service levels and
obviously one of the things we would like to compare Jake is that the County of Kauai has a
hundred and sixty eight million dollar operating budget where the County of Maui has a three
hundred and thirty million dollar operating budget. It's almost half and I'm not saying we based the
ratio on that but obviously it than ties to our budget as to what funds are available. If you could do
that comparison for us I would appreciate that.
Mr. Delaplane: Just so I'm clear are you asking for a comparison of the other
Islands based on the prosecuting attorneys operating budgets?
Mr. Furfaro: Only on the operating budgets not on their bond money or
their CIP, just so we have an understanding. At this point I'm going to start with the first question
do I understand and I have Mr. Heu here in case I have to call him up. Do I understand that at the
first pass of the prosecuting attorneys budget, the Mayor did extend one additional attorney?
Ms. Carvalho: That's correct.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay and what I'm hearing from you is there is a request for
consideration for one additional attorney?
Ms. Carvalho: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Is that correct?
Ms. Carvalho: Yes. There was a dollar funded that we re-allocated to a
deputy and that was funded by the Mayor's office and we had asked for one other deputy.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay. So we don't get to our decision making until May but I
just in my mind wanted to make sure I was very clear that the administration added one and in this
presentation today I'm anticipating adding one more?
Ms. Carvalho: Well they are going to add one and they have stated that in
their May budget they will provide borrowing extremely bad circumstances and after hearing the
presentation after they had submitted their March proposal had agreed that they believe that one
position was going to be what they would be funding.
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.25
Mr. Furfaro: Okay so you're understanding is when they do their May
supplemental they will be considering funding one more attorney?
Ms. Carvalho: That's correct.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay so we will see that in May. Based on that information I
don't think I will be calling up the Administration because we haven't seen what they'll actually
submit in May but I want to make sure that we were clear. There's one addition presentation after
the May re-submittal. I wanted to go back and reconcile a few things and thank you for recognizing
the council for extending some money back to you on the furloughs. I will go through the 6 questions
that I submitted so that we make sure that we wanted to have a better status of the victim witness
program for the last 6 years maybe and did we lose grant funding in that area? If there is please
respond to us in writing?
Ms. Yukimura: Did we get copies?
Mr. Furfaro: No you did not get copies so I will go through them. Now for
the sake of time I'm going to ask that these answers come back in writing and I want to make sure
that we have an opportunity to understand the answers. I will go through this verbally if I can.
How much funding appropriation in Ordinance Bill 201170 has been used to address the back log of
cases? I heard in part of the presentation that you felt you reduced it by at least two hundred cases?
Ms. Carvalho: Up to this point.
Mr. Furfaro: Up to this point yes. What are the current variances in your
salary amount for the physical year to date? And here is why that's really important. I know you
had a very invested process with your people. You've brought ion attorneys that were pretty much
had less experience but had an opportunity to show their value or their worth and so you brought
people in that may not have been at the budgeted levels. On the flip side for the council we're
worried that will find us in a situation that you may be actually contributing to a surplus at the end.
So that is the rationale behind number three.
Ms. Carvalho: If I could just add what we had discussed the last time when I
was .here for budget was about succession planning, we actually hired people with experience but
they were licensed to practice in other jurisdictions. When they pass the Hawaii bar is when they so
we had initially a surplus because they were paid at the minimum law clerk level salary and then
when they passed the bar they had 13 years of experience handling capitol murderers etc... So you
will see a huge jump in their salary. We would not pay anyone who was not licensed to practice here
that level of salary until they pass the bar.
Mr. Furfaro: Understood and I'm just wanting to make sure we get to
June 30th and if you end up with a salary surplus than we can reconcile it.
Ms. Carvalho: Definitely.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay. Number 4 I'm going to surface based on the fact that I
did have a chat with our newest councilmember who actually works for the YWCA and so there may
be times and we're going to get an opinion that if this funding source comes directly before us, he
may have to recues himself. I want to also know over the last 4 years what has been the
participation level and what is the anticipated level going forward. This is in particular to the role
that we have with the new councilmember.
Ms. Carvalho: Yes.
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.26
Mr. Furfaro: Number 5, as it relates to the deputy prosecuting attorney's;
please provide us a breakdown of the following information? I think it's part of some of the
promotions that you've made but dealing with current salary and years of experience. A little clearer
picture for us on what your continuity plan was in promoting these individuals? Number 6, can you
provide a breakdown for the department staffing? I want to make sure that the decision about
staffing is not what we're questioning. That authority Jake certainly rest with the prosecutor. I just
want to make sure that we can reconcile at the end of the year. So these questions I will provide
copies again to the members but I would is we're waiting for the new submittal from the Mayor and
then you do have a request for an additional person on top of that?
Ms. Carvalho: Currently yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Yes?
Ms. Carvalho: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay now I'm going to go around the table and ask
individuals if they have questions to ask.
Ms. Carvalho: I guess what I wanted to clarify is that The Mayor's office is
not saying that they are not going to give us another deputy. There just saying that we need to wait
and see because they have committed like I said to one but they potentially could give us two
depending upon what the outlook they receive from the state and all the other funding sources that
they considered.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay any questions here? Yes Mr. Bynum.
TIM BYNUM: I have some questions just to clarify the last discussion.
You're anticipating that the Mayor will include a new position in May and you're asking the council
for an additional position above that?
Ms. Carvalho: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: Okay.
Ms. Carvalho: Unless the Mayor provides that.
Mr. Bynum: Yeah, Yeah, And Yeah. So in that and I guess we will leave
that up to you and the Mayor's office to look at what they're proposing and what your proposing and
clearly look at the difference but some of that's in your narrative. I had a question regarding the
records management system that you talked about Jake. Is that something that you consulted IT
about?
Mr. Delaplane: Yes we've been talking with IT about that and we've also
consulted with not the IT departments on Maui but the actual prosecuting attorneys office there to
see how it's working and we've talked to the (inaudible) to sort of see logistically how to get it up and
running.
Mr. Bynum: Because this whole issue of paper management or records
management is something that I think our new IT person. wants to look at county wide so just to
integrate with them to make sure there in the loop.
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.27
Mr. Delaplane: Absolutely and that was our first priority because both of
these projects that we want work in tandem right so the electronic case management system plus the
digital storage have to be compatible and so we've informed the vendor that we're looking at and
there aware and IT is aware of what we're looking at and all systems should be a go.
Mr. Bynum: But you're asking for about a hundred thousand dollars
increase in your budget to pay for that?
Mr. Delaplane: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: I totally support that we need to handle our records and move
into twentieth century and like you said if you have database you can push a button and it fills in
and you're not hand in putting the data every time. Does are productivity gains that are important
for the whole county and I'm sure for your office as well. Just to take one step back, I'm a little
confused now because of the Mayor's budget that has substantial increases for OPA by five
percentage anyway compared and so I think we'll sort out before decision making in what the
Mayor's budget submittal is? Which of these initiatives he's agreeing with and putting in his
supplemental and then be able to compare that with- request your making and that might be above
and beyond that but just to have clarity of what's being asked of us. I guess we're not going to get
that today and that's fine as long as it comes before May 8th or 9th or whatever.
Mr. Furfaro: May 4th.
Mr. Bynum: I wrote some notes down and typical of me I misplaced them
so I don't know if they'll be other questions but I lost my notes but I know that records management
really jumped out at me as something that I think is important. And forgive me if I just didn't get
this but in terms of having these files all over the place, how do you propose to address that by
getting additional space or central filing it or?
Mr. Delaplane: We're going to destroy the documents for a large part of them.
Now the more important cases where we have video tapes and things like that that were part of
evidence those will still be stored within the office but by and large most of the documents after their
scanned in there will be a waiting period that we go through but there will be transported to be
destroyed.
Ms. Carvalho: Also councilmember Bynum prior to making this request we
did consult with Finance Department and I'm not sure if you remember but there use to be this
storage X when they had transported the evidence from KPD to this safe confidential location for
these files. We were looking into that site and apparently that site was not available we requested if
there was any additional space that was on top of the third floor of the nearest building area there's
like a floor that available but it doesn't allow for the confidentiality that is required by our office so
we are not able to utilize that space. We actually inquired about space here and again because of the
lack of confidentiality and secured spaces and we're very limited in the different types of buildings
that we can get into and also these files, not the murder ones or the sex assault ones but the ones
that people are still within their probation period. If there's a revocation we need to re-access these
files and so they need to be in a relatively close proximity to our office because when they get picked
up in custody that happens like within a 24 hour period and so we have a lot of constraints as far as
what our options are and definitely going to a digital management system would be the most ideal.
Mr. Furfaro: I'm sorry before we go to Council member Kualii, In
discussions earlier in the week as you go in the basement of the Historical council offices you will go
down a set of steps on the ground floor is ample space which use to be the Civil Defense area and
going down there's a mezzanine level that has a couple of offices on it that can simply be locked up
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.28
and so forth. I would suggest you quarry the administration. It didn't seem like we had immediate
plans for that area. Just an FYI. Councilmember Kualii.
KIPUKAI KUALII: Aloha, Mahalo Nui Loa. Thank you so much for such a
thorough presentation. I learned so much about everything that the office of the prosecuting
attorney is doing for the people of Kauai and I just appreciate that so much. Like the Chair I took a
special interest in hearing you talk about your Pohaku Project. In my work with the Council for
Native Hawaiian Advancement, we always talk about ourselves as chanters or people who are
speaking up and leading the way but also as poi pounders people who get out there in the community
and actually roIl up your sleeves and help do the work. This symbolism I think is really important to
our people and for our people so I'm really excited about that for sure. I wanted to congratulate you
on building your impressive team of experienced deputies. The work that they do is of course critical
and your success and the fact that you've showed us the numbers saying and attaining all these
guilty pleas and your conviction rates. Seeing the charts and seeing the success that's very
comforting to know that you're creating real results with minimal support. The numbers are very
clear, if the grant funding is not there to help you do what needs to be done than hopefully we can
cover that just to maintain the levels of taking care of crime. Training, partnerships we talked about
and I'm especially interested in the website this E-Court Kokua, I'm starting to hear from people
already about junk cars and abandoned cars and so if citizens have a way to help us address the
problems they want to do it and more than just calling their council members. Putting that
information out there I think is empowering oux citizens and is very, very important. Council
member Bynum sort of asked my question about the hundred thousand in other services for the
electronic storage. I'm assuming that's for consultants and equipment and that's going to get me to
where you'll need to be?
Mr. Delaplane: Yes and that's basically estimates that we've done so far and
again we've been in contact with the IT Department here in the county because I know a lot of the
other county agencies have already been through this granted on a much smaller scale but we are
able to project out what our cost would be.
Mr. Kualii: Clearly from the pictures I mean and the fact of the type of
work that you do your agency is doing a lot of paper work and going paperless and leading the way
and tackling that huge monster I think is wonderful. The other line item I looked at was the R&M
on computers. So there was repairs and maintenance I suppose so there was a pretty significant
increase there I think like nearly double or ninety three thousand dollars additional for some of the
same work?
Mr. Delaplane: That's for the case management system so the first one that
you talked about the hundred thousand that is for the electronic storage and the scanning and
storage of the information. The other line item is for the actual case management system so that we
can access and do the document redaction and compliance with rule 9 like I talked about earlier.
Ms. Carvalho: I'm not sure if Jake had mentioned but rule 9 was already
passed and to go into affect back in July of last year. It was only after we learned about it and we
were not prepared meaning "WE" the entire state to deal with the redaction of documents.
Currently because of the process management system we have everything is done by hand. We
redact all of the identifying information and all the other Islands pretty much do it by hand to
because their systems are not up to date. We have mentioned to the Police Department and they
have attended and we also will be seating on the Statewide Hawaii Supreme Court Rules Committee
dealing with rule 9 which is set to take place in January of next year. We have approximately six
months to get our systems up and running to make sure that it has the capabilities to redact
documents or else we're going to have to hire a whole bunch of personnel simply to redact documents.
We go through thousands of documents in our office in a given day and so to redact all that personal
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.29
identifying information is going to be a nightmare which is why they created the supreme court chief
justice created this rule 9 statewide committee to decide on who's obligation because right- now it
seems to be that it's the prosecutor's office that's going to be responsible for that. Because we get our
documents from the police department there going to be responsible as well in trying to get all of the
parties to the table because this is a daunting task as Jake had mentioned for all the counties. We
deal with thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands of documents and you're talking about
Honolulu who deal with millions of citations and alike. So it's a huge project and it definitely has to
be done because we're seeing the increase in crime with identity theft and so it's definitely something
we need to address. It's unfortunate that its fallen on times when we're probably at the lowest
economic fiscal ability that we have but it's something that they have mandated to take effect
January 1St of 2012.
Mr. Kualii: So those are my basic questions for now but I did want to say
Mahalo Nui Loa again and especially for the Project Pohaku because in listening there not only was I
listening with my head but you had my heart listening in and my gut also so thank you so much.
Ms. Carvalho: Thank you council member Kualii.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you and I checked with Councilwomen Nakamura and
her questions are all focused on the written six that was sent over as well so we'll wait for that.
Mr. Chang.
DICKIE CHANG: Thank you Shaylene for being here and thank you to the
fellow council members Kualii and the Chair for bringing up the Pohaku, the rock. Also thank
Lianne and thank you Jake for mentioning that Lianne was the one that put that together. First of
all I want to ask a few questions but I want to congratulate you Shaylene, Jake mentioned that you
were recently elected as the President of the Prosecuting Attorneys Association (HPAA) it's
comprised of the elected and appointed Prosecuting Attorneys of each county as well as the Hawaii
Attorney Generals and United States Attorneys for the District of Hawaii. I just wanted to say
congratulations and I noticed that they hold quarterly meetings and they work close with the State
Leg and Congressional leadership. When was the last quarterly meeting you had on Kauai?
Ms. Carvalho: On Kauai this year was the first time I was elected and our
first meeting was held 3 weeks ago over on Oahu. We change so we go to each of the Islands so
3 Months prior to that we're on Maui and so it's coming up and our next meeting will either be on the
Big Island or Oahu.
Mr. Chang: Next meeting will be on the Big Island or here?
Ms. Carvalho: Yes.
Mr. Chang: Not Oahu, Oahu twice then?
Ms. Carvalho: I'm sorry not Oahu, Big Island or Kauai sorry.
Mr. Chang: Kauai okay. What is the general or how many attendees are
there?
Mr. Carvalho: It has to be attended by all, every member has to be present
in order to have a quorum so all six of us have to be present.
Mr. Chang: Okay again congratulations.
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.30
Ms. Carvalho: Thank you.
Mr. Chang: Also I wanted to say hopefully you'll get that position from the
Mayor come May and hopefully there will be another position created by the Mayor and hopefully we
obviously can support. If you did have not just one but two attorneys, what would the work load
than be for an hour? You mentioned pretty much you guys are working 50-70 hours per attorney. If
you did get one or let's say we all wish you have two, then how many hours a week would the
attorneys realistically be working?
Ms. Carvalho: It would be difficult to say, we definitely are hoping that we
would allow especially with the District court currently right now for the implementation of our
diversion program. We do not have an attorney to head up that unit, all of the attorneys are
assigned to court so we would have to get another position in addition to the position that the Mayor
has. The one that is slated for what the Mayor has would have to fill in for the juvenile court which
is where I'm currently handling all of the cases. What the Mayor's position has provided is will only
get us to staffing levels to attend all courts. The additional position which we are requesting is to
create, implement, execute, and provide statistics on the success of the Pohaku program. That is our
new initiative and that's where we want an attorney to be fully assigned to doing. Especially with
this first year because it's going to be the beginning of the start of the program to gather all of the
volunteers to create the plan on the conditions that each person who is assigned to that program
would have to follow, all of the monitoring etc... that is where we're asking for that additional
attorney. Currently all of our attorneys are assigned to courts.
Mr. Chang: You know what was very refreshing for me and I'm sure it's
very refreshing for the community to note that the relationship between the Kauai Police
Department and the Prosecutors Office is pretty much at an all time high and the testimony's by
officer Miller and of course Chief Perry and Randy Chong Tim, that's very refreshing to see that the
case in December as I mentioned you told me that was what bonded everybody big time because
there were a lot of pressure and time constraints and what have you so... One of the and I was
looking down the list of your challenges that you have, is it difficult I mean what is the morale like
within your department what now as far as knowing that you guys are obviously understaffed and
pretty much overworked?
Ms. Carvalho: Let me have Lauren address that.
Mr. Furfaro: Actually I'm going to caution you on that item because it
starts to encroach on personal matters and I just would rather be safe Lauren.
Mr. Chang: Okay and the reason I was leading up to that is I personally
want to try and help in every way. Public safety is the key for us and that's the main concern around
here. You mentioned when the economy goes down unemployment goes up and you know there are
desperate times out there and we don't see it like you folks do because it's sad but true but there are
people that you know from the early days. Cousins, Uncles or Aunties and that's a different seen
there when you see people that you know use to walk a good straight life so I didn't mean to say
anything negative on that but I just wanted to make it clear that obviously there's a need for help
and when it comes to public safety. I think that's number one for all of us and myself personally so I
just want to make sure that you know I believe that and I understand what the plight is and I can
see just based on the caseloads and if you want to compare the Big Island and Maui with 27 and 29
attorneys respectively and numerous clerks in their position that really out way Kauai. It's very
commendable what you're department has been going through for that long of a time. That's what I
wanted to say and in no negative sense but just to understand the urgency.
Ms. Carvalho: We appreciate that, thank you Councilmember Chang.
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.31
Mr. Chang: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Councilmember. Again I just wanted you to
understand that the personal matters for the department are under the issues of the prosecuting
attorney herself and not this council.
Ms. Carvalho: I guess generally Councilmember Dickie, I would say that we
have any extremely hard working dedicated committed passionate staff. They come to work loving
their job; they work extremely hard and its very tiresome hours, there's voluminous amount of work
but they are a dedicated group of people. I feel that I am so honored to have had the opportunity to
have had the opportunity to work with the felony staff that we have because they are tireless. They
are very, very committed they care so much about the victims. This is their home town, this is the
place that they love and this is the place that they want to make safe and they work endlessly in
order to make that happen for not only themselves but for the rest of the people here on Kauai.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you on that. Sir I'm going to leave it at that and I've
already recognized Councilwomen Yukimura and Councilwomen Yukimura you have the floor.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you very much Jay, Jake, Lauren. Thank you for your
presentation. On the Pohaku project, what criteria are you going to use to select misdemeanor cases
from the traditional process?
Ms. Carvalho: We are currently looking at non violent first time offenders.
Ms. Yukimura: Who's going to develop the program for the diverted um...
Ms. Carvalho: We have, there are these kinds of programs, and of course not
by the name Pohaku but diversionary programs that are in place across the country. Community
based prosecution are in fifty percent of the prosecutor's office. We have models from different areas
that we had pulled from but we are also integrating it with the Hawaiian values that we have and
the type of restorative justice that we foresee that would benefit the community. For example none of
the areas have a program where and including the judiciary where a crime is committed in Kealia
that you are ordered to perform your community service in the area of Kealia. That is an integral
part of this program that you give back to the community that you took from. Most of the people in
the community service branch is dependent on how close your transportation is it has nothing to do
with the crime itself.
Ms. Yukimura: Well that sounds like a really good idea, there models out
there but someone has to put this together in a written program that shows what the criteria are,
who is going to develop the individualized program for each client or case and then who's going to
oversee it. I don't think it's really an attorney who would oversee that.
Ms. Carvalho: It is in the other counties it is an attorney that oversees the
program.
Ms. Yukimura: So is there a program in other counties here in Hawaii?
Ms. Carvalho: There was a community prosecution. There is and it started
off with the weed and seed program which is in Waipahu. They ran out of funding but that cleaning
up of China Town that was also a community based prosecution program. They've got different types
of models, our model is very unique, and I am developing the program in conjunction with the
administrative team that I have here. We also are going to get the buy in from the judiciary and so it
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.32
is similar to other types of diversionary programs but unique in its own sense in the type. of
integration between having restorative justice and having the offender give back to the community
that it took from.
Ms. Yukimura: Can you submit the proposal that you would be submitting to
the judiciary and now there's two as well to get their support?
Ms. Carvalho: Sure.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so staff if we can follow up with that?
Ms. Carvalho: The proposal is in its development stage, when the program is
launched we will make sure that we provide you a system of how that program is going to be
implemented.
Ms. Yukimura: And you see one of the positions that you're asking for to
develop and oversee this program?
Ms. Carvalho: One of the positions will yes partially oversee and develop
this program that's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And what's the other partial part that the person will do?
Ms. Carvalho: Providing coverage in court.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay thank you. So on your first page of your budget line
items, I can see that the 6 positions that are by ordinance so that's the six that you mentioned in
your chart which shows the comparison of personnel and the different counties right? But that's not
including yourself and the first deputy?
Ms. Carvalho: That's correct because the other counties don't include the
first deputy and the prosecutor because in the other counties they do not take on a full case load
unlike here where both Jake and I handle a full case load. .
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and that's logical for a small county where people have
to do more than those in big counties.
Ms. Carvalho: It is not, not for this county councilmember Yukimura its
extremely impossible at this point to handle murder trials which I did, to handle the sex assault trial
that goes on for 2 months to also handle another 2 month murder trial that's coming on and also
handle all of the administrative processes. This is why no other county really does it because you
could not really do it well for a long, you would just not be able to do it and to prepare these
presentations, go to court everyday and answer whatever questions you guys may have during
whatever period whenever we ask for a money bill etc... it's simply impossible for a prosecutor to
handle a full case load and do all of the administrative functions of that office including personnel
matters.
Ms. Yukimura: I absolutely agree to handle a full case load would be too
much but are you saying that the prosecutors in Maui, Big Island and Oahu handle no case at all?
Ms. Carvalho: They on Maui when Ben Acob was there he did not prosecute
a single case in 4 years. Jake Kimura who was a prosecutor on the Big Island did not prosecute a
single case for 4 years.
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.33
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and the first deputies don't do any cases either?
Ms. Carvalho: The first deputy on Maui did not. They have the first deputy
in the Big Island I don't know how many trials she did but she rarely ever did any trials. The one on
Oahu they have a team of 130 plus attorneys and they do not handle cases it's simply impossible to
do.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and then you have 1,2,3, other attorneys but they-are by
grants? Is that right?
Mr. Delaplane: Are you staring with EADA?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Mr. Delaplane: So EADA 9088 and 9089?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Mr. Delaplane: 9088 and 9089 were 2 positions that were both partially
funded by the county and partially funded by grants. Those were the property crime, so 9088 was
under the property crimes grant and 9089 was under the career criminal grant. This year's budget
asked that those be fully funded by the county since grant funding is being slashed in both those
areas.
Ms. Yukimura: So there like 2 new positions to then in terms of general fund
funding?
Ms. Carvalho: Its not 2 new positions it was partially funded by the county
already.
Ms. Yukimura: But now you're asking for full funding by the county?
Ms. Carvalho: Because the grants are expiring and or declining because
especially we're talking the property crimes and this is the end of the 4 year period.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and these reflect their actual salaries?
Mr. Delaplane: No these are the ordinance amounts that are listed here and
these don't reflect the actual salaries besides the second deputy.
Ms. Yukimura: That's kind of strange I thought we usually reflect all the
salaries?
Ms. Carvalho: That is not accurate. All the times I have set on budget, the
salaries that are reflected are not the actual salaries of the employees. If you hired a person at one
year you would not pay them the same as a person that had been there for 15 years where all of the
deputies have been assigned a single salary amount. It allows leeway for those people that gain
experience to get an increase in salary or else you would not be able to complete with the private
sector.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so E-64 and E-88, those are or they reflect not the
salaries but the level of general funds contributions? Is that what it is?
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.34
Ms. Carvalho: E-64 is the part time attorney which is the one that does
appeals.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Ms. Carvalho: She has been there 12 or 14 years.
Ms. Yukimura: And that reflects her actual salary?
Ms. Carvalho: That reflects almost her actual salary that's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And the one just below that?
Ms. Carvalho: Just below that. There was one funding this eighty thousand
dollar position was one that the Mayor funded at a lower salary the last budget.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Ms. Carvalho: That's why this is the only that's at eighty. If you look across
the board at the county attorney's office and all of the other attorneys well I guess it would be the
county attorneys. They all have the same amounts for every deputy county attorney. I mean that has
been standard for years in the budget.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and are all those positions filled right now?
Ms. Carvalho: Except one.
Ms. Yukimura: Which is?
Ms. Carvalho`. E-43 and one of the problems that I've been having is that I
have a ton of applications I have just not had the time to interview people because we have been
busy with budget and being in court all the time. We have a ton of applications we just don't have
necessarily the time to go through and intensive process of interviewing which our interviews are
quite lengthy.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes I know the hiring process in lengthy.
Mr. Furfaro: May I make a summary here real quick?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Mr. Furfaro: Jake could you summarize the attorneys that are currently
staffed there but are getting portions of other grants. Just to tell us what those grants are?
Mr. Delaplane: Yes and we already actually have that prepared so no
problem.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay and the next part I want to understand is the whole
intent for example this one property crime; when we got the position we applied for it we got the
grant and it was funded at a hundred percent. Year 2 it was funded at 75, year 3 it was funded at 50,
year 4 it was funded only at 25 and I'm just using this as an example. The whole idea is to get the 4
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.35
years of credit so that you would anticipate that county either has addressed that problem or the
county now has an experienced team that the county would fund.
Ms. Carvalho: You are absolutely correct.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay so I don't know if I used a typical example of that but I
would like to see that list if you prepared it that says this is the third year of property crime and
we're only getting 25 percent, this is drug relief etc... something to that effect would help us
understand this a Little bit better.
Ms. Yukimura: Well it also will help us anticipate budget issues in the
upcoming years.
Mr. Furfaro: If we could get that by the fourth of May?
Ms. Carvalho: You can get that today we have it.
Mr. Furfaro: Well I just wanted to summarize it so we all see it because we
do have some new members here on the council as well.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you Chair and then just finishing up here, the special
prosecuting attorney what is that one tenth time or full time? And the special prosecuting attorney?
So those are positions 9087/9091 what are they?
Ms. Carvalho: Those are grant funded positions and the reason why we have
a 10 percent to the county is because grant funded positions are restricted you can only work on and
utilize equipment that are grant funded. So when you purchase a computer only the grant funded
attorney can use that computer. That is absolutely correct and you are limited.
Ms. Yukimura: That's crazy.
Ms. Carvalho: If you are in a property crimes depending upon what your
objectives are and what you have applied for as to what type of property crimes that you are going to
handle. You are limited in prosecuting only those cases. Well there has been many times when
attorneys are tied up in court in doing a trial and they have their other matters for non-substances
hearings and when that happens at least we can utilize this property crime attorney to come in and
handle this domestic violence case for a non substantive hearing. Had we not had this point one in
there we would not be able to utilize that attorney for any other purpose but fox what is funded
under the grant.
Ms. Yukimura: So it's not a warm body?
Ms. Carvalho: It's a body what do you mean it's not a warm body?
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so it's a position in your office and we're using general
funds to pay for a portion of that person's time? The other protein is being funded by grants right?
But they aren't handling cases that are specifically allowed by their grant?
Ms. Carvalho: No the grant is only paying 90 percent of their salary so their
time...
Ms. Yukimura: Ninety percent of the salary?
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.36
Ms. Carvalho: In this situation.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes right.
Mr. Carvalho: There are different kinds of situations but if we're talking
specifically about this line item that person who is allocated to do 90 percent of its person's time to
work only on grant objectives. So if for example this was a property crime grant, that person could
only do property crimes. However there are instances where attorneys may be doing other kinds of
matters and they want coverage on a non substantive domestic violence case or a non substantive
career criminal case. That ten percent of their time can be allocated for that purpose where it
maximizes the use of that grant attorney position, who is majority well more than majority, ninety
percent of the time just doing just one specialized type of case.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so my confusion is that all these grant funded attorneys
are working on cases so you're taking their case load out of this chart than because otherwise if
you're not including them in the bodies but including their cases in the case load than there's a
discrepancy so it's just like counting apples and oranges.
Ms. Carvalho: No the ten percent of the cases is that what you're referring
to?
Ms. Yukimura: No if you're taking the total case load in your chart of your
office and you're dividing it only by 6.5 attorneys when actually some of the attorneys are doing some
of that case load, then you're not getting a true case load reflection.
Mr. Furfaro: Jake maybe you want to answer that question it was your
chart.
Mr. Delaplane: Yes, I didn't count the grant funded attorneys in the other
Islands either so it was purely looking at the numbers that came down from judiciary about what the
case statistics were for the prior year.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Delaplane: So a comparison based on what attorneys are handling what,
some attorneys are in specialized units at other offices and handles a very minuet part of that case
load and it would be very difficult to go and do an apples to apples sort of comparison. Hey let's look
at your grant attorneys versus our grant attorneys but it was very easy to come back with the
number of county funded attorneys versus total case loads.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah but the results will be (inaudible) depending on what
the percentage is of attorneys who are regularly funded and how many or grant attorneys.
Mr. Delaplane: It should normalize since we are using grant funded attorneys
and their using grant funded attorneys.
Ms. Yukimura: But the proportion of grant funded attorneys maybe different
from office to office and I don't know but mathematically it would make a difference.
Ms. Carvalho: It would and it would very because we have what occurs in
our budget you'll see that a percentage of the time and sometimes its 90!10 and for several months it
may go 80/20 so it would be impossible to compare our agency to even the Big Island as to how they
allocate their grant funded attorneys.
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.37
Ms. Yukimura: So it might be better to take all the attorneys grant and none
grant and all the case load and then see what happens.
Mr. Delaplane: If you'd like that we can certainly provide that it's not a
problem.
Mr. Furfaro: We'll send it over as a question, Jake, and just show
everything combined okay.
Mr. Delaplane: Sure.
well.
Mr. Furfaro: And also show the revenue comparisons that I gave you as
Ms. Carvalho: Also when we're talking about funding we're talking about the
county budget funding. The Federal sources is totally different, the State sources are totally different
so then the infusion if you're going to try to mix up the cases and mix up the type of cases and mix up
the type of funding, you're not really going to be able to compare or have anything imperative.
Mr. Furfaro: I understand what you're saying but to satisfy the body lets
merge it all together so that we can make that comparison. Can you do that Jake?
Mr. Delaplane: Sure.
Ms. Yukimura: And actually we do that in Housing and Public Works and
where ever there are different sources of funds. Whether its bond funds, general funds, grants, we do
look for that to because you have to look at the overall operations.
Mr. Furfaro: But I think we already agreed that Jake's going to make that
available to us.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay Kualii and then Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Kualii: Just a quick point and I don't want to beat at that horse but
we have to realize that we have a responsibility to the citizens to provide public safety but we have
no guarantees with the grants. The grants are nice but in the end if the grants are not there, we
have to be responsible with the county general funds, thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Since you've been the prosecuting attorney, how many
attorneys have you hired?
Ms. Carvalho: How many attorneys have we hired... maybe 13, I don't have
that number, but I can provide that.
Mr. Bynum: Okay and those attorneys that were hired since you were the
prosecuting attorney but are no longer with you, under what circumstances and you can answer this
in writing.
APRIL 19, 2011
Prosecuting Attorney (Call Backs) p.38
Ms. Carvalho: Well I believe if councilmember Furfaro, Mr. Bynum has just
asked that we provide the reasons why people are no longer there.
Mr. Bynum: If I could finish the question. I asked you to provide whether
they resigned or were terminated?
Ms. Carvalho: I believe that's a personnel issue that goes way beyond
Dickie Chang's question however...
Mr. Furfaro: Let me answer that for you. If we want to know the number of
attorneys that you turned over, please give us those numbers. Give you give us statistics about the
rationale and so forth, that's in your jurisdiction not ours, okay.
Ms. Carvalho: Definitely.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay so if you can answer the question about the number we
do not and are not entitled. The privilege of managing your department is yours and not this council.
Ms. Carvalho: Thank you Council Chair Furfaro.
Mr. Furfaro: Kualii did you have another question? No, you have none
okay. I think we've come to an end; you're going to get responses back to us in writing and hopefully
by May 4th and Jake we would like to see the revenues from these counties compare to the number of
attorneys. We pay in dollars we don't pay in population, when you get a paycheck you get it in
dollars so we need to make that comparison. Also the request from council women Yukimura if we
can merge those charts it would be appreciated. Our deadline is May 4th, thank you.
Ms. Carvalho: And we will take the opportunity to meet with the Mayor
prior to the submittal of the May 4th budget where they would have a better understanding of where
the county stands as far as managing the budget for the next fiscal year. Hopefully we'll be able to
accommodate the request that we have made. And they have been very positive, they have been
wanting to provide the request we had had extensive conversations with the administrative team
about our needs and what they want to fund and so we're hopeful that we will be able to fit our needs
within the overall picture of the county or the Mayor's submittal on May 4th.
Mr. Furfaro: Okay B.C. I'm going to take a 10 minute recess before we go
to the County Clerks review and that will be our last for the day.
Ms. Carvalho: Alright thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you
There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews recessed at 2:43 p.m.
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.l
The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 3:07 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
OFFICE OF THE COUNTY CLERK:
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay we are back from a recess and we're going to entertain
the presentation on the County Council from the County Clerk.
