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HomeMy WebLinkAbout04/05/2021 Kauai Fire Department, Kauai Emergency Management Agency, Kauai Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Kaua`i Fire Department Honorable Bernard P. Carvalho, Jr. Honorable Mason K. Chock Honorable Felicia Cowden Honorable Luke A. Evslin (via remote technology) Honorable Bill DeCosta Honorable KipuKai Kuali`i Honorable Arryl Kaneshiro The Committee reconvened on April 5, 2021 at 9:01 a.m., and proceeded as follows: Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Good morning, I would like to call to order the Committee of the Whole and the Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews. Let the record reflect that we have a quorum. On the schedule today, April 5, 2021, we will be hearing from the Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, the Police Department, and the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney. As we do each morning, we will take public testimony. Clerk, do we have anyone registered to speak today? There being no objections, the rules were suspended to take public testimony. There being no one present to provide testimony, the meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Committee Chair Kaneshiro: We have no registered speakers and we received no written testimony for today. For today's review, we will be taking the Fire Department in the order of Administration, Operations, Prevention, Training, and then Ocean Safety. We will allow them to do their presentation and then if we have specific questions to those divisions, then we will ask those questions in those particular divisions. We can ask questions on the presentation and get the questions out of the way; that is fine also. If it is addressed in the presentation, that is good too. With that, Chief Goble. STEVEN R. GOBLE, Fire Chief(via remote technology): Good morning. Thank you for this opportunity to be before you today to talk about our proposals for the upcoming budget year. I would like to bring up a couple slides in a presentation. I want to have something available as reference as I talk through our initial presentation. Hopefully we will get this up in a way that you can see. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: We can see it. After this presentation, can you E-mail it to us, so that we can have it on record? Chief Goble: I certainly will. As we roll into this budget planning period, the Mayor, Administration, and the budget team presented the ongoing challenges here at the County, to make sure we understood the economic conditions of the day. The overall message from the Mayor was shared sacrifice and an attempt to keep everyone a part of the overall solution. We feel like we have done that with our budget request. We have done some things to push things out to future years. We have done some things to help locate alternative funding streams. Overall,we have invested in ourselves with our teams and crews putting in some hard labor to get important things completed within April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kauai Emergency Management Agency, Kauai Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 2 our Department. Hopefully that comes across in the presentation for you today. I want to acknowledge the Mayor and the Administration for their support of us and our mission overall. We do enjoy tremendous community support, support from the Mayor and the Administration. We are well-supported by the County Council and from the Fire Commission as well, so we are very appreciative to be in that position where we can provide our services in an environment like that. The mission is important. What we do is important. But we also recognize that what the other things that happen across the County are important as well and again, we want to be a part of that solution. As we rolled into this budget year, we were asked to make a small reduction in our Operating Budget, which we did. On the flipside of that, we have our personnel costs. This personnel cost did go up largely due to contractual obligations through collective bargaining agreements. However, that is pretty typical across the country and across the board. Public safety organizations like ours that the bulk of your funding goes to your most important resource and so I do want to indicate that as well. The men and women of the Kaua`i Fire Department (KFD) are what makes it all work, what provides that level of protection, and provides that overall of safe community here on Kaua`i. It makes sense that is the focus of our budget going forward. The graphs represent that in general. Year-over-year comparison, a slight uptick in overall costs. We did have reduction in the operating costs, however. Just some highlights, this is the way we intend to use the funding and this is a demonstration of how we used it over the past Fiscal Year (FY). We want to focus on those strategic budget priorities. We know that we are here to provide that level of emergency response and a large portion of the funding that is allocated goes to that cause. Some highlights from that are really around COVID-19 response, both the incident and operational challenges that came with that. Our folks were on the frontline of response as they tried to manage new protocols and policies, PPE requirements, and all those types of things that related to COVID-19.They did it. They stepped up to the challenge and performed very admirably in that arena. We were a big part of that overall Incident Management Team support for the ongoing pandemic. Our team has been committed to the Emergency Management Operations and have taken on important roles within that group. Taking folks away from their normal duties to perform those kinds of things and the rest of the team behind them has picked up the ball and made sure we were not skipping a beat behind them. We all went through the process of those initial budget impacts that came as a result of the pandemic last March. Making those big adjustments, the team has fallen in line and adjusted to that in an admirable way. Our teams are out there in various roles, doing work that they never thought they would have to do, supporting the overall response to COVID-19, including our folks over at the airport, folks out there in the frontline, changing the way we do business on a day-to-day basis. I am really proud of our team and the efforts that they made across the board. For operational readiness, we made some big changes in the way we deliver our training by reducing our overtime cost directed towards delivery of that training. We looked to continue that into this coming year as well. This has allowed us...that reduction in overtime costs has allowed us to fill some other shortfalls across the budget and address some very important needs. One of the things I will call out there is that we had a very unexpected expense due to identification of asbestos in three (3) of our fire stations. Because we had taken this fiscally responsible approach, we were able to pull money in from other areas in the budget and address that very important need. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 3 We continue to work with our community risk reduction. It has been a weird world and a very strange environment for us to operate in. Historically, we have done a lot of that outreach effort in-person, in front of people, but the pandemic has caused us to change our tactic a little bit and leverage technology and use our social media platforms, creating videos, and creating those types of opportunities for people of all ages across the island. We have done some targeted outreach to young people using"Sparky the Fire Dog" on a skateboard or we made a virtual station tour that we were able to pass along to folks who are interested in fire-related topics. We have also done some community informational videos that are out there in our social media as well, targeting things like electronic hazard safety. We experienced a rash of those types of fires during the summer and the team has put together a nice video to inform folks about the hazards of electrical fires, et cetera. Really, those are innovative and great work by that team to continue to have a presence out in the community. Administratively, while we did not call this out as one of our primary functions, we know that this type of support is what makes the other priorities work. This is what allows us to be effective in our response, to be operationally ready and work on those community issues. We were able to have our strategic plan process funded last year. We have worked through that process and came up with a great foundation for us as a department to help us to chart the course forward for overall management of the Fire Department. A big part of that was identifying what our needs were, engaging our team, personnel from across the department. Another piece of our foundation-building is our utilization study. That is an ongoing process right now. We are wrapping up our data-collection piece of that, but ultimately this is reaching out to a consultant that has a broad array of experience with fire departments, deployment, staffing, resources, program needs, and so we look forward to working through that. We will have that completed hopefully by the end of June. That is our goal. That will be a foundational tool that we can use for future planning for the department. One of the big things that the pandemic has brought to us is the need to look for other ways to fund our needs and make sure that we are able to accomplish our mission. We have great partnerships across the island: Kaua`i Lifeguard Association (KLA), our Friends of Kaua`i Fire Department, and other community groups, working with the Red Cross and teams like that assisting us with achieving our mission, our goal. We have been scouring our resources for grant opportunities out there as well. We have a replacement truck that we were just notified—completed and will be delivered to us some time later this month. That was a product of a grant request, which is two hundred fifty thousand dollars ($250,000) worth of funding that we are able to secure in an alternate way. We have continued that effort going forward. We have a couple of pretty significant grant applications in and things that we have talked to you about, to-date, the Assistance to Fire Fighters Grant(AFFG). We got one million dollars ($1,000,000) worth of equipment needs that we are applying for, with our communication needs and an additional piece of apparatus. Then we have the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant, which is the funding for personnel costs and we are hopeful that we get awarded...overall there is a four million two hundred thousand dollar($4,200,000) funding request over three (3)years. We continue to do our part and we are working hard to identify these other sources. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 4 The other bullet point is about sweat equity. An appreciation for the work that our folks are doing out there at the fire stations and on the beaches across the County. They are not afraid to drive a nail or grab a paint brush or do those types of things to help us address our ongoing maintenance and facility needs. We appreciate what they are doing out there. I would be remiss if I did not call out our partnerships with other departments as well. We enjoyed tremendous support from within the County, folks are willing to chip in and help us to get work done. A last-minute call to install a water heater, things like that—we are always on the receiving end as far as support from our teams so we greatly appreciate all of that and the work that gets done. Those are things from FY 2021 that we will continue to carry to FY 2022 as well. It is kind of a strategic approach, those things do not go away, but they stay on the radar for us as we go forward. As we walk through the different divisions, I just wanted to call out the challenges, key actions that we are hoping to address through the budget, and then the last column was just about the funding changes year over year to give us some context as to what we need to accomplish.Administratively, this is really about creatingthat and makingsure we have the right pieces in place to pull that off. Currently, we have one of our positions on the Administration side that is half-funded. It is an Accountant I position currently. That position right now is something that we have taken advantage of the 89-day contract to get us the service that we need there. We have sort of a two-fold benefit in that position in that we were able to bring someone in with a wealth of experience and is able to provide that level of the support we need. That person that is on the 89-day contract for us has a tremendous amount of institutional acknowledge as well. As I have been transitioning into my role, she has been very helpful in helping me to understand context and history and all of those types of things. For us today the 89-day contract is working, but we recognize we need to solve that support