Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout 12/04/2013 Council minutes COUNCIL MEETING DECEMBER 4, 2013 The Council Meeting of the Council of the County of Kaua`i was called to order by Council Chair Jay Furfaro at the Council Chambers, 4396 Rice Street, Room 201, Lihu'e, Kauai, on Wednesday, December 4, 2013 at 9:00 a.m., after which the following members answered the call of the roll: Honorable Tim Bynum Honorable Mason K. Chock, Sr. Honorable Gary L. Hooser Honorable Ross Kagawa Honorable Mel Rapozo Honorable JoAnn A. Yukimura Honorable Jay Furfaro APPROVAL OF AGENDA. Mr. Rapozo moved for approval of the agenda as circulated, seconded by Ms. Yukimura, and unanimously carried. Chair Furfaro: This is a period for public comment under Council Rule 13(e). Is there anyone in the public who wishes to testify on any item posted on today's agenda for three (3) minutes? PUBLIC COMMENT. Pursuant to Council Rule 13(e), members of the public shall be allowed a total of eighteen (18) minutes on a first come, first served basis to speak on any agenda item. Each speaker shall be limited to three (3) minutes at the discretion of the Chair to discuss the agenda item and shall not be allowed additional time to speak during the meeting. This rule is designed to accommodate those who cannot be present throughout the meeting to speak when the agenda items are heard. After the conclusion of the eighteen (18) minutes, other members of the public shall be allowed to speak pursuant to Council Rule 12(e). Chair Furfaro: Seeing no one, we will go to the minutes of the previous meetings. MINUTES of the following meetings of the Council: September 11, 2013 Council Meeting September 25, 2013 Council Meeting September 26, 2013 Special Council Meeting October 8, 2013 Special Council Meeting and Continued on October 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting November 6, 2013 Council Meeting November 6, 2013 Public Hearing re: Bill No. 2503 and Bill No. 2504 November 7, 2013 Special Council Meeting November 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting November 19, 2013 Special Council Meeting COUNCIL MEETING 2 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Bynum moved to approve the Minutes as circulated, seconded by Ms. Yukimura. Chair Furfaro: Is there any discussion on any of these items? The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: Chair, may I ask that the October 8, 2013 Special Council Meeting and the November 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting Minutes be excluded from this motion to approve so that I can read them? Chair Furfaro: Certainly. Mr. Clerk, would you please note that Councilmember Yukimura requested that the October 8, 2013 Special Council Meeting and Continued on October 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting, as well as the November 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting, not be approved on this particular scheduled agenda. RICKY WATANABE, County Clerk: So noted. Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Is there any questions from members? Mr. Bynum: Just very briefly, I would like to point out the incredible volume of work this represents that came from our Staff over the last few months. Anybody who has read our minutes know how well they are done verbatim. I just wanted to recognize this increased volume of work. Chair Furfaro: Thank you for your comments and it is acknowledged by all Councilmembers as well. The motion to approve all Minutes except for the Minutes of the October 8, 2013 Special Council Meeting and Continued on October 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting and the November 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting was then put, and unanimously carried. Chair Furfaro: The vote is 7:0. The October 8, 2013 Special Council Meeting and Continued on October 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting and the November 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting will be scheduled for approval at the next Council Meeting. Mr. Watanabe: Chair, can we get a motion for a deferral on the October 8, 2013 Special Council Meeting and Continued on October 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting and the November 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting? Mr. Bynum moved to defer the Minutes of the October 8, 2013 Special Council Meeting and Continued on October 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting and November 15, 2013 Special Council Meeting, seconded by Ms. Yukimura, and unanimously carried. Chair Furfaro: Let us go to the Consent Calendar, please. COUNCIL MEETING 3 DECEMBER 4, 2013 CONSENT CALENDAR: Resolution No. 2003-31 — RESOLUTION SUPPORTING THE AIR FORCE C-17 GLOBEMASTER III OPERATIONS AT THE PACIFIC MISSILE RANGE FACILITY AT BARKING SANDS ON KAUAI (Deferred 06/26/2003 pending completion of the environmental assessment): Mr. Rapozo moved to receive Resolution No. 2003-31 for the record, seconded by Ms. Yukimura, and unanimously carried. Resolution No. 2010-10 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL APPOINTMENT TO THE BUILDING BOARD OF APPEALS (Gerald T. Nakasone) (Deferred 01/06/2010 pending interview): Mr. Rapozo moved to receive Resolution No. 2010-10 for the record, seconded by Ms. Yukimura, and unanimously carried. Resolution No. 2012-34 — RESOLUTION SUPPORTING THE HAWAI'I STATE ASSOCIATION OF COUNTIES' PROPOSAL OF ESTABLISHING A POSITION FOR THE HAWAI'I STATE ASSOCIATION OF COUNTIES STATE DIRECTOR (Deferred 03/28/2012 pending Hawaii State Association of Counties (HSAC) information): Mr. Rapozo moved to receive Resolution No. 2012-34 for the record, seconded by Ms. Yukimura, and unanimously carried. C 2013-370 Communication (11/19/2013) from the Director of Finance, transmitting for Council consideration, proposed amendments to Ordinance No. B-2013-753, as amended, relating to the Fiscal Year 2013-2014 Operating Budget, by Revising the Amounts Estimated in the General Fund. (Office of Economic Development, Executive/Consultant Services (Joint Fact Finding Group (JFFG) Scope-of-Work Environmental Public Health Impact Study (EPHIS)) - $100,000): Mr. Rapozo moved to receive C 2013-370 for the record, seconded by Ms. Yukimura, and unanimously carried. C 2013-371 Communication (11/20/2013) from the Mayor, transmitting for Council consideration and confirmation the following Mayoral Reappointments to the various Boards and Commissions for the County of Kaua`i: (1) Building Board of Appeals • Miles Tanabe —Term ending 12/31/2016 (2) Board of Ethics • Kurt Akamine —Term ending 12/31/2016 • Brad Nagano — Term ending 12/31/2016 (3) Board of Review • Jose Diogo— Term ending 12/31/2016 (4) Board of Water Supply • Clyde Nakaya —Term ending 12/31/2016 (5) Charter Review Commission • Ed Justus, IV— Term ending 12/31/2016 • Charles Stack—Term ending 12/31/2016 (6) Civil Service Commission • John Low — Term ending 12/31/2016 COUNCIL MEETING 4 DECEMBER 4, 2013 (7) Cost Control Commission • Glen Takenouchi— Term ending 12/31/2016 • Joanne Nakashima —Term ending 12/31/2016 (8) Fire Commission • Heidy Huddy-Yamamoto —Term ending 12/31/2016 • Eugene Jimenez —Term ending 12/31/2016 (9) Liquor Control Commission • Dane Oda —Term ending 12/31/2016 (10) Planning Commission • Wayne Katayama —Term ending 12/31/2016 • Angela Anderson— Term ending 12/31/2016 (11) Police Commission • Randall Francisco — Term ending 12/31/2016 • Charles Iona — Term ending 12/31/2016 (12) Public Access, Open Space, and Natural Resources Preservation Fund Commission • Luke Evslin—Term ending 12/31/2016 (13) Salary Commission • Sheri Kunioka-Volz—Term ending 12/31/2016 Mr. Rapozo moved to receive C 2013-371 for the record, seconded by Ms. Yukimura, and unanimously carried. C 2013-372 Communication (11/20/2013) from Councilmember Bynum, transmitting for Council consideration, proposed amendments to Chapter 5, Section 5-2.3 of the Kaua`i County Code 1987, as amended, relating to the County Motor Vehicle Weight Tax, effective January 1, 2015, pursuant to Hawai'i Revised Statutes (HRS) Section 249-13: Mr. Rapozo moved to receive C 2013-372 for the record, seconded by Ms. Yukimura, and unanimously carried. C 2013-373 Communication (11/20/2013) from Councilmember Bynum, transmitting for Council consideration, proposed amendments to Section 21-9.2 of the Kaua`i County Code 1987, as amended, relating to Integrated Solid Waste Management, to increase the tipping fees for business, commercial, and other non- residential haulers: Mr. Rapozo moved to receive C 2013-373 for the record, seconded by Ms. Yukimura, and unanimously carried. Chair Furfaro: Is there anyone in the public who wanted to give any testimony for these items? Seeing no one, there is no one who wants to testify for the record. Let us go to our next item please. COMMUNICATIONS: C 2013-374 Communication (11/01/2013) from the Chief of Police, requesting Council approval to accept a multi-year grant in the amount of $750,000 from the United States Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) for six (6) new police officer positions to establish a new beat in the Kawaihau District. COUNCIL MEETING 5 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Future funding for the grant is proposed to be allocated as follows: • Year Two (2): $600,000.00 (Grant Funds), $91,357.44 (Asset Forfeiture Funds) • Year Three (3): $150,000 (Grant Funds), $614,847.35 (County Funds) • Year Four (4): $804,604.00 (County Funds) Mr. Kagawa moved to approve C 2013-374, seconded by Ms. Yukimura. Chair Furfaro: We will cover all four (4) years in this discussion. Chief, can you please come up? There being no objections, the rules were suspended. DARRYL D. PERRY, Chief of Police: Good morning Chair and Councilmembers. Chair Furfaro: Good morning to all of the members of our Police Department that is in attendance as well. Thank you for being here. Chief, you have the floor. Mr. Perry: Darryl Perry, Chief of Police for the County of Kaua`i. Thank you for having us here today to go over the COPS Grant. I cannot believe that it has been six (6) months since we were here, asking for approval to submit an application for the COPS Grant. Since that time, the application was submitted and we were awarded seven hundred fifty thousand dollars ($750,000), but we need your approval for the grant. We sent information in, and I know you have that information, but for those who forgot or maybe need a little reminder and for those who were not on the Council at that time, we would like to briefly go over and summarize the COPS Grant. Chair Furfaro: Chief, I am going to move over to a mic here, so I can watch your presentation as well. Thank you. Mr. Perry: When I first got here, we had about thirty (30) vacancies. Our Staff for the authorized Staff was one hundred fifty (150) officers. We have thirty (30) vacancies and we are having a very difficult time filling those positions, but since then, we have been able to streamline our recruiting and training process, so now we are actually on the verge of filling all of our vacancies. With that said, we did is some research and the information up here was presented to you before, but this is just a review. The Bureau of Justice statistics and National Crime Victimization Survey came out with this "population-driven" police force ratio. The ratio is, on average, two point three (2.3) officers per one thousand (1,000) population or the de facto population of about eighty-six thousand (86,000) people on the island, including the military and visitors. We are below that national ratio. Interestingly, with that taken into consideration, this was based on departments in the United States that have jurisdictions that are close by. If they needed to leverage their assets, they could request from the other neighboring police chiefs to assist them in certain types of situations. The recent Newtown incident is one example where the jurisdictions adjacent to the Newtown shooting responded immediately, so they were able to assist them in investigating that scene. Kaua`i and all of the islands are unique in itself, the reason being because we are the only game in town and we cannot reach out to Honolulu Police Department, Maui Police Department, or Hawai`i Island Police Department to request assistance. Actually for the ratio you see here, we COUNCIL MEETING 6 DECEMBER 4, 2013 should be on the high ratio side; two point three (2.3) instead of two point three zero (2.30). For our sake, let us use the average. Based on those numbers, we are actually down by about forty (40) officers, where we should be nationally. I wanted to talk a little bit about the beats. The beats are basically geographical areas and designated areas, and how we arrived at the beat boundaries is based on calls for services, population density, and officer safety concerns on how fast it would take an officer to respond to a certain location or to a certain type of call. The last beat expansion occurred in 1989, so for the last twenty-four (24) years, we have had no expansion of any beats or officers. I can understand why because we were not able to fill our positions, but things have changed and today we have done that. If you look at the numbers up here, we have ten (10) beats currently. Back in 1989, there were almost twenty (20,000) calls for services. In 2011, we had thirty-six thousand (36,000) calls for services and an eighty-three percent (83%) increase. We have had no increase in beat officers. The de facto population has increased, of course, by twenty-eight percent (28%) and still, we have not expanded our beats or increased our officer staffing. In 2008, we did a projection of where we should be by 2025. Perhaps this is a "pie-in-the-sky" type of wish list, but nevertheless, we went ahead and created what we foresee to be by 2025 of how the beats will be structured. Again, this was based on calls for services, population density, and officer safety concerns. We worked with Planning and the community to derive these beat boundaries. Hopefully within the next future, probably not during my lifetime, we can see this come true. We actually added eleven (11) new beats for the projections. The island is divided into five (5) main districts. The districts that we are talking about being the busiest is District 1, which is the Lihu`e area and District 4, which is the Kawaihau area. This is the proposed new beat that we are asking for. Perhaps Stacy could explain the boundaries of the new beat. STACEY PERREIRA, Police Officer: For the record, my name is Stacey Perreira. Currently, how the Kawaihau District is set up is that we have two (2) different officers that respond. They cover from South Leho Drive, which you can see in the little picture on the right, just past the Wailua Golf Course. On the left is North Aliomanu. That is the area and everywhere in between, all the way up to the Homesteads, that is where two (2) officers cover on any given shift. Of course, it is a mixture of residential, agricultural, commercial, and retail space. We have a lot of resort destinations in Kapa'a Town and Wailua. We also have the Hawaiian Homelands which is in the Anahola area. That is currently what our two (2) officers are covering. Mr. Perry: Before submitting for the grant, we saw the need for a beat expansion and to work in conjunction with the community. That is why when we saw this grant come up, we thought that this would be a perfect time to submit an application. Before we go into the Community Oriented Policing program... Stacy will explain that in more detail. We reviewed what the grant encompassed. There are strict guidelines on how to submit a grant. At the conclusion of the grant, we submitted it and it was evaluated based on their criteria. Our County had the highest score that was ever seen in the grant applications. Normally, they would allow a five percent (5%) increase in staffing and they gave us just below that. They almost gave us the maximum score of the COUNCIL MEETING 7 DECEMBER 4, 2013 amount of officers that we needed. If we were to extrapolate that number out, based on our score for a larger departments, say with two thousand (2,000), that would be anywhere from fifty (50) to one hundred (100) officers that the COPS Grant would have allowed. We got the maximum for the amount of work that Stacy did. I will give to you, Stacy, and you can explain the Community Oriented Policing Services concept and what our goals and objectives are. Ms. Perreira: Of course, like the Chief said, this is through the Department of Justice and it is a Community Oriented Policing Services Grant. Just so everyone is on the same page, "Community Oriented Policing" is a philosophy that combines traditional aspects of law enforcement with prevention measures, problem-solving community engagement, and community partnerships. In a nutshell, that is basically what Community Oriented Policing is. When I started to write the grant, there were some things that I had to identify in order to fulfill the requirements of the grant. Part of that, of course, is coming up with goals and objectives, as well as using that philosophy and identifying what we are already doing in our Department, what we need to improve in our Department, as well as where we are lacking in our Department based on community oriented policing. We came up with this goal and the goal is to increase the number of first-responders for the Kaua`i Police Department (KPD) to allow a more even distribution of cases among officers, while promoting community policing strategies aimed at prevention, solving, and controlling crime. That is a mouthful, but given the expansion, that is what we hope to accomplish. Some of the objectives that we came up with is that in the beginning, you need to increase the sworn personnel, first-responders. We asked for five percent (5%), which is seven (7) officers and we got six (6). We are hoping to hire those first six (6) officers in the first twelve (12) months of the project. With the streamlined process that the Department has now... I do not foresee that as an issue at all. The second thing was to establish the new geographical beat assignment based on the increase of sworn personnel in the first fifteen (15) months. We already have a good idea of where we would like that to be. Of course, we can always revisit what the current numbers are to make sure that when we do place the officer in the Kawaihau District, it is where it is most needed. We are looking at possibly placing that person more in the business district, so that we can revitalize our community policing and get more involved with our community and our businesses. Of course, assign the officer to that particular beat within the first fifteen (15) months as well. Number three is to enhance existing community oriented policing strategies within that new geographical beat. That is not to say we are not looking at doing it for the entire island, but specific to this grant, this is what we need to make sure we address with the grant, which is what we will be doing with the community and how we will be working with the community specific to this project, as well as with the beat assignment. We have several things that we already are doing within our communities. Specifically in Kawaihau, we do already have Neighborhood Watch Program that Sergeant Green works on with the community and we are hoping to get our officers that will be assigned in that area more involved with that. We also have the Mayor's Crime Task Force that we hope to get more involved with as well. That is basically for our businesses. We also want to help promote safety for our businesses to combat against burglaries, thefts, and things of that nature. Of course, number three (b) is to promote proactive community oriented policing within the Kawaihau District. We also want to make sure that we provide training for all first-responders to promote the Department's community oriented strategies. We COUNCIL MEETING 8 DECEMBER 4, 2013 want to make sure that everyone is one the same page in our Department, knowing what community oriented policing is. It is not just about the community, but it is about the community and our Department working together to help solve crime when it is identified in specific areas. Chair Furfaro: Stacy, at this point as I mentioned to the Police Chief, I think we are going to take a short break and recognize our guests that are here. May I have the Staff acknowledge them? I am not sure how many people we have coming in, but if we can all get a little closer together, it would be helpful so we can vacate some chairs. Thank you for your understanding Chief. There being no objections, the meeting recessed at 9:22 a.m. The meeting reconvened at 9:45 a.m., and proceeded as follows: Chair Furfaro: We are back in session. We will continue now. Ms. Perreira: Moving into project activities, it is kind of redundant, but I will quickly go over it. We came up with the project activities specific to the goals and objectives. With the assistance of the COPS Grant, it is the immediate goal of the Kaua`i Police Department to expand our beats from ten (10) beat assignments to eleven (11) beats. Of course, in order to achieve this goal, we need to increase our patrol officer and first responders by... the grant it is says seven (7), but it is actually six (6) positions that we were awarded. We will be able to meet our needs with the six (6) officers. The next thing is to establish the geographical beat assignment. We talked about that and currently where the officers are working from, South Leho all the way to North Aliomanu. That will be divided up into three (3). More specifically, we are looking at possibly focusing in the business district of the Kawaihau District. Next is to enhance existing programs within our Police Department. The Department of Justice recognizes... they are heavily into the School Resource Officer (SRO) program, as well as Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) and all of that. We have youth programs, DARE and Kaua`i Police Activity League (KPAL), and our SRO program is highly notable in our community. We also want to continue to support that, as well as enhance some of our existing programs such as the Mayor's Task Force, Neighborhood Watch Program, and revitalize them and get our officers that will be in those areas involved, as well as throughout our community. Then of course, as we said, is provide in-service training to all first responders on with the community oriented policing strategy is and what our overall goal as a Department is on moving forward, not only to fulfill the grant, but become more of a proactive Department with responding to targeted areas, areas that we recognize need more assistance, and so forth. Our project evaluation that we submitted with the grant was to keep track of who we hire, when we hire, and how we hire. We are required to submit these project evaluations on a quarterly basis. These are our benchmarks that we need to make sure that we meet, which is what we put forth. First is hiring within the first twelve (12) months of the project, the geographical beat assignment, enhancing or specifically defining which beat it will be, where it is, and what the geographical location will be for that beat. Then of course, providing in-service training, as well as making sure that we enhance our existing programs, continue to improve on programs, and possibly expand on programs with community oriented policing. COUNCIL MEETING 9 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Our current community partnerships, our youth programs like KPAL, DARE program, School Resources Officers, and our Explorer Program. Our Community Relations Officer plays a huge role in our community oriented policing. He goes to different schools, starts up our community watch programs, assists with Cop on Top, (inaudible), and endless amounts of stuff that our Community Relations Officer does. Again, like the Neighborhood Watch Program and Mayor's Crime Task Force, we started within the last— when was this Citizens Police Academy started? We have already had two (2) and we are probably having a third Citizens Police Academy. It has been quite successful. Media communications— we have over the past several years, our website is a huge area where our public can go to and find different information on statistics, what our Department is doing, how we are doing, and crime mapping. There is a bunch of tools that you can go to on our website as part of the community to see what is happening in their neighborhoods and so forth. We will continue to enhance that, as well as make sure different public events are publicized for the community. Mr. Perry: We talked a little bit about the history of KPD and our staffing concerns. We went into what the grant is about and the benchmarks that we want to establish and meet. This is the meat of the whole thing, the funding breakdown. I will have Deputy Chief Michael Contrades speak on this and we will go into more detail later. MICHAEL CONTRADES, Deputy Chief of Police: Good morning Chair Furfaro, Vice Chair Chock, and members of the Council. For the record, Michael Contrades, Deputy Chief of Police. Like the Chief said, this is a big part of it. "How much is this going to cost?" In terms of funding breakdown, what we are proposing is that for the Fiscal Year 2014, if we are allowed to accept the grant, there will be no funds expended. The reason being is that you are able to draw on the funds once you hire the people, so for the Fiscal Year 2014, we do not anticipate being able to do so. For Fiscal Year 2015, we are planning and anticipate being able to hire these positions, if allowed in July of 2015, so this would be.... I am sorry, July 2014, Fiscal Year 2015. Six hundred thousand dollars ($600,000) in grant funds would be used. There would be no County Funds used and we would use ninety-one thousand three hundred fifty-seven dollars ($91,357) of Asset Forfeiture Funds. In Fiscal Year 2016, there will be one hundred fifty thousand dollars ($150,000) in grant funds and six hundred fourteen thousand ($614,000) and a little extra in County Funds. After that, we would not be able to drawdown on grant funds anymore. We would have expended that. Fiscal Year 2017 would cost eight hundred four thousand six hundred four dollars ($804,604). In total, what we are requesting of the County over the four (4) year period is two million two hundred twenty-four thousand fifty-five dollars ($2,224,055). Chief, could you go to the next one? Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, I have a question before you go any further. Could you go back to the other slide? The current State of Hawai`i Organization of Police Officers (SHOPO) contract expires in year 2016, I believe. Have you put in a contingent for what the negotiated new settlement would be in the year 2017/2018? Is that based on current contract negotiations? Mr. Contrades: That is based on current contracts, so at the ending of the contract, that is what the cost would be. We are unable to determine what SHOPO may get at that point in time. COUNCIL MEETING 10 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Chair Furfaro: Understood, but that could be adjusted by about forty thousand dollars ($40,000) a year from 2017 forward. It is possible. Okay. Thank you very much for the slide. Sorry for the interruption. Thank you. Mr. Contrades: Again, we are humbly asking for your acceptance of the grant and KPD being allowed to create this new beat. If you average it out, it is roughly five hundred fifty-six thousand dollars ($556,000) a year for the four (4) years that we are asking for. Chair Furfaro: Is that the end of the presentation? Mr. Contrades: Yes. Chair Furfaro: Okay. Just give me a moment to go back to my seat. Members, are there any questions on the presentation? We will start with Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: First, I want to thank you Officer Perreira and the Chief for an outstanding presentation. Mr. Contrades, thank you very much. We have come a really long ways from the thirty (30) officers vacant to almost being fully staffed, and it took a lot of things and a lot of effort on your part. I think the Administration and the Council assisted, but I have told that every Chief that has ever stood here that when you can hire new officers, I will be in your corner. We have arrived at that. Thank you. Congratulations. I think that is great for our community. I do have a few questions, but I want to say that the fiscal challenges for the County are very significant, and a lot of that is because of the Police Department, but that is okay with me. Our Police just had a contract negotiation that is going to bring officers' salaries into the range that hopefully we can keep fully staffed and you can accomplish new beats. This has been the goal for a long time, and to be here today should be a huge celebration. I want to thank you for all of your efforts, all of you, to arrive at what I consider a historic moment because I have been involved in the County for fifteen (15) years and we have never been fully staffed. I have publically made that commitment many times. I do not ever want to be an obstacle to expanding the force when we are at that opportunity. The idea that we have a grant to assist us with that is great, but I come in with eyes wide open. This grant pays about a quarter of the cost of these new officers, and then we are going to pick up the full freight. We have been waiting for this and now it arrives. It comes at a challenging time, but it is our responsibility to fund this and create a safer community. With that said, may I ask a few questions? I also see this grant, and I have followed it and read it, as a renewed commitment to community oriented policing. KPD has always done that. I think I told you the story, Chief, in the past. When I first got involved when there was a grant for SROs, that the Department could use. That was really critical. I was a Therapist at the time, working with kids. It was like, "Wow, you had this money and you did not put these officers in the school?" I know now that was naïve because the Chief then would have loved to put those officers in the school and use those grants. You have to make triage choices. I am going to be really happy when KPD is in a position where they do not have to do that. I see that as a commitment to these programs as well, a renewed commitment. Is that correct? Mr. Perry: That is correct. Mr. Bynum: So SRO officers are currently in high schools? COUNCIL MEETING 11 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Perry: Yes, they are. Mr. Bynum: Did we get ever them in the junior high schools? Mr. Perry: Not yet, but that is in the future. We are looking at getting them in middle schools where they are most influenced and we need to get to them. Mr. Bynum: Twenty (20) years ago, when I naively criticized the Police Department for not following that grant, the goal was at that time to put the officers in the middle schools. I can see that happening over the next couple of years, right? Also, you mentioned Police Explorers which is a program that we have a strong commitment to as well. Is that correct? Mr. Perry: The Police Explorers right now... for lack of a better term, in "hibernation." We are looking at getting a Program Manager. In our re-description of a position to a KPAL officer— we will be using that position to assist us with KPAL and the other youth programs, including the Explorers program. Mr. Bynum: Those are other kinds of goals that we have had to have a full-time dedicated KPAL officer, or two. I am glad that we have arrived at this point. We are going to have a lot of dialogue about how difficult it will be for our community to fund all of the Hawai`i Government Employees Association (HGEA) and contracts because our workers have waited a long time. It is our responsibility to fund these things and that is going to be difficult. Other than that, I appreciate this presentation and this moment we have arrived at. Thank you very much. Mr. Perry: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Members, I want to remind you that six (6) months ago, the discussion was about giving them the approval to apply for the grant. That approval occurred and they made a presentation. This agenda item is now about approving the grant as presented, and that is where our discussion should be focused on. I think some of the topics that have come up need to be expanded in the budget review, too, as Mr. Bynum is talking about some of the... I think the Chief used the word of programs that went into "hibernation." Make sure that we have those kinds of discussions at budget time as well. Councilmember Yukimura, you have the floor. Ms. Yukimura: Chief, Officer Perreira, Deputy Chief, and members of the Police force— first of all, congratulations on the outstanding success in filling positions. It has been a longstanding problem. Councilmember Bynum is correct; your accomplishment in the last couple of years has been extraordinary and I hear is being watched and studied by other jurisdictions because you have done so well. In particular, I want to recognize Lieutenant Gausepohl who led the effort under your leadership. Thank you. That is really an outstanding performance. I also want to acknowledge your efforts on the grant, which I have done some grants, and they are a huge, huge effort. Thank you for all of that work. I have some questions. Just so that I can better understand the grant proposal, "first-responder" means what in this context of your grant? COUNCIL MEETING 12 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Ms. Perreira: It means our patrol at the patrol level; the lowest level of entry into our Police Department. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Your definition of "community oriented policing," how do you define it? Ms. Perreira: It is on one of the first slides. It is basically a combination of getting the community, taking old traditions of policing along with new aspects of policing, and combining that with prevention measures utilizing the community to our benefit and working together with the community helping to solve crime. Ms. Yukimura: I am a little confused about what your indicators will be for showing that you are preventing crime. I am also not clear about what the problem is. Is our crime rate going up? I did not see any of the statistics in that. Ms. Perreira: One of the things with the grant is that we had to specifically identify "a problem." There are tons of problems in our community that we could address, but we had to pick a specific problem. In our case, Kawaihau District is the largest residential and business district. They also have the highest burglary rate, both businesswise and residential. When I wrote and approached the grant, that is what I focused on because that is our highest area of concern and an easily identifiable target area. Ms. Yukimura: Do you have the burglary rates over the last five (5) years in the different districts? Ms. Perreira: I can tell you what I have in front of me. I do have it here. Over the past three (3) years from 2010-2012, the Kawaihau District alone reported six hundred fifty-five (655) residential burglaries and one hundred eighty-six (186) business related burglaries, which accounts for approximately sixty-five percent (65%) of burglaries across all three (3) districts. Across the island, Kawaihau District makes up sixty-five percent (65%) of that. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Ms. Perreira: The Kawaihau District also makes up seventy-six percent (76%) of all related thefts, so that is a high target area. Ms. Yukimura: Right. Ms. Perreira: In that same time, with those burglaries, approximately two million one hundred twenty-seven thousand dollars ($2,127,000) worth of items were reported as stolen. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. I would like to just stay on thefts and burglaries for a moment. Ms. Perreira: Sure. Ms. Yukimura: You said the burglaries are seventy percent (70%) or something like that. COUNCIL MEETING 13 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Ms. Perreira: For the Kawaihau District alone, they make up sixty-five percent (65%) of all burglaries. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. And seventy-six percent (76%) of thefts? Ms. Perreira: Yes, across the island. Ms. Yukimura: What is your goal with respect to this program? Will it be to lower the number and rate of burglaries and thefts in Kawaihau? Ms. Perreira: There are a couple of things. When you look at burglaries, burglaries are one of those crimes where you hope to catch them, but you might not. What we are trying to do is through education, with the different residents in the area, as well as along with businesses, educate them on how to maybe protect their property better, safeguard their homes better, and safeguard their businesses better when they are not there. Through education, we hope to possibly lower that number as well. Ms. Yukimura: How is this new grant, COPS, going to help with education? Ms. Perreira: Being able to put an officer in that area will do several things. One is allow for the calls for service to be distributed more evenly. Our officers will hopefully, with the hope of having more officers, be able to respond at a quicker rate. Also, work with the community through community programs which is what community policing is, work with the different communities to be able to identify what time of day they are happening more, what they are seeing out on the streets, being more aware of what they are observing in their own community, which in turn will help assist us. Ms. Yukimura: I understood that maybe it is problem oriented policing... what is it called? That is part of your community oriented policing... problem solving policing? Ms. Perreira: It is actually called "problem solving/problem oriented policing is what that is. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. If burglaries are a big problem, how are you problem solving with the community? Ms. Perreira: Through education on two (2) things. It is education of the community, as well as having them be more aware of what is in their community so they can assist us. You cannot look at it as one aspect; you have to take both. You have to look at problem solving and community oriented, and then put it together to help assist and solve crime. Ms. Yukimura: I understand that problem solving is Police working with the community to figure out what the problem and the solution is? Ms. Perreira: Identifying it, right. COUNCIL MEETING 14 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Ms. Yukimura: I am hearing that you have decided already that education is the way to solve the problem of burglaries. Ms. Perreira: It is not a way to solve it... Mr. Perry: May I interject just a little bit here as we continue on? Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Mr. Perry: Often times, the community forgets that the Police are not the ones that are going to solve the crime. When we do solve the crime and arrest the perpetrator, we have other elements within the criminal justice system that have to work in coordination with the Police. If any one of those factors breaks down, then we are right back where we started from. What I am trying to tell you is that community policing has to do with the community and problem solving, but we also have to reach out to the Judiciary, the Prosecutor's Office, and to corrections because we are all in it together. When we look at these numbers, people often ask, "What you are doing about it, Police?" We are arresting these individuals and they come to us and say, "You guys know who they are. Why do you not arrest them?" Because we have a certain thing called the "Bill of Rights" and the "Constitution" that we have to abide by. These numbers, while we are the ones that take the report, are skewed because we are not the only ones involved. Our goal is to reach out to the community and have them talk to their Judiciary, whoever it is in there, the politicians, and whoever else helps us to make the community safer. That is what this is all about. Ms. Yukimura: Chief, I hear what you are saying, that it takes a team to bring burglaries and thieves to full prosecution, which presumably will help to lower the burglary and theft rates. I am assuming that you and the Police Department work closely with the Prosecuting Attorney and the Judiciary to do that, and you could do that even now without the extra beat. All of these things that Officer Perreira is talking about— I am presuming that you are doing that right now on our beats and that you are getting some results that can show what works and what does not work. Mr. Perry: Well, we are doing the best that we can with what we have, but we expect to enhance this relationship. We expect to go out to have our officers have time to go out in the community because right now, we are going from case-to-case, to case-to-case. Unless we have Rod Green out there— he is covering the whole island. This new position will allow us to do that and spend more time with the community, look at whatever problems they have, and dialogue with them on a one-to-one basis. That is what our expectations are. As it is today, the numbers show that we are down. We have always been down and it has become a norm this County that you operate with what you got. I understand the fiscal constraints, but that has become the norm. In other jurisdictions, that is not acceptable. It really is not. Those new officers will be specifically assigned to reduce crime and create a safer environment for our community. The overall goal is to reduce the burglaries and the thefts, but there is no guarantee in that. The reason why I say that is because we are not the only ones involved in the prosecution of these individuals. That is why I say that. These numbers may not go down, but we will be out there doing the best job we can because we have the Judiciary, the Prosecutors, and the corrections also involved with this. We are only one element of this whole process. COUNCIL MEETING 15 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Ms. Perreira: Again, if I could just kind of go back to the goal of why we were awarded the grant and why we scored so highly on the grant. I believe we did that because we were able to identify what we are already doing in our community on community policing. Having the new beat only enhances that goal of community oriented policing. The requirement of the grant is basically what I talked about in our project evaluation. That is what they want to see happen. There was no specific number that we had to give them in terms of how we are going to reduce it. What we are saying is, "Yes. Overall, we want to see those reductions." But in order to see those reductions, we want to make sure that we provide education in our community on how they can assist us and work with our community to reduce that. Again, like I said, we do not know for sure if it is going to go down, but... Ms. Yukimura: Well, I am hearing one thing that it is education. I am hearing the Chief say that it is a lack of working together among the enforcement agencies. If that is the case... Mr. Perry: No. Ms. Yukimura: Am I hearing correctly? Mr. Perry: No, it is all encompassed in our objectives. It is all together. We do not divide one or the other. Ms. Perreira: I am also speaking on the grant. When I speak, I am specially speaking on what the grant is requiring. Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, one speaker at a time. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Chair Furfaro: Councilmember, do you want to get clarification to the statement that you just made to the Chief? Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, yes. Chair Furfaro: Chief, I want you to respond to the Councilmember on clarification on this goal and mission. Mr. Perry: Will do. It is all encompassed. That is my answer. Ms. Yukimura: Chief, when we give out money to any Department, not the Police Department, and the Department says "we are going to do this and this is how we are going to do it because we have analyzed what the problems are and how we are going to reach our goal." We give the money with the expectation that the goal will be reached. We also ask questions about how they plan to do it based on past experience, based on analyses, and so forth. We expect a really concerted action to reach one's goals. I am trying to be clear on what the goals are. If the goals are to reduce burglaries... I am even thinking of the former Prosecuting Attorney who would set goals like that to reduce crime or burglaries by ten percent (10%) in next five (5) years. That is what I think we want to see from all Departments, and a commitment to reach that goal. I am not clear about what COUNCIL MEETING 16 DECEMBER 4, 2013 the goal is with respect to reducing burglaries and thefts in Kawaihau. Excuse me if I am not listening correctly or anything like that. I guess I am looking for a clear goal and a commitment to the goal. Ms. Perreira: Our goal, based on what was written in the grant, is what we presented. That is our goals and objectives. Ms. Yukimura: I know, but it says "to increase the number of first-responders to allow more even distribution of caseload among officers, while promoting community policing strategies aimed at preventing, solving, and controlling crime." That tells us what you are going to do in terms of the organization of the Police force; it does not tell you what results are going to happen in the community like lower burglaries, et cetera. An objective, to increase the number of sworn first-responders by five percent (5%)— again, that tells us your operations goals, but does not tell us your outcome goal. You are going to "reduce burglaries or reduce juvenile delinquency." That is kind of what we want to know. What is going to be the outcome for the community? r guess that is the kind of indicators that I am looking for. I think you have in mind that you are going to achieve those, but they are not articulated here. It would be helpful if you would articulate them. Mr. Contrades: If I may? Ms. Yukimura: Sure. Mr. Contrades: Our objective is to reduce the burglaries. There is not a percentage because that is difficult to do. I could tell you ten percent (10%), but we may or may not reach that goal. There are a lot of things that occur whether burglaries happen or not like police presence, officers solving cases, detectives solving cases, individuals being prosecuted, individuals being released from prison, and a lot of those things are beyond our control. Part of the reason why we are asking for this grant is because based on those statistics provided, obviously, there is a serious problem within the Kawaihau District in terms of crime. There have been two (2) officers working in that area since 1989, and probably before. We cannot continue to operate this way. We need to have additional officers. Each of the officers, depending upon the day, take "x amount" of cases. What we are hoping to do is distribute those cases more evenly, instead of amongst two (2) officers, we would have three (3) officers. Doing that would give them more time to interact with the community. When I worked on the north shore as a commander, one of the projects that we did, because we had the time, is that we went to the businesses, talked to them, and asked them, "How are things going? What problems do you have? Is there anything that we can do to help you?" It was a very, very productive method of one; getting to know the people that we serve, and two, trying to deal with whatever issues that they have. There is absolutely no way we can do that in the Kawaihau District right now because it is a matter of, as the Chief mentioned, going from case to case to case all day long. You take a case, you need to write the report. Some days officers will go from a traffic collision, to a burglary, to another burglary, to a series of thefts, and the only interaction that they are getting is with the poor victim that they are trying to help. We want to be more proactive, but in order for us to be more proactive with the community, we need the time to do so. With only two (2) officers within that district, they do not have the time to do it. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you for that explanation. I have not been able to really do all of the research I probably should do, but from what I COUNCIL MEETING 17 DECEMBER 4, 2013 understand of community oriented policing, and Officer Perreira mentioned about targeting... maybe it is about instead of having the people drive around in the districts during their work, targeting areas that are of concern, so that using existing personnel but using it more effectively; which I heard in other communities that is getting out, walking, but being close to a car in case you need to go. That kind of effort, I am reading, is one way to use existing personnel more effectively. Mr. Contrades: Again, when you have only two (2) officers and they are being called all day long to different calls, you do not have much time to do that. That is why we need the extra personnel. Presently, that is how we have been conducting police operations, which when we identify a hotspot, we try to put our resources towards that. Quite honestly, it is very rare that the officers get to patrol anymore. When I started back in 1994, there was a lot of time to patrol and do enforcement, but today it is not like that. They do not have time to patrol and they do not have as much time to do enforcement. What we are trying to do is get to the point where they have more time, they are not all being called to different calls all day long, and we can utilize those resources to deal with those issues. Ms. Yukimura: Is it not true that in some districts, you are able to actually do more community oriented policing? Mr. Contrades: Absolutely. Like I said, when I was in Hanalei, we tried to do a little more of that than normally would. Ms. Yukimura: I know. Your service was extraordinary, I must say. Mr. Contrades: Thank you. The busy districts like Kawaihau do not have that time and that opportunity, and that is what we want to give them, which is that time and that opportunity. Ms. Yukimura: It is not a matter of assigning or changing the beats, so that the people in the less intense districts can do that work? Mr. Contrades: That is an argument that has been made over the years. On face value, it sounds like it would be a simple answer and something that is easy to do, but when you are a beat officer who is working out in Waimea and your nearest person to help you assist is in Kalaheo, and you end up getting into an altercation, that ten (10) to fifteen (15) minutes that it takes for them to get there seems like a lifetime. It is not just about distribution of workload, but it is also an officer safety thing because you are talking about geography and distance in which you have a response time for assistance. While it would seem that the answer would be to take people away from the outer beats who are not as busy, that leaves officers vulnerable. The response time to go and assist them would be tremendous. That is why we are having difficulty doing that and we want to expand the beats instead of contracting them and bringing them into the busy areas. Chair Furfaro: On that note, may I ask the Councilmember if she would yield the floor to other members. Ms. Yukimura: Yes. COUNCIL MEETING 18 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Chair Furfaro: I believe Mr. Hooser and Mr. Rapozo have questions. Thank you, Councilmember. Mr. Hooser, you have the floor. Mr. Hooser: Thank you all for being here. Thank you to the officers for being here today, too, to support this important initiative. Health and safety are obviously the core function of what we do here, so I appreciate the work that you do and I understand how much work goes into identifying and writing and doing all of the work necessary to achieve the grant, so I applaud you for that. I do have some questions. One is specific to the numbers here, but I did not see a line item for "overtime." Is that included or is that missing? Mr. Contrades: Overtime is not included. Mr. Hooser: Okay. It is expected that none of these officers would get overtime? Mr. Contrades: It is hard to gage how much overtime because it depends on circumstances. I may get a call from an officer at the end of their shift, and I am not able to ask somebody else to take it because I am involved in the case. That may result in overtime, so it is difficult to say that each officer should have "x amount" of overtime. Some days you do it and some days you do not. Mr. Hooser: If you averaged out overtime among officers, what would that number be? Mr. Contrades: That is something that I would have to get calculated for you. Mr. Hooser: I think historically, that is a significant number in the budget. I think we need to work with real numbers that are as solid as we can get. As you know, this asks the County right now to pay eight hundred thousand dollars ($800,000) a year in year three (3), four (4), and forever after that. As you also know because you were here for last year's budget, we were asked to raise, I believe, every single tax and fee that we could possibly do just to balance the budget. I think we expect to have a similar situation moving forward, so it would be important to have accurate numbers. I do not know if you can do that today to give me an estimate of the overtime or round numbers. Mr. Contrades: One thing I would like everyone to consider though is that when you have a more even distribution of work, report writing over time should go down. One officer is not taking the bulk of cases or two (2) officers, so being able to spread that across three (3) officers instead of two (2) should help with a reduction. I know overtime is always a concern and we have been doing everything that we can to minimize it. With the inclusion of the new officers who have actually become beneficial in the sense that they are out on the road now, our canceled days off having greatly reduced. We are doing everything that we can to minimize that overtime. Mr. Hooser: I appreciate that. I do believe it should be a line item though. I think it is an expense that the County is going to have to pay. Whether it is five percent (5%) more than average or five percent (5%) less than average, or whatever that number is, I believe that a tangible number should be budgeted for that in order for the County to anticipate with future COPS. Are you standing up to speak? Chair, should we hear from the Finance Director? COUNCIL MEETING 19 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Chair Furfaro: I was hoping to hear from the Finance Director towards the end. I think I had a side conference with him because we are going to have some financial questions altogether. If you would like the time now for these specifics, I will give you the time, but please know, Steve, that does not cancel my comments to you that I want to hear from you at the end. Go ahead Mr. Hooser, you have the floor. Mr. Hooser: I guess if you could address the overtime budget question in general. Since you are here, I am assuming that the Kaua`i Police Department has consulted with the Mayor and the Administration, and the Administration has a position on this with