HomeMy WebLinkAbout04/14/2015 Office of the Prosecuting Attorney, Transportation Agency, Office of the County Auditor, Agency on Elderly Affairs 4/14/2015
DEPAR'T'MENTAL BUDGET REVIEWS 2015-16
• OFFICE OF THE PROSECUTING ATTORNEY
• TRANSPORTATION AGENCY
• OFFICE OF THE COUNTY AUDITOR
• AGENCY ON ELDERLY AFFAIRS
Office of the Prosecuting Attorney, Transportation Agency, Office of the County
Auditor, and Agency on Elderly Affairs
Honorable Mason K. Chock
Honorable Gary L. Hooser
Honorable KipuKai Kuali'i
Honorable JoAnn A. Yukimura
Honorable Mel Rapozo
Honorable Arryl Kaneshiro
Excused: Honorable Ross Kagawa
The Committee reconvened at 9:01 a.m., on April 14, 2015, and proceeded as follows:
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Good morning. I would like to call back to order
the Budget and Finance Committee and the Fiscal Year 2015-2016 Departmental Budget
Reviews. On the schedule for today we will be hearing from the Office of the Prosecuting
Attorney, Transportation Agency, Office of the County Auditor, and Agency on Elderly
Affairs. As we do each morning we will take public testimony. Do we have anyone signed
up?
DARRELLYNE M. CALDEIRA, Council Services Assistant II: First
registered speaker is Glenn Mickens followed by Ken Taylor.
GLENN MICKENS: Thank you Arryl. Thank you B.C. For the
record, Glenn Mickens. You have a copy of my testimony and let me read it please for the
viewing public. First, I want to thank Stephanie for the outstanding job she has done
running the Auditor's Office while Ernie has been on the DL. Then I want to thank the
Council who six years ago unanimously hired Ernie Pasion as our County Auditor. This
man has gone way beyond what the citizens expected of him and proved to be the best
quality qualified and hard-working honest person this County hired. Having been a
nitpicker and government watchdog for twenty years, I use these words of praise with
nothing with sincerity or any other reason except to be truthful. Ernie has been praised for
the Association of Local Government Auditors for the work he has done and any citizen who
reads his audits agreed. The eight audits he did were so crystal clear and understandable
to the average citizen, which is usually rare in trying to understand most legal documents
today. The recommendations made in these audits have been used to save the County from
the millions of dollars of waste that were identified and I have no idea why. In doing his
job by the book, Ernie discovered improprieties and pointed the finger at people in power
who retaliated and caused his staff to be cut. With his operation budget getting slashed,
Ernie believed he could no longer perform the function he was pointed and felt forced to sue
the County for relief. Ernie is on medical leave and will no longer be our County Auditor,
but when he returns to Kauai, he has a wealth of knowledge to help the Auditor. We
desperately need people in our government who have the honesty and integrity of Mr.
Pasion and whoever is hired to fill his shoes can live up to the standards he kept. The
uncoverings of the gas audit could have been ignored by him and his staff for political
reasons, but they were bound by honesty and integrity and knew they would have been
guilty doing so. The point that we had an Auditor who did his job. Thank you, Ernie
Pasion for a job superbly done. We will miss you and the high standards you brought to the
County Auditor's Office. I hope people absorb a little of this. I know I have testified
behinds hundreds and hundreds of times and wonder if you are really listening or going in
one ear and out the other? I appreciate your efforts when you fill this position again, and I
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do hope sincerely that you find somebody with the integrity of Ernie. Thank you very
much.
Ms. Caldeira: Ken Taylor followed by Joe Rosa.
KEN TAYLOR: Chair, Members of the Council, my name is Ken
Taylor. In reference to the Auditor's activities, checks and balances, no government system
is perfect. The system of government is supposed to work with checks and balances. A
branch of government whether it is the Administrative or Legislative has that built-in
responsibility to check on the other to prevent any corruption or irregularities. However, if
a branch of government with its duties...duly elected officials in spite of having sworn to
protect the Constitution of the United States and the State of Hawaii and the County
Charter, fails to exercise their duties, then this is a gross breakdown of the system.
Although the Pasion civil case has been closed with prejudice by the State, the County
Council must refer the case of the alleged corruption and irregularities to the U.S.
Department of Justice and FBI to investigate those who are perpetuating the illegal acts
and if you do not, then you become part of the cover-up, part of the corruption and
irregularities. Are you going to give us 3 and 3 or the full 6?
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: 3 and 3.
Mr. Taylor: Thank you, I will leave it at that point for now.
Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thanks.
Ms. Caldeira: Joe Rosa.
JOE ROSA: Good morning. For the record, Members of the
Council, good morning. For the record, Joe Rosa. I am here to complement our former
County Auditor, Ernie Pasion. When he was appointed in 2009 by a unanimous vote of
these Councilmember...not this present Council, but past Council and he did a job, and got
to a point it starts to ruffle some people's feathers...so he started to look like the bad guy.
Any time when audits are performed, have to be performed by someone who was appointed,
you know, you ruffle the boat, things start to shape up. And whenever it comes to auditing,
I know because I had audits done by the Federal Bureau people come down and check the
books on projects. They say do not try to slip anything under the rug, because if you do,
that and you know there is something illegally going on, you will be just as guilty as the
person involved. So think about it, you would be just as guilty. So like what has
happened, where it starts to ruffle some people...Ernie became the bad guy, but when he
was appointed in 2009, he was the good guy and a job well-done and complimented by the
committee that does auditing as an excellent job, but he was not given that credit, even at
that time by Council Chair, saying he did not get that kind of rating, but it came out in the
papers. So how can they deny he did an excellent job? And the way he exposed now, it was
not only the gas card. He came out, now today, another critical item is the pCard. And
the thing is it is going the way the editorial said in the paper it is going to be a State issue
and it is trickled into the Legislature and it has been shoved under the rug. It was only a
whistle-blower from the Big Island in the Finance Department that got this thing rolling.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you, Mr. Rosa, would you like to come
back for 3 more minutes?
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Mr. Rosa: I could go for my 3 now, if I want to.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I am going to have Mr. Taylor come back for his
three and you can come back for your three.
Mr. Rosa: Okay. I will come back then.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you.
Mr. Taylor: Thank you, Chair and Council. Continuing with
checks and balances, unfortunately you did not deal with the Mayor's problem properly last
year. So we now can expect free, national news coverage bringing Kaua`i's ethical and
moral issues to the world. You dropped the ball as to your lawful and fiduciary
responsibilities, as well as to governing law and the respect of the people you serve. Would
it not be better for Mayor Carvalho to admit he made a mistake and take the high road and
do what HRS 78-9 requires and step down? I also believe that not investigating this issue
last year you shirked your responsibility. The County Charter Section 3.17 gives you the
right to perform investigations and by not doing this last year in a timely manner you
showed that your ethical and moral compass is not in good working order and may not be fit
to hold office. This alleged behavior is inexcusable and cannot be tolerated. Just look at
what is happening now on the Big Island? Thank you.
Mr. Rosa: I was saying in my prior three minutes this thing
has come to sort of a dead-end here on Kaua`i, but yet, a thing like this here, somebody
should have taken it by the horns and do something about it. Like they are doing on the
Big Island, where a member from the Finance Office started to do what is happening and
exposing what is going on and also the Prosecuting Attorney has contact with the Attorney
General. So they are not hiding anything under the rug and to me it is whistle-blower and
to me what Mr. Pasion did, was a whistle-blowing job. In the end with the settlement, he
could not pursue anything to do with his Office. In other words, it seems like somebody is
hiding the guilt. That actually took place and audits have not been made available to the
public. Other than what came out with the Kilauea Gym and gas card audit...the gas
audit, because so much gas was missing, so-called evaporation. But everybody knows you
cannot evaporate that much gas. So I think that somebody should have done the thing to
pursue this matter, because like as I say, you sweep it under the rug, you all involved are
going to be affected. Because that is the way the Federal do is justice...I remember those
audits telling me do not try to hide anything, because you are just as guilty as the person
involved...so I think somebody should do it, either the Prosecuting Attorney, somebody in
the Council, somebody in the Finance Office or something should have gone and seen the
Attorney General and do something about it. Because you people were elected with
integrity and honesty. It is where you cannot trust the officials anymore; that is something
to think about. If you know anything and you hide it, you are just as guilty. Would you
like to serve somebody else's time in jail because you hid something from that person and
did not make a testimony?
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you, Mr. Rosa.
Mr. Rosa: Think about it, somebody has got to take the ball
and get rolling. I thank you.
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Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you, Mr. Rosa. Mr. Mickens.
Mr. Mickens: Thank you, again, Arryl. I know you guys are
super busy with the budget thing and the hours you spend going through the hundreds and
hundreds of pages. I well-understand that. I just sincerely hope you have a good chance to
listen to the three of us. We are concerned. We are not politicians. We have no dog in
this fight other than to try to bring things up to you guys to take care of what we ask for,
that is all. So I really hope that you have the chance to be able to review and if you do not
agree with us, tell us. Answer our questions. If you do agree with us, tell us that, too. We
would love to hear it. Again, I appreciate all that you do, because it is no easy job that you
have with this huge budget thing to be able to go over all of these things. Again, we feel
that what we are bringing up is highly important to the public, to everybody. So all we
want to do is have you listen to us. Thank you very much.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you, anybody else in the audience wishing
to testify? Seeing none, we will bring it back. Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: Yes, Mr. Chair, I want to say for the record, and
if the gentlemen who spoke had done their research, they would have found out that, in
fact, the County Council referred this matter of fuel usage to the Attorney General, and it
was the Auditor who fought it and who wanted to send it to local enforcement, who were
embroiled in a political situation that would not have made them objective. So the County
Council actually did what the others have done across the State, referred a matter to the
Attorney General, who is the highest-ranking enforcement official in State, and who was
also unbiased, because they were not on this island. And that is, in fact, what I did, too,
when I was Mayor and discovered a $1.3 million embezzlement. We felt that was
something that had to be handled off-island to be objective and that is what this Council
did, with the situation that has just been discussed today.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you, for today's review, we will start with
the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney and call up Justin Kollar, to give us the overview.
They will go through their presentation and we will hold our questions to the end. If we
can keep our questions to line items, but general questions on the PowerPoint presentation.
JUSTIN F. KOLLAR, Prosecuting Attorney: Good morning. Aloha everyone.
For the record, Justin Kollar, Prosecuting Attorney. I have here in the gallery with me,
Jamie Chong our Grants Coordinator and Art Williams our Administrative Manager who
are here to assist. I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here and this our third
year presenting to you folks. We have done our best over the last two and a half, three
years to exemplify sound stewardship over the County's resources and look forward to
continuing that. They say time flies and it is certainly true and I have been fortunate to
work alongside the talented individuals that I do each day at the Office of the Prosecuting
Attorney and that includes the folks here on the County Council as well. So to start off
with our mission statement it is our mission to promote the fair, impartiality, and
expeditious pursuit of justice to promote integrity in ...to do our work in an open and
transparent way. I have said our mission, our job description is simply, two words, to seek
justice, myself and Deputies are very fortunate to have such a simple mission in what we
do. We do not have to argue about our client's money. We do not have to get involved in
political issues. We just come and seek justice. When my Deputies have questions about
cases I tell them at the start of each conversation, what is the right outcome in this case?
Just do the right thing. That is our job. That boil down to our vision statement, our vision
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is for a safe and healthy community where offenders are held accountable, case dispositions
are appropriate for the offense and the offender, timely and efficient administration of
justice occurs, service delivery is improved for victims and witnesses, crime is reduced, and
fear of crime is reduced. Our vision is for an Office of the Prosecuting Attorney that
exemplifies competent and professional behavior, efficient, fiscally responsible management
and administration, and consistent, coordinated enforcement efforts and administration of
justice. Our structure as I have said before in previous years, we are Kaua`i's largest law
firm. We try to run it that way. We try to apply sound business principles to what we do
and best management practices to what we do. Attorneys have been broken down into
three major categories, three major categories of work that we do. That is the
district/family court unit, the circuit court, and the appeals and administrative services;
that we handle. We have 15 attorneys on staff, including myself and the First Deputy. We
have 14 clerical support employees. It says two vacancies, but offers have been made on
both positions. Victim-Witness Program with four employees, administrative support with
five, and investigative support, which has four employees as well. In the district and
family court unit, it is supervised by the Second Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Becky Vogt
and DPAs Jenna Tatsey, Ginger Grinpas, Michelle Premeaux and John Murphy work in
this unit under Ms. Vogt's supervision. They handle district court traffic matters and
criminal matters and it is misdemeanors, petty assaults, leash law, cases like that,
contempt of court. The adult family court unit Ginger Grinpas handles most of those cases.
Those are our adult domestic violence calendar essentially. Juvenile family court is a court
for juvenile offenders. DPA John Murphy handles that. And the Girl's court calendar has
been added and we are happy that the judiciary has gone live with here on Kauai. As well
as our mental health calendar and jail-diversion programs in district court, as well as the
screening for all of the thousands of traffic and district court matters that we receive each
year. Domestic violence as you all know does remain a very serious problem in our
community. It is one of our emphasis areas for targeted enforcement. We do receive close
to 400 adult DV cases each year that come through the family court system. As well as
hundreds of cases that come through the family court juvenile calendar. Juvenile justice is
another hot button issue and we are very proud that Hawaii is in the forefront of looking at
progressive ways of addressing juvenile justice. We are a juvenile detention alternatives
initiative state, which is an NEKAC Foundation program that the judiciary has
participated in for a number of years and shared that knowledge with us at the County-
level and we are also one of three states to benefit from some very interesting and
innovative Department of Justice initiatives with regards to juvenile justice. In the circuit
court we have two circuit court courtrooms on Kaua`i, Judge Watanabe and Chief Judge
Valenciano. This team of attorneys is supervised by the First Deputy Kevin Takata. The
attorneys in this unit are DPAs Becky Vogt, Melinda Mendes, Lisa Arin, Sinclair Salas-
Ferguson, George White, Jennifer Winn, Teresa Tumbaga, and Ginger Grinpas. This unit
handles felony cases, crimes against persons, drug cases, property cases, and career
criminal prosecutions. Responsible for considerable volume of motion hearings and trials,
misdemeanor jury demands, grand jury proceedings, Drug Court, the Hope probation
program, as well as screening and charging the hundreds of felony cases that come through
our Office each year. I am very proud of this unit. I was doing the numbers the other day
and we actually have more than 100 years' of experience on this team of attorneys. We
have got a good blend of newer attorneys and more experienced attorneys, a lot of training
and a lot of mentoring and knowledge happens in this unit. Deputies with a wide variety of
experience working in the Prosecutor's Offices across the State of Hawaii, as well as
experience working in the Attorney General's Office and handled just about any kind of
case you can imagine. Appeals and administrative services, supervised by First Deputy
Kevin Takata and DPA Tracy Morikami is responsible for the bulk of our appellate work
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and with assistance of DPAs Sinclair Salas-Ferguson and John Murphy who assists with
asset forfeiture petitions. We handle a large volume of Rule 40 petitions, which are
petitions for post-conviction relief, basically offenders who have been sentenced to lengthy
prison sentences, really have unlimited opportunities to file these petitions for years and
years and years after their convictions. So even when a case appears to be finished, it may
not actually be finished and these things come up, we have to deal with them, evidentiary
hearings and appeals, et cetera. This unit is also responsible for conducting research for
keeping current on appellate decisions or briefing KPD, updates to the law, making sure
that we are giving them current information, guidance, and support that they need when
they are out in the field doing their jobs. We do that regularly. Some accomplishments we
want to touch on for Fiscal Year 2015, the cold case unit and unsolved homicide unit, I work
in this unit along with Kevin Takata, Melinda Mendes, as well as detectives from KPD,
Assistant Chiefs Mike Contrades and Roy Asher as well. Our special investigators Joe
Adric and John Burgess. A couple of major accomplishments this year, we did succeed in
extending the grant and using those funds to secure a contract to perform DNA analysis
with a laboratory on the mainland. The state of the art in DNA analysis and forensic
analysis is so far beyond where it was five, ten, 15, 20, 25 years ago, we can really drill
down and do testing that were not available at the time these cases happened. This
enables us to keep moving these investigations forward, even after the evidence-gathering
phase of the case may have concluded. We also we are able to use these funds to secure a
contract with a forensic analysis firm to again revisit the evidence in these old cases and go
through the remaining evidence, and consult with us on what types of analyses would best
benefit the case? If there are particular items of evidence that could benefit from particular
testing, we talk about that and figure out the best way to do that and get it done. And
again we were successful in extending this grant funding, which we received via the
Department of the Attorney General with the assistance of the Governor's Commission on
Crime. This unit also...this is something that only DNA nerds may appreciate, but with
were able to get HPD to accept DNA profiles developed by a private laboratory, the lab we
contracted with. It is the first time that HPD has agreed to accept profiles from a private
lab, the Honolulu Police Department crime lab. We are anticipating some breaks in some
cases in the near future as a result of this. It is really...what this means is that if we send
evidence to testing at our lab, and a DNA profile makes a match, HPD can actually put that
into the nationwide CODIS system and if that DNA is already in the CODIS, i.e., they are a
convicted felon in another case, which many time these murderers are, it will link up and
we will get a hit and it will say this is the same DNA profile as this convicted felon...so we
do have a new Attorney General in Honolulu, who we work were on these grants and
consult with on these cases. He has a law enforcement background. He has been a real
pleasure for us to be able to work with and we also want to praise the Kaua`i Police
Department's crime scene specialist Stephanie Regan. She has a wealth of knowledge
when it comes to DNA science and forensic analysis. We are really so fortunate to have her
on this island. She has been participating in our cold case meetings and bringing a very
impressive resume to the table. We meet monthly and currently have 24 cases on the cold
case/unsolved homicide list. I do not like to call them cold cases because we are still
investigating them actively on a daily basis. Another accomplishment from this past year
in the area of vehicular crimes prosecution, and these are cases that Melinda Mendes
handles the bulk, and I also handle some of these cases. We were successful in obtaining a
grant from the Hawai`i Department of Transportation that provides grant funding to us to
investigate and prosecute cases involving vehicular manslaughter, negligent homicide,
negligent injury, and cases of operating a vehicle under the influence of an intoxicant.