PETER NAKAMURA, COUNTY CLERK: Council Chair, Peter Nakamura
County Clerk for the record. Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity to go over our fiscal
year 2011-2012 operating budget with you. What I'd like to you just hopefully in the interest of time
is to just kind of go down to some of the highlights and just review the handouts that we distributed
hopefully not too fast just...
Mr. Furfaro: Would you make some appropriate time regarding issues in
the office of elections as well as the reapportionment?
Mr. Nakamura: Yes, in fact we'll cover that I will make sure to cover that
Council Chair. Just real briefly council chair and members, our fiscal year 2011/2012 operating
budget is approximately well not approximately is 3 million eight hundred forty six, four hundred
forty seven dollars. This represents for the council services office a 5.9 percent decrease from the
fiscal year 2010/2011 operating budget and a 19.65 percent decrease from the fiscal year elections
divisions operating budget. Overall the Clerk's office experienced a 7.9 percent decrease in our fiscal
year 2011/2012 budget which is approximately a drop of about three hundred twenty nine thousand
five hundred fifteen dollars. If you go to the second page, I provided some graphic illustrations of
how our budget is broken up. The division between elections division and the county clerk's office is
about 83 percent of the budget and is made up of the council services office expenses and about 17
percent this fiscal year is made up of the elections division budget. In regards to salaries,
approximately 49 percent of our overall budget/operating budget is dedicated to salaries, about 44
percent of that is for council services, 5 percent is for the elections division, and the numbers are on
the chart itself.
Corollary cost to salary requirements include the current way the department of Finance
allows for departmental accounting of such cost as other post employment benefits, social security,
health benefits and retirement. The 2 graphics on page 3 and 4 show the percentages of those costs.
The first graph on page 3 shows just (inaudible) other post employment benefits as a percentage of
the overall budget. At the top of page 4, it shows the social security health fund and retirement
portions of our operating budget for council services and elections which together include about 15
percent of our overall operating budget. Finally the graph on the bottom of page 4 in total for our
office with the cost of salaries other post employment benefits, social security, health employment
benefits and retirement comprise approximately 80 percent of our overall budget. Seventy one
percent of that for council services and nine percent for elections and one of the reasons that I
wanted to highlight this particular sector of component of our budget is if you look at that last graph
on page 4, approximately 80 percent of our offices operating budget goes to salaries and benefits and
about 20 percent falls into the other operational cost. You can see that our office is very much
personnel driven if you could call it that. What we are is we are a service organization and it's
reflected in the budget. Just to go back into some of the comparisons of for the council services
division. Decreases in our fiscal year 2011-2012 operating budget, those decreases are anomalies as
opposed to part of a trend and I think their attributed to 2 major factors, one is the non occurrence of
onetime cost associated with the fiscal year the current fiscal year relocation of the council services
office to our interim facilities here at Nawiliwili. Secondly, we're anticipating the termination of
certain operational cost associated with our interim facilities here at Nawiliwili. These would be
factors like lease, rent, and utilities that we're currently budgeting for in this fiscal year budget.
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.2
We anticipate these onetime costs in the first quarter fiscal year 2011/2012 for the relocation
of and in addition, we also anticipate certain onetime cost for the relocation back to the renovated
Historic County buildings. These costs should be offset by the dropping off of the operating expenses
here at the interim facilities so we're hopeful if we move back the budget will stabilize as opposed to
showing the swings it has the past 2 fiscal years.
The Elections divisions budget meanwhile the drop in the elections divisions operating
budget reflects again the cyclical nature of the elections themselves and the decrease is primarily
attributed to the non-inclusion of our cyclical election cost. However one of the reasons why I wanted
to speak to the council a little bit about the elections divisions' budget is because it should be noted
that there is a number of State legislative initiatives that are currently pending to establish new
election deadlines for the 2012 elections cycle and that is driven by a Federal Law an agreement that
was signed by the Department of Justice and the State office of elections with input from all the
counties that will in essence move the primary election approximately one month or 30 days earlier
than it currently is. I believe that is going to probably result in some increase cost and I will go
through that later as we get into the elections divisions operating budget highlights. Some of the
reasons for this is and just as a side note Council Chair, I have attached a copy of house Bill 716
Senate Draft 1, which is the actual bill that is currently in conference at the Legislature and the
countries were appointed I believe in Friday. This is the bill that actually moves certain deadlines
up. For the elections division on the operating budget side, one of the things I wanted to highlight is
in 2010 in order to, in an initiative to promote greater voter participation, the permanent absentee
voter program was implemented for the first time in the 2010 election cycle.
This program had an immediate effect on what we did in our office and was especially
noticeable in the 2010 primary election when the number of absentee voters both walk-in absentee
voters and mail in absentee voters exceeded the number of precinct voters for the first time in recent
memory or even a little longer memory. I have attached just a graphic that shows for the 2010
primary election we had 20 percent of our turnout was precinct 20.2 percent was precinct votes and
23 percent was absentee walk and absentee mail. In going back I needed to thank Deputy County
Clerk Eddie Topenio for going back and looking at those numbers. We wanted to know and just to
show you some trends as to why this happened. It was highlighted just by and as we're going
through the numbers and in the short period between the 2006 and 2010 election cycles the
percentage increase in absentee mail voters in both the primary and general election both exceed at
80 percent. For the primary election in 2006 the number of absentee mail ballots we received was
three thousand six hundred fifty. In the 2010 primary election, that number was six thousand eight
hundred twenty seven which is an increase of three thousand one hundred seventy seven absentee
voters or an eighty-seven percent increase. In the general election we saw a similar increase in 2006
general election four thousand two hundred sixty four absentee voters' mail voters. And 2010
general election seven thousand eight hundred fifty two an increase of about three thousand five
hundred eighty eight ballots which is an 84.1 percent increase so as you can see just in that short
two election cycle between 2006 and 2010 when we first implemented the permanent absentee
program there were jumps in both elections of over 80 percent. What does that mean for us? That
means that the increase in absentee mail voting has meant a corresponding increase in the volume of
absentee mail ballot processing by our elections division which is by statured responsible for all
aspects of absentee voting from applications for and delivery of absentee ballots to the return and
receipt of absentee ballots. The elections division is also responsible for the conduct of absentee
polling place operations or what we call absentee walk in voting. That number has remained fairly
flat and slowly rising.
The absentee walk in voting has been very dramatic in the absentee mail in voting. Part of
the absentee ballot receipt process when absentee mail ballots are sent back to us this involves the
verification of voter's signatures prior to opening the return envelope and the ballot envelopes and
counting the actual ballots. The absentee ballot return envelopes must be checked for the following;
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.3
we must check to make sure the signature on the outside envelopes affirmation statements is signed
and the second and most important part is that the signature must correspond with the absentee
request on the voter registration that we have in our register that we're required by statue to keep
an update. Because the elections division has continually searched for improvements in the
processing of absentee ballots in anticipation of this continually rising number of absentee mail
ballots and the processing intensive nature of what happens with that increases. We are proposing a
hundred twenty five thousand dollars operating budget item to procure services to develop a voter's
signature verification database. This will be to improving our capacity to process absentee mail
ballots while hopefully maintaining a high level of accuracy while leading a high level of accuracy in
terms of meeting our statutory requirements.
There being no objections, the committee recessed at 3:20 p.m.
The Committee reconvened at 3:23 p.m. and proceeded as follows.
Mr. Furfaro: Thank you and we're back from a tape change. Mr. Clerk.
Mr. Nakamura: Mr. Chair we are on the discussion of the hundred twenty five
thousand dollar new operating budget item for the elections division. One of the things we're trying
to do is with the increase in absentee mail voting and with the attendant increase in the amount of
processing that has to be done by the elections office. This is why we're requesting this agenda item
and the other thing that was just. a matter of timing was in the process of scanning the digital
imaging of the records of elections division and currently what is happening with council services is
that same scanning is going on. By the time the scanning of the elections documents were completed
and the contractor had moved down to council services just a matter of timing that was prior to the
absentee mail ballot application process kicking or becoming effective so what happened was we
weren't able to capture those 2010 permanent absentee ballot applications as part the initial digital
scanning project. This will help us catch up to that the hundred twenty five thousand dollars and it
was just a matter of timing that they could not get those things done at one time. We've also been
tracking and every legislative session there are bills that come up during the legislature that have
potential to affect all the way down to the way county election offices will be operating and what I've
highlighted is just some of the bills that are currently all still alive in the legislature. The bills that
I've listed here the 4 bills are all scheduled for conference with conferees appointed as of last week
Friday I believe. The first one is House Bill 545 Senate Draft 1, and it is a bill that requires
electronic voter registration on the website of the office of elections and requires requirements for
online voter registration including identification affidavits. That will have a direct impact on the
amount of processing and validations that we would require to handle at the local elections offices
because by state statues the clerks offices are responsible for voter registration. In providing
comments on this bill what we're and just briefly one of the concerns that we have is the ability to
provide that kind of verification if it goes online.
There is a time fused deadline and that bill that is currently heading to committee I believe
it was at last checked they were looking at it as coming in to effect for the 2014 election cycle but
that bill is still in conference. House Bill 593 Senate Draft 1 relates to nomination papers and this
rule out of a situation on Maui, Maui County and it requires candidates for county elected offices to
submit a sworn certification by self-subscribing oath that the candidate has complied with all
relevant provisions of the applicable county charter and county ordinances. That bill is also in
conference and I believe the house countries have been appointed. House Bill 638 Senate Draft 1 is
one that all of us have been keeping an eye on because it relates to instant method of voting called
instant run off voting, also referred to sometime as rank choice voting. This provides for instant run
off voting for all elections in which no primary election is held and it authorizes the state chief
elections officer or the county clerk to use the instant run off voting method in special elections that
would normally require a separate runoff election if no candidate receives the majority of votes. To
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.4
explain instant runoff voting it will probably take a workshop with the council so it's a rather it's a
type of election that's gaining popularity and it seems to have gained (inaudible) on the West Coast,
the City of San Francisco uses it. What it does and I'm probably simplifying this too much is if
there's an election where they can be an outright winner in the first election or the primary election
and so there's a potential that there would be no general election. The way the current bill reads
which is going to conference is in those kinds of elections it would be right for an instant runoff-
voting situation. For example in our charter just in looking at it and reviewing it with our elections
division office, the charter was amended recently to allow no matter what happens in the Mayoral
race in the primary of the mayoral race the top 2 candidates move on so there cannot be a winner
declared in the primary the top 2 always move on. The way the bill is currently structured is that
instant runoff voting provision would not apply to the Mayoral election, however we had questions
and we've talking about it with the election officials statewide about for example the council races
and the prosecutor race on Kauai and if the bill passes we probably will be trying to get clarity with
the county attorney's office on how that particular case works. It will probably take an entire
workshop to explain how it works and what I will do Mr. Chair is I will circulate some information
on how instant runoff voting works as well as a copy of the bill We are keeping an eye on that bill
because it has particular ratifications for our. county elections.
Mr. Furfaro: That would be appreciated and I do think I concur about a
workshop so...
Mr. Nakamura: If it passes council chair.
JOANN YUKIMURA: Mr. Chair it might be more appropriate to for a workshop if
we're trying to cover budget.
Mr. Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Nakamura: The next bill is House Bill 716 Senate Draft 1 which we've
already spoken about which moves the election deadlines up. One of the and I just wanted to briefly
touch on this is one of the things that the Federal mandate that there be 45 days a minimum of forty
five days between the primary election and the general election to allow for the mailing of overseas
ballots. One of the fallouts from that is our current election September to November is almost
exactly 45 days, however that doesn't take into account that we have to put in a challenge period and
print out the ballot. What happens is the bill that's currently before the Legislature moves it up one
month 30 days and almost all deadlines move up 30 days accept the candidates filing deadline which
stays February I believe. The one thing that we were able to among the clerks discuss and get put in
the bill is as opposed to 30 days for the submittal of the charter amendments to the chief elections
officer. We are able to insert a clause where it says instead of moving it; currently it says charter
amendments must be submitted to the chief elections officer 60 days prior to the general election so
instead of 90 days what we were able to do was put in a clause that cut that in half so now its 75
days. If this bill passes we're planning to have a discussion with the charter review commission on
how that affects the schedule. The reason why I mentioned these bills is that this has a direct effect
on what one of the things that will be proposing and a change that I will be asking the council to look
at for the May 5th submittal of the Mayors supplemental to the operating budget. One of the things
that is also going on this year for elections is the statewide reapportionment project is on its way
which is the appointment of the state wide reapportionment commission has been done. There are 8
members that are appointed by the house and senate and together they choose a 9th member to be
chair of the reapportionment commission.
They have a deadline of May 1St to get that commission appointed and once that's done the
constitution allows for 150 days for the reapportionment commission to complete its work which puts
us right in the beginning of the second quarter of the fiscal year 2012 which is around October at
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.5
that point in time. Once its reapportionment is completed and once maps are adopted major
responsibilities now shift to the local election offices because what starts to happen is now we start
redrawing our lines for our precinct and possibly reassign where people will vote. For example very
quickly if you were voting at Kapa`a Middle School last year there's a potential you could be voting at
the Kapa`a Neighborhood Center. What we would need to do is we would need to update all of our
voter registration rows and mail outs in order for that to happen. In light of the reapportionment
responsibilities and the anticipated move of the primary election to 30 days, move up to 30 days up
to the 2nd Saturday in August we're caught kind of between a times vice. We will be working on the
redrawing and the reassigning of voters after reapportionment and at the same time we will be
ramping up for the moved up primary and because of that there's currently in the budget what there
is in the operating budget for the elections division are two temporary election clerk positions that
were budgeted to be hired in March of 2012. My responsibility and my fault I had I had kind of
forgotten about the timeline that the reapportionment commission was working on so in light of both
reapportionment and the moving up of the primary election in 2012 to August. I will be requesting
that we be allowed to bring on the temporary election clerks instead of in March of 2012 in January
of 2012. That was kind of a long lead up to that request that will be making and hopefully what will
happen is they'll be able to assist in the reassignment of voters that will be caused by the
reapportionment commissions work and also free up some existing election workers our permanent
election workers to start working on the earlier primary and the deadlines and the training and
everything attended that comes along with that so what we'll be doing is asking that that be given
consideration by this council. Council chair I can stop and take questions on this section or just
continue through until...
Mr. Furfaro: We're going to roll into the council services next. Are there
any questions up to this point?
Ms. Yukimura: We're going to council services next?
Mr. Furfaro: His summary which is page 8 of 9 and that also covers the
council's budgeted training program which is attached so go right in to that.
Mr. Nakamura: If there's no questions on the hundred twenty five thousand
dollar digital signature verification program and the request to move up 2 temporary election clerks.
For the council services division, one new position has been included in the budget for the fiscal year
2012 for secretarial support. The direct and primary purpose of this position is to provide support
for the offices plans to increase web posting of council documents. In discussions with council chair
in terms of what was needed by staff in order to facilitate and ramp up some of the postings of digital
documents on the web, I think this came up as a proposal to provide additional assistance and
support to allow this to happen. This works hand in hand with the upgrades in our no longer my
understanding is no longer called digital copiers they are now called multifunction copiers because
they provide a number of different services. One of the things as part of our goal of increasing the
presence of the council and council documents on the web, the primary objective that we're given by
the council chair was to obtain and upgrade our copier systems in to multi function systems that will
allow us to begin that process here at the Nawiliwili facilities and be able to transition that directly
to the upgraded network systems in the renovated county building. At this point the objective of
obtaining a replacement copier which we had kind of been waiting on in terms of making sure we
had the connectivity to do it. We've been given a deadline of probably within the next month to get
the second multifunction copier down here.
Our hope is that it will be able to decrease the amount of steps that we currently have to do
to convert paper documents into readable searchable documents, currently we have one copier that
does scanning and a smaller scanner upstairs but neither one of them will convert directly to a
readable searchable document and what this one multifunction copier does it does that on one pass
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.6
and hopefully what it does is it changes and it will drop the amount of time it takes for that kind of
processing. It's also in true multifunction nature it's also going to be a part of the network printer
system when we transition back to the renovated county building. It will also be besides being a
copier and besides being a scanner it will also be a network printer also. On that I will transition to
the next thing in the budget that had a fairly substantial increase and the council training budget
was also increased by fifteen thousand dollars in order to expand opportunities for staff
development. What I've attached to our office's budget handout is the conceptual plan for staff
training and development dated March 14, 2011. This was under the signature of the council
chair that was submitted and discussed by the council committee of the whole human resources
sub-committee and provides the framework for training within all the divisions of council services
and that's attachment B in your document. Also just in terms of the amount of vacancies within the
staff, the recent staff departures have led to 2 vacancies that remain to be filled among the
legislative analyst positions. We are currently in the recruitment mode to fill these positions and
there's also an ongoing effort to fill a vacant secretarial position. I think we're -close to being fully
staffed for what appears to be a snapshot of time. We recently saw the transition out of 2 analyst so
we're looking. to fill those as soon as we can and we're in the recruitment process now and the chair
has given us a very short deadline to accomplish that.
Mr. Furfaro: On that point I just want to share with the group that we
have 4 finalists for those 2 positions.
Mr. Nakamura: The other vacancy that we successfully filled within the past
2 and a half weeks was the council vacancy so that was another one we were asked to plug rather
quickly.
Mr. Furfaro: Eh you had fill one vacancy bridal.
Ms. Yukimura: And we did it in record time.
Mr. Nakamura: I thank the council for its support and understanding and I
also especially thank councilmember Kualii because we've been trying to make sure that he gets the
support and orientation that is necessary although he appears to be doing very well actually. That is
something that we're still committed to doing with councilmember Kualii in terms of orienting him
to just the office functions as with everyone to get ready for the transition back to the renovated
building. One of the major goals of our office and if it well one of the major goals that we have been
in discussion with council chair Furfaro about has been the ability to increase our digital presence.
One of these objectives was to obtain the technology or the equipment to be able to do this and
hopefully what will happen and is one of the real learning experiences that we had in the last fiscal
year was in our relocation down to this building where the relocation occurred for several reasons
that were and some of which were beyond our control. We actually relocated during the budget
period right during the start of budget period and at the same time we were doing budget we were
also trying to keep up with the schedule of council meetings and in fact I think we had to schedule
almost a rush meeting before this building was actually wired up. That had to deal with making
sure the council approved the funding for the acquisition of the Hodge parcel at Black Pot and that
was pretty much done almost on typewriter because we were in transition between the 2 buildings
and we did not have the...And it was done on a lot of borrowed equipment but what that taught us
was that as we relocate back to the building one of the challenges we're going to have is we're going
to have to be able to fit in not just the ability to make sure that we're connected as we get back to the
degree that we want to but also that we're able to deal with any kinds of unexpected and
unanticipated emergencies.
We are currently working on finalizing the furniture fixtures and equipment packages for the
new building and at the same time design elements for the newly renovated council chambers. That
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.7
are being finalized and that is going to be a particular challenge because I think what we're trying to
do is increase the audio visual connectivity capacity of the chambers and trying to time it so that it
actually is completed and good to go at the same. time that the move back to the newly renovated
county building occurs. Once in the newly renovated facilities I think what we want to be able to do
is to ensure that we minimize the amount of down time as we fit back in to the building in terms of
whether it has to do with maintaining the kind of presence that we .want to on the web or
maintaining the support for the council members and the ongoing meetings that we have. Pretty
much council chair that was what I wanted to get to the council.
Mr. Furfaro: I appreciate that because we have 2 members that need to
leave shortly but I'm going to open for some Q&A and thank you for that presentation. I think
people can revisit the training business plan for the council on the last 2 pages. Councilwoman
Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you Peter. On the scanning machine that you're
proposing, is that we've run it by the I.T. people and?
Mr. Furfaro: Oh yeah we've had several meetings with them JoAnn.
Mr. Nakamura: Thanks to council chair Furfaro I think we were not only able
to run it by them but the chair was able to and I'm trying to find a nice way to say this is light a fire
under them I believe.
Ms. Yukimura: So it's part of their recommendation to us then?
Mr. Nakamura: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay that's excellent.
Mr. Nakamura: And we are also careful to tell them that the connectivity
shouldn't only be looked at only at this building because we will be moving out of here in a matter of
months. And that it had to be done so that we could just in essence pack and go plug and play at the
new building once we get in there.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay good. I think the mission statement is pretty thorough
but we're not setting a very good example for the rest of the county with respect to goals and
objectives. And I'm taking responsibility for it to I mean it's a "we" thing but it's not clear from this
document what our goals and objectives are, and I was wondering how we might make that clear.
Mr. Nakamura: This was something I was kind of looking at I think council
chair and members of the council in terms of goals and objectives. One of the things as I started
looking at that, what I realized was that I hadn't made time for prior to writing it up was to be able
to sit down with the staff and go over our goals and objectives. One of the... for example one of the
goals that we really wanted to look at was to be able to provide a lifelong learning experience or a
career long learning experience when you're here so you're not just kind of locked in to the everyday
grind of the process. Council Chair Furfaro kind of gave us that opportunity in the training budget
in terms of being able to say if we're telling people that you should be able to come to work and learn
things and that should be a goal for people working in our office that we should be able to provide the
kind of support that's needed for that. I think we get that every once and awhile with the Boards
and Commissions office and I know that they offer training on certain kinds of software, for example,
it might be PowerPoint, advance Microsoft word, or Microsoft excel. Some of the particular needs for
our office and one thing that we really were trying to focus I think not only this year but in the
previous-two years was the ability to interface with other Government agencies that do bill drafting
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.8
for example and what we've done is we've been in contact with the legislative reference bureau in
order to try to arrange seminars actually on bill drafting. One of the strange things is that if you
google (inaudible) on the web you will find that it's a fairly unique way of doing legislative bill
drafting. Hawaii may be one of the very few states that do that.
Ms. Yukimura: I think that's exactly what I'm thinking about in terms of that
kind of thought so under personnel the idea of having career tracks or career development and
working with our employees. I actually just read the Hawaii Business Magazine about best places
to work and you know we could compete in the process one of our goals was to become the best place
to work, what would that take? I'm thinking what are our I.T. goals? What are our personnel goals?
What are our customer servicing goals? What are our goals in terms of being able. to analyze issues
and do research and develop really good bills or legislation? Stuff like that and it's really great that
you thought about involving the staff in developing that but I also think the council has a role in
setting some kind of vision and goals related thereto. Maybe we need to set up more processes that
help engage in that kind of dialog.
Mr. Furfaro: I did want to point out that I had an opportunity to follow up
with Barbara today and I think what I expressed to Peter was the fact that some of the things that
we talked about as a group about values that I know is ongoing work and it's something we probably
want to incorporate even in signage and programs that we have right here in our chambers. I was
thinking that was a way for our council to participate. What I'm asking of the clerk is to be inclusive
with the staff at this point. So those 2 pieces could come together and not be driven by the fact that
we took the time to get everybody to participate, especially on the values.
Ms. Yukimura: That would be excellent and then it could get translated down
in to budget because that's what we're telling all the other departments. You have your missions
and your goals and how is it supported by budget.
Mr. Furfaro: Well you know if you look at Maurice Maskeranis and his
business training plan the fact of the matter is you come up with a set of core values and those
values support your mission, your mission is kind of the what you're doing, the values is how we're
doing it. We have some great talent right here on the council but those are the things that you know
the vision statement, the mission statement and the value statement. They are all connected like
weaving a lei and I think we're on that way in our own way.
Ms. Yukimura: I think so too and I also want to suggest that and it's
something I've been suggesting for many years that we have a voter registration goal that we
register 90 percent of the eligible voters. We could look at that, education, campaign and so forth.
Mr. Furfaro: Absolutely, set goals make sure it has some reach but set a
goal. Okay Mr. Bynum and Mr. Kualii after that and Mr. Kualii I'm going to you because I know
that you and Mr. Rapozo need to leave out to the North Shore so Mr. Bynum.
TIM BYNUM: I will try to be quick. For the vacancies we had that we
posted internal or external notice...
Mr. Furfaro: Why don't you let me handle that? I've been working with HR
on the recruitment of that particular. We have solicited internally and we had one candidate come
out of that internal.
Mr. Bynum: So we sent out the HR?
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.9
Mr. Furfaro: We sent out the particular information and we had one
candidate response. I also want to let you know that I have had others here involved with me on the
recruitment process and as I mentioned we have 4 candidates that include some participation of
screening and so forth with one of our legal analyst, our HR person and so forth. Really at this point
we're just trying to get the best possible candidate we can and the one internal candidate who I chose
not to mention is in that group of four.
Mr. Bynum: But there was a regular through HR posting to county
employees?
Ms. Yukimura: Can you speak into your mic?
Mr. Bynum: The normal process that we do?
Mr. Furfaro: There should have been Mr. Bynum. Was there? I would say
to you I don't absolutely know I left that with HR. Did we get someone who responded? Yes we did
through what I think was the process complete.
Mr. Bynum: I had 2 other questions?
Mr. Furfaro: Go right ahead.
Mr. Bynum: Is it the responsibility of the clerk's office to update the
county code and do you have a plan to do that?
Mr. Nakamura: Yes. To the first question yes it is our responsibility to update
the county code. I think for the past two terms what we've been trying to do is not just update the
county code and put out a supplemental but also find some way to incorporate the updating of the
code into a posting of the code on the web. I have talked to Maui County for example council member
Bynum and I think you know that Maui County has that where they have a vendor that actuaIly
bundles the two services together. They do the update they do the printing of a hard copy and they
also post it on the web. My responsibility and what happened the first and most critical element of
that is to make sure that we have an updated clean code to work from and that has taken us a while.
That is something that we're trying to focus on, we dedicated a single staff person I believe over the
past year or so but just with the amount of work that was being generated by the council over the
past two years my fault I underestimated the amount of time that had to be done to catch up on that.
That is my responsibility that is our offices responsibility and that's something...
Mr. Bynum: So there's a plan going forward?
Mr. Furfaro: There's a commitment on June 30th to have it done and we've
met with members of the bar association here on Kauai to share that commitment with them.
Mr. Bynum: Okay and then my other question was similar. The update of
the charter, is that the responsibility of the clerk's office and do we have an official charter? The
administration put it online but there's this disclaimer that says the official one goes to council
services so I'm just confused about that.
Mr. Nakamura: This is something that and I'm fairly unclear about that too
because the charter itself has no provision that speaks about the revision of the charter or what
would be called the codification of the charter.
Mr. Bynum: If you're confused I feel better because I'm confused.
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.10
Mr. Nakamura: My problem is that we shouldn't be but what we did was as
soon as the boards and commissions office was established and once the charter commission was
established as a sitting commission for the next 10 years I believe going back to the 2008 election.
We were in discussions and theses discussions were initiated by boards and commissions
administrator John Isobe about the responsibility of the charter and codification of the charter. We
got to the point where we were able to provide information and proof the "quote" unofficial codified
charter that on the boards and commissions website. What we still needed to close the loop on is
how that gets adopted. The other thing that we wanted to make sure was that the annotations to
the charter were consistent in terms of we spent a particular amount of time on for example the
charter amendment that was adopted but was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court was real
property tax cap. The annotations to put on those kinds of things where there was actually approved
but it would not show up in our charter. I think that's something that needs to be clarified and this
is something that has been the ongoing push of the boards and commissions office so that's
something that we really wanted to clear up as soon as possible. One of the other reasons why we
were looking at that is with the sitting charter commission I think the potential for charter
amendments to be on every election and the potential for the charter to be amended at every election
was pretty much going to ramp up. I think this charter commission has taken its responsibility
fairly seriously and it looks like for every election that there will be amendments to do it. The cycle
of charter amendment changes will probably speed up too so I think that's something that we need to
close on fairly quickly council member Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Council member Kualii.
KIPUKAI KUALII: Mr. Chair I had a couple of questions and that I'm going to
submit in writing as I do have to leave. I do want to just take a moment to say Mahalo to the county
clerk and the entire staff. It hasn't been 1 week yet a week ago tonight is when I was sworn in and
that very night and the very next morning was right to work and if you think I've been handling it
and hitting the ground running it's only because of the support that I've been receiving from the
county clerk and all of the staff before the meeting starts and after the meetings and during the
breaks I'm getting a lot of help. Thank you so much and I already can tell this is an incredible place
to be and to work and I really appreciate the entire county clerk and council services staff, Mahalo.
MEL RAPOZO: Unfortunately for us council members it cannot be a lifelong
experience.
Mr. Furfaro: Council members I want to say we will see you tomorrow for
our regular council meeting and believe me we are very appreciative of you just plunging right in
and working with us. We are very thankful.
Mr. Nakamura: Thank you council member.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo is going to leave as well.
Mr. Kualii and Mr. Rapozo were noted as excused from the meeting at 3:58 p.m.
Mr. Furfaro: We're at 9:00 tomorrow gentlemen. you no tell me that I
drive that far every day, any additional questions? Councilwoman Nakamura.
NADINE NAKAMURA: Under the special projects line item there is a CZO update
assistant?
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.l l
Mr. Nakamura: Yes.
Ms. Nakamura: Can you please explain that?
Mr. Nakamura: I think that occurred out of a discussion that the previous
council had and I believe council member Bynum was an integral part of that discussion in
anticipation of a document like the update of the comprehensive zoning ordinance coming over to the
council. There was a feeling that perhaps what the council would need is the ability to have someone
to take a look at that document in addition to our staff, to also review it for completeness and to see
that it was capturing everything that's supposed to be in it and that was put in anticipation of the
CZO update arriving here I believe last year sometime Council Member Bynum. I think we were
anticipating that towards the last quarter of 2010 in fact. That in anticipation if it's still coming over
that budget item was carried over.
Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Bynum do you want to add on?
Mr. Bynum: Yeah can I?
Mr. Furfaro: Of course you can it was your item that you sent yesterday of
course you can.
Mr. Bynum: I've been expecting the CZO for 4 years since I've been on the
council; it's such an important document that has many complexities. I suggested and I asked the
county attorney if we could do this and we may want to hire a consultant just to advise us about
whether the document because of the intricacies meets the goals that we have and so that was and
whether comes to flourish or not that the idea was to have a consultant services if necessary.
Mr. Nakamura: I think the intent is there to get that to us sometime this
calendar year.
Mr. Bynum: And I know the intent is probably more real than ever but
that's been a stated intent since at least 2000 and I have seen...
Ms. Yukimura: No it's been since 1990.
Mr. Bynum: Well 2000 is as far as I went back in my research. Councils
way before I was on it were expecting that from planning in that calendar year.
Ms. Nakamura: The other question has to do with the consultant services line
item of twenty eight thousand of which twenty thousand is for special council? I was just wondering
are we tied to and it doesn't look like this past year we have spent down too much on that line item
but going forward are we limited to legal consultant, legal counsel for that line item?
Mr. Nakamura: Short answer councilmember Nakamura. Yes I think that
occurred that line item occurs it's because there's already a special counsel budget that sits in the
County attorney's office and that one is at under the responsibility of the county attorney. The
ability for the council in absolutely unique situations where they may be a need for the council to
hire its own legal council to give them advice that is there for those kinds of instances when there
may be some extraordinary circumstance where the council won't be able to consult with the county
attorney's office.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay thank you.
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.12
Mr. Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: On the county code, this idea of a supplement is what we do
with HRS right?
Mr. Nakamura: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And then at some point it gets converted totally into the code
again.
Mr. Nakamura: Because (inaudible) yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so what is our plan? What are we going to have done by
June 30th?
Mr. Nakamura: What we hope to have is we hope to have the supplements the
current supplements in the county code by June 30th. That's my understanding and what happens if
you look at our code is rather than a (inaudible) what happens is that the pages or the sections of the
code that are amended what we actually do is we have replacement pages so it's not as if we reprint
the whole thing but the pages get re-numbered to reflect new sections.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Nakamura: We will always be behind just because of the nature of the
council and its calendar. We will always be about a year behind so it's dissimilar to the county
charter in the sense that that happens every two years so we are able to look at changes. With the
code because of the speed and the amount of changes the supplement process where pages are
actually if you think about it like a book are actually...
Ms. Yukimura: Oh I know exactly how it works that's how the Supreme Court
rules were for an attorney, you just take out certain pages and you put in different pages.
Mr. Nakamura: Instead of page 10 you get page l0A 10A-1, 10A-2, ETC...
Ms. Yukimura: Right or you remove page 10 & 12 to 12 and then you have a
new page 10-12.
Ms. Yukimura:
Supreme Court rules like
Mr. Nakamura:
Ms. Yukimura:
Mr. Furfaro:
date of June 30th.
Ms. Yukimura:
by June 30th.
But one year behind seems kind of I mean if I remember the
I think, like within two months of a rule change you get the change.
I'm not familiar with that.
So I mean I guess I'm trying to figure out what our goal is?
I set the goal first of all in all fairness to him. I set the goal
Right but I still needed to know what we're going to get done
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.13
Mr. Furfaro: I think the clerk explained pretty much what we plan to at
this particular time. Any goal you set I mean it has to have reasonable reach. We've been working
on this for a very long time and in particular most of it has been assigned to Peter Morimoto.
Mr. Nakamura: To one of our legal analyst.
Ms. Yukimura: Whatever the assignments the goal is to get it done with a
current supplement which will nonetheless be about one year behind?