regards to the budget like how we are going to pay for it and what those costs will be. May you speak to that? STEVEN A. HUNT, Director of Finance: Thank you. Steve Hunt, Director of Finance for the record. Overtime is treated as a single line item for the Police budget. It is not on new positions. Our discussions regarding overtime was that this is an investment. Certainly, you do not see overtime savings on the front end because there are a lot of field training officer time that goes in and overtime to get these new officers up to pace. But I think on the back end, you will begin to see those savings in overtime. Those are the discussions that we have had with the Police Department in terms of this position. It is a requirement to keep this for four (4) years. Naturally, I think the intent is to keep it longer, but to me, it is a pilot beat to see how this goes. If there are measurable results that potentially we see and reduction in crime as an investment, there could be return on investment (ROI) as well. Property values for those areas that are being serviced, especially commercial, that is subject to burglaries— some of the private residences in higher ends could actually see property values increase with a greater police presence. Again, it is to be measured, but it is something that I think we are willing to invest in, and that is the Administration's position on that. Mr. Hooser: I want to ask a specific question. In terms of the cost to the County in additional overtime that is not now budgeted for four (4) years, that would be relative to the seven (7) new positions, as well as any accrued overtime to train those. What would that number be in the year-to-year for the purposes of getting an accurate accounting of what this will cost the County? Mr. Hunt: I believe the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget, the current budget, is the one that will likely need to be adjusted for overtime. Going forward, it is my hope that through the budgeting process for Fiscal Year 15, we do not see any escalation and that overtime line item will be absorbed by these additional officers coming into the force and providing that coverage that they can live within their existing overtime budget, which I believe was is one million eight hundred thousand dollars ($1,800,000) for this year. The prior year for Fiscal Year 2013, I believe, was closer to two million three hundred thousand dollars ($2,300,000). Mr. Hooser: In terms of taking one million eight hundred thousand dollars ($1,800,000) divided by the number of officers, taking an average per officer and adding "x number" of new officers; you do not anticipate overtime... Mr. Hunt: I think there is going to be less overtime for those officers that are currently receiving overtime, and that overtime will be spread out more evenly as well. COUNCIL MEETING 20 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Chair Furfaro: Mr. Hooser, I want to remind you that I do plan to have him come back if you want to broaden the questions. Mr. Hooser: It probably relates to what the... Chair Furfaro: Go right ahead then. Mr. Hooser: I hate to be duplicate of the whole thing, but I believe there are only three (3) ways to pay for this. One is through existing funds through the Police Department, trimming other areas and moving money around to move it forward. The other is to do similar to the County as a whole; going into existing services, rearranging priorities, cutting services as needed; and the third would be raising property taxes. What does the Administration envision how we are going to fund the eight hundred thousand dollars ($800,000) a year and the six hundred thousand dollars ($600,000) for the second year? Mr. Hunt: Because that is forecast out fairly far, I really cannot speak to that at this point. Property taxes by themselves will be raised because we are seeing new construction and we are seeing property values rise. There are some potential major projects like Safeway, `Ghana o Hanalei, and things that may come online during those periods that may add to the tax base. Without increasing the rates, there may be additional property tax revenues to the County. Again, those are fiscal years that are yet to come. I cannot really predict that at this point. I would think that would likely be the largest source of funding, which is going to be coming from Real Property Taxes in some venue. Mr. Hooser: In the second year, there is six hundred dollars ($600,000)... Mr. Hunt: In Fiscal Year 2016, correct. Mr. Hooser: The Administration envisions paying for this through revenues from property taxes? Mr. Hunt: Yes. I believe that would be the primary source. I do not know... once we have the officers in, there could possibly be even further reduction in overtime that could pay for a portion of that. It has yet to be seen. Mr. Hooser: Thank you. I would like to ask the Police Chief a couple of follow-ups. Chair Furfaro: Go right ahead. Steve, do not plan to leave. You still have the floor, Mr. Hooser. Mr. Hooser: Thank you. I would like to ask a brief follow-up question on Councilmember Yukimura's questions which are very valid questions. I would think as a layperson, and I understand adding new people and new resources distributes the working load and makes it easier and more efficient, but what I would hope to see is a line on the graph saying "this is crime in the Kawaihau District and we add six (6) or seven (7) officers, eight hundred thousand dollars ($800,000) a year," and that line on the graph changes. "We are spending money, and the benefit from spending that money is a reduction in crime." I think COUNCIL MEETING 21 DECEMBER 4, 2013 that is what the budget process calls for. If any Department is asking for more money for something, then what will get out of it besides just a happier workforce or less stressful work— I understand that those are important values also. I really do, and that is why I voted in support of the raises, and I have always been very supportive. At the same time, to see a tangible... if in fact we have a problem, which I believe we do, then that problem would be represented by numbers. If we spend "x amount" of dollars, then that problem would be better, and that is not what I am really getting from the presentation. I get a lot of other things. I understand that there are other parties involved like the Judiciary, the Prosecutor, and everybody else. At same time, this is a significant amount of money that will likely go forever. It would be nice to know that there was a goal. I understand the danger of setting goals that maybe it will not happen, but I believe that goal-setting is important and it forces you to look at it. "It is going to reduce crime in the Kawaihau District by twenty percent (20%), how we are going to measure that, and whatever that percentage is." May you address that, Chief? Mr. Perry: Okay. Thank you. As you know, it is very, very difficult to— we can set goals and I can give you a number like fifteen percent (15%)... "We are going to reduce burglaries by fifteen percent (15%) and thefts by twenty percent (20%) with the implementation of these officers, and here is how we are going to do it." The reality is that it may or may not happen. Every year, I set goals. For example, for this year, I set zero (0) fatalities on the road. That was my goal. We went out and gave a whole bunch of tickets and arrested people driving under the influence. Did I reach my goal? No, I did not. Today, last night, we had our seventh fatality. Based on those numbers, you would say, "You have not reached your goal. Let us take your officers off the streets. We do not need them because you are not reaching your goal." With respect to the Kawaihau District, let us get back to the question at-hand. I can go ahead and give you a number... I can give you a number right here. We can add that into our presentation if that would satisfy you. Whether it will be realistic or not, I do not know, but I can give you a number. It is not a defeatist attitude, but it is a reality check on the way things are today. With respect to taking into consideration the amount of officers that we have and additional officers working in conjunction with the Prosecutor's, the Judiciary, the corrections, and all of the social agencies that are involved in reducing the crime; I can give you a number right now of ten percent (10%) for burglaries and fifteen percent (15%) for thefts. We will put that number in our report. Mr. Hooser: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Before I recognize Mr. Rapozo, and I will get to this later with the Finance Director, but I want to make sure we understand that there are goals and then there are measurable goals. I want to make sure that when we come to budget and we are looking at "goals," we are talking in terms of measurable goals that we can periodically do a cross-check. Thank you, Chief. I just wanted to add "measurable goals." Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you Chief and all of you for being here today. I am a little confused. Is this a crime reduction grant or is this a community oriented policing grant? Mr. Perry: It is community oriented policing. Mr. Rapozo: That is what I read. I am not sure if I have something different from the rest of them because this is what I have: "list your COUNCIL MEETING 22 DECEMBER 4, 2013 goals, lists your objectives, and lists..." It is a very finely written report by the way, so I am not sure if the other members got it. They also have a project evaluation slide, which talks about how you are going to measure what you said you were going to do, as it relates to community oriented policing, not crime reduction. I am not sure where that got inserted here and all of a sudden we are talking about burglaries and thefts. We are talking about creating a new beat and enhancing your community oriented policing. Am I reading that correctly? Is crime reduction a byproduct of a good community oriented policing program? Mr. Contrades: Absolutely. Mr. Perry: Yes, it is. Mr. Rapozo: That is something that we would expect to see if we are running this community oriented policing properly. Correct? Ms. Perreira: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: I have to frame these as questions because that is the rule. I will have time for my comments later, which will not be pretty. I am assuming that you are going to monitor overtime throughout this project? Mr. Perry: Yes, we are. Mr. Rapozo: Is reduction in crime a measurable? Yes, of course. Property values— I heard this earlier... property values. What I did not hear was officer safety. An extra beat—is that what you are proposing? Mr. Perry: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: One more human body out there; not a computer, a computer program; not a consultant; and not a study, but a human that can go out and assist the public. That is what this is about, correct? Mr. Perry: A trained officer. Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Perry: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: I am hearing a lot of... I do not know what I am hearing. It is like objections. Yet, since 1989, there was no increase in beats and we are still operating? These are questions, so you have to answer "yes" or "no." Mr. Perry: Yes. Ms. Perreira: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: We are still operating with ten (10) officers and three (3) supervisors on the island of Kaua`i serving sixty thousand (60,000) people plus the tourists population of eighty thousand (80,000) people. Now we are up to eighty thousand (80,000) to ninety thousand (90,000) a day. COUNCIL MEETING 23 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Perry: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: Thirteen (13) officers; ten (10) plus three (3). Mr. Perry: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: The numbers that we have seen about overtime because it has been a huge problem with Kaua`i Police, but were the historical numbers not based on fifteen (15) to twenty (20) vacancies? Mr. Perry: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: It is not accurate to even look at those numbers going forward because you pretty much have full Staff? Mr. Perry: With the inclusion of our latest recruit class, and Stacy has the numbers there, we have shown reduction in our callbacks and overtime. We do not have the overtime numbers, the money value, but we have the number of days that were canceled that showed a huge reduction. Mr. Rapozo: If you have that available, what was the reduction? A percentage is fine. An actual number is fine. I do not need to know a dollar amount. Anybody can understand that cops get paid "x amount" of dollars. Every day that they are not being cancelled off is a huge savings to this County. What was the reduction in overtime in cancelled days off? Let us just use the canceled days off. Mr. Contrades: In terms of canceled days off, and that occurs for many reasons like vacancies and vacations that we have to account for, people who are injured, personal illnesses, and the like; in September, we had two hundred thirty-two (232) cancelled days off. Mr. Rapozo: I am sorry. In September, you had two hundred thirty-two (232)? Mr. Contrades: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Mr. Contrades: In October, two hundred thirty-eight (238); in November, one hundred eighteen (118); and projected in December is sixty-one (61). The reason is that the new officers who have been trained and done with their field training are now out on the beat taking care of the community. Mr. Rapozo: That is one-fourth (1/4) of what it was in September. Chief, you and your team should be commended because that is the numbers we have to look at. The fact that since you guys have been fully staffed, the number of canceled days off... you are at one-fourth (1/4) of what it was when you had all of those vacancies. I think that is vital for this body to think about. This is like commonsense. You do not need a study. If you get more people filling in the slots, is it not true that your overtime will be reduced dramatically? Mr. Contrades: Yes. COUNCIL MEETING 24 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Rapozo: So I think what Mr. Hunt said earlier, that as we move forward and maybe you guys can figure this out, and I do not need it today because this needs to move forward today, in my opinion. Maybe you can prepare what would be the anticipated savings. You just take two hundred thirty-two (232) canceled days off and you subtract sixty-one (61), that creates a financial savings to this County. That is going to exponentially grow as we move forward. That is just the way it works. That will create a figure of savings for KPD that I would be interested in getting because all of these moneys will have to be used to backfill the future costs of this program. Mr. Perry: Okay. What we can do too is get the amount of savings we have saved the County in the other grants that we have used for our officers. There is an overall savings, not only with respect to this, but the other grants that we have acquired. Mr. Rapozo: Chief, I would expect that as you in your budget discussions with your team that savings from other areas that you created would be moved to fund these positions. I think that is expected of us from you. I am hoping that that is your mindset, that, in fact, KPD is going to try to fund— Mr. Hooser talked about the various ways that we can fund this... three (3) ways; one of them is existing funding. It will take some creative work on your part to move available funding into this program, so that KPD will be used primarily, and then whatever needs to be supplemented would be done through the General Fund or other sources of revenue. Mr. Perry: Yes, those discussions are already underway. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Before I give the floor to Mr. Kagawa, Chief, thank you and the comments you made on the callback numbers. Those are what I referred to as the "measurable" variances and you are to be commented. Please make sure that we have those key statistics in your budget report. Mr. Kagawa: I agree with Councilmember Rapozo. I think you did an excellent report and application. If you did not do one, then we would not have gotten it. Great job. I know money is tight at the Federal level, but I think the Department of Justice can see as well that when we reduce crime, it is better for everyone. Thank you for that. Although I am going to approve it because I have strong support, I just wanted to get some clarification for myself, as well as the public. I am looking at the grant, the fiscal sheet, and it says, "subtotal for six officers," so we are adding six (6). Then I see in this presentation that you have for seven (7). Ms. Perreira: The seven (7) was what was written in the grant. That is what we asked for as part of the grant and they approved six (6) out seven (7), so they are funding six (6) of seven (7) positions. Mr. Kagawa: Okay. To get some clarification, we are basically adding another beat between Lydgate to Anahola? Ms. Perreira: Yes. Mr. Kagawa: There are two (2) of ten (10)? COUNCIL MEETING 25 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Ms. Perreira: Yes. Mr. Kagawa: We are adding one (1) of six (6), I guess? Ms. Perreira: Yes. Well, the six (6) officers— maybe you could go into what that entails. Mr. Contrades: Based on our scheduling and based upon the fact that officers need days off, vacation, and the rest; in order to create a beat, the number that you need was, I believe, six point five (6.5) so that is why we asked for seven (7). We believe we can still do it with the six (6). That is what it takes because it is not all six (6) will be working just in that beat itself. People will be rotating in and out of it, but six (6) is the number you need to create a new beat. Mr. Kagawa: Okay. Ms. Perreira: I want to also make sure we understand that when we talk about these six (6) officers, in a given shift, we are only adding one (1) officer. It is not like all six (6) are coming on all at one time, just one (1). We go from ten (10) to eleven (11). I thought that was a big thing the last time we came. Mr. Kagawa: I saw in one of the highlights that instead of having two (2) officers cover a certain area, there will now be three (3). Ms. Perreira: On any given shift. Mr. Kagawa: That already gives our largest residential and commercial community an extra person, so it is tremendous. It is a thirty-three percent (33%) increase in that area so it is just great. My final question is, we had the support of the businesses and Deja Vu send it... but is the crime rate really bad in that business district or they are just sending in support because they feel it will be extra safe, I guess? Ms. Perreira: It is hard to tell you off the top of my head where it exactly happens, but the Kawaihau District in itself makes up for majority of both thefts and burglaries, and that encompasses from the ocean to the mountains. Mr. Kagawa: Okay. About six (6) months ago, I was watching the news and I saw that the Kailua community had this big gathering with the police. I guess they were having a spike in crimes there. I just thought, "Thank God that we are not at that point on Kaua`i." You guys really have things pretty much under control. I do not think we come up as often on the news with these crime things. I think that, in itself, makes us more attractive than the other islands for visitors and everything, which is our main industry. I want to thank you for your work. I am in full support. If I go seven hundred fifty thousand dollars ($750,000) and you guys are basically figuring about one hundred thousand (100,000) per with everything added in, it gives us almost over the next four (4) years, two (2) officers or one and a half officers (1.5) for free, which is a tremendous deal that we see in no other Departments. I want to thank you guys for this grant. I am in full support. I think our largest community has asked for it. They are supportive of it. I think we owe it to our taxpayers to do our best to keep them safe. Thank you. COUNCIL MEETING 26 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Perry: Thank you. Mr. Rapozo: I just have a clarification question. Regarding that seventh man or woman, seventh officer and the six point five (6.5); I think one of the concerns that I am thinking right now is that should you run into an issue where that beat becomes short, does that create a new overtime problem or do you run with the short beat? I think those are the things that I would ask that you consider as you submit your overtime numbers. Is there an opportunity or a possibility that that would be... because if you constantly run short in that beat and you are filling it up with a guy on the day off, then you are defeating the purpose of the grant. I would ask that you seriously consider a policy that that is the extra beat and should they... you are probably surprised hearing that from me, but because of the financial ramifications and the fact that I really do not want to see us create the extra beat only to create more overtime expenses for the County. Mr. Perry: Those discussions are underway and the Deputy and I and others have discussed whether or not to fill the beat if somebody calls in sick or we are unable to have an officer there. Right now, the preliminary decision was not to fill the beat and to wait until the officer comes back and we are able to have him in there. In the meantime, the project itself will have... because it is a community oriented policing grant, we can have our Community Sergeant step in and assist in that matter. That is exactly what we did not want to do, which is incurring more overtime, but we will have to work with SHOPO on that. Mr. Rapozo: Obviously, Chief, every circumstance is different. It is unique and it is case-by-case. You would make that final call, obviously. In the evening shifts, I think you should have it filled, even if it does incur some overtime. I think for me, obviously, the crime reduction is critical and important. I think it was Ross's question about the crime rate, but it is getting worse. I think we know that if you talk to the community in Kapa`a. They are afraid. They are not locking their shops at night, going home comfortable that it is not going to be broken into and that is not where we want to be. In circumstances like that, I think it is important because of officer's safety as well. We put that even above the crime reduction. Mr. Perry: The chances of not filling the beat because of shortages are, today with the resources that we have and new officers that we have, will be very slim, very slim. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chock. Mr. Chock: I just wanted to congratulate you for all the hard work you folks did on this grant. I know how difficult it is. I have been writing grants for a while and from a nonprofit perspective, it is often chasing money to start something that you cannot finish or sustain. That is really what we are talking about here. I think just for clarification on the direction of the discussion earlier about goals versus objectives, I think broadly projected outcomes is really something that we can start to envision together about what we can see specifically. So that aside, I am fully supportive of the need. I do not need statistics to know that we need this. I was wondering if there was any clarification of the details of the grant in terms of how we might creatively restructure it if COUNCIL MEETING 27 DECEMBER 4, 2013 necessary. I know how these grants typically work, but there is always a chance that we default on these things. I am very scared when I look at what the future is holding for our budget hearings and where we have to go with the budget. If there is anymore that you can offer, I think that what we need to start think about is being proactive on how be to be creative. That is only going to happen by us collaborating more. If there are more about those details, I would love to hear that. Mr. Perry: I just wanted to mention— and I made some notes here, but when I was with the Honolulu Police Department, we created a mission statement, and then we went into what we described as "measurable outcomes," as the Chair had mentioned. It is not just measurable outcomes in a vacuum. I personally use the formula. You have your mission station, your vision, and our objectives and strategic plan to get the measurable outcomes. What we did is we have our outcomes of what we want to do based on what the criteria is, and that is exactly what we did with the criteria for this grant. You have to combine the mission statement, the vision, and the objectives to get your measurable outcomes but we always start with the measurable outcome, and then we work this way. "Does it fit into the measurable outcome?" This Department does have an understanding of what measurable outcomes are all about, and that is how we base our operations and do things. I just wanted to make that clear. Ms. Perreira: I did want to comment real quickly on what you were talking about the grant specifically. A portion of the grant was identifying what we do currently. When I started writing the grant, a lot of larger police departments have community policing down to a science. When I did my research on what we do versus what other departments do, I started seeing that we do all of these things. We just do not have a specific name that we have identified. In order to write the grant, I had to start doing that and say, "This is how we are doing it. This is the names that other departments are utilizing." A big portion of that is when we look at our strategic plan and combining what community oriented policing are, there are all of these areas that we had to touch upon. For example, the community partnerships that we have, the problem oriented; what it is and how we approach it, as well as crime prevention, geographical responsibility for the grant, proactive problem solving, and combined community response; how we expect the community to respond with us in terms of the grant, as well as emphasizing analyses. All of that is in the grant and what I was required to put as part of the grant. A big part, as well as training is that this is what we provided to them. They said, "Yes. We identified that you are doing these things." They expect that of course these things are worked on and are being utilized every day. One of the things that the grant people did say was, "We cannot alter these things. This is what you said you do, so you cannot alter them." Although they say, "Yes, go ahead and enhance them," that is what we plan on doing. All of these different subcategories of what community oriented policing are; we will have to report back. I believe that is a measurable outcome in terms of how many meetings we attend, what we do with the community, how we are interacting with the community, and focusing on community oriented policing. I wanted to make sure I answered that in terms of what the grant does. Chair Furfaro: Chief, I am going to hold my questions because I am going to ask for two (2) of the Commissioners to join you when it is time for my questions. I am going to go around the table a second time for members with questions right now. COUNCIL MEETING 28 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. What about cars? Are additional cars going to be needed if you have an additional beat? If so, should the expenses not be included in the budget? Mr. Contrades: From speaking with the Patrol Commander, there would not be a need at this time for additional cars. Ms. Yukimura: How will that work? Mr. Contrades: Based on the fleet that they have, the cars are rotated. Not everybody gets a take-home car or is assigned a car personally. If they have to share cars to make that happen, then that is what they will do. Ms. Yukimura: I guess the difference between a "take-home" car and a car that move from shift to shift... you are planning having a car move from shift to shift? Mr. Contrades: Yes. Ms. Yukimura: That is what the plan is? Mr. Contrades: Yes. Ms. Yukimura: I know there is a lot of talk about measurable outcomes, so what exactly are your measurable outcomes for this grant? Ms. Perreira: For the grant, our measurable outcomes, which what the grant asked for— I know you are asking for something different and you want numbers to go along with crime statistics, but what the grant requested, what we were approved for, and what we got the grant for was what our project evaluation is and how we will evaluate it. That is what we will be answering to the grant for. Ms. Yukimura: Where is that in your application? Ms. Perreira: In last page, there is a portion that says "Project Evaluation." That was the one (1) through four (4) that we had on the slide; increasing the number of sworn personnel by five percent (5%) or in this case, six (6) officers. That is our measurable goal. "Establish one geographical beat. Enhance community policing efforts." Ms. Yukimura: Okay, I understand what you are saying. Ms. Perreira: Those are specific to this grant. Ms. Yukimura: I guess this is a question for the Chief. Right now, we are just talking about six (6) patrol-level officers, but your goal is to ultimately get to a full beat with a Sergeant and a Captain. Is that right? Mr. Contrades: Through the grant and the six (6) positions, the initial goal is to create a beat. They will be supervised by a current supervisor, and more than likely, the supervisor that works out in Hanalei. But our overall long-term goal, and I do not know how long that will be, is to create our own district in that area with a commander, three (3) sergeants, and enough Staff to deal with COUNCIL MEETING 29 DECEMBER 4, 2013 the entire district. For now, we are just asking for the six (6) officers to create an additional beat. The supervisor will be a current supervisor. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. You mentioned a lot of your programs like KPAL, DARE, your Citizens Police Academy, and so forth. How do you measure the effectiveness of those programs? Mr. Perry: Could you clarify on each of those programs? Ms. Yukimura: It is related to achieving goals. Mr. Perry: For example for KPAL, what measurables are you looking at? Chair Furfaro: I am going interrupt here for a second. I am going to allow the question, but I am going to remind members the agenda item is the grant. If you have police goals, missions, and measurable objectives, I will give a little leeway, but I want you to reserve those for budget time. Thank you Chief. You got the floor to answer Councilwoman Yukimura. Mr. Perry: Could you clarify that please? Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, Chair, for the reminder. If I can explain, you will see that it is related. Whenever there is very little money, which is the situation we are in— I think our Finance Director said we are going to start our next fiscal year budgeting at minus ten million dollars ($10,000,000). If we commit to certain programs, that means we are going to either have to cut other programs or raise taxes. Especially when we are in those situations, we look at the return on investment that for every dollar expend, what is the return on investment in terms of producing results that you want for the community like reducing crime, et cetera? When your goal and your mission is to create a safe community that is low in crime where people are in partnership with the community and where our young people are growing up, strong and capable of resisting crime, drugs, and those kinds of attractions; then you want to know that every dollar you spend is achieving that. You want to spend it on the most effective programs rather than the less effective ones. That creates an organization, whether it is a department or a county, that constantly evaluates. If they are not reaching their goals and say, "How can we reach the goal? What will get us to that goal?" That is the power of a goal and it really makes you do everything possible to achieve it, and to discard the things that are not really moving you towards the goal. That means that you evaluate all of your programs for whether they are getting you toward your goal or not. My question is how do you evaluate the effectiveness of your different programs? Mr. Perry: Could you ask me which programs you are talking about? You want me to give you a general statement? Ms. Yukimura: Well... Mr. Rapozo: Point of order, Mr. Chair. We are on the grant like you said. She is going into programs of the Department which is not on the grant. Chair Furfaro: Chief, I have decided that we are within three (3) minutes of a caption break. It might be a good time for us to take a caption COUNCIL MEETING 30 DECEMBER 4, 2013 break now. I want to make sure that if your response to the Councilmember is that you can address those in the overall budget plan, I would suggest we do that. If there is anything that you would like to touch base with her at this point when we get back and touch on the grant, I will go ahead and allow it. Let us take the caption break to think clearly through this question and answer period. Save budget questions for budget time. I am going to take the ten (10) minute caption break now. There being no objections, the meeting recessed at 11:03 a.m. The meeting reconvened at 11:14 a.m., and proceeded as follows: Chair Furfaro: At the request of members in the audience who are on time limits, I will take a break to take public testimony. Mr. Watanabe: The people who want to give public testimony are Robin Danner, followed by Lorraine Rapozo. ROBIN DANNER: Aloha and good morning. For the record, my name is Robin Danner. You are looking at Kawaihau District. I appreciate the Chair for allowing me to testify. This is my very first Council Meeting, and I have to say that it is far more frustrating in person than watching you on television. I thank you for allowing me to testify, as we have to work, but also given sixty-five percent (65%), I am probably being robbed right now, more likely than any of you. What I want to say to you is that this is a "no-brainer." If there are Councilmembers that want a different grant with a different goal, that is a different process. This grant— and what was been really frustrating sitting in the audience and listening to this conversation, we are talking about funding. Where is the conversation of all of the funding that was saved by this Council over the last thirty (30) years when the Police Department was failing to fill thirty (30) positions? Did you leave the money aside and wait? My district has been suffering that failure for thirty (30) years, and now you want me to suffer more failure because the County Council did not plan ahead? You want to treat my community like a scientific petri dish. We are people. It is humanity. Sixty-five percent (65%)— do you hear that? This grant is on the money. We are way behind the national curve on community policing. It works. Our Police Department has all of the components of policing. Your conversation— this goal is not about cops. It is not about your budget. It is about this. It is about the children of Anahola, that are being tortured and it is about the parents and the adults in Anahola that are ready. We are ready and willing to participate fully in community policing. Those two (2) things... those two (2) stars have lined up. That was not always true. We had a community that felt like, "Save us. Save us County. Save us cops. Stop bad things from happening to us." We are not there anymore. We have evolved and we have moved forward. We are with a Police Department that because they had one (1) officer who had the time to come and talk to us and explain the reality. We finally realized that we are the people who are going to save us. We are the people who are going to reduce crime rate. We are. My examples to you, Mr. Chair, of our readiness for this to happen now in the last ten (10) years, we have built a school in our district without a dime of your money. We have built a marketplace. Chair Furfaro: Your first three (3) minutes are up. You have another three (3) minutes. COUNCIL MEETING 31 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Ms. Danner: We have built a café and a community kitchen. We are on the way to creating jobs, which has everything to do with crime. We are in the process of implementing anti-drug and anti-crime by the community. We have implemented the first neighborhood watch. We did not know that is what was called because we called it "evening stewardship." We have just recently developed an eight (8) acre youth and cultural campground in the second highest area of drug trafficking on this island. We did that. It is the perfect opportunity to match what we are doing with what the Chief and our police officers are about to do. Do not study me anymore. Do not study my children anymore. Do not put on the burden of my community anymore, your burden of leadership which is to figure out how to fund the perhaps most important thing happening today, which is not criminal jailment. The most important thing happening at the Kaua`i Police Department is community policing and bringing us to the table. They have got to be there. We are so supportive of this. Our community association will today commit and give this County and Police Chief free, no-cost space for a substation in Anahola on our property in our facilities because we believe it so much. I want my children to say, "Hello Officer Green." I do not want my children to be fearful. I want to know every officer's name. It is not about catching criminals, Councilmembers; it is about deterrence and prevention. You can only do that not with the gun, but with an officer and additional officers in our beat that we can be human with. This is humanity. Thank you very much. Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, Robin. This is your first time testifying to us, but have you ever testified to the Police Commission? Ms. Danner: No. Chair Furfaro: Have you ever made these offers on space and so forth to the Mayor? Ms. Danner: Yes. Chair Furfaro: Good. Could we get copies of those offers? Ms. Danner: Of those offers? Chair Furfaro: Yes. Thank you very much for your testimony. We do agree with you that volunteerism is something that nobody can measure. It needs to continue in building community. Thank for your testimony. LORRAINE RAPOZO: I never wanted to come to the Council. I think this is the second time in my life. Mr. Rapozo: Please state your name. Ms. Rapozo: I am sorry. Lorraine Rapozo. I work for the Department of Human Services for thirty (30) years with Child Protective Services. I would like to compliment the Kauai Police Department in front of you for the help that they have given to our children and the dedication that they have had with us. Like I said, I will be retiring on December 31st. It has been remarkable working with them, even if I have issues, but that is okay. I am here because I firmly believe this grant is what we need. Robin is strictly Anahola, but I am talking for the whole island. I worked for thirty (30) years from Lihu`e to Koke`e with the Department. I have lived in Anahola for thirty-one (31) years now and I was born COUNCIL MEETING 32 DECEMBER 4, 2013 in Kilauea, so I know this whole island. This grant needs to happen and you are the ones that are going to make it happen. You are the people's choices to be sitting here. I do not care where the money comes from, it needs to happen. Again, I beg you. Happy holidays and thank you for having me here. Chair Furfaro: Lorraine, congratulations on your thirty (30) years of service. We appreciate all that you have done. I know you have been very committed to your work and we appreciate it. Ms. Rapozo: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Chief, we are going start off with the question that Councilmember Yukimura had for you, but you need to reply only to those that are attached to the questions as it relates to the grant. Mr. Perry: I believe you asked me to comment on the Citizens Police Academy. One of the biggest issues that we had was concerning misunderstanding or misinformation about the role of the Police Department. What the Citizens Police Academy is about is to have more informed citizens as to what our roles are. With respect to the program as community members graduate, we expect them to be more involved in community programs such as the KPAL program. We expect them to relate to others within their area and share the information about how to reduce crime and what things to look out for. It is kind of like an extension of the Police Department. We also expect them to assist us in understanding and relating to other members of the community of what we do so that there is also a reduction in complaints against police officers. If they have that information and they are aware of what our restrictions are, then we expect the Citizens Police Academy graduates to relay that information to other members of the community. By and large, the philosophy of Citizens Police Academy is to have more informed citizenry within that particular community. Ms. Yukimura: Chief, do you know whether there has been a reduction in complaints against the police officers? Mr. Perry: Interestingly, it went up and then it went down. It varies and this is a phenomenon, but when the community has more confidence in the Police Department, the complaints actually go up. We have seen a rise in complaints, but now it has decreased. I can get those numbers for you. Those numbers are also skewed by individuals who make multiple complaints and individuals that perhaps have mental health issues. Each complaint that is filed with the Police Commission or with us has to be recorded and has to be investigated completely. Those numbers go up-and-down accordingly. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Are there other questions for the Chief, the Deputy Chief, or the grant writer? If not, I am going to excuse them. Mr. Chock: I was wondering if this is a recurring grant. Is there an opportunity to reapply for it? If so, when? Ms. Perreira: There are other grants, but specific to this, no. They have other things related to hiring, but not this particular grant. COUNCIL MEETING 33 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Ms. Yukimura: So that means that next year, there will not be a Community Oriented Policing Services Grant application? Ms. Perreira: There is, but not one we can apply for. We got it so we will not be reapplying for it. Ms. Yukimura: Right. It is an annual program that jurisdictions can apply for? Ms. Perreira: Yes. Ms. Yukimura: We could not apply for it for some other programming like another beat later on, too? Ms. Perreira: They have other programs, like I said. Not this specific one, but they have specifics for addition of SROs and other positions that we could tap into. But for this particular grant, it goes for three (3) years with the notion that for the fourth year, we will be picking those positions up. We have applied for this grant multiple times and never gotten it. This is the first time we have even gotten close to getting this particular grant. I think it is important to know that should we not get this grant, I do not know if we would ever get that opportunity again. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Are there any more questions for the grant writer or Deputy Chief? Mr. Rapozo: I just have one more. Chair Furfaro: Go ahead, Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: I am assuming this is time sensitive and that we would need this approval today? Mr. Perry: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Any more for this group? If not, congratulations to you, young lady. I think the entire Council approves and concurs. Your effort has paid off. Thank you very much. I am going to let Officer Perreira and Deputy Chief Contrades go. I am going to ask the two (2) Police Commissioners to come up and join the Chief. Chair Furfaro: Gentlemen, may I ask you both to introduce yourself? RANDALL FRANCISCO, County of Kaua`i Police Commission Member: Randy Francisco. JAMES R. O'CONNOR, Chair of the County of Kaua`i Police Commission: Jim O'Connor. Chair of the Kaua`i Police Commission. COUNCIL MEETING 34 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Chair Furfaro: Thank you for being here. I guess I first want to say that this is a sizeable grant over a period of years, but at the end of the grant, because this Council cannot find itself in any kind of position earmarking future funds, it is against the process of the Charter. I wanted to know if the Commission for future councils would be, in fact, acknowledging that you approved of the process for this grant and you will be writing a support letter from the Commission to the Council on this grant application. At the end of the period of time, it then becomes a cost associated with the County. Mr. O'Connor: As you know, this is part of our responsibility and I was in remiss not seeing that is not on your desk in front of you now, but I will assure you that we have had two (2) specific meetings on this and have formally approved the Department going before you for this approval of this grant. Yes, I will have the letter to you in your hands shortly. It is already done. We really do not need another meeting for it, but just to put it in. Chair Furfaro: I would just like to have one from the Commission supporting these efforts before we get into budget because the financial consequences are in the future. Mr. O'Connor: We will be involved in that process as well, Chair. Chair Furfaro: I would like to also say that we have recently heard testimony from Anahola and so forth. I would like to know if the Police Commission with the Police Chief would be working on something more substantial in the way of a five (5) year plan as we are hearing about this expansion of the beats. I would like to have kind of a strategic plan that is reviewed by the Police Commission that talks long-range on some of the things that the Chief has exposed us to today, and I think the Chief would probably appreciate the same in terms of staffing manpower and programs. Is that something that you folks will be working on in future? Mr. O'Connor: Absolutely. Thank you for reminding us, Mr. Chairman. For one thing, we have heard about it during the length of our term here and sort of vicariously through living in the community for a long time. This is a twenty-four (24) year period that we have gone through from talking about these ten (10) beats. It did not hit me too much until I got on the Commission a few years ago. It is almost ludicrous to tell you the truth. I am tired of hearing from constituents about it. It is inconceivable to me that we could have a Police Department that has been able to function as well as it does now. We are very proud of that by the way. People come up to me and say, "You do not mean that there are two (2) people from Anahola to Hanalei that are available at any one time?" I say, "Yes, I do." Does this greatly increase it? No. I look at this grant as a catalyst and it happens to be focused on community oriented policing, which I think is terrific. The Department is correctly designated the proper area to augment with this grant. It is also critical that we look forward down the road, and we start doing the forward planning... five (5) years is just the minimum that we should be doing. Chair Furfaro: I am asking for that because as we just had Ms. Danner here sharing with the Council, we do not have a formal document that we can look at that talks about future proposed staffing, subdivisions, and measurable goals other than some discussion here. For example, the Police COUNCIL MEETING 35 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Department should be very proud of the fact that we have filled so many vacancies that we have. Also a measurable goal— when I was on the Council twelve (12) years ago, we had one million five hundred thousand dollars ($1,500,000) in overtime per year. We peaked about at two million two hundred thousand dollars ($2,200,000). We are actually around one million eight hundred sixty thousand dollars ($1,860,000) from last year. That is a three hundred thirty-five thousand dollar ($335,000) reduction in overtime. That is a measurable item. Mr. O'Connor: Absolutely. Chair Furfaro: That needs to be part of these presentations. I think some of the goals that Councilmember Yukimura talked about and so forth could be reflected on this. At the same time, I also want to let you know that I think we know that you are going to need some outside help for the five (5) year strategic plan, and I kept it short-term because money, as pointed out earlier by the Finance Director, is a challenge. If we need some facilitating on a five (5) year strategic plan, the time to show us the need is at budget time. Mr. O'Connor: Absolutely. Chair Furfaro: Mr. Francisco, would you like to add anything? Mr. Francisco: Thank you for the opportunity. I do want to convey my congratulations on behalf of the business community. I did submit testimony that on stand on behalf of the Chamber, but I also wanted to convey the sentiments of the Kapa'a Business Association along with the recently revitalized Royal Coconut Coast. As you know, they were recharged to help develop the area in terms of marketing and promotion. One of the things that I learned a few years ago when we started the crime prevention seminars, initially with Chief Perry who just came on board, was we needed to do more outreach as a business community because we cannot have it where everything is based in the Lihu`e area. Recognizing that, it gave me an opportunity to go to the north shore and meet, for the first time, Deputy Chief Contrades. What I learned from that was while they were doing a great job, the challenge was, "How do you dispense excellent service in an area that is the size of that area that touches upon the Kawaihau District?" I came to the conclusion that when I first became aware of this grant, having been someone that managed about ten million dollars ($10,000,000) in grant funds, that anything that you do to receive external funds leverages your capacity to deliver programs that meet budget and so forth. While the challenges what metrics and questions on the "how," I think the grand vision is, as the Chief had said, they are looking to 2025. Coinciding with this is the hope that our economy, as we move out of the recession, is moving towards economic security with the development of new shopping centers and job creation. I think this corridor deserves to have this kind of expansion. I recall going out to the Kapa'a Business Association meetings and the number one comment was crime. It seemed that you tend to lose confidence if crime is up and you wonder how you are going to get help as a business operator. Seeing that the activities in the area continue to grow, I just came to the conclusion that this grant will restore some sense of community and confidence. The message that I wanted to convey is that it is about a partnership and the notion of the philosophy that community policing really goes to the heart of this. Several members of the Chamber are serving as volunteers on the Mayor's Crime Task Force, as well as on the initial training programs that allowed members COUNCIL MEETING 36 DECEMBER 4, 2013 of the community to participate and go out on a ride or go through some idea of what the Police Academy is about. I think opportunities like this only help to not enhance, but leverage our ability to develop the kind of partnerships that our private/public sector needs to continue to develop. I hear the frustration from Robin Danner, but I think if we continue to leverage these opportunities, it grows our capacity to create a better Kaua`i; a Kaua`i that is not only safe and one that does not require me to say as I did in January. I think the Chamber, for the first time, needs to have a press conference which is unprecedented for me just because I was never planning to have one. Earlier in the year, as you know one (1) year ago, we were known as the island that had someone on the north shore literally gallivanting through certain parts and causing a bunch of crime, such that a Japanese tourist was attacked. I think the message here is having another officer in a new beat will hopefully convey a sense that it is a little safer because our public safety is improving. I would like to say as a Commissioner and as a grants writer; I look forward to working closely with the Department, assuming that I will be approved today for the next three (3) year term. Chair Furfaro: I think that is quite possible. I want it make sure that we understand the bigger part here. For myself, as being the senior manager for many years in resort areas and so forth, I do not think the answer from what I have heard today is just about approving a grant for a new beat. That is what I want to make sure you hear. The Charter also does set us up with a Police Commission. What I am saying to the two of you from the Police Commission based on some of the things that were presented today, I have no problem encouraging Mr. Francisco to find himself writing a grant for fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) so that we can do a five (5) year strategic plan on staffing and facilities for the Police Department. This is just a small piece of what I am hearing from today. We need a five (5) year plan. I certainly will be offering my support to this grant today, but I would like us to have some dialogue with the Mayor, who is an ex-officio of the Police Commission, and see if we are not looking at some moneys to be available for a long-term strategic plan to address some of these things. I also want to say to the both of you gentlemen, thank you very much. It is much appreciated that you as Commissioners are here and your volunteerism and work is recognized for being here. Thank you. Mr. Francisco: Thank you. I anticipate that we will be taking you up on that offer. I think the strength of this particular grant is it demonstrates that there will be grant history and experience. It will add to that resume of future grant applications. I think the grant itself, having received support from our Congressional Delegation, says a lot. I think it only gives us more incentive and inspiration to apply for additional grants in the mix beyond the COPS grant. Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Commissioner. Are there any questions for any of the Commissioners or the Police Chief? I am going to ask the Director of Finance to come up. Thank you, gentlemen. Chief, you are welcome to stay there. Thank you again. Mr. Hunt, could you introduce yourself again? Mr. Hunt: Sure. Steve Hunt, Director of Finance, for the record. Chair Furfaro: I think you heard from my comments that based on some of the things that we heard today, it is some serious considerations we need to do and at a minimum, a five (5) year plan for the Police Department. COUNCIL MEETING 37 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Perhaps there is an opportunity through other Federal agencies to apply for some grant moneys through writing for specifically a five (5) year strategic plan on staffing and facilities. I am certain some of that is available. I also want to say to you, in my interpretation in looking at some numbers and I have some experience in looking at numbers, I would be correct in saying that one of the measurable pieces is the fact that overtime in the Department is on the way down, especially with the addition of some recruits and the effort that the Chief put in. I think that is something that needs to be reflected in our plan. How do we ultimately get enough officers to a point that one of the rewards is still having an overtime line, do not get me wrong, but continuing to manage those payroll concessions? The premium pay is the halftime cost. Would you agree that my numbers are pretty correct? Mr. Hunt: Yes. I would say that although for Fiscal Year 2014, we are still potentially looking for additional overtime moneys because of the front-end loading of this. It is an investment and although the canceled days have decreased, the Field Training Officer (FTO) involvement in training these new recruits is certainly front-end loaded. As we work our way forward, we would hope to see some financial savings in those overtime costs. Chair Furfaro: That, in itself, is something that is ongoing. Steve, I need to share with you— this references Mr. Hooser and Councilwoman Yukimura's question. When I was Finance Chair from 2002 until 2007 or 2008, I worked on this finance building report so that we could look at where building permits are being issued, their value, and then calculate what we might see in the way of an increase in potential property taxes based on having an index over here. For example, for the last one we received, I am rather point disappointed. If you could convey this to the Building Division, it was February of this year. In that report, it indicated that year over year, the value of the permits that have been issued have gone from ten million four hundred thousand dollars ($10,400,000) to thirteen million six hundred thousand dollars ($13,600,000), and that is going to be very important for us when we are looking for money in year 2017 to have some kind of indication. That is what I designed this permit reporting process for, so that we could see how we are doing year-over-year. The second item I want to reconfirm is that it is not just for the Police Department here. We need to use this like Councilwoman Yukimura's approach on the Solar Water Heating Bill and looking at those values and increasing. That is so important for us to know that there is money coming in the Building Division for future tax credits and so forth. Just as a side note, we cannot be seven (7) months behind. If somebody could look into that, I would really appreciate it. The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR)- the narrative basically said that we were about ten million dollars ($10,000,00) short, but I want to make note that that is ten million dollars ($10,000,000) short without knowing the outcome of the CAFR. Mr. Hunt: You are talking about for the initial budget Fiscal Year 2015 presentation? Chair Furfaro: Yes. Mr. Hunt: That is correct. Chair Furfaro: Okay. That is not unusual for us to see this lag before we see the final assumptions made on where we are controlling costs as it is? COUNCIL MEETING 38 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Hunt: Correct. Chair Furfaro: So I am correct in saying that. I just want to make note. Mr. Hunt: Correct. Our projection was about twelve million eight hundred thousand dollars ($12,800,000) in Unassigned Fund Balance and the CAFR, once determined, will hopefully be close to that. Chair Furfaro: So we are forecasting twelve million dollars ($12,000,000), but we will not know that until we see the CAFR? Mr. Hunt: Correct. Chair Furfaro: We have a new date confirmed for December 17th on that. Okay. I would hope that I could gain the Administration's support on a five (5) year strategic plan for the Police Department on staffing and facility building. Those are the only comments that I have for you, Steve. I want to thank you for being available to us. I will see if there are other questions from members. Councilwoman Yukimura, you have the floor. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Steve, it would be so wonderful for me if we could pay our obligations for this new beat by overtime savings. I know Councilmember Rapozo was moving in that direction and I appreciate that he did that. Is that a possibility? Mr. Hunt: Certainly, overtime incorporates more than just actually having positions that are out sick, on leave, or on work compensation. It also includes actual holiday pay. There is a certain percentage, certain dollar amount that is going to be required regardless. People serving on that beat during a holiday are going to be paid overtime. I would imagine that the new beat would add a little bit more to that if they are serving on a holiday or holidays. From the perspective of having those reduced canceled days and actually receiving full workforce, those savings should be real. Ms. Yukimura: What is the cost of the holiday pay for a fully staffed Police Department? Mr. Hunt: I would defer to the Police Department Fiscal Officer to answer that. I do not have that number. Ms. Yukimura: Do we, Chief? Mr. Perry: I will ask our Fiscal Officer. I do not have those numbers. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Chair Furfaro: We will send it over as a question, Councilmember. How about that? Ms. Yukimura: That would be good. Do you have an estimate outside of how much you think outside of holiday pay could be saved by a fully staffed Police Department? COUNCIL MEETING 39 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Hunt: Again, I think only time will tell. Certainly, we are not hoping to exacerbate overtime. If anything, we are hoping to see flat overtime to a decrease. My gut feeling is probably fifty percent (50%) of the salaries of those eight hundred thousand dollars ($800,000) that will be obligated in later years is a goal that we would set. I do not think one hundred percent (100%) of those salaries will be from overtime savings. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Thank you. Mr. Perry: With respect to overtime, and we have discussed this before and perhaps the Deputy can expand on this, but as you know, we are a twenty-four/seven (24/7) service and there are situations where we need to respond sometimes in an emergency situation like a hostage situation. There are other times where we have to expend overtime. For example, for the recent Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) Bill where we expended quite a lot of overtime funds on that. It was well-worth it because we want to make sure that everybody is safe. Those are the types of examples that make it very difficult for us to predict how much we are going spend annually. We try to do a good job and the Deputy and I have put in place restrictions on overtime. We have to do our due diligence. Again, it is very, very difficult to predict, and perhaps the Deputy can expand on that. Chair Furfaro: I want to caution you that this is going to budget issues again. I would like you to briefly respond. We can send things over to you in questions. The agenda item is the grant. Go ahead, Deputy Chief. Mr. Perry: I just wanted to answer the question about holiday pay and overtime. We expend about twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) per holiday. What we do to try to control that though is that there are only essential people working on the holiday. Every administrative staff or if we have additional officers on staff for the day are what we call "forced-off." They get the actual holiday of. Basically, you have thirteen (13) people working. We cannot get away from that. That is our minimum staffing in order to safeguard the community. So roughly twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) per holiday. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you very much. Presumably or my simplistic thinking, but if there are twenty-one (21) holidays in the County system, then it is times... Mr. Contrades: I believe it is times fourteen (14) holidays. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: I want to clarify this again. There are fourteen (14) holidays of which you have a minimum staff of thirteen (13). Those thirteen (13) would be on straight time, so the difference on the holiday pay is only the premium because they would have been there anyway on a regular day. I want to make sure that since we are kind of shading off the agenda here a little bit, we can send more questions to you in writing. Mr. Hunt: I just wanted to add one more potential savings that could help fund this, I guess. It relates to officer safety as part of my job in risk management. I would suspect that having officer safety being a priority COUNCIL MEETING 40 DECEMBER 4, 2013 would reduce some of the work compensation stress cases and incidences... there could be measureable savings in work compensation combined with overtime that make it closer to funding those positions. Again, it is a probability game. We cannot guarantee it, but it could certainly be a likely outcome. Chair Furfaro: Thank you for that clarification as an option. Are there any more questions? If not, Chief, I am going to excuse everybody and I will call the meeting back to order so we can have some discussion. There being no objections, the meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Mr. Bynum: Our County is improving. Our County is a much stronger and better County than it was five (5) or six (6) years ago. Those improvements come at a cost. I am totally celebrating today. I have waited in this community for years to expand the Police force. Thank God we are there. The numbers speak for themselves. All the rest of the discussion we had today is all germane and appropriate, probably at a different time and place than today. We should be celebrating as a community and we should celebrate the strength of our Police Department that we have arrived at this. Thank you all very much. We had community oriented policing because of the extraordinary police officers. Community oriented policing in a small town is obvious, right? I am pleased to say that I know the officers in the audience today by first name, three-quarters of them. Is it not great that we live in a community like that? It is tough to be a police officer in a small town. There are officers out who have written me tickets and arrested my family members, but did it appropriately. They have to do that every day. It is a tough job. Thank you all for the work that you do. Let us celebrate that we have arrived at this place where we can expand our force and protect the community better. That is what you all want and that is what we all want. Over the last few years, people want things from our County. They want better police protection and better parks. Over the last few years, citizens have told us to create a Parks Department, have an Auditor's Department, and expand our bus. Then we have these challenges of environmental clean-ups that suddenly cost us a couple million dollars a year that we did not plan for or huge overtime because the Council puts a controversial bill up. You guys have to respond to all of that, and you do, and I am proud of all of you and what I have observed of the Police Department despite all of the huhu and challenges. Through all of that, extraordinary police officers have stepped up and served our community above and beyond. Is it not great that we can get to the point where you are not doing that because you are passionate and you will always do that because of that? We actually could have school resource officers and officers assigned specifically to the community outreach. I am going to close with this. We saw three (3) generations of police officers up there today, right? We saw the Chief, with his wisdom and experience. We saw our Deputy, who is just outstanding. He is one of the people that I have seen— I do not know if you remember this, Mike, meeting with the business community in Kapa'a and they were so misinformed and misunderstanding of our Police Department that they said things that were offensive to me, and I am sure they were to you. It was because they are passionate about safety and they did not understand. For the community to understand and your Department to understand those, I know the relationship of Kapa'a business is much better now than it was then, and that was because of the extraordinary efforts by police officers. Thank you, Mike, for that. Then you have Officer Perreira who is here today. We see this in our Fire Department, too, where people at levels learn how to write grants and COUNCIL MEETING 41 DECEMBER 4, 2013 get passionate and inspired about improving their Department. I only have one thing to say; you need seven (7) officers for a beat. I have been here and listening to you all these years. Six point five (6.5) full-time equivalent (FTE) is what you need to sufficiently staff a beat. It is better to go half above than a half below. If we are going to expand it and create a beat, let us do it the way you said. I would encourage you to put that extra position in the budget. We are going to have extraordinarily difficult times. It is just going to be really tough because... well, we will go into those financial issues at another time. It is our responsibility to make this happen and the next beat to happen when you are ready. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Mr. Kagawa, you have the floor. Mr. Kagawa: Thank you Chair. First of all, I want to thank Officer Stacey for doing a superb job. Thank you for all that you do and the rest of the Department who helped her with this grant. The year of 2013 has been a great year for KPD. We finally filled all of our vacancies thanks to Kaleo Perez and the rest of your group. Great job. Was that fourteen (14) vacancies or so that we filled? The biggest class ever. We opened up the Waimea substation and it is a beautiful facility. It was a lot bigger than it.was. The Kapa'a substation is now at the Armory and much bigger and better. I think the officers have wanted that for a while. Those are just a few things that have been done in 2013. Now we have this new beat in our largest community, residential district, and commercial district. I think this is our core function of County government, which is to protect public safety, and our Police Department is on top of the list. That is our job. This new community oriented policing that we are going into is just great to hear. I want to see the results in the future. I think I like to watch police television, real television. You really get to see that an officer's job is just much bigger than arresting people when they get in trouble; it is actually working with the community to make sure that they try and take care of things, so our officers can concentrate on bigger issues. It takes a police officer to teach the community what to do, what not to do, and I think we are going to be headed in that direction. Finally, I want to say that I agree with our Finance Director, Mr. Hunt. I look at this as a good investment that will have positive financial returns to our County via increase property values and increase tourism. With all the trouble that is going on with the outer islands. You see them in the news. Hawai`i island had some... Maui... Honolulu, of course. Kaua`i has been off the radar in that department and it is that is a good thing. We need to keep it that way and make it better by having that additional beat. I will strongly support this. Again, I want to thank the police for really doing an outstanding job. It is the most important job of our County. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Thank you, Mr. Kagawa. Anyone else? Mr. Rapozo, you have the floor. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all again for being here. I think I have settled down some, so this should be painless. First of all, Chief, thank you for the accomplishments in your term, your tenure. I think Mr. Kagawa talked a lot about it. I think former Chair Kaipo Asing won a lot of lunches from betting with the former Police Chiefs that they would... whenever they came up, they promised, assured, and guaranteed that we would fill up the positions in their tenure and they were never able to do that, but you did. It is a testament to your Department, your Staff, and your team. COUNCIL MEETING 42 DECEMBER 4, 2013 We often times hear from the community that the County has to run more like a business. I heard some terminology today like "return on investment" and business terms that does not apply to public safety. If that was the case, we would not have a fire station in Hanalei because they just do not have enough calls to justify the investment. You throw that out the window when you are talking about public safety. We have to provide a service to everyone on the island. Return on investment— I agree with Mr. Kagawa that we will see some definite returns in the way of savings, and that is true, but that cannot be the sole purpose of expanding. Response rates— one of the biggest complaints I hear from the public is that it took him one (1) hour to get here; one hour and a half (1.5) to get here. That is what is going to happen as population grows, crime increases, and you do not increase the Police Staff. It is just going to happen. It is going to be two (2) hours, and then three (3) hours. There is going to come a point where it is going to be some municipalities on the mainland where you call the police department and they are going to say, "We do not take those complaints anymore. Call your insurance company." It is happening. God forbid that we get to the place where we have to start laying off police officers. What you folks do with what you have is just incredible. I think Commission Chair O'Connor said it best, "It is ludicrous to think that we can operate as well as you do with ten (10) beats." Think about it. Just as a reference, the Kaua`i Fire Department; eight (8) fire stations and sixty-four (64) firemen on any given shift. Ten (10) beat officers. How many calls do the Police get versus how many calls do the Fire Department get? I am not diminishing the role of the Fire Department because I think it is necessary, but we are splitting hairs to increase the Police Department Staff by one (1) beat. "What is your return?" "What is the crime rate?" "What is this?" One (1) accident involving three (3) fatalities throws your goals and objectives out the window. One (1) crime spree through Kapa'a Town at night with eight (8) burglaries throws your goals out the window. You are not talking about normal situations in police work. I think we, as Councilmembers, need to understand. We are not dealing with a normal operation, County function. You are talking about a function that can change at any given time. You guys play by different rules. We have an opportunity today to help you. Throughout the years, you guys come up and we do certificates for this and certificates for that, and every one of us takes our chance to say how great a job you guys all do. Here is one opportunity that we can sit here and help you do better. Frankly, I get frustrated when I hear some of the questions. This grant was the only grant I can I remember that we required you guys to come for an application and acceptance. This body said, "No, we are not going to do it all like we do for Wastewater and all of the other Departments. No, you are special. You come back and tell us when you got accepted, so we can make sure we agree with how you are going to use it." That is not right, but we did that. Today, do you know how many bus drivers on the road right now? There are thirty (30). Then we have ten (10) police officers. As you can see, I am a little frustrated because I am biased to public safety. I think you guys deserve as much as you get. The money? Really? We just went through a discussion on Bill No. 2491 where there was no concern about how we were going to pay. We just needed to pass that Bill. Today, all I heard were questions about things that are not even related to the grant. That bothers me because it tells me that our priorities are not, in my opinion, where it should be. People get upset with my comments, but it is what it is. Was that it? I get five (5) more minutes? I thought I had ten (10) minutes. Chair Furfaro: You do. It is your time. COUNCIL MEETING 43 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Rapozo: I do not usually need ten (10) minutes, but today I will. I think the public needs to understand because we hear the complaints. "The cop gave me a ticket. He was rude." Have a cop working seven (7) or eight (8) days in a row, seeing blood, fights, murders, domestics, and drownings. It is hell. Take a look at that and think. We have an opportunity to help. The impact will be so minute; one (1) more beat. To the County, it will not even be noticeable. They will not see three (3) more police cars in Kapa`a. But to that officer in Kapa'a that now has his caseload lessened by maybe half; do you think it is going to make an impact on him? You are damn right it is going to make an impact only him, his family, his health, or her health. We do not think about those things. We think about returns on investment and how we are going to pay for it in three (3) to four (4) years. Really? We will pay for it. If we are so broke at that time, I expect the Chief to incorporate those bodies, six (6), like we are hiring forty (40) people; and incorporate them into the retirees that go out in 2015 or whenever it is. You guys are going to have cops that retire, which creates what? Vacancies. You put those six (6) people in those spots and we are creating such an argument about a new beat. I remember when the Chief took over and I remember when I asked him, "Chief, what I would like to see is a five (5) year beat expanse process, five (5) beats per year." I am so thankful that you did not bring this up, Chief, because you would have gotten beheaded. You are only asking for one (1) and partially funded by a grant, not even our County money. This is a "no-brainer," as Robin Danner said. It is a "no-brainer." This thing should have been approved right away. It should have been approved after the presentation, called this meeting to order, and approved it. Because I have never seen a grant request that has gone through so much scrutiny for public safety for an opportunity for this body to place an extra beat in Kapa`a. I do not know if my colleagues have taken up the offer to go ride along on a Friday night or Saturday night. It really does not matter because bad things happen on weekdays and bad things happen in the morning. One of my worst calls ever was at 6:00 a.m. for a multiple murder suicide in Hanama`ulu. That was in the morning while people are drinking coffee. In fact, some of you are here in this room that had to g and witness that. We forget. We just think you guys are cops; tough, macho, and strong. It hurts me when we have to fight for an extra beat. It really does. I think this should have been passed. I am hoping that we can make this happen and get more beats as Mr. Bynum said. You guys deserve more beats. You guys are entitled to more beats. Just for one more beat having to sit here for three (3) hours or so, not counting the application meeting that you guys gave, not counting what you guys went through in the budget, and the future budget hearings coming up. I pray for you folks. I think people just do not appreciate what you folks do. I am sad for that. Anyway, Mr. Chair, I appreciate the extra time. It is not extra time, but I just apologize, I guess, if I offended anybody, but it is time that enough is enough. It is time that we start giving you guys what you need. Does it cost money? Yes it does, but I could go through our budget and I could fund you guys extra beats if they allow to remove what we did not need, but I do not have that power. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Mr. Hooser, you have the floor. Mr. Hooser: Thank you Chief, Police Officers, Commissioners, and members of the public who are here today. I want to echo what Councilmember Bynum said. I think this is a time to celebrate and it is a long time coming. I first met the Deputy in Kapa'a in front of my business in an incident. I called the Police and he shows up... I would not say twenty (20) years ago. It may COUNCIL MEETING 44 DECEMBER 4, 2013 not have been that long, but it was about there. I remember to this day of how impressed I was by then beat officer... I am not sure what your rank was at that time. I continue to be impressed by the good work that the Kaua`i Police Department does. I remain a resident of the Kawaihau District for over thirty (30) years. I had tenants there in Kapa'a Town in a small rental property. I hear the calls. I was also a former member of the Kapa'a Business Association. There is no question that I enthusiastically welcome the additional support for the Kawaihau District. I think the whole island would benefit, not just the Kawaihau District. Having said that, I do not think it is unreasonable, as a Councilmember, for me to ask questions to probe into the reasoning and what hopes to be accomplished on behalf of the community as a whole. I think it is reasonable for the community as a whole to know that if the community is going to be investing eight hundred thousand dollars ($800,000) a year, that there will be some benefit to the community; a tangible benefit. It is not meant to be critical of the Police Department, but I think it is a reasonable question to ask. If we invest this money in the Police Department, how will the community benefit? Will there be a reduction in crime? I do not see any issue with asking those questions. I was happy for the responses that I got. I also think it is reasonable to ask questions about the budget and about overtime. That is our job. The budget discussions are imminent. We are already doing them individually with the Administration. Because we have been told that there are ten million dollars ($10,000,000) we have to find moving forward, it is difficult to separate this conversation with the budget as a whole, even though the agenda item is not about the budget. We are being asked to approve a significant amount of money of future spending and we do not have the money. The reality is that there is no money, so we are being asked to spend money that we do not have. Given those circumstances, I think it is even more prudent for me and others as Councilmembers to ask some tough questions. I think the Chief and others are perfectly capable and have done a good job in presenting the answers to those questions. Unfortunately, months from now when we go to balance the budget and are looking at tax increases and fee increases, the room will not be full of police officers saying, "Yes. Let us raise property taxes." You can be sure that the Chamber of Commerce will not be here saying, "Yes. Let us raise property taxes." But those are the difficult choices that we have to make, so I think it is appropriate and prudent for me to ask those questions today, which I have done. It does not distract or detract from my support of the Kaua`i Police Department and for my acknowledgment of the good work that all of you do in your community. I want to thank you for that. I will be supporting the grant. I am thankful for all of the work that has gone into it. I appreciate you being here and appreciate your understanding the role that we have to play as Councilmembers in representing the people who elect us. Thank you very much. Chair Furfaro: JoAnn, did you want the floor next? Ms. Yukimura: Yes. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you Chair. Thank you everyone for being here. Contrary to what some of you may be thinking, I am not against expanding the Police Force. I did go on patrol with Officer Pia on a Friday night to find out exactly what you experience. I appreciate the work that you do and the sacrifices that you and your families make. I hope you understand that none of my questioning is to detract from that appreciation I have of all of you and the work that you do. As Councilmember Hooser stated, we have a job that has to represent COUNCIL MEETING 45 DECEMBER 4, 2013 all of the people of Kaua`i, all of the Departments of this County, and the needs are tremendous. Every day, people rely on riding the bus getting to or from work, to school, or to their senior centers. We have a really difficult affordable housing problem that is getting even worse now because the economy is revving up. Our parks need attention. Your families enjoy our parks. Some of your families are in our housing programs and those are the things that we have to keep going, too. To make commitments— this is a budget issue because we are making commitments for future budgets. We are making a commitment before we see all of the other needs that this County has. My questions are not because I do not appreciate what the Police Department is doing, but they are because I have high standards for every Department that comes before us. When we give or commit more money to a program, the Council needs to be assured that it will give us the best return on investment in terms of services and results for our community. I think that is what you are all about, too, so I do not feel like we are different in that matter. I do believe that every dollar that we spend has to give us the best return because we are taking that from another need and use. All of us, all of the County Departments, have to be so accountable for making sure that the money is being used well. I really appreciated the discussion here. Hard questions make for really creative thinking and thoughts, and Councilmember Rapozo's request to the Department about... what was it? Mel, help me here. Mr. Rapozo: The only thing I talked about was the canceled days off. Ms. Yukimura: Right, how you would handle holiday pay. Actually, the Chief and Deputy Chiefs response about how you are dealing with cars for this particular beat are showing that you are thinking about how to minimize the costs and yet, give the service that you want to give. The thought about reducing overtime, and that was Councilmember Rapozo's point, being able now to fund some of the costs of that new beat. All of these are issues are reassuring to me in terms of how we are going balance the budget. I know it seems tedious at times, but I feel like we are doing joint problem-solving here. The questioning and the answers are raised to help this. The reason why some of my questions seem to be related to the budget is because they are related to the budget. This is an early budget commitment without us being able to look at all of the other needs. I am to the point where I am thinking that I can support this because of all of those mitigating issues that have been raised, so that we are not having to pour out full-on eight hundred thousand dollars ($800,000) in two (2) years. I am still very, very concerned about how we are going to make the budget. Many of you are property owners and do not want to see your real property taxes raised either, but those are some of the balancing acts that we have to do. Please forgive me if I am trying to do that. Chair Furfaro: Okay. Mr. Chock, you have the floor. Mr. Chock: Thank you. I just want to start by saying that the world is changing so rapidly. Government's role is changing as well, so I think about what Einstein says about how we keep doing the same thing over and over, and trying to get a different outcome. There is definitely this need for us to think and do things differently in every Department. That is what we are here to do, right? I am looking for solutions in this. I do not think there is a question about whether or not we want or need it, but I do think that every Department will have to look at this kind of stuff in the future and what we can do differently to provide the better outcomes for our community. I do not think it is a secret that I am an COUNCIL MEETING 46 DECEMBER 4, 2013 advocate of prevention. I think what you folks have created here with the scope of the grant, with the idea of community oriented policing is exactly the direction and the foresight you should have had in getting this completed. I am like Councilmember Bynum because I am celebrating as well. I think that this is the right response and the right direction. It moves us in the direction of putting the responsibility back in the community because in the long run, that is what it is going to take, no matter what happens. That is the sustainability piece that we need. I do not want to belabor this. I am here to approve this and move forward on this. I do think that we are going to have to scrutinize just about everything that comes to this table because there are some difficult financial needs ahead. I think if we plan and strategize together, then we will have the best outcome that we can. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: I guess it is my turn now. First of all, Officer Stacy, I want to thank you for a good job over the last six (6) months and to all the people that supported you. I do not think people realize that the first step really, for us here, was some critical thinking as it relates to strategic planning. The first piece we had was, "What are we doing about officer recruitment to reduce our overtime?" Without addressing that, we will have this ongoing occurrence of premium pay. My hat is off to the Chief and my compliments with the new recruits and what we have done. Step one in this critical path is certainly accomplished. The next step is this five (5) year plan and I am going to say to the Commissioners quite frankly, the Charter prevents this Council from being involved and directly directing the Police Department. We have you there and this Council will offer you the kind of support so we can do this five (5) year plan. That five (5) year plan has to have measurable, tangible outcomes. Those are the kind of facilities we need in the future, as well as those costs related to increase staffing and the new beats. Those are the challenges that are out there. Facility needs— I think with Engineering and help from the Mayor, we are starting to make some improvements, but those are the two (2) key things that need to be in this five (5) year plan. I would encourage community input to the Police Commission as we had the two (2) ladies here from their communities today. The Commissioners really need to see that. I look forward for your letter of support as we get into the budget year and get closer and closer to this. I appreciate the Finance Department sharing with us the forecast of these future costs, as well as some assumptions we have to make about SHOPO contracts and items that we can look at and savings, as the Finance Director said, that we can back into. This is a process that I very much appreciate and it is the business of this Council. I thank my colleagues for the questions that they asked because that is part of their job. I want to make sure that for the budget this year, there are not any additional costs. We have no say over future years. It will be the future Councils that will and that is why we need the strategic thinking about tangible, measurable results in a plan that future Councils can, in fact, embrace and understand the decisions we made. It is very much appreciated by this Council. I want to tell you that on Sunday night, I got home from Hilo, and was home rather late. At 8:00 p.m., I was driving through Kapa'a Sunday night and there were two (2) police cars parked across from Smoky Louie Gonzales' old home. They had one (1) person in handcuffs on the corner and the second officer was down the street with another suspect. That really hit home to me about the support that officers need when there is a crisis because these two (2) officers were separated. I just pulled on the side, obviously, thinking that in my assistance... I do not know what I could assist with, but I just stayed pretty close. It really hit home Sunday night when I saw that these two (2) officers operating with two (2) suspects and only COUNCIL MEETING 47 DECEMBER 4, 2013 two (2) officers at different locations. I do want you know that your work is very much appreciated by this Council. Going forward, I want the Police Commission to get really involved with a presentation about a five (5) year plan. On that note, may I ask for a roll call approval on this grant request? The motion to approve C 2013-374 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. Thank you to the Police Department. We are going to break for lunch. There being no objections, the meeting recessed at 12:28 p.m. The meeting reconvened at 1:41 p.m., and proceeded as follows: Chair Furfaro: We are back from our lunch recess. Clerk, please bring us to the next item on our agenda. COMMUNICATIONS: C 2013-375 Communication (11/07/2013) from the County Engineer, requesting Council approval to purchase a replacement Flail Cutter in the amount of $23,000, by utilizing funds in the Department of Public Works, Roads Division, Other Supplies Account No. 201-2072-624.61-02, to assist with the Levee Maintenance Program and other Islandwide Road Resurfacing projects: Mr. Kagawa moved to approve C 2013-375, seconded by Mr. Rapozo. Chair Furfaro: Is somebody here from Roads or Engineering? May I ask them to come up please? Mr. Kagawa, I will give you the floor. Mr. Kagawa: Thanks for coming, Lyle. I have never heard of a flail cutter, so can you could explain what that is and if twenty-three thousand dollars ($23,000) is a reasonable price to pay for a flail cutter? What levee is it going to be used on? Waimea? Hanapepe? There being no objections, the rules were suspended. LYLE TABATA, Deputy County Engineer: Good afternoon members and Chair. Lyle Tabata, Deputy County Engineer for the record. The two that we are asking to move funds to purchase is an attachment for the excavator that would go in there and act as a flail tool, rotating assembly tool, that would allow us to more efficiently mow down the vegetation on both levees. Mr. Kagawa: They use that flail cutter on both levees? Mr. Tabata: Right. The Chief of Roads Division, Ed Renaud, can expand on the discussion. COUNCIL MEETING 48 DECEMBER 4, 2013 ED RENAUD, Chief of Roads Division: Ed Renaud for the record. Good afternoon Council Chair and Councilmembers. We use it island wide for different ditches and what not, so it is a very valuable tool. The thing is when we first bought that equipment, the first one, it was only for the levees so it was not heavy duty. Then we found out that we needed this all over the island, the Kekaha Landfill, and what not. After a while, it breaks down. Mr. Kagawa: Ed, I kind of asked this question and maybe you can answer it, but is twenty-three thousand dollars ($23,000) the going rate for something like that? Mr. Renaud: That is what I was told by (inaudible). Mr. Kagawa: Okay. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Councilmember Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you, Lyle and Ed. It bothers me that this very high-usage piece of equipment has been inoperable since March 2013, which means you have been trying to operate without it? Do you have another one that you have been using in the meantime? Mr. Renaud: No. We do not have another one. What happened is that we were trying to use labor and see what would happen with it, but with the labor it cost us too much. It was not productive. Ms. Yukimura: I see. Mr. Renaud: We needed to look for moneys and I said, "We do not have any moneys here and there, so I am going borrow some from here and then another one, I am going to replace it back when I am complete with my signs retroactivity project, I should have something to put back into this account. That is why I went there because there was no other place to move. Ms. Yukimura: What you are saying is that the length of time that it took from when it broke down to now is because you had to wait for money and move it around? I am just concerned or I guess looking at how we might make this piece of equipment available sooner when it is so valuable and when it breaks down. I was just trying to understand procedurally what the hang-up was in waiting so long, but you were actually experimenting with labor instead? Mr. Renaud: Correct. We were trying to use labor because we were trying to find where we would get the funding from. We looked at all avenues and the only avenue was that I would have to look at my own administrative "Other Services," but to be sure that I can replace it back. Ms. Yukimura: Okay. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: I am deeply disappointed gentlemen. We just did a budget four (4) months ago and this piece of equipment has been broken since March. Now you are going to manipulate the money we gave you to pay for it because you need it now. We just signed off on a budget four (4) months ago. If it is such a valuable piece of equipment... unbelievable. Anybody else have a question? COUNCIL MEETING 49 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Ms. Yukimura: I do. Chair Furfaro: Go ahead. Ms. Yukimura: I have toyed in my mind with not requiring you folks to come up for Council approval when you have key pieces of equipment like this, but that is one thing. The other thing is the money, of course, right? You need money and then you need... and I guess the Chair was saying that perhaps you should have asked for it in our last budget. Chair Furfaro: That is what I was saying because in March you said we found out how valuable a piece of equipment it was. That is March. We are doing the budget in April, May, and June. Here you are moving money that we allocated for other projects to get this piece of equipment. I am just telling you. I am going vote for it, but I am sure not going to buy into the process. I expect more from you folks. Mr. Tabata: Thank you for that comment. We will take that very seriously. Chair Furfaro: Thank you. I appreciate that. Mr. Kagawa: I just want to ask one final question because I get asked this by the community. We do a lot of work on the levees and keeping it trimmed. Do we want some vegetation on the levee to hold the levee in place? Is it preferable that we get rid of all vegetation? If that was the goal, then we would look into possibly using Rodeo or something that is approved for use near water. What is the object? I have heard two sides. I have heard one side that we want to get rid of the vegetation, and then I heard the other side that we want some vegetation. Mr. Renaud: The vegetation that we have right now on the levee is really weeds and whatever we are going to put on there... we have a contract to put grass on it, so this year we can maintain it better and easier. That is what it is about; the bottom line. Mr. Tabata: If I may add, we had to present selection of grasses that the Army Corps of Engineers approved for us to use, and that has been approved. You talk about weed control— the recent construction completed at the Hanapepe levee... we had approved Seashore Paspalum and we irrigated with the river water, which we found through a contractor who tested the river water, is only two percent (2%) less salt content than the ocean. If you go to the levee now, you will see that there is no guinea grass growing because the saltwater killed the weeds, but it is helping the grass grow. That is something we are implementing and we found that is able to help us move forward with that grassing project. Mr. Kagawa: If I can follow-up on that. With that Hanapepe levee, we are using Seashore Paspalum and the irrigated river water, and it is controlling the weeds? Mr. Tabata: Yes. Mr. Kagawa: Do you have to add additional salt? That is what the golf courses use the salt for. COUNCIL MEETING 50 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Tabata: By my witness, and Ed can confirm, it is handling the needs adequately. Mr. Kagawa: Thank you for that because I brought up Rodeo, but as much as possible we do not want to use pesticides. One, it is costly and two, sometimes they cause damage to the environment and reusing water from the river would not cause any damage. Thank you for that. Chair Furfaro: To the Deputy Engineer, when we are utilizing these funds from the Department of Public Works road maintenance areas from the supply account, we are going to reduce the supply account by twenty-three thousand dollars ($23,000). Do you have other miscellaneous funds available or do I have to ask this budget cycle for the details regarding your "Other Supplies" account if we can move that much money? This is like other supplies, so I would assume this is like a miscellaneous kind of factor. Mr. Renaud: No, I think we are going to be okay because we had a contract for brief activity to be with the Federal update and put in one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) for that. In negotiating with the consultant— and the thing is that we came in a little lower for the inspection and verifying which sign has to be in place, and then the next step was to purchase the signs so we could replace those signs that are so-called "illegal." With the numbers that we got back from the vendors in Honolulu, I had enough money to move from there where I was going to have a little savings. That is why I said from that account, I put it back in the tree account of the other services because that is where we move trees that are beyond our control. Chair Furfaro: Just be prepared for a little bit more scrutiny this budget cycle on the miscellaneous line, as well as budget other funds. Be prepared for questions from me. Mr. Tabata: Okay. Chair Furfaro: Are there any other questions? Mr. Bynum, you have the floor. Mr. Bynum: I am sorry, if you already answered this, I apologize. Is the flail an attachment to a tractor? Mr. Renaud: Yes. It is an attachment to the excavator because it has the reach. The one that we are bringing in can take out so-called "trees of certain size." Mr. Bynum: Right. Mr. Renaud: The other ones were mostly for grass and smaller cutting materials. Mr. Bynum: Well, it is a great piece of equipment that can have uses beyond levees, right? Mr. Renaud: Correct. COUNCIL MEETING 51 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Bynum: What an improvement in the levees over the last few years. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: To the Engineering Department, do not misunderstand my questions here. My questions are focused. We should have known this sooner rather than move money. I have no question about using the flail because what you in your own statement said was that you were planning to use labor. Probably from the expense side of it, the labor would have been more expensive than having the right tool to do the right job. I am just bothered that we knew about this in March and here we are four (4) months after the budget and you are moving money around from miscellaneous and supply accounts. We are going to have a tight budget and I am going to expect more detail next time around. Gentlemen, thank you very much. Is there any other discussion? If not, may I ask for a roll call vote? There being no objections, the meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: The motion to approve C 2013-375 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. C 2013-376 Communication (11/19/2013) from the Director of Planning, requesting Council approval to apply for and receive technical assistance from Smart Growth America to conduct a Parking Audit Workshop for the Lihu`e Town Core area that would engage local businesses, property owners, and other key stakeholders by addressing all five (5) elements of parking; demand, supply, economics, enforcement, and administration; to assist local stakeholders to see the issue in the context of overall growth management and economic strategies: Mr. Kagawa moved to approve C 2013-376, seconded by Ms. Yukimura. Chair Furfaro: I am going to suspend the rules and have a representative from Planning come up. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. LEE STEINMETZ, Transportation Planner: Good afternoon Mr. Chair and members of the Council. My name is Lee Steinmetz and I am the Transportation Planner with the Planning Department. Chair Furfaro: Welcome. We are going to start with a few questions for you, Lee. I will start with Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: Are you writing this grant? Mr. Steinmetz: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Congratulations. COUNCIL MEETING 52 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Steinmetz: Thank you. Mr. Bynum: I appreciate that you are applying for it. I just have a couple of questions. We did a parking study as part of the master plan for the Civic Center. Are you aware of that? Mr. Steinmetz: Yes. Mr. Bynum: It did some of this analysis, so I just want to make sure you are aware of that and that is a good starting point. I remember some of those options. I just appreciate the initiative to do this and engage the community in this dialogue. We have done that before in the past, but it has not led to outcomes as much as it is now. We are making changes downtown, which is great. Finally. This is timely and I appreciate the initiative. Mr. Steinmetz: Thank you. Mr. Bynum: Make sure you look at that study. Mr. Steinmetz: Yes, absolutely. We are using this to implement the Lihu`e Civic Center Master Plan, as well as the Lihu`e Town Core Urban Design Plans. Of course we will look at the information that is in those plants to move them forward, but then use this to help refine that and take it further. Mr. Bynum: Right. You are saying things that I want to hear. We do not want to recreate the wheel. We want to build on the work we have already done in the Lihu`e Town Core Plan and in the Civic Center Plan. There were traffic studies done that I think may have been redone or need to be redone. I do not know, but I think this is great. Thank you. Mr. Steinmetz: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Councilmember Yukimura, do you have questions? Ms. Yukimura: I do. First, thank you for applying for this grant. I understand it will be used to build capacity as well amongst our local staff? Is that correct? Mr. Steinmetz: Yes, that is correct. What we really want to do are two (2) things with this workshop; one is to build the capacity of our Staff and community members to understand the various aspects of parking; parking management, parking supply, parking demand, and how we even assess demand of parking. We want to get a better understanding of those tools and we want to use this area. Because some work has already been done, we want to use the Lihu`e Town Core area as the venue to build our capacity and also further our solutions in this area. We did this previously, as you know, with the Po`ipu Road Design Workshop in Koloa and Po`ipu Road where we had similar outcomes. We wanted to come up with design solutions for Po`ipu Road, but we also wanted to build the capacity of our Staff to understand how we can do design workshops in new ways and in better ways, so a very similar approach. COUNCIL MEETING 53 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Ms. Yukimura: This is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sponsored grant? Mr. Steinmetz: Right. It is an EPA grant through Smart Growth America, which is the one who provides the technical assistance. It is free. It is not a grant in terms of cash, but technical assistance that comes and helps us. There is no match and there is no charge for that. It just so happens, coincidentally, for this particular workshop, Jim Charlier is the person who is hired to be the technical assistance. He has done a lot of work on our island and knows Kaua`i really well. If we are awarded the grant, he would be the one we would be working with. Chair Furfaro: Good deal. Ms. Yukimura: That is excellent to hear since we know and have worked with Mr. Charlier in the past. As you said, he knows our community. I just want to thank you again for going for this grant because I think Lihu`e is very ripe for a parking audit to help us analyze our problems, find solutions, and make Lihu`e a more livable and functional town and place. Thank you. Mr. Steinmetz: Thank you. I would also like to thank you, Councilmember Yukimura, because you were actually the one who brought this grant opportunity to our attention. Thank you as well. Ms. Yukimura: I am glad if it helped. Chair Furfaro: We all thank you. Thank you, JoAnn. Mr. Kagawa, you have the floor. Mr. Kagawa: Thank you, Lee. When we first closed `Eiwa Street, we ate lunch out there and kind of watched how the traffic moved. Is this grant related to everything like `Eiwa Street and the whole... Mr. Steinmetz: Yes. It is related to the whole Civic Center and also the Town Core. To use a couple of examples for that, we have the Lihu`e Civic Center Master Plan which is the plan that recommends the closure of `Eiwa Street. The idea is really to create a more campus-like setting for our Civic Center, Historic, County Building, and the State Building so everything is more pedestrian friendly. There is more of a campus, greener, and we start to see that greening happening with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) improvements that were recently installed. All of that, of course, has an implication on parking, so we need to understand the parking implications in order to implement that plan. As part of the Lihu`e Town Core Urban Design Plan, a key part of that is Rice Street revitalization, looking at economic development of Rice Street and possible traffic changes on Rice Street. Parking is really key to that, too, to make sure that we are making good parking decisions that will support the economic development of Rice Street at the same time. Mr. Kagawa: I know it was early in the year when I met with Lyle and Doug, and I guess we were kind of set on the plan as is, which included the closure here. For me, I think I want to see and I want this Smart Growth America to look at how effective has that closure been because I am still getting a lot of complaints from residents who have looked negatively on the impact of closing `Eiwa Street. I guess they are getting frustrated at this left turn here on COUNCIL MEETING 54 DECEMBER 4, 2013 `Umi. At times, the traffic coming up Rice is heavy and only a few cars can only get by on the traffic light. I guess it is one of the things that hope they can look at. I know we proposed reverse-in parking on `Umi, which to me, if it is a problem area, does not make sense because on a heavy traffic flow, it will cause cars to stop and that leads to more traffic. But I know it is further up. I realize that it is not right at the turn. I just have some concerns that some of the residents still have not gotten used to this closure and expressed frustration that we did it permanently. They feel like we are not open to other ways of accomplishing that left turn. I know it is a tough job to try to accommodate all users, but we are in the heart of Lihu`e. I think we want the vehicles to flow. We also have a school nearby so lunchtime and after school hours, it is piling up. I was just wondering if Smart Growth can look at those impacts, and not only take businesses', County, and State people's concerns, but also drivers' concerns. I can give you some names of some people who have some complaints and they only see it their way. It would be good if we can have both sides, too, and maybe we can compromise. Chair Furfaro: Before