There is another emphasis area that I felt very strongly about during the term of my
Administration, something I felt very strongly that we needed to focus increased efforts and
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went to the DOT and said, if you give us this money we will have a dedicated prosecutor
who just handles traffic crimes. We do have six to ten individuals who the on our roadways
every year. Motorists, pedestrians, cyclists, making it a very serious category of entirely
preventable deaths in our community. So this is something that I am really proud we have
managed to accomplish. We have taken on the responsibilities for participating as the
State of Hawaii's traffic safety resource prosecutor meaning that as part of the grant, we
will conduct research and make sure we are providing communication and guidance out to
the prosecutors in all of the other four counties with updates on case law, training
opportunities, and information-sharing. We are very proud to be one of two TSRPs in
Hawaii and there are TSRPs in every state across the country. We want to thank our
partners at the State Department of Transportation for giving us the opportunity to move
that forward and to acknowledge our partners in KPD's traffic safety unit, a unit full of
talented individuals and very proud of their accomplishments. Five years ago, when I
started working on these types of cases, it would sometimes take a year, year and a half or
longer for an investigation to be concluded and submitted to our Office for prosecution.
And would then take another 3, 6, 9 months to get that case charged and into the court
system. That processing and investigation time has been dramatically reduced. Now we
are talking about a matter of months versus a matter of years. So these cases matter.
Career criminal prosecution, we are going spend some time talking about this a little later
on, but this is a program for prosecution of repeat offenders, offenders who are on felony
probation or parole at the time they commit their offenses, cases involving prohibitive
possession of firearms, things like that. DPAs Jennifer Winn and Lisa Arin handle the
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bulk of these cases. These cases are funded by a grant from the Department of the
Attorney General and it is actually from the State of Hawai`i from a program administered
by the Department of the Attorney General. Funding, we have been receiving for more
than 25 years now. The funding challenges presented by the shrinking pool of funds in this
grant program have really required a really coordinated response from all four of the
counties. And we are not sure exactly what the final amount is that we will get for Fiscal
Year 2016. That amount is still up in the air. Because that pool of funds has been
shrinking over the years, this year all four of our counties introduced appropriation bills
with the State Legislature to draw attention and hopefully funding to this program. And so
we have been working very diligently with our State Legislative delegation, who have all
been immensely supportive of our efforts and thank you Senator Kouchi and
Representatives Derek Kawakami, Jimmy Tokioka, and Dee Morikawa for supporting our
legislative efforts to get these appropriation bills through. The new Attorney General
Doug Chin again has been very supportive and indeed he was a former Deputy Prosecutor
who was paid under this program so I know he understands the value and the importance
of the career criminal prosecution victim-witness funding we get from the AG. We will
drill down into more details a little later. Another one of our successes and achievements
for the past fiscal year is with our mobile solutions, our case management system has gone
mobile. Our Justware system is available from remote locations on our mobile devices. All
of the attorneys have their mobile devices that they are required to have with them 24
hours a day. If they are out of office they can still check on their cases and see their
calendars and events that are in there and make updates and they can receive updates. It
is a valuable component to our information technology center in the office. I am just going
to have a sip of water here. We supported the constitution establishing a crime victim bill
of rights. Hawaii is one of 17 states without a constitutional amendment guaranteeing
specific rights to crime victims and their immediate surviving family members.
Unfortunately the bill was deferred and made it up to the last Senate Judiciary Committee
and was deferred. I think next year it has a strong chance of passage. We have been able
to address all of the concerns that were raised by different groups. I mentioned it today,
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because tomorrow morning in the Chambers, I believe we will be doing the certificate and
proclamation because April is National Crime Victims' Month. I want to chock it up to a
success even though the bill did not make it through this year. Our video testimony bill
that I saw George Costa mentioned a little bit yesterday. This is the second year it was
introduced at Legislature. This year it again passed through the entire House and
eventually did die in the Senate Judiciary Committee, but did receive more attention and
more support and we are again hopeful for next year. It is an important vehicle for us to
see justice done for crimes against visitors. It is no secret that visitors are targeted for
certain types of property crimes because folks know they will not want to fly back here and
participate in a lengthy judicial process. We did get a very nice editorial in support of this
bill from the Star Advertiser urging the Legislature to look at this issue and make
something happen in the next session. We are very hopeful that will happen. This year we
were fortunate to host under the auspices of the Hawaii Prosecuting Attorney's
Association, a statewide domestic violence prosecution training on October 23-24, 2014 in
the EOC at Civil Defense. The Attorney General had a pool of funds available under the
Stop Violence Women Act grant funding. They were looking for an opportunity to use up
that pool of funds that they had and we said hey, why do we not put on a statewide training
and we will bring in police and prosecutors from all four counties and from the Attorney
General's Office and use in-house trainers so we do not have to pay trainers, we will use in-
house facilities so we do not have to rent facilities. We will bring them to Kauai, Kauai
has not hosted a statewide prosecution training in many years. Bring them here and show
them what Kauai can do and what our knowledge is like. This was a really outstanding
two days, we had trainers from every county, from Honolulu, extremely experienced and
talented prosecutors like Maurice Arisgado and Chris Van Marter, and Kevin Takata, and
Cynthia Tai. Folks from all four counties and the AGs came together here on Kauai for two
days and we just drilled down on DV prosecution. DV prosecution, these cases are very
difficult. They have got very familiar challenges, recanting victims, victims who have been
traumatized, offenders who get in these situations over and over again. So they really take
a dedicated and passionate team of folks to attack and we are proud that we have that.
Again we have restored our garden in front of the Ka Hale Maikai 0 Kauai which is a
garden that was put in a few years ago during Crime Victims' Rights Month and it had
fallen into disrepair but it was not as fresh as it used to be. We made a concerted effort and
got our staff out and said, let's fix this up and put some nice plants in and let us clean it up.
It was amazing because we got up there and did it, and all of this halo started growing that
we did not know was there. I am glad we did that. We also within our Office made some
improvements. We were able to utilize VOCA funding to build out and upgrade our
workspace that our Victim's Witness staff works in. You can see in the photo on the left
there, it is not the world's greatest photo, but you get the idea. We were able to construct,
they are not quite full offices, but they are semi-private spaces for our victim witness
advocates as well as our Victim's Witness Program Director. This allows the advocates to
have conversations with crime victims without being distracted by the other things that are
happening in the office, without being distracted by other conversations that are happening
nearby, and it is much more professional. We could not build them all the way up to the
ceiling because it would have interfered with the fire sprinklers up there. We made them
as private as we could. It is much more professional than what was there before. It gives
the victims more of a sense that they are being respected when we can bring them into a
private space to talk to them. The next phase of the modular build-out that we are
attempting to do is actually in our budget for next year, we cannot use VOCA funding for
that because we can only use that for victim's witness matters. We are looking to build-out
modular workspace for our district court clerical team in our Office. We want to avoid any
potential ergonomic or occupational injury, hazard issues for clerks who are working with
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some pretty antiquated equipment there. Able to make a major legislative accomplishment,
not in the current session, but in the previous session. We were able to advocate for and
see signed into a law a bill making it a crime to commit a domestic violence offense in front
of a minor under the age of 14. We were again, very thankful to our entire Kaua`i
Legislative delegation for introducing, supporting, and sponsoring this bill. Very few bills
affecting criminal justice actually make it all the way through the Legislature each year
and get signed into law. I think it is about 10-12 a year. This was the big one for last year.
Again, reflective of our emphasis on domestic violence offenses, trying to build a victim-
centered prosecution effort, and trying to protection children. Studies are very clear that
children who witness DV in their households grow up to have problems and reduced
economic opportunities, increased interaction with the law. We are trying to shield them
from that. Also continued our program of making technology-related improvements in the
Office. We have added project management capabilities to our case management software.
It is not something that comes at an additional cost. It is just another way we can use our
Ms. Mahikoa and basically that allows us to track non-case-related office management
matters within our case management system. So for example, if I assign somebody to draft
a piece of legislation...a piece of testimony to send in relating to legislation, they can look in
the project in there and see what else have we submitted this year. When did we submit it?
What did it say to make sure we are consistent and tracking extradition expenses and
travel costs for transport of inmates and things like that with our case management rather
than relying on an ad hoc system that is hosted on County servers. We have also added
desktop scanning as a way to improve our work flow at a reduced or at a low-cost, I would
say. All of our clerks now have these scanners on their desktop and when they get
documents in, they can just scan into the Ms. Mahikoa and they do not have to get up go to
the Xerox, scan the document, come back, drag it out of an E-mail, drop it into the Ms.
Mahikoa, they have the scanners right on their desktops. New tablet technology, which we
are in the process of rolling out to our Victim-Witness program. Cheaper than desktop
computers and more versatile. It is more about information portability and accessibility.
When we are working with the Police, we are working with all these other agencies, the
faster we can get the information in, process it get it to the courts, get it to the attorneys.
We are able to do our job more quickly and we are able to do our jobs better. I mentioned
earlier the Kaua`i Girls' Court. I am very happy to see this program go live this year. It is
a very successful collaboration with the judiciary and the Hawaii Office of Youth Services.
It provides targeted services to a cohort of at-risk girls and a gender-specific programming.
Right now there is a cohort of four young women in the program working with Judge Trudy
Senda, Deputy Prosecutor Jenna Tatsey, and Deputy Public Defense Stephanie Sato, all
participating in that. It is not anything that is any cost to the County. It is actually the
judiciary that received the grant funds to expand the program from Honolulu over here to
Kauai. It has been something that has been very successful at helping these girls get out of
this cycle of criminality that they are at risk of falling into. We all know that here on the
island, a lot of our problems with crime come from a relatively small number of people. If
we can keep one, two, three, four of these people from falling into that group, it really reaps
tremendous benefits down the line. I did want to touch on a couple of challenges that we
are facing. One challenge is definitely the shrinking Career Criminal Prosecution Victim
Witness Assistance funds that have been coming from the Department of the Attorney
General. Included there a little chart that shows basically how the funds have declined
over the years. The highest was Fiscal 2008-2009 from career criminal prosecution we
received $205,306. There were some economic problems facing the State around this time,
which reduced those funds to a low of$61,000 for Fiscal 2011-2012. It has plateaued and
come back up over the last two years to $92,733 in Fiscal 2013-2014, but again you see that
is less than half of what we were getting just five years ago to do the same kind of work. So
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that is why we went to the Legislature, and said hey, this is an important program. It is
actually statutorily required that we have the program in our Office. There is a statute
that required the AG to run this program and put funds into the program and make it
meaningful. Victim-witness has been hit even harder. You can see in 2008-2009, we were
receiving $66,889. It dropped to a low of$15,140 in 2010-2011 and rebounded a little bit to
$31,000 in 2013-2014. It has rebounded, but the future is uncertain and it has been
incumbent on us to push the State for funding on these programs. Judicial and legislative
mandates, a-filing in the district and circuit courts required more work for our clerks. The
judiciary makes its own rules and we have to follow those rules. So when they say you have
to completely change your work flow because we are changing our work flow, we do not
have opportunity to say no, or let us talk about this. Our response is to say okay, this is
very difficult, but we have to do it. So if they change the rules and they can and they do, it
puts more work on us. They are going to go live with this in circuit court very soon and it
will be an interesting process to see how that works out. They have been better at
dialoguing with us on this go around, so we are optimistic that we will be able to manage.
Legislation could change at any time, putting restrictions on what we do. There was
legislation this year to introduce an entirely regulatory regime with regards to eye witness
identification. If law enforcement is out in the field and they have a victim. If the eye
witness to the offense, they identified the perpetrator via a photo line-up, there is a process
that the Police Department follows to accomplish that. There are a host of challenges that
can be raised at that point. What the Legislature was looking at doing this year was
putting all of these rules on us that would have required us to have all kinds of different
hearings, to file all kinds of different paperwork, really just another example of how things
that happen in Honolulu can make our work much harder over here. Another challenge
that we face and this is another systematic or social issue I suppose, but one that trickles
down into the judiciary is dealing with the expanding mental health calendar. We have a
tremendous number of folks coming into the system with varying levels of mental health
service needs and the way the criminal justice system handles them is different from
handling offenders who do not have those mental health issues. We have to suspend
proceedings and refer for testing, come back, discuss that and if it is an issue where the
person is not fit to proceed, the case can go into a holding pattern that could drag on for
years and years. Again, we have cases that really may not be appropriate for the criminal
justice system, but because these people have not received the appropriate services over the
years, they have ended up in the criminal justice system now and we are called on to
become the social workers of last resort and basically have to figure out what to do with
these folks? We just cannot put them in prison or on probation and end up with the Hawai`i
State Hospital with periodic hearings and doctor evaluations and again, more work for us.
Goals and objectives for Fiscal Year 2016, we want to continue enhancing our case
management system. We want to add in a justice...what is called a justice web module.
We are looking at doing this with asset forfeiture funding. It is a low-dollar cost item, but I
wanted to highlight it here, because I think it is going make a really important connection
that is going to save us and the Kaua`i Police Department a lot of work. Right now they
have got their own records management system that they handle all of their information in.
We have our case management system, where we handle all of our information. But the
two systems do not...they do not interface, they do not talk to one another. This is the
module that we believe will address that. This will...any police officer or records section
staff member will be able to go through this web-based portal and log on...this is exactly
what they will see and send documents...add documents to existing cases electronically at
anytime from anywhere. So if they are in the records room in Lihu`e, they can add a case.
If they are in the records room in Waimea, or Hanalei, they are able to add a case and if
they are in Honolulu somewhere and take a statement from a witness, they could add it
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directly to us and not have to print out a hard copy and submit to records and records will
not have to make a copy and bring it to us. We are talking about shaving days, if not weeks
off of the processing of some of these cases. So we are in the process of vetting this module.
We have run a few tests. We are going to look at implementing a pilot program, but we are
confident based on what we have seen, this will really address the link between the Police
Department and the Prosecutor's Office that right now is lacking from an IT standpoint.
This is just more screen shots from what we...what the people will see when they use this.
Each Police Officer has their own individual log-in. They will be able to go in, see what
cases they are linked up with? They will be able to see what the court calendar looks like,
if they have been subpoenaed for a case? They will be able to look and submit reports if
there are documents that they have to submit? If say one of the deputies asked them to go
out and re-interview a witness, they could do that and resubmit it straight into the case.