Mr. Nakamura: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Nakamura: About one year behind by the time we get it done.
Ms. Yukimura: And do we have a time when we're going to codification. Do
we have a long range plan that we do codification every ten years?
Mr. Nakamura: No not at this time councilmember. What we're trying to do
at this time is to make sure that we get to where we can be.
Ms. Yukimura: And actually if you have those supplements that fir you really
don't need a codification but what you could aim for is faster supplements.
Mr. Nakamura: Correct and I think hopefully and I'm not entirely sure how it
works but once we try to figure out a way to get it digitized and digitally represented that hopefully
will lead to a quicker codification, that's what we're hoping however the offset it there will probably
be more cost to that.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah of course. So the supplement that's going to be
produced by June 30, is actually going to be those additions?
Mr. Nakamura: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, okay. And can you give us the variances to date in our
different accounts by May 4th?
Mr. Nakamura: By May 4th I'm sorry, yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and can you also give us some tentative goals and
objectives you as the clerk in your thought process knowing that this is going to be vetted in the two
groups?
Mr. Furfaro: Peter would you first make reference to my January 3rd eight
objectives that I have to you for the 6 months I briefed some of the individual council members on
that but I do have it based on something that we're going to review in June. I just wanted to remind
everybody that I am the administrative for the clerk and I set those goals and we should be able to
start with those first.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay I see so he would submit that to us?
Mr. Furfaro: Yes.
April 19, 2011
Office of the County Clerk p.14
Ms. Yukimura: Because right now in my it's not a personnel evaluation it's
goals for our council services our elections division as related to budget.
Mr. Nakamura: In all honesty council chair and council members, up until the
point where we hit the relocation and the relocation of the office is back to the renovated building
we'll probably be working off a series of objectives.
Mr. Furfaro: Well that was one of the goals too.
Mr. Nakamura: That's one of the goals.
Mr. Furfaro: To get back by August 22na.
Mr. Nakamura: Correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay very good thank you.
Mr. Furfaro: Any more questions of the clerk? If not we're going to go into
recess until Thursday.
Mr. Nakamura: Thank you Mr. Chair, thank you council members.
There being no objections, the budget review recessed at 4:11 p.m.
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.l
The Council reconvened at 9:10 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
FINANCE DEPARTMENT (CALL-BACK):
Chair Furfaro: Aloha and good morning. I'm calling this meeting back to
order on Budget and Finance for the County of Kauai. A few small housekeeping items before you
folks get too far if I can and before I welcome Mr. Resents, we have a single sheet provided to us by
Finance on the single bigger line item budget variances, there are five particular pieces on your
sheet there as well as there is a circular piece referencing the opportunity of Economic Development
that we were able to bridge certain questions that may again come up again in the Budget session
especially dealing with payroll issues, PT&E, so you have that. Also I would like to thank Eddie our
Deputy Clerk as a follow up for our goal setting for us, I am passing out to you the voter turnout
comparisons for the last ten years that came up as one of the goals that we might want as a
suggested by Vice Chair Yukimura, if you can pass one down so all of you can have a ten year
preview on the voter turnouts that we have. And again I want to thank Wally for his information in
advance and I want to thank Eddie for doing the follow up on some of the goal setting from
yesterday. So those are just FYI items and on that note, I'd say aloha good morning Wally. We
would go ahead and let you start your presentation whenever you choose to begin so go right ahead.
Mr. Rezentes: Good morning Chair Furfaro and Councilmembers, for the
record Wally Rezentes Jr., Director of Finance. I think you're going to like today because I think I'm
going to be mainly a color commentator on the side and allow my division staff to discussion their
respective sections of the budget packets that we had provided for you folks earlier. Chair based on
the communication and discussions that we've had, IT I believe have moved to the May 9...
Chair Furfaro: That's right.
Mr. Rezentes: So they're going to be...
Chair Furfaro: May 9.
Mr. Rezentes: So you'll be doing the budget review for their operations and
CIP at that point in time. I did hand out to you some of the highlighted large dollar variances
between FY 2012 and FY 11 with some explanations in them and I believe touch on some of these in
the past and I believe we've had communications from Council staff on some of these items so we
will, for example the cost allocation plan the central indirect cost central services and I think that's
going to, we've been requested to come back to this body at a later date and during a Council meeting
time and provide information on that service as well as the contract in that particular, for that
particular line item, I know we have our consultant coming in next week for two or three days and is
going to be working with the various departments and we're trying to arrange the meeting as well
with you Chair.
Chair Furfaro: I did respond to that email this morning.
Mr. Rezentes: Perfect. So, the first division I'm going to be bringing up
today is the Purchasing Division and that is on page ten (10) of your, the binder that we provided
you last week.
Chair Furfaro: Before you do that Wally for the benefit of the members here I
just want to remind everyone that the way I set this up with our staff is May 6 we're going to get the
supplemental piece submitted to us from the Mayor's Office. I have and I'm very proud to say I have
asked members of our staff to work the 6 and 7, that Friday and Saturday to prepare a variance
report for all of you so that we can see what we've been reviewing with what has come back to us on
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.2
that Friday. I also want to recognize that I didn't add Sunday in there because it's Mother's Day and
we have several mother's that are on our staff and in fact several expecting mothers on our staff.
When we get to Monday again as Wally pointed out, we will have some time to actually look at the
IT piece and that would be the first look at that. But we are going to be in a very condense
timeframe to meet certain deadlines and that's why I asked Jade and the staff about working
through Friday, Saturday so you'll get a variance sheet. What we saw in the meeting and the
differences after adjustments from the Administration because we only have that 8th and 9th before
we start cranking out some decisions. So thank you for that time Wally and 9th and 10th, I'm sorry;
my apologies.
ERNEST BARREIRA, ASST. CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER: Honorable Chair.
Chair Furfaro: Go ahead and it's Thursday morning and you can start with
us and we do want to be timely today because we have a posted Executive Session at 11:00.
Mr. Barreira: Very good Mr. Chair. Honorable members of the Council,
good morning, my name is Ernie Barreira, I am the Assistant Chief Procurement Officer for the
County of Kauai. I am very honored to be present before you this morning to speak about the
division and to hopefully be able to answer any questions you might have following my very brief
presentation. I will not reiterate a lot of the content of the written submittal, it's actually an easy
appearance because other than replacement of a couple of a minor broken pieces of equipment, I am
not asking for anything other than moving towards very needed innovation in planning within the
division.
In the year that I have been blessed to be part of this county I -have spent a good deal amount
of time in comprehensive review and analysis and evaluation of our entire purchasing operation.
And in the process of doing that I have identified some significant strengthens and at the same time
I have identified areas that are ready for improvement and review. And I will be remised this
morning if not in making a brief comment about my staff, it is amazing to me that whether it's a five
dollar expenditure or a one hundred million dollar expenditure, every minor and major purchase for
the county, starts and ends with the division of Purchasing. It is amazing that the seven people
occupy that staff and with me eight, assume responsibility for that. I think that speaks to their
qualifications, their commitment and their character and I am proud to lead these group of people
because they have done a tremendous job. What I am suggesting to you this morning in my
presentation is not a criticism of the way in which we've done business, it's simply an
acknowledgment that technologies are here and are available and we have an obligation, it is
incumbent upon us to move towards those technologies to improve our base of operations and to
deliver a timely and affective product.
There are three things that I would briefly like to touch upon, the first is a critical
importance of moving away of the extensive paper process that we're currently involved with. That
has been something that has been really a challenge for all government agencies for many years. We
are driven by paper and I have heard comments from this honorable body on more than one occasion
about the time it takes to process the paper and about the technologies that are available is really
something we need to (inaudible). Our procurement process is very cumbersome, it's very
challenging. It is not unusual ladies and gentlemen for a major bid product to be submitted which is
this thick and on an contraction project you add specifications to the plans and you're dealing with a
document that potentially that thick. All of those documents are reproduced, if we have fifty priority
bidders or fifty people that want a copy of that document, they're basically being mailed a copy. We
photo copy, we mail, we expend a tremendous amount of time and energy and manpower on those
types of processes which are extremely out dated. The other astonishing fact is when you speak to
the more larger department heads who submit construction bids, its not awkward for them to budget
as much as ten thousand dollars for photo copying alone. In an advent of 21 century and with the
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.3
resources that we have available to us, we need to move away from those types of reliance on those
traditional methods. One of the things that we have to face ladies and gentlemen is that if we want
to fully intergraded procurement system, it's going to take time, investment and money. Obviously
this is not the time to speak of that, at least not extremely seriously because we have challenges as
all of you are well aware. The Honolulu City and County, the State of Hawaii have invested in
intergraded and fully intergraded an electronic procurement systems. We have the HEP system at
the State level and we have the (inaudible) at the City and County level. Very impressive systems
and they achieve their goal and achieve their efficiencies, however that took a tremendous amount of
money and the City and County it was a twelve million dollar project over six years. But I will tell
you that they are none and low cost initiatives that we can pursue now. which will enable us to
harness these technologies, increase our efficiencies and move us away from the intensive paper
process that are currently follow. And the way that we're going to do that and I'm sure Honorable
Chair, you're going to have more questions for Mr. Raynes when he's here on the 9th but we will
harness the technologies available to the world wide web and to the Internet to the our somewhat
utilize county website to attach solicitations so that vendors can access the website and access those
solicitations and it doesn't end there, all of our amendment, discussions and even our awards can be
posted on that website so that you have a far more timely resolution of these procurements. We
currently post our awards on our bullet board, well that works if you can come to the Division of
Purchasing and read the board. But it creates redundancies that are unnecessary because in
addition to posting, we have to mail and many times we have certified mail, extremely expansive.
We all know that we have a six figure posting budget, it's extremely demanding so there are unique
opportunities for us to address that situation.
One of the biggest initiatives we're undertaking today is to conduct a comprehensive review
of the many, many forms that are driven by the procurement process. These forms are necessary,
the statute and the administrative rules govern execution of those processes and the forms basically
require that we do that. What we're doing is identifying the numerous redundancies that exist in
our system. After twenty some years, you create a lot of forms and sometimes you don't manage
them as weIl as we should, so identifying and eliminating the redundancies is a critical component,
conducting a comprehensive content review of all of those documents to make sure that they comply
with the law and with the statutes and with our internal policies... and the challenge then is to
reprogram those forms to make them data fill capable. That is the back bone that is going to create
the opportunity for us to remove ourselves from the paper driven process and to create a fully
electronic system. All of these forms will be stored in an organized fashion on a county portal where
all agencies and divisions will be able to access those forms and decide what they'll need to do to
facilitate a particular procurement. And we will then begin an electronic process which will save us
time and money and it will allow us to efficiency process the work in a sufficiently shorter period of
time. Once again these technologies exist, it is nothing that we cannot currently occupy. It's a
matter of developing policies and procedures internally and preparing and working closely with our
vendor community so that they're ready to more in that direction. And many of them are, we get
business all the time, people frustrated that they have to break their back and picking up a
solicitation package that is quite voluminous, so the community is ready. The Contractors
Association is ready, Director Rezentes and I have been invited along with IT manager Baynes to the
Contractor Association of Kauai annual dinner meeting because they want to hear more about our
ideas about electronic procurement, so we're going to be meeting with them next month and
hopefully keeping them well informed with what our plans are.
The move towards technology ladies and gentlemen is very easy because the charge is clear
for Mayor Carvalho and Director Rezentes, we are going to more in this direction and we are going to
be successful in doing so, so its-very easy to facilitate the necessary planning when the leadership is
clear about what they want. The last thing I'd like to talk to you about, our contract system is going
to be significantly streamlined with these forms and electronic product and I don't want to spend too
much time on that but I would like to close sharing you our plans for our P-Card system. All of you
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.4
are aware that we have a purchasing card that is in place for the County of Kauai for travel and
related expenditures, Director Rezentes recently amended and increased the threshold from one
thousand dollars to five thousand dollars to facilitate purchase related cost that every county agency
has to absorbed, this is going to streamline the process. We've also recently aloud as a standard
practice Internet bids for travel related purposes because it facilitates a much more affordable
option and its much more timely. We have work collaboratively over the last year in planning and
developing our implementation strategy to roll out our P-card system for a general commodities in
goods and services. We have had two informational briefings with all employees, we have developed
a functional threshold which we think will work, I will tell you that as astonishing as it is, we
execute over eight thousand purchase orders every year in this county. The P-card for general
commodities at the fifteen hundred dollar threshold will enable us to eliminate close to ninety
percent of all of those purchase orders.
Chair Furfaro: Did you say ninety?
Mr. Barreira: Ninety percent sir.
Chair Furfaro: Just want to know if you wanted to reconsider that goal?
Ninety?
Mr. Barreira: That's the number...
Chair Furfaro: Okay, we're writing it down.
Mr. Barreira: Very good sir and you may hold me to that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Barreira: What that essentially is going to do is streamline the time in
which it takes to facilitate these small purchases, much of the control and organization will be at the
departmental level versus at the purchasing division level however we will continue to provide
oversight and guidance as the need arises. I will explain to you and inform you that the State of
Hawaii and the City and County have executed successful P-card systems. The State of Hawaii last
year well at the current time they required all State employees to utilize the P-card as a mandatory
use for all purchases under twenty-four hundred dollars. Last year they expended over nine
hundred billion dollars in P-card purchases, they were subject to an internal audit by Marion Higa
with not one reportable condition. I think that speaks the strength and vitality and success of that
program.
In addition a collateral benefit is the State earned six hundred thousand dollars of credit
payments from the credit card vendor and that is a wonderful opportunity to put money back into
the cumbers. So with the efficiencies and timeliness that is going to be available, I think it's an
exciting initiative and one that we are definitely pursuing with the leadership of Director Rezentes
as well as the division heads in Purchasing, in the Finance Department. I'll close ladies and
gentlemen, in these times of financial challenges, it is incumbent upon all of us as administrators in
the. government sector, to find innovated and creative methodologies to save money, to achieve our
goals and objectives and to deliver an effective product to our constituents. I am committed to that
process and will continue to work toward delivering those innovated (inaudible) thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. I do Ernie want to first of all thank
you for the work you are doing and your corporation with the efforts even here at the Council with
Mr. Rayner and IT. I want to recognize our controller Mr. Rezentes, our Finance Director, he's team
for you know moving the threshold up to the five thousand dollar number, I think one of the things
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.5
we have to recognize is all the processing that is generating by those purchases at a thousand dollars
or two thousand dollars really equal time and motion and cost... so I'm very pleased with that. On
some of the things you laid out for us as goals, along the lines of the support we've been getting from
you on the things that we're trying to do here at the Council, but I got to say this... Oh my gosh,
we've got a lot of work. On that note, questions? Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: First of all I just want to thank you for this presentation, I
couldn't be more pleased about this stuff that you were telling today when I first read it. I know
your division interfaces with vertically every county department and its sometimes a love hate
relationship and you know with the long .term leadership that was there from Elmer, a lot of
sensitivity about that change, concern from all the other departments and I want to share with you,
I've heard nothing but positive things since you've been here so I'm very appreciative of that. I do
have a couple of questions... electronic initiative is great and you're not seeking any funds in this
budget to help initiate that?
Mr. Barreira: I am not... as the Head of the Division of Purchasing, I'm not
sure what initiatives that are going to be taken up by Mr. Raynes.
Chair Furfaro: We're going to see it on Monday as I earlier stated, he gave us
a short list and we'll have him in here Monday Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Rezentes: Yeah I know that Mr. Raynes is doing some investigation and
due diligence into what's out there that there's some off the shelf type of solutions that may not come
anywhere near the cost that was mentioned the City and County went through. So we're doing some
of that due diligence now and we hope to be able to narrow down the choices and move forward once
we get a real good picture for the direction and we want to head and that we expect.
Mr. Bynum: Well you know I know these initiatives have a big return in
productivity for our current staff and that's not easy to measure but... and then I have never heard
of a Marion Higa audit that had no findings, that's the first time I've ever that so... that's very
interesting.
Mr. Barreira: Councilmember if I may add... actually what the finding
was... why aren't we using this more expansively.
Mr. Bynum: Right.
Mr. Barreira: There was nothing, there was no corruption, there was no
difficulty, there was abuse, she said let's use it more often at a larger amount.
Mr. Bynum: And we just moved our threshold to fifteen hundred or we're
in the process of doing that?
Mr. Barreira: When we xoll out the P-card utilization for general
commodities, we Director Rezentes has decided on a fifteen hundred dollar threshold which will
essentially enable that, if you look at the analysis of the amount of purchase orders we cut on that
level, it gets very close to ninety percent. So that would take the place of those purchase orders.
Mr. Bynum: So that's the level that makes sense for the County of Kauai
and your judgment?
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.6
Mr. Barreira: As a transition, we have not ruled out the possibility of
increasing that threshold after we've had a chance or incrementally assess the success of the
program.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you very much.
Mr. Barreira: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Let's get to the ninety first and then we'll push it to ninety-
five as a goal. Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Or higher limits right?
Mr. Barreira: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Right. Ernie thank you very much for this remarkable report
and the Chair says we have a lot of work to do well I'm glad that we're starting to do it because I
think we're long overdue. So my question is there was a request... if you initiate this P-card system,
you've done it already for travel and then you'll do it again for all commodities and in the City and
County of Honolulu they've been doing it and the audit by Marion Higa was done over their
purchases right?
Mr. Barreira: State of Hawaii.
County.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh it was the State of Hawaii?
Mr. Barreira: Yes. I'm not sure if they were subjected to an audit, City and
Ms. Yukimura: At the City and County level. How do you plan to do an audit
or exercise the oversight to see whether this system is working?
Mr. Barreira: One of the things that we talked about in our planning and
implementation is that while responsibility, primary responsibility for the P-card purchases up to
fifteen hundred dollars will reside with the departments. My role as directed by Director Rezentes is
that we are to do spot checks and review an analysis to make sure that there is close adherence to
the State procurement code as well as the statutory requirements having to do with procurement as
defined in the administrative rules. I'm not sure, of course we will be subject as our all departments
to a normal audit process so we will be subject to that process as well. But internally we will be
doing spot checks to make sure there's compliance and adherence.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and in regards to grants procurements or procurements
that are done under grants, we've had at least one problematic and I think it might have been before
your time, I'm just wondering about the oversight, over grants procurements.
Mr. Barreira: The statute of course grants present an interesting situation
for us because much of that grants wants authorized by this body fall under an allowable exemption
under the statutes, so it does allow for an expeditious process or expenditure of the funds. However
the procurement controls would still be in place, could you sight a more specific example that I could
perhaps answer more detail?
Ms. Yukimura: Um.
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.7
Chair Furfaro: If its in the past I prefer an offline discussion.
Mr. Barreira: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Actually.
Chair Furfaro: And focus on the constant of making of improvements.
Mr. Barreira: Very good, I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah it does involve a claim so I will do that offline but...
Chair Furfaro: Thank you Councilwoman.
Ms. Yukimura: But it was a substantial amount of two hundred thousand
dollars so it's of concern that... and my only concern is how to prevent future occurrences like that.
Mr. Barreira: I found Vice Chair that by adhering closely to the elements
contained within the law, that is the best way to ensure compliance and to avoid problems with the
procurement process. There's a lot of in my twenty-five years in government, people look at the
procurement code as the grim reaper many times.
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Barreira: It is very structured, it is very rigid. But there are also the
intent in 94 when this was promulgated was to ensure the highest level of integrity and
accountability in expanding public dollars, it achieve that objective. But there's also flexibilities
built within the code that allows the exemption provision for example, it's a perfect example where
you can exercise discretion in order to ensure the best interest of the county. So there are elements
in both sides.
Ms. Yukimura: Right. On the other hand in this particular problem, the best
interest of the county was not served so you know how do you find that balance and I know that we
consistently seek it because as you are yourself finding some of the old systems are methodologies
following the procurement law actually are unduly restrictive and so or old fashion in terms of
technology, so how do we modernize it and yet keep the protections, yeah? Thank you.
Mr. Rezentes: And we do have some solutions or options in the future to
ensure what had happened in the past you know will not happen again so there's something's that
we discussed internally that I think we have solutions for to resolve that type of issue.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Councilmember Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: Aloha and mahalo to you and the seven other staff members
at Purchasing. So you talked about the fully integrated electronic procurement system and I think
you mentioned HEP for the State and DSS for City and County of Honolulu. I see for the state the
amount is twenty four hundred dollars, what is the amount for the City and County of Honolulu?
Mr. Barreira: City and County is five thousand dollars.
Mr. Kuali`i: It is five thousand?
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.8
Mr. Barreira: Yes.
Mr. Kuali`i: Like what you're proposing, what you're moving for us and
then you said for the City and County of Honolulu, I think you said, it was a cost to fully integrate
twelve million over six years?
Mr. Barreira: I believe so, yes.
Mr. Kuali`i: I was hoping it was an m and not a b...
Mr. Barreira: It involved a very comprehensive approach with all county
agencies, the challenge is the integration so that from point a to the closing of the contract all the
information is integrated and shared, that's where the cost comes in.
Mr. Kuali`i: So when was there like twelve million over six years, they
finished integrating it last year or... when did they put it in place?
Mr. Barreira: I can't say for certain but they have two separate independent
integrated procurement systems, one vendor base and they are moving actively towards formal
procurement to also include multimillion dollar procurement projects in the City and County. I
believe that the work, I can only speak for the last year, but my information report, they followed a
protocol by bringing in a couple of people who were procurement experts with an IT background and
they were instrumental in carrying out the technological design that resulted in these systems.
Mr. Kuali`i: Do you know about the state system, what did it cost them
and how long, I mean over how many years?
Mr. Barreira: That I'm not certain.
Mr. Kuali`i: Not certain.
Mr. Rezentes: I can tell you that it was maybe eight, ten years ago that they
did this, one of the challenges with the system and I think one of the reasons why the other counties
didn't opt in with the state or even the City, they did a procurement and got an external vendor
ultimately got the contract but there is a percentage of each procurement that goes to the vendor, I'm
not sure exactly but you know it might be two percent, one percent so it's a fee that the vendor takes
off of the price tag of each procurement. Knock on wood, we hope our solution will be more efficient
and less costly.
Mr. Kuali`i: And then my only other question is in the written material
and I heard you elute to it and slightly different words but it creates a financial benefits for the
county resulting from credit payment with the P-card use, so what are these credit payments and
what kind of dollar value can you put to it?
Mr. Barreira: Our contract arrangement with the vendor, the provider,
First Hawaiian Bank it involves a, for every purchase that you make, a certain percentage is
calculated and that is a payment credit that is returned back to the county and our accounting
systems administrator Renee Yadao always tells me, we never remember the percentage and here I
am today and I don't remember the percentage, but I can get that for you very easily.
Mr. Kuali`i: So it's like real dollars that come back to us?
April 21, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.9
Mr. Barreira: Yes.
Mr. Kuali`i: Wow.
Chair Furfaro: We'll send that as a question.
Mr. Kuali`i: I want that information.
Chair Furfaro: We'll send that as a question.
Mr. Barreira: And we will research it and respond timely, thank you.
Mr. Kuali`i: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: You still have the floor, you're done?
Mr. Kuali`i: I'm done, thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Okay let me go to this side of the table, Councilwoman
Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Good morning. I wanted to just clarify on this fully
integrated purchasing system so is the plan to do this in house, is to move toward this...
Mr. Barreira: We are not certain, it's at its earliest infancy in design as far
as discussions are concerned. What I can tell you is that no one in the State that has a fully
integrated system either the State of Hawaii and some elements at the City and County involved a
level of consulting assistance and external guidance and it was a procurement of some kind and
usually involving a RFP. However there are methodologies short of that that we can exercise with
our own county resources, the fully integration is where the challenge comes in and would most
likely involve some sort of consulting assistance and guidance.
Ms. Nakamura: But you're not asking for that assistance this year?
Mr. Barreira: Not at this point, no I am not.
Ms. Nakamura: So there's enough to do without this piece.
Mr. Barreira:. Based on my presentation and honorable Chair's response,
yes.
Ms. Nakamura: But it's your long term goal to get there?
Mr. Barreira: Yes and not too long.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay. And that leads to my next question which has to do
with some matrix because I'm new to the county so it would be helpful to see what is the length it
takes now for a typical purchase under five thousand, two thousand... what is it now and with all
these changes that you're proposing that seem very promising, what do you hope it will be? What
will be the cost savings in terms of postage or copying that, so that we can see one year from now
what you, the actual outcomes of your work.
Mr. Barreira: I haven't sat down and done a mathematical analysis, I've
done more of a pragmatic analysis.
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Finance Department Call-Backs p.10
Ms. Nakamura: And that would be fine.
Mr. Barreira: Yes it's going to be significant in the sense that you know
every photo... one of the things that makes me, one of the biggest challenges we have is the use of
certified mail. In addition to the cost of a parcel, fourteen, fifteen dollars add five dollars onto that.
Ms. Nakamura: So going online you know that will probably disappear or be
reduced substantially?
Mr. Barreira: Once we develop a protocol to develop solicitations and post
them online and to invite bid responses online and to do awards... they'll be no need to mail. It
would be a rare situation as with our contracts, the contract protocol now involves an extensive
amount of paper, we're looking at ways to certify the fund process and to eliminate the paper so that
the only time you will have a paper contract is when the law requires a written endorsement on the
oxiginal.
Ms. Nakamura: Very good, thank you very much.
Mr. Barreira: You're welcome.
Chair Furfaro: I want to make sure that we had a bit of this discussion in my
office but please make sure the County Attorney is involve as we get to these claims that people
didn't receive or there was no documentation for an opportunity for bid choice and so forth but if you
can continue to keep them in the loop on that, I would appreciate it. Mr. Chang, you had a question?
Mr. Chang: Yes. Thank you for explaining everything, I just wanted to
ask you Ernie, how long have you been in this Department?
Chair Furfaro: I started April 16 of last year, so just a little over a year.
Mr. Chang: That's what I wanted to say, I just wanted to comment not in
a form of a question but I think your presentation was outstanding, I mean... I got it... and in this
short one year I could say there's been a lot of improvement and I would like to say that when the
community members have come up to myself and ask about the procurements or the bidding process
and everything else, I just wanted to say thank you because when you say well let me check and I'll
get back with you, you got back with the customer before I could get back with the customer not only
verbally but also in the written form, so I just wanted to say, I think we really appreciate all of your
efforts and I know it hasn't been that long but I think you've done a wonderful job. We're just happy
to have you.
Mr. Barreira: Thank you. Chair just to answer your question briefly, Mr.
Castillo has been more than accessible and we have had a multitude of meetings talking about legal
protocols and we're very careful that we're going to proceed within the law.
Chair Furfaro: And I know you know my caution, we don't want to have a
situation who somebody then files a claim that they didn't get selected because of a procedural issue
and that adds to the delay rather than expedite the process, so thank you for that. Any other
questions here? If not, Mr. Rezentes thank you very much.
Mr. Rezentes: I'm going to bring up Janine Rapozo for Risk Management
Division review, that's on page 13.
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.ll
Chair Furfaro: Page 13?
Mr, Rezentes: Your packet.
JANINE RAPOZO, RISK MANAGER: Good morning Councilmembers, Chair Furfaro, Vice
Chair Yukimura.
Chair Furfaro: Good morning.
Ms. Rapozo: Thank you for allowing me this opportunity. Similar to Ernie,
I'm even newer to this position, I've been there since December 1 and just a little bit about the
division, prior to me getting to the position we had a division of one person and so now we are a
division of two. We are located physically next to the Mayor's Office, in between the Mayor's Office
and the County Attorney's Office and so we had to physically move of Risk Coordinator who was in
the Finance Department and we are now collocated and that has been a big help for us to be able to
manage the division right now. The mission of the Risk Management Division is basically to protect
the County's human, physical and financial assets through comprehensive and cost effective
insurance _andxisk~nanagement programs. The. goal in order to fulfill-the mission is really for_us to
first of all identify what risks the county has and then through implementing a lost control program,
we look at risk reduction and prevention, we look at risk transfer through insurance and risk
retention as far as looking at some of the risk we will retain because there are more predictable risk
with cost that are not going to a financial burden to the county.
As far as identifying risk, one of our objectives for the year is going to be to establish a risk.
management committee made up of different departments and divisions and it's kind o£.. we used to
have a safety committee at one time that use to go out and do inspections of all the facilities and try
to look at what kind of risk are out there and looking at preventing some of that. And so we're going
to try to resurrect some of that and actually enhance that and so that's one of our objectives for this
coming year. And going on site to different areas facilities to really look at what's out there, what
are we really dealing with. The other thing that we are really looking at is enhancing the training
aspect of the county and looking at what kinds of losses we are incurring because of injuries and
trying to focus on some safety programs and training that will assist in trying to manage our claims
a little bit better, and reducing that area. So one of the things first of all looking at what kinds of
policies we have and updating everything. The one that we currently just implemented and rolled
out-was the county's anti discrimination and harassment policy so aside from rolling it out we also
have been doing training on that for all employees as well as we're going to be starting supervisor
training on that in May. And then we will do a little bit more on that on investigator training so we
want to make sure from start to finish we implement something in it's entirety versus just rolling
out the policy and right now when IT comes up with Brandon Raynes, he will probably share with
you that share point portal that we are now using so that all of our policies will eventually be on
there and so everyone will know what is the most current policy because sometimes when we update,
some departments do not somehow get that message and we are distributing policies that are really
out dated or have been updated and that's a real risk for us and so that has been really helpful and
we can refer everybody to the share point portal. Also understanding that some people do not have
computers in their areas of work, we are looking at trying to get a manual of those out at the
baseyards so that everyone will have access. Even if we do distribute to everyone, they will have
access to it as well, so that's one of the things we're looking at.
Along with training we're looking at working with our insurance broker in trying to establish
an online training system for all employees. With training there is cost to the training as well as
cost to train the employee, we have to pay them to come to training. Well if we can establish a
program whereby the training is done right at their desk, when they have maybe down time or a
little bit extra time on, coming from a division where we had in the past our department where we
April 21, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.12
had drivers that worked at all hours it was very hard to get them to training so I really can
appreciate having an online program where you are able to have them train right on site versus
having to take off and come to an area. We are very close in getting that rolled out as well and
working with the departments for different category of employees that would have different types of
training program for them on topics.
Aside from that we are also working in, what I was talking about with the policies. we are
looking at, we have a taskforce right now that is working on streamlining all of our polices to be in a
very similar format so that all of our policies, everyone knows how a policy will be where they can
find information. And so we're asking all departments right now if they have a county wide policy
we're looking at bringing it all in, updating if necessary and putting it in the format so that we can
then roll those up as well.
The other thing that we are looking at is working with our Personnel Department in trying
to figure out how we're going to get to establishing a Human Resources area and that we're working
with them as far as not only establishing I guess the department or division but also the programs
that would be involved with the and Risk Management you know, does fall under Human Resource
or can fall under Human Resources so we are task with working with them in trying to develop that
and there is some overlap with training, with...we're looking at a return to work program for some of
our people that have been injured on the job and trying to establish that. Those are some of the
initiatives that we're looking at right now and again we're trying to also do as much as we can on the
claim side which our coordinator takes care of and it is a daunting task right now and so we are still
trying to look at different ways in trying to manage that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay? First of all I want to say to you outside of government
I've had an opportunity to serve on a board when you were part of our Finance Department. I've
always been very impressed with your knowledge, your skill, your understanding of financial risk
and I just wanted to say I have complete confidence in you leading this department and in fact I'm
very pleased.
Ms. Rapozo: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Your track record at the Transportation Department speaks
very well of your ability to manage and have oversight to this program. I have a couple of items that
I want to share with you before we go too much farther and one when you do set up this committee, I
want to make sure that you understand and I'll be sending over a correspondence over to the Mayor,
I expect one of our members to be on that committee and in particular we have our Finance Chair
Mr. Bynum who also heads our HR Sub-Committee, who will also oversee our Audit... and I will be
making that recommendation that Mr. Bynum be the Council's representation to this lost prevention
committee. I, myself would like to be his alternate but all of these measurements are tied to his
oversight in the committee that he chairs here. I do not feel as confident about looking towards the
Personnel Department for the goal setting and the parameters for the HR committee and I mean
that in no way other than to say they have constantly been in front of me to say, they're roll is Civil
Service. Our issues deal with appointees and managers that become operating overseers of the
departments and we really need a different view than this limit that we might get from a Personnel
Department that manages Civil Service and so I just wanted to share that with you. Again I
reiterate my faith in what you're doing there but you know Risk Management is about two things,
first is the preventive portion and the other piece is when we do make decisions about policy, how
much are we risking because the policy has good criteria and we demonstrate reasonable care. But I
just want to say that I'm very pleased and I will make a very push to make sure one of the
Councilmembers as I just described in Mr. Bynum's case, becomes a member of your Committee.
Ms. Rapozo: Okay.
April 21, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.13
Chair Furfaro: And very nice presentation, thank you very much.
Ms. Rapozo: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: We'll go for questions here, Mr. Bynum
Mr. Bynum: Hi Janine, thanks for being here. You've been in that position
for how long?
Ms. Rapozo: Well similar to Mr. Furfaro's, I think he said eighteen weeks.