problem long-term, so we were able to secure half funding for that and we will look to utilize that later in the year. This piece about the reallocation to EMS support. We had some money committed to consulting and other fees in our administrative division and we recognize that we need to address our EMS support needs. EMS is our Emergency Medical Services. Seventy percent (70%) of our responses are emergency medical related and so we recognize that we need to provide some resources and funding to support that very important, high liability program for us within KFD. We moved that money there to try to help us meet that need. For Fire Operations—our ongoing personnel costs, we talked about those in the past in our conversations about the overtime cost and the continued incremental increases in contractual agreement, but we know that our part for this is to manage our discretionary personnel costs and so we are making every effort to manage that. We look to that pot of money to help us fill those other voids across the board. Health and safety is always a priority for us. We want to make sure that our people are well-taken care of. This is a CIP issue, so this is not General Fund, but I just wanted to call out that we are trying to be strategic about identifying challenges and addressing them with action. We talked about incident communications. The grant that we have in place, we did commit some budget money of about one hundred ten thousand dollars ($110,000) to our overall incident communication needs.We hope to be awarded the Assistance to Fire Fighters grant that will solve our communications problem long-term and our hope would be to be able April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 5 to use that money as the matching funds to support the overall one million dollar($1,000,000) request from the Department of Homeland Security. We continue to work through our equipment and maintenance needs to make sure that we are staying on top of critical items to keep our operations sound and moving forward. We talked about community risk reduction. The big news there is that we have taken a good look at that plans review process for fire plans and we recognize some shortfalls and some shortcomings in our process. We are looking to tighten those up, working good with the folks on the Building Division to help us better move through that process. We think that is going to enhance our revenue generation on that side of things. Overall the goal of that revenue enhancement is to support our community risk reduction through those fees. We will use those funds to continue to invest in our technology and our processes on the preventive side of things. Training—this is just an ongoing effort to reduce our overall overtime costs that are committed to our training program. This is an area where we have that ability to manage those discretionary costs. The team really did a good job this year. At the end of the year, we will have reduced that overall cost by about fifty percent (50%). Again, those funds are important to us and we have been able to reallocate those moneys to other important needs across the department. The team has put together a strategic training plan. A lot of our training in the past had been "the flavor of the month" kind of training. Important training, for sure, really bringing important concepts and skills to the table, but we have taken a step back and really worked on being strategic and using a building block approach to how we delivered our training. That has helped us to manage our approach and our costs. Again, a proactive way of looking at it as opposed to a reactive way of jumping on the latest, greatest technology that comes our way. We feel like that will help us as we go forward as well. This last line item is the biggest one, our Ocean Safety Division. As we talked about that, we got the immediate problem and then ultimately a long-term problem with that lifeguard staffing provided through contract with the state. The state last year dropped that funding and kind of left the County to manage that problem without any assistance from them. We adapted to that. Again, great partnerships with the Mayor and his team in identifying an alternative funding stream through grant opportunities to help us get through FY 2021. We think we have some funding options in place to help us through FY 2022 as well using a similar path, however it does not solve the problem long-term. We want to continue to work at that rather than just putting a "Band-Aid" on it. We need to figure out what that long-term solution is going to be. There has been some conversation already in place about exchange in service arrangement with the state or other means to try and accomplish this.We feel like that resource out there at Ke`e is just too important to the overall safety of our community. They have responsibility for the beach at the end of the road, but that is not the extent of the service that they provide out there. They are also the gateway to the Kalalau Trail and the Na Pali Coast and just a number of incidents, permitted actions and rescues occur at that site just because of the nature of that location. We have continued to receive support for that, because everyone understands it. Everybody gets how important that resource is to have in place out there for the safety of our community and so again, we feel like we got some solid things in place to help us get through this year and not have to April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 6 reduce the staffing out there, but we intend to work on a longer term solution to figure that out with the help of the Mayor and the Administration. Again, acknowledging the community partnerships out there with KLA. They have been an incredible resource. They are able to work within the community and donate, get funding that they can turn around and donate equipment and supplies. We will continue to engage in that very important relationship to help us manage the difficulty of the economic picture for us. These are the big challenges. Again, as we look at the funding changes, we see increases in payroll, we see generalized decreases in operating costs, with the exception of that training piece. The increase in operating, again, is attributable to that additional support for our EMS program. We felt that was important to capture that cost and make sure we were behind that service and showing our appropriate level of support for the need that was out there. I have taken too much time already, but I do want to say thank you to the Council and everyone involved in this. We are dedicated to our mission. We are working in a strategic way to address our needs as we go along and hope to continue to have your support to get the important work done. Thank you. I am available for any questions you might have. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you. With that, do we have any questions on the presentation or on the synopsis that was provided by Fire? Councilmember Kuali`i. Councilmember Kuali`i: Page 2 of the written narrative that we received. It talks about, "KFD Fire Operations Calls for Service." Chief Goble: Yes. Councilmember Kuali`i: The third item, "Medical/Rescue," in 2019, five thousand twenty-six dollars ($5,026); in 2020, four thousand sixty-two dollars ($4,062). Does that include water rescues? Chief Goble: It does not. That is the fire operation side of the house. Those are the calls that come out of the fire stations. Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay. The bottom "Other," can you give some examples. It shows only one (1) in 2019 and nine (9) in 2020. Chief Goble: Typically what those are...in reviewing the statistics, these are things that do not end up being classified in our reporting system. It also captures some kind of minor categories that are called out through the "National Fire Information Recording Systems."There is a nationwide standard, the short name is"NFIRS." There are thirty odd different categories for calls for service and this other category lumps together things like steam mistaken for smoke or calls that are unfounded in those types of ways that are reported to us with important information, but ultimately do not require an emergency response. Those are the types of things that fit in that category. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 7 Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Cowden. Councilmember Cowden: I want to thank you for all the work you put into this very good paper. On the same chart that Councilmember Kuali`i was just talking about, I have noticed there are a lot more fires. Do you have a rationale for why that is? Chief Goble: I wish that I did. I know that we have seen that, we recognized that statistic...a lot of these are brush and wildland-type fires. Although we saw an increase in the residential and structural-type fires as well, the biggest increase was on the wildland side and brush ire side of things. I tend to think that some of that is interfaced with people. People have been pushed into areas where people are not necessarily intended to be and the interface with people and dry grass and those types of things often leads to these increases of fires. Councilmember Cowden: Thank you for that excellent answer,because I did want to know if it was more brushfires or more house fires and then if those brushfires, I think we just have a lot of overgrowth of brush, because there is less agricultural uses. When you say the interface and much of that people are pushed into the bushes without housing or is it people choosing to go? Chief Goble: I think it is a combination of the two things. There is a segment of our houseless population that has found themselves in that environment, but we also know that with the pandemic, folks are looking at alternate ways to appropriately social distance and those types of things and often that lead people into these types of environments as well. Councilmember Cowden: I do want to say I am so impressed at how well the Fire Department puts out fires. I know it should be your job, but it is not your job as much. It is like 30% or less of the job, so when I watch a tight neighborhood get taken care of and the propane tank blows up and everything else, it looks like you do it all the time. I have a couple Ke`e questions and just the overall when I am looking at ocean safety, I think this is super meaningful for us when we are see the impacts of the visitor industry, when we had this "soft" year of visitor arrivals, we are really able to see how much dedication goes to that important community that we protect. I want to really thank KLA, because funding mostly come from the resorts, so good job to KLA. With the Ke`e position, I have fought hard to keep that position funding as a citizen for a long time. We need to bring the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) into this discussion, because I know there is a consideration and I know because I am in those conversations, for trail staff to be able to broker who should be going up or not. I think we also need to talk to them a bit about the parking situation out there, because even if we reopen, I want to fund Ke`e, but it might be that if we do not make changes with the parking, we will not have visitors out there. I have never been out there when the parking lot is full. It is rare that I see even a half-full parking lot in full time when the tourists are allowed to be here. When I talk to visitors and they are going out there, I tell them to get a parking permit, because you might not be able to...and they say, "No problem, it is only $5, I got one for the entire time I am visiting." They will get the entire week or the April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 8 entire fourteen(14) days, so I think there is some places for people to go, that is why we have a low turnout at that beach. When we are prioritizing where we are going to be spending, I think we should be in conversation with that. I have something about the twelve (12) openings, but I will wait until we get to that part of the conversation. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Yes, we will do the vacancies when we get to operation. Councilmember Cowden: 89-day Accountant—when you get that half-time, that is going to be the same individual, right?You are not having a fresh hire, but keeping the same person who has been helping? Chief Goble: It will likely be a fresh person. Our 89-day hire is looking very much forward to being with her grandkids more frequently. We are going to be challenged to find someone with that skillset to come into the organization. Councilmember Cowden: Okay, and that was your hero in helping you...she was the one that you were saying such good things about, okay...I just wanted to know if we were keeping her. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember DeCosta: When you were merging in Puhi, that was me who gave you the "shaka." Chief, you mentioned the important concept and you said sometimes it is the flavor of the month...I was able to experience this firsthand with your fire fighters out there at the Waimea/Hanapepe Station and I noticed that some of your younger fire fighters were very akamai about hand tools, changing out a sparkplug, looking how to run a rope in that hand pump that went into the ditch to pump water into the truck. When the rope came out and the nuts and bolts came loose on the sparkplug, there were a couple of them who did not know anything about how to use a wrench. The point I am trying to make is in equipment maintenance—it is good to run through all those small, little pumps, even if it is not being used. The common sense when doing the application process in hiring, I know you know this, but just to reiterate it, it is more than just book smart and college degree, when you cannot even change a sparkplug on a pump. I wanted to just put that out there. Thank you. Chief Goble: Thank you. We have recognized that in a general trend in the fire service. We are getting candidates that are well-prepared academically, but the mechanical side of things has become a lost art, so we are including some of types of things in our recruitment process as well. Councilmember Evslin: Thank you for the presentation. Good job in some of your successes over the last year and in going forward, especially just looking at the synopsis. You folks have made a big shift to on-shift training, which seems to impact significant amounts of overtime pay. I heard anecdotally about a lot of good Microsoft Teams April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 9 training that you folks are doing, so good job on those fronts. I really appreciate seeing when every department is asked to make cuts, it is good to see a list here of the items that you folks are deferring upgrading, so we can see sort of concretely where these cuts are coming from. I appreciate that. Can you talk a little bit about the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) lockers and what you were saying about valuating sweat equity and what those lockers would have hopefully been used for? Chief Goble: Each of the fire stations has a place to...this is storing their turnout gear, so across the industry, there has been a huge recognition of the health and safety concerns around exposure of your turnout gear, so your coat and pants that you wear out on the fire scenes. What we have learned over time is that those things off-gas and they retain the chemicals in those types of things that are detrimental of the health of fire fighters. The PPE lockers was a measure that was taken some time back in order to have a place to store the gear without bringing it into the station until it can be cleaned and taken care of in that sort of way. It is protected within the apparatus bay area with solid doors and those sorts of things, because again, one of the recognitions of the health concern is the diesel smoke that comes from the apparatus and the bays. The PPE cabinet gives us a place to store the gear and then also helps to protect the gear from off-gassing out and then also from the detrimental effects coming in. It was built out of wood. Wood is a good choice for a little while here, but over time the termites find it, the environment finds it and the doors start to fall off and they come into disrepair. The sweat equity piece of that is again an investment that we looked to ask from our folks out in the fire stations to Councilmember DeCosta's point, we have some pretty skilled folks out there with a hammer and screw gun and so we are hoping that if we can provide materials or the basics that we can invest that sweat equity from our teams to put those things together at the stations. Councilmember Evslin: Good to hear. Can you provide us more data on Ke`e. You have a good rundown here with calls that you are having for ocean safety and KFD. One it is pretty staggering to see the decline in those numbers. But if we could see, it would be interesting, for Ke`e alone just to better judge the impact of the possibility when they are not having guards at those beaches. If we can see a breakdown pre-COVID-19 and during COVID-19 of rescue calls at Ke`e would be good. Chief Goble: If you do not mind indulging me, I have a slide buried in my presentation here. If you indulge me, I will bring that up just to give you a quick point of reference. Councilmember Evslin: Great, thank you. Chief Goble: This one may take just a little longer to come up, because it is in a PowerPoint. Are you able to see that at all? Committee Chair Kaneshiro: No, not yet. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 10 Chief Goble: I guess I can go through it while we are having a conversation, but overall we captured statistics from FY 2019, because that is the last full year we had available to us. Again, it is indicative of mostly pre-COVID-19 time, but overall we expect the same kind of trend there for this fiscal year that there were to be a reduction, but as we return to normal, I think this is what we can expect. Overall ninety-five thousand two hundred forty-eight (95,248) visitors to Ke`e. That team out there is tremendously proactive in their approach. Because they sit at that trail head, almost everybody that comes to that beach is engaged by a lifeguard almost immediately. Whether they are headed out on the trail, whether they are headed down to the beach or up the coastline a little bit further, far and away our highest number of preventive actions happens at Ke`e with over twenty-one thousand (21,000) preventive actions. This can be anything from: "Where is a safe place to swim; here is our skill-level, where should I swim," all those types of things that our lifeguards can help to inform people about are classified in that way. Along the North Shore, Ke`e by far provides the highest amount of medical first-aids as well for a total of three hundred thirty-three (333), of those two hundred seventeen(217) happened at Ke`e and were provide by the Ke`e staff. Small number of assists because of the high level of preventive action that happens out there, the number for actual assistance is fairly low with three (3) public assists, and then five (5) rescues in that period, so these are actual people in the water that required intervention in order to be brought to safety. Pretty impressive stuff from that group and an indication of the work they do out there Councilmember Evslin: Yes, certainly an indication of their vital importance. Are you confident that there will be some alternative funding source for this coming fiscal year for those four (4) positions? Chief Goble: I will defer that final answer to the administration, but we have had some positive conversations about that and I feel like we are in a very good place for getting that funded for an additional year. MICHAEL A. DAHILIG, Managing Director (via remote technology): In response to your question to Chief Goble, we have options, but they are unconventional options that at this point, I will use the phrase "strategy" standpoint. We will probably not want to divest some of that information at this point. We have things in our pocket that we can try to do as a stopgap funding measure. The Mayor's priority is to make sure that ocean safety is prioritized to safe levels, so we will be able to talk about that as we see what the State's budget looks like going into FY 2022. Councilmember Evslin: It seems like a beach as popular as that, especially a beach that visitors pay to get into and with the dangerous ocean conditions there can be, it seems insane for the State not to be funding those positions. I appreciate your efforts looking into that. There is an increase in salaries for ocean safety, even with these positions being dollar-funded and is that just because of the raises that went into effect this year or are there other reasons for that increase? April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 11 Chief Goble: Those increases in the personnel costs are largely due to the increase...a slightly larger than expected increase that came with our last contract. That was signed last July and it was retroactive to the year before, but that is a reflection of those ongoing costs. Councilmember Carvalho: Good morning. Thank you for everything that you folks do for our island. Having created that entire program at Ke`e and I wanted to say that it is very important that we look at every single way to support that particular lifeguard operation. Just the presence there is important and I know there are many challenges. I just wanted to say that upfront that whatever we have to do to look at that Ke`e Beach operation and support the different levels. My question is on the operational changes that you have one page 4, training. You have that in there and I just want to know that you did increase the budget, but where are we at with the training in general and what are some of the support you might need? I understand you are trying to do the Train the Trainer program, but at the same time, how do you keep the training program moving in a positive way that you might need support? Chief Goble: We have been successful in maintaining positivity around the training program. Like I said, I think one of the challenges that we have had in the past has been the lack of strategic direction for our training programs. I spoke a little bit about it earlier about if there is a new regime out there that fire departments are experimenting with, our team is very proactive and we would look to that as a future solution and invest in quick ad hoc types of trainings that did not necessarily fit our model and the way we are trying to go. We asked the Training Bureau to be more strategic about their approach, align with our overall strategic priorities, and then ultimately create a program to ensure that we have accomplished mastery at the basic level. That our folks are well-versed on the absolute basics of the job in order to be consistent with our service delivery, be effective with our service delivery, and be safe with our service delivery. We built that into our system. A lot of buy-in across the board with that idea. The days of sending six (6) people off to Florida for the latest and greatest training, those days are behind us, I think. Because we cannot afford to go chase the flavor of the month and because we have identified that there is a cost to that that is not sustainable to us, so we want to be able to bring those things in- house when we can, creates experts in our teams, so instead of sending six (6) people out, maybe it is two (2) people that we send out to bring that skillset back to the department and then we use that model to deliver it out across the board. Overall, there has been a great appreciation for the strategic vision that has become a part of that training plan and we feel like we got a good foundation for success with it. Councilmember Carvalho: That is good. It is good that you reach out and bring it home and work it internally. That is a good concept. I like that. Whatever we can do to support that, thank you. Councilmember Kuali`i: Under the narrative on page 4. At the very top, you talked about"Operational Readiness," and the summary total listed there is $97,000 but the two (2) pieces are $37,000 and $65,000 so I think there is a typographical error, because April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 12 it totals $102,000. But the top one, the $37,000 for replacing a fire pump skid unit brush truck located at Hanapepe Station. It is listed there and I believe I saw it in the budget as a line item as budgeted to be done, but then on the next page on the chart of deferred items, unless it is a different location and different truck, at the bottom, it says, "truck five fire pump skid unit is due for replacement," $37,000 and it says, "deferred seeking grant funding." Are those the two (2) same items and what is the status of that? Chief Goble: They are two (2) separate items. We identified overall the need for two (2) units to be replaced. However, our Fire Department mechanics were able to put a stopgap measure in-place using parts from the two(2) to make one (1) good one. That is the goal we think we can accomplish, and it will get us through another year without having to purchase that second skid unit. Station 6 is the Hanapepe Station. That is the one in the most immediate need. We will scavenge the pieces from that to make it whole and we will defer that out for an additional year for the full replacement. Councilmember Kuali`i: In the next section on operational challenges regarding training, some of the other Councilmembers were talking about it already, but this line item talks about doing a lot of the training in smaller groups during regular work time. You say that the training budget was cut deeply in this current fiscal year so we should see that maintaining that lower budgeted level. I did not see anywhere a line item...because I think I saw it elsewhere...overtime training, that was eliminated last year, and we have overtime for training in this new budget? Chief Goble: There is an item in the 1104 account under the payroll section. It is classified under the regular overtime number. It is on your master page 152. Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay, it is under Regular Overtime. I believe I saw a line item called Overtime Training specifically for training. I would be interested to see that breakdown to see how we are doing. If we are budgeting differently based on this goal in the narrative, I would like to see a breakdown of those training items. Chief Goble: This number is almost exclusively for that training piece. We have it broken down by program and instructional requirement. I can certainly get that to you. I will say that this is an area that we consider to be discretionary as far as overtime goes. This is not the rank-for-rank or anything driven by the collective bargaining agreement (CBA). This number remains unchanged from last year to this year, even though we recognize there are probably going to be savings experienced. We also recognize there is a shortfall in other areas and this is a place to save money and distribute to those other areas, if needed. Councilmember Kuali`i: Under operational challenges, that whole item about Ocean Safety and the need for the $405,000. Is that not currently in the budget? You said you think you have solutions in-place. I think I heard the Managing Director say that April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 13 we will see what the State ends up budgeting for FY 2022. With the new American Rescue Plan, the State is getting approximately $480,000,000. I would hope that we could push or strive to show the State how important this is and maybe wait and see how they budget to get that funded in there. The $405,000 would be less that 1/10th of 1% of that $480,000,000 that the State is probably getting. That would be about 3% of the $14,000,000 that our County is receiving. I would imagine that we see that as critical. The last piece under Fire Operations and the twelve (12) open positions, you talked about how they impact the daily requirements. In the last sentence you say that these positions will remain open until recruits can be added and trained. When do you think you will have those recruits added and trained? Chief Goble: We are actively recruiting at this point. We have completed the written exam and the physical agility portion of the recruitment. We have interviews scheduled for later this month and then we will have a list established for potential hire. The complicating factor for us is the application for the SAFER grant for the replacement funding of those twelve (12) positions. Essentially, if we move forward and fill those positions, they would become disqualified for that potential award. We have delayed our recruit class pending information from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on the SAFER grant. They stated their first indication of awards will come through in May, so we are hoping to be a part of that initial wave of either approvals or denials, for those positions. Councilmember Kuali`i: That is actually the second part of my question. When I flip the page over, it talks about the SAFER grant. Is that grant intended to fund all twelve (12) of those positions? You were saying that you would hear about it in May. When is the latest you could hear about it? Chief Goble: Yes, May is the initial first wave. We hope we have a good relationship with the folks who are responsible for that grant. We hope to at least get an indication of what they are thinking in that first wave, but it could be as late as August or September before they would distribute those funds. Councilmember Kuali`i: Once you hear, you can start distributing the funds right away? Chief Goble: That is correct. We have our recruit class agenda all lined out and ready to go. We will have everyone identified by the end of this month. It will be a matter of plugging those recruits into the system and scheduling a start date. Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any further questions on the presentation? If not, we will move into the budget. I know we received a lot of answers on the budget as well. We will go through the line items and start with Administration. Are April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 14 there any questions for Administration? If not, we will move on to Operations. Councilmember Cowden, was your question on the twelve (12) vacancies answered already? Councilmember Cowden: Yes, that was my question on that. If possible, and this can be sent later, I would like to see an organizational chart of the retirements and the internal promotions. I am curious how much of our leadership staff has moved and how much of our internal positions are filling those openings. That could be something you could send later, but that would be of interest to me. Chief Goble: I could quickly comment on that. Councilmember Cowden: Okay. Chief Goble: We recognize the value of our leadership positions, especially when it comes to our operational staff, and having someone supervising and responsible out there. We promoted all of the positions up. The Captains in the stations, one of our retirees was a Battalion Chief, and behind them operators for the apparatus. Those positions were filled. All of the vacancies are at the lowest level of the organization, the Fire Fighter level. Councilmember Cowden: Regarding that, I am curious about the one employee who ran the wildlife and brush fire prevention unit. Is that person still here or did he retire? We had a very good person in that position where the work was increasing due to more brushfires. I am hoping that we were able to hold on to that knowledge. Has that person retired? Chief Goble: A Captain from the Fire Prevention Bureau was one of our retirees. He was very engaged in the statewide efforts surrounding wildfires. That knowledge has been transferred to his replacement and one of our Battalion Chiefs has taken up the position specifically for the area in and around Anahola, working on building good relationships out there with people that are stakeholders dealing with that problem. We are targeting that area a little bit because of the number of fires that have occurred there. We are also building relationships with people at the State and transferring that knowledge from the retiree to his replacement in the Bureau so as not to skip a beat. Councilmember Cowden: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Kuali`i, followed by Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember Kuali`i: I have a follow-up question on the twelve (12) positions. You stated that the testing and physical agility portions have been completed and that you are currently doing interviews. After the interviews, you have selection and could be ready to go as early as the grant funds become available in May, correct? April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kauai Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 15 Chief Goble: Correct. We are tentatively looking at probably the second pay period in June to start them. That is our hopeful target. Councilmember Kuali`i: If for some reason you do not get the approval in the early round and you have to wait until August, at one point you were saying that we could get them started and the grant could reimburse us, but you were saying that that would not be allowed? If we start it, we have to finish it, and we would not be eligible for the grant anymore, is that correct? Chief Goble: That is correct. Councilmember Kuali`i: If we have to wait for August, we will just wait to start them? Chief Goble: Yes. Again, with the relationships that we have with DHS, we hope to at least get an indication of where our application stands fairly early in the process. Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Cowden has a follow-up question. Councilmember Cowden: Do any of the fire crews have a platoon of three (3) or is it always a platoon of four (4) at every station? Chief Goble: We have distributed the vacancies across the- Department. We have a maximum of one vacancy in any given station on any given crew. We are maintaining safe staffing levels of four (4) as much as we possibly can. Councilmember Cowden: So some have three (3)? Chief Goble: The assignments are four (4) per station and five (5) in a couple of the higher-volume stations. There are rare occasions where they will drop to three (3). Councilmember Cowden; Okay. Chief Goble: We have a couple of extra folks on each shift in those five-person stations, and they will rove to the vacancies to maintain the staffing level of four (4). Councilmember Cowden: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Kuali`i. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kauai Fire Department, Kauai Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 16 Councilmember Kuali`i: Based on the results of the recruitment, will we have enough to fill all the slots? Chief Goble: Yes. Councilmember Kualii: Are you interviewing more than twelve (12), should one (1) or two (2) drop out along the way? Chief Goble: Yes, our recruitment was not as productive as we hoped. We originally started out with two hundred sixty-seven (267) applicants, I believe. We only had one hundred forty-five (145) actually show up for the first phase of the test, which is the written portion. I think that was largely due to COVID-19 restrictions and the difficulty in traveling, and some other unknown obstacles. Of those one hundred forty-five (145), we had forty-three (43) that actually passed the written exam. There was a larger failure rate in the written exam than what we typically experience. Of those forty-three (43) that move forward to the physical agility portion of the testing, we had sixteen (16) actually passed all phases of the initial testing process. The pool is fairly small. However,_this appears to be a group that is dedicating themselves to preparing and being ready to be ' firefighters. We are hopeful that we will be able to pull twelve (12) from that pool. I have also fielded a handful of transfer requests from neighbor island fire departments that could help us with that problem as well. I think we have the ability to get twelve (12) into the Department. Councilmember Kualii: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember DeCosta: With the sixteen (16) who passed and the twelve (12) vacancies that you have to fill, you spoke a little about sending our recruits to learn about the most tech-savvy things that go on in Florida during our fire training. There are a lot of things that go on here on Kauai with the trails that a lot of your recruit trainees from Kauai know about. The men and women from Kauai know that background. I am always an advocate for the Kauai community and looking at the commonsense attributes when hiring. I noticed that the written and physical tests are quite difficult to pass here. Regarding the Anahola brushfires, it was brought to my attention by many of our firefighters, especially in the fire station near Anahola, that there are a lot of abandoned vehicles in the DHHL area. What are our plans to make sure our firefighters are safe when they are out fighting those fires near abandoned vehicles? A lot of them have toxic fuels or oil still left in them. Chief Goble: Right. That is a complex hazard. In our line of business, you have a brush fire, a car fire, a house fire, or a commercial fire, and you can kind of couch those things into those different categories. With the problem specifically in Anahola, it is an interface of a lot of those things. Often the abandoned vehicle is at or near the source of the fire and is perhaps the reason why it started. Our folks are exposed to April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kauai Fire Department, Kauai Emergency Management Agency, Kauai Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 17 additional hazards out there that are not typical to normal brushfires. We rely very heavily on our leaders out there, the Captains in the fire stations. Their first role is risk management and they rely on their training and equipment to protect themselves and their crews to the level that is required for them to take care of the problem that is in front of them. It is complex and making fighting a brushfire more difficult when you have to wear your turnout gear, your SCBA tank and mask, and it is hard work that we are asking our folks to do out there. It is required though because of the uniqueness of that problem and the complexity of that problem. We have to take the highest level of precaution in our toolbox to address those fires. We have followed up with the State and have done some good foundational work to help with removing the vehicles that are in that area. They are working through an incremental plan to help us with that problem and they will also be supporting us with cutting fire breaks as we enter into the brushfire season. They are also working to install some fencing to help prevent the additional influx of vehicles and abandoned vehicles in that area. We continue to work at the problem from a number of angles, but it is definitely a tough problem for us and our crews. Councilmember DeCosta: Chief, you mentioned safety. Are you working with the State of Hawaii or with the DHHL? Chief Goble: There are a couple of stakeholders. DHHL has been the lead in that and we have been working with the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) and their enforcement team as well. Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you. At least there is some kind of movement in that area. I know it is very hazardous to your firefighters and we want to keep them as safe as they keep our community. Chief Goble: Yes, and I know we have leveraged some of our resources out there. Our training team has been out there and flown the area to identify the number of vehicles located there. We can provide that information to the State so that they can come up with their plan of attack as far as removing those vehicles. Again, we are trying to address it on a number of fronts. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Evslin. Councilmember Evslin: Would you mind speaking a little bit about rank-for-rank? It looks like we are half of where we usually are historically for rank for rank. Will we see a surge there? Is there an internal policy reduction or will we end up poaching from other areas to try and fill it? Chief Goble: The response is yes, yes, and yes. I think that is ultimately where we are at. We recognized based on historical usage and on our projections that the rank-for-rank budget line item is not sufficient to cover what we anticipate the overall cost to be. Again, we feel it is our responsibility to manage those discretionary pieces. I have already pointed to the training piece to potentially supplement or augment that. I April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 18 think you are correct in that there is some pent-up vacation need within our Department. We have been fortunate over the last year that people have not been able to travel as freely as they would have liked. Our staffing issues have been pretty minimal this year. We anticipated that. While we have controls in-place as far as how many people we allow off on any given day, there will be a surge of taking advantage of the opportunities that are available that will drive those costs. We think it will level-out over time and we think the rank-for-rank, while the cap is fairly high as defined in the CBA...at least there is a cap, right? So we know what that maximum cost will be. We will keep an eye on the trend of that as we go through the year. Councilmember Evslin: I know you are really constrained on efforts to try to rein back rank-for-rank and I appreciate the steps you are taking in that regard. My own hope is that your budgeted line item for rank-for-rank would reflect what you really think it would end up being at, rather than having to do modifications to take from other areas. I appreciate you are in a hard position here. Chief Goble: Yes. A lot of our personnel costs are a product of trying to capture the overall expected costs. There has been some short distributions here and some overdistribution there in hopes that we would cover the hot-button items as we work through that personnel cost piece. I think the challenge for us will be that we had a number of folks retiring this year. Ten (10) people went out and that will drive some of those pension costs that are also kind of a sensitive area when it comes to personnel costs. It is going to be a tough one. I do not want to candy coat it. It will be a strain on the resources. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: So you are bracing us for a big punch? Chief Goble: We hope not. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any further questions for Fire Operations? Councilmember Kuali`i. Councilmember Kuali`i: On master page 141, the line item for Other Services...can you talk about the helicopter pilot contract? What is the basis for the contract? Do we get so many hours at a certain rate? Are the pilots on-call? Chief Goble: The helicopter pilot contract is for a defined period of coverage. They are available to us sun up to sun down on an on-call basis and available within certain windows of time to be with the bird on-site in a defined way. It also broadly reaches to on-call status for helicopter pilot resources. That is the cost of having that resource available to us seven (7) days a week, any time that resource is capable of flying. It does not have the ability to fly at night, so once it is dark, there is no ability to fly. During daylight hours, that creates availability for this important resource for us. Councilmember Kuali`i: Can you tell me the distinction between when they respond to a call versus when they are just waiting? I know in some other situations, I have April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 19 seen where individuals are primarily on-call and they get paid a certain amount for being available and on-call. When they are called out and they actually make a call, then they get paid a significant amount. Two (2) different amounts where in the long-run if they do not get called out that often, there would be a floor. Is it some private operation that we contract with? Or is it just a contracted flat rate whether they go out at all? Chief Goble: We have the Assistant Chief on the call and he is kind of our helicopter expert. I believe this cost is intended to cover those highs and lows. We get bills and invoices for service when they fly, and this is built into the overall cost for the helicopter pilot and helicopter contract in general. Assistant Chief Kanoho, I know he probably has one (1) ear on the State operations meeting for COVID-19, but I am hoping that he can jump on here to answer you. SOLOMON KANOHO, Assistant Fire Chief(via remote technology): It is a contracted item. It is actually a three-year contract that gets reviewed by the Department and the vendor each year. This is the third time that we have actually had this contract in-place and renewed. There are instances where we have budgeted for certain items to address the on-call standby versus the time period when the pilots are available at the helicopter at the hangar and all of that is factored into the monthly and annual costs to operate the helicopter. We have been pretty good at keeping within the amounts and being very efficient with our costs and budgets. I hope that answers part of your question. Councilmember Kuali`i: Yes it does, thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember De Costa: Did we ever do an analysis spending $500,000 a year on the pilot and helicopter services of possibly getting a funding source to hire our own helicopter pilot and buy our own helicopter? Perhaps there might be a cost-benefit over time. We are looking at $1,500,000 to cover our helicopter costs for three (3) years. Would that cover the cost of owning a helicopter? Assistant Chief Kanoho: The Air One helicopter is currently a County-owned helicopter. We do own the helicopter. However, the services to fly the helicopter and to maintain it annually is contracted out. With that being said, we have had one of our captains in charge of the helicopter cadre looking to see if that is something that we might incorporate further down the line as part of the Department as opposed to a contract to see what cost-savings there might be. That would only be for the pilot similar to the City and County of Honolulu. The maintenance part would still have to be a contract, because we do not have the ability with our fire mechanics. They work on apparatuses and are not trained in helicopter maintenance. We are taking a look at that and hopefully will be able to put something together that we can discuss further with the Fire Chief and Administration. Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 20 Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any other questions for Fire Operations? Councilmember Kuali`i. Councilmember Kuali`i: No, thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: If not, we will move on to Fire Prevention. Councilmember Kuali`i. Councilmember Kuali`i: Under master page 146, the second item is Regular Overtime. The two (2) pieces: Fire Safety Trailer Public Appearance, thirty-nine thousand five hundred forty-four dollars ($39,544) and Fire Safety Trailer School Appearance, thirty-five thousand dollars ($35,000). These two(2)line items, I would imagine in this past fiscal year, were impacted by COVID-19 and your ability to actually go out in the public and do these services. Do you anticipate that come July 1st that you could still be impacted and not be out there doing these services? It says, "4 personnel, 18 appearances" and "4 personnel, 2 appearances per month." Chief Goble: Yes, I think that if we look at this through the COVID-19 lens, we recognize that these are the things that would and could be impacted, our ability to deliver these things in-person. Again, as we look at the full scope of the budget and the shortfalls in some areas and the potential discretionary pockets of money that we might have available to help us fill those shortfalls, this would be one of those spots that we would definitely look at. In this past FY when we got the finalized contract for the Bargaining Unit 14 group, this is the first place we went because we knew that we were not going to incur these costs this fiscal year, but we were able to allocate this forth to cover the increase in salary cost that was not accounted for in our additional budget. We look at this as one of those things that if we can deliver this service, it is great, it is good for the kids and community. However, if we are still under limitations and limited ability to deliver this in-person, we would look to reinvest this in those other areas that we anticipate to be shortfalls. Councilmember Kuali`i: It was exciting to hear in your opening about the virtual tour that was created by the crews at the Kaiakea Fire Station. Thank you for that, so once schools open we could do that, if you are not able to go in-person. Chief Goble: Yes. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there further questions for Fire Prevention? If not, we will move to Training. Councilmember Cowden: I know you covered this somewhat in the overview, but I am still wanting to understand a little better. I attended a few of the fire trainings that are set up over in the Administration—I actually learned a lot. It looks like a big group and the firefighters come in and do collective training so that there is uniformity and agreement and understanding, is that one of the things that we would not be doing anymore? April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kauai Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 21 Chief Goble: We have identified and created expertise across the department in specified areas. We have a team of folks who are focused on auto extrication, the use of the "jaws of life" process that is their world, which is what they spend their extra time learning more about than the rest of the team. We call those training cadre and we have a number of them across the department: EMS, helicopter, auto extrication, a number of them out there. These groups of departmental experts that we rely on very heavily deliver these trainings to the teams. We know that there is no one person who knows everything, so we rely on that group approach to get a good, well-rounded understanding of the subject matter and deliver that training to our teams. Councilmember Cowden: Does that mean that trainer is going to just go out to the different stations and train them out there instead of having the collective group come into the main Administration area? Are you still going to do the big collective training together? Chief Goble: That will be based on the subject matter at-hand. It is a delicate balance for us. We want to maintain our response capability as much as we can, so our first method for delivering training is in a fire station. That keeps that resource available to respond within their district. The second level is when the resources are just not available in the station and we have to bring them into the training center here in the Administration building, then we do displace crews from time to time and get training, either because there are additional resources needed or that needs to be a larger group. We will then pull one group from one part of the island and one group for another. We will rove crews out to cover those voids as we go. There are those trainings where it just makes sense to try to get it all done in one big shot, when we can, and that is one of those things that drives our overtime costs. We cannot afford to have those big groups be assigned to duty that day, because we lose our response capability. We will bring folks in for mandatory large group training as part of our training delivery model as well. Councilmember Cowden: That is the one that I was asking about, because some of it takes too much focus to be doing it at the station because if there is a call, obviously