Again, more screen shots, just from what they will see. When the documents are
submitted, it comes into a queue that our clerk supervisors manage. They will be able to
route it to the appropriate staff member for action, if it is something that an attorney needs
to take action on. They can highlight that to the attorney. If it is something that a clerk
needs to take further action, they will be able to highlight that directly to the clerk, just
streamlining. Always streamlining. A major objective is of course ensuring our grant
continuity with regards to the cold case and unsolved homicide unit. We want to make sure
that we keep investigating these 23 cases on our list. We want to make sure we are
continuing to process the forensic evidence that remains in these cases. And a lot of it is
just reconstructing case files from cases that go back as far as 40 years and we actually
have a new oldest case in the unit that is 40 years old that we are in the process of
reconstructing the file on. So again with the career criminal prosecution unit as I
mentioned, reverse the trend of decreasing funds, continue to keep focus on repeat and
habitual offenders and move cases through court in an expeditious way. With the vehicular
crimes unit, maintaining a high conviction rate for the OVUII cases which are some of the
most hotly litigated cases that come through the criminal justice system and make sure we
are continuing to expedite the handling of vehicular homicide cases. We will talk about
some of the performance measures that we look at in terms of measuring our effectiveness
as an office. What we did in analyzing this, we consulted a national District Attorney's
study that they did back in 2007. It is purple there on your screen but there is a link to it
in the presentation and I can also send out that link to anyone interested. It is about a 50
page document and we distilled it down into some provisions that can really apply to what
we do and help us make sure that we are being responsible in how we are measuring our
performance. In the past there were ad hoc ways of looking at effectiveness of the
Prosecutor's Office, looking at types of conviction rates, case clearance rates, budget
metrics, but none of those individual measures tells you the whole story. It is kind of like
feeling the parts of the elephants in the dark with a blindfold on...that kind of thing. You
do not get the big picture. So with the stability that the Office has now, we can start to look
at more of the sophisticated measurements and assessment devices that are talked about in
this report. While the NDAA did do this study in jurisdictions with larger populations
there are valuable lessons that will enable us to have a framework for looking at what we
do. The performance measures that the NDAA recommends are tied to the three areas
reflects in our mission statement. This is not anything new. These are the principles that
we have looked at as being the very foundation of what we do in the Office. Promoting the
fair, impartial, and expeditious pursuit of justice, ensuring safer communities, and
promoting integrity in the profession. The three major goals for the Office. Under
promoting fair, impartial, and expeditious pursuit of justice we look at the following
metrics: Are offenders held accountable? Are case dispositions appropriate for the offense
and offenders? Is there timely and efficient administration of justice? Is there improved
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service delivery to victims and witnesses? We always want to be improving. The question
is never are we doing good enough? The question is how can we get better. Some of the
things we might look at is the ratio of convictions to cases charged, what is the average
sentence length, what is the ratio of participants to drug court referrals, what is the ratio of
referrals to successful completion of drug court, ratio of pleas to lesser charges versus pleas
to cases as charged, and case disposition time. The recommendations made by the NDAA
are things that I am happy to say that we are already doing. To use a consistent and
methodical screening process for incoming cases, to have supervisory review and approval
over plea offers that are made, to focus on repeat offenders and gun crimes, and to refer
first time non-violent offenders to drug court. For ensuring safer communities, we want to
look at A is crime reduced and B, is the fear of crime in the community reduced? Because
those two factors are not necessarily linked to one another. We look at gun and robbery
crime rates, juvenile violent crime rates, domestic violence and major violators recidivism
rates, drug offender recidivism rate, and the public safety index of community attitudes and
knowledge of prosecutorial outcomes...all things important to consider. This is why we put
so much energy and emphasis into making sure we have good information-gathering
resources in the Office. So that we can process this data, look at our outcomes, and see
where we need to go in future. And we are just getting there. We want to look at
recommendations made by the NDAA under this subject matter area involving the Federal
prosecutors in appropriate cases, which we do. Maintain vertical prosecution, with special
units within the Office, which is what we do. We do use vertical prosecution in the Office.
It is a technique, as much as possible keeps each individual case with an individual
attorney through the case life span so we are not passing cases to different attorneys.
Victims are more comfortable in the process. And it just makes sense that the attorney
would know the case better if they keep it from start to finish. To participate in
investigative task forces and evict drug-dealers for nuisance properties and to look at
collaborating with KPD on doing nuisance abatement actions, conducting community
outreach, and again focusing on repeat offenders. Promoting integrity in the profession is
something that we do by manifesting competent and professional behavior by manifesting
efficient and fiscally responsible management and administration practices within the
Office and by maintaining consistent and coordinated enforcement efforts and
administration of justice. So let us talk about the numbers here. For FY 2016, proposed
budget salary and wages category $2,254,649, that is an increase of $82,925 or 3.8% from
Fiscal Year 2015. Most of that is regarding HGEA collective bargaining step increases and
pay increases for the clerical and support staff as well as reflected in modest performance-
related pay increases for deputies. Benefits, actually the number went down a little bit and
I am not sure if that is reflective of the Administration's perspective on the OPEB line item,
but that is a 2.3% decrease. Utilities we are projecting a 7.3% decrease. Vehicle and
equipment lease you will notice that is a little statistical blip there. Showing a significant
increase. We do not have any vehicle-related expenses. We do not have much in the way of
lease-related expenses. What that reflects is the funds we put in to build out our district
court clerical staff work spaces. So that is what you see that one-time increase on that line
item is. And then operations, projecting an increase from $159,764 to $198,185. And we
can drill into the line items in a little bit. Basically, almost all of our budget is salaries,
wages, and benefits. Another graph there comparing FY 2015 to FY 2016. A total budget
FY 2016 of$3,789,507. Thank you again for the opportunity to provide an overview of what
we do, hit on some highlights, and touch on some challenges and answer any questions that
you may have. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you for your very thorough presentation.
I am going to open up to questions from the Members, but I know we went through a lot of
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information and I would like to keep the information specific to the budget. I know there
are items that we could probably spend hours talking on, like maybe the 50-page
performance measures and things like that, but it may be an item if Members are
interested in, we can put it in a Committee Meeting. So just keep that in mind. I would
like to...we will go over any questions that we have on this presentation and then we will
get into the numbers. But I do not want to spend too much time on going over things like
performance measures or stuff like that.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you for your presentation. At one point
you talked about the attorneys being divided up into three groupings and you said
district/family court, circuit court, and I missed the third one?
Mr. Kollar: Administrative services and appeals.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So you have 15 total attorneys you said.
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Councilmember Kuali`i: And I counted through the position list, and
there are 13 and then the First Deputy and yourself. So it is with the First Deputy and
yourself.
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So are the 15, probably not for yourself and the
First Deputy, assigned to these different areas? Or do they all work all areas?
Mr. Kollar: They are focused on areas. They are all expected
to help out wherever the need may arise.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Can you break it down for me quickly?
Mr. Kollar: Sure, absolutely.
Councilmember Kuali`i: District/family court how many of the 15?
Mr. Kollar: Let me look at the presentation, because I did
highlight which attorneys are in there. Four of the attorneys are focused on district and
family court, along with the supervisor. The supervisor also has a significant felony
caseload, but is responsible for supervising four attorneys that are in those two courts.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Circuit court?
Mr. Kollar: Circuit court nine attorneys plus myself. So 10.
Councilmember Kuali`i: And then the last one, which I do not really
understand, so you might have to explain that a little more.
Mr. Kollar: Sure, Tracy Morikami, who is half-time Deputy
does all of the appeal and most of the asset forfeitures. Asset forfeiture is an
administrative practice before the Department of the Attorney General. Those are matters
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that we actually file with the AG's Office rather than a court. So we refer to that as an
administrative practice area because it is before that agency and it is those proceedings, as
well as Rule 40 petitions that are technically civil in nature. So basically anything that is
not a criminal case in our courts in Hawaii.
Councilmember Kuali`i: There is an assignment of a half-time attorney?
Mr. Kollar: She focuses on that area and receives support
from two other attorneys.
Councilmember Kuali`i: You know in the list of all of the 15, how do I
know which of those 15 is half-time? You just told me now that one of them is half-time,
which one is that, which position number?
Mr. Kollar: That is position no. E-64.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So I do not see it...there we go. E-64. So that is
also a grant funded position?
Mr. Kollar: No. E-64 is County-funded, halftime 0.5 FTE.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay. So the 0.5 FTE is that it is a half-time
position, but the funding is 100%. So no grant-funding there?
Mr. Kollar: Well, it is funded at half the rate, but that is
County funds, correct.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Exactly, that is why the $50,000 is showing
there.
Mr. Kollar: Right.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So 100% County funded, but 50% position.
Mr. Kollar: Right.
Councilmember Kuali`i: The other two grant positions I believe, the
asterisk says it is a grant position. So down at 9087 and 9091, is that 0.55 FTE and that
0.20 FTE telling me it is slightly more than halftime position? And a 1/5th position? Is that
the share of the County's pay?
Mr. Kollar: That is the County's share. Those are full-time
positions.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So they are full-time positions.
Mr. Kollar: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: It is not clear how this report is done because in
one instance it is 0.50 FTE and to me, FTE means "full-time equivalent" so it is the half-
time position, but these, 9087 and 9091 are full-time positions?
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Mr. Kollar: Correct. The balance of those funds are grant
funds.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Being that they are full-time and are they grant-
funded at all?
Mr. Kollar: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: What is the breakdown between County portion
and grant portion percentagewise is fine.
Mr. Kollar: 0.55 reflects 55% of the position's funding comes
from County sources. And the 0.20 reflects 20% of the County's funds support the position.
The balance of that 45% and 80% with regards to the positions are grant funds.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So are you saying 55% of a 0.55 position and just
coincidentally they are both tied that way, it is not a halftime position, but 0.55 position.
Mr. Kollar: No, 55% of the position's funding is County
funding.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Yes, I am sorry, you said earlier that they are
both full-time positions.
Mr. Kollar: Yes, they are both full-time, as well as E-88,
which is the dollar-funded position, we do have that position filled and that is funded with
grant funds entirely with grant funds, the DOT grant.
Councilmember Kuali`i: It is full-time?
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Councilmember Kuali`i: And entirely funded by grants?
Mr. Kollar: All 15 attorneys with the exception of E-64 are
full-time attorneys.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Four positions that have grant funding, do they
all come from this Career Criminal Prosecution grant that you talked about?
Mr. Kollar: Two positions, we split the Career Criminal
Prosecution funding between two of the attorneys. The VWA funding goes towards victim-
witness staff and employees. We have four attorneys that receive some grant funding,
some or all and three non-attorney positions that are funded partially or entirely by grants.
Councilmember Kuali`i: And all those positions are showing here?
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
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Councilmember Kuali`i: What positions are funded by the victim-witness
grant?
Mr. Kollar: Excuse me?
Councilmember Kuali`i: Then which positions in the victim-witness area
is funded by grants or partially funded by grants? Because I do not see any asterisks there.
Mr. Kollar: Jamie?
Councilmember Kuali`i: Because it would probably show with a $1 like
that E-88, correct?
Mr. Kollar: There are two positions, the process server
position and the victim-witness counselor trainee position that do not show on this
spreadsheet because they do not show any County funds.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Now you are not following the same...or Finance
is...I do not know who generates this report for you...the same logic that E-88, which is a
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, which is a full-time position paid by a grant with a dollar
showing. So now I know that there is a position fully funded.
Mr. Kollar: That position was fully funded at one time in the
past and had been dollar funded and that is how it came through on spreadsheet. We work
with Finance in getting these.
Councilmember Kuali`i: It would be good to know. What our positions
are? That is doing the productivity, the services? Regardless of whether it is paid by grant
funds or fully grant funds.
Mr. Kollar: I think that is something Finance has been
working on is reflecting...
Councilmember Kuali`i: So there are two victim-witness positions we are
talking about?
Mr. Kollar: You see the Victim-Witness Director is fully
County-funded. Victim-Witness Counselor II, which is fully County-funded and another
Victim-Witness Counselor Trainee position, which is funded entirely under VOCA.
Councilmember Kuali`i: And what is the salary line item?
Mr. Kollar: We can definitely give that to you in writing.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Trainee, VOCA and what is the other one?
Mr. Kollar: Victim-Witness Counselor position and process
server position paid by JAG grants.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So the only other thing is that along those lines
of the two vacancies, you said they were both filled. When I looked at the Human
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Resources quarterly report on vacancies, it showed 2807 Legal Clerk III as vacant as of
March 3rd and status was "recruiting."
Mr. Kollar: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So the position just went vacant and you filled it
immediately?
Mr. Kollar: Yes, sir.
Councilmember Kuali`i: That is pretty awesome. How do you do that?
Do you have people waiting?
Mr. Kollar: Janine Rapozo has been doing an amazing job at
Human Resources.
Councilmember Kuali`i: With that position. We need that kind of
recruiting for some of our other positions.
Mr. Kollar: I cannot give her enough kudos for how quickly
they have been making things happen over there.
Councilmember Kuali`i: That is the same thing that happened for 2807
and 2827.
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Because they both went vacant on March 3rd and
March 16th. The question I had about 2807, is that they are both Legal Clerk III and both
SR 13s, but the vacancy report from Human Resources showed $33,720 as the salary. But
in the budget here for 2807 you show $37,980. Is that a difference of the hiring at a step
higher than...?
Mr. Kollar: The incumbent in the position was at a higher
step, so when these spreadsheets were generated, she was still in that position, so it was
budgeted at that amount. The person coming in, assuming they are coming in at an entry-
level step, which they may not be. We have other applicants who may come in at a higher
step.
Councilmember Kuali`i: In all of these instances I want to see the
justification of that. If it is not hired at the entry level, or just one step for promotion
purposes for the year, I want to see the justification. So we should see the budget adjusted
down when you come back to what it is going to be, because you know now, you hired the
person.
Mr. Kollar: The offer has been made, correct.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Chock.
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Councilmember Chock: Thank you, Chair. You know my questions were
really around your programs, your career criminal and victim-witness. As it pertains to the
line items that Councilmember Kuali`i was talking about. Were these two that are
currently County-funded, Victim-Witness Director and Counselor II, were they previously
funded by the grant or have they always been County-funded?
Mr. Kollar: These positions have been County-funded for as
long as I have been around.
Councilmember Chock: So my question is really about how it is...because
it is a significant drop in the amount of funds. I know you are working on trying to get
legislating through to get more support? It is based on the amount of numbers that we are
producing or is it a percentage share compared to other islands or counties? I am trying to
get a better sense at what the uphill battle is.
Mr. Kollar: The State has just had less money. It was not an
area that was emphasized by the previous AG Administration for whatever reason. They
have to prioritize the resources that they get and that is just how much they available for
the program on a year-to-year basis.
Councilmember Chock: Based on your presentation, the forecast sounds
like it is moving positively in the direction of increasing.
Mr. Kollar: At least remaining stable. We are hoping for
increases.
Councilmember Chock: Of the amount that you have lost, where are you
making it up?
Mr. Kollar: VOCA, Victims of Crime Act. Those are Federal
moneys.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Council Chair Rapozo.
Council Chair Rapozo: Thank you and thank you for being here. Just a
follow-up to what Councilmember Kuali`i was talking about. So as far as at the current
moment, how many positions are not filled? Not that are pending or offers made, but how
many vacancies do you have?
Mr. Kollar: None.
Council Chair Rapozo: The report was that just two?
Mr. Kollar: There was another legal clerk, who transferred
out. So we recruited for that position as well.
Council Chair Rapozo: And they are working already?
Mr. Kollar: No, no they are not on board.
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Council Chair Rapozo: That is what I am asking...how many vacancy
...a "vacancy" means that you do not have somebody in the seat.
Mr. Kollar: Three that are not on board.
Council Chair Rapozo: Which three are those?
Mr. Kollar: 2807, 2826, and 2827.
Council Chair Rapozo: Those are the three that you have made offers,
but you have not hired yet?
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Council Chair Rapozo: And what is the anticipation...how long...will
they be hired by the beginning of the fiscal year?
Mr. Kollar: Absolutely.
Council Chair Rapozo: And your First Deputy, how long before you fill
the First Deputy's position?
Mr. Kollar: Well, the First Deputy position is filled. He has
told us that he has accepted an offer from the Attorney General's Office so at the end of
May he will be departing and we anticipate we will have another candidate in the position.
Council Chair Rapozo: Before start of the fiscal year?
Mr. Kollar: Yes.
Council Chair Rapozo: And then the investigator support, you have four.
Would that be the investigators and process server?
Mr. Kollar: Correct. Two half-time investigators, one full-
time investigator, and one process-server.
Council Chair Rapozo: I know in your commentary you said that the
conviction rates may not always be the best evaluation tool, but that is something that I am
interested in. And I do not expect that today, but we will send it over. I am interested in a
breakdown of the cases that you receive? How many were declined? How many were
whatever? You know?
Mr. Kollar: Yes.
Council Chair Rapozo: Because I think that is vital information.
Mr. Kollar: Sure.
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Council Chair Rapozo: I do not know if you heard when I spoke with the
Chief when he was here, there was some issue with the amount of cases that were not being
pursued. I would just like to see that spreadsheet.
Mr. Kollar: I heard that when it actually came up and it
perked my ears up a little bit, because it is the first time anybody had raised that concern.
So I did have staff go and run a report out of our case management, and although there is
no reliable data from past years, our 2014 total prosecution declined case was 253 and 2015
calendar year is 81. So the numbers that were put forward, I would be curious where they
came from, because they do not line up with what we are seeing in our system.
Council Chair Rapozo: It came from the Chief of the Police Department.
So I am not sure how they count or you count.