Mr. Bynum: Eighteen weeks? So it really is starting from scratch to
develop these programs and what you're saying makes sense. And also I want to echo with
Councilmember Furfaro has said and thank you for your mentoring of Celia who did an outstanding.
job.
Chair Furfaro: Absolutely.
Ms. Rapozo: She did.
Mr. Bynum: At some of the questions I've been asking seemed to be
taking shape of where risk management should be housed, should it be Personnel, should it be... and
what kind of integration and it looks like its focusing more... I don't know how this is going to turn
out but I hope HR becomes you know a department that addresses civil service in personnel and risk
management and I am interested very much in risk management. I was a middle manager in a
county 22 years ago and a big part of my job was risk management and there were very clear
expectations about training schedules employees, receiving training in a timely manner, that that be
documented and that managers be held accountable for the people they supervised to make sure they
had the required training, is that the direction we're moving?
Ms. Rapozo: Absolutely. The last trainings that we've had on the
discrimination and harassment, we actually scheduled 7 sessions including an evening session to
make sure we accommodate everyone and as soon as the day was over and if I had people that did
not show up, it went right back to the department that said that these people did not show up to the
training, if you need to please schedule them and I did get some response copied to me that what's
going on, why did these people not show up and they did reschedule them. So we're looking at
starting a master list with all of our employees and make sure that we can check them off. The good
thing with the training, no matter-what, we're not going to be able to catch everyone and so the Fire
Department graciously taped the presentation and we'll be able to show it not only to their different
fire stations so that they didn't have to come out on over time but also to people that was not able to
make it for one reason or the other, so we will have that starting and a library of the training
programs and for new people, the new employees that come in we will be able to show them
something as well.
Mr. Bynum: And that goes to a second question or just a little short
discussion I want to have with you is about making sure that people actually gets the information
that's intended for them to get. I know 22 years ago we did a lot of this training kind of manual
training because we didn't have online and one of things we had to guard against was just kind of
filling out the paperwork but not really receiving the information in a way that made a difference in
terms of behavior and so as you moved to online that's a real simple, it's simple to abuse that by
saying oh you do this and you log in and you answer some questions. And if the schedule, if the
training is scheduled for an hour and you can do it in 5 minutes and you're not receiving the
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Finance Department Call-Backs p.14
information, so I just wanted to say going forward you know there has to be some controls to make
sure that if it's not going to be training live and we don't want to do all of that, you know which is not
cost effective but make sure that when alternative methods are used the people are actually
investing the time to receive the information.
Mr. Rezentes: Part of the method in which we can be assured that the
electronic system works is there are obviously you can assign various modules for different groups of
employees but there's also a testing component at the end where we can set the parameters that you
know in order to complete the module you need to with x percentage. In the private sector I've
worked with that kind of system and I know it worked because it forced you to pay attention to what
you read, so you can pass the test at the end so that's some of the controls that's built in.
Mr. Bynum: Well I'll suggest one other control because in my experience
that's where we had abuse, I mean literally just like high school test questions got passed around
and people -could go in and just in five minutes do and fill out the paperwork and looks like
compliance in terms of auditing but it wasn't, so online can be interactive, it could require that
people actually interact with the program during the course of time so that you can't just skip to the
end and have a cheat sheet but I'll leave that to you, I think that's really important, you know as a
middle manager, I didn't know about fiscal audits, that I've learned since I've been here. But we
were audited as managers, internal audits about to make sure that we actually did the things we
were supposed to do but I don't think we'll even get there but I think that's a good model to look at. I
have a couple specific questions about harassment training, you know I'm very pleased that that's
happening, I think it's been a big liability concern but I wasn't clear about what you said, I thought
you said well we can't, not everybody can do it... is our intention to that everybody does get it?
Ms. Rapozo: I'm sorry not everyone can actually come to the session
physically so what we've done, the Fire Department has done to control their cost to actually send
their employees to the training, is they've taped the training and will be showing it at their stations
versus actually physically coming to a location. The intent is to have everyone get the training.
Mr. Bynum: And when this issue was before us a few months ago, the
YWCA said we will be an asset for you, we will step up, we will help develop training, we'll help...
have we taken advantage of that at all?
Ms. Rapozo: Not at this point. We are looking at different, because we're
fiscally constraint right now, we are looking at various resources in the community as well as our
own contracts that we have like our employee assistance program who can provide some training for
us as part of their contract as well as our insurance broker can provide some safety training so we
will be looking at how we can minimize cost for training by working with different community
groups.
Mr. Bynum: And some trainings because they're so important to the
quality of the workplace environment, in my opinion need to be alive, need to have some interactive
discussion and so kind of basic safety training is more meaning to online but these kinds of issues, I
think need people involved. In policy, in training development, I'd like to see people have input in
that so you mentioned in the harassment training, there's a follow up training for managers
specifically?
Ms. Rapozo: Yes it's going to be happening in May.
Mr. Bynum: Okay. And can you share that who's developing that training
module, what the content is, how it would be... and I don't mean all right now.
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.15
Ms. Rapozo: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: We'll send that over in a question Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: I expect that this is just the beginning of an ongoing
discussion about how we move to the next level in (inaudible) the Human Resources and valuing our
employees and making them safe in the workplace and the good thing we get a better workplace and
the benefit is that it's probably going to save us lots of money, so...
Ms. Rapozo: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you very much. Just from your comments, it's clear
that things had just been sliding. You know if your first task is to get polices in place, so thank you.
Ms. Rapozo: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: You know you'll have more time to interact with Mr. Bynum
as I send that letter over to the Mayor asking him to be our appointee.
Mr. Bynum: Oh boy.
Chair Furfaro: And do call me if there's a no show for a meeting since I'm the
department head. That's very doubtful but we want to be treated the same as the other
departments.
Ms. Rapozo: Absolutely.
Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you Chair. Good morning.
Ms. Rapozo: Good morning.
Ms. Yukimura: I thought I would never forgive you for leaving
Transportation because you were such an excellent manager and... but Celia is doing a fabulous job
and I want to acknowledge you for your mentoring and I can see your skills are going to be so well
applied to this area that needs attention. Welcome onboard and thank you for being here. I don't
have that many questions but it is about supervisor training, I've heard you say that in the area of
you know harassment and that we're doing supervisor training but my question is whether there will
be overall and general supervisor and manager training as part of Risk management because so
much of safety in the workplace as well as productivity and everything else, depends on the
managers and supervisors?
Ms. Rapozo: Yes. That is correct. The current supervisor training I was
talking about was specific to that particular issue on how to handle complaints or disciplinary
actions in regards to harassment and discrimination. We are actually working with the County
Attorney's Office on a module regarding just effective supervision and supervisory skills because
there are a lot of employees that are coming up the ranks, that go into a supervisory position and do
not have the skills and so.
Ms. Yukimura: That's right.
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.16
Ms. Rapozo: And so just basic things that they need to know, they are
responsible for now that they are a supervisor, it's not just getting a promotion but it's not... it's no
longer part of the line staff now, you have part of a responsibilities, so that would be the next one we
are looking at to make sure that they just get some basic skills and support from the administration
that we are wanting to develop you into really good supervisors and so that we can make sure that
the training is there and they know what their responsibilities are because I think that's lacking
right now.
Ms. Yukimura: It's been terribly lacking for many, many years. We have just
been promoted people without giving them the training or support.
Ms. Rapozo: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And I can see that it will improve county workplace and
productivity tremendously so I'm glad you are looking at that and then more specifically in the area
of Risk Management as Councilmember Bynum pointed out every supervisor... you're making...
you'll make Risk Management a part of every supervisor and every manager, right?
Ms. Rapozo: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: So that it's not just your safety team or you.
Ms. Rapozo: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: That's executing Risk Management but it's happening all the
way down, thank you.
Mr. Rezentes: I just wanted to say not only because Mr. Castillo's in the
audience but I need to acknowledge the County Attorney's Office that they provide Risk
Management and Finance in the initiatives that we're working on right now and in the future and so
I know that Mr. Castillo knows that it is an important area to provide some of his resources and
focus and we do appreciate that.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much for acknowledging that office for that
and in particular Marc Guyot who has taken the time to become a Human Resource specialist.
Councilmember KipuKai.
Mr. Kuali`i: Aloha and mahalo to you and the rest of the staff at Risk
Management. I'm excited to hear about your online training, I'm hopeful that that could save us
some travel dollars. I trust you and the other managers to deliver effective and necessary training
and useful in meaning the ways, whatever alternative methods you find that work, I trust that to
you. Your other point about workers injured on the job and having a return to work program, I think
that's great and the sooner we can get our injured workers back to work, the better for productivity
and all of that... I'd like to mention that yesterday marked the first anniversary of the BP oil
disaster that killed twelve workers on the Gulf of Mexico drilling plate form where workers said they
were scared to speak out about safety problems, actually next Thursday the 28th workers across the
Country are going to honor those workers and thousands more killed on the job each year. It's the
workers memorial day... so I did have a question and I'd like to know what are we doing actively and
publicly as a county to ensure that the work place makes it easy and comfortable for the workers and
the public to report any unsafe working conditions?
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.17
Ms. Rapozo: I think with the first policy we just rolled out right now one of
the things we did is first of all to ensure that everyone would be able to have access to the complaint
form as we put it on the website. We actually put it on the county's website and so the public as well
could have access to that form and not have to actually come into the office and that's actually for
employees as well, they can accesses it from home because they may not be as comfortable going up
into the department and saying I need a complaint form or even accessing it from their computer. So
that was one of the things we did to try to ensure that not only is it confidential but that they would
feel comfortable to be able to just get the form and that's just one start. We would probably be
looking at all of that in all the different areas that people are having to be able to complain or report
something. That's something that really working with the departments as well that we ensure that
they have a method for their employees to be able to come to them and report safety issues or any
type of issues that they have, it really starts at the department level and it's going to be training, the
supervisors, the department heads to be sure that they have environment conducive to making sure
that people are not afraid.
Mr. Kuali`i: Yes I do appreciate that and I do think to be more positive
and to be more encouraging, it might be good to not necessarily think of it as a complaint you know
that it's also to help the county be more productive, help the county save money by not having to pay
law suits or whatever. This is a part of our responsibility to the people because we care about the
county, because we care about Kauai and Niihau and make it more encouraging and positive but I
think you're on the right track and I appreciate you moving in that direction.
Ms. Rapozo: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you and Councilmember just because you're new, I do
want to share with you that we have implemented a plan here for our staff called upward appraisal
which touches exactly what you're saying where we reach out for feedback before a problem exist and
I have given testimony in front of the Civil Service Commission Janine along with Marc Guyot and
they are looking at another system similar to what I just described as a possible implementation
which I think touches on your question... it's the outreach to get feedback where we can do the
improvement rather than go directly to the actual complaint, so good question and...
Mr. Kuali`i: Being proactive.
Chair Furfaro: Yes very much so. Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Morning.
Ms. Rapozo: Morning.
Ms. Nakamura: I know you're going to do good things for this division. One of
the questions I wanted to follow up with Councilmember Yukimura's comment about the supervisory
training, it's really good to hear you're moving in that direction and I see it as not so much one or two
training sessions offered but a real module, multiyear attempt to really work and provide the skills
to our supervisors who we know can make all the difference in the operations of a county branch
division or department. So I really hope that it will be looked at as a long term investment in our
personnel including mentorship that will provide the role models that are going to be needed to make
them successful. Also you mentioned, I'm going to go back again to matrix because I think because
this is a new division, that it would be good and I think the County Attorney's Office did provide the
law suits against the county but to know what type of law suit, how much the county paid in the past
years, and to see a year or two from now, you know what kind of difference we're actually making by
the support services you're providing. Finally, this your challenge that you describe in your strategic
plan about the communication gaps between the existing personnel department, that make it hard to
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.18
provide the type of training and follow through with the employee related issues, so I was just kind
of curious, I was trying to look back at the Mayor's report to see where we're heading with that.
Ms. Rapozo: I think the reason I have that as a challenge is with the
current Risk Management Division as far as the claim side, there's a lot of work we need to do with
the employees. A lot of times there is a little bit of a disconnect because we really need to work with
personnel and similar to what Mr. Furfaro said right now a lot of their focus by statute is on Civil
Service and not really on some of these other quote human resources types of things and working
with the employees, working in trying to get them back to work and so one of the things that they
are working on is the return to work program which is similar to something that we want to bridge
the gap so that we can work together on different employee issues.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Councilmember Chang.
Mr. Chang: Hi Janine, good morning. I'm going to actually submit a
question in writing to you, thank you.
Ms. Rapozo: Okay.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Chang. Wally, I think we're fine. Oh excuse
me. Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: I just wanted to acknowledge Mr. Rezentes that he took
initiative during the Baptiste administration to press for Risk Management and get it included and
the economic downturn we dollar funded it for a while, but I just wanted to acknowledge Wally that
you saw the need for this and pushed forward, and thank you.
Chair Furfaro: I will second that.
Mr. Rezentes: Thank you. Next one is our Treasury Division Mr. Spanski.
DAVID SPANSKI, TREASURER: Good morning Councilmembers, Dave Spanski,
County Treasurer. Unlike the other two, I've been here for nineteen years so rather take up your
time of what we do, I'm sure you have a bunch of questions.
Chair Furfaro: Say that again?
Mr. Spanski: Well.
Chair Furfaro: Because I take money very serious.
Mr. Spanski: So do I sir. That's why you never see my name in the paper.
Chair Furfaro: And I think that's why you're around for nineteen years, good
job. Dave, I think I scheduled you for a follow up a little bit later for our quarterly treasurers report
in a future Council Meeting and so I just wanted to say for the members here, I really want this to be
about the operating issues and so forth versus the actual investment plan but before I say that
totally, can you just give us a little overview of the existing plan and the current kind of conditions
globally that posed challenges for you.
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.19
Mr. Spanski: Well for the Treasury, I oversee, my title is the Treasurer but
I also have a quote other title called the DMV Administrator which oversees Drivers License and
Motor Vehicle Registration, so with that said the Motor Vehicle Registration collects all the moneys
that come to the county whether it be motor vehicle registration, to real property tax, your sewer bill,
your tipping fee coupon, your bus pass, we also issue your bus pass in that area. So the main thing
of protection as far as the money, the first thing is, is it legal, the next thing, is it safe... it is liquid
and then after that we go after you.
Chair Furfaro: Dave is there any concerns that we should have on the cash
portion of it right now with the fact that the State has made it very clear to us that for example our
intergovernmental funds, the TAT payments and so forth, they're going to lag right now only with
two payments a year. Do you have any concerns?
Mr. Spanski: Well they've always had two payments, we get a payment
June 30 in the closing fiscal year and we get one on December 31, so there's two spikes that we'll
have in the cash flow, you know those years. We also have our debt service payments that will come
out in August and January and so we will have a spike in the expenditures. Currently as where we
stand currently, our cash flow is positive, we probably through the end of March, you know
comparing (inaudible) expenditures smoothing out the highs and the lows, we take an average of
eighteen million dollars a month and we expend of an average of seventeen million. So at the
present time we're up approximately in the cash flow not knowing what's going to happen in April
and May and June. Right now we have a positive cash flow or potentially a reserve.
Chair Furfaro: So Dave if I look at the next sequence then, we get maybe I
didn't remember all of it... we're going to get our June payment from the State.
Mr. Spanski: Right.
Chair Furfaro: And we're going to have a debt service payment in August.
Mr. Spanski: That's correct.
Chair Furfaro: So we have about sixty days between the two, is that right?
Mr. Spanski: That's correct. And then your property tax payments start
coming in, we mail out the billing at a low level, the last week of July but again you know I don't
want to down play it but it's pretty easy, you just match your assets with liability and that's what we
do. Once those are met, then we go out on a yield curve to get your yield. So with that being said,
you know yields aren't that good. Okay, we have a portfolio of about two hundred sixty-four million
dollars, okay we're yielding one point one seven percent on a year so that compares right now to a
three year treasury so again by state statute, I can't go out any farther on the curve than five years.
And then we have some of the bond issue, we have (inaudible) and restrictions and so with that
being said, you know it's like a cost of capital, our cost of debt service for right now for this fiscal year
is close to five percent four point nine but again we're only generating income of one point one.
Chair Furfaro: I understood as we refinance the old bond, we actually did
save ourselves some...
Mr. Spanski: Well...
Chair Furfaro: Projected debt service.
Apri121., 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.20
Mr. Spanski: We're projected to save. With that upcoming, you got to keep
in mind we're probably talking about general of that refunding that is potential refunding, is
approximately twenty-five to twenty-six million, twenty-one of that is county side, five of that is
water. So the potential savings on a... we'll take a conservative approach is about two hundred
thousand dollars a year, it would be about... engross over the last fifteen years of that bond of about
a little over two hundred dollars.
Chair Furfaro: Well I appreciate your caution especially as it deals with the
money we have in holding with the Water Department but on the flip side I also want to make sure
that the Water Department is cautious because without our leverage, they couldn't borrow that kind
of money.
Mr. Spanski: Well that's true and you know I also invest the water side
also. And we handle their analysis for their debt service.
Chair Furfaro: Well I would like to say I'm looking for our opportunity to get
an update on the condition of the County Treasurer in a month or so, I want to thank you for all of
your efforts and I think it speaks very well in these difficult times. And although you have give us a
caption that it's pretty routine; the reality is nothing is routine in this day and world.
Mr. Spanski:
That's correct but...
Chair Furfaro: Especially with the federal government trying to pay down, is
it four trillion dollars inside of six...
Mr. Spanski: That's correct.
Chair Furfaro: Something like that. Let me give the floor to Mr. Bynum, he
has a question. Mr. Bynum thank you very much Dave.
Mr. Bynum: You were talking about revenues versus expenditures earlier.
Mr. Spanski: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: I think the number you said was twelve and eleven.
Mr. Spanski: No.
Chair Furfaro: No he said seventeen and eighteen.
Mr. Spanski: Seventeen and eighteen... revenue is eighteen, smoothing it
out now because we just gone through...
Mr. Bynum:
Right, right.
Mr. Spanski: Two... because we collect first half taxes in August, second
half taxes in September, so there's a big spike there. So you're going to have some points where you
have and then as you spend that down, debt service comes up and now you may have a you know,
your reserve may have went down because you had to spend more. Say for example for the last nine
months, we've had a high of expenditures of twenty-one million but we also had a low as low as
twelve million in a month. So it depends if things happen. Right now as it shows, not knowing
what's going to happen April, May or June... that we got (inaudible) payments coming up, we close
out all those things, so it may not be that cushion, the cushion may not be that large.
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.21
Mr. Bynum: Right and you're talking about in the year?
Mr. Spanski: In the year.
Mr. Bynum: Right so.
Mr. Spanski: Year around year.
Mr. Bynum: Right and typically we, somewhat a little bit underestimate
revenue in the budget that we put out and in a typical year we have a surplus that gets generated
right?
Mr. Spanski: On a typical... yes sir.
Mr. Bynum: And that shows in the CAFR?
Mr. Spanski: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: And as a net change in general fund balance?
Mr. Spanski: Right but again from my standpoint that could be more of an
accounting situation because (inaudible) cash manager.
Mr. Bynum: Right.
Mr. Spanski: I'm looking at the forest and not the tree. So I have a make
sure that when I'm saying seventeen million, that's not just general fund.
Mr. Bynum: Right.
Mr. Spanski: Now I've taken out your housing funds, I've taken out your
trust funds... I've taken out your section eight and your other housing because we get reimbursed.
And I've taken out like your financial insurance, things that we have to keep that we're in control of,
now all those other things come into play like yeah. that seventeen million covers some of your
federal grants because sometimes we have to fund it until that money gets here.
Chair Furfaro: And I just want to reiterate the tax role is certified.
Mr. Spanski: That's correct.
Chair Furfaro: So it's a pretty good estimate.
Mr. Spanski: That's correct.
Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum. Okay. Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: It's great work in terms of managing the county's money and
then you say you have these additional duties which is all of receipts of payment whether real
property or.
Mr. Spanski: That's correct.
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.22
Ms. Yukimura: ... licensing and so forth... so and you have an extensive
narrative about.
section.
Mr. Spanski: The narrative in the budget was for the Drivers License
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Spanski: When I first came to the county in 1992 I oversaw Real
Property Tax Collections, Motor Vehicle Registration and Drivers Licensing. And after the change of
that administration, they took the Drivers License in 1993 or 94 and put it under the Director of
Finance and that stayed that way and then I had Motor Vehicle Registration and Real Property Tax
collection and with the change of the next administration eight or nine years later, (inaudible) okay
Dave you can have back the Drivers Licenses but we're going to take Real Property Collections and
put it under the Assessment side and that's where we stand now. My narrative is about over the
Drivers Licenses section in 1996 due to a head count change we took the supervision portion, we
used to have seven people that were government or county funded and five were state funded. We
used to have a chief examiner of license and a supervisor examiner of license, the supervisor would
handle the day to day activities, the chief was in charge of administrating the programs, like motor
vehicle, drivers licensing, CDL program, PMV eye inspection, taxi cab, financial responsibility okay
so but there was a lack of a better term, there was a death, the supervisor was promoted, that
supervisor position was then transferred to IT and that was never brought back so what I'm trying to
do is get back to the original head count prior to 1996. With that being said is an upcoming is a
REAL ID act that's a mandate from the federal government due to terrorist attacks from 9-11 so that
is now coming to light and coming soon. They're trying to get the legal present portion started in
January but that didn't get out. So what that means in essence for us is if you're going to come and
get your renewal or your licenses, if you want to fly on a commercial aircraft or enter a federal
building, you're going to have to have this Real ID either a drivers licenses or a state ID now we're
the only state in the Nation that issues a drivers licenses from the county and then you get a state
ID from the Attorney General, so we got to co-mingle those things because if you have a young child,
they're going to have to have a state ID to fly. So the mandate is not age specific if you want to board
an aircraft you're going to have these IDs, so when you come in now to say you want a renew, okay so
that we can verify who you are, you going to have to bring in a certified birth certificate or your
passport or if you're an immigrate or whatever or you're on a visa pass you got to bring in those
documents to tie it in, we will scan those documents okay, you will then be issued a temporary
license and that way it will go from a over a counter issue in which we are now to a central
processing and you will have it mailed to you.
Chair Furfaro:
Is there a compliance date for this?
Mr. Spanski: Well they tried to move it up to January, I think I put it in my
narrative there... fully compliance by January 23, 2013 but that's from the Department of Home
Land Security.
Chair Furfaro: For our citizens?
Mr. Spanski: That's correct.
Chair Furfaro: Are we, yeah... are we publishing any kind of notice?
Mr. Spanski: Well when we know we're... when it's going to start...
Chair Furfaro: You will...
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p23
Mr. Spanski: We don't want to get there and not be there.
Chair Furfaro: Understood.
Mr. Spanski: There will be some...
Chair Furfaro: You will do some public notices...
Mr. Spanski: We'll work with the Mayor's Office and get those public
notices out.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you Dave, thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: So are you asking for more positions then?
Mr. Spanski: No, I'm just asking to go back to the original head count, I
have one vacant that's been vacant for the last couple years, it was a dollar funded position and in
actuality I have two vacancies because the CDL examiner, again he's a state funded position,
position two, I think it's thirty-eight, he retired, so now we have to go out and go find a CDL which is
again they're paid for by the state but we were mandated by the state to have one here on Kauai so
we'll have to go out and recruit for that.
Mr. Rezentes: So the request is just moving from a dollar funded position to
have it fully funded to help with the implementation of real ID so in the past...
Ms. Yukimura:
Can you speak into the mic.
Mr. Rezentes: I'm sorry... there's past years as in the current year, there's a
dollar funded drivers licensing position, in the upcoming budget the request is to fully fund the
dollar funded position to provide assistance in the implementation and transition to the real ID
program.
Ms. Yukimura:
And so that position is what 238?
Mr. Spanski: No, that's the one... you'll see a dollar funded and that's done
by the state, that's the CDL examiner, he's retired.
Ms. Yukimura:. Alright.
Mr. Spanski: Now the position 288 I think is the salary grade 16 but my
intent if I can get the (inaudible) I would like to reallocate that to a supervisor position to handle the
day to day. I wanted to have the Chief here today but he's in court, the traffic court all day... so he
has to be there for the Prosecutor side and he's also involved in the implementation, so he fly to
Oahu on the state's bill to go to meetings of that nature, okay so he's going to have to promulgate
(inaudible) and so on and so forth but the state passed the and it's also in my narrative, there's a
legal presence act and that's item number two, act thirty-eight SLH twenty, ten section 19-11 HAR.
Mr. Rezentes: Page sixteen of your...
Chair Furfaro: So Wally may I ask as a follow up to Vice Chair Yukimura, is
that something you're going to revisit for us in the May submittal? This reclassification? Is it hard
to say at this point?
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.24
Mr. Rezentes: It's a possibility that our May 6 submittal will include that
change, yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay, Councilwoman, you still have the floor, I'm sorry thank
you for the courtesy of letting me ask that question.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and so in terms of our, this is for Drivers Licensing, so
this means that people in this year are going to have to bring in their birth certificates?
Mr. Spanski: When the state says go, yes, you will get a notice in the mail,
you will get a notice that your license is due.
Ms. Yukimura: I see.
Mr. Spanski: And then this is the documents you will need to bring. But
the R regulations spells it out what you will need to bring and in an overview you will need to bring
your social security card, your certified birth certification or if you don't have one... or can't find that,
if you have a passport. That's going to make our lines longer because we're going to have to scan
these documents which we have... the scanners are now in place, the state has provided those. And
then while you're being interviewed and they're scanning your documents, as we scan your
documents to the webcam to the computer, so that we can identify the face with the document. So
there's no fraud involved.
Ms. Yukimura: And this is all because of terrorist attacks, it's ridiculous.
Mr. Spanski: That's correct but according to the Department of Home Land
Security when people board a plane ninety percent of them present either a state ID or a drivers
license. So that's why they went to this portion I believe.
Ms. Yukimura: And even children have to do this?
Mr. Spanski: It's not age specific.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So what you guys are doing is gearing up for the
additional process that will be required by this law.
Mr. Spanski: Well yeah, it's called unfunded mandate if you will.
Chair Furfaro: I like that term... My gosh... unfunded mandate...
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so this is a big thing we have to deal with that has just
come down...
Mr. Spanski: Well it's been... they wanted to implemented it sooner but
what the state is trying to figure out, get all fifty states to comply and then with the economic times,
we can't get there, how we're going to get there? So you know... because they had computer IT
problems that integrate in all fifty states and US territories, so we can... so everybody can talk to
each other, so if you came to the thing and you wanted to turn in your licenses, we want to verify
that that's you.
Mr. Rezentes: It was pretty highly publicized pushed back on a number of
states that was not happy with you know not being provided the adequate funding to implement this
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.25
federal program so I think that's why it basically took as long as it's taken to get to the point where
they're at now. They're going to provide some funding for I think the infrastructure improvements
but the day to day operational cost items, we won't receive the funding to make ourselves whole.
Chair Furfaro: So you're telling me that's one of the reasons there was a push
back? Because it's unclear if we're going to get any kind of reimbursement or funding? Okay...
Councilwoman, would you yield the floor? Councilmember Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: Aloha and mahalo to the work that you do for the county and
your staff as well. The Council Vice Chair asked my question regarding positions but I did want to
make a quick statement and when I worked for the City of (inaudible) within the Finance
Department, I worked directly with the Treasurer and listening to your presentation upfront, the
way you just explained it so clearly and so simply and right off the top of your head with confidence,
I'm really happy about that and I thank you for that and I thank you for that on behalf of the people.
Nineteen years of service, mahalo and keep up the good work, I Iook forward to working with you.
Chair Furfaro: Dave thank you for the fine work. Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Hi Dave, I have one question. In looking at the
comprehensive annual financial report, I just had one question that relates to our budgeting for this
year and that is... there are a lot of long term liabilities of the county that are annual budget
process, you know we really don't address and I was wondering whether... you know some of these
include landfill closure, post closure twenty-one million, we know that's coming down the line,
capital lease obligations three million, compensated absences of eleven point five million, so I was
just wondering as we do because I'm new to this and I don't know what the process is but how do we,
do we take these long term obligations into account in this year's budgeting process? Or how do we
factor that in or do we just... when the time comes that's when we just budget for it.
Mr. Rezentes: I think there's... just recalling some of the items that you
mentioned we funded annually, I think Dave had mentioned earlier that we set aside financial
assurance money for post closure, closure monitoring of our landfill, the long term liability section, I
know that our auditors, our external audits meet annual with the County Attorney's Office to
determine what are in fact our long term liabilities are to determine if we need to in fact set aside
funds or at least identify the funds or the future exposure. I think you had mentioned employee
related, I'm sorry what was it...
Ms. Nakamura: Compensated absences.
Mr. Rezentes: I believe what that is handled on an annual basis and there's
an account in the Finance Department, I can provide you the line item later. But it's an estimate of
how much like the payouts would be for retirement purposes as they come but it's hit or miss
because we really don't know exactly how many employees every year will be retired and we have
you know that number of months liability in those types of payouts but we try to budget for it within
Finance and sometimes I believe we've in the past we've asked for funding support from the
Departments to make sure that we can adequately pay for those cost.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: But those liabilities are fully forecasted.
Mr. Rezentes: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Right, okay.
April 21, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.26
Mr. Rezentes: And I know for sure it's a very important couple days when
our auditors are here and they work with the County Attorney's to look at the liability exposure of
various suits, etc... with them and they come to and in the end with a dollar amount that's indicated
in the CAFR report.
Chair Furfaro: I'm going to share with the Councilwoman, you know the last
condition of the County Treasurer report we got, was November 16 so we do have one coming up
after the budget process here and we'll take it from there and if you can evaluate again some of our
particulars on PT&E I think that would be very much appreciated Wally. So let me leave this with
you. Okay, any additional questions for the Treasury, if not, I'm going to go ahead and say thank
you again Dave and I'm going to excuse you.
Mr. Spanski: Thank you.
Mr. Rezentes: I know we have twenty minutes, but I hope... I'm not sure
how long our next section will take, it's for Real Property Assessment, I'm going to have Steve Hunt
and Sally Motta come up here and explain the Real Property Assessment Divisions program for
fiscal year 12.
Chair Furfaro: Wally let me ask you a question before you leave, I do not
want this operational review of the budget to turn into a whole discussion about budget strategies
and so forth, will we be having time in a soon to be discussion about any strategies going forward?
Mr. Rezentes: With respect to Real Property?
Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Rezentes: Yes, one of the things I've been thinking about because there's
a number of different moving parts as you'll see in the testimony today, the possibility of having
workshops with the County Council to go over these initiatives and proposed ordinances some of
which will come very soon to this body, so that is an option and we can have more time and focus on
discussing these initiatives at that time.
Chair Furfaro: And thank you for that but that's a nice way of saying there
are some low hanging fruit there that on individual ordinances we can address especially as we close
the transient accommodation scope, those people should be in a different tax bucket, those types of
things can be handled either individual or a very long workshop on a new tax bill and that's not the
agenda item today but I want to make sure it is something that's going to come up in a future radar
screen.
Mr. Rezentes: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you.
SALLY MOTTA, DEPUTY FINANCE DIRECTOR: Aloha, I'm Sally Motta and the Deputy
Director of Finance for the County of Kauai. I have Steve Hunt here that will be doing the
presentation for the Real Property Assessment division.
STEVE HUNT: Aloha Council Chair, Vice Chair, Councilmembers. For the
record Steve Hunt Real Property Officer for the Real Property Assessment Division. The Real
Property Assessment division mission is to accurately and uniformly assess all property within the
county of Kauai annually, maintain current ownership and taxpayer address records; create and
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.27
maintain up to the date tax maps, provide public service education and administer numerous tax
relief programs.
Some of the successes and achievements the use of new integrated technologies such as
Pictometry and GIS Mapping, combines with the development of market modeling methodology has
increased both this division's efficiency and accuracy in assessing residential properties. These
technologies have allowed RPA to remain to essentially the same staff levels for over two decades
despite a rapidly growing taxpayer and parcel count.
Some of the challenges facing RPA the primary challenges facing RPA are administering the
complex, layered tax relief programs, enforcing and complying with the laws of KCC Chapter 5A and
monitoring our assessment software to make sure it functions in concert with our laws.
Additionally, the changes in the technologies utilized by RPA have subsequently resulted in our staff
having to possess greater technical skill sets, specifically computer and analytical abilities, which
requires ongoing training. Kauai County does not currently have a Property Technical Officer, a
staff member specializing in statistical data analysis, database queries, construction cost studies,
staff training, and assessment quality control. Thus it has become incumbent voluntarily upon a few
key staff members to perform these functions without any formal training or change to position
descriptions.
An efficiency challenge that exists at a macro level is the limited integration between county
departments, such as Planning and Public Works Building Division which currently relies on the
paper delivery of shared information between departments. This inefficient flow of information
between departments combined with the extensive amount of time being spent on tax relief
programs has resulted in the backlog of building inspections and related fieldwork. This proves
problematic in that the amended notice of assessment for omitted buildings and properties for prior
tax years can result in significant rollback taxes to taxpayers as well as create the negative
perception that RPR is not doing their job.