we go any further, Mr. Kagawa had made two (2) suggestions here; the left-hand turn with the light and the parallel parking here. I do want to compliment Engineering because they installed a left-hand turn light. It is complete as of Friday, so my compliments to Engineering for taking Mr. Kagawa and Mr. Rosa's suggestion and acting. Lyle, thank you very much. I think it was complete on Wednesday. Mr. Kagawa: Thank you. Great news. Again, there will be new impacts now. Maybe all of those complaints will go away. I just want to make sure that we are not only looking at the pedestrian side, but the vehicle side as well. You know what I am talking about, so good job. Mr. Steinmetz: Yes. I want to agree with a lot of the points that you made. First of all, everything is related to everything else, so we really need to be looking at the connections, how traffic flows, and parking. It is all related. Another advantage of this technical assistance is that by building the capacity of our own Staff, we are able to take these Smart Growth principles, but apply them locally so that we are really coming up with local solutions that work well here, and our Staff understands how to do that. I think that is another real advantage. I also think we will be looking at other traffic improvements on Rice Street that will address many of the concerns that you are bringing up. This will be something that we will be working on overtime. By all means, we want this to be a community process, so we get a lot of community involvement and hear what everybody has to say. Mr. Kagawa: I just want to close by saying that I offer my service to assist in helping if it goes through. Mr. Steinmetz: Thank you very much. Chair Furfaro: JoAnn, you have the floor. Ms. Yukimura: I wanted to also add a group of people who are concerned about parking, and that is the tenants in the Lihu`e Town Court... the condo project. They have called me already to ask if we are going to eliminate parking. I do not know how far the plan is, but for on-street parking on Rice Street, they are concerned because that is a big part of their parking. Including them in this conversation and in this workshop will be very important. Thank you. COUNCIL MEETING 55 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Steinmetz: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Thank you. I have one piece. On the five (5) elements for parking, I am pretty familiar with it based on the fact that for thirty-nine (39) years, I was in private business. We measured the amount of parking needs that we have, whether it is for banquets, houseguests, restaurant, and so forth. In the elements that you evaluated here, am I to assume that as we talked about the demand, enforcement, and supply in economics that you included commercial tenants along this way as part of this evaluation? What is this criteria here in the elements that you looked at on the "economics" of it? Mr. Steinmetz: I think there are a couple of parts to the economic component. First of all, I think we will be looking primarily at public parking, not private parking. Although, I think as part of understanding the full demand, we will really need to understand both. But to me, there are two (2) economic components. I hope to learn more from this workshop, too, so I do not know if I have all of the answers. The first part of that is how does parking support economic development? For example, there are different types of businesses. Some do better with on-street parking. Things like florists, barbers, and those kinds of businesses where people just want to stop, go in, and go on their way. I think there is very much an economic development component of parking of looking at how parking supports the types of development that we want to have. The other economic components are costs and potential revenues associated with parking. There is parking enforcement which has costs. There is the possibility of paid parking in some areas which has potential for revenue. I think it is really important as we develop a parking program and parking management that we understand the potential costs and revenues associated with that. Chair Furfaro: Just so you remember, when we issue a ticket, the money goes to the State. I wanted to know if we were including commercial businesses that would give you feedback about their need to have street parking for the purpose of their business. Obviously, we can measure ours as people go in for permits and so forth. They pay fees for those. I just wanted a little better understanding of the element here that is called "the economics." Thank you for the comments. JoAnn has another question. Go right ahead. Ms. Yukimura: Is it not true there is an impact on economic activity from walking also? Mr. Steinmetz: Sure. The more that we can create "walkable districts," there is certainly a benefit to that as well. That all contributes to the mix of businesses that we have. It is related to the type of land use that we develop in terms of where we put buildings, sidewalks, and all of those things. That is definitely part of it as well. Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo? Mr. Rapozo: I just have a follow-up to the Chair. That works well if you are designing a new community or if you are designing a new area, but this is an existing— we are basically trying to retrofit Smart Growth principles into an existing community. My concern is for that on-street parking for COUNCIL MEETING 56 DECEMBER 4, 2013 the existing businesses. I think you answered the Chair's question, but how are we addressing that? How will we address those? Is it the plan of the Administration or Planning to eliminate street parking? Mr. Steinmetz: We have been working on various scenarios of what Rice Street might look like. We really want to have a community process before we finalize the outcome, but we have options that retain on-street parking. We also have options that remove on-street parking. We have options where in certain areas, it may be more important to have on-street parking than others. For example, in this part of Rice Street, we have a lot of off-street parking so maybe on-street parking is not as important as say further down Rice Street where there is limited off-street parking. Mr. Rapozo: For example, right here in front of Central Pacific Bank and the Historic County Building, there are those businesses going down. I do not know where the off-street parking is. Mr. Steinmetz: I am thinking further up right here at the Civic Center where we have ample off-street parking. I do not really have an answer for you of what the plan is because we do not know yet. We really want to get input, but we fully recognize that there are areas where having on-street parking might be a benefit. That is something that we just have to have more discussion on. Mr. Rapozo: I think for some areas it is vital for the success of the businesses. If you take away the on-street parking, you take away their ability to survive. I think that is more my concern because off-street parking— although they may be off-street and available, they are still private. Mr. Steinmetz: Right. Mr. Rapozo: Those parking stalls belong to other businesses and I do not know if they are open to allowing "their" parking lots. What I am afraid will happen is that these private entities that have the space will start charging for parking because it is for their benefit for their customers and clients and not the general public. Mr. Steinmetz: All I can say is that nothing has been decided and everything is on the table. We do really need to look at those conditions very closely. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chock. Mr. Chock: Mr. Steinmetz, I just wanted to ask because I did not see it in the proposal in terms of timeframe. I understand that you get notification by January. When is the workshop starting? I know that you have a specified amount of time before you want to implement some of the practices? Mr. Steinmetz: Right. Basically what Smart Growth America told us had is that they will notify the recipients towards the end of January, and then try to schedule the workshops within a year from that time. COUNCIL MEETING 57 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Sometime within a year after January, we would schedule that but we do not have any more information than that right now. Mr. Chock: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Lee, thank you very much for giving us feedback on the progress of this. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to to testify to this item? Seeing no one, I call the meeting back to order. Is there any discussion members? If not, may I ask for a roll call vote please? There being no objections, the meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: The motion to approve C 2013-376 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Next up, we have Resolutions. I want to remind everyone that I had sent out a note if you had queries because these are all reappointments. If you had a query, you were to contact me and we would handle it as an individual item. My plan is to have all of these read first, and then do one approval on these reappointments. I did not hear from anyone on any questions regarding re-interviewing these existing Commissioners. I would like the Clerk to read all. Is there anyone that would have a comment on the request I am making? Mr. Bynum: I want to just make this comment now. I appreciate that. These are all, as you mentioned, people who are serving our community that choose to be reappointed. I intend to support all of them. If they were not reappointments, then we would have different discussions. Thank you very much. Chair Furfaro: This is only for reappointments. Mr. Bynum: Right. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: I will turn this over to the Clerk to begin reading, and then we are going to have a single motion and single vote on all of the Resolutions. Go right ahead, Scott. RESOLUTIONS: Resolution No. 2013-76 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE BUILDING BOARD OF APPEALS (Miles Tanabe — At-Large) Resolution No. 2013-77 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE BOARD OF ETHICS (Kurt Akamine) COUNCIL MEETING 58 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Resolution No. 2013-78 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE BOARD OF ETHICS (Brad Nagano) Resolution No. 2013-79 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE BOARD OF REVIEW (Jose Ricardo da Silva Diogo) Resolution No. 2013-80 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE BOARD OF WATER SUPPLY (Clyde Nakaya) Resolution No. 2013-81 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION (Ed Justus, IV) Resolution No. 2013-82 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION (Charles Patrick Stack) Resolution No. 2013-83 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION (John Low) Resolution No. 2013-84 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE COST CONTROL COMMISSION (Glen H. Takenouchi) Resolution No. 2013-85 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE COST CONTROL COMMISSION (Joanne P. Nakashima) Resolution No. 2013-86 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE FIRE COMMISSION (Heidy K Huddy-Yamamoto) Resolution No. 2013-87 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE FIRE COMMISSION (Eugene Keith Jimenez) Resolution No. 2013-88 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE LIQUOR CONTROL COMMISSION (Dane Oda) Resolution No. 2013-89 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION (Wayne Katayama — Business) Resolution No. 2013-90 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION (Angela M. Anderson — Environmentalist) Resolution No. 2013-91 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE POLICE COMMISSION (Randall Francisco) Resolution No. 2013-92 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE POLICE COMMISSION (Charles Iona) Resolution No. 2013-93 — RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE PUBLIC ACCESS, OPEN SPACE, AND NATURAL RESOURCES PRESERVATION FUND COMMISSION (Luke A. Evslin—At-Large) COUNCIL MEETING 59 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Resolution No. 2013-94 – RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL REAPPOINTMENT TO THE SALARY COMMISSION (Sheri Kunioka-Volz) Ms. Yukimura moved to adopt Resolutions Nos. 2013-76, 2013-77, 2013-78, 2013-79, 2013-80, 2013-81, 2013-82, 2013-83, 2013-84, 2013-85, 2013-86, 2013-87, 2013-88, 2013-89, 2013-90, 2013-91, 2013-92, 2013-93, and 2013-94, seconded by Mr. Chock. Chair Furfaro: Are there any discussion members? Mr. Kagawa. Mr. Kagawa: Thank you Chair. I really want to thank all of the people that are serving and for giving up their time to the community. We have such a stellar list of people with great backgrounds. I want to thank Paula and her Staff. I think we have really stepped up our Boards and Commissions and I think that Office has really worked great for the community. I just have one issue that I just have to bring up. It will not affect my vote, but it has been brought to my attention by some members of the Charter Commission that there are two (2) members; one of them who is on the list now that are really pushing for districting. It is a push that is made by them in hopes that they would run and benefit from the districting. My only concern with that amendment that goes out is that they can do whatever they want, but my concern is that a lot of the times, the public voters do not take the Charter Amendments seriously when they vote. They will just go in and check all "no" or all "yes," and they will not really get into detail as to what they are voting for sometimes. I believe that sometimes the outcome may not be what the voters want, whereas I think when they elect the Mayor or Councilmembers, I think they pay attention to who they are checking. Again, it is not to say that I am against them serving, but I want to let them know that please consider that districting Kaua`i is not districting Honolulu. It is apples and oranges. The population here compared to the population in the City and County of Honolulu is apples and oranges. To slice up a small pie does not make sense. Thank you, Chair. Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Very well-summarized. If that occurs, and the voters on Kaua`i have chosen for "At-Large" on previous times, but it is the voters' choice. Thank you for the comments. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you Mr. Kagawa for bringing that up. I was not aware of that. I guess this question is really going... it will be sent over in writing to the County Attorney Al, that if in fact, there are members serving on the Charter Review that are advocating for districting and they intend to run; if that poses a conflict of interest and should they be participating in the Charter activity knowing that the outcome may, in fact, benefit them? I do not know. But if that is something that you folks could look at Mr. Chair, I would appreciate it. Chair Furfaro: We will send that question over. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Is there any further discussion? Mr. Hooser: Mr. Chair, since the issue has been raised, I think it is only fair— I have spoken to many members of the Charter Review Commission and I do not know of any of them that have said that they are planning on running and taking this action to facilitate that at all. Whether any Charter COUNCIL MEETING 60 DECEMBER 4, 2013 member runs in the future, I think we should encourage more people to run, quite frankly. Whether or not districting is a good idea or bad idea, it would be up to the people to decide. Chair Furfaro: As I said, it is up to the voters. Mr. Hooser: Thank you. Chair Furfaro: So noted. It is not the first time it has been on the ballot. Mr. Bynum, before we take the vote on all of them, you have something for the floor? Go ahead. Mr. Bynum: I just want to thank all of these individuals for their service. It warms my heart to see people reapplying and I know a lot of the good work that has happened from these individuals. I have to use this opportunity to say to the Mayor that next time you make an appointment of a new person to the Police Commission, that Commission needs more diversity. It needs a woman. The Board of Water needs a consumer advocate and a woman. These are reappointments, so thank you for your continued service. Chair Furfaro: Point well-made. Without volunteers in our community, we would not have a very effective County government. Volunteerism is extremely important. On that note, may I have a roll call vote on all nineteen (19) reappointments? The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-76 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-77 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-78 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-79 was then put, and carried by the following vote: COUNCIL MEETING 61 DECEMBER 4, 2013 FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-80 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-81 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-82 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL — 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-83 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL — 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-84 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL — 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-85 was then put, and carried by the following vote: COUNCIL MEETING 62 DECEMBER 4, 2013 FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL — 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-86 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-87 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL — 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL — 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL — 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-88 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-89 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-90 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-91 was then put, and carried by the following vote: COUNCIL MEETING 63 DECEMBER 4, 2013 FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL — 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-92 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-93 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2013-94 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR APPROVAL: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL — 0. Chair Furfaro: Paula, thank you very much. On that note, we need to take a tape change. I would also like to take a break at the same time. We are on a ten (10) minute recess. There being no objections, the meeting recessed at 2:24 p.m. The meeting reconvened at 2:34 p.m., and proceeded as follows: Chair Furfaro: We are back from our tape change and quick caption break. We would like to go to Bills for First Reading. To the Clerk, could you have the reading done please? BILLS FOR FIRST READING: Proposed Draft Bill (No. 2513) — A BILL FOR AN ORDINANCE AMENDING ORDINANCE NO. B-2013-753, AS AMENDED, RELATING TO THE OPERATING BUDGET OF THE COUNTY OF KAUAI, STATE OF HAWAII, FOR THE FISCAL YEAR JULY 1, 2013 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2014, BY REVISING THE AMOUNTS ESTIMATED IN THE GENERAL FUND (Office of Economic Development, Executive/Consultant Services (Joint Fact Finding Group (JFFG) Scope-of-Work COUNCIL MEETING 64 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Environmental Public Health Impact Study (EPHIS)) - $100,000): Mr. Rapozo moved for passage of Proposed Draft Bill No. 2513 on first reading, that it be ordered to print, that a public hearing thereon be scheduled for January 16, 2014, and that it thereafter be referred to Finance & Economic Development (Tourism / Visotr Industry / Small Business Development / Sports & Recreation Development / Other Economic Development Areas) Committee, seconded by Ms. Yukimura. Chair Furfaro: Is there any public testimony on this item? If not, is there any discussion members? Mr. Kagawa, you have the floor. Mr. Kagawa: I just flew to O`ahu last week and I met with Mr. Gill again from the State Department of Health. He reiterated to me that the EPHIS would be a good thing for us to do. Actually, it is something that I think our County has wanted the Department of Health to do for a while. I think if this will help the process along to help get some answers as to the effects of agriculture and pesticide use on the environment, as well as to the health of people. Anything that will give us some of those answers, I think is a good step. I will be supporting this. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Is there any more discussion? Council Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: If there is one thing that came out as a consensus out of the discussion from Bill No. 2491 is that we need more and better information about some of the impacts, especially of large-scale pesticide use on our island. There was certainly enough anecdotal information to say that we need to look at things closer. This study, I think, is very important, and I am glad that Councilmember Kagawa spoke to Gary Gill at the Department of Health because I believe this study will bring in agencies and draw upon resources from the different Government agencies, as well as other partners to look at this question. I envision this to be a joint community effort, that is an effort that we all embark on together and hopefully when we get the results, we can together use the results to create better laws if necessary or better solutions for the problem that is facing us. Chair Furfaro: Any more comments before I speak? Mr. Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Yes, I am going to be in support of this, obviously. We have gone through a very difficult period with disagreements and veto overrides, but we have passed the law. There were clearly areas that we all agreed on and this was one of them. Part of my takeaway from all of this was that the State's a responsibility to malama aina in almost every level is in crisis. Whether it is (inaudible), the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), the Department of Health, Agriculture Division, or the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS); they are not functioning to malama aina any longer and the County has had to step up when it was important and this is. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: JoAnn? Ms. Yukimura: I want to thank you, Chair, for identifying where we could get this money from. I want to thank the Mayor and Finance Department for initiating this Bill and bringing it forward. Assuming we pass this today, we will have both administrative and legislative support for this study, which to me, sends a great signal out to the community and is a good start. COUNCIL MEETING 65 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Chair Furfaro: Go ahead, Mr. Kagawa. Mr. Kagawa: I have one last comment, too. I also had time last week to meet with Thomas Matsuda from the Department of Agriculture and there were twelve (12) recent cases that they investigated on Kaua`i; six (6) were because of residential use of pesticides; four (4) were because of small farmers; and two (2) were because of the seed corn companies. I just wanted to point that out that the complaints are not only from the seed corn companies. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Before I call for the vote, I just want to remind everybody that it is becoming more and more obvious as we go forward on certain things that the financial needs and the criteria set aside that we look towards the State on; we need to do a stronger effort in lobbying. I will give you a few examples here. When Councilwoman Yukimura and I went night hunting for Coqui frogs, we found no money from the State to help us. Almost one million dollars ($1,000,000) million went to Hawai`i island. Yet for three (3) years, we had to fund that particular piece to get us to a point where we could manage the Coqui frogs at the County Council level with the Invasive Specifies Council. In three (3) years, we spent almost two hundred and five thousand dollars ($205,000) of County money to do it, but our County can basically say, "We can manage Coqui frogs." I will tell you that it is at a very, very challenging status on Hawai`i island, to the effect that I think they have pretty much given up on it. That was one. Then it came to the Important Agriculture Land Study, the four (4) Counties had to share seventy-five thousand dollars ($75,000), which was the only allocation that they have. We basically said for us to do it right, for the right reason, for the right people; we formed our own citizens group and we funded the Important Agricultural Land Study at the County level. We took no State money because there was no money. It comes to the point where they pass mandates, but they do not pass along the financial pieces to go along with those mandates. As you know, my hometown that I consider is Kilauea. When we had the clean-up at Kilauea from Kilauea sugar, there was money that State made available to us, but in my thanking Mr. Gill, he indicated to me that another project of that size, they would need County financial support. We, as a body, need to be aware that each time we are doing these things, we are stepping into areas that we think the research, the study, and the correction needs to happen, and it is money that we seem to be advancing. Now my discussion and my E-mail references this one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) and I want to make sure that we understand that to me, it is a cap of what we are putting aside. This is not an item that we can keep coming back to renegotiate. The scope of the bid has to be very clear and it has to include the stakeholders to get us to that point because there might be a bigger, second part to this a little later. The whole State would be very interested in what we are going to accomplish here. We have about one hundred thirteen thousand dollars ($113,000), maybe one hundred eleven thousand dollars ($111,000) now that JoAnn had referred to thanking me earlier, but I want to thank Steve for helping me identify what we are going to do with a tax bill that we are going to collect from the agricultural community that will be made available to this. But it is a cap. Please be focused on the trend here. The trend is that we keep stepping into areas that are not our financial responsibility, but they clearly are for our community and is our kuleana. We need to be aware of that. COUNCIL MEETING 66 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Mr. Hooser: Chair, I was not planning on adding to the conversation, but because of the remarks you made and others, I would like to say a word or two. Chair Furfaro: Go right ahead. Mr. Hooser: First of all, I agree with you one hundred percent (100%). I am going O`ahu tomorrow on my own dime, I have to add, and meeting with Legislators in both the House and the Senate. I will be back on Monday doing the same thing. I have invited the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the Senate to come over the following week to meet with residents and also if Councilmembers want to meet with him. As you know, that is the money Committee. The awareness at the State Legislature of the people that I am talking to on a regular basis is higher than it has ever been. I have no doubt, whatsoever, that the State as a whole will benefit immensely from the increased awareness and effort that our Council has made in this particular area. I have no doubt that the funding for more inspectors is going to happen. Whether it will happen enough— but I know it is going to be increased as a result of the efforts of Kaua`i County. The entire State will benefit, and I believe the leaders in the State, Government, as well as otherwise, realize that the State has dropped the ball on this and that Kaua`i County has pointed that out. As a result, I think they are going to pick up the ball to a larger extent, not to preempt what we are doing necessarily, but to add to it and to add value to the work that we have done. I feel real good about the State in the coming Legislative Session in stepping up to helping us, as well as the rest of the State on this issue. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Thank you for those comments and we wish you a successful trip. The money bill that I put together and introduced for these agricultural inspectors is in front of them. I would also like to take the time to thank Mr. Kagawa for his continued focus with Honolulu. I would certainly make myself available to meet with The Ways and Means when they are here. Again, my comments were just about the recent things that we have had to step up to the plate and some word of caution. Mr. Kagawa: Chair, if I could just add one more result of my meeting. I specifically asked for Kaua`i on how much of the Department of Agriculture was going to go up and he said one (1) Inspector and one (1) Education Specialist. We will go up to two (2) Inspectors and one (1) Educational Specialist. That is the proposal. Chair Furfaro: Thank you for getting that clarification for us. On that note, is there any more discussion? Mr. Bynum: I want to thank you for your comments today, Mr. Chair, because they were right only the mark, especially about the State having a financial responsibility, but us having a kuleana. It was well-said. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Okay. On that note, may I ask for a roll call vote please? COUNCIL MEETING 67 DECEMBER 4, 2013 The motion for passage of Proposed Draft Bill No. 2513 on first reading, that . it be ordered to print, that a public hearing thereon be scheduled for January 16, 2014, and that it thereafter be referred to Finance & Economic Development (Tourism / Visotr Industry / Small Business Development / Sports & Recreation Development / Other Economic Development Areas) Committee was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR PASSAGE: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Kagawa, Rapozo, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 7, AGAINST PASSAGE: None TOTAL— 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: Furfaro TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. Proposed Draft Bill (No. 2514) — A BILL FOR AN ORDINANCE AMENDING SECTION 5-2.3, KAUAI COUNTY CODE 1987, AS AMENDED, RELATING TO THE COUNTY MOTOR VEHICLE WEIGHT TAX: Mr. Bynum moved for passage of Proposed Draft Bill No. 2514 on first reading, that it be ordered to print, that a public hearing thereon be scheduled for January 16, 2014, and that it thereafter be referred to Finance & Economic Development (Tourism / Visotr Industry / Small Business Development / Sports & Recreation Development / Other Economic Development Areas) Committee, seconded by Ms. Yukimura. Chair Furfaro: Is there any discussion? Mr. Rapozo, go right ahead. Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Chair, it is not normal or not usual for us to vote against first bill readings, but I will not be supporting the Bill. I think we went through the exercise in the budget of last year, heard all of the discussion, and heard from the public. Now we are coming up on a new budget year in a few months. We heard from the Finance Director earlier today that we are awaiting the CAFR and waiting to find out where our financial position is going to be, actually in a couple of weeks... maybe two (2) weeks. We are going to get a briefing on the CAFR to find out exactly what the rollover will be into next year. I think the, and my comments will be for the two (2) items today, that now is not the time to be discussing another potential tax increase. Like I said, we have discussed this in length. These two (2) items did not pass during the budget and I think this would be more appropriately presented during the budget after we have the final report from the Finance Department with the CAFR to find out exactly where we are at. I do not think the people will appreciate the County Motor Vehicle Weight Tax, as well as the Tipping Fees to be increased. The arguments have not changed. People are struggling right now. I think, as I have stated during the budget proceedings, I do not believe we have seen enough effort put in the cost-cutting measures in our County. We constantly look at ways to generate revenue. We are also discussing potential changes with the General Excise Tax power in the Counties. We have a lot of opportunities and options still available to us and I think we should explore other options before we increase our citizens' taxes. Again, not normal for Councils to vote against first reading bills, but I do not consider this a... it is a first reading bill, but it is one that we addressed a few months ago and it did not pass. I will not be supporting it today. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Okay. Mr. Kagawa. Mr. Kagawa: I too, will not be supporting it on first reading because of the same reasons. In May, we did not approve it. I voted no. COUNCIL MEETING 68 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Some of my reasons was; number one, for residential users, a typical car might go up from seventy dollars ($70) or a little more. I do not think we should do it right now. We said "no" in May. The other one that kind of stuck in my head was a major Kaua`i-owned trucking company owner telling me that the cost of his large trucks might put him out of business. I thought about that and it kind of stuck with me because we are seeing a lot of these out-of-island, out-of-state companies that are really taking over our local companies' business because they are able to sustain those downtimes and they have more capital. I just think this is one area where if we can at least relieve our local residents and enable them to compete for jobs and sustain those downtimes. I think is really important. For those reasons, I will not be supporting it and I would be happy to entertain this Bill during budget. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Councilmember Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: As to the two (2) Bills, one of the Motor Vehicle Weight Tax and Solid Waste Fees, I have concerns about both of them, but I think we need to position them and hear input from the public about them. I think it is suitable to do it now. We can always defer final action on the Bill to the budget session, but we need to look for more revenues. Also, people need to pay for the services rendered. Vehicle weight taxes by weight cause damage to the roads, which then need to be repaired to be maintained proactively. We are expecting a full report from our Roads Division during budget, and from all prognostications, it is going to be a large bill we have to pay to proactively or do preventative maintenance to our roads, which if we do not do, we pay one way or the other. We pay by car repairs or we pay by repaving the roads. We have to be responsible in figuring out how to keep our infrastructure in good repair. This is one way. We just passed a Bill that is committing us to eight hundred thousand dollars ($800,000) a year for an additional police beat. We cannot neglect other areas of our County services. I think it is responsible to position all of these Bills, at least for final passage, get all of the input, and then make our decisions that we have to make. I think we should at least pass these Bills on first reading. Chair Furfaro: Okay. Mr. Bynum. Mr. Bynum: It has been an interesting day. As I said earlier, since I have been involved in County government, our citizens have asked us to step up. They asked us to fully fund the Police Department and get more beats. They asked us to create a Parks Department and they voted to create a Parks Department. They voted to create an Auditor's Department. They want us to pave our roads correctly and Public Works is going to pave them correctly from now on. These are positive things, but they cost money. We are engaged in a huge environmental clean-up that we should not have had to budget for, but we have to. The Administration last year did an analysis of fees. I am a supporter of user fees. When they are done properly and they make sense, then the people who are benefiting are paying and they are part of our funding mix. The Administration recommended these two (2) fees and the Council did not agree. A lot has happened since then. Councilmembers who said they were going to vote against this today voted for millions of dollars in increased spending. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too. It is just that simple. If you want this level of service, you have to pay for it. It is our responsibility to do that. HGEA, Police, and Fire— they held off on benefits. They pay more of their medical. We went through this economic down turn. We are going to discuss that a lot over the next few weeks because we made decisions during this period that got us in a pretty tight jam right now. In the long • COUNCIL MEETING 69 DECEMBER 4, 2013 run, how do you vote for millions of dollars of spending, and then say, "But I am not even going to consider revenues to address those concerns." This is about positioning these Bills to be part of the mix. Councilmember Yukimura has it correct. I am putting these Bills forward, so I am going to support them because I believe this is an appropriate part of our revenue mix. As we go into this period, the Mayor has to give us a balanced budget and we have to have one at the end of the day. If these fees do not come from here, they are going to come from somewhere else. I will not go into all of the details because this is first reading, but especially the tipping fees are good, social, public policy at this stage. I will be prepared to defend those, presuming we get through first reading today, which is typically what we do and set that for a public hearing. If we do not pass the Bill on first reading, the public does not get to chime in at all because what we do today is set-up a public hearing and engage the public process. It makes prudent sense to make these Bills available, should we choose to use them as part of our revenue mix. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: This is first reading. Is there anyone else who wants to speak the first time before I speak? Go ahead, Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: I just want to say that the public hearing occurred a few months ago. We had this discussion and I guess what frustrates me is that Councilmembers do not get their way, so they just reintroduce and keep trying until they get it passed. That is the frustration. We had the public hearing. I heard from the community and continue to hear from the community. It is a few weeks away from Christmas and we are giving them a Christmas gift of a tax increase. That is not right. As far as approving the cost items earlier today, I did, but I also expect the Administration to come across with some cost-savings measures that I have not seen. We still have a whole bunch of positions that are funded that are not filled. We have not seen any attempts, in my opinion, enough to warrant a tax increase at this time. Like Mr. Bynum, he will defend his position and so will I when we get to the Committee Meeting. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: I am going to go on in first reading and keep recognizing people and I would like to keep my comments for the end, but I let Mr. Rapozo speak a second time, so Mr. Bynum and JoAnn may also speak. Mr. Bynum: We can see how spirited this discussion will be going forward because we have huge challenges, right? I have heard Mr. Rapozo talk about cost-savings from cutting, but I have not seen him put much cost-cutting proposals before the Council, so I will be interested to see... he said earlier, that we should not spend money where we do not need to. I am really interested to see where you think we are spending money that we do not need to. We will do that over the next few months. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: JoAnn. Ms. Yukimura: Councilmember Bynum has talked about people asking for these services like parks, an Auditor, and those kinds of things. Our responsibility as County government is to provide those services efficiently and effectively. That is why I was asking the questions this morning of the Police and will ask of it every single Department, including the Mayor. I have many concerns, especially about the Solid Waste Division in terms of the management there. It is not like I am totally in favor of these fees right now. They can be amended. They can be modulated. They can be killed. I think we have to have this discussion and that is why I will be voting on first reading for them. COUNCIL MEETING 70 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Chair Furfaro: Okay. I am going to speak last here if I can. I want the Finance Director to take note of my comments here. When we get to January 16th, I want some information made available to the Council. At the last look, I think we had seventy-eight thousand (78,000) register vehicles in the County of Kaua`i. I would like to make sure that we have a pure understanding of cars, trucks, trailers, and the whole bit, so make certain that is available to us, okay? As far as the cost-cutting, I have to tell you that I was so disappointed in the Roads Division about forty-five (45) minutes ago. They make a twenty-three thousand dollar ($23,000) swing on what is really a line item for miscellaneous expenses and supplies, and they do not blink an eye at moving that kind of money. Well, maybe that is where the cost-cutting has to come from during this budget round. You keep finding twenty-three thousand dollars ($23,000) that they put in the budget and say they need, but they can move it later. I am pretty good at budgeting and I did it for thirty-nine (39) years in the visitor industry and even at Sheraton Waikiki and the Princess Ka`iulani, who had a bigger Operating Budget than the County of Kauai. Maybe that message has to come from you folks and maybe we have to enforce it a little bit. Steve, can you prepare that information for me? I would also like to let you know that we are looking forward to the CAFR coming and it will come up on the 17th. We will have that information by the time we get to January 16th, so that is a big help. The Building Department has fallen seven (7) months behind on their building reports. I take that personally because I helped design that form, so that we could forecast future income based on the value of building permits. If we need to wake them up, we will wake them up, but I need your help on that, Steve, along with the variance reports. We have not seen a quarterly financial report for some time, but we are due for one soon. You have one in your hand. Thank you so much. In the meantime without it, we are kind of flying blind. I just want to remind everybody that the purse strings are attached here. Right here. I will be supporting this because of the timing element. We will be able to get a view of the CAFR, and then we will have a better understanding where we are at on January 16th. We need some additional information, Steve. If nobody else wants to speak, I am going to call for the vote. The motion for passage of Proposed Draft Bill No. 2514 on first reading, that it be ordered to print, that a public hearing thereon be scheduled for January 16, 2014, and that it thereafter be referred to Finance & Economic Development (Tourism / Visotr Industry / Small Business Development / Sports & Recreation Development / Other Economic Development Areas) Committee was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR PASSAGE: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 5, AGAINST PASSAGE: Kagawa, Rapozo TOTAL— 2, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: Furfaro TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. Proposed Draft Bill (No. 2515) — A BILL FOR AN ORDINANCE AMENDING SECTION 21-9.2 OF THE KAUAI COUNTY CODE 1987, AS AMENDED, RELATING TO INTEGRATED SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT: Mr. Bynum moved for passage of Proposed Draft Bill No. 2515 on first reading, that it be ordered to print, that a public hearing thereon be scheduled for January 16, 2014, and that it thereafter be referred to Environmental Services / Public Safety / Community Assistance Committee, seconded by Ms. Yukimura. COUNCIL MEETING 71 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Chair Furfaro: Is there any discussion? Mr. Kagawa. Mr. Kagawa: This is another Bill that we denied in May and I voted no at that time. I still feel the same way for the following reasons: number one, after talking to some of the people at Garden Island Disposal, et cetera, they had no problem with the tipping fees going up. The only worry that they had was for the businesses that they will be passing on these increased costs to. They said many of these businesses are struggling to pay their bills and struggling to have enough revenue to call them additional times or what have you to satisfy their needs of rubbish pickup. That concerns me that our local businesses may be adversely impacted by passing a Bill that we denied six (6) months ago. The second reason why I feel it is not proper at this time is because I believe that there are is vast improvement that needs to be done in the Solid Waste Division as far as recycling, et cetera. My counterpart, Councilmember Yukimura— we have good agreement on what she says. We have been stuck at that thirty percent (30%) or what have you for such a long time. I continue to go to our County parks and I see recyclables in the rubbish cans. We need to really change the thinking of our residents. This is a huge problem. In the meantime, we are stuck doing the same mistakes that we have been doing from the early 90's. In the early 90's, I was an Analyst like the Analysts here and I was in charge of Public Works. We looked at plasma arc and all kinds of stuff, and it never has come to fruition. I think coming in, I really hope that we could possibly get into some type of waste to energy. I just recently heard that I think Maui is on track to change into bio fuel and they are going to be turning every type of rubbish into energy. That is just amazing. They will vastly reduce their need for landfilling. I think our Solid Waste Division— I know they are really trying to find the right fit for it, but I think at some point, we just need to set our minds that that is the only alternative, which is to go into that kind of direction. The building of rubbish at Kekaha is reaching its end. If we think fast and do something fast, I think we can avoid Ma'alo, or at least the need there will not be as urgent. I can see increasing our tipping fees if it is going towards something positive, but if it is just increasing our tipping fees for the sake of doing the same thing and just burying it, I am not for it. At this time, I am not for the direction that we have been going. I look for a new direction from the Solid Waste Division. I will be voting no. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Thank you for your comments. Mr. Bynum, and then Mr. Chock. Mr. Bynum: I just want to let folks know that we are going to ask the Solid Waste Division to look at the goals that were set, our adopted Integrated Solid Waste plan in 2008, where we are currently on those goals, and what their projected completions are compared to the plan. This is the first reading Bill, so I do not want to go into tons of stuff. Again, I am assured that there is a public record out there. We adopted these plans and we can analyze it. I do not want to go into those details other than to say that Solid Waste is a place where our General Fund hugely subsidizes the cost of running that Division. That means if the businesses that are dumping trash do not pay this fee, then other taxpayers pay it. The trash gets generated and it gets dealt with one way or another. The fees we charge are not even close to the cost of service for that whole Division. We should have had a plan to address that over time, but we just have accepted that our Solid Waste Division is going to be a drained from the General Fund. Again, we have fixed costs that we have to meet, right? We need to have a robust and fair mix of revenues to do that. My closing statement is that we would not even be having these discussions if the State had not stolen thirteen million dollars ($13,000,000) COUNCIL MEETING 72 DECEMBER 4, 2013 from us. We are chasing ten million dollars ($10,000,000) and we lost thirteen million dollars ($13,000,000) from visitors who come here. A lot of people are saying, "Okay, we lost that money forever. Let us get it from our local taxpayers instead, so the visitors who use all of the services pay nothing and we are going to get that from you guys." We have got to have this big robust discussion about how we fund the commitments that we have made. We have made those commitments. I think this is part of the mix. It will be a trigger for us to discuss the Solid Waste issues and to understand why this is an important fee for bigger reasons. We will have that discussion as we go through the Bill. Chair Furfaro: Mr. Chock, you have the floor, followed by Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Chock: It is first reading. I feel like I really agree with what Councilmember Kagawa was going in the direction he is going. I think that we need to find the time to discuss this more. I want to hear more from the public about it. Hopefully through that discussion, we will get to some solutions. We can move at a different direction, but I like the option here and I am willing to approve this on first reading. Thank you. Chair Furfaro: Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Chock was not here during the budget discussions, so I am sure he will hear it. Mr. Chair, imagine that next month your hotel's food costs went up by forty-three percent (43%). Imagine forty-three percent (43%). That is what the tipping fee for the municipal solid waste is proposed— forty-three percent (43%). Imagine that, Sir. Can you imagine going to your chefs and preparing your menu now and saying, "My gosh, our food costs have just gone up forty-three percent (43%)." What is that going to do to your menu pricing? You are not going to eat it; you are going to pass it on. It is the same thing here and I do not think we see that. Everybody assumes that all businesses have a lot of money and cash flow is fine, but forty-three percent (43%)... that is just in your normal daily waste. That is just in your normal daily waste, your municipal. It goes up twenty-five percent (25%) for asbestos containing materials. That should be higher. That is the hazardous waste that requires special handling. That is where the increase should be where we have special handling requirements. But no, your regular trash gets hit forty-three percent (43%), asbestos-containing materials is just twenty-five percent (25%), and dead animals are thirty-two percent (32%). That is what this Bill is doing. For the forty- three percent (43%), I just do not know if some businesses can absorb that but we are not thinking about that because we just want to get this thing passed. The Finance Director said earlier that property values are increasing. We know that. In some areas, it is increasing substantially. I read the "for sale" publications. That is going to generate more Real Property Tax revenue for this County. We get new developments being proposed; that is going to generate more tax revenue for this County. I guess what I am saying is, and as I said in last Bill, we are in the middle of two (2) budget cycles. We do not have all of the information right now to make a determination of when we should increase any taxes. I am not supporting it, obviously, because I understand what the impact will be and I know what the public sentiment will be. I do not know what the justification or rationale is. Was it just arbitrary and capricious and just picking a number from the sky? Forty-three percent (43%)? That is just too high for me and it is too much for our small businesses to absorb. Thank you Mr. Chair. COUNCIL MEETING 73 DECEMBER 4, 2013 Chair Furfaro: Are there any more comments? JoAnn, go ahead. Ms. Yukimura: Even though I seconded the motion on Solid Waste Fees, I have severe reservations as I have expressed before. It is true that it would be appropriate to ask the users to pay for the cost of service, but not when the cost of service includes the cost of horrendous mismanagement. That is what I do not want to keep throwing money at. That is not right to ask our users to pay for that and that is what my concern is. I have asked Public Works that if we spend the nine million dollars ($9,000,000) slated to expand the old landfill instead on diversion infrastructure like the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) and we accelerate our efforts on that, can we lengthen the life of the landfill and use our dollars for the future rather than the past? I have not yet gotten an answer on that. Those are the kinds of management issues in the Administration that have to be addressed and have to be vetted here before us because it puts us into a horrible dilemma if they are not properly managed. I see this Bill as a chance to address those issues, which I think we must address on behalf of the taxpayers and the users. Chair Furfaro: Is there any more discussion before I speak? No, okay. To the Director of Finance, as I mentioned earlier, I will be sending over a memorandum from myself on the vehicle weight tax situation, number of vehicles, types, total revenue, and so forth. I will also be sending over questions regarding solid waste, and in particular, some of the new collections that we have like curbside, tipping fees, and so forth so that we have a good understanding. I would like those available to us on January 16th. Thank you very much. On that note, I would like to call for the vote. The motion for passage of Proposed Draft Bill No. 2515 on first reading, that it be ordered to print, that a public hearing thereon be scheduled for January 16, 2014, and that it thereafter be referred to Environmental Services / Public Safety / Community Assistance Committee was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR PASSAGE: Bynum, Chock, Hooser, Yukimura, Furfaro TOTAL— 5, AGAINST PASSAGE: Kagawa, Rapozo TOTAL— 2, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: Furfaro TOTAL— 0, RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0. Chair Furfaro: Thank you. Before I adjourn the meeting today, it would be probably wise that I make note that for the COPS Grant, there were twenty-one (21) pieces of testimony that came in favor of that support. I just want to make note of that. I have just recently caught up on it. It has gone from our Congressional people to the other neighbor island Police Chiefs who have encouraged us for the exception. That should be part of the record. On that note, I would like to thank everybody. Our meeting for today is adjourned. COUNCIL MEETING 74 DECEMBER 4, 2013 ADJOURNMENT: There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 3:39 p.m. esp• l ully submitted, it \ II JAD ► .-• •" • N-TANIGAWA Deput ounty Clerk :cy