Mr. Kollar: I would welcome them.
Council Chair Rapozo: We will work on that and I know there was a lot
of discussion on domestic violence and cold case and homicide and vehicle crimes, but not
much on the drugs. The drug prosecution. I think that is we all agree domestic violence is
serious, but I kind of want to see the numbers on the drug prosecution as well.
Mr. Kollar: Sure, we still have a very serious problem in the
community with crystal methamphetamine and alcohol and the opiates and pills that are
out there, wreaking major havoc and we have not changed anything with regard to the way
our Office handles those cases.
Council Chair Rapozo: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: Thank you for a very informative presentation.
And for some impressive accomplishments. I am particularly impressed with the work that
you have done in setting up the DNA analyses. Because as I recall from the past, that has
been an obstacle.
Mr. Kollar: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Now that you have that system in place, I am
looking forward to some effective movement in the cold case arena and maybe in the more
active cases, or recent cases. I want to second what the Chair has said about crime
statistics. I would love to have for both Police and Prosecuting Attorneys some annual
framework of crime indicators and Councilmember Hooser and I were looking at Maui and
Big Island Police Department reports and they have included their statistics and we have
asked the Police to submit, KPD to submit their statistics. So I am looking forward to that,
but your discussion in terms of prosecutorial decline, I am not fully understanding of the
meaning of those statistics. But even like our youth report that KPAA does, if we select the
meaningful array of indicators and we could measure them year after year after year, that
would be something that I think would be very productive.
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Mr. Kollar: Right, that is exactly the conversation that we
want to be having, because we have a system now that is versatile enough and
customizable to generate a wide array of reports to look at that range of metrics.
Councilmember Yukimura: That is something that between now and next
year or even as you do follow-up with us, that would be helpful.
Mr. Kollar: Absolutely.
Councilmember Yukimura: Thank you. May I continue or is there follow-up?
Councilmember Kuali`i: Are we still on positions?
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I think we jumped around a little bit.
Councilmember Yukimura: I wanted to go to career criminal prosecution. So
if you have something else first, I can wait.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: We will go back to the position section and get all
of our questions out on that. Councilmember Kuali`i.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Just two last questions on positions. I saw in the
quarterly report from Human Resources a T-2825 position number Victim-Witness
Counselor II, SR 22, $47,400, Federal funds. Vacant as of 4/11/2014. Funded for Fiscal
Year 2015-2016, but under status it was blank. So I am wanting to know if that is a vacant
position and if not, when was it filled and at what salary?
Mr. Kollar: That position is...that has been vacant for a
number of years. And recently we have been able to...it looks like we can structure our
VOCA budget to actually fill that position. Using the Federal funds. So we have initiated
the process of recruiting for that position, but we have not conducted interviews or made
any offers.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So is that position now position 2825? It had a
"T" in front of it. It used to be called T-2825.
Mr. Kollar: We did not reallocate any existing positions into
that.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Is it just a coincidence there is a T-2825 that we
are now talking about?
Mr. Kollar: T-2825.
Councilmember Kuali`i: T-2825 and in the list of positions, Legal Clerk
III, 2825.
Mr. Kollar: That is an existing filled legal clerk position.
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Councilmember Kuali`i: That one is existing and at the level showing?
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So this one is just a coincidence it has a similar
number.
Mr. Kollar: I am not sure what the number is, so I could not
say.
Councilmember Kuali`i: It has the same number, can you follow-up?
Mr. Kollar: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: And get back to us with a follow-up. Existing
and filled? So the last one has to do with on this quarterly report it includes new-hires,
transfers, promotions, and reallocations. On this report it shows a reallocation of position
9093 which it is currently showing in the budget 9093 Private Secretary, SR 20 salary of
$52,000 basically.
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So it was $42,000. And the status says,
"conversion to classified position" what does that mean? What did it used to be and what is
it now.
Mr. Kollar: The position was the Program Support
Technician position and basically the incumbent in that position is still doing all of those
duties, as well as now additional duties pertaining to my calendar, et cetera.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So normally I have seen the reasoning
operational needs, but here it says, "conversion to classified position" are you saying that
this used to be like an EM 3 or...appointed position?
Mr. Kollar: It was not an EM, but I think technically it was
an unclassified position. We have been working on HR, because we had a number of
unclassified positions.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Right.
Mr. Kollar: And kind of getting them all consistent.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Is the reasoning that we had many unclassified
positions was because some were tied to grant funding that we were not sure that would be
there indefinitely. Once you make them classified, now it becomes an SR type of position?
Mr. Kollar: None of those positions were grant positions.
Councilmember Kuali`i: No. But in this case, you are basically making
the long-term commitment now, because you are saying instead of being...
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Mr. Kollar: No, that position is still an appointed position.
The private secretaries are exempt and appointed.
Councilmember Kuali`i: It says SR 20 here.
Mr. Kollar: It is classified with an SR rating, but not a civil
service position.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So another interesting thing to know in this is
that, what we just said? I mean all the SRs to me look like the rating that is civil service
and we have seen, like EM, or the appointed positions and obviously the salary by
Ordinance is by recommendations of the Salary Commission.
Mr. Kollar: I still learn new things about the civil service
system every day.
Councilmember Kuali`i: You have the justification of this jumping from
$42,000 to $52,000.
Mr. Kollar: Considerable additional duties.
Councilmember Kuali`i: In a year when everyone else is asked to cut, we
see increases. So just send the information over, please.
Mr. Kollar: Sure.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Follow-up, Councilmember Chock.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you, Chair. This is my only other
question. I just wanted to thank you again for the presentation. It was really thorough.
And congratulations on the Girls' Court movement. I had a chance to have our people work
with that program and it was enlightening and also, I really enjoy the philosophy on the
performance measures. I will not go into that, because I could talk a lot about that, but I
really commend you for that. There is a line in terms of encumbrances, $10,000 towards
workers' compensation, because I do not see any further requests. Is that closed?
Mr. Kollar: We do not have any active matters.
Councilmember Chock: Closed workers' comp.
Mr. Kollar: We get that from the Administration.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Hooser.
Councilmember Hooser: Thank you. I want to echo my compliments on
the presentation. I thought it was very comprehensive and gave me personally a much
greater understanding of what the Prosecutor's Office is doing and the depth and scope of
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all of the activities. So thank you very much for that. I do not want to be redundant on the
issue with regards to statistics and metrics, but I do not want to be redundant but I will be
redundant. And I just want to confirm that you will be able to get back with us, during this
budget deliberations, with some summary of metrics in terms of caseloads? I think it
measures both what the Office is doing, and maybe some history, preferable with year-over-
year. So what is your workload like and from the community's perspective, what are the
different kinds of crime, if they are increasing or decreasing? We had a similar discussion
with the Police Department and I understand long-term with the new computer stuff you
are doing, it might be easier to do and more comprehensive. But I want to make sure that
we get something during this budget session.
Mr. Kollar: We can generate reports pertaining to those
categories.
Councilmember Hooser: That could be great. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: On your salaries for deputies...these reflect
actual salaries?
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Councilmember Yukimura: And then I noticed your overtime line has gone
done significantly from 2012, where it was $19,000 and now it is at $4,000 although...yes.
So that to me indicates good personnel management. And so I just wanted to acknowledge
that. I would like to go to your OVUII and career criminal, if I may, Chair?
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: What page is that?
Councilmember Yukimura: It is on his PowerPoint presentation 5. And I
think you mentioned how many people died per year on the highways? And that is an
interesting statistic to track. But there were many that were preventable. And that is
what your OVUII, which I was trying to understand last night when I was reading it, but I
gathered from your presentation it is operating vehicles under the influence of an
intoxicant.
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Councilmember Yukimura: So tell me more about how you are trying to
influence or prevent deaths on the highways through your OVUII prosecution?
Mr. Kollar: What we have done is basically stopped treating
them as if they are minor offenses. We put a very experienced...one of our most tenacious
attorneys on those cases. To be able to devote a lot more time and energy, rather than
having it sandwiched in with rest of the district court traffic offense calendar. District
court attorneys tend to be the younger deputies, less experienced deputies, but OVUII cases
are some of the most technical cases that we get in the office at any time. So it really
behooves us to put a more experienced attorney on those cases. And by getting that
additional funding from State, we were able to separate that caseload out from the district
court traffic calendar and put those cases with the attorney who also handles vehicular
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cases and really bring that skill-level to what is a petty misdemeanor offense, but it is a
petty misdemeanor offense that can become a case with fatal consequences. So by doing
that, we have actually seen very much increased effectiveness in the district court
prosecutions of these cases.
Councilmember Yukimura: Well, thank you for doing that. So one of the
statistics to track would be your conviction rate on OVUII?
Mr. Kollar: That is one metric we could track, yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay.
Mr. Kollar: The unfortunate thing, we do not have a lot of
reliable data from past years to compare it to. But as we start to generate that information
now, and moving forward, we can develop a really good base of information.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. And then as you said, some of these small
things, if they are not addressed when they are small, can evolve into serious injury and
death. So one of them would be the highway deaths per year or traffic-related deaths per
year? So I would like to see that statistic, if I could.
Mr. Kollar: Yes. That is more Police data, because if you
notice, not all of these fatalities are cases that come to our Office, but we can certainly give
you the information that we received with regard to the fatalities, absolutely.
Councilmember Yukimura: And one of my personal concerns is juvenile
drinking and deaths related to underaged drinking. I would love to be able to track a
statistic like that if possible. And that would not necessary be convictions per se, just the
number of deaths related to juvenile drinking.
Mr. Kollar: When it comes to records involving juvenile cases
there are certain restrictions that apply, but we can give you raw numbers in terms of that.
Councilmember Yukimura: Right. I do not need to know names. I just need
to know annual statistics of accidents or deaths related to juvenile drinking on the
highways.
Mr. Kollar: Sure.
Councilmember Yukimura: I have been working on these issues in another
arena, which is with Kaua`i Planning and Action Alliance. I have been thinking that is one
of the statistics that we need to track and have not been able to get a hold of them. So
thank you. And then moving to "career criminal prosecution" it would be helpful, I mean, I
hear that you are putting a lot of emphasis on it, and that there is this funding challenge
coming up. What is not clear to me is what impact career criminals have on this
community? And why it is so important to have this unit? If you could help us understand
that is.
Mr. Kollar: What measurable would you specifically be
looking for?
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Councilmember Yukimura: I do not know, that is a good question. I mean,
all I can draw from my background is that in...and this is drug-related, in reading about
what they did in the weed and seed program, in Honolulu, in Chinatown, with Judge
Steven Mm, there was a concerted effort to identify drug-dealers, which I presume could be
under this category of"serious offenders and career criminals."
Mr. Kollar: Could be, yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: And they were identified, prosecuted quickly,
and taken to Federal prisons on the mainland. The main thing was getting them out of the
community.
•
Mr. Kollar: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: So is that what this unit...is that the kind of
work this unit would do?
Mr. Kollar: Well, if it is a case that is going to be adopted by
the Feds, we might be involved at an early phase in the case in terms of assisting with
providing support in terms of search warrants and things like that. But at point that the
Feds decide to adopt the case, our participation would recede.
Councilmember Yukimura: Judge Mm was a Federal Court Judge, I believe.
Mr. Kollar: I believe Steven Mm, I believe is still a Circuit
Court Judge in Hawai`i and he is responsible for a lot of very progressive and beneficial law
enforcement-related programs, including Hope probation that we have here on Kaua`i and
things of that nature, that are designed to target expeditiously target consequences on to
high-risk offenders.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. So I think it was when he was in the
Federal Court side, or the Prosecutor, that this Chinatown effort weed and seed effort went
on. But is this what you would do with State Court defendants?
Mr. Kollar: Well, in terms of identifying people who are
drug-dealers and doing everything we can to get them out of the community, I mean that is
what we would do. A case that stays at the state-level and we have had several over the
past year that we have been able to get very significant prison sentences.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I do not want to kill the discussion, but I know
this discussion could probably take place in a Committee Meeting.
Councilmember Yukimura: Thank you, Chair, I respect the concern. If we
are actually going to schedule another time to talk about this, that is one thing, but actually
since they are here and if we have the time, you know, this is about where budget affects
performance or how budget creates performance to me. And so that is why I was asking as
a budget and its importance to the community.
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Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I agree and seeing what benchmarks they are
using for their accomplishments, but going over and trying to figure out what benchmarks
we should use now, I do not think is the discussion we should be having here. If Justin
could just say the benchmarks and we will move on. I do not want to just continue
throwing ideas back and forth on what benchmarks should be, because I think the
conversation could go really long on that.
Councilmember Yukimura: Awesome. I want to say, I am envisioning for a
budget process and I think the Managing Director has tried to insert that, too, into the
whole budget process is that over time we have people coming here with their budgets and
their budgets are meaningless if it does not translate into performance. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Council Chair Rapozo.
Council Chair Rapozo: I will go back to the budget itself. Yesterday we
had a discussion, because I am not sure, because we do not know what grant moneys you
get and where it goes. Yesterday we had a discussion about the YWCA getting cut and the
Managing Director had stated they had some discussion and that your Office would fund
the YWCA to some extent that would basically justify the reduction for the two programs
that we traditionally fund. Is that something that your grants would be funding.
Mr. Kollar: Every year we contract with the YWCA to
provide two contracts basically. The shelter, and the sex assault counseling program. This
year they get basically $80,000 from us, via VOCA, and the intention for next year was to
give them the same funding, assuming the VOCA funds come in the way we expect them to
come in. We were also intending to provide them with some additional funds to support a
therapist position that they want to do over there. That would be $60,000 and VOCA funds
can only be used to provide direct services to crime victims, so I am not sure if the County
funds were used for any other type of budgetary purposes that fall outside of that category?
So I am not our funds would be fungible with the County funds as far as the YWCA is
concerned, but we plan on continue and maintaining the support we have been giving them.
And actually it is not just a question of them supporting them, but they provide services to
our crime victims and they are very important services.
Council Chair Rapozo: So your Office through grants will not kick up
another $40,000?
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Council Chair Rapozo: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: But you are supporting an extra $60,000 to
support a therapist?
Mr. Kollar: We are intending to do that assuming the funds
come in the way we expect them to, yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Is that an ongoing therapist?
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Mr. Kollar: I would imagine so as long as they have funding.
Councilmember Yukimura: And sometimes you have to move money around
in different ways.
Mr. Kollar: I do not know how they move their money
around, but we are intending to support that.
Councilmember Yukimura: So it is additional funds of a certain category.
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Councilmember Yukimura: To what is normally their budget?
Mr. Kollar: It is funding that they would get next year that
they are not getting this year. I just wanted to be clear.
Councilmember Yukimura: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Council Chair Rapozo.
Council Chair Rapozo: I just want to clarify, those funds are
not...granted it is more money for a therapist and that is fine and I appreciate that from the
Feds right?
Mr. Kollar: Yes.
Council Chair Rapozo: My concern is the $40,000.
Mr. Kollar: We did not put that in there with the idea of
making up for the $40,000.
Council Chair Rapozo: That is my concern. With the lack of$40,000, we
are going to lack services. Your $60,000 has absolutely nothing to do with the $40,000.
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Council Chair Rapozo: That is what I wanted to clarify.
Mr. Kollar: Yes.
Council Chair Rapozo: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: I suppose we need to talk to the Y, but the
$60,000 for support of a therapist...?
Mr. Kollar: I do not know if it is an existing therapist. I do
not know how they move the funds around.
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Councilmember Yukimura: Okay, that is what we will have to verify. Thank
you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I just had a question, trying to wrap my head
around the grant and how the money is distributed. You apply for specific grants for the
YWCA and you are just funneling it to them?
Mr. Kollar: No. This comes out of a bigger pool of money,
that comes to us under the Victims of Crime Act, formula funding through the Federal
government. We get a pool of that money and decide how we are going to spend it. We
apply for Council permission to get it, to receive it, to expend it. We put our budgets
together. A significant portion of that we use to support the services we provide in our own
Office out of our victim-witness program. The services we contract for with the Y are
services that we cannot provide ourselves. So it is treatment, you know? Our Office cannot
set up and run a shelter for domestic violence victims. So we contract with the Y, to
perform that service on behalf of the County.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Okay. I may be interested in see a spreadsheet
of the grants that come in and how it gets allocated? I know some goes to salaries and some
goes to the Y.
Mr. Kollar: It is complicated and we can give you any
numbers that you want. The issue with the granted funds is that we do not...it is not like
every year, on July let, we wet get these checks and we disperse them. They come in at
different times and may be expended over the course of multiple fiscal years. We may have
funds from fiscal 2010 that we are still expended, we may have funds from fiscal
2013...some grant periods may be restricted to an eight month period of time...some grant
•
funds may run for years and years. We can give you that data.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I do not need a confusing spreadsheet, just where
you get the funds from and where it goes? It does not need to be a dollar amount if it is
going to get too confusing with the grants over multiple years.