In overcoming these challenges there are a number of changes being proposed, they include
changes in the ordinance, technology, and staffing that are in various stages of consideration and or
implementation. Ordinance changes to streamline assessments and simplify tax relief programs are
being drafted and hope to be presented for consideration by the Council during 2011. The major
ordinance changes include changing the notifications to a single value, applying tax rates according
to actual use rather than zoning, removing the redundancies of overlapping tax relief programs,
shortening the tax rollback period, creating a commercial alternative energy exemption and reducing
the appeals threshold. Another ordinance change under consideration is moving the assessment and
appeals deadlines to earlier dates so that the certified assessment roll will better coincide with the
annual budget proceedings. Changes in staffing include redefining our current position descriptions
to meet the changing needs of RPA. We will look into the possibility of reclassifying and prioritizing
the vacant tax clerk position 286 and utilize the funding from an existing temporary position T274 to
convert it into a PTO position in our future budget submittal. On the technology forefront, adding
the Change Finder enhancement to the existing countywide Pictometry software will allow RPA to
screen properties that have made changes in the improvements between periodic flyovers. RPA is
investigating the feasibility of using a third party vendor to assist with the enforcement o£
exemption fraud. The IT department will be tasked with assisting RPA to find more efficient and
reliable ways to share data for the mutual benefit of numerous county departments. While likely to
be cost prohibitive during these challenging economic times, future initiatives may include
investigating the feasibility of upgrading to a web-based software and using field tablets to collect
real-time data.
Some of the improvements a real property technical officer from the City and County of
Honolulu was retained to train our appraisers in market modeling a valuation process that mirrors
April 21, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.28
the sales comparison approach used by fee appraisers, and a proven methodology that has been
employed by CCH for the past ten years. Market modeling has resulted in better market value
estimates and is alternative to the cost approach historically used by all Hawaii counties.
A recent reorganization of RPA has created improved coordination and administration of the
front of the house activities, clerical and mapping sections, as well as better turnarounds times for
amended assessment notices. The changes in leadership roles at back of the house are resulting in
greater standardization of valuations, improved monitoring of staff appraiser responsibilities,
streamlined appeals intake processes comprehensive review of the existing real property ordinance
and policies and earlier reporting to the Finance Administration and the County Council.
Some of the upcoming initiatives and training RPA intends to do a comprehensive review of
our initial model configurations and will utilize additional training from Honolulu property technical
office to continue to refining our market models. To better facilitate market modeling is our intent to
move away from appraiser assignments by zone and move towards assignments by property type
such as oceanfront resort VDA tract subdivisions and larger estates.
The administrative staff is scheduled to attend assessment administration training, hosted
by CCH and issued under the IAAO international association of assessing officers standards for all
mass appraisal entities.
An ERSI GIS software company has provided for four invitations to their annual conference
on the utilization of GIS with all types of practical software, including CAMA mapping by global
satellite imagery linked with assessment data by tax map key. The conference will be held in San
Diego this July and RPA hopes to send one to two employees to this conference.
RPA would greatly benefit from any procurement training as well as personnel management
training, should this become available. And real property assessment envisions adding entry level
appraisers and property technical staff to meet our office's changing needs as well as develop a
succession plan for an again workforce.
Chair Furfaro: Could you use the term maturing workforce?
Mr. Hunt: More (inaudible) I understand.
Chair Furfaro: I'm kind of going backwards from your notes... on this GIS
software training in San Diego, you know we had a discussion in yesterday's Council meeting dealing
with complete streets and it really dawned on me that some of the mapping in the tax office, should
also be able to help us on some of the mapping on the issues that came up with where and what
complete streets we could actually address and which and where cultural and historical ones may
not be... we're sending only two from Real Property, are we sending anybody from Planning, do you
know?
Mr. Hunt: Right now of the four slots, I believe one, hopefully earmarked
for Garrett Johnson who heads up our GIS from IT he's going to attend.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Hunt: There's also one for sure from Planning that's going, I'm not
sure who the individual is, Fire was invited but may not send and Real Property was given one, we
may take two if offered but we want to make sure that Garrett, if Fire does send someone, we'll go
back to one and make sure he goes, it's most important that he's there.
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Finance Department Call-Backs p.29
Chair Furfaro: Short answer, this question... can we get more slots?
Mr. Hunt: I believe they run about two thousand dollars for the actual
slots, these were given to us as gifts so we want to use those four... I don't know IT may have that
answer.
gifts.
Chair Furfaro: We got eight thousand dollars worth of value through the
Mr. Hunt: Correct.
Chair Furfaro: So maybe we could pay for a couple, that's my... I'll send that
over as a question. Going a little backwards here but are you pleased with the market model as this
is a big change for us.
Mr. Hunt: It is, this is our second year of market modeling and what it is
done for our office in terms of equalization of value is phenomenal and it only gets better as the data
is brought in and just a brief overview of what it does.
Chair Furfaro: Yes give us a brief overview because you seem everywhere I
read, it's market modeling...
Mr. Hunt: It is our future. What it does on the cost approach is to
compared and contrast the two.
Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Hunt: On the cost approach, it's taking your land value, it's taking
your replacement cost, less appreciation and coming up with your value. That does not say what the
market will bear for that property, it just says this is what the replacement cost is. The difference in
market modeling is that it goes out and finds five recent sales of properties within your model per
say and they're grouped according to neighborhoods and then they're grouped and clustered and put
in an overall model. As it finds the best five (inaudible} for your properties which you are able to
select criteria in terms of square footage, lot value you know type of class in building, you can find
your selection and it takes those five sales and it uses those sales against the subject property and
makes adjustments for the differences and comes up with a concluded value for your property. Right
now we have by ordinance are required to provide two values a land value and a building value, we
hope to bridge that and go to a single value because that's what market modeling does, it provides us
a single value and what we're having now is to provide the land value based on land comps and the
overall value and the difference basically gets rolled back into the building value, and so that
fluctuates a lot and we're getting a lot of calls and in an instances where the land value went down
ten or twelve percent in one year but the total property value only went down five percent, it showed
an increase in building value as an offset and people are saying why did the building value go up,
regardless that the whole property went down, why did the building value go up and so we hope to
get to that point. Again market modeling essentially measures what buyers are willing to pay for
the finished product and it's much easier way to measure that.
Chair Furfaro: I'm going to end over a question to give me an idea in how
does that work in a foreclosure market?
Mr. Hunt: In a foreclosure market, by ordinance we're supposed to look
at the market value.
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.30
Chair Furfaro: So that may not change?
Mr. Hunt: That may not change and...
Chair Furfaro: You satisfied my question, just with this piece. I'd like to
finish my question first Mr. Bynum and then I'll go right to you. ordinance changes to streamline
the assessment of tax relief programs are being drafted and hope to be presented for consideration to
the council during 2011, the later part of 2011?
Mr. Hunt: No and it depends on the complexity and the discussions, we
have some that are in draft form now that can be presented next week.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Hunt: And they would be staggered depending on what refinements
we need to do to individuals as we've met, alternative energy I know has been long, long coming and
there's only one small piece left dealing with biofuels that we're dealing with, trying to get our hands
around.
Chair Furfaro: Well thank you for pointing our my particular bill that I've
been working with you folks on and it's been a while but it is coming sooner than later.
Mr. Hunt: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you and then let me ask you on these positions... are
you telling me that they're not being shown in your current budget, it is something that's going to
happen later like this property technical officer I mean why aren't we finding that person now?
Mr. Hunt: Well we essentially, we have fourteen positions including our
temporary and we have for the last two years, we've been operating with ten, we've recently filled
the commercial appraiser five position February 15 and we also recently filled one of our retired
positions in an appraiser four position, residential journey man which was only April 1, so recently
only added two bodies and we're in the process of training them up and learning the system
internally because it's they possess the skills but they don't have the necessary knowledge to go
forward. We're still as supervisors assessing the needs of the office because they're changing as
technology changes so does our office change. The way we're heading now is we're looking more
towards people who have strong back grounds in mathematics, statistics which wasn't always one of
the requirements and so as a property technical officer that's what we're looking for now is to refine
that position. And there are people in the office that have been doing that job sort of you know
voluntarily if you will.
Chair Furfaro: I don't like that term but go ahead.
Mr. Hunt: I know but we're looking at trying to create that position and
maybe move some personnel around within our department first and then look at the needs after
that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay well let me share your own words with you... from my
point of view... the processing we're doing right now is called the budget.
Mr. Hunt: Correct.
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Finance Department CaIl-Backs p.31
Chair Furfaro: We'd like to see the direction you're planning to go reflected in
the budget. You can determined whether these people is elevated or not but part of your strategic
thinking should be attached to your staff needs and I would hope that you can revisit with the
Administration your intention to upgrade these positions for the next submittal.
Mr. Rezentes: That's exactly what I was going to say.
Chair Furfaro: Oh very good, you and I are thinking on the same page. You
know this is our process, this is the budget now, not six months from now.
Mr. Hunt: And part of that too is it's not necessarily an upgrade, some of
these are maybe lateral moves, it's just... basically redefining the position to meet the work needs,
the work has changed and we have to do the work.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Mr. Hunt: And now the position descriptions are changing, we have to
change our personnel descriptions to meet that.
Chair Furfaro: Okay and if I was wearing pin stripes like Lenny Rapozo
today, I would be doing hand signals like this... whatever that means... I want to see it reflected in
the budget. If you can consider and convince the administration to do that because this is our
planning time.
Mr. Hunt: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: And we'll look forward to start seeing some of these tax
ordinances coming up, thank you for a nice presentation, I'm going to go around the table,
Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Thanks Steve for how responsive you've been since you've
been in that position, we're have lots of talks and we'll have a lot more because you're working on
legislation, I'm working on legislation and we don't want to work cross purposes, so that dialog is
very valued, I appreciate it. The other thing; I just wanted to put in here... that submittal we keep
talking about happens on Friday May 6 Wally hopefully in the morning, so our staff can... because
Council Chair said our staff is going to be working that weekend. This is inherent difficulty with our
budget process, we're talking about it now but that submittal happens on Friday usually in late
afternoon and on Monday morning we sit down and start voting... and so we only have like one or
two days to process that. I know I'll be working that weekend because it's a lot to process so and I
think that's why the Chair wants to talk about it now even though it will result in changes in the
submittal. And that's just kind of like for the Finance Department and for the world it just
(inaudible) since I've been here that oh the supplemental usually has very significant changes and
then I think it will this year... anyway...
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, I just want to answer that on that one thing...
this is something the administration needs to bring to the Charter Commission. These date changes
are driven by Charter, okay and then we get into this box that Mr. Bynum has shared. That's why I
went to our staff earlier and asked them to work Friday late and that Saturday but the dates about
changing are Charter issues. Mr. Rezentes, you're hearing me about maybe some dialog that the
Charter Commission can be briefed on the timing, it becomes... you know we end up in a box.
Anyway, thank you Mr. Bynum.
April 21, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.32
Mr. Bynum: Okay and then my specific questions... single value, I want to
start with single value, I understand at administering single value is a huge advantage to you and
you say right up front that your biggest challenge is administrating the complex layer tax relief
programs and I think having this dual rates adds to the complexity to you, is that correct?
Mr. Hunt: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: And on the other hand it's like why do we have that in the
first place? And I don't need to answer today but I want to plant some seeds because if this changes
has to be by ordinance, right? In my mind we have those value differentiations to make our tax
quote a little bit more progressive right, so for instance if you have a three hundred and fifty
thousand dollar house, the land and the you know building value doesn't make a whole lot of
difference in your tax bill but if you have a million dollar house, a lot of that can be waited to the
building, right because it's a more laborite building and when we tax that at a slightly higher rate, it
makes our tax quo more progressive, have I got this right?
Mr. Hunt: It could be that way, I mean there are other ways to do it as
well with increasing possible exemptions for income amounts I mean if you're looking for ability to
pay as well, there are other ways without doing that. I believe we are the only county in the state
that has a (inaudible) tax rates, everyone else either has a single rate or a unified rate where they're
the same.
Mr. Bynum: And even if we go to a unified rate we will be assessing
building and land?
Mr. Hunt: We will be for this year for sure, we've already done it but my
hopes are that we get away from that and we will go to a single value. Behind the scenes we will
still maintain land because there's still vacant land to assess to a single, it's just when you get into a
improved land, you can't really separate the two, you sell it as one entity, someone don't buy the
house without the land.
Mr. Bynum: Right.
Mr. Hunt: So it makes more sense to have a single value.
Mr. Bynum: And you said there are other ways to address the tax code in
terms of making it progressive and that includes exemptions and...
Mr. Hunt: Correct.
Mr. Bynum: And so I just wanted to plant seeds on that that we need to
have that... if you bring us an ordinance, we need to have that kind of complex discussion.
Regarding the energy exemption... I've been telling the Mayor's Office every week, almost every day,
I want that bill. You know I wrote a bill a year ago, Chairman Furfaro worked on a bill about these
energy exemptions, thanks for supplying a draft of your bill in process because frankly it's better
then the one that I did, you included things I hadn't thought of but we're way pass deadline of
getting that done so I really want that before the Council as soon as possible. I've been
communicating that to the Mayor and Wally and so do you know when is the arrival date?
Mr. Hunt: I don't know if I can comment on that, it's not up to me to
send it. I think the one sticking point that I can say that has not been resolve yet is the bio fuels and
I mentioned this earlier... is one of the stakeholders in this that maybe producing bio fuels may not
be on board with having a limitation to sell it all on Kauai, they may want to sell it other places and
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.33
from our perspective should we be giving an exemption to someone who's producing bio fuels and
selling it elsewhere and maybe it's just a matter of putting up a minimum percentage sold on Kauai,
I don't know... it will probably be through the discussions you have here when it is presented... we're
trying to get over that last hurtle.
Mr. Bynum: Well we have these.
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me Mr. Bynum, we have to...
Mr. Bynum: Caption break?
Chair Furfaro: We're going to take a caption break here because we've been
at it a few minutes after nine, and Councilwoman I've been called to a meeting as well so when we
come back Mr. Bynum has the floor and you have the meeting.
There being no objections, the Council recessed at 11:07 a.m.
The Council reconvened at 11:22 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
Ms. Yukimura: We're back to order and Councilmember Bynum, you want to
continue your questions or start your questions?
Mr. Bynum: We have a theme developing when you talked about
inefficient delivery of information is an obstacle for you and you're talking about GIS and IT hasn't
come here and you mentioned Garrett going to this training. Garxett's the guy right?
Mr. Hunt: He is the guy.
Mr. Bynum: Like Maui has like six Garrett's right so I'm really thrilled to
see not only your division but others using this tool and trying to integrate it, the GIS tool and the
(inaudible) but I'm worried about how efficiently we can do that but that's an IT thing when they
come because there's other ways you could use that, other than you talked about for the future, is
that correct?
Mr. Hunt: Right, the one component that we're looking to add that is
actually in procurement right now is the change finder and what it does is every two years when
they do the fly over, it actually takes pictures of the structures and the structures are compared to
the prior picture and it identify those where there were changes. So for us it's a way to easily screen
which properties need to be looked at as opposed to rely on paper information and we're not sure just
because someone pulls a permit doesn't necessarily mean they started construction, sometimes they
sit on it and ask for extensions so for us this is an easier way to screen which permits are actively
being worked on. That change finder will not just be for Real property, it will be countywide, it
allows buildings to be scaled so someone can look at it and see that's it's a twenty foot second story, if
it's a fire, fire knows what ladder to bring, the certain height. It's really countywide.
Mr. Bynum: In the past we made real strong investments in this
technology in the data and so I'm really happy it's being used but you are integrating with IT on that
discussion right?
Mr. Hunt: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And then I think the Chair asked you about PTO we might
see that in the submittal is what I heard...
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.34
Ms. Yukimura: What is PTO?
Mr. Bynum: It's the...
Mr. Hunt: Property technical officer.
Mr. Bynum: Right.
Mr. Hunt: At the moment Kauai County is the only one that doesn't
have this position. It's being filled by Kim Hester currently but she also serves as the supervisor to
the appraisers and has a zoning responsibility so she's being stretched very thin. So we may look at
carving out some of those duties and just re-titling her position and releive her of some of her zone
work as we grow our new appraisers that just came on and possibly and future appraiser staff that
just come on.
Mr. Bynum: We're lucky that Kim is so detail oriented and committed
because... yeah...
Mr. Hunt: Valuable asset for the county, absolutely.
Mr. Bynum: Absolutely. So I think that's all I have right now.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Other questions? Councilmember Kuali`i and
then Nakamura.
Mr. Kuali`i: Like Councilmember Bynum, I'm very interested in the more
efficient delivery of services and you mentioned that it was a theme and so I'm excited to see some of
the things you have in your report. I'm sorry I should say aloha and mahalo. Thank you for all the
work that you do for our people. Now you just explained the change finder enhancement and that's
pretty cool. I'm looking forward to learning so much more and you know getting into it and as far as
the ordinance changes you see coming forward, the one thing I think about is like over ten years ago
when I moved back home and I personally had experienced with my parents and you know when
you talk about this administrating the complex layered tax relief programs... so I know you're
talking about this (inaudible) system which applies to everyone but you also briefly said something
about exemptions, so there is a senior exemption and the low income exemption...
Mr. Hunt: Correct.
Mr. Kuali`i: So are those hard to administer and what are you saying here.
by making that statement, that it's complex...
Mr. Hunt: Sure. In addition to exemptions, we also have credits a circuit
breaker credit, we have the permanent home use cap which is the two percent cap on prior years
taxes... and we have the exemption changes that occur. Every year we have to look at whether
there's been any changes to the status of the tax payer and the property.- So as the tax payer reaches
a new age threshold, they get additional exemption which actually gets deducted from that two
percent cap that actual comes off and it's not recalculated but we also recalculate the market taxes
and if the market taxes dip lower than the capped taxes depending on the year that they got into the
program, they actually paid the lower of the two taxes. And we have to look at the impact of the
circuit breaker and sometimes the circuit breaker which rolls back the taxes to two thousand and
one taxes for a tax payer is the lowest of them all and we have to sort of look at these different in
scenarios for a particular property every year.
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department CaIl-Backs p.35
Mr. Kuali`i: Are you saying to that it's interrelated like is you are eligible
for one then you can't get the other or?
Mr. Hunt: No, we're saying if you're eligible for any of them, we have to
look at all of them and see what provides the tax payer the greatest relief.
Mr. Kuali`i: And you...
Mr. Hunt: But there are some redundancies so one may do the
permanent home use, may do all of it but we still have to look every year what the circuit breaker
might do or what the exemption increase have done.
Mr. Kuali`i: You had mentioned age but that's fairly simple right, I mean
once you put their birth date in the system, the compute can kick in when their meeting that age and
their eligible. The other thing to, so on that the tax payer themselves have to reapply every year for
whatever exemptions they might qualify for or would it be something like this age thing?
Mr. Hunt: Right the age and basic home use are not, you don't have to
reapply for it, it's a onetime application provided you don't move or change your residency. The
other applications, some of them are annual, the income is annual because we don't know what your
income would be from one year to the next, same with the circuit breaker that is an annual
application.
Mr. Kuali`i: So in the income thing, is it as simple as when they file their
tax returns, they can send you a copy and now you have your income?
Mr. Hunt: They do have to provide copies of their state and federal, that
is correct.
Mr. Kuali`i: The only thing I'm curious about is to how you... what kind of
effort you put in to making it known to our seniors and our low income families... you know I've been
away, I went to college, I'm kind of like the head person in my family who sort of like, because I'm
the only person that went to college but to help with legal and financial throughout my family. So if
a family doesn't have a person like me, they might be missing out on that really important assistance
that they need because they are so low income and when I was looking into it, I had to dig. It wasn't
like in my face, today it's like ten, fifteen years later...so I'm assuming you have the information on
the website you must have brochures in the lobby...you must put the word out, you must send it out
with your property... with the bills, the notices every six months or whatever, you do send but at
that time it was like a Xerox paper with information on what the rates and what you're eligible for
and it was like probably something that hadn't been update in ten years, the quality was all faded so
it was like we were keeping it a secret and I don't... I want to make sure that we're helping the
people who need the help the most.
Mr. Hunt: You are correct.
Mr. Kuali`i: And making that available.
Mr. Hunt: You are correct, it is on the web, it is on the assessment
notice. There are exemptions you may qualify is stated on that, we have a brochure, it probably
mirrors the old one, it's not faded anymore, it's been updated and includes the new exemptions that
are out there. There had been direct mailers that were done a while back, it's costly to do direct
mailers to all the... there's ten thousand seven hundred and fifty home owners that qualify for that
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.36
exemptions so it's costly to send that out all the time but there had been periodic and we try to get
them when they come in to fill out the application or turn in the application or turn in the
application to get the following years application so that we try to get them going on the next one.
Mr. Kuali`i: So clearly the income level changes, the taxes... that's one
thing but the age thing, once they do it once with their birth date, then it's automatic every year?
Mr. Hunt: Right. When they file the application, they actually show
their drivers license or identification, the birth dates are noted and entered into the system and if a
husband or wife, the older of the two is put on first so as soon as the older one hits that critical age
which is age sixty prior to the assessment date or age seventy prior to the assessment date, the
higher exemption thresholds kick in.
Mr. Kuali`i: The last thing... do you think it might not be possible to tie
the income for the senior's who are on fixed income, they have social security, they don't necessarily
have any other kind of large pensions, the social security is pretty much set and even the cost of
living adjustments has been minimized with no increases or what have you, wouldn't there be a way
electronically if they authorized it up front for that to be automated as well.
Mr. Hunt: To be honest, I can't speak to that. I don't know what kind of
coordination between the IRS and the state tax agency would be required to provide that information
because a lot of that have social security numbers, other information that may not be able to be
electronically submitted to us.
Mr. Kuali`i: Right. But just maybe the income, if they authorized it, just a
thought. Thank you for the information.
Ms. Yukimura: Councilmember Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Hi Steve. With Real Property Tax Division brings in ninety-
one point five million of our county revenues at least for last year which is seventy-eight percent of
the total county revenues so I wanted to just say this is such an important function to the county's
operations and I don't see any, so I would support any... request to... for the PTO to meet the needs
to make our assessments fairer, more equitable for our citizens. I also wanted to find out I guess
compared to last year you're showing a decrease in small equipment, computer accessories there's
no... doesn't seem like a real need this year to... I just wanted to make sure that you have the...
Mr. Hunt: Resources.
Ms. Nakamura: Resources... to do your job because it's so critical to the
operations of this county.
Mr. Hunt: Thank you for asking that. Last year we did have a large
equipment purchase which was a large plotter for our tax mapper, that was the only major increase
in equipment that we had. We recently got the county vehicles within the last two years as well
which I believe are on lease, so we have the resources the thing that is sort of handcuffing at the
moment is the tax relief and the amount of time that the assessment staff spend dealing with tax
payers on tax relief issues and that's what we're trying to hopefully streamline by simplifying some
of the process.
Ms. Nakamura: Okay and is that going to be coming through in this
upcoming...
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.37
Mr. Hunt: In ordinance, yes submittal bills.
Ms. Nakamura: And what's the timing of that?
Mr. Hunt: Again I would say... we're still looking at how to group them
together but I would say we probably have about a number five or six bills that are being packaged
and most of them have already been drafted and we're just going through edits at this point. I would
say possibly ready in a number of weeks or within a month.
Ms. Nakamura: And the purpose of the bills then would be to streamline the
process...
Mr. Hunt: I think the intent is to create efficiencies by reducing the
number of appeals which we think the single family will do, we end up in a lot of discussion with tax
payers with too much of the land value, too much of the building value but they're okay with the
total value. So if we can kind of get rid of that and say, you know the rates are the same, it doesn't
really matter how we allocate, we can get to a single value. Majority of those appeals would go away
and again some of these redundancies of having to look at circuit breaker and income and RHU and
other things that sort of overlap when maybe now that the PHU has gotten down to the point where
its so low, some of these ones may not have as much impact anymore. If we can kind of streamline
some of those relief programs to a more (inaudible) approach, I think we can simplify the process.
What this frees up to do is get out of the field more and pick up some of the buildings that are still
haven't been pick up and again it's a problem because a building that's been there three or four
years, we have to roll back taxes for that.
Ms. Nakamura: That frees up your staff time to have to work on appeals.
Mr. Hunt: Right. And its difficult to ignore someone at the counter
asking to talk about their tax relief and the actual bill they got that say no I got to go out and pick up
buildings, we can't do that... we have to provide service and I think again if we can simplify that
process, we can spend more time picking up the buildings.
Ms. Nakamura: Thank you.
Ms. Yukimura: No questions?
Mr. Hunt: Just a comment to on the amount of time... we estimate and
there's no way to sort of quantify but we estimate between fifty to sixty percent of the time of the
assessors are spent on tax relief, not assessment... it's tax relief.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Ms. Nakamura: Well we look forward to taking that bill coming up.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so I guess it's my turn. And first of all I want to say
wow, what a great report but even more importantly I'm so thankful for the work that you're looking
at, you anticipated a lot of my questions but I guess my most, well one of my concerns is... are you in
your bills going to be also addressing the inequity of the two percent cap?
Mr. Hunt: It's a fine line. There are possible ways to gap the inequities,
unfortunately for the county the values have been declining but that bridge between the market
taxes and the cap taxes has been narrowing so that the amount of credits that we have for the PHU
program have been...
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.38
Ms. Yukimura: But what's going to happen if it starts going up again?
Mr. Hunt: If the value start rising, currently we have a two percent cap,
so on the way up the cap still hits everyone.
Ms. Yukimura: I know but the inequities that it causes are really
tremendous.
Mr. Hunt: As values increase faster than the cap, that is true.
Ms. Yukimura: And it's hurting a lot of the young buyers.
Mr. Hunt; That is true also and what we're looking at possibly is having
that cap not mandated at two percent but maybe making it something that floats with maybe the
CPI or something that's more realistic of inflation... and that way as the cap amount comes up and
values are declining at the moment, those two may start at least from a point in time be on a level
playing field then because people who have gotten in say in 2006 or 7 sort of peeked market, all they
seen... they haven't seen the benefits of the cap because their market taxes have been declining
every year.
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Hunt: So whereas the other cap taxes were they sort of missed the
big bubble and have been cap, cap, cap... well the values are now coming down and we actually get
the call, how come my value went down between 2010, 2011 but my taxes still went up.
Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Mr. Hunt: And they don't realize that they're still saving a lot more than
someone that just recently brought in but they just view it as the value went down, how come my tax
bill didn't go down.
Ms. Yukimura: Well and they save a lot more that was being paid by other
people, other categories as well.
Mr. Hunt: That's correct.
Ms. Yukimura: So I mean... I don't know that you're going to be addressing, I
mean there's just going to be some unworkability in the overall framework if you don't address this.
Mr. Hunt: If the question is, is there a bill to remove the cap, the answer
is no... we have not proposed that.
Ms. Yukimura: Well you're talking about other remedies so... do you have a
bill with other remedies to address that issue?
Mr. Hunt:
No.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay than so we're going to be blundering along and then if
prices go up the inequities are going to become greater and the difficulties of change are going to be
harder so where does that leave us?
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.39
Mr. Hunt: Leaves us in a decision as to what you want to do about the
cap. It's provide a lot of relief to a lot of families and at the same time it's created an inequity for
people, depending on their timing of becoming a homeowner.
Ms. Yukimura: Well all the new homeowners which are our kids.
Mr. Hunt: Right. And to answer that also I mean we're talking about
people protecting on fixed income with the question right before that... people who are on fixed
income maybe need to relief of that.
Ms. Yukimura: Well...
Mr. Hunt: Or some other fashion of relief in terms of higher income
exemption.
Ms. Yukimura: Well that's where the circuit breaker was supposed to provide
that so are you going to be proposing removing the circuit breaker?
Mr. Hunt: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And how are you going to protect people then?
Mr. Hunt: The protection will come in their cap at the moment because
the cap has provided relief.
Ms. Yukimura: And so you're going to be making the cap an even more
difficult thing to remove thus increasing the discrepancies?
Mr. Hunt: Or we're looking at increases at the income amount and
exemption amount to qualify for the income exemption because there are two... there is the income
exemption and there's the circuit breaker. The circuit breaker is very difficult to administer.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Hunt: And there's a danger in what it provides which I care not to
share on camera but would like to discuss with you individually.
Ms. Yukimura: So... you think that the income based taxes can reduce the
inequities? Especially between categories and between time of purchase?
Mr. Hunt: Well philosophically it depends on the relief that you want to
provide, are you looking to provide a relief to those who can pay and that's where the income comes
in... or you looking to categorically have relief and equity so someone who has an expensive or highly
value property but has low income, if we remove the cap and then they pay on market, they may not
be able to have the ability...
Ms. Yukimura: But I thought your income law would address that?
Mr. Rezentes: Can I make a suggestion? I think that's why we need to have
this discussion maybe in an...at another time. I think I may have proposed, I mentioned to the
Chair that we may need to, we should look at workshops because a lot of these items need a lot of
discussion and we need to provide options, we need to provide supporting data that you know can
April 21, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.40
support a position that we may be taking. I don't know if it's really prudent for a budget session to
keep going on and on, we can talk all day and then some on this item...
Ms. Yukimura: Well I think a workshop would be a good idea but when you're
addressing in your budget...
Mr. Rezentes: Yeah... (inaudible) we're going to do in the future, that's one
of the initiatives that's coming up and then it's going to take a lot of time to involve... be involved in
the process.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, yeah, alright.
Mr. Rezentes: Some of the measures that we anticipate proposing are quick
that we believe that will not take the kind of time that some other items may. And these are the
ones that we probably going to be setting up on short notice, others that will be more involved and
will take a lot of this course back and forth, we hope to have that kind of meetings in a workshop or
other types of settings.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay so what was missing here for me and I think
Councilmember Nakamura touched upon it was kind of a timeline... for these initiatives that you're
working on, that would be helpful to have. Even if it's beyond this year but so we can just see what
the timeframe is and I think Councilmember Bynum has a question related to this issue. Okay and
then we'll move on.
Mr. Bynum: I appreciate what Mr. Rezentes says these issues are complex
but... and so I want to summarize this and not you know go deeper into it now. We definitely need to
have this discussion. Thank you for being honest and acknowledging that there are inequities in our
system. That it is falling on young families, that it's something that needs to be addressed. The
market has helped narrow the gap of those inequities, over the last couple of years. There are other
majors we can take like exemptions that may narrow that even more but in... would you agree with
this statement... the two percent cap has created complexities in this system that are difficult to
unravel?
Mr. Hunt: Yes and I think as the values continued to increase over this
period it would be even more, you know the more inequities would be visible. I think that you're
right that the market has saved the inequities or minimized that but going forward we don't know
what's going to happen.
Ms. Yukimura: Well.
Mr. Bynum: And it's made it more difficult for our county to adjust tax
rates in changing. times, the normal levers that county have property tax being the main one, are
more difficult now because of those complexities and so this is a very important issue, we will follow
up with workshops or whatever is necessary.
Mr. Castillo: Excuse me, Vice Chair Yukimura. Al Castillo, County
Attorney. A lot of the questions that are being posed to Steve here... it might be unfair to him
because we're talking about legal and policy decisions and you know it would be better to go offline
and discuss these things because it's unfair to him to focus on him and have him answer for everyone
concerned.
Ms. Yukimura: Actually Mr. Castillo it's unfair for the public to have policy
decisions discussed offline.
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.41
Mr. Castillo: Well I don't want to argue with you Vice Chair.
Ms. Yukimura: I don't either.
Mr. Castillo: What is unfair, what you feel- is unfair and I feel is unfair...
I'm making a legal call here where it's... you're talking about legal opinions and his... and you're
talking about having him represent the department on matters that I think is unfair to him to be
able to answer.
Ms. Yukimura: Mr. Castillo, we're not talking about any legal issues at this
point but thank you very much, we're about to conclude this discussion. We have a question from
Mr. Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: My question is just basically in your presentation on page 19,
you talked about improvements and then you talked about upcoming initiatives, so I understand the
whole initiative but in your (inaudible) you talked about market modeling... and you said a property
technical officer from City and County of Honolulu was retained to train our appraisers in market
modeling so if market modeling represents a change and you know that big change about land value
and building value and the difference in the property, that becomes the building.
Mr. Hunt: Right.
Mr. Kuali`i: A change, I just need to be clear if that's a change that's not
yet... you know what I mean, it's to come assuming an ordinance.
Mr. Hunt: Okay, the market modeling is actually in it's second year of
implementation so the 2010 and the 2011 residential assessments were done using market modeling.
The property technical officer from Honolulu that has trained us in the process of market modeling
continues to trains us and refine our models and one of the major changes that we're going to
hopefully implement for the next assessment cycle is getting away from the assessments...
Mr. Kuali`i: To the single... what you're talking about.
Mr. Hunt: Right.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay so there's other parts to it that's being implemented,
that is not included, that would come in an ordinance if that was approved?
Mr. Hunt: Right the reporting of a single value, those things would be
ordinance changes.
Mr. Kuali`i: So the one thing I would say is that because you mentioned
hereto the it's a proven methodology that has been employed by the City and County of Honolulu for
the past ten years, so I think you know in the future the information I would want is what was it like
for the City and County of Honolulu prior to their implantation and statistics and information about
the impact on our different residents and all of that.
Mr. Hunt: I know...
Mr. Kuali`i: And that's probably for future time but...