Mr. Kollar: I can tell you for the open grant accounts in
Fiscal Year 2015 totaled $359,791. And that encompasses everything that is open, not all of
that may be spent in this fiscal year or the coming fiscal year, it depends on what the needs
are and what the services that we provide are?
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any further questions? I have
another question, and the cubicle build out is that a necessary build out that needs to
happen this year?
Mr. Kollar: The concern is that we have been deferring it for
a number of years and the concern is that the clerks there are using furniture that is very
old and obsolete and in many cases cobbled together from kind of things that had been
picked up at Walmart or things from different sources. So when they are doing their work
and any time you work with an improvised work space, you are being really inefficient and
run the risk of someone developing carpal tunnel or an occupational injury that would blow
the costs of this out of water. So we have deferred that for a number of years and we are
deferring another part...we had come into the Administration with a larger request and
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agreed to defer a portion to a future year. So we are hoping to accomplish that this year.
We understand times are tough, but we are trying to take care of our workers.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I had to ask the question in times of tightening
our belts. Councilmember Yukimura?
Councilmember Yukimura: You mentioned 400 domestic violence cases per
year?
Mr. Kollar: That is an approximate number of prosecutions,
yes, in the family court, yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. So in terms of statistical indicators, there
must be a larger pool of domestic violence incidents that the Y keeps?
Mr. Kollar: Well, it is not a question of them keeping cases.
They provide services to the victims. They may be cases that we have. They may be
providing services to people who do not have criminal cases with us.
Councilmember Yukimura: That is right. So some of the incidents do not
rise to the level of a criminal case.
Mr. Kollar: Sure.
Councilmember Yukimura: So if we were tracking them, we would be...I am
not sure how you would track the larger case...I mean the larger group of cases, but your
caseload involves 400 domestic violence cases over last year?
Mr. Kollar: Approximately, correct, yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: And we could track it just to see as part of the
workload you handle and an indicator of what is happening out in our community.
Mr. Kollar: Correct.
Councilmember Yukimura: So that would be one of the statistics.
Mr. Kollar: It is still a significant portion of our Police calls
for service and our caseload, yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any further questions? The Justice Web, I think
it was software that you used with the Kaua`i Police Department?
Mr. Kollar: Correct. That is what we are looking at.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: It is stationed in your Office, and they are able to
access it from their computer?
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Mr. Kollar: It would reside on the servers with our Justice
Web. You know, it is web-based. So it could be accessed by personnel anywhere. But it is
web-based so we would manage it out of our Office, but it would be accessible by Police,
wherever they choose to do that.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: And you guys are the ones who manage it?
Mr. Kollar: Correct, yes.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura?
Councilmember Yukimura: Well, I just wanted to add my thanks on the
Girls Court. Because it seems like just like Drug Court, and what is the Youth Court?
Mr. Kollar: Teen Court.
Councilmember Yukimura: Teen Court. To me, I see them as prevention.
Mr. Kollar: Absolutely.
Councilmember Yukimura: Prevention, intervention.
Mr. Kollar: That is the intent.
Councilmember Yukimura: Thank you very much for that.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any further questions from the Members?
Thank you for coming.
Mr. Kollar: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I think we are done with you for now.
Mr. Kollar: For now, okay.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: We will take a 10-minute caption break and come
back and have Transportation.
There being no objections, the Committee recessed at 10:51 a.m.
The Committee reconvened at 11:01 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Welcome back, up next we have the
Transportation Agency and I will ask Celia to give a brief overview of the Transportation
Agency.
CELIA M. MAHIKOA, Executive on Transportation: Thank you very much.
Celia Mahikoa with the Transportation Agency. And you can introduce yourself.
JEREMY LEE, Program Specialist III: For the record, Jeremy Lee.
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Ms. Mahikoa: What I wanted to do today was I provided
Council our budget presentation for this upcoming year, and that was prior. What I wanted
to do for this morning, initially, was to just do a quick scan over the history of bus service
here on Kaua`i and put everyone on the same page as to where we are at and how we got to
where we are at today. It is just a brief, summary review of the history of the Kaua`i Bus.
If you have your handouts, and we have it on the overhead. If you have any questions at
any point, please go ahead. I do not have thorough detail with me today, but I would be
happy to get that information for you. As far as the transportation system on Kaua`i, we
had initially started up in the '70s and '80s being a transportation program within the
County's Office of Elderly Affairs. It was a rather small program, serving seniors, and
persons with disabilities and disadvantaged children within the Head-Start program. It
was a very small operation within the Agency on Elderly Affairs. And that as you see went
on for a couple of decades there in that small capacity. As we moved into the '90s, we saw
around 1990 there was a demo project with four routes between Kapa'a and Lihu'e. Back
that far, that long ago we were already defining the heavily traveled areas between Kapa'a
and Lihu`e and had tried the demo project back then. Then we had the unfortunate
incident of Hurricane Iniki that occurred in 1992. One benefit that came out of that was
the abundance of FEMA funding for transit to help serve the community and provide them
assistance with getting around the island. With the FEMA funds, that was able to carry us
through 1994, 1995 or so. Where the Federal funds started tapering off. We were running
out of funds at about that point. So what happened in February of 1995, that was where
the Transportation Agency was formed as it is own agency outside of the Agency on Elderly
Affairs. And at that point, the most important goal that we had was being able to wean the
County off of the Federal funds, and to make it a system that this County could afford. So
at that point, everything was restructured, and we saw that our total budget at that point
was $1.4 million at that time. At that point the service level as far as ridership on public
transit was pretty much a flat line. There was not much growth that was going on then. It
was just a little bit over 100,000, maybe 130,000 rides per year is what we were looking at
around that time. From point when the agency was formed, our leaders were looking for
placement for our baseyard, a permanent baseyard, where we could have ourselves set up
to have an administrative facility, and be able to have our vehicles parked all-in-one
secured area. Prior to this we were parking in a rented location in Puhi. We were able to
work with the County and we were able to get the location that we are currently at set
aside. The Federal Transit Administration provided 80% of the funding that provided
construction costs for building the baseyard that we currently have. You see the photo up
there is interesting how we are right next to the Veteran Center and back then there was
still no judiciary building and no Police building, no soccer field at that point. This was
back in 2001, I believe, this photo was taken in June of 2001. So from that point, we
started looking at around 2005, the initiatives were the interest of building and using
public transit more so and there was more support internally for growth of the system. So
there were additional investments made, in 2005 we had the Lihu`e Airport service added.
We had bike racks installed on the buses and this is about the time we started seeing
annual...significant amounts of annual growth on the transit system. Around 2005 we saw
ridership increase about 7%. 2006 we started holiday service where we were serving for
each holiday other than Christmas, New Year's, and Thanksgiving. And started the Lihu`e
lunch shuttle. We saw ridership increase 10% that year. 2007 we added service to Wailua
Homesteads and Houselots, added the Koloa shuttle and added seven bus stops and saw
ridership increase 19% that year. In 2008, we added three runs, three additional runs to
our Hanalei-Lihu'e main line. At that same time, summer of 2008 we saw the significant
increase in fuel prices as well and between the combination of those things occurring we
saw ridership increase 31% that year. In 2009 we had added additional commuter service
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for Kekaha-Lihu'e because we were experiencing frequent standing-room only situations for
commuters, that is miserable. Because that means almost the entire ride they are standing
and that was deemed unacceptable. We also added service for Hanalei-Lihu'e to make it
hourly and added four on-call bus stops that increased ridership 30% in 2009. We saw
2010...excuse me...we had added three bus stops, and set up the park-and-ride sites. We
did not add to service. So we saw ridership increase 2%. 2011, in February, 2011 is when
we did the large expansion, where we actually added Sunday service, prior to that there
was no transit service on Sunday. Sunday service was added and we also increased week
day evening hours to three hours where the last runs from Lihu'e were at 9:30 p.m. rather
than 6:30 p.m. and saw ridership increase 22%. That was implemented in February of that
year. In 2012, we added three Kapahi shuttle runs and to make it consistent and hourly we
had the KCC transit pilot project and Tropic Care free ride transit promotion. A good
portion of what contributed to our ridership increase was also a full year's impact of the
weekday evening increase and the Sunday service added. We saw a 39% increase in
ridership in 2012. Beyond that, we were doing just small investments. So we saw a
slowing in the growth on transit. We took Koloa-Po`ipu shuttle to hourly and did some
adjustments in order to do that. And we had the retail bus pass locations set-up. It went
from Pono Market, who was very generous to be the first one to allow us to sell bus passes
there...to where the Menehune Food Marts allowed us to distribute bus passes through
their locations as well. We saw ridership increase by 5% in 2013. 2014 we initiated the
KCC bulk rate discount pass program and again participated in the Tropic Care "free ride"
transit promotion and there was no additional service that year. We saw ridership increase
by 5%. This year, we added Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day service, so we
are now operating 365 days a year and working on passenger shelters. So far we have seen
a ridership increase of about 1% and upcoming in the year 2016, due to the fiscal situation,
and the budgetary constraints we have, what we are looking at is basically turning inward
and doing our best to work on ways to improve quality, improve efficiencies, that we have
within our system, since we are unable to afford to expand. We are looking at improving
our service and our schedule. We are also currently working on procuring our computer-
aided dispatch and community software program and finishing up the passenger shelters.
As far as the impact that these actions will have on ridership, that will be determined and
we will be talking story about that next year. So that provides you my summary. I just
wanted to just share as far as our Agency's commitment that we are fully committed to
seeking ways to fulfill our role in contributing to the sustainable transportation system for
the island of Kauai. We take great pleasure in serving the public in this way. So beyond
that, I am open to any questions that you have?
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you, Celia, for the presentation. Members
do you have any questions on the PowerPoint that we just saw? Councilmember
Yukimura?
Councilmember Yukimura: Thank you, Celia. It is been a while since I have
looked back at the history and it is very helpful to look at it. What was the increase from
...what did you say was the flatline? Did you say 30,000 trips in the beginning? It was your
slide...you have not numbered your slides.
Ms. Mahikoa: It should be number three.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: There is a small number.
Councilmember Yukimura: I see it, number three.
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Ms. Mahikoa: The font is pretty small.
Councilmember Yukimura: No, I see it. It is there. I think you mentioned a
figure when the ridership was flatlined. Can we go back to the slide, if possible?
Ms. Mahikoa: I think it is 3, where when we were first starting
out, the ridership was averaging around 150,000-160,000 each year, until we started
investing in the system.
Councilmember Yukimura: 150,000 per year?
Ms. Mahikoa: Trips.
Councilmember Yukimura: Trips. And so what is it today?
Ms. Mahikoa: Today it is running probably 850,000.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. So 850,000. So that is like?
Ms. Mahikoa: Five to six times.
Councilmember Yukimura: 5-6 times the increase? 500-600% increase? So
that is our present-day tracking. So that is a huge growth. And the budget was $1.4
million back in the beginning for an islandwide system, because Iniki was an islandwide
system and now what is it? It is $7.3 million, today, in terms of costs?
Ms. Mahikoa: Of what?
Councilmember Yukimura: Your operational costs.
Ms. Mahikoa: Overall, sorry...yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. And you say in your actual report for the
first time...I mean your narrative, that for the first time we have reached $1 million in fees
from users.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes, that is correct. This fiscal year, I believe we
are exceeding $1 million.
Councilmember Yukimura: So about 14% is being paid for by user fees. So
that is the overall picture. And I think the other thing we get from your history is that
every time we have made significant increases to the service, there has been jumps in
ridership.
Ms. Mahikoa: That is correct.
Councilmember Yukimura: So it is not like we have to convince people to ride
the bus. We have not been doing any real advertising, right? It is just that so I think as
has been pointed out in our multi-modal transportation plan, demand for the service has
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been exceeding supply and every time we increase supply or service there is an increase in
ridership. So the way to increase ridership is to increase supply or service. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any more questions on the PowerPoint
presentation and the budget presentation that we received earlier and we can talk
questions on that also. Councilmember Kuali`i.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Hi there, thank you both for being here. Yes,
that is a critical piece, the history, but I think even more critical is this budget
presentation. Here there are some specific things I have questions about. On page 2, well
let us start with page 1. On page 1, you have highlighted that the bus stops, 119 bus stops
and of those, 88 have no shelters and is that 88 the current number or with the shelters
coming online now is that a different number?
Ms. Mahikoa: That probably needs to be updated.
Councilmember Kuali`i: About ten came online recently?
Ms. Mahikoa: Six more recently, yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So it is a little bit lower. On page 2, the North
and South Shore Transit Feasibility Study. It says "completed by the summer of 2006" has
the study been started? Has it started?
Ms. Mahikoa: Actually, that is being carried out through
Planning, and we are at the point of, I believe we are almost at the point of contract award.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Contract award.
Ms. Mahikoa: Still negotiating, I believe.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So do you know what that amount is? Or we will
see it in Planning?
Ms. Mahikoa: I am sorry, I do not know.
Councilmember Kuali`i: We will find out from Planning.
Councilmember Yukimura: Is it not about $250,000?
Ms. Mahikoa: I believe it is around there, but I do not want to
guess.
Councilmember Kuali`i: And it is going to take over a year to complete?
Ms. Mahikoa: That is my understanding.
Councilmember Yukimura: 18 months.
Councilmember Kuali`i: It seems like it might be something that we need
to rush. Page 3 the biggest challenge, I guess, your number one challenge is overtime
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expenses. But you actually justify it as reliable bus service demands, all of this overtime.
But would you not say that the overtime is because you do not have enough drivers? I
mean if it is consistent that you have to utilize so much overtime, would you not need more
drivers?
Ms. Mahikoa: The challenge with that is if we hire more
drivers, and then those that are out on extended sick-leave return, we would end up with a
surplus of drivers that the County would need to...
Councilmember Kuali`i: I noticed there was a big chunk of on-call drivers,
but that, in fact, that is one of the areas that you are cutting your funding the most.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Like over $100,000. Was it just because you
were desperate to find an area to cut? Because you need the drivers it seems, right?
Ms. Mahikoa: We do need the drivers. One of the strategies
that we are going to employ this upcoming year was part of what I had mentioned during
the PowerPoint was looking at ways to increase the efficiencies and the service we provide.
And restructuring what we currently have and if we can succeed at doing that this fiscal
year then we can achieve that.
Councilmember Kuali`i: The last part of the page, with "overtime" you
break it down bus drivers 67%, clerks and dispatchers, 16%, mechanics, 14% and
accounting/supervisors, 2% and 1%. So clearly bus drivers is the largest area. But you said
you have an unprecedented number of bus drivers needing to be out on long-term non-work-
related absences. What is an unprecedented number? How many?
Ms. Mahikoa: Right now it is four that were out for several
months and beyond that there have been others who, you know...just the nature of having a
working group that large that need to be out for various reasons.
Councilmember Kuali`i: When you say work group that large, how many
total bus drivers and on-call drivers?
Ms. Mahikoa: We have 52 full-time bus drivers.
Councilmember Kuali`i: And then the other line item of "on-call bus
drivers?"
Ms. Mahikoa: On-call, I believe we have about 16-18. Is it?
Thank you. 17.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. That is good. Next sentence under
"clerk dispatchers," these are dispatchers for the bus?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So why does it say, "maintaining order and
transit operations for 24 hours a day?"
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Ms. Mahikoa: It should say 20 hours a day. Yes, sorry, it says
20.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So even 20 then, only four hours that we sleep
and not operate the bus?
Ms. Mahikoa: They open the office at 4:00 a.m. And close at
12:30 a.m. On weeknights.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So 4:00 a.m. the office opens and the bus starts
running at what time?
Ms. Mahikoa: Our first drivers check in at 4:15 a.m. And we
have drivers checking in throughout the day. I believe our last ones check in at 3:45 p.m.
and get off at 12:30 a.m.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So dispatch answers calls from the public, or
they tell us about drivers where to go?
Ms. Mahikoa: All of that. We have dispatchers.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Calls come in at 4:00 a.m.?
Ms. Mahikoa: Well maybe not that early, but they are taking
messages from individuals who have called in that they do not need a paratransit ride.
Councilmember Kuali`i: I would like to see how those unusual hours are
spent, providing what kinds of services? Because I would imagine it does not really have
anything to do with the fixed-route buses and more to do with the scheduling and
appointments of paratransit?
Ms. Mahikoa: You would be surprised.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Really? Send me the information and the
breakdown between the two primary functions?
Ms. Mahikoa: Okay.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Council Chair Rapozo.
Council Chair Rapozo: Thank you. I have a follow-up. Celia on the
regular overtime, the current budget you have budgeted $156,464 and year-to-date is
$156,464, you have basically spent your overtime funds.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Council Chair Rapozo: Where are you getting your funds from now?