Apri121, 2011
Finance Department Call-Backs p.42
Mr. Hunt: Okay I can just comment on just on their appeals counts have
gone down significantly, I don't have the statistics but dramatically and being able to show the tax
payers these are the five sales that they know where the sales are, they understand how they came
up with the value.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay.
Mr. Hunt: It's much easier to explain when you can show where the
sales are and what the prices were and if they're okay with it.
future.
Mr. Kuali`i: Very good. I'm looking forward to getting all into it in the
Ms. Yukimura: I'll turn the gavel back to Council Chair.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. We are about an hour beyond our time, I just want to
revisit on a couple of things here that we said at the beginning and I'm sorry I had to meet with the
Attorney's Office that I had to step out but I'm hearing that we will be looking at things within the
next ninety days in the way of tax bills not to be visited during this budget session but certainly
future discussions, I'm sure those things will be in Mr. Bynum's Committee. And then also you have
promised us some future workshops.
Mr. Hunt: That's what we're looking at.
Chair Furfaro: On these particulars...
Mr. Hunt: I think we almost got into one but yes.
Chair Furfaro: Well I'm glad you didn't because I would have wanted to
participate and I would have ended the discussion today since you promised some workshops and
also we need to have a little bit thinking when we schedule those future council meetings that some
thought about pre and post workshops, not only workshops to understand the bill but kind of if there
are questions or amendments proposed if we have to do a follow up workshop as well. Thank you for
those offers.
Ms. Yukimura: I have two more questions.
does.
Chair Furfaro: Go right ahead.
Ms. Yukimura: One is you oversee collections as well, do you not or... oh Sally
Mr. Hunt: Sally does.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay and I just... because I don't think we have any report on
collections, do we here and maybe because everything's just going fine.
Ms. Motta: There isn't a report in there on collections mainly because it's
after the fact. All the changes that effect the budget are with the assessment department and the
other departments. Collections basically just takes the checks in.
Ms. Yukimura: But we're doing it in a timely basis and you know our
procedures are, they're informed, I mean our... tax payers are informed and it's working well, right?
April 25, 2011
CIP-Transportation Agency p.l
The departmental budget reviews was called back to order on Monday, April 25, 2011, at 9:08 a.m.,
and the presence of all members was noted.
CIP BUDGET -AGENCY ON TRANSPORTATION:
Council Chair Furfaro: aloha, good morning everyone, and I would like to call our
budget meeting back from recess as we have a continuation of capital improvement issues, starting
with the transportation department. And on that note, please come up.
CELIA MAHIKOA: Good morning. Thank you, Council Chair?
Council Chair Furfaro: Celia, you're going to have to introduce yourself again.
Ms. Mahikoa: Good morning. My name is Mahikoa, the executive with the
county transportation agency, and I want to thank you all for this time that we have to discuss our
capital improvement program for bus stop shelters that we have submitted for this upcoming fiscal
year for the amount of $250,000, and I believe all of you have the project information document that
was submitted to basically spell out the details on what our goals are for this year. I will go through
and pretty much summarize what we envision being able to accomplish this year. Of the stops that
we currently have, we have 124 stops out there, and seven currently have shelters already, and 29
are established at facilities that wouldn't require shelters, such as Wilcox Hospital and these areas
that are already sheltered. So this upcoming year, we're looking at our goal is to be able to
accomplish at least five bus stops is what we're looking at. And when I say "goal of accomplishing" I
mean having it accessible, having it sheltered with seating, if necessary in the area that it's located
with PV lighting, PV-powered lighting added. We want to also make sure that there are bike racks
and trash and recycling receptacles, also, at each of the locations that we're having the shelters
placed at. Along with this for now, we're doing preliminary steps, knowing the challenges that are
coming up. Knowing the challenges that are coming up we're going through preliminary steps right
now, basically, conducting analyses on ridership and the facilities that we currently have to
determine the areas that will require the greatest...or have the greatest need at the moment. We're
also refining the procedures we have to obtain the proper authorization from the different
landowners, depending on where the stop is located, if it's on state property versus county property
versus private. If it involves private landowners that we're refining those procedures that will allow
us to have the proper authorization to do these improvements.
We're working with Honolulu Transit as well. We have communicated with them and are
getting their plans that they use for their stops there, a lot better than reinventing the wheel. We're
trying to and working with them and they very willing to help us in the bus stop designs, the
methods that they use for working with the communities. They actually do go out to the
communities there and discuss the community needs and their willingness to work with them as well
on accomplishing these types of projects. Our initial plan was looking at the locations requiring the
least amount of development as is right now is what we were going to prioritize initially, being that
this is the first time we're going into this sort of a capital improvement venture. We were looking at
going that way. We're somewhat reassessing that, since our meeting last week Thursday on the
complete streets implementation workshop whereby, we had the key players of everyone involved in
getting involved with the development of these systems, not just transit, but making it much more
user-friendly for pedestrians, bicycles, and transit, and all of us working together. What we're
planning on doing is meeting with state highways and county public works, as well as any other
players who are involved in getting into capital projects so that we can prompt visioning of transits
involved in any time that capital projects are taking place. I know that's challenging to try and
integrate these, but we're committed to do our best to be able to pull that off. There are certain
challenges involved with these type of projects with but bus shelters. I'm sure you see some of the
stops on the roadsides where space would be a challenge. Certain areas you have the sidewalk and
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Transportation Agency p.2
then maybe a foot of grass and then a parking lot. So we're going to need to employ negotiations
with the landowners, and ensuring that we're always keeping safe and accessible routes for everyone
in addition to providing this amenity for each stop.
Another challenge that we have encountered, as with our current contract in developing
these stops and getting them accessible, is just the nature of rural transit, having the connectability
that we would like with the surrounding facilities for the stop. We can make the stop accessible, but
we at the same time want to ensure that anyone getting off at the stop has a safe way to get where
they need to go. That tends to be a challenge that we will need to address as well in this. In
addition to that, just looking at the long-term effect, as we're developing these stops will involve
somewhat more maintenance efforts on the facilities that we will be putting up. So that will slowing
increase the demands on the staff that we currently have, is maintaining all of the features that we
will be facing here. Paired up with that, what we're also encountering is there are many groups in
the public who are more than willing to work with us and are very helpful-the north shore Lions
who put up the Kilauea and Princeville shelters recently. They just had a meeting last week and
committed to taking care of the trash emptying and maintaining the facility. So it's a really
wonderful thing that these members of the community are willing to do that. Other than that, we're
just looking forward to making these improvements to make it a more attractive option for people on
the island to use the public transit system. And that's about all I have for this morning. Do you
have any questions?
Council Chair Furfaro: We have a few, Celia. First, I'd like to ask is, my buddies, my
colleagues, out at the North Shore Lions, I'm a charter member of the North Shore Lions Club. Has
discussion come up about solar lights for the bus stops?
Ms. Mahikoa: Nothing formal has come up; however, the issue of, especially
with us doing the later night service now, the more dark hours that we're operating, that yes, we're
looking at that as well.
Council Chair Furfaro: So that is being looked at the proposed five targeted shelters?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: You are looking at solar as a component?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes. That is what we would like to. That is our ideal that we
would like to address, so that we're not having to... I mean basically just doing the best things
sustainably to power the facility, because they are kind of in the middle of nowhere, also. So the
resources it would take.
Council Chair Furfaro: Would the plan include xetrofitting the two north shore units
that the North Shore Lions built?
Ms. Mahikoa: We would definitely want to include that, yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Are we considering like those prefab
type of bus shelters? You know, just got to put together, make the foundation, make it accessible?
And just looking at the Internet, ever since this issue came up, there are a lot of opportunities for a
few thousand dollars to have these prefabricated shelters, all different sizes and shapes and designs,
and I'm looking at one here, 4x8 for $1,675 and that is complete; you know of course we have to pay
the shipping. But nonetheless, I still think even if you ship it, much like a shed at Home Depot, it's
April 25, 2011
CIP-Transportation Agency p.3
all packed up in cardboard boxes, and you put it together. I think it would be a lot more cheaper; not
only that, it'd be pretty consistent throughout the island if we pick a design and go that way, and the
community volunteers can help with the slab and setting up the foundations and actually putting
this thing together. But have we even looked at that?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes, we have done have research on the prefab shelters and
we're currently just kind of looking at all options right now. So that is one of them. We're currently
leaning away from that, primarily because when we had our discussion with Oahu Transit, they had
mentioned just how prohibitive the shipping-costs were to get these shelters in, but I don't have
actual numbers on that, but that was the reason why they chose not to go that way. And looking at
it, I'm thinking that getting the materials to Kauai would probably be even be a little more than it
would be for them.
Mr. Rapozo: Not necessarily, because if we are get it straight to Kauai,
but... There is a company in Kapa`a right now, a contractor that can in fact get the prefab, and I
bring that up, because he had mentioned to me, obviously I'm not going to mention the name here,
but there are opportunities. I would ask that we explore that. I think it's more important to get as
many of them up as fast as we can, and I think the quickest way to do that would be the prefab, as
opposed to planning out design and getting people to design it for us. I think the prefab is probably
the way to go. That is just my opinion. We want to provide shelter as soon as possible for the least
amount of money that is necessary. That is all I have.
Ms. Mahikoa: We'll certainly look into it more. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Celia, may I ask, the number you have in your CIP
is $250,000?
Ms. Mahikoa: I believe so, yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: Do you know the breakdown of that component?
Ms. Mahikoa: As far as design versus shelters?
Council Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Ms. Mahikoa: No, we're still working on getting the exact breakdown.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay. Mr. Bynum, you had a question? Councilwoman
Yukimura?
Ms. Yukimura: Yes. I am glad that we're drawing on the city and county,
remembering how helpful they were after the hurricane, when they just came forward with all their
support and infrastructure and superstructure. So it's great that you have such a great big sister/big
brother over there. Piggybacking on Councilmember Rapozo's excellent suggestion, and we do have
to check the costs, because that will affect the number of units we can get. I know that in Seattle at
the bus stops, they have this really zig-zaggy design on the Plexiglas which seems to discourage.
graffiti. So it seems to me that that might be incorporated into the thinking, if we decide to procure
ready-made shelters. Having that factor in on the specs and maybe Seattle will be able to give us
more advice, but I noticed it when I was there, using the bus. And that is a maintenance issue for us
and it affects the quality of our infrastructure. So just a thought. The $250,000 you said, $250,000
you said would cover... I missed the initial part of your testimony.
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Transportation Agency p.4
Ms. Mahikoa: Ongoing through the...our goal is initially to establish the
five, and we're going rather conservative, because this is the first time we're going in for a project
such as this, which would cover any design costs that are involved with it, any engineering scope
that we need for those particular sites that we end up selecting for shelters. And then, of course, the
building of it and the supplying of all the shelters as well as the amenities that we're having with the
foundational element, yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And the thought is if you get a good design you can then use it
over and over again in places where it's appropriate, and maybe as modified by particular
circumstances? So have you said a total of 124.
Ms. Mahikoa: 124 total.
Ms. Yukimura: 124 stops.
Ms. Mahikoa: With seven existing shelters right now.
Ms. Yukimura: A lot of work ahead. And you don't have an overall plan yet.
You're kind of doing a pilot with this first year...
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes, right now.
Ms. Yukimura: ...and then might have along-range, overall plan, which may
also be included in the multi-modal study? Okay. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: And council member, before I recognize you. Celia, I'm going
to send over a question. Could you please give us and maybe work with the engineering department
and the county attorney's office and give us some idea of what this $250,000 is made up of, you
know? If you had 5% in for design fees and 20% in for land acquisitions or easements, give us
something that indicates the breakdown. And on that note I'm going to recognize Councilmember
Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i:
Ms. Mahikoa:
Aloha Celia.
Aloha.
Mr. Kuali`i: Just a couple of quick questions. So you said 124 stops, 7 has
shelters, and 29 are designated as requiring shelters. How do you designate which ones require
shelters?
Ms. Mahikoa: Sorry, I probably didn't express that clearly. The 29 are
currently at like existing facilities. We wouldn't call them "bus shelters," but like our Wilcox
Hospital stop and those so that it wouldn't require a stop, because they are in the covered facility
area already.
Mr. Kuali`i: So they are taken care of?
Ms. Mahikoa: Pretty much, yes, at the location where the stop currently is.
Mr. Kuali`i: So in essence, 36 of the 124 is taken care of?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Transportation Agency p.5
Mr. Kuali`i: So we have less than 100, still a lot, and then you have five in
this pilot project. Have you determined that those are where the citizens need it the most? Want it
the most? High-use? Our kupuna standing in the hot sun or in the rain?
Ms. Mahikoa: We are doing our initial assessments right now, looking at the
ridership and analyzing how many boardings we get at location to determine which area would have
the greatest need. One of the challenges with that is simply because it's an area of greatest need,
there may be restrictions as far as building in an area where we do serve. So we would need to try
and work through that.
Mr. Kuali`i: More challenges like the available space you were talking
about? Okay. Is there any way you could do more than five in this first pilot project?
Ms. Mahikoa: We're going to try. Yes, we're going to try to do as many as
we can.
Mr. Kuali`i: We have (inaudible) goal of calling it success if we do at least
five, but we're going to try to do more? Okay, the more the better. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Councilmember Chang?
Mr. Chang: Good morning, Celia. So I guess obviously you get the bus
drivers involved in this conversation, what they would recommend?
Ms. Mahikoa: We do. It's more like break-room type. We sit down with
them at lunchtime or during their downtime and we talk story. It's not a...I don't sit there and
formally go, okay, what is your input on... But we sit there and talk story and they give us their
ideas about things we should change or areas where we're needing to add additional service or
change certain things. So we do get their input on it.
Mr. Chang: So out of curiosity, of the five bus stops, can you tell us where
this might be? Is it too premature to tell us where?
Ms. Mahikoa: The only reason I wouldn't is because we haven't got the okay
from certain landowners and gone through the proper steps of getting an okay. So that is the only
reason I would hesitate.
Mr. Chang; I understand, and of course I guess when you build a shelter,
the thought would be to make sure that we take advantage of the natural elements. In other words,
we would build it with the trades behind? You know, just for rain or whexe the sun is going to be?
Like, a lot of times I guess maybe you can't help, but when the sun is setting on the west side, then
it's going to be like extremely hot. But if it rains and we got trades, then if we have it positioned
another way, then people can technically get wet.
Ms. Mahikoa: I would imagine in certain areas we could do that. In other
areas, because of the limitations of space or the traffic direction being next to the road, we would not
be able to. But we will definitely consider that, if we do have the ability to consider those factors,
sure.
Mr. Chang: Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair?
April 25, 2011
CIP-Transportation Agency p.6
Council Chair Furfaro: Celia, may I add another? .Could you give us an idea of the
balance of the 88 stops that we have? Which ones in your opinion would be the ten most difficult to
retrofit? I would just like to know, whether it's land...
Ms. Mahikoa: For different reasons?
Council Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Ms. Mahikoa: Unfortunately, we have come across where, I apologize I can't
explain it very well, but Parks, if I believe there are certain types of federal funds were used to either
acquire or improve our park systems, then it restricts the use of that park to where it would not
allow structures to be built for something, for like a bus shelter. It's what we have encountered some
of that so far. But we're working with them to see. What we're trying to do is find out, well, how can
we? Can we find a way to do this. They have been more than willing to work with us on finding
ways to do it. It's just...unfortunately, it cannot be right now, because we need to work through. For
certain parks, not all.
Council Chair Furfaro: Let me restate the rationale behind... The 10 stops that
would be the most difficult to serve for various reasons and if one of them is, in fact, this question
about the use of federal dollars and it applies to our parks? We would really like to get that clarified
rather quickly and we want to make sure that we can direct those inquiries to our county attorney's
office, because it just doesn't seem reasonable. So we'll ask you to send over that list as well, the ten
sites that might be the most difficult to retrofit, for whatever reasons. Thank you. Any more
questions here? Councilwoman Nakamura?
Ms. Nakamura: Hi, Celia. I wanted to ask you, for the existing bus shelters
that have been built, what has been the average cost?
Ms. Mahikoa: I would probably need to get back to you on that. They have
been built in different situations; some have been through added-on contracts with other
developments, and then we've had the Lion's Club project that they took on last year. But I can
gladly assemble that information for you.
Ms. Nakamura: I was just curious. Also, so with the $250,000 request, you
would like to do five, you are kind of budgeting about $50,000 per shelter?
Ms. Mahikoa: We're hoping that it won't be that much and we'll be able to
do additional improvements, like with the lighting on Princeville and Kilauea and other
improvements, such as that. But I think just being conservative, because knowing that certain times
engineering-type issues can come into the mix or design issues may need to be addressed.
Ms. Nakamura: I think because it's a pilot study, that I think it would be
great to see at the end of the pilot study what the findings were. What worked and what didn't and
how you would try to improve the program. And then for the 83 remaining bus stops, that how you
would prioritize those? So whether it's high, medium, low, so that we can see what your big picture
is, because some of them may be either undoable, because of federal laws or because maybe there are
very few people using the stop. I'm not sure what the criteria would be, but to categorize them, so we
can have a sense moving forward what the needs would be. I'm really glad that you are looking at
the whole issue of the shelters and the connectivity to the communities that they serve. So thank
you for looking at those opportunities, too. One final thing and I'm glad planning department is
here, too, because as you are doing these bus shelters, if they are taking up space either on private
land, city or state lands, where, let's say, for example it's in a parking lot and it will take away from
off-street parking requirements that the establishment has. Then I would like to be in touch with
April 25, 2011
CIP-Transportation Agency p.7
you to talk about those obstacles that you might encounter, because I think where the transit
stations are located we should try to be flexible about off-street parking requirements. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Any more questions? Councilwoman Yukimura?
Ms. Yukimura: If I heard you correctly, you said that you working with the
state so that whenever they have major CIP projects, even like the widening of Kaumuali`i Highway
that they might include bus shelters along that route wherever they are? Is that what you were
talking about?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes, unfortunately it's not past tense. It's based on the seeds
that were planted last week and that workshop where we're going and Mr. McCormick has expressed
a willingness to sit down with us and have discussions in this arena.
Ms. Yukimura: That is excellent. And there actually is a past example. I
don't know if there is a shelter there, but in Kealia, I know that they made that bus stop area as part
of the multiuse-trail CIP project. So I mean too bad they didn't put a shelter in... Oh, is there? Is
there actually a... Excuse my ignorance, I have never used it. Oh, I did once. Anyway, good. And
then how about coordination with school bus stops? Does that have any issue there?
Ms. Mahikoa: We have not taken that step yet, but I would see how
naturally that should be also a part of stepping back and taking a look at the entire picture. That
should be, yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, because I saw one case...one park in Puhi where there's
a bus stop... I don't know if it's a shelter. I think it might be a shelter. On two sides of the park,
they're within 100 yards...oh, 50 yards of each other. So it seems like some coordination at
minimum would be good that maybe there is a way to pool resources. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum?
Mr. Bynum: So the shelter in Kalaheo, as I recall, was a community came
out of Ka Leo O Kauai program?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: And that shelter is also prefab, is that correct?
Ms. Mahikoa: I believe so.
Mr. Bynum: So that was definitely a public transit, public school, public
community-involved kind of synergy. I don't remember all the details, but I think there was some
community volunteer efforts involved. Was there? Co you recall?
Ms. Mahikoa: I'm sorry, I don't.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Celia, make a note, please, to check with the county attorney's
office in any collaboration with the D.O.E. on school bus shelters and public shelters and make sure
there isn't a hurdle there that we need to go through. Any more questions of Celia?
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Transportation Agency p.8
Ms. Yukimura: Just one more. As a follow-up to that Kalaheo bus shelter
and stop, could you let us know what the cost of that was? I mean I think it was a substantial
project that we wouldn't expect that every bus stop would be like that. So I know that it would be
kind of like the Cadillac category, but it still would give us some idea of costs. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: And probably on the same note, since public works had the
shelter at Kealia bid as part of the bike path, we could probably isolate that model and probably
have construction documents that lead up to the bid price as well. On that note, any more questions?
If not, thank you very much, and thank you for coming back.
Ms. Mahikoa: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Now on that note, we're going to ask the planning department
specifically to come up. Before I do, Mike, is there anyone in the audience that wanted to speak on
the Transportation CIP? No?
There being no objections, the departmental budget reviews was recessed at 9:39 a.m.
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.1
The departmental budget reviews reconvened at 9:39 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
CIP BUDGET -PLANNING DEPARTMENT:
Council Chair Furfaro: Come right up, Mike. Mike, we have copies of planning's four
major project initiation documents. So there are four and on that note, do you want Myles to come
up and join you? Miles, you want to come up for the planning department's CIP? Now Myles is in
fact in your...is in an administrative role now for your office, am I correct?
MIKE DAHILIG: That is correct, Chair.
Council Chair Furfaro: So would you introduce yourselves again?
Mr. Dahilig: Mike Dahilig, the planning director.
MYLES HIRONAKA: Myles Hironaka, planner.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay gentlemen, I will give you the floor.
Mr. Dahilig: Good morning Councilmembers. For discussion this morning,
we're requesting in the countywide CIP budget, four items. They are the Lihu'e Development Plan
for $905,000. Can you hear me?
Council Chair Furfaro: Now we can.
Mr. Dahilig: Again, so we're including in our CIP requests for this
upcoming fiscal year four planning projects. Two of them are located in the bond fund, two of them
are located in the general fund. The two that are located in the bond fund are the Lihu'e
Development Plan at $905,000, and the General Plan Update at $1,250,000. In the general fund, we
are again requesting the countywide impact fee for $250,000 and a reauthorization of the Koloa
Development Plan which is now $525,000. The Lihu'e Development Plan, General Plan Update, and
Koloa Development Plans, those three are requested amounts that are above the previous
authorizations. With respect to the Lihu'e Development Plan, we're asking for an additional $75,000
to the funds to help facilitate what is...we briefly touched upon at the operational budget meeting,
this discussion about how to handle this operational bubble of having these plans kind of go through
at once. The general plan update is also including additional funds for some type of project manager
or additional support to help with this bubble, as well as increase of scope...
Council Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, Mike. Before we go any further, this budget cycle
you are asking for an additional $75,000 for the Lihu'e Development Plan Update?
Mr. Dahilig: That is correct.
Council Chair Furfaro: Based on what moneys we have already given you?
Mr. Dahilig: Yes.
Council Chair Furfaro: Do you have that number?
Mr. Dahilig: Yes, $830,000 was appropriated from the last CIP budget.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay and that is what brings us up to the $905,000?
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.2
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct, Chair?
Council Chair Furfaro: And on the general plan update?
Mr. Dahilig: The previous appropriation was $600,000. Right. We're now
asking for $1.25 million.
Council Chair Furfaro: Total?
Mr. Dahilig: Total. Yes. An increase of $650,000. Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Chair? Just a procedural issue. Is this in the CIP line item?
Mr. Dahilig: In terms of the increases or...
Ms. Yukimura: Yes.
Mr. Dahilig: The reason why I believe it may slightly differ is if you look
under the general fund option...
Council Chair Furfaro: You know what, Mike, let's go through my questions first.
Ms. Yukimura: Oh I'm sorry. I just haven't been able to follow.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay? So then we can go to her sheet and we can tie the 650
to the 600, the 805 to the 75, and so forth. So let's go to the next item here. What was in the
existing plan and what we're adding and the next item?
Mr. Dahilig: The next item was the countywide impact fee. The previous
authorization was for $250,000 and that is remaining the same.
Council Chair Furfaro: No new requests?
Mr. Dahilig: No new requests.
Council Chair Furfaro: Then the Koloa Po`ipu Kalaheo Development Plan.
Mr. Dahilig: The Koloa-Po`ipu-Kalaheo Development Plan was actually
appropriated in the 05 budget, I believe. So the moneys were encumbered and did not show up in
the previous CIP appropriation, but that amount that was previously authorized and encumbered
was $300,000.
Council Chair Furfaro: $300,000?
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct.
Council Chair Furfaro: And you are telling me that wasn't in the capital plan, but
that was actually in your operating department? Is that correct, Miles? Okay, now we can go back
to Councilwoman Yukimura's question. The Koloa-Po`ipu-Kalaheo plan doesn't appear in the CIP
budget, but let's start with the earlier ones and go through her explanations and the reconciliation.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay Chair, sure.
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.3
Ms. Yukimura: So the Koloa-Po`ipu development is not in the budget? It is.
Mr. Dahilig: ~ It's in the general fund.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, that is the $525,000?
Mr. Dahilig: That is correct.
Ms. Yukimura: What was in the budget previously and unexpended?
Mr. Dahilig: That amount was $300,000. It was actually encumbered. So
that is why those funds were not listed as prior appropriated (inaudible).
Ms. Yukimura: So the total that you expect to expend on this is $825,000?
Mr. Dahilig: No, about $525,000. An increase of 225.
Ms. Yukimura: Yeah, but you already encumbered $300,000.
Mr. Dahilig: What will be happening is because of the change of scope,
we're going to have to actually re-do the whole process over again.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mike, pull the mic in front of you, and because of what and
what you are going to re-do one more time, and is this something we're going to look at in the
mayor's resubmittal? What are we looking at here, this body?
Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Chair, I just need a page number so I can follow on the
budget. I don't have a page number that reflects anything that he is talking about.
Ms. Yukimura: That's what I was trying to find too.
Mr. Dahilig: We're going off of a...page 5 of the...
Council Chair Furfaro: We'll take afive-minute recess, so everybody can find their
page numbers.
There being no objections, the Chair called a recess at 9:46 a.m. The meeting was called back to
order at 9:49 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
Council Chair Furfaro: You have money that's in the general fund money accordingly.
So please earmark it as such, Mike, when we speak about it, so they are broken in different lines.
Councilwoman, you have the floor.
Ms. Yukimura: So I know you did it in the initial part of your speech, but it
was going so quickly and we didn't have the line item referenced. Can you go down one by one and
tell us the status, the amount of funding requested, and give us some time to look at the PIDs so we
know what the issues are surrounding it? So let's start with the Lihu`e development.
Mr. Dahilig: So we'll start with the L3hu'e development plan, and we're
working off the budget ordinance, on page 2, and this is for a request of $905,000. The previous
appropriation was in the general fund but has been moved into the bond fund, and it reflects an
increase over the last authorization of $75,000. The scope of the plan as outlined I guess in the PID
generally is the same from the previous years. What has gone on in the process in the meantime is I
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.4
guess a discussion about procurement, but yet nothing has been launched yet with respect to the
Lihu`e development plan. As we mentioned from the conversation on the operating budget, the
increase reflects moneys that will be used to support the operational arm because of the bubble of
these four plans that are going forward at once. From a staffing standpoint, we do have, again, the
planner 5 and the planner 4 in the long-range division, as well as a vacant planner 7, which we
expect to fill soon. There were questions about whether by having these CIP appropriations, if the
staff could handle it? And our response and our response again is that the additional funds will help
to buoy the department, but we do not think that I guess the additional full-time staff to the long-
range planning division would be appropriate at this time.
Ms. Yukimura: So in this $905,000 is there any contract staff position
included?
Mr. Dahilig: Is there any contract staff position?
Ms. Yukimura: Included in the $905,000?
Mr. Dahilig: We're are now trying to evaluate whether it makes sense to do
it as contract staff or do it as, I guess, third-party project managers. We don't necessarily know at
this point what is the best fit for this project in terms of how we can support the staff. What the
amount is based off on is the equivalent of a planner 5 position, which is equivalent to what we have
in-house and so when we're looking at it from a calculation standpoint that is where the $75,000
comes from.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, so the $75,000 would be for a position?
Mr. Dahilig: Would either be for a temporary position, which we would
utilize Iguess adollar-funded project manager position or even look at third party administration
through a separate consulting contract.
Ms. Yukimura: So in developing a plan you usually have somebody in the
planning department, a planner, who works with the...you have consultants and then you have a
planner who is like a project manager in charge of that planning project?
Mr. Dahilig: That is correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And then you usually have a citizens advisory committee?
Mr. Dahilig: That is correct.
Ms. Yukimura: And they develop the plan. And then when the plan goes
through the process and gets approved, the consultant is gone, and we have this plan on the shelf,
and oftentimes nothing happens. So one of our questions that I think came up even during
discussions on your operating budget was how do you ensure the implementation of any plan? It
seems like we just go from plan to plan to plan, every ten years we do a plan, but the implementation
as exemplified by the last general plan is left in the dust, so to speak. So how do we... What are
your plans for changing that course of action, so that we can actually go to a plan and somehow,
through the permitting process, as well as other processes, you actually have an implementation of
these plans?
Mr. Dahilig: In each of the three plans, we do have, as part of the scope or
the draft scopes, either specific or more general items that the consultant will include in the report
that we can entertain for implementation. The county can entertain for implementation. So for
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.5
example, a road spur here or widening here or road diet here. In terms of what those specific items
are, again, that would come out through the CAC planner and consultant process. When we look at
implementing the plans, we look at the two major groups, which is one, regulation and the other,
which is county CIP.
Ms. Yukimura: Regulation meaning permitting?
Mr. Dahilig: Regulation, permitting... So with respect to the CIP
implementation when we're looking at county projects, we have been working with Marie Williams
in-house to develop a more robust schedule and more robust involvement in terms of how we do
our...it's how we do our six-year projections.
Ms. Yukimura: That's good.
Mr. Dahilig: And how we would interface with the administration on
developing the CIP budget for the upcoming year. So we will be briefing the planning commission
on...actually tomorrow's meeting. It was supposed to be at last meeting but the schedule went long.
About our plans to start the CIP six-year event horizon earlier and have that information get up to
the administration as the budget process is developing. So that addresses I guess that one element
of CIP. With respect to implementation on the regulatory side, as a matter of practice, we do include
in all the reports consistency evaluations with the general plan. So I cannot say that we have looked
beyond what is in the normal course of developing director's reports, these evaluations for
consistency, but we're certainly open to suggestions about if that is a robust enough consistency
review or if there needs to be other means of determining whether proposed projects that come up for
regulatory review are actually consistent with the general plan.
Ms. Yukimura: So it's wonderful that you are actually trying to tie in our
community and general planning process to CIP. Do you in your permitting also evaluate projects
for consistency with the community or the area development plans?
Mr. Dahilig: That also comes into play, so when we do the evaluations, the
general plan is always looked at first, and when there are regional development plans that also are
applicable, there is a discussion and an analysis whether the proposed project is also consistent with
that particular development plan.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, and you said that your scope, in all of these planning
documents, includes implementation recommendations?
Mr. Dahilig: That is correct.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, but oftentimes it stops there. So your having your
long-range planner, now Marie Williams, look at how to actually implement that and you plan to do
that for all community plans with your one long-range planner?
Mr. Dahilig: Well, Marie is responsible for, again, only the implementation
part that relates to CIP.
Ms. Yukimura: I see.
Mr. Dahilig: And so with respect to consistency and implementation from a
regulatory standpoint, those lie with our regulatory planners. So Marie's job is to look at the CIP
budget and look at the event horizon of six years, present it to the commission and determine
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.6
whether the projects they are aligned with what are the implementation recommendations that
would come forth in these particular plans. So that would be her window of the universe.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So have you considered that it might be good to have a
long-range planner who is overseeing this planning process, who after the planning process, can
actually make recommendations as to permitting, but also do other work to implement the plans?
Mr. Dahilig: You know, it's...
Ms. Yukimura: I mean it's a different format and I'm not saying you should
do it. It just seems there is a logic to having a planner who becomes familiar with the community
that they worked with in doing the long-range planning, and then works with the community in
terms of the permitting that is supposed to be pursuant to the plan, and then also does other things
that helps to move plan implementation. An example is Lihu'e development plan, I think even the
core plan, talks about parking, and even the possibility of using the Lihu'e plantation site and that
horrible traffic problem around the post office and the banks, and to develop a more rationalized
parking system. But what that would mean is that someone, and possibly in planning, because I'm
not sure who else in the county would do it, would actually begin to work with businesses, talk to
them, and with them develop a plan pursuant to this recommendation that came out of the Lihu'e
town core plan. It's kind of an activist planner, but somebody that would work on recommendations
that are in the plan.
Mr. Dahilig: It's certainly an idea that has, I guess, not crossed my mind,
but certainly I do see the merit of it. But, I guess, without understanding exactly what... I guess as
we discussed in the operations budget, we are looking at the reorganization of the department and
seeing what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. I would be remiss to comment strongly on
saying that that is something we would need at this point. It is certainly something we need to take
a look at more in-depth.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes and I'm not suggesting that this is the best way to go.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: But if you are in the process of reorganizing and looking how
to best organize your planning department, it's worth looking at and maybe checking with other
planning departments, not only in the state, but elsewhere, in terms of how they keep the continuity
of planning and implementation.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Members, I just want to remind us that this is a CIP meeting.
And the fact of the matter those are very good questions. I think you can sense the direction that the
council is going. We want to have a clear understanding of who will do what, when, who is going to
do the follow-up and arrangements and so forth, but this time today is about CIP. We can have
follow-up discussions in the planning committee of which Councilwoman Yukimura is the vice-chair.
Mr. Bynum?
Mr. Bynum: Thank you very much for the presentation today. And you
know, we focused a lot on CIP the last couple of years and the most substantive change that I'm
seeing are these PIDs, and I like that. It's appropriate. It outlines the questions and lets us know
who is accountable. So I wish we were also seeing the CIP projects moving forward more quickly,
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.7
but this is a definite change from the way it's been in past. So thank you for that. Regarding the
specific plans, the Lihu'e development plan, I'm assuming and I want you to let me know if this is a
correct assumption that the geographic scope is from the Wailua Bridge to the tunnel of trees?
Mr. Dahilig: Yes. Specifically, it's the Kudsen Gap, but that general area.
Mr. Bynum: Yeah, yeah, okay. Knudsen Gap, that's fine. But that is the
scope in terms of the geography.
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct.
Mr. Bynum: And then regarding the general plan, I think the questions
that Councilmember Yukimura asked were excellent and very important, and without belaboring
it... I've done pretty extensive research since the general plan in 2000 about implementation, and
there were efforts made by the administration, there were efforts made by Councilmembers, so in
terms of the legislation or the ordinances that are called for, under the charter they can either come
from the administration or they can come from Councilmembers. And so I don't think it's accurate to
lay off that lack of limitation on the planning department totally, because they are work proposals
put forwarded to the council, never acted on. And you know, later we need to follow up about how we
actually make those things happen.
Last year the administration applied for a grant that would have brought federal dollars for
planning for transportation, general plan, and housing. And I've said and encouraged that kind of
collaboration, and my understanding is that that grant is out for a second round with increased
funding. I think it's called sustainable communities. Do you...are you guys aware of that? Are we
planning on reapplying? Because some of us have tried to lay groundwork politically all the way to
the national level to educate the decision makers about the political subdivisions in Hawaii and how
our proposal may be unique because of our unique political subdivisions. Does that all make sense?
Mr. Dahilig: That's correct. I hear you.
Mr. Bynum: And are we reapplying?
Mr. Dahilig: We are... Our intent is to reapply.
Mr. Bynum: Yay.
Mr. Dahilig: What has helpful is that the local office, the local federal
office, actually did conduct an exit interview with our staff.
Mr. Bynum: That's news to me.
Mr. Dahilig: And so we took a look at the previous application and were
given tips as to what were strengths, what were weaknesses, and how we could bolster the
application. So the long-range staff is on it. They are aware that it's there, and our intent is to
reapply.
Mr. Bynum: That is great news. I didn't know about the exit strategy. I
would love to talk to you offline more about that. But the statement I made that part of it, and this
is an assumption again I'm making that part of it was a need to educate those national decision
makers about the uniqueness of our application because of our- unique circumstance of being an
island state having only two political subdivisions, because it kind of envisions a regional grant, and
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.8
our region is an island. That's very foreign thinking than mainland thinking. Is that part of the
issue that you heard from the exit interview?
Mr. Dahilig: I can't say personally what the exit interview... what was
talked about at the exist interview. I wasn't actually participating in it, but I can definitely ask our
long-range planners about your inquiry and about from a strategy standpoint of a national
understanding about how we operate here.
Mr. Bynum: Because those of us on the political side of this, we are in a
position to kind of attempt to influence that, at least in terms of educating decision-makers, and
making them aware of our circumstances. So a follow-up on that would be appreciated. Regarding
the... I'm really very pleased to see a PID here about impact fees. Do you know when that was
initially funded?
Mr. Dahilig: From the sense that I got in the last council meeting was it
was funded a while ago.
Council Chair Furfaro: 2006.
Mr. Bynum: Okay. So you intend to take action during this fiscal year on
this? Correct?
Mr. Dahilig: We hear you crystal clear.
Mr. Bynum: Right. And in your PID, you mentioned that the last
assessment was done in `92-93. To your knowledge, did that lead to any legislative initiative on
anybody's part?
Mr. Dahilig: I think the only thing that just recently came about was the
solid waste assessment, and whether that was directly tied to this or not, I don't know, but it was
something that was mentioned in this report as a potential revenue source.
Mr. Bynum: So I just want to lay that out as an example where we have a
history of expending planning funds and then not following through as a county. So I hear in your
dialogue today and in the questions from Councilmember Yukimura an appropriate kind of focus on
are we spinning our wheels or do we intend to actually change our behavior as a result of spending
these plans dollars? I think that is a dialogue we need to, not today, but to continue to address.
Your long-range planning team, Miles, you were the...what was your title there?
MYLES HIRONAKA: I was the long-range planning manager.
Mr. Bynum: Manager.
Mr. Hironaka: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: So has someone assumed that position?
Mr. Hironaka: No. That is a vacant position which we are advertising for.
Mr. Bynum: You're advertising... and there could be internal applicants?
Mr. Hironaka: Well, I'm not sure. I know the deadline for that closed last
week, so we still haven't received the listing from the department of personnel services.
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.9
Mr. Bynum: Our intention is to keep that a team of three?
Mr. Hironaka: Yes.
Mr. Bynum: Thanks for that answer. In regards to the... Just regarding
the general plan, even if we don't get that grant I hope we're going to collaborate with transportation
and housing on that and I hope we have follow-up discussions about whose responsibility is it to
follow through? Is it something the administration intends to do with some of these funds, writing
enabling legislation? And then there is a level that Councilmember Yukimura was talking about
that I personally don't see as the planning department, like the town core plan and the civic center
plan. You know, the planning department gave us a plan that says, hey, we need to address parking.
Here are some issues. Just as an example, to stick with the same example, but in terms of turning
that into a CIP project I don't think planning is going to managing parking structure CIP projects in
the future. There has to be kind of a handoff to someone, whether it's public works or engineering.
And my last comment would be, for something in some circumstances like a town core plan, maybe
that handout should be to a redevelopment project that is inclusive of a downtown area, like Lihu`e
or Kapa`a, and I hope we're considering that. Because I don't think we have ever developed a
redevelopment...a town core redevelopment plan or set up a committee. It was just commonplace
around the country and I don't think we have ever done that. So that is something I just want us to
talk about in the future. Thank you very much.
Mr. Dahilig: Thank you.
Mr. Bynum: And I really appreciate the dialogue of going...of saying hey,
and I hear that from you, Mike. Plans are meaningless, unless they lead to something and that has
to be thought of during the planning process as well. Thank you.
Mr. Dahilig: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, and thanks, Mike. I know earlier we were told
that everything on the CIP budget or projects that we expect to implement or at least initiate
within 12 to 18 months, and you are comfortable that you can get all of these four projects moving
in 12 to 18 months?
Mr. Dahilig: It's a tall order to follow, but I think what is driving our
proposal here is the fact that these are needed. So it's something that we think we can manage with
additional support, either again from a project manager or from a external consultant. But we think
we can handle it given the temporary, but additional support.
Mr. Rapozo: Is there any particular priority? I think the only real
mandate would be the general plan update, right?
Mr. Dahilig: The general plan update will drive the other plans, but we're
caught in a unique situation, where we have had the Lihu`e Development Plan in a kind of in a
stasis. The KPK plan has been in a very long stasis, and the community in both areas have been
asking for this product. So certainly we would want to be able to coordinate the general plan with
these development plans in other ways, but the needs of the community are...we're hearing them. I
think part of the challenge for us, which we think we can handle, is how to integrate and time these
different plans to move forward.
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.10
Mr. Rapozo: But of all the four projects, the only one that there is a
specific mandate by the charter would be the general plan update, right?
Mr. Dahilig: Yes.
Mr. Rapozo: I mean...I am asking, because I just believe that I think that
is the case. I don't think the local development plans are required. I think the charter says that we
shall update the general plan every ten years, and in fact we're a few years past that deadline. So I
guess my point as is we look at aII of these projects, over $2 million worth, that we would really focus
on the general plan. And the byproducts are the regional plans. But I just want to make sure we
comply with the charter, because at this point we're not. And that is of concern to me, because we
should be in compliance with the charter. Like many other department heads this year, you weren't
here, so you obviously got to pick up the ball and run with it, and I think what kind of Mr. Bynum
was saying, whatever we can do to help, we want to help. But we want to bring us in compliance
with the charter. I think for me, anyway, I want to make sure we do that as soon as possible. Thank
you.
Mr. Dahilig: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mike, I have to tell you, you better be real sure on some of
these numbers. Because I'm telling you, I'm extremely disappointed when I see the kind of numbers
your department is asking for here. $1.25 million for the general plan, when we're going to have
Lihu`e Town Plan almost done, we're going to start the Koloa-Po`ipu Development -Plan, we're
finishing things in Kapa`a. Ten years ago, it was $500,000. We put 20% increase in the budget to
get us to $600,000. And now you are asking for another $650,000? Is that what I understand?
Mr. Dahilig: It is, sir.
Council Chair Furfaro: With all of the planning companies that are available in
Hawaii that don't have work, you are asking for 108% increase over the number last year? That is
unbelievable. I mean everybody isn't working on the Honolulu rail system. Somebody's got to be
wanting business that meets our minimum criteria. And then we're adding another $75,000 to the
Lihu`e plan, which has really been moving along and so forth, but it's our core town. It's the capital.
of this county. I just wanted to share that is a lot of kala.
Mr. Dahilig: It is, Chair. It's something that when we took a look at the
request for this upcoming fiscal year, you know, we are cognizant, again, of not wanting to propose
numbers that are being pulled out of thin air. The reason why we had requested the increase in the
general plan was for two issues. One was that it didn't include a gross study and especially given
the charter amendment and the requirement that we need to have more data-driven numbers with
respect to the TAU issue, that had to be taken into account, because that was not in the original
budget.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, let's talk about the transient accommodation units. We
have a lot of statistical information and I know it off the top of my head, 950 units is what we start
with, 480 actually applied, 262 got rejected, and we drew the line in the sand-no new growth. That
is tied to our charter amendment, which we think is going to be somewhere between 150 and 160
units. I just want to make sure... I'm not encouraging good data. I'm saying you guys have doubled
the money, doubled the money you have asked for. In addition that we have been very supportive
about Lihu`e Town Core Plan, we've been very supportive about Kapa`a-Wailua, we're very much
focused on Po`ipu-Kalaheo... I mean these are tough times. And then we got an existing plan that's
on the shelf that we've implemented less than 20% of the ideas in there, and I would think at least
half of the 80% that haven't been addressed are at least still live issues...rather than refer to them
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.11
as valid...live, I'll refer to them as valid, as my... Half of them are still valid. You guys are asking
for a lot of money.
Mr. Dahilig: It is...
Council Chair Furfaro: And I don't understand why we can't get this number more
refined, considering the challenges we have right now, and the number of engineering and planning
firms that are looking for work. Economics 151, University of Hawaii, I know you know the place.
Supply and demand. There is no demand for work, and there is plenty of people out there looking for
it. So that's...my message is not about supporting these plans. My message about the amount of
money you are asking for. Councilwoman Nakamura, did you have something? Mr. Bynum, you will
be next.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you.
Ms. Nakamura: I guess...you know, I haven't had a chance to read this PID.
We just received it today, so...or this copy. I think I'm also a little concerned too about the amount of
general plan. I don't have a sense, because I haven't really had time to read this, but we do have a
general plan; it was approved in 2000. And I'm just wondering, are you looking at starting from
scratch? Are you looking at refining portions of it that you think require updating? Do you see...how
do you...what is your general approach to this plan?
Mr. Dahilig: The general approach is to take care of, again, the statutory
elements of just updating the data, taking a look at the 2000 plan, and that was how I would
conceive the original appropriation of 600,000 being. What we're looking at from an additional
.standpoint again is the charter requirements now with respect to transient accommodation units,
the desire to want to actually go into growth projections, again, this is something that is on top of
what normally is done, and again, a lot of it is driven by the charter amendment. And then the third
element would be along the lines of trying to position the general plan in the manner that if the
Council wanted to, as a matter of course, move down the line of implementing aform-based code,
that the general plan would be aligned in that manner. That's where we see...that is where the bulk
of that increase is coming from. Again, the charter...the specific TAU charter amendment, growth
projections, and the form-based code alignment. So we've did some digging around and trying to get
some ballpark figures in terms of if we were to add these as additional work items to the general
plan, how much would they cost, and this was what...this is why the $650,000 came up.
Ms. Nakamura: I guess one of the...for me, the priority is working on the
growth projections by region, because the current general plan does not provide that policy guidance.
It's very difficult, to me, to do the development plan updates without that guidance. So I would be
asking planning department to make that a priority area of work with the general plan. I think that
is the only way we could feed that data into the DP updates. I think that we should also follow-up on
councilmember comments earlier about plan implementation. I think that's...when we were working
on the East Kauai development plan, we found out that a lot of the...some of the good ideas in the
original plan were not implemented. And one of the things that we looked at were alternative ways
to begin implementation, or for the county to take a different role, because recognizing that there is
this gap in your system here where we have these plans... something is missing. We're unable then
to take the ideas and then work it through the multiple agencies that need to be involved in
addressing some of these concerns. So I think that is a topic for the planning committee to have
some conversations with you about in the future. And I will try to get that on the agenda.
Mr. Dahilig: Sure.
Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Bynum?
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.12
Mr. Bynum: You started...I didn't hear...I don't think I heard the finish of
your answer. You started to say why the increase was there and you started with growth scenarios.
And then there was something else I didn't hear. Could you finish that?
Mr. Dahilig: The charter amendment relating to transient accommodation
units relies on a figure that relates to planning growth range. So again, because it was a
community-initiated process, that language planning growth range is actually not a specific number
that you can find in the general plan. So it's problematic and because this is something that is on
the books, something that is a number that we do need to develop. Beyond just TAUs alone, and
again, that is one process, there is the .larger question that Councilmember Nakamura did touch
upon, which we concur with, which is the notion of growth projections. Planning growth projections
by region. That particular item was not included in the original scope of the general plan. So we
believe that an investment in that area is appropriate. The third one is with respect to providing the
option and aligning the overall general plan should the policy be down the line to implement a
form-based code. I guess form-based is something that is new. It's something that was touched upon
when the Lihu`e Town Core Plan was developed, so it would look along the lines where it's a more
urban-form driven type of plan. But that was not a consideration also in the original plan. So those
were the three scope adjustments that were taken into account when we asked for the additional
funds.
Mr. Bynum: I appreciate that clarification, because I think what you just
heard from Councilmembers was sense that there is a frustration that the General Plan
recommendations were not implemented in a ten-year period and those in my opinion were just the
ones that were identified as critical short-term. The bigger issues of growth management, we ended
up with a charter amendment. And that is going to be one of the challenges for this council over the
next year is addressing things that weren't well-thought out and planned and now I hear you saying,
hey, we're going to do a better job at outlining where does this plan lead. I just want to read
something from your PID: there will also be a separate section, a final plan called "implementation
and monitoring plan:' The plan shall clearly describe and organize the implementation and
monitoring plan. Marketing plan -recommendations shall be prioritized accordingly, so immediate
actions are feasible within the current budget and responsibilities have identified lead agencies. So I
think that I wanted to hear the rest of your answer, because it's a lot of money. But the general plan
is about our future. I won't read these other parts. I just got this today, I have been reading it while
trying to pay attention. I'm not great at multi-tasking like that, but I understand the direction you
are headed. And one of the largest challenges that this council faces is because those things done in
the last...or weren't followed through with. I don't want to say they weren't done, because you could
see some of it was specific in the form of general plan, others were just logical, hey, if you are going
to manage growth, you have to have legislation to do that. If you are going to address infrastructure
properly, you need impact fee studies and a way to finance the changes that lead to that planned
growth. Right? So there is not a topic that is more important. So I think we got to swallow hard,
but you are answering the questions I need to hear about why would we go through this and not just
have it be make work, you know, this time around. And when we bring this up at discussion in the
planning, perhaps I will get an opportunity to do a presentation I prepared about the history
from 2000 what actually happened, what was proposed, what was rejected by this council. You
know, what didn't happen, because I think we need to look at that to understand and make sure we
don't follow that same course again. So we'll see what happens in the budget process, but I
understand why you are asking to increase this scope, and I would be totally opposed to it if it didn't
have this element of saying we're going to make sure we present a plan that will lead to action, not
oh, a nice plan, great vision, you know? So thank you very much.
Council Chair Furfaro: Let me take a moment to clarify that. My nagging wasn't
based on what you are going to accomplish and what is in your project intentions here as the
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CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.13
narrative was read. Do you understand what my question was? My question was $1,250,000.
That's my question.
Mr. Dahilig: I hear the shock factor and the...
Council Chair Furfaro: Hey, it's not "shack factor." To me it's a very unbelievable
number, especially something that you said on your own... Can we accomplish this? Well, it's a tall
order. Well let's have a little more strategic thinking about the financial picture of the county here.
Next month I'm going with the administration on reconsidering our ability to borrow money. Does
all of this money need to be earmarked now? Can some of it be in the planning department the
following year and part of your operating money? I will call you up, Mr. Heu, but I would say that
department heads need to stand in place too, sometimes, and answer the question. That is a lot of
money.
Mr. Dahilig: It's a lot of money and it's a lot of plans, Chair, and I don't
want to...
Council Chair Furfaro: And it's a lot of what?
Mr. Dahilig: It's a lot of plans. And I don't want to give the impression
that we're just pulling things out of thin air. There are rationales as to why we wanted to go forward
with these four rather than looking at trying to stagger them.
Council Chair Furfaro: My point is most of what you need in this $1.2 million you've
got going on in other projects with other committee input. You've got acarryover-old general plan. I
have sat almost two weeks now through...I mean I just had one. We throw a number at the building
of bus shelters. When we ask for the detail -how much is for land acquisition, how much is for
planning, how much is for material, how much is prefabricated. It's got to go back over in a question.
And I tell you...and she is a brand-new department head. That is acceptable. And you are, as well,
but you've got a lot of carry-over planners, and I don't want to misconstrue what I'm saying about
that example. She has done a fine job, but we really kind of need to refine these numbers. They
have to be more tangible. They have to reflect today's market work. And if they are going to go 18
months, 24 months, maybe they need to be broken up into a series of the budget. That is all I'm
saying. All of this window dressing has got to be done, but I'm just asking for very tangible numbers.
Mr. Dahilig: It's something that we attempted to do before we even just
floated the number up. I don't want to give you the impression that we didn't do any due diligence
before proposing these numbers. The difficulty...
Council Chair Furfaro: You are putting words in my own mouth now. I didn't imply
you didn't do any due diligence (inaudible).
Mr. Dahilig: I apologize.
Council Chair Furfaro: And I also know that you are the planning director now, but
on projects that are two and three years out, for continuity, you know, I would like to vote for you to
be the long-term planning director, but we're going through that change, too. I sure hope from what
I have seen, Mike, that you grasp that and you become our planning director, long-term. Because
that is what this department needs that continuity over the long run, if we're going to follow through
on these plans. That is my message.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.14
Council Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Nakamura.
Ms. Nakamura: Mike, I wanted to find out why is the Koloa-Po`ipu-Kalaheo
Development Plan budgeted at 525,000, and the Lihu`e Development Plan 905,000.
Mr. Dahilig: I think it comes from a number of factors. The original
budget again was $300,000. And a lot of value scoping that came as a consequence of that original
figure was based on a study that was done by James Charlier with respect to transportation
planning. However, at looking at the plan more closely and understanding what the regional area of
the plan is, the Charlier plan did not include the Omao, Lawa`i, and Kalaheo elements. So as part of
the increase in there, in order to make sure that that is a complete plan, we contacted the
consultant, trying to understand, okay, if we were to included in the scope transportation planning
for that portion of the region, what would that cost? And essentially we took... He gave us a low and
high, we split the baby, and said, okay, this is what we're looking at. And again, it can be a
number...also a number of factors. A lot of the planning in that area has already kind of come to
fruition. When you look at resort area down in Po`ipu, there is not a lot of vacant land, as you would
see around the Lihu`e area. So there is a certain degree of buildout. Again, I can't point to a specific
reason why there is a difference in the value of the costs. But from when we look at the analysis that
needs to be done, a lot of analysis has come as a consequence of that development in that area,
whereas Lihu`e, even though it's the town core...is the core of the county, from an urban standpoint,
a lot of the lands around I,ihu`e still remain to be developed. So that could be one factor. Again, it's
hard for me to say line-by-line. If you were to line Koloa-Po`ipu-Kalaheo and Lihu`e, why the
difference actually adds up to a difference in amount. But it's factors like those, as an example.
Council Chair Furfaro: Can Ifollow-up on that question? You are aware that your
predecessor, despite the fact that this council passed a resolution encouraging the adoption of the
Charlier transportation and circulation. plan, never incorporated it? Now we're saying, oh, we're
going to use that plan, that's why the difference in the money. Where are you at? Maybe Myles can
answer that? Because I had to introduce a resolution to get us to formally adopt this plan. It did not
get incorporated into the long-term Po`ipu Kalaheo Lawa`i planning. The document was done and
done well. So I'm going to assume, if I don't hear from you, you folks are now adopting that
document, if you are using it to compare the difference in price.
Mr. Dahilig: Transportation is a key element in that area, Chair. Rather
than try and reinvent the wheel, and Jim Charlier is an renowned expert, and the resolution by the
council does reflect that. But at the core of planning, of these plans, is how you move around, and
circulation-wise how you define that. And in order for us to take advantage of a work product that
was done for the county and has merit, it's imperative for us to expand upon it. We need to make
sure that that transportation plan encompasses the whole area. So a long story short, chair, that is
our intent.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, because the things we're implementing now are just
the low-hanging fruit of that plant, the crosswalks and some of the pedestrian areas, but nobody's
answered my question we adopt the whole plan. Councilwoman Nakamura?
Ms. Nakamura: I was just following up on my earlier question. You are
saying that the Lihu`e development plan is almost double the amount? And there are a lot of
different factors, but the fact that there has not been a circulation plan, is that adding to the costs of
that?
Mr. Dahilig: That is the only addition. The addition is the only cost that
that reflects.
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.15
Ms. Nakamura: So that is the $400,000 difference?
Mr. Dahilig: You mean in terms of the Lihu`e versus Koloa? Again, it's
hard for me to say that that is the only thing. Maybe Myles wants to say?
Mr. Hironaka: Would just to add some information on the Lihu`e plan. The
budgeting and planning for Koloa came first, and then after that we did the plan and budgeting for
the Lihu`e plan. I think the Lihu`e plan took a slightly different avenue from any of our other plans
and it went through what we call "the sustainable design assessment team process," where we hired
the architects to come in and do this sustainable assessment for the project. So based on that,
additional fundings was provided for the Lihu`e plan.
Ms. Nakamura: Are there recommendations from the team that requires more
money for Lihu`e?
Mr. Hironaka: That was, I believe, the intent for the additional funding that
there would be this additional scope of work based upon the sustainable principles. Yes.
Ms. Nakamura: Are those sustainable principles not going to be applied to
Koloa?
Mr. Hironaka: Not necessarily, but again, we did not have the opportunity to
go through the same type o£..the assistance of the sustainable design assessment team for Koloa.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum, then Mr. Kuali`i.
Mr. Bynum: When you ask for these funds, you are asking for...you're
making an estimate of what you think the costs might be, is that correct?
Mr. Dahilig: That is correct.
Mr. Bynum: And so when these plans go out, you develop the scope of work
and it goes out to competitive bid, right?
Mr. Dahilig: That is correct.
Mr. Bynum: And so if you set out the scope of work, there will be a whole
bunch of planning firms that can respond and their costs maybe less or it may be more?
Mr. Dahilig: That is correct.
Mr. Bynum: So I just wanted to point that out that it goes to competitive
bid. Regarding the cost differences, the transportation plan that Charlier did was gifted to the
county. Do you know what the cost of that plan was?
Council Chair Furfaro: $300,000.
Ms. Yukimura: $350,000.
Council Chair Furfaro: $350,000.
Mr. Bynum: I think it was...in the long run there were change orders and
so let's find that out what the total cost was. I think it may have gone even above the $350,000. And
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.16
I agree with the Chair that there is frustration from the council that when you say low-hanging fruit,
I would say extremely low-hanging fruit. There were things in that plan that was like let's move on
quickly that haven't happened five or six years later. So I think there was a real frustration that the
administration at the time didn't identify even two or three elements that they could move on in
terms of CIP. Obviously the transportation plan is encompassing and we wouldn't have had the
money to implement it all, all of it, right. But you know, I never saw a process that identified hey, of
this plan what are the priorities? A process that you have outlined in this future plan, that we're
going to look at these priorities and make recommendations. And so I want to share the chair's
frustration on that whole process was very rich, and it inspired the community, and then frustrated
them, because not even a few elements were adopted and funded and moved forward.
Council Chair Furfaro: Councilmember Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: Aloha. So I'm trying to absorb all of this, and like the Chair
and some of the other Councilmembers, I'm kind of wowed and concerned by the large dollar
amounts. And I'm also concerned as Councilmember Rapozo is that we should be focusing on what is
required by the charter and make sure that we do the general plan first. Some basic questions I
have with regards to all the moneys that is being spent on plans and plans possibly sitting on the
shelf and things not getting implemented. I know it's been like that for a long time and hopefully
we're moving in a different direction now. In the planning process, besides paid consultants, aren't
we working with other community groups and non-profits and hearing the example that
Councilmember Bynum just said about Charlier and the plans being donated or whatever, can't we
do as much as possible in that direction? I mean there are probably a lot of well-meaning individuals
and organizations that want to make Kauai a better place, want to make our immediate
communities and towns more livable. The county doesn't have to be the sole agency that is spending
all of the money. We have all these decisions to make as far as priorities, and funding this place as
opposed to this place. If everyone's asking for big chunks of money, they are making our job even
more difficult, like we got to be the bad guys now, face reality, and make the cuts. Are we doing
everything we can to work with other organizations, nonprofit organizations, community
organizations, to make the planning process as great as possible, but as inexpensive as possible.
Mr. Dahilig: I guess with respect to the Charlier plan, that came as
something that was funded by private industry, and as a consequence of the approvals and
permitting that went on with a number of the developments in that area.
Ms. Yukimura: It was a consequence of a proposed moratorium?
Mr. Dahilig: Okay.
Mr. Kuali`i: And then in looking at all of these different plans and looking
at all of these general fund dollars and bond dollars, and I thought I heard Councilmember Bynum
say something about a grant and whether we got it or not. Can we have that information as far as
the grant moneys that potentially that may be already allocated or that we could potentially be
getting to line up with these different plans and projects?
Mr. Dahilig: We can definitely provide the information with respect to the
national grant program. Because it is a nationwide competitive process that we have to go in for.
And we can definitely bring that your way. With respect to, again, funding by private industry, it's
something that I can't say that we have looked deeply into. There is always a concern that when
something is brought in as contracted by someone from the private sector, is that an unbiased need
for what the community...as the county really needs? But it's something that definitely,
Councilmember, we can look into, as options for the council, if that helps.
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.17
Mr. Kuali`i: And the last thing, it might be one step further, where we're
just talking about design and circulation and that part about communities. As far as development,
when it comes to that place, are we looking at community redevelopment agencies and non-profit
developers? And I'm curious to know what the county's role may have been with, like, the Waimea
Theater, when that came to be.
Mr. Dahilig: That is something that I don't think I can answer, just based
on my institutional knowledge.
Ms. Yukimura: It's not really related to the budget right now.
Mr. Kuali`i: Okay, I can explore that further later. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Council Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura and then Councilmember Rapozo?
Ms. Yukimura: I may have asked for this already that you would have an org
chart of what your existing organization is and what the organization format you are going to be
aiming for? Did I ask for that? Okay, so that is forthcoming. Because you know, what we're all
struggling with here is the lack of a clear and current planning framework and what my concern has
been is that we have been doing all of these community plans like they are term papers, and they're
cookie-cutter processes that we go through. We fund, we go through the function of doing it, and
then there is no results really from it. Except an expenditure of a lot of money and then to the extent
that it doesn't address the issues that concern citizens, community, or developers, we're just wasting
our time and spinning our wheels. So I'm really grateful that you are looking at form-based codes,
because I'm a novice at this, too, but everything and talking to the county of Hawaii and other
counties that are moving towards this or have moved towards that, they seem to be addressing both
community concerns, like the. trees at Koloa, which our codes did not address, and the developers'
concern, which it takes forever to get permits is an extremely expensive process, and then it doesn't
really end up creating great places that match the beauty of this island, the natural beauty. So I like
that you are beginning to move into that and I appreciate you have done extra research to figure out
how we might consider an improved system of planning for the better results for citizens and the
development community. And I'm concerned as I have been with the Waimea plan, the Kapa`a plan,
the Koloa-Po`ipu plan that we've initiated all these planning processes, following an old obsolete
system that's going to get us results that we all don't want or that don't really help us. So my
question was how are you going to look at form-based codes and see whether they really do offer a
great alternative for us, and then how are you going to incorporate them into all these fast-track
planning processes so that we're not just wasting time and money and spinning our wheels.
Mr. Dahilig: I hear your concern and it definitely is a delicate coordination
dance that we're going to have to set up before we even launch the plans. As Councilmember Rapozo
said, the general plan is going to be the driver behind, as you look perspectively across the...
Ms. Yukimura: But you are going to do the scope of the general plan before
you actually figure out if we need a new system of planning?
Mr. Dahilig: It's entirely, I guess... Whether we need a new system of
planning or not, I think is really a broader policy discussion that maybe is not appropriate in the
context of just the general plan itself. And what we would want to do is align the plans, so that if
that call to shift regulatory and planning regime does comes as a function of law that the plans
would easily comport without having to redo the plan over again. I think that is where we're aiming
for. We'xe not suggesting that we definitely do it, but we're just saying let's align this plan and these
other plans to make sure that if the call is made down the line to go to a form-based that you don't
have a plan that is out of sync with the form-based bill or form-based ordinance.
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.18
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Well, I will be interested in seeing how consultants
propose that we would do that. And then on this growth plan that is a component of the general plan
process, and I want to say that I will support any money, as long as I can be assured and I'm sorry
the planning department doesn't have a really good track record, that the money will be used well in
away that will move us forward in planning. Because we're so far behind. But on the growth plan,
it's not going to be only resort.
Mr. Dahilig: It's not only resort. It's two elements. Again, one is a
planning growth range with respect to TAUS, and then the larger broader growth plan objectives to
look at by region across the island. Because we know that approximately...
Ms. Yukimura: It's overall growth, resort, residential, et cetera?
Mr. Dahilig: Because we know that 15,000 people based on current data
are going to end up going somewhere on the island. That is just generalizing the rate of growth that
we can see from the census.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Dahilig: So when we want to figure out where they go, I think having
those growth projections by region, as you break them down, really is going to drive a lot of the more
development plan objectives as we move around the island to update the other plans as well.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, then in that context as a growth plan, is the general
plan and all the community plans and the ones that are underway right now, do they include
buildout analyses?
Mr. Dahilig: It does come...I can say that when we look at the East
Kauai plan, as part of the growth projections that were done, we're taking at a look at what is the
readily available or developable lands or projects that are online or conceived about, and that is what
is taken into account from a build out perspective, if that's what I think I'm hearing from you. That
data takes into account what is...what are landowners projected developments around a certain
areas and say how many homes are going to go here, etc.
Ms. Yukimura: The way I understand build-out analysis, and I could be
incorrect, but is that it will project if all the zoning is built out, the existing zoning is built out, how
many units that would be, what kind of population that would be, what kind of traffic that would be,
what kind of water needs that would be, what kind of economic analyses you would have from that?
But that was the main problem with the general plan done in 2000, because citizens were saying,
okay, we want so much growth but they never looked at what the baseline was from which the
growth was going to increase. We all know that when the big boom comes, when economic conditions
happen, then all of a sudden everything starts building out. And everybody goes I didn't approve
that. But that is because nobody took into account the existing growth that was approved, but
hadn't yet happened. And so the conclusion, if you had started there, might have been in the 2000
growth plan, we don't need any more extra growth. We just need to encourage the buildout of the
growth that has been approved already. Why do we keep approving more growth when we have so
much buildout? So the question is, is there a buildout analysis in all of these plans that we're going
to be doing?
Council Chair Furfaro: Mike, before you answer that, let me share with you, I have a
buildout analysis that came from the planning commission when I was on the general plan. And the
current plan shows no new resort areas in that ten-year cycle. But I do have that from the time I
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.19
was on the general plan commission. So maybe you can take that from me, and find out, and talk
with Dee how it was calculated.
Ms. Yukimura: So was a buildout analysis done, Miles? Because I have never
been told that.
Mr. Hironaka: Yes, we did a buildout analysis for the eastside, which
included...
Ms. Yukimura: Oh, but the general plan 2000?
Mr. Hironaka: Oh, the general plan did try to do a buildout. It did include
some of the existing, as well as projected zoned lands, and even what might have been planned
projects from certain developers throughout the island.
Ms. Yukimura: So that is something that is available that you can provide to
us and that is something that is required now in all the development plans that we have been doing,
or we've created scopes of work for?
Mr. Hironaka: Well, I can just speak to the east Kauai plan is where we
tried to do a buildout analysis for that?
Ms. Yukimura: You tried to or you did.
Mr. Hironaka: Well, we did.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay.
Council Chair Furfaro: I will share what I have with you, Mike, and you can get back
to the councilwoman on a separate communique.
Ms. Yukimura: But I still want to know the answer to my question, the Koloa
Po`ipu Plan, the Waimea-Kekaha plan, the Lihu`e development plan, are they all going to have the
requirements for buildout analysis?