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Ms. Mahikoa: Because we have individuals out, we have salary
funds that would otherwise be left at the end of the fiscal year as unused salary funds.
Basically, because there are a couple of drivers and unpaid-leave and have no sick-leave.
So we are able to do budget adjustments.
Council Chair Rapozo: So you are okay for the rest of the year?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Council Chair Rapozo: And then it is a little follow-up to what KipuKai
was saying about the big drop. Now the request is $97,000 for the next year and I am
assuming that I noticed you look like you are allocating three substitute drivers to regular
positions.
Ms. Mahikoa: That is what we would like to do, yes.
Council Chair Rapozo: And that reallocation you anticipate that much
savings in overtime?
Ms. Mahikoa: That is what our hopes are, yes.
Council Chair Rapozo: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any further questions from the Members? We
can move into the budget, if there are no other questions on the report. Councilmember
Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: Thank you. So on your short-range transit plan,
and congratulations for all your work on the multi-modal land transportation plan, which
actually covered a lot more than transit, but I know you were the lead person working on it
and now the next step, now that we have a long range plan in place, the next step is a
short-range transit plan scheduled for this year?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: You say it should be available for the Council by
winter of 2016. So this year, will you be able to do it that quickly? I mean you are going to
procure the consultant in July, I presume.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes, along with professional services.
Councilmember Yukimura: And it will take about three months to put a
transit plan together? Three, four...July, August, September, October, November.
Ms. Mahikoa: This is for 2016.
Councilmember Yukimura: So that is a year and a half, excuse me.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
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Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. That makes more sense. And dove tailed
with that is the shuttle system planning that is happening...are you involved in that? I
hope you are.
Ms. Mahikoa: We are. We meet regularly. Yes and coordinate
what is going on.
Councilmember Yukimura: All right. And that plan is going to be done
when? Summer of 2016.
Ms. Mahikoa: That was my estimate when I assembled this. I
do not know if that has been revised based on the most current action that is being taken on
that plan.
Councilmember Yukimura: One of my concerns is how does this shuttle
system interface with our bus...our regular fixed-route and paratransit service? And so I
just want to make sure that the timetable on the two plans are synchronized.
Ms. Mahikoa: Right and our responsibility in establishing the
scope of work for each of the plans needs to be to ensure that we are taking all of these
projects into consideration. That they complement each other and are coordinated.
Councilmember Yukimura: So the scope of work for the shuttle system or the
short-term...?
Ms. Mahikoa: For both. We need to make sure that we are
coordinating between them both and ensuring that the contractor is taking all of these into
consideration.
Councilmember Yukimura: I sure hope you have enough money in the short-
range plan to do two shuttle systems in two different parts of the island. Because your
short-range transit plan will have to make some assumptions about the regional circulators
or whatever you call them. So can you make sure that is coordinated?
Ms. Mahikoa: We will do our best, yes.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you. Councilmember Kuali`i has some
questions. If your questions start digging into the budget, feel free to start asking.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Just one last one on this narrative on page 5,
performance measures. You talk about revenue increases. And how the anticipation is that
our revenue will now increase over $1 million. Obviously there is...maybe not obviously.
The money comes from the public and goes into the catch...when they get on the bus. So the
bus drivers when they end their route, they are handling the money. Who else? We have
an Accountant III and Accountant II. Are all the people within the Agency handling
money? Is that a finite group of people, and are they bonded or have special qualifications
to handle that money?
Ms. Mahikoa: There are no special qualifications, but we have
the positions defined. We have our cash-handling procedures setup. And also ensuring
that we are maintaining proper...
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Councilmember Kuali`i: For me, because it represents $1 million to
provide that information, what the positions are? What the procedures are? I want to
confirm there are checks and balances in place and when we hire people into those position
there is either a background check or a reference check. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: How much of our moneys are gotten through bus
pass sale it is are done at the counter, and not on the bus?
Ms. Mahikoa: We actually sell passes out of Treasury, out of
our office, and at the off-site locations. I unfortunately do not have that breakdown with
me, but that would be easy enough to provide to you.
Councilmember Yukimura: Because I can understand Councilmember
Kuali is concerns if you are doing it at individual bus-level, you know? But and we had
Treasury before us last week. And one of the reasons for having them do the cash
transactions is that they are setup for cash transactions. So it would be interesting to see
how much of our revenues come through our bus-pass places, and how much are through
the individual coin machines? But you do have in the long-range plan, which I am guessing
it will come into the short-range plan, plans for cards eventually? Transit cards?
Ms. Mahikoa: That would be ideal like a smart card system,
that is on our to-do list.
Councilmember Yukimura: If you have enough money to run the system,
right. But that would be wonderful, because then people will buy, as much as they want to.
And then just use it, but with no cash transactions.
Ms. Mahikoa: That would be wonderful.
Councilmember Yukimura: Good.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Chock.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the
presentation. I am looking at page 11 of the submittal. Under "fleet management" and so
I see you have a plan to increase or replace the fleet. And I was wondering, is this funding,
one of which you have received in March, some replacement. Do we have to apply for it
annually, or is it multi-year funding that we are...and what are the likelihood of us
receiving this support? Do we have a contingency plan for it?
Ms. Mahikoa: That is an excellent question. Through the past
we have had...it has varied. The method in which we have received funding for vehicle
replacements. Through the early years it was typically just Section 5309 funding through
FTA, where they would give the State of Hawai`i DOT an allocation each year and they
would divide it up between Big Island, Maui, and Kauai. They would divide it up three
ways. We would all just purchase the vehicles that we could get out of that allocation.
More recently, say within the past 3-4 years or so, the Federal government has taken a
change in their method of providing awards. They came out grant announcements for state
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of good repair funding opportunities of which we had applied and I believe we were
awarded three years' worth. For the last one that we gained, we are just receiving the
vehicles right now...the 20 vehicles right now. So as of right now, this is the last of the
Federal capital funds that we have available, that we are spending down right now.
However, typically annually we anticipate what used to be 5309 funds, they call it 5339
section funds now, and we anticipate that there will be an announcement for 5339 funds
soon and we were hoping they would have been done already, but we have not heard from
DOT whether or not that has been made available yet? If that is the case, we do not know
how much that will be, which is why I allocated funds within our 5311 funding over that
grant announcement that you all had approved last week for us. That will help us to
cushion it if there is no 5339 announcement or if it is competitive, like the state of good
repair grants are competitive and if we end up not getting an award, we would need to
basically request additional funding in order to keep our fleet within the state of good
repair and being able to replace, as much as we should each year. Within the nation we
keep seeing reports of where many transit operations are unable to keep up with their
capital needs. So the Federal government has been asking for additional efforts in us being
able to report the activities that we have as far as what our needs are and being able to
maintain that well.
Councilmember Chock: So I see here we still keep our vehicles in service,
even after the 150,000.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Chock: Up until 300,000.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Chock: So how many do we have that are over that
threshold, that initial threshold?
Ms. Mahikoa: I can get you that. You are saying over 150,000?
Councilmember Chock: Right.
Ms. Mahikoa: Keep in mind we have 20 that are sitting waiting
to be put in service and replacing quite a bit. Looks like 25 or so that are above the
150,000. I mean, as far as far of our operations, I should not say never but, disposed a bus
at 150,000, but we try to get our money's worth out of these vehicles that we have and
thankfully we have an excellent shop crew, who is able to make that happen for us.
Councilmember Chock: So when do we typically decommission these
vehicles?
Ms. Mahikoa: When we are able to assess as far as the cost of
repairing it would exceed the cost of replacing it, for the most part, yes.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: So I guess it is showing us the value of good
maintenance.
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Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Because by keeping it properly maintained, you
are actually extending the life far beyond what is the minimum life span.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. The state of good repair funds, is that...do
you have to meet certain criteria of maintenance before the Federal government will give
you the money? Or is this title of the funds, "state of good repair" meaning that the Federal
government is recognizing the need to keep our buses in good repair and therefore, are
giving this program to local governments to enable us to keep our buses in good repair?
Ms. Mahikoa: Right. I believe based on what I have read
coming through news releases is that the purpose was the latter explanation that basically
they are increasing their efforts at assisting transit agencies with increasing their...
Councilmember Yukimura: They understand how important it is to keep the
capital or hardware in good condition, both from a safety standpoint, but also from an
operational standpoint. So people can rely on the bus to come. You will not have as many
breakdowns and things like that.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: In looking at the fleet replacement schedule, it
seems like every year we will be replacing buses, right? Because the schedule you have is
a 6-year schedule. So the 7th year or 5th or 6th, 7th year you are replacing the 20 buses we
just got this year, 2015?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes, this would be an ideal systematic method of
replacing them. However, the funding unfortunately does not come in that consistently. So
sometimes we are able to get, say, two awards within a year and a half, and then other
times we might go a year and a half, two years without. So we need to plan accordingly and
thankfully, the vehicles are able to go on longer than we planned.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: So just as a follow-up, I mean, it appears it is an
incredible juggling act for you folks because there is not a consistent, sustained funding for
the hardware? That you have to keep creating contingencies in this atmosphere of
uncertainty, in order to keep the buses running, which you do not...we do not have a choice
in terms of keeping services going for people who depend on it to get to work and school and
things like that, doctors... May I ask another question?
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I have a follow-up.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: In past, the Federal match, 80/20, it has not been
a yearly thing?
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Ms. Mahikoa: We put it in each year and make sure we are
consistent about putting it in each year and if we are given a Federal award that year we
are ready and can utilize it right away. And if not, there have been times when it has
lapsed because we were not given a Federal award that year.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: And when it lapses, say it lapsed this year, you
would add 28 buses to the schedule since we are one year behind or are we playing catch-up
at 14?
Ms. Mahikoa: That is what it has been.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Other questions? Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: Of the 7.3 million plus, what part of the cost is
due to paratransit and what part is due to the fixed-route system?
Ms. Mahikoa: I believe at this point and please, this is just a
generality and I do not have a worksheet in front of me on it, but I believe that cost of
paratransit is probably 45% of our operating costs right now.
Councilmember Yukimura: And that is because it is door-to-door, right?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: So you have been working on some plans to
address or encourage people to move from the paratransit...and enable people also to move
from the paratransit and that will be forthcoming, possibly with your short-term transit or
in next couple of years?
Ms. Mahikoa: Do you want to expand on that?
Mr. Lee: Jeremy Lee, for the record. The short-term
transit plan should address issues like that. We are looking to partnership with the
different groups that we work with and people that we serve in the capacity to keep them
on fixed route and it should help us keep our costs down, which is quite significant when it
comes to paratransit system.
Councilmember Yukimura: Right. Part of your bus shelter efforts are to
make the fixed-route more usable, so those who are able to, who are now using paratransit
will be able to use the fixed-route?
Ms. Mahikoa: Ideally, ideally, if all of our fixed-route stops
were fully accessible, meaning if somebody could get from their house, wherever they live to
the stop, then say that pickup for paratransit would not be necessary. And if that person is
going to Walmart, and it is fully accessible there as well. So they have the freedom to be
able to hop on any fixed-route bus and do not have to call ahead for reservations.
Councilmember Yukimura: It is actually more convenient if they can use it.
Ms. Mahikoa: Right.
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Councilmember Yukimura: Because it takes them faster. I commend you for
working on that because I think it is going to be more cost-effective, but I know we need a
plan. I am hoping that in the short-range transit plan, we will look at...we will be creative
in thinking out of the box for how to address our paratransit needs...the real needs that
cannot be addressed by fixed-route?
Ms. Mahikoa: Right. Thank you.
Councilmember Yukimura: Because paratransit is an essential, right? It is
part of meeting the ADA requirements.
Ms. Mahikoa: Complimentary paratransit service for
individuals who are not able to use fixed-route is, yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Required? By Federal law, yes.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: So we just have to find the best ways to address
that. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I would like to move into the budget and take in
sections. So if anyone has questions on the Transportation Administration section.
Councilmember Kuali`i?
Councilmember Kuali`i: So in the Admin section, according to the HR
report, vacancies, 9332, Accountant III has been vacant since February 18, 2015, what is
the current status?
Ms. Mahikoa: Current status is we anticipate having that filled
by...we are hoping by mid-May.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay. And then there is only one, two, three,
four, five positions listed here. Are there any other positions for Administration that are
fully grant-funded and if so, what are they? No? Okay. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any further questions for the Administration
section. If not, we will move on to the Operations section. Any questions for the Operations
section? Councilmember Kuali`i?
Councilmember Kuali`i: Vacant position 9441, Field Operations Clerk.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Vacant 3/28/2015. The budget, newly vacant is
the status?
Ms. Mahikoa: The ad just went out opening for recruitment on
Sunday, I believe it closes on the 21st of this month.
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Councilmember Kuali`i: So recruiting. The amount shown here is
$29,988. Is that the entry-level salary?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: 9456 Transit Mechanic, $46,000. In the HR
report it showed $44,000 not that much difference. And status, offer made?
Ms. Mahikoa: The individual started April Pt.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay. And the 9298 Utility Worker was vacant
since November 15th and you are dollar funding this position?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So it is not anticipated to be needed for the entire
Fiscal Year 2015-2016?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: But you hesitated and that is why it is dollar-
funded because if needs change, you will? The last one in this section, because you have the
two sections. You have the section on bus drivers that are fully funded, 100% by the
General Fund, our funding and bus drivers who are 50% funded.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So bus driver 9311, that position? It was
showing vacant from 12/31. It was showing as a new-hire on 02/17. However, on the HR's
quarterly report, it was showing as 50% General Fund, 50% Highway Fund. And in your
report, it is showing as 100% General Fund. Do you think it is just a typo or oversight?
Ms. Mahikoa: I can check into that. It is possible that we
would have adjusted it based on the individual coming in. Typically we fund the higher
seniority drivers through the General Fund positions.
Councilmember Kuali`i: But if you assigned a position to a grant, 50/50
and then you had another position, if the vacancy...I mean you would not switch the
numbers would you or you might? Because maybe that is the confusion, too. You switched
it. Anyway just follow-up with that.
Ms. Mahikoa: I will check into it.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Here under "bus drivers that are 50% funded by
us and 50% by grant." There is a comment that says, "pending reallocation of three bus
driver positions from substitute drivers in Fiscal Year 2015 and unknown number at time
of budget, WS" and $68,630. What is W and do we divide total by three and assume it is for
three positions and are they 50/50 positions?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes, they are 50/50 and that is three at $21,210.
I am assuming that "WS" is for "worksheet" but I am not sure.
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Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: Does the utility work position impact the buses?
Ms. Mahikoa: The utility worker position would be minimal.
They do assist with the shop, primarily janitorial and custodial and taking care of the bus
stops and taking care of the base yard and assisting in the shop. We have been through the
vacancy review process when that individual left, and have been looking at ways to work
with Public Works, and Parks and Recreation has been working with us on absorbing the
duties that this individual had covered in our Agency.
Councilmember Yukimura: If it was to take care of the bus stops and now
you are going to have more bus shelters to maintain. And so actually the workload has
increased. If that is going to be covered by Public Works, their workers are going to do that
bus-stop maintenance? Empty trashcans? Cover the graffiti? Make sure that the bus
schedules are visible and current, right? Things like that? Somebody does that, right?
Ms. Mahikoa: Actually they have already been assisting us
with changing out bus schedule holders and straightening up...
Councilmember Yukimura: Public Works has?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Who is doing that in Public Works?
Ms. Mahikoa: Sorry, I do not have names.
Councilmember Yukimura: No, what division?
Mr. Lee: I believe it is Roads. I am not 100% sure. We
just submit through the AS400 work order system and it goes to the division.
Councilmember Yukimura: Actually that sounds like it could have some
efficiencies. So I do commend that there is this interdivisional cooperation that this
Administration has really put it forth. So that is good. Okay, interesting.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I have a question on the telephone line item. I
see a purchase for tablets, phones, MiFi...I do not know, but could you explain what that is
for?
Ms. Mahikoa: That is for how I had mentioned we are
purchasing the CADAVL system, the computer-aided dispatch and vehicle locators and it
involves each driver having a tablet on board. Right now they currently have a clipboard
with papers and pencil, where they log their ridership and have printed manifests for
paratransit pick-up and drop-off and these tablets will be where all their information is
stored at that point this. It is for access for the tablets.
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Committee Chair Kaneshiro: When you gave the number of employees, 52
full-time, 17 on-call, but we are ordering 75 tablets. They cannot share a tablet? Do we
need 75 tablets?
Ms. Mahikoa: Ideally we would have one assigned per vehicle.
And we also typically would want to have backup as well in case one goes down.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: So the tablets stay on the vehicle itself, it is not
with the employee?