Council Chair Furfaro: That will come over in a question. I don't want you to ad-lib
right here without going back and checking the records that were prepared in 2002. Staff, did you
pick up on those questions? Thank you very much. That will come over to you in question form.
Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Mike, if the council were to cut a million dollars
from your CIP requests where would it go?
Ms. Yukimura: Not to them then.
Mr. Rapozo: I'm sorry?
Ms. Yukimura: You are thinking of spending it on other planning?
Mr. Rapozo: No, no, no, between your four CIP projects. Mike, and again,
if you cannot answer, that is fine. I think this goes on to what Mr. Kuali`i said, you know, we're
here, the council is going to be tasked with going through this budget, all departments' budgets. And
wouldn't you agree this is probably the worst fiscal times that we have ever seen in our life, and I'm
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.20
talking -about you and me, I'm much older than you, but I'm sure it's the worst in your life, because
it's the worst in my lifetime. So it's got to be. And yet I think this is one of the more aggressive
spending budgets I have seen in a long time. So as we sit here trying to address all the different
projects that are coming up on CIP, as well as operating, :and I'm .only one out of seven, but I got to
believe that this council is going to look at some cuts. And I'm hoping that you folks are prepared in
your supplemental budget to come back with a budget that reflects some of that reduction in
spending. At least give us an idea of a priority, because I think Mr. Furfaro is right on target. We
have spent over the years a lot of money on plans. And granted you weren't here, but regardless, we
got to start somewhere. But at what point do we start seeing some results? And the public is in an
outcry right now. Everybody is struggling, but all I have seen is... I remember a few years ago,
probably five or six years ago, the administration said and this I got straight from the mayor, we
throw everything up on the wall and hopefully some will stick. That is kind of how I feel right now.
We have gotten these wish lists from the administration that should be reserved for a time where
there is money. We have a wish list that we cannot fulfill. So I'm asking you that for me, personally,
I kind of need to know what's your priorities. I mean where is the priority? If we got to reallocate
some funds or redirect funds throughout this county budget, this council has to prioritize what is
important. And I think I have already said my priority was really being in line with the charter,
number one. So I think we need to move forward. But also with that, we need some justification on
how that's going to be achieved. Again, one of seven, but I will tell you as I'm telling everybody, and
I hope the administration is listening, but they are in a separate conversation in the back. I will not
support any expenditure that isn't justified. And justification is not a PID that says this is all the
things we're going to do. Because I will be honest with you, for all the years that I have served on
the council, that four projects that you have are humongous projects. And I look at the...you know,
you have like...to mention names, but you have names on here that are going to be leading the
charge on a couple of them. It's almost inhumanely possible to have one person do that. I mean, it's
tough to do. All I'm asking is, and this again for the administration, send over the supplemental
budget of what we need to get accomplished. The wants can be reserved for a better time, because
believe me, and I had a discussion with a gentleman this morning. You know, after the hurricane,
we were in some rough financial times, because of the hurricane. That goes without saying. It was
temporary because we knew that recovery would come. This hurricane is a financial hurricane. This
hurricane we're going through right now is really no different than Hurricane Iniki, except there is
no end in sight right now. It's not going to get better with some FEMA money and with the Red
Cross and the Salvation Army. No, this is not going to get better because times are getting worse.
They predict $6 a gallon gas. So this budget, and I'm asking, I'm pleading the administration, and
you included Mike, and I agree with Mr. Chair, you are doing a heck of a job and we appreciate what
you do, I really do. But please help us so we don't have to be the bad guys like Mr. Kuali`i said,
because that's how I feel right now. We're being set up to make those tough decisions and I'm asking
when you go back, get together, please, submit a supplemental budget that we can actually work on.
This one here is, in my opinion, it's a tough nut to crack, because we just don't have the funds.
Okay? And the question that I did ask was in fact where would you prioritize your funds? You can
talk to me later on that. That is fine. I don't expect an answer, but we all got to be real -that in fact
this is not the time to be spending that kind of money. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mike, I would like to do this. I would like to extend our time
to 11:30. I'm going to call up Mr. Heu. He was anxious. Don't leave so quickly, Miles. But we're
going to probably take a caption break. Mike, how long have you been in the position?
Mr. Dahilig: Four months.
Council Chair Furfaro: So I hope you understand my message about the continuity
we need for you to be long-term.
Mr. Dahilig: Okay, appreciate it.
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.21
Council Chair Furfaro: I think what we're seeing is a new way of doing business in
planning, but let me also, on the business side of things, let you in on something that I found here.
All of our estimated contracts for CIP and everything are public record. So if you put a number in
there that is high in the time when people are hungry for work, they are going to bid high. When
you put a number in there during a time where people have plenty of work, they either not going to
bid or they are even going to bid higher because they want to be on the bid list, but they just can't
take the work. So we haven't seen that in general in the capital plans. We need to be conservative
-for the work we have, and at the same time, we want to do a number of things. So please consider
what Council Vice-Chair Yukimura was saying. If we're going to do a number that looks for a
growth plan, let's not try to bury it in the general plan, you know? It's something that we probably
want to do, but we probably want to isolate that project. My opinion, my opinion only. But we need
to find ourselves in a situation that we know. It's going to be tough, and I would suggest that
making these large project assumptions without having more detail will be difficult for us when
people that are very hungry for work will still bid high, because it's a public document. Now before
we go on break, I'm going to excuse you two gentlemen, if I can. Mr. Heu, you wanted to come up
and speak? And then Gary, we're going to take aten-minute break and work on planning for
another 20 minutes to half an hour.
Mr. Heu: Was that work on planning or work over planning? Just
kidding. Good morning Council Chair and Councilmembers, for the record, Gary Heu. The only
reason I asked to come up and say few words was because as you identified our very young and...I
wouldn't say inexperienced, because I think...
Council Chair Furfaro: I didn't use that term.
Mr. Heu: Right, that's my...
Council Chair Furfaro: I tried to promote him long term.
Mr. Heu: I think. he's done an admirable job in the relatively few
months that he has been in the position. I think he has moved very quickly to understand how that
organization is set up, how it functions, and I think he's moved very quickly to actually implement
certain things to start to move the organization in a direction that he feels would provide all of us
with the best work possible coming out of the planning department. And so I just wanted to say
when I hear the concerns and I think you folks raised many, many valid concerns, as well as
suggestions. But when Mike came to us with the proposed budget, there was a lot of dialogue. There
was a lot of back and forth with the department as well as the mayor and the fiscal team relative to
how we were going to accomplish some of this work. The bottom line is that while Mike, as his job is
to raise flags in terms of what is real and what is practical from an operational standpoint, he was
given clear direction that these are the set of plans that we need to move on. At that point in time
then it becomes his job as manager for that group to identify the resources that are going to be
necessary to make that happen. I do hear the concern about Councilmember Rapozo raising the
issue of not only is this a lot of work, but is it the right work at the right time? That is definitely a
message that is heard. I think though having been with the county for the time that I have been
with the county, I know how important not only the general plan is, but some of these development
plans that for whatever reasons have not been carried out over the years. And we could continue to
play things off and say, well, let's go ahead and let's do the general plan first and let's move some of
these other development plans further out. But it just didn't seem like the right thing based on
community expectations and the promise that have been made to these communities over the years
and not been delivered upon. So again, our strategy was basically saying that we feel these are all
important and although I would agree with Councilmember Rapozo, that in terms of what is
mandated, you know, either by the charter or by county ordinance or H.R.S., what are the
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.22
compliance issues here for us? I would acknowledge that it is the general plan. However, that
doesn't necessarily mean that we don't think that the Lihu`e development plan and the Koloa-Po`ipu
plan aren't important and that is why they are in the budget. That is why, Chair, I mean, definitely
we hear your message regarding the costs of the plan and how the costs has increased substantially
over last year's proposal. I think that Mike did a good job of articulating some of the reasons why we
have seen that cost increase. But in addition to that and imbedded in a number of those plans are
the result of us asking the question what is it going to take to get it done? Because you know, it
would be irresponsible for us to say you just got to get this work done and find a way to get it done. I
mean we said, okay, we're telling you this work needs to get done, we think it's important work, now
you come back and you tell us what you need to get it done, and that's what Mike has done, and
that's reflected in some of those increased costs that we're seeing. I just wanted to come up here, and
you know, if you continue to have issues with that, I think that that should probably be directed at
me, rather than Mike. Because you know, again, Mike was taking a certain amount of direction and
Mike did his job in terms of raising issues relative to are we properly staffed to accomplish all of
this?
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay Mr. Heu, I appreciate your comments, but we feel that
in this cost environment, we just need to be sensitive to pricing. Nobody over here on this table
implied that we wanted to do anything more than prioritize in this economic condition, and do the
right thing for the right reason. This council has never overpromised, but you used the word
"under-delivered:' Well the money has been there. There is nothing we rejected. And I appreciate
working with the administration on this, but it's a different environment right now when it comes to
money, and I'm afraid if we start posting these high numbers, that to some degree we did some due
diligence, well, in a hungry market, these guys are going to bid high, too. That is my point. And I
think some of the Councilmembers made very good points about having a separate item maybe for a
growth plan and so on. Maybe that is how we have to take it. Now I'm going to give Councilwoman
Yukimura just a few moments on the floor and then we're going to take a recess here, because we're
at our caption break. Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, I do want to agree that we're throwing too much on the
new planning directox. And actually, we should probably talk to you and the mayor, because the
Lihu`e development plan was the planning director's top priority in 2004, and we gave the money
requested, and we still don't have a development plan, and the request is for $900,000. And
everybody recognizes the urgency of planning for those lands...well, I think everybody does now. But
it was an opportunity for us in 2004. The council supported it and we don't have it today. And we
are in a bind that now we have to put forth this money and we're asking planning to do general plan
update, Lihu`e development plan, we haven't even seen the Kapa`a-Wailua plan yet, and the Koloa
Po`ipu Plan, and the Waimea-Kekaha plan. None of this is...and I'm concerned that we're spending
all this money without very clear scopes of work and a new form of planning that's going to really get
us the results the community deserves. So it's a terrible situation to be in and it's not just about the
decisions made today. It's about the decisions and actions made back then and either taken or not
taken.
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay, and on that note, Gary, I will give you a minute to
respond. Mike, welcome to the big league. Mike, we're here to help you. Gary, you have the floor,
and we're going to go on a break. Go ahead.
Mr. Heu: I just want to acknowledge what the vice-chair said. There is
no doubt, you were sitting there, I was sitting here, and moneys were appropriated. And I think we
have had that discussion numerous time on the floor through the years. And I mean the bottom line
is the Lihu`e development plan was not done. We had the Lihu`e Town Core Plan, which obviously
doesn't encompass the entire area that the development plan would have. And that was also an
important plan and we could sit here all day and debate that issue.
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.23
Ms. Yukimura: Well, it wasn't even authorized.
Council Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, councilmember. Go ahead.
Mr. Heu: I'm just saying that we've debated that issue many, many
times on this floor. We think we have a good product. It wasn't the original intent in terms of
products. The Lihu`e development plan that we have the request before you now is. We think that
we are behind in getting some of this work done. We think that it is all important and we think that
we just need to provide sufficient resources to make sure that we can make it happen. And relative
to how it happens, again, I think Mike did a real good job of articulating his vision for how he wants
to see these plans rolled out and eventually accomplished. I don't want to .under-sell the planning
department, because I still think they have a lot of good and capable people there. Some of the
earlier discussion relative to, you know, implementation, Ithink that is good discussion. We need to
pay attention to that. I think we're in a time period that you folks would agree, at this point in time
we're trying to stabilize that organization, and I think we're making some real good strides to
making that happen. I feel very, very comfortable with the current leadership. I've heard things
this morning that indicate there are certain members who would like to see that leadership continue
in place and provide continuity. I think we'll have to leave that to the planning commission
ultimately to see how that pans out, but certainly we'll all have a voice in terms of expressing our
desires. But again, we come here with this plan, with this budget; we feel that it's the one that we
need to put in place to make the things that this community feels important happen. And
ultimately, if this council decides otherwise, after this back and forth discussion, then that is the
plan that we'll march to. But we're coming to you and saying this is the one we believe in. This is
the one we believe we can make happen.
Council Chair Furfaro: On that note, Gary, I need a personal moment of privilege for
the council. But I do want to thank you for that. I do want to repeat a quote from Mike. He has
been given a "tall order."
Mr. Heu: Yes sir.
Council Chair Furfaro: We're not going to be any more delicate with him than we
have been with department heads. Okay? We all encourage him for the work that he is doing, but
we need to be really focused and we need to realize that we don't have resources to spend to just have
the things lay on the wayside. I think that that is our message. On that note, Gary, I'm going to
excuse you.
Mr. Heu: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: May I have a moment of personal privilege with all of you
folks? I have in here a document to give to The Garden Island newspaper, who is here. I just want
to let you know, this is the response for their notice of request for information about those that had
formally applied, formally applied, for the vacant council seat. So I just wanted you folks to know
I'm turning this over to The Garden Island ahead of their communication for the UIPA request.
We're going to take aten-minute break.
There being no objections, the Chair recessed the meeting at 11:15 a.m. The meeting was called
back to order at 11:30 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
Council Chair Furfaro: Members we are back from our short recess. Mike, if we can
continue on and like I mentioned, I certainly would like to get us to break here before lunch, but I
think as it relates to the general plan, you have heard from many of us, but we have three other
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.24
pieces here that we would like to talk about. I also would like to just plant the seed as it's been
shared with me by other Councilmembers. Although we're required to do this general plan
periodically, you know, there is some thinking here at the table that we should finish the
neighborhood plans, those development plans, probably in an order that takes priority over starting
a new general plan. That is just one of the thoughts here. Do we move it back a year or something?
Because the development plan for Lihu`e, for Koloa-Po`ipu, and the understanding of future impact
fees can all contribute to the costs and/or help us expedite the general plan when the neighborhood
development plans are completed. So there's something going on here. Now on that note, can we
drift to another one of these project initiation documents other than the general plan, because we
have almost used our entire time on the general plan.
Mr. Dahilig: Let's go back to the KPK plan, or the Koloa-Po`ipu-Kalaheo
plan. What we wanted to do was increase... again, increase the amount to take into account the
addition of more transportation planning to the Charlier plan. So that is generally what the increase
in costs comes from.
Ms. Yukimura: I have a question.
Council Chair Furfaro: Councilwoman Yukimura.
Ms. Yukimura: So are you including a traffic circulation element in every one
of your community development plans?
Mr. Dahilig: I think from the aspect of the two plans that are before you,
the KPK one and the Lihu`e one that transaction is critical in both of them. So having that
component as an element of the overall plan is what we're looking at incorporating.
Ms. Yukimura: And do the consultants who will have that job of doing the
transportation element, are they really...are they of the same transportation philosophy that, you
know the Smart Growth Transportation philosophy that Mr. Charlier is? Because I don't want an
old engineering plan.
Mr. Dahilig: I do hear the....
Ms. Yukimura: The level of services and all of that stuff.
Mr. Dahilig: And the Charlier plan is...his methodology is unique. It's and
something that is not...you just readily find in the discipline of transportation planning. So you
know, he is more innovative when you look at what he proposes. When we intend to go out, should
this be approved, one of the things that we're going to ask for is that the addition of the three areas,
Lawa`i, Omao, and Kalaheo be able to comport with what Charlier did. Now whether it's Charlier
himself or it's another like transportation-minded planner, I think what is key is that we're looking
at whether the Charlier plan meshes up with what is going to be produced, and that is where we're
going to start.
Ms. Yukimura: Couldn't you address these issues through the land
transportation plan of the State and the multi-modal plan of the county?
Mr. Dahilig: We certainly could, but we also recognize that the regional
movement beyond islandwide movement is... They do interrelate, but I would say that having the
Charlier plan looked at and having it supplemented is something that would not necessarily be
found in the statewide or a countywide...
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.25
Ms. Yukimura: I mean look, the Charlier plan took all the way up to Koloa to
Lawa`i Road, and then from there it's really just up to the main highway both ways, and then to
Kalaheo.
Mr. Dahilig: Without going into specific comparison on how robust or what
this plan would like in terms of what an addition, I think a lot of the discussion would be how do you
integrate from amulti-modal standpoint Kalaheo, and then within Kalaheo how do you move within
there? Again, I can only speculate what a transportation planner would say, because I'm not...that
is not my specialty, but I think that when you are looking at it from what would be produced, those
are the types of things that we would want to focus on is having it, again, comport with what are the
elements of the Charlier plan.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. So the other part of this as related to your
reorganization, is that the link between land use and transportation in the planning department has
been very, very weak, and some planning departments have a transportation planner that tries to
really keep that link strong. So I don't know if that is something you are thinking about.
Conceivably, if you had a really seasoned transportation planner they could almost do that in-house.
Mr. Dahilig: Last Thursday we had that complete streets workshop. Larry
Dill was there, as well as myself, I guess Celia was there, and a lot of... Councilmember Nakamura
was there as well. And that was something that was kind of touched upon, was this notion of
integration and how do you look at the different elements, and from a planning standpoint, who is
the point person? We looked at each other and we honestly said we don't know. What we're moving
to right now is the direction of trying to at least cross-coordinate visions between our department,
public works, and the transportation department, but that is still in its infancy. By having a point
person, it's an idea. That was brought up, but we haven't taken a look at that.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, it might be an interesting idea to try a transportation
planner, to hire one, and make their first project the Kalaheo transportation component of the Koloa
transportation element of the Koloa-Po`ipu transportation plan. I mean Koloa-Po`ipu-Kalaheo
Transportation Plan. And in that way, build your staff as you do some things in-house. Because I
know a lot of planning departments do things in-house. They have their planners actually redevelop
plans. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Members? Next item?
Mr. Dahilig: Okay. The next item was the Lihu`e Development Plan.
Council Chair Furfaro: Go right ahead.
Mr. Dahilig: We're maintaining the same budget, but the increase that's
being reflected is to address this issue, again, of additional support needs, either directly in-house as
a project manager or through a third party administrator. So that would be the only increase. We're
assuming that the scope stays the same for this one.
Council Chair Furfaro: Questions on that particular piece? Any question on that
particular piece? We'll move right along, Mike, because I'm going to ask for public comment at the
end here.
Mr. Dahilig: Then the last one was the countywide impact fee and we're
maintaining the budget for that and there are no changes based off of last year's earmark.
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.26
Council Chair Furfaro: Questions? A couple of phones went off. You got relief... It's
no one from your staff calling, is it? Mr. Rapozo?
Mr. Rapozo: I guess just a real brief, informal summary of what your
intention is with this islandwide impact fee. I know you got a lot of information here, but is it just a
study to determine some possible potential impact fees or user fees here for Kauai?
Mr. Dahilig: I think where we start, Councilmember, is looking at the `M
study. And the M study had things like fire, police, solid waste, parks, transportation, sewer,
administration fees, etcetera. What we would hope and what we would want to put in for the
consultant to do is first do an assessment as to whether that gamut of fees still make sense or are
there new fees or should fees that were proposed in `M be eliminated? And then from there, look at
updating the information based off of our population, where everybody is living and what are the
demands for the services? So that would pretty much be the gist of it, essentially.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Mr. Bynum?
Mr. Bynum: I just want to say something really quick and see if you agree.
If somebody comes in and does a very large development, whether it's resort or new business or it
impacts our community in terms of fire, police, parks, wastewater, solid waste, and many
communities have impact fees as part of development, to say if you build this project it's going to
have these costs for the county in terms of facilities. But under the Supreme Court, there has to... If
we're going to impose fees, there has to be a rational nexus between the fee we impose and the actual
costs? That's the purpose of this study, right, to establish that?
Mr. Dahilig: If it's done through a development exaction, yes. But if it's
done as a levy on the general populous, then that's...based on usage, that's... I mean you may want
to consult with the county attorney's office too.
Mr. Bynum:
that correct?
But the primary intent of this is about development fees, is
Mr. Dahilig: Looking through the `M study it didn't seem as if that was the
only basis for looking at potential sources of revenue was development only. It does start at
development, that is correct, councilmember. But from a maintenance standpoint, just like when
you look at solid waste fee that is something that is more user, on-demand type of thing versus like a
park fee or a sewer fee, those types of things.
Mr. Bynum: And we currently, in some areas of island have a development
impact fee assessment. Is that correct?
Mr. Dahilig: Sorry, could you repeat the question?
Mr. Bynum: My understanding is that in some areas we have an impact
fee of $1,000 or $1150 or something like that.
Mr. Dahilig: For parks.
Mr. Bynum: It's currently on the books, right?
Mr. Dahilig: Yes.
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.27
Mr. Bynum: But there is no connection to a study?
Mr. Dahilig: You know, I can check on that. I don't know exactly how that
legislation...
Mr. Bynum: I think this...like this was funded by the council in 2006. I
think that is just before I came on, and I feel like I have been here for a while now, and I really
support you moving ahead with this, because I have had developers say to me that that $1,000 is just
a joke because it should be 20 times that, and that is from the developers. They are amazed. People
come from off-island to develop and they are like, wow. So I just wanted to make that statement.
You have heard similar things, right?
Mr. Dahilig: I have.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Any additional questions? Go ahead, Mr. Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: Just probably for clarification more than anything. Under
"project scope," when you talk about assessment of current and future level and conditions of public
facilities and services. What are some examples, and if there was a business operating on our
current path, our Kauai path, is that potentially something that will be looked at as far as impact
fees?
Mr. Dahilig: You bring up a good point. That example I haven't thought
on.
Mr. Kuali`i: Because I also thought of like the trails, but that is probably
state, you know, Kalalau trail and all that, so it's not necessarily impacting us. But I'm just
wondering if that is what is also being looked at, because if we're going to spend all this money on
this study, I think that the most important thing is that we're asking the right questions and looking
at the right areas, and it's mainly just to gather that information. It doesn't mean that we're going
to go there collecting fees, but if we don't have the information, then we don't have the choices. I
think we should get as much information as possible, as far as any county resources,. services, and
the different users, you know, and especially if there is business users.
Mr. Dahilig: Including in the scope, something along the lines of looking at
enterprise services that the county...in terms of what I think I'm hearing, something that we can
look at folding into the scope. It's beyond just the user on-demand type of thing whether there is also
an enterprise element.
Mr. Kuali`i: Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Any more questions? Mike, you feel you got a grasp of the
council today, understanding of our concerns?
Mr. Dahilig: It's crystal clear.
Council Chair Furfaro: And a tall order of business presented to you?
Mr. Dahilig: Yes.
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.28
Council Chair Furfaro: Okay on that note, I'm going to go ahead and excuse you and
ask if there is public testimony? Is there anyone in the audience that would like to testify on the CIP
items presented by the planning department? If not, I'm going to call our meeting back to order. I'm
going to give you a couple commentaries about our critical dates going forward, and then I will open
for comment from others. I believe on this Wednesday, Mr. Bynum in the finance committee will
have a posted item that reflects an audit report on our revenue statement from the June 30 period,
and he will be making a presentation, I understand, on that. We arrive at the 1St of May and you
should have this all in your calendars, but I'm repeating it again for the TV viewing audience, which
is the date we require the administration to send to us the certified real property tax. That is the
revenue portion of the budget that, in fact, is only estimated at this particular time. So that will be
to us on the 1st. Then on May 5, the state legislature closes, and we'll have a better idea, although
we were able to get a presentation on the state's picture, they are closing on May 5, and we'll have a
better idea of any impacts to our operating budget with the legislature closing. On May 6, the
administration will be submitting to us the modified items to be considered in their resubmittal of
the budget. So they basically have two days after the legislature closes, and they will take into fact
any impact on other exemptions to the counties and/or the actual number for the transient
accommodation revenues. We will then find ourselves and this is the homework you have
individually with the materials that were provided to you, including the CIP, capital improvements,
the actual revenue forecast and modifications on the real property tax, and be able to identify items
that you feel strongly to add or subtract from the presentations you saw up to this point. Then of
course our final outlook will be on May 9 and 10. We will then also have our public hearing
scheduled in the evening on real property tax for comments from the public. On May 18, the plus
and minuses that we had talked about will be reviewed in the committee of the whole. And
hopefully, on May 25, send out for action on the final outcome of the budget, along with the council's
budget message. And you all have a substantial amount of material to look at. We do have
questions coming back that we asked, so that we have a better understanding of items that we
might plus or minus, oh yes, I'm sorry, and then there is... I thought I did say May 4 for the
published public hearing on real property tax. But that is at 5 P.M., right? 5 P.M. on May 4. So
before I actually close these hearings, I will go around the table so far and see what you have to say.
You all need to evaluate the schedule I gave you verbally, but you have it in your packets. We'll
start with you, Mr. Bynum.
Mr. Bynum: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the presentations this
morning from transportation and the planning department, and I agree that we're in trying financial
times. But I also want to make a distinction between commitments that council makes for ongoing
spending. A good example is the bus. We all agreed to expand the bus. We had a price tag for six
months of that, but I think we also realized that that is from now on; that that becomes part of our
budget process, unless we reduce that. CIP projects sometimes lead to additional general fund
spending, too. The bus example today, we're going to create five shelters, maybe six. It's not going
to be a huge impact, but those become assets that we have to maintain and have security and it will
have an impact on the budget. So CIP have varying impacts in terms of ongoing costs to the county.
Planning CIP and providing good planning may not have that much ongoing costs, but they are
about us being thoughtful about the way we build our environment to, among other things, reduce
costs. So when we make decisions about spending money, I make a distinction in my mind between
am I making a commitment to ongoing revenue needed to maintain this, or is this a project that has
a beginning and end? If the project is on extension of the multi-use path, clearly that has some
ongoing commitment in terms of maintenance and being to do with county revenue, so we got to do a
judgment call about whether the cost-benefit analysis is good. But you know, everything gets
complicated, because hey, maybe that amenity is going to increase revenue by bringing more visitors
to that and making the economy stronger, increasing property values, which increases tax revenues.
So these are all complex decisions. On Wednesday I am going to do a presence operation
presentation about the CAFR, the actual audited report, and try to make a distinction between a
budget plan and our fiscal condition, which I think the mayor did pretty well in his state of the
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.29
union...or state of the county address. But as the newspapers pointed out, there's confusion,
and...about really what our economic state is. But it's really important to determine commitments
we make for ongoing spending and commitments we make that impact kind of a reserve or revenue
or cash status of the county. Thank you.
Council Chair Furfaro: Other members? Mr. Rapozo.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. I think I made my points a little earlier when
planning was up here. I guess I see things a little differently. I think that we got to be cautious.
And often time we do have to cut back, and I think that is what the people expect us to do right now,
because they are cutting back. They have come off, especially our employees, our state and county
employees, they have come off of some furloughs, they've come off with some devastating fiscal
impacts, many of them were forced to make serious adjustments to their lifestyle, and I think real
simply for me, if many of these expenditures are not necessary or not required and, in fact can be put
off for another day... I mean there are. certain issues, public safety issues, I believe we must
continue to fund. But any of these other things that which I call the "luxury items" or the not so
important items, I think we got to make that tough decision, and it's going to be us here on the
council. Because as you look through the budget that's been proposed, there are a lot of things in
there that will make life a lot easier for a lot of people, but is it really necessary at this time? Versus
the expenditures that in fact will actually create a better situation for the people of Kauai? I think
many decisions were made in the past that required ongoing funding. I don't think anybody
anticipated the situation we're in today. I don't think anybody, even the experts. If you watch CNN
or MSNBC, and you listen to these experts, most of them did not see it coming, and it caught all of us
by surprise, and now we're in a situation where we got to make some tough decisions. Just like the
tough decision I made at my house, cutting out the land line, $40.26 a month. Is it nice to have?
Yes. Could I justify the expense? Of course I could, because if there is an emergency and if the cell
towers go down, we need that land line to call 911. I mean we can justify every expenditures. But in
my own household, we got to make those adjustments because times are tough. We got to do the
same thing for the county, because at the end of the day, it's not our money, it's not the 7 of our
money, it's not the administration's money, it's the people's money. And I think their call needs to be
heeded. I think when they are asking us, relying on us, to do the right thing, we owe that to them.
It's not an easy decision. It's going to be tough to go through the budget and I'm hoping that the
administration will help us out to some extent by reducing some of the expenditures in the
supplemental budget coming up in May. But if not, then it's going to be up to us. It's not a good
thing to do. I remember Kaipo Asing when he was the chair would always say, you know, you guys
have never experienced a budget without money, and now I can say, well Mr. Asing, I think now I
am experiencing a budget without money. I think it's... We cannot look just for this next year.
What is the fiscal impact to this county going to be five years from now? Ten years from now?
Because we cannot rely on hey, we still have a little bit of surplus and we can use that, no. Because
next year it will be more worse than this year, unless we think about raising income streams like
property taxes, and I don't want to go there right now. So there's a lot of decisions got to be made,
and unfortunately it will be on this table, and we'll see where it goes. But I guess my own message
really is to the administration saying help us out, send a supplemental budget with some reduction,
and hopefully we can make ends meet in the next fiscal year. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Council Chair Furfaro: Councilmember Kuali`i.
Mr. Kuali`i: Aloha. I do want to say thank you for the information you
provided today. I don't think we can ever have too much information. The next couple weeks, I
think as a council we'll be doing the most important job that's put before us for the people. I think
when we find out on May 1 about the certified real property taxes, when we find out after the
legislature closes on May 5, and when we get the modified budget from the administration, then
we're going to have to just crank it and make the tough decisions. But between now and then, of
Apri125, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p,30
course you are doing the work you need to do, and all of our questions, we're getting those answers,
and I we'll be digging into that, and I just think we have to work together for the best of the people
going forward. I thank you again.
Chang?
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Councilwoman Nakamura? Councilmember
Mr. Chang: Thank you Chair. I just wanted to so say thank you for those
of you that came with the presentations. And I just want to echo on what our chair said. Mike, I
think you got a big challenge ahead of you, so we're all looking forward to working with you, but I do
think it's very important with everything laid on the table today with continuity, I just hope you can
be around for the long ride, because this is going to be a long ride. So I just wanted to say thank you
in advance. Thank you, chair.
Council Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Before I actually adjourn the meeting, I do want
to say to the administration, Mr. Heu, the mayor, and all of the participants, thank you very much.
We extended the session by two days, we used half that time, we're coming to a close here. One of
the items we didn't touch on yet, but I want to make sure that the message is clear to the
administration, we look forward to working with you on developing a fiscal goal of the county, which
will include developing a reserve fund. And I think it's important for all of us to understand if we
have a portion of the surplus now that establishes that reserve fund, going forward, we'll be in a
better place year after to establish if we need to replenish the reserve fund or we have funds to spend
on initiatives for new projects. So I think that is a very important dialogue coming up yet. I also
want to share with the administration our need to measure performance. Because I know this
county is being looked at by the other counties and the state legislatures because we ended
furloughs. And they are not perhaps looking to us as being out of step, as much as them looking at
their financial needs, and I encourage the mayor, the administration to continue to negotiate a
supplemental agreement, which allows us to evaluate our own workforce going forward. I think
there were a few things tonight, Mike, this is for you, that could be items that we want to have
further discussions with. No. 1, the actual timing of when we do the general plan versus finishing
those regional plans. You know, there is some consideration there. Also the fact that I was hoping
for hearings officer that became part of a dotted line of responsibility to you and the county
attorney's office versus just allocating money to contract it out. So we have to weigh those things. I
want to thank you, Mike, for a good presentation, and I want to thank the transportation
department, as well. Celia actually did an outstanding job, and these are two first-time department
heads that were making presentations, and they both got called back for certain items, and I was
very pleased with what I saw there.
On that note, I'm now going to say that we have come to an adjournment of the budget
review and the departmental call-backs. You wanted to say something?
Mr. Bynum: I'm just curious. IT? We never saw IT?
Council Chair Furfaro: No. IT is on May 8...May 9.
Mr. Bynum: May 9?
Council Chair Furfaro: Yes. I'm going to say it again. For IT, I handed out their five
projects in writing to you and they will be the first review on May 9. This was because of the IT
manager not having enough time to reevaluate the programs laid out by Mr. Knutzen. Did you folks
not get that memorandum from me? You did, Mr. Rapozo? So that report you have got it. Hold onto
it. It will be part of decision-making on those days. Again, that was courtesy I extended the finance
department, of which IT... Did you not see?
April 25, 2011
CIP-Planning Dept. Call-Back p.31
Mr. Bynum: I-knew it was rescheduled, but that is adecision-making day?
Council Chair Furfaro: And it will be a decision making process. So you're welcome
to talk...
Mr. Bynum: We're not going to have a verbal presentation from IT? We're
just going to have a written?
Council Chair Furfaro: Yes. You have a written in advance, and you are free to
actually have that discussion with him, as you saw what he submitted. I think I'm back on track
here. This ends our budget reviews and our call-backs for this budget review at this point in time.
There being no objections, the Departmental Budget Reviews and Departmental Call-Backs was
adjourned on Monday, Apri125, 2011, at 12:04 p.m.
Resp'ec~ tfull~` witted,
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d
Aida Okasaki, Legislative Services Aide
Gl,~~ C~`r~-~
Wilma Akiona, Council Services Assistant
Da rellyne Simao, until Services Assistant
urie Chow, Senior Clerk Typist