Ms. Mahikoa: We need to work out details yet when we do get
the tablets in and once we have the software implemented. I just want to make sure we do
not end up shy.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: As a follow-up, I mean, eventually and I do not
know how other transit systems do it, but a tablet that could be firmly placed in the bus, so
you cannot knock it or drop it or take it out. You do not see it being handled a lot, right?
And I do not know when you order buses that you order them with something that can come
in? But one thing I appreciate is your bus drivers are trained to keep track of people as
they board. And that is the basis for our statistics, right? And so something better than a
clipboard makes sense. But yes, I hope you will plan carefully how that is implemented.
Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any further questions on the telephone line
item? Councilmember Chock?
Councilmember Chock: I went to Operations, sorry. I had a question
about the bus passes. I see the amount of$8,800 for the past fiscal year and I just wanted
to get a sense as it relates to what we are looking at with the KCC bus passes? Is that what
this is a reflection of?
Ms. Mahikoa: This is just the printing of the passes.
Councilmember Chock: So where will we know the amount of passes that
we are actually handing out in reference to...
Ms. Mahikoa: For KCC?
Councilmember Chock: For Bill No. 2580, what we are currently doing
and what we can expect? When I looked at the amount of bus passes and considerable
amount of income that we might be...I just wanted to get a sense of what that is and how it
reflects in this budget?
Ms. Mahikoa: Actually what we do with KCC, we have a
separate agreement setup, whereby when each individual registers for classes at KCC, the
ID that they are given is observed as their pass. So as they board, it is logged as a KCC trip
and that is how we track the KCC ridership. So we do not actually hand them a pass.
They are using their current valid IDs as their pass.
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Councilmember Chock: How many have taken advantage of that?
Ms. Mahikoa: We do not have a count of actual students, but
trips provided under the program. However, the numbers that we have would typically be
number of students registered for that semester is the data that we have.
Councilmember Chock: Do we have a budgetary impact you can share
with us to give us moving forward on this that we can expect the next fiscal period?
Ms. Mahikoa: As far as cost of providing the KCC program?
Councilmember Chock: Yes.
Ms. Mahikoa: I do not believe that it would...unless so many
students begin taking advantage of the program to the point where we need to add another
run to certain areas. Right now we are working within existing capacities and I do not
believe that the program, other than the time it takes me to work out the agreement with
KCC that the program costs us a significant amount.
Councilmember Chock: So in addition, to the bus passes that we are
talking about with KCC, how many other bus passes are we distributing?
Ms. Mahikoa: How many do we sell?
Councilmember Chock: Sell versus give out?
Ms. Mahikoa: We sell probably about 600-650 passes a month
to the general population and then beyond that, the KCC IDs that...valid IDs that we
honor.
Councilmember Chock: Do we have any bus passes for people in the KEO
program, the homeless?
Ms. Mahikoa: The County does not hand out those, but the
program can come in with checks and purchase, which they do. There are programs out
there like DHS, comes in and buys a few.
Councilmember Chock: KCC is the only program that we actually
deliver...I mean service?
Ms. Mahikoa: That we have the agreement with?
Councilmember Chock: Yes.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Chock: Okay, thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Follow-up question, Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: This is the category called "bulk purchase?"
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Ms. Mahikoa: Bulk rate discount.
Councilmember Yukimura: Bulk rate discounts. So that large traffic-
generating entities, whether it is an employer like the Hyatt or Wilcox Hospital or
elsewhere can come in and it is done a lot on the mainland where they are under strict
requirements to control the car traffic. They can pay for a discount...they can purchase a
bulk at a per ticket discount or per passenger discount and give them or sell them to
employees and in many cases they give them to employee because otherwise they would
have to provide parking for their employees and that is an expense to the employer. So just
to...I mean I think it is really useful to be clear, that we make an agreement for a rate that
KCC pays us per registered student, right? Per registered student, they collect the moneys
from the students and pay us.
Ms. Mahikoa: That is correct.
Councilmember Yukimura: And that goes into the revenue line.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: To the total of now about $1 million per year?
Ms. Mahikoa: Our total revenue.
Councilmember Yukimura: Our total revenue. And that is shown where in
our revenues?
Ms. Mahikoa: I do not have it broken out in our revenues as far
as the KCC portion. I believe it comes to maybe about $85,000 to $90,000 a year.
Councilmember Yukimura: But that all goes into the...does it go into the
General Fund?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. So that becomes revenues. Along with all
of the individual purchases, and all of the fees. But the students get three months' worth,
a semester's worth of bus passes for $24.
Ms. Mahikoa: Currently, what they came in for was $20
initially and now it is up for proposal.
Councilmember Yukimura: In the public, they paid $30 a month, right?
Ms. Mahikoa: Currently $35.
Councilmember Yukimura: $35 a month. And a KCC student will get a bus
pass for $24 a semester. So they have a deal, if they can use the bus, they really are getting
a good deal. So theoretically it is win-win all around. The employer does not have to
provide as much parking. The employee or the student gets very discounted bus pass. And
the County gets revenues in a bulk form.
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Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Kuali`i.
Councilmember Kuali`i: I flipped the page and now I see on the second
page on-call drivers is 9457 with asterisk that says "move to Public Works Janitorial' so
your comment about doing some of the janitorial whether it be at the base where your
headquarters are or at the bus stops, that would be covered by that position? So how will
we see that transfer of that position 9457? And when will it start? July Pt in the new
budget?
Ms. Mahikoa: That is my understanding.
Councilmember Kuali`i: As of July Pt. I can go back and look at either
Public Works or with HR, but July 1st, that position 9457, which you are giving up, will go
over to Public Works for Janitorial. My question on the line item of wages and hourly pay,
where the decrease is $117,000...that to me represents a cut in the number of on-call
positions, correct?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So how many on-call positions are being cut?
Ms. Mahikoa: I need to take that "yes" back. We are not
cutting positions. Typically we cut hours.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay.
Ms. Mahikoa: But the more on-call individuals we have
available, the more flexibility that provides us in covering shifts.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So in this line item, you had 26...you are moving
one 9457 and left with 25 on-call positions. And the flexibility, that is just dollars and cents
based on hours.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: In how you use them. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any further questions for Operations?
Councilmember Kuali`i?
Councilmember Kuali`i: For Operations, besides the 50/50-funded grant
and General Fund bus driver positions, are there any other positions that are grant-funded
either in portion or fully funded? Because I imagine if they are fully funded, then they may
not be showing. Do you have any fully-funded grant positions?
Ms. Mahikoa: No.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
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Councilmember Yukimura: Clarification on grant funded. Is it grants or
Highway funds? You fund bus drivers with grants?
Ms. Mahikoa: If you look...at the bus drivers section...17 at
$21,210, 50%. The 5311 funds that we get from the Federal Transit Administration funds
operations at 50% match. So that is what that is.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay.
Ms. Mahikoa: And then our on-call drivers are also 50%. We
fund it 50% General Fund and 50% 5311 funds. As far as the Highway Fund goes, you see
there is that minus there? Right above or right between the two bus driver groups? That
$742,455 minus. That is the amount, I believe, that is transferred over to Highway, it is
just a bulk amount that is transferred over once a year.
Councilmember Yukimura: So we do get...we do use Federal moneys for
personnel?
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: And that is fairly consistent or fairly...what is
the word? Reliable?
Ms. Mahikoa: It has been, because we have needed to apply the
method, which I had mentioned during the grant meeting, of basically giving ourselves a 6-
9 month padding window.
Councilmember Yukimura: An overlap.
Ms. Mahikoa: Yes, just to make sure that we have enough to
carry us if there is a delay in the Federal announcement. That is the method.
Councilmember Yukimura: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any other questions for Operations? Our final
section is Small Equipment Maintenance? Any other questions before we take lunch?
Okay, with that we will take lunch and because we finished early, we will get an extra 20
minutes. We will come back at 1:30 p.m.
Council Chair Rapozo: Mr. Chair, next up is the Auditor, and let me
just...because I really do not know how much time we can spend on that. Let me just say
that right now as you know we are currently in the process of searching for a new Auditor.
And we posted already, one posting. We are going out for a second posting. And we are
hoping to get that done as soon as possible. But today, we are talking about a budget that
really no one is here and no one is available to discuss the future plans, I mean, we can
have Stephanie come up and she can talk about the budget. I can tell you that our staff
assisted with the budget. It is really...the budget is the budget. It is a personnel budget,
yes. Except for the CAFR funding, and the only other item is $150,000 for the outside
experts you will, consultants. That is really the only items on there and I am not sure if
you folks want Steph up here to discuss that? They fall under our branch and the goals and
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objectives is for the new Auditor to decide and not for Stephanie. I will leave it up to you,
Mr. Chair and the Committee. I would suggest as we go through the search of the new
Auditor and the process that will be like we did with the County Clerk, we will have an
opportunity to interview each candidate and find out their goal and objectives.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I am open to hearing from the rest of the
Councilmembers, because for me, as I was going through notes, I did not have questions on
the Auditor's section.
Councilmember Yukimura: Well, I agree there is not much to talk about and
no one to ask questions of. So can we just move Office of Elderly Affairs up?
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: If that is the consensus.
Councilmember Yukimura: And give them notice of 1:30 p.m.
Council Chair Rapozo: Do we have a lot of issues with Elderly Affairs?
Councilmember Yukimura: I think we should have them.
Council Chair Rapozo: No doubt about it.
Councilmember Yukimura: I do not think it will be long.
Council Chair Rapozo: If we can get them here and take a ten-minute
caption break and get done within an hour...no? All right, early lunch. Okay.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Early long lunch. We will be back at 1:30 p.m.
and we are going skip the Auditor and go straight to Elderly Affairs.
There being no objections, the Committee recessed at 12:08 p.m.
The Committee reconvened at 1:30 p.m., and proceeded as follows:
(Council Chair Rapozo was noted as not present.)
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Welcome back and next is the Agency on Elderly
Affairs and Kealoha will present us with some brief highlights.
LUDVINA KEALOHA TAKAHASHI, Executive on Aging: Thank you. Kealoha
Takahashi with the Agency on Elderly Affairs. Just to show with those that are viewing a
little bit about our Agency on Elderly Affairs. We were able to put together some marketing
videos that are posted on our website and I would like to share one with you that explains a
little bit about our Agency and again, what we do. So Scott is helping me with this part.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: If you know any jokes...we need to stall for Scott
to get this video up.
Ms. Takahashi: I do not know any jokes.
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Committee Chair Kaneshiro: If we have any questions, we can start asking
questions. I have a question. How many elderly citizens on Kauai does your division
serve?
Ms. Takahashi: If you look at the attachment, I think it is
Appendix 1. And if you look at the bottom of the first...second column. You have that "N"
and there are 17,033. 17,000, that is how much is estimated on Kauai. This is 60 and
older. So if you look over to the next column, where it says "total" for Fiscal Year 13-14,
and on the bottom we served 2,117. And then thereafter you have a breakdown of those
services that were provided and how many we served.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: Follow-up question. Kealoha, thank you for
being here. So right now we have our population is 17,033 in terms of people 60 and over?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: And greater than 60. And I think in your
planning, that number and the percentage of population of elderly is expected to grow quite
considerably?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: The baby-boomers are getting older. Do you
know what that expansion rate is proposed to be? I am recalling...
Ms. Takahashi: Right now Kauai out of the other counties
percentage-wise is the largest.
Councilmember Yukimura: Right.
Ms. Takahashi: It is going to grow exponentially and I do not
know what the numbers are at this time, sorry.
Councilmember Yukimura: Which for planning purposes whether for transit
or for other services that is one of the things that we need to keep in mind, I guess.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Can you send us that figure? You folks will have
it in your long-range plans, I imagine? Okay. And I guess we want to know what the
growth is going to be, but more importantly, what the percentage that elderly will be of the
total population?
Ms. Takahashi: Okay.
Councilmember Yukimura: And you define "elderly" as 60 and over?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
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Councilmember Yukimura: That is your definition. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: The video is not ready yet, any more questions? I
have a question. We are good.
Agency on Elderly Affairs video was played.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you for the video. Did you have any other
information you wanted to show?
Ms. Takahashi: Just two more. One is on page 13. We left one
position out and that is our Enhanced Fitness Coordinator. So we need to add that to the
count...out of the grant-funded position, with a staff of 18, there are nine that are grant-
funded. And we need to add Program Coordinator and that is for the Enhanced Fitness
program.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: They are in the budget already?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Okay.
Ms. Takahashi: They are in the budget and just one more point
on the operating budget discussion. On page 12, we had two positions that retired, two
staff that retired and that one is the Program Specialist and that is the position we dollar-
funded. And then Community Service Program Assistant. So you are looking at a decrease
in operations of 9.1%. due in part with the retirement of our Program Specialist and some
less in our operations. That is about it.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you. With that, any questions from the
Councilmember? Councilmember Hooser.
Councilmember Hooser: Good afternoon.
Ms. Takahashi: Hi.
Councilmember Hooser: Could you summarize what impact the
retirement of the Specialist will have on the services delivered?
Ms. Takahashi: The position basically covered our Healthy Aging
programs, Enhanced Fitness, Better Choices, Better Health and so I am now helping and
Johnny, the Coordinator, we are kind of splitting and doing the classes and workshops for
Better Choices, Better Health. And for our diabetes program workshop as well. So I am
taking part of that and some of the staff are doing other assignments as well.
Councilmember Hooser: So the actual classes and hours provided will not
diminish? Just more work for you?
Ms. Takahashi: Because the Better Choices, Better Health
program, it is six-weeks and it is 2.5-hours each week. We have another scheduled for May,
next month. So it does not...just recruiting and getting people to attend the classes.
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Councilmember Hooser: Thank you very much.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: A follow-up question. So you said that is this the
position that is dollar-funded?
Ms. Takahashi: Program Specialist, yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Program Specialist. What were you at the at the
paying when you had someone in that position before the retirement?
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: If you do not have the answer right away, you
can E-mail, unless you have the answer here.
Ms. Takahashi: Okay.
Councilmember Yukimura: You say this was a physician...it was a
physician?
Ms. Takahashi: No, Program Specialist position.
Councilmember Yukimura: You said you could handle for the rest of this
fiscal year, but then in the new year, there needs to be somebody who is recruiting for the
new classes for the new year, is that right?
Ms. Takahashi: We are sharing the responsibility, Johnny Yago,
who is our Enhanced Fitness Coordinator agreed to help me with the classes. So he is
helping and sharing the load of providing those classes.
Councilmember Yukimura: And so does he actually lead the class then?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: He will be leading?
Ms. Takahashi: Both he and I, we need two facilitators for each
class.
Councilmember Yukimura: I see.
Ms. Takahashi: We are working...both Johnny and I attended a
master trainer workshop and in future we are looking to get volunteers, lay-leaders to
perform these instructions and we are in the process and hopefully by next year we will
have volunteers to conduct classes, so it will not be us doing it.
Councilmember Yukimura: That is very creative.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
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Councilmember Yukimura: So in other words, you are seeing this as a long-
term cut? You are not thinking about putting something back next year or the following
year...or you might?
Ms. Takahashi: For the...I would hope that I would be able to
promote Johnny to a Program Specialist position.
Councilmember Yukimura: You would like to have the position restored at
some point?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura, I was informed that
position was for $68,070.
Councilmember Yukimura: $68,000?
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I think that is why their salaries went down
$56,000 and there are probably had some increases due to collective bargaining.
Councilmember Yukimura: Wow, that would make it the second highest
position paid. Okay. This position would not just do Better Choices, right?
Ms. Takahashi: No.
Councilmember Yukimura: It would be to take care of basically all of the
fitness programs, which are in your addendum or appendix. Is that the last column
"exercise physical training?"
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: That is?
Ms. Takahashi: The last column "exercise physical training," is
our Enhanced Fitness program.
Councilmember Yukimura: You have other programs besides that or is that
your basic module?
Ms. Takahashi: Enhanced Fitness is part of the...besides this is
the Better Choices, Better Health component.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay.
Ms. Takahashi: Which is more of an education. With Better
Choices, Better Health, that is an educational program.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. So the exercise physical training, which is
one of your clusters for targeting performance is but one...I mean that is actually not a
program. It is your...it is a measurement of your work in that arena?
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Ms. Takahashi: I am not sure I understand your question.
Councilmember Yukimura: This chart here that you referred us to.
Ms. Takahashi: This is just the people that we serve, and the
breakdown low-income, minority, just a little demographics of the clientele that we serve.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. Is it complete...it is a complete picture of
all of your clients? All of the people that you serve?
Ms. Takahashi: Who participate, yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Who participate. Okay. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Chock.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you, Chair. I just noticed on "the
challenges" the first item is some accounting challenges. You go through very specific
procedures that you have included in how to respond to it. Have these been implemented?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Chock: They have?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Chock: How has it been going since the implementation?
Ms. Takahashi: We still have some mess-ups as far as checking
our totals at the end.
Councilmember Chock: Well, I am sure we will see it again in the
CAFR...but we will check on that again. I did have one more question, Chair. The other
question was on the planned improvements. You talk about the accreditation?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Chock: For the American Association of Diabetes
educators. How much reimbursement would we look forward to in moving forward on this
accreditation?
Ms. Takahashi: This is just an estimate, but when we attended a
class, you are looking at approximately $500.
Councilmember Chock: So very minimal.
Ms. Takahashi: $500 per person.
Councilmember Chock: How many is that?
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Ms. Takahashi: Well, there are six classes. But in order to be
able to receive this amount, we first have to be accredited.
Councilmember Chock: Right.
Ms. Takahashi: And then we need to have a Medicare number or
partner with someone who has that Medicare number.
Councilmember Chock: How much do we expend on it now?
Ms. Takahashi: I do not know.
Councilmember Chock: That is okay, we can follow-up on that. Thank
you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Kuali`i?
Councilmember Kuali`i: Aloha Kealoha. Just on the positions, on page 13
you corrected and added Enhanced Program Coordinator.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: That makes nine total positions that are grant-
funded.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: But a couple of these positions have 50%.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Does that mean it is 50% grant funded and 50%
General Fund-funded.
Ms. Takahashi: Correct.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So which positions crossover? Because in the
budget, on page 196, where the positions are all listed...
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: There are a few positions that have 50% next to
them.
Ms. Takahashi: Okay.
Councilmember Kuali`i: But one of them, the first one, position 147 there
is Accountant 50% SR 22, $27,150.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
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Councilmember Kuali`i: But on this sheet it is...there is only an
Accountant III. 50/50. Is that the same?
Ms. Takahashi: That is the same.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So it is the same and which is correct? The
Accountant or Accountant III?
Ms. Takahashi: It is Accountant III.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay. And then the salary that goes with that is
it SR 22 $27,150 is General funded 50% and 50% from the grant. That is position 147. The
position that is Community Service Worker, position 139.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: That is the same thing 50%. So that $13,884 is
our 50%. And then the grant is another $13,884.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: And of the last one is 146, listed as RSVP
Director.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So those are the only three that of these nine
positions are 50/50?
Ms. Takahashi: That is correct.
Councilmember Kuali`i: And then all the others, the other six positions, is
100%?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So do those positions have job numbers?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes, they do.
Councilmember Kuali`i: They do, right? Could I get that?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: As far as the job number, the salary, the current-
level? Just to have that information to do the cross-comparison.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So the position that you were talking about
earlier, I did see on the vacant positions report that the 135 Program Specialist II was
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vacant since 12/31/2014 and that was not partially grant funded? It was all County-
funded? And that is what is being dollar-funded? So on that vacancy report they had
$67,512, $68,000, that was close there. And then the only other thing showing as "vacant"
on the vacancy report was position 141. Which is a Community Service Worker. SR 9
$27,768. That is 100%? It seems like maybe...
Ms. Takahashi: That is 100%.
Councilmember Kuali`i: It is 100%?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: I think here in the budget ...the vacancy report I
might have saw 36, which is kind of a big difference.
Ms. Takahashi: 36?
Councilmember Kuali`i: Because well it is Community Service Worker.
And you have two of those positions. But one is half-paid by the grant. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any other questions from the Members? I have a
question on "other services" $114,000, the Enhanced Fitness and Better Health, I am not
familiar with it. Could you just give me a brief explanation on what that is?
Ms. Takahashi: Enhanced Fitness?
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Yes.
Ms. Takahashi: It is a physical activity that they meet three
times a week for an hour. And they do aerobics and it is evidence-based. The program
came out of Senior Services, Washington state. And so there is a program that they have to
follow for fidelity and they have physical checkups. And if you look at the chart, let me
see...on page 2 of my report, they conduct fitness checks. They check on how well they do
their stand...from a sitting position they stand up and count that for so many seconds. So
arm curls is just lifting weights in your arms, and bringing them up. And up and go, they
stand up and they walk around so many paces and turn around and come back to the chair.
So they checkup to see the improvements of their balance, their strength, and so the
program is really geared towards helping seniors to maintain their flexibility, their balance,
and hopefully they are preventing falls.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: The money is for an exercise coordinator?
Ms. Takahashi: It is for the instructors.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Because there is more than one instructor?
Ms. Takahashi: We have nine classes. And they meet three
times a week. So we have instructors that are certified, first of all, to be with the program.
And they have to meet a certain skillset to be able to be an instructor.
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Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any follow-up questions? Councilmember
Yukimura?
Councilmember Yukimura: Yes. So the charts on page 2, the pie charts.
They are showing that the majority are either improving or maintaining at average or
above average. So that is a really good statistic. Is this compared to...this is the after?
Ms. Takahashi: This is the after. What happens is we do a base
line four months after they have been in the program and do a test and annually after that.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. What would be helpful for us is to see
what the "before" pie chart looked like because there has been a major improvement, has
there?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: At the beginning of the six weeks you do a
baseline study and at the end, this is the result?
Ms. Takahashi: The results.
Councilmember Yukimura: If you could provide that, I think it would tell us
the effectiveness of the program. And the goal of this...so the number that you are training
or that are participating in this is that the 203 or 176 unduplicated?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Individuals that are you are reaching through
this program and presumably enhancing their health?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Are these figures going into a national study as
well?
Ms. Takahashi: We do have a Doctor at the University at the
Center of Aging, who does put together all of this statewide.
Councilmember Yukimura: The statistics.
Ms. Takahashi: And they do submit it to Washington Senior
Services.
Councilmember Yukimura: Is there any extrapolation to number of falls or
fall-preventions that these people are, in fact, less likely to fall? Is there any data on that?
I am actually convinced that if they have this kind of stamina and muscle stability, it helps
them a lot. You know, if there are statistics also showing that, that would be really helpful,
too. But the goal of this program, because it is a substantial cost, but the goal of this
program is to keep seniors healthy.
Ms. Takahashi: Keep them limber, and balance and strength.
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Councilmember Yukimura: And prevent falls also.
Ms. Takahashi: It is going to be a byproduct of them exercising,
yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Right, you have been running this program for
how long?
Ms. Takahashi: Since '07 or`06.
Councilmember Yukimura: '07 or`06, about eight years.
Ms. Takahashi: About eight years. It will be our 9th year.
Councilmember Yukimura: Do you know the total number of people served
over that period of time? Because people come and go, right?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes. I do not have it on the top of my head.
Councilmember Yukimura: You could say that you get about 175 a year?
Ms. Takahashi: Pretty much.
Councilmember Yukimura: The same people?
Ms. Takahashi: The same people. And the only way they are
going to exit out is that they grow older or they get sick. So we have had some that
naturally or they have had other causes.
Councilmember Yukimura: That is like...
Ms. Takahashi: I can get that number served from the beginning.
Councilmember Yukimura: About 175 out of 17,000 elderly. It is a small
sampling. And I believe the people who participate love it. But the question is, can you
reach out to more people, right? Because that would be the goal is to get...
Ms. Takahashi: Classes are limited to 22 participants.
Councilmember Yukimura: So there are waiting lists?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: So have you looked at the possibility of
increasing the trained leaders and the number of classes to reach more?
Ms. Takahashi: We just recruited four new instructors.
Councilmember Yukimura: But that is more costs, too. Is there any charge
of fees for this program?
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Ms. Takahashi: Not at this time.
Councilmember Yukimura: Are you folks going to look at how to spread the
program and maybe spread the cost as well?
Ms. Takahashi: We have a consultant on-board who is helping us
doing a strategic plan how we would be able to do that.
Councilmember Yukimura: That would be a good thing to include...is your
strategic plan for overall services...or just for this program?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes, just for this program.
Councilmember Yukimura: Interesting. It sounds like a good program, but it
is only reaching a small number, but to look at a plan to expand it and I bet even charge
small fees on an affordability basis. It reminds me of Ho`ola and maybe partnering with
them would be a great way to keep it going and making it more available. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Chock.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you. Kealoha, I do not know if you
actually have the answer for this, but I am wondering about...you know based on your data
that you are showing here, if you have any information on how many of our elderly are
displaced? It shows here 100% rural residents and I am not sure...I do not know how that
can be accurate. I am trying to get a sense of how many people in this age bracket might be
without a home, for instance? Do you have any of that kind of information?
Ms. Takahashi: No. But the rural is just all of Kauai is
considered "rural."
Councilmember Chock: Okay. That is why. Got it. I have been getting
more and more calls about homeless issues and how many of those are in this age bracket?
That are kind of falling in between the cracks? So they cannot get services because of
Medicare and some other things that we are not really tracking or able to service. So I am
wondering if you are seeing any of that come in your direction.
Ms. Takahashi: Just a few.
Councilmember Chock: So not too much.
Ms. Takahashi: But we will have to sort our data to see how
many we are serving. It is not a whole bunch.
Councilmember Chock: I am sure that they are just not coming out for
the services.
Ms. Takahashi: We have had a few we helped to apply for homes.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Kuali`i.
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Councilmember Kuali`i: Back to the position. Now I see why there was a
confusion there. Either it is wrong in the budget, or it is wrong in the HR quarterly report.
But that second vacancy, not the one that became a dollar-funded position, but position 141.
So in the vacancy report, they list 141 as having the title of"Community Service Program
Assistant" SR 13 with a salary of $36,468, but in the budget, position 141 is Community
Service Worker SR 9 at a salary of $27,768. So which is it? Is it still vacant and what is
the status?
Ms. Takahashi: It is SR 13. It is my oversight on what is listed
on your budget report and at the higher rate.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So 141 listed in the budget as Community
Service Worker.
Ms. Takahashi: It should be Program Assistant.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Like the three positions above it?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: 138, 140, and 144.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: 141 should also be titled "Community Service
Program Assistant" and listed as SR 13 and should have...I think entry-level salary of
$33,720, because I think in the HR report they put $36,468. Is the status recruiting? Or is
it job offered? It is filled?
Ms. Takahashi: No.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay. As I had asked some of the other divisions
if it is a new vacancy that we are filling or an old vacancy, if it is being filled are we hiring
them at the starting salary that the position SR 13 calls for at pay step A? And if that is
the case, that the amount I want to see on the line and not the amount of the incumbent.
Going forward.
Ms. Takahashi: Retired at SR 13, but in the hiring process, we
have to go back to SR 9 only because they need to be certified to get that higher pay.
Councilmember Kuali`i: That happens fairly quickly?
Ms. Takahashi: No.
Councilmember Kuali`i: It takes a year?
Ms. Takahashi: At least. It is a certification that they have to
study for, and it is online, so it will take a while.
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Councilmember Kuali`i: So in the budget at SR 9, $27,000, that is correct.
It is at the lower level. One may become another Community Service Program Coordinator.
Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Takahashi: In fact if you look at my report, I do have 139 and
I am hoping that the person...that position receives her certification, but she would not be
eligible to be at that higher...at the Program Assistant level until February 2016.
Councilmember Kuali`i: I saw that. It is nice of to you plan that far
ahead and to show it.
Ms. Takahashi: And they will be eligible at that time.
Councilmember Kuali`i: So you have the last five months of the fiscal
year to have the funding available to do that promotion, whatever it is called in February of
2016.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura?
Councilmember Yukimura: So back to your chart on targeting performance.
Under"transportation"what does that involve?
Ms. Takahashi: Curb to curb. So they pick-up at their home and
take them to doctors' appointments or whatever destination and pick up from the doctor
back to home.
Councilmember Yukimura: How does that differ from paratransit?
Ms. Takahashi: I do not know that, I am sorry.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. Can you provide that as a follow-up?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: How it distinguishes if at all from paratransit?
And would you be able to quantify the costs of that program, too?
Ms. Takahashi: Our costs?
Councilmember Yukimura: Yes.
Ms. Takahashi: To provide that is $ 8.34, one trip.
Councilmember Yukimura: $8.34, one trip.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
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Councilmember Yukimura: That is interesting because I think on the
average, paratransit cost is $25 per trip and the fixed-route bus is $5 a trip. That is
average. When they are reconfiguring or looking at their paratransit, they better look at
how you do yours. That would be interesting. Because I am guessing it is the same
clientele, it is elderly or disabled. Right, that you would be providing transportation for?
Ms. Takahashi: For our services, they need to meet the Kupuna
Care criteria.
Councilmember Yukimura: That is interesting. Can you send the Kupuna
Care criteria?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Is that transportation provided by grant funding?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes, State.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I do not see it on the budget.
Councilmember Yukimura: You did it with what kind of drivers? Who are
your drivers?
Ms. Takahashi: I do not know who the drivers are.
Councilmember Yukimura: That is what we would like to know. How is
transportation provided? What is your outreach? What does outreach mean as different
from information and assistance?
Ms. Takahashi: It is going around and finding clients or seniors.
Whether it is by managing at the fair or any other kind of opportunities that we get.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. Yes. So it is like manning booths at
events or other gatherings?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes. Even from our website.
Councilmember Yukimura: And includes your website?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Very good. And your friendly visiting, telephone
assurance, those are wonderful things and can be lifelines for seniors. But who does it?
Those are part of the services your Office provides, so you have case workers?
Those are your Community Service Program Assistants?
Ms. Takahashi: Those are Program Specialists.
Councilmember Yukimura: The two Program Specialists.
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Ms. Takahashi: The one that recently retired. That was the
position who would oversee that program.
Councilmember Yukimura: I see. And I can see why long-term you
would want that position. Because those are a lot of things to keep track of. And
given the anticipated increase in elderly over the next 10-20 years, are you planning
for an expansion of services?
Ms. Takahashi: Not at this time.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. It might be...you do three-year plans,
right?
Ms. Takahashi: Four-year plans.
Councilmember Yukimura: Four-year plans.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: That is where you folks try to anticipate
what is happening. Okay. And presumably, that is how you folks are so...what do I
want to call it? You are so target-oriented or you are so statistically-oriented. That
is required by Federal grants.
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Yukimura: Okay. Well, that is interesting how another
level of government gives out money and what they require.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I have a question on the consultant services.
Home delivered meals. I just wanted a brief description of that and if there is a
criteria for someone to have to be able to get it or is it given out to everybody.
Ms. Takahashi: There is a criteria, again the Kupuna Care
guidelines we follow. We use that. It has to be senior 60 years or older, or
extended to their spouse, even if they are not 60, but...
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Hooser.
Councilmember Hooser: I think we have this conversation, a little bit
of this every year. And so my question is about capacity. So on the meals program,
do we have people who are qualified for and would like to get the meals, but we do
not have sufficient meals to give them?
Ms. Takahashi: We are at a point right now that we do have
the capacity to serve more people.
Councilmember Hooser: Do you have more people asking for the
meals than we have meals available?
Ms. Takahashi: Not at this time.
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Councilmember Hooser: Okay. So we are right about even?
Ms. Takahashi: Right.
Councilmember Hooser: There is not anybody on a list wishing they
were getting fed, but are not?
Ms. Takahashi: No.
Councilmember Hooser: That is good news. Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Yukimura.
Councilmember Yukimura: And that is done through a contract with
KEO?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: This is meals three times a day or once a
day?
Ms. Takahashi: Five times a week.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Five times a week. Okay. Once a day. Any
further questions for Elderly? Councilmember Kuali`i?
Councilmember Kuali`i: In the narrative on page 8, under "planned
improvements" it says "partner with State Executive Office on Aging, the Hawaii
SHIP program to be reimbursed for providing Medicare outreach and assistance"
and this is something that you are planning to work on this coming year?
Ms. Takahashi: Yes.
Councilmember Kuali`i: And to see what kind of reimbursements?
Ms. Takahashi: Through the Medicare program. So I am
just estimating. Anywhere from $60...that might be kind of high, but a
reimbursement for every person that we help.
Councilmember Kuali`i: For the year or for the month?
Ms. Takahashi: As we make contact with the person.
Councilmember Kuali`i: For the counseling session. All right. And
that is just a new area and we are doing a little bit of that.
Ms. Takahashi: Well, we have been doing that. We have
been providing the services, but now hopefully we will be able to be reimbursed for
what we provide.
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Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay.
Councilmember Yukimura: That will be great.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any further questions from the members? If
not, thank you Kealoha.
Ms. Takahashi: Thank you.
Committee Chair Kaneshiro: We are done. So at this time I would like to
recess the Departmental Budget Reviews, and we will reconvene at 9:00 a.m. on
Thursday, April 16, 2015. We will hear from the Planning Department, Housing
Agency, Department of Human Resources, Department of Liquor Control, and the
Office of the County Clerk.
There being no objections, the Committee recessed at 2:11 p.m.