things are going to have to stop. I believe what I have attended, they were on overtime pay on a day that is not their platoon. It sounds like we are doing a little less of that, but that will not stop. Councilmember Kuali`i: On master page 155 under the training part,there is "Other Services." Other Services have been flat at $25,000 for the last three (3) to four (4) years and now it is being raised to $45,000. It says, "EMS training coordinator"—can you say a little more about what that is? Chief Goble: A big majority of the response is the EMS that we provide to the island. We have been doing this work with a cadre approach, however what we are learning is that we need more academic type of training that is provided through an EMS coordinator. We identified a great resource here on the island that is tied into the UH system April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 22 for EMS training and that is what you see as the additional $20,000. The $25,000 is for the medical director, which has the general oversight of our overall program, approves our protocols. We work under that license to deliver our service. The EMS training coordinator is specific to recertification training, certification training for our new hires, and ongoing continuing education for our teams. We feel like that support is critically important to us because of the high call volume that is related to EMS, as well as the high liability that is associated with that service and so it is important that we get this right. We feel like adding this resource, this is the area that we pulled resources from our administrative line item and transferred it here, because we just believed that this is hugely important. This is another area where we have been able to leverage our technology. We got a big chunk of our recertification training done in a virtual environment and things like that, so this training coordinator gives us some flexibility to deliver that service in that way as well. Councilmember Evslin: On page 153, there is $10,000 for Jet sSki refresher training. At least two (2) years ago we heard a little bit on the floor about your aging Jet Ski fleet and it was right around the time on O`ahu, a member there almost died after the Jet Ski training. Out of curiosity, have you been able to upgrade any of your Skis, are they still aging, does it hamper your response time or a possible danger to your training? Chief Goble: Overall we have taken a big look at our Jet Ski response program on the Fire Department side. What we identified is that our Ocean Safety team are the subject-matter experts, they are on those skis every day, they have the ability to train at a much higher level than us, with that specialty type of training. The grand plan is to rely on them as the primary response for Jet Ski incidents. We want them to be the ones who are in the water for these things. We will continue to support them from the Fire Department side to provide a safety platform to augment the rescue efforts and those types of things, but we are transferring that primary responsibility to Ocean Safety where we think it belongs. However, there are remaining gaps in that system. Currently our staffing levels do not cover pre-9:00 a.m. hours. When we put the folks in the towers and the Ski goes into service to 8:00 p.m., but then there is a gap after the towers are evacuated and the Ocean Safety team goes home. We have identified, primarily out at Fire Station 1, out in Hanalei that remains a risk for us and a gap that we need to fill. This Jet Ski refresher training, a chunk of that is dedicated to that team. We have put together a really strong plan to make sure that they are maintaining their training and equipment, maintaining that sort of operational readiness profile that we expect from them. They have an old Ski. It is a 2009 Ski that was donated to them by the community a number of years back. They have taken great care of it, but it is not the piece of equipment that it once was. Through our replacement program with the Jet Skis on the Ocean Safety side, however, we just got two (2) new Skis in for them. One of the Skis that would have normally been going out of service will now be moved to Station 1 because it is in better condition than the one that they currently have. We will continue to use that model to try and support that, until we can establish the plan that gets us the covers we need from the Ocean Safety team. Councilmember Evslin: Out of curiosity, what are the barriers for others to overlap and use the OSB equipment on off times? April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 23 Chief Goble: There are not many other than our level of training, so when we look at this line item, we are establishing a basic level of response capability with our Fire folks, because we just have so many other requirements out there. The training that the Ocean Safety team goes through is at a much higher level, requiring many more hours to certify and maintain certification, so it is largely a training issue. We set strict parameters in our plan for the Fire Department responses as far as their risk assessment of any given situation and so we cannot have them go out in high surf morning conditions. They just do not have that level of training and capability behind them. Councilmember Evslin: I meant on an afterhours call, where they have their outdated Ski, how come they cannot just use OSB's better equipment? Is it that they cannot get it quick enough to respond to it? How does that work? Chief Goble: Yes, I think that is really the restriction. The Ski that they have is in their station, it is on a trailer, they hook it to their mule, and they run it down to the dock and launch it fairly quickly. To get access to the Ski, it would take some effort to go to the baseyard to get it launched, so it is a time-sensitive issue. Councilmember Cowden: I think this is closely related, I am looking at Public Safety Diver, page 158. There are two (2) locations for Public Safety Diver, there and on page 159. I can see why you want to always be trained up for diving. I want to know just a little more about who are our Public Safety Divers. Are they in the Fire crew and not in Ocean Safety? Is that when we are looking for a body? Can you tell us about Public Safety Diver? Chief Goble: Correct. These are folks in fire stations that have an additional level of training to allow them to do search, rescue, and recovery in deep water. This is a dedicated team of folks that we have provided resources and training to for those very difficult underwater rescues and recoveries. Unfortunately, in the dive world, too often these are recoveries as opposed to rescues, because these are below the surface. We have a team of folks that are dedicated to that. This is one of our other cadres that are able to provide training across the department for folks to support their organization and to try get them and to support the actual dive team themselves, so people in the water. The costs that you noted for the two (2) people, this is one of those kinds of trainings that we just cannot get here locally. A lot of the expense that you see with these two (2) folks for per diem costs and travel costs are all about getting these folks to O`ahu where the training is available for them. They bring back what they learned—this is part of that "train the trainer" approach. Those two (2)will bring it back to the rest of the team and train them to that high-level of training. Councilmember Cowden: I just want to acknowledge those people doing that. That is not only personally dangerous, it is also tragic typically when you are recovering someone loved by others. I am also looking at the drone money. How much are we using drones to help our process? That is probably a great strategy. How often do we use the drone? Is there a drone at every station now? April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 24 Chief Goble: We essentially have a drone at our disposal and we have a drone team dedicated to it. These folks are licensed pilots for that unmanned aircraft. We use it in a number of ways. We have used it in emergency response, looking for people who are lost, missing people, those types of things. It takes a while to get this researched deployed, so we have found that is not the best use for it. It is a very useful tool for us from a prevention standpoint, however. We do fly and with the example of the Anahola area, we have flown and mapped that area using that drone, so we can identify where the threats are and then work on the plan to mitigate that threat. Most recently, we flew it up at the landslide on the road out there to Hanalei to assess the damage. It really gave us a great overall quick perspective of the impact to that area. What the overall exit of the slide were, we shared that information with the folks from the State, so they were able to put a plan together even prior to their arrival based on the footage that we were able to present to them. It has proven to be a very useful tool. Councilmember Cowden: I am pleased to see that and learned that. I also want to acknowledge the dollar funding, it looks like quite a number of conference travel and attendance. Part of that, I am sure, is COVID-19 and for saving money. I know there is value with conferences, but I just want to acknowledge that is slimming down in an area of the budget. I appreciate the dollar funding and am just acknowledging it. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Any further questions for Fire Training? If not, we will move on to their final division, which is Water Safety. Do we have any questions for Water Safety? Councilmember Kuali`i: Page 163, Position No. 745 Ocean Safety Officer II, vacant since November 2020. On the vacancy report, it says no activity. When HR was before us, I asked and they said they put out for the position and recruitment started. Can you give us an update on this position and when you expect to fill it? Chief Goble: The challenge with this specific position is that this was a termination back in November and at this point we still consider it subject to grievance, so we have not been overly aggressive with filling the position. We have recruited—same type of timeline. We have completed all the preliminary testing including the physical agility. We are interviewing on April 8th to establish that list so that we can move forward. In conjunction with that we also have a couple of short-term vacancies, the part-time type folks that we will look to probably fill those vacancies to help us with our staffing issues. But we are still working through the grievance process on the termination. Councilmember Cowden: On page 163 where it has the Ocean Safety Officers SR-15, those numbers seems strikingly low right there, is that because they are part-time? Comparatively to the salary, or do I have that wrong? Chief Goble: Yes. That account is for the part-time folks. These are our limited service type of people. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 25 Councilmember Cowden: On page 162 where we see the dollar-funding for Kee, in alignment with what Councilmember Carvalho said, are we just saying that we are not doing it there or are we still trying to figure that one out? Are we looking for grants? Chief Goble: Yes, that is the intent. We have the positions held with dollar funding in the budget account, but we are working through those alternative needs to try to identify a way to get this done. This has historically been funded in this way, because it has been reimbursed through the State, through their process, but going forward, we are working hard to try and find the solution that makes the most sense. Councilmember Cowden: On page 160, I am sure there is a good reason, but I just do not understand how it is presented here. I am looking at the collective bargaining item. We see the Mayor's request is for one thousand two hundred sixty dollars ($1,260) but the expenditures and encumbrances is thirty-four thousand seven hundred thirty-nine dollars ($34,739). How can we bring that one down low on collective bargaining? Can you explain to me what that is? I do not understand. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Chief, we went back to the Training Bureau. Chief Goble: In that line item we have historically seen a higher expense, however this year we are funding that at one thousand two hundred sixty dollars ($1,260). Councilmember Cowden: How can we just do that? Maybe I do not understand what collective bargaining is. I thought we had no choice or control over collective bargaining. How do we just say we are not going to fund that? Chief Goble: This is a matter of this money being allocated in a different place. Since a large portion of this cost is for turnout gear and things like that, so that our training staff still maintains their ability to respond to calls and things like that, they fill vacancies in fire stations from time to time. They are required to wear their personal, protective gear. This falls all into that category and this money is largely reallocated in the 1102, in the Fire Operations budget. It is not necessarily missing, but it is absorbed into that overall cost for the Fire Department. Councilmember Kuali`i: Page 164, Premium pay. The detailed line item, Jet Ski premium, $58,000. Can you tell me what this is?How is it paid out? Does it take into account that on-call and the actual use? Is it limited to the people...I suppose there are only certain people who are trained to use the Jet Ski. Chief Goble: That is correct. There are folks who are trained and proficient in its use and this premium is based on their assignment to that Ski for that day. There is not a standby status for them typically. They get this assignment on a daily basis and then this is the premium that is assigned to that specialized work. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kauai Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 26 Councilmember Kuali`i: Is that a collective bargaining item as well? Chief Goble: Correct. Councilmember Cowden: Can you speak to your Junior Lifeguard Program plans this year? I see that we have collectively $15,000 for that. I know that we are dealing with COVID-19, so I see some dollar funding in this item. I want to just acknowledge how amazing the Kaua`i's Junior Lifeguard program is. Is this going to be on hold this summer? Chief Goble: No. Our team is hugely disappointed as well that we were not able to deliver this last year, just because of the restrictions from the pandemic. Our team loves to put this on. They recognize that the community just falls over themselves in order to get enrolled and be a part of this. It is a fantastic program for us and for the island. This year, because we still have restrictions with group size, level of contact, and social distancing requirements, we do not want to lose the momentum again this year, so we are going to deliver a Junior/Keiki Lifeguard program in a very limited way. About half the size of the groups that we are used to seeing, limited amount of contact, an overall smaller effort, but we are going to engage this year to provide that program to the island. Again, probably about a fifty percent (50%) reduction in the participant level. Some restrictions on our ability to perform live rescue techniques, but it will largely be demonstration, follow along, classroom, and we will do our best to keep the group engaged. We do recognize the value and the importance of keeping the momentum going for the program. Councilmember Cowden: Okay. I just want to honor how important that is. My background used to be surf and skate. Our young people save people all the time. It is great for the kids, it is great for the community, and it is great for the people who lived through the disaster, because we have these awesome kids.When we live next to a dangerous ocean, we want to have our young people just as solid as possible, because even just saving yourself and having the confidence to make the right choice is really important. I cannot give enough "props" to that program. I am glad it will return this summer and I thank all in our Fire and Ocean Safety team who are part of it—I want to acknowledge having made Kaua`i proud even in our national competitions and sometimes we come home with the number one position for the entire country. Councilmember DeCosta: Have we thought about having some type of fire fighter junior program or"donation hours" like how they do in other fire departments across the nation, where they have volunteer firefighters who serve so many hours? Those hours are contributed to their test-taking and upon them requesting to become a firefighter, if they pass all the tests, as far as written and physical, then maybe their hours of contribution as a volunteer firefighter might play a part in their evaluation score. Have we thought much around those lines about having a program like that? Chief Goble: Great timing for that question, actually. Through the Friends of Kaua`i Fire Department, the 501(c)(3)group that has been established here on April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kauai Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 27 the island, we are recognizing a need to create that same type of thing that the KLA has with the Junior Lifeguard Association. It is important to identify people who are making decisions about their career early in their life and want to learn more about the job and what it takes to be prepared to pass the test and to do the job. The Friends of Kauai Fire Department has started to put together a proposal to do exactly that for us. Same type of thing. If it is the Fire Department itself that is the sponsoring agency, we run into some challenges in identifying people and bringing them in, but through an objective third-party, they can put together a pretty good program to identify folks that are interested in the career path and ultimately can move and create a strong candidate pool for us, making our department better, because at the end of the day that is what we are looking for. They are looking at doing this islandwide. We are looking for folks who are service oriented, so this is a group that can start to learn that side of community service, can learn about the department and the job, and whether they choose to be firefighters at the end of the day or not, we have instilled some good values in folks and improved our community in general. Yes, I think that is a great idea and is something that is in the infant stages of being developed in the Fire Department. Councilmember DeCosta: The only difference I see is that our Junior Lifeguard is for teenagers under the age of 18, am I correct? Chief Goble: Correct. Councilmember DeCosta: You might want to look at in the preliminary stages to incorporate men and women who have the time or maybe only working part-time and would like to make a career change. Chief Goble: It is important to cater to that group. What we know is that our most successful candidates have a wealth of world experience. They went out, worked jobs, and they have applied themselves in different situations and learned to work with people, et cetera. A group that is interested in a career change is worth our consideration as well. I think that is a good idea. Councilmember Carvalho: I remember transitioning from lifeguards to water safety officer and from lifeguard stand to lifeguard tower and the importance of the maintenance. I saw there is some funding here for upgrades or transitioning of water safety towers. You have some funds set aside, but what are the plans for that? Any additional towers needed or upgrades? Chief Goble: We are looking at the condition of current towers and then where is the logical location for future towers as well. One of the sites that would provide a roving patrol is out there at Wanini (`Anini) and so we think that is likely the next tower location, however there are a number of challenges with that site. A lot of people use that area for different reasons, so there is a mix of boats, boards, swimmers, and they all kind of work in the same area, which creates a challenge for us. One of the things we have done was reach out to the state to help us with identifying boat lanes and areas for specific uses and out in that area to help us better manage that mix of folks. We Are trying to make sure April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 28 we are well-positioned when funding comes our way to put a tower there. KLA has been very generous and active in the pursuit of seeking funding from the community to help us with those types of resources. One of the startling things to me is there is a cost associated with the tower...the ongoing maintenance...these things are built to last a significant time, but we have noticed in three (3) of our towers out there on the north end that the floors are starting to weaken over time, just the fiberglass and the construction of them, they are starting to become like sponge. We identified what those are and the manufacturer of those has a fix for them, but the costs are pretty steep by the time we get them here and get them in place. It is one of those items that we intend to defer for now, but we have an eye on that as a priority in future times. Councilmember Cowden: I have a follow-up. I know at one point we were working with the Division of Boating and Aquatic Recreation (DOBAR). There are older patterns of who can swim where, when, and how to do those shared uses. They worked pretty extensively on these competitive uses of the water and I do not know if the Ocean Safety folks really want to police of all of that, but it is an issue. What I have seen, because I have been down there lately and used to teach windsurfing, sometimes the swimmers choose to swim right through the windsurfers and I will even talk to them on the side and they are doing it as a form of protest. That is really more of a DOBAR piece, but it certainly affects our Ocean Safety Division. As the Public Safety & Human Services Committee Chair, I am very willing to be a part of that conversation, because I have quite a bit of history and understanding regarding what the pathway was. There is current tension, I can say that. You might know that, but DOBAR was a good partner. Councilmember Chock: I did not see any Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) funding. Can you give us the status of that? Chief Goble: CERT funding is one of our successes. Getting CERT up and running and working and having that resource out in the community has proven to be important to our overall response capability. We know that in this last budget year, that funding was eliminated. I heard from the active CERT groups pretty regularly and they were very understanding, of course.The pandemic is hard to put CERT training together anyway so we just pushed the pause button on the CERT program in the short term. In the long term, we have worked specifically with a group on the North Shore. They are intending to share that with other CERT groups across the island. But they came to me and asked if they could support the CERT training in some shape or form. I told them that we really could not take a direct donation of that sort, but that we do have community partners out there that might be able to facilitate that. Again, we worked with Friends of Kaua`i Fire Department as kind of that vessel to make that happen. We paired the CERT team leadership with the Friends of Kaua`i Fire Department to work on a mechanism to try to get that important training delivered out to the community. A partnership that achieves the goal and allows us to support it, but still keep a dollar in that fund instead of applying a bunch of other additional funding to it. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 29 Councilmember Chock: I appreciate that. One of the concerns I recall, and this was some time back, was the location for the trailer. Has that been resolved? Chief Goble: I am not sure about that. I know we had some issues with the storage...I believe it was with the church, but then there was some challenges with that site and access and the fact that the trailer was showing its age as well. I am not sure where that stands, but I will definitely follow up and get you an answer. Councilmember Cowden: I believe that particular CERT team on the North Shore is still meeting and working independent of the fire station. The Fire Department supports their choice to do that, is that correct? Chief Goble: That is correct, yes. Councilmember Cowden: Is there anyone other than the Princeville CERT team continuing to be working together and keeping their skills and their organization sharp? Chief Goble: There has been less participation from the other groups. The North Shore group is certainly the most active, the most engaged, and rightfully so. They recognize their immediate challenges and their preparation served them well here over the course of the month. The other groups are still engaged. There are groups that just need a little more direction to achieve their goals. They are still out there, they are still organized, and they are still willing participants. Councilmember Cowden: The ham radio operators group...I am with KKCR too, so that vector is continuing to be in place and I am glad that Council Vice Chair Chock has brought this up because we really do not want our emergency services, certain types of teams to be atrophied while we are seeing no increase in flooding problems all around the island. It might be that the North Shore is the most motivated because they have a lot of direct impact regularly. I am glad that is continuing and CERT is a very important part of our overall public safety program. Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any further questions for the Fire Department? If not, we will take our ten-minute caption break. There being no objections, the Committee recessed at 11:10 a.m. The meeting was called back to order at 11:29 a.m., and proceeded as follows: Kauai Emergency Management Agency Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Welcome back, next up, we have the Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency(KEMA). Elton, if you would like to give us a brief overview of your budget, please begin. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 30 ELTON S. USHIO, Emergency Management Administrator (via remote technology): Aloha everyone. Is my microphone volume okay? Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Yes, you are good. Mr. Ushio: KEMA has come in with what we feel is a fiscally responsible budget. If you look at the most significant changes, they are largely limited to that which is tied to collective bargaining and contractual increases of what we call multi-term contracts already in-place. We have one (1) new equipment item for a repeater replacement at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF). This is not for PMRF, but it is for our public safety 800 mHz radio system. This system provides 800 mHz coverage for first responders when they have incidents or calls out in that area. As for operational challenges this year for KEMA, with the COVID-19 pandemic on-going, we have seen our longest, historical continuous activation of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC). Our extended team of emergency management partners, our incident management partners, all levels of government, various sectors in the private sector, community-based organizations, et cetera, all came together for the best interest of keeping Kaua`i safe. It has been a challenge. KEMA has expanded with additional personnel supporting the incident. Even with that, very much of our time has been focused on the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless and despite these challenges, we have kept our budget relatively flat and not had that impact of line items that we are proposing to you. We have had some operational highlights for the year. First, as we have already mentioned, the COVID-19 pandemic and our on-going response. Even with that, our organization and our extended team of partners have been able to successfully respond to things such as the Hurricane Douglas activation last summer. We have had telecommunications improvements made, such as the integration and bringing in the National Guard, Emergency enc Medical Services (EMS), and Sheriffs into our radios stem for better interagency interoperable communications. Lastly, we helped with the alternate dispatch center for the Kaua`i Police Department, which also will help us with our COVID- 19 and all-hazards response. We have done some maintenance on the radio system as well. Additional things that have come up, as you know very well...we experienced a rather active wet season this year culminating in our most recent incidence of major flooding and the severe landslide on the North Shore. That incident tested our team and everyone rose to the challenge. It is quite an honor to work with such a good group of emergency management professionals. Finally, we prepared, submitted, and have initial Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approval, pending formal adoption, for our Hazard Mitigation Plan Update. That is a major accomplishment that we were able to do regardless of the ongoing pandemic and all of the additional workflow associated with COVID-19 and a very active weather year that we have had. Again, it is quite an honor to be a part of this team. I am very thankful to the Administration, to the County Council, all of our Federal, State, and County partners, private sector, community-based partners, as well as all of the people that we serve for our collective response to the pandemic this year. We look forward to what is to come, but we acknowledge that there will be additional challenges as we attempt to safely reopen. Today, April 5th, is the day we have opted back in to the transpacific portion of the State's Safe Travels Program. Operations have kicked off with the first flight this morning. Staff has been busy getting ready for this and thus far today, there are quite a number of things going on. We have more follow-up and things that we need to continue to work on. Seeing what this results in as far as disease incidence and how we have to respond to it from there, how we continue with phase II of the vaccination program, and how that all April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 31 rolls out into where we gradually return to normalcy will be interesting to see. That is all I have for you at this time. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Is that it? You only had to deal with COVID-19 and natural disasters on the island. Just kidding. Thank you, Elton, for all of your hard work. We definitely have seen our share of additional work. It is becoming a new normal with the pandemic and all of the storms. I would rather see us not have all of these emergencies, but I am confident in your work. You have been proven and tested through all of these storms and pandemics. It gives me a lot of comfort knowing that you are there and prepared. Does anyone have any questions on the presentation? Councilmember Kuali`i. Councilmember Kuali`i: On page 2, operational challenges, when you talk about the eleven (11) personnel, I think you said, "Partners, all levels of government, and the private sector." Of those eleven (11) personnel, how many of those are from other County departments, how long do you anticipate continuing to use their services, and when would they go back to their regular jobs and duties? Mr. Ushio: Those eleven (11) personnel are actual KEMA employees, those which appear on our actual budget submittal. We also have an Incident Management Team (IMT) made up of representatives from various County, State, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and that is a bit more than I can describe off the top of my head. We do have various employees from different agencies as part of that team. Those are not part of the eleven (11) that I mentioned in our presentation. Councilmember Kuali`i: What do you mean when you say, "...increased by eleven (11) personnel"? Did you have ten (10) employees and you now have twenty-one (21) employees? Mr. Ushio: We have additional personnel supporting COVID-19. For example, when we implemented the inter-island travel quarantine, and people wanted to apply for a modified quarantine request or exemptions, we had to create an office and hire personnel. We have two (2) managers assigned to that, in addition to support staff. We have a testing operation at the Kaua`i War Memorial Convention Hall, so we have had to hire personnel to do sample collection, the laboratory portion, management, et cetera. We have had to hire various positions supporting COVID-19. We have also had some expansion prior to COVID-19, due to our management of Act 12/Act 35/Act 9 legislative funds for flood recovery. Councilmember Kuali`i: Basically, we are not going to see those positions in the budget, because they are all from special funds and not from the General Fund? Mr. Ushio: Correct. That is why we were able to come in relatively flat with the budget. We are leveraging other sources of funds for our expansion. Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Cowden. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 32 Councilmember Cowden: I did not see an increase in salaries. How much CARES Act funding did we get that was directed at KEMA operations? Do you remember how much that was in dollars? Mr. Ushio: I do not have that exact breakdown for KEMA operations. CARES Act was approximately $28,000,000 overall. If we can get that question submitted to us in writing, I can make sure our staff gets the correct figure to you. Councilmember Cowden: Okay. Thank you for a job well done and for an impressive job at that. It seems that almost since I have been elected that you have been in one emergency or another. I do not think I have worked with you when you are not in the middle of an emergency. I appreciate all that you do. When I am thinking about those eleven (11)positions...hopefully this COVID-19 stuff will pass us by soon. Are these positions going to keep carrying forward? Do we have funding for next year for these positions? Mr. Ushio: We are having to operate under principles of incident command and how each incident will expand or contract depending on developments and how things are going. Right now, we are at full expansion, so to speak. As the pandemic continues on and hopefully improves, we should slowly be able to scale back on operations. We just started to do that to a small degree with a partial downsizing of our testing operations at the Kaua`i War Memorial Convention Hall given our reentry into the Safe Travels Program. We know that the demand on the persons testing under the Enhanced Movement Quarantine (EMQ) or Resort Bubble Program is going to decrease. If you are able to take a pre-travel test and be free from quarantine, I think more visitors will tend to do that versus take a pre-travel test and be in an EMQ bubble. We saw back over the holidays where test demand was significantly lower than when it peaked in the past few weeks. There is a small downsizing there, but we are still capable of processing the people who come through. As each phase of the pandemic or the recovery continues, we will downsize accordingly or adjust accordingly. Hopefully we do not need to adjust upwards by restaffing or bringing in additional persons, but I could see the next foreseeable change as an example being that should we eventually do away statewide with the interisland travel quarantine, then our need for a modified quarantine request portal for the County would go away. Then that portion of our operations can be phased out. It all depends on how the incident is going. We will expand or contract accordingly. I do not foresee most or all of these positions being continued over the long-term, if they are hired specifically for this incident. Councilmember Cowden: Thank you. How has your physical office space been functioning? I know the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney and the Kaua`i Police Department...I remember when that building was built, but seemingly, it is getting crowded. Are you folks fine in your space? Mr. Ushio: I owe a lot of thanks to people who have come before me here at KEMA and the vision for creating this facility. They created a hardened EOC facility with adequate workspace and breakout rooms. In short, we have been able to fully house our IMT as well as our partners and staff expansion here, for the most part. One exception would be for our modified quarantine request team is currently utilizing the offices at the Purchasing Division as their worksite seven (7) days per week. Councilmember Cowden: Okay, thank you. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 33 Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you for a job well done. You have been tested time and time again. It is no doubt that you are the man for the job. I have a question on page 172 on what we call Other Rentals. Could you explain that $96,000+? Thankyou foryour kind words. Credit goes to the Mr. Ushio: entire team, yourself included. As for Other Rentals, those are leases for locations where we have infrastructure, tower, and repeater sites for the County's 800 mHz radio system and we had to lease properties to put the infrastructure on. That is what that line item covers. Councilmember DeCosta: Do you have a breakdown of the properties and whether they are private, State, et cetera? Mr. Ushio: I could provide that to you in writing in more detail. Off the top of my head, at La'aukahi, that is private. Moloa`a is private. Pu'ualanakau is private. Kukuiolono Park is private. Kalepa is private. Mount Kahili is a State-leased site. What we have there is for a helicopter rental for access to the site. Our Telecommunications Officer is on this call as well, so if I have made any errors, he can chime in. Anahola, Pu`ualanakau is actually on State Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) lands. Councilmember DeCosta: I see the three (3) sites, but the numbers do not correspond to the $96,000. Mr. Ushio: If you flip to page 173, there are additional sites there. Those should total $96,000. Councilmember DeCosta: The Kukuiolono site amount looks pretty high compared to everyone else. Is there a reason why? Mr. Ushio: It really depends on how much space we have out there with the infrastructure and negotiations with particular property owners. Some owners have a very unique site. Somewhere like Kukuiolono or Kalepa, we do our best to negotiate well on the County's behalf, but those sites come at a higher price. Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you for clarifying that. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any other questions on the presentation? If not, we can go into the budget as well. Councilmember Kuali`i. Councilmember Kuali`i: Under vacant positions, one of them is Position 9403, Grant Fiscal Specialist. That one is dollar-funded and the other one, Position 9033, Disaster Assistance Project Manager is blank. I know that they are both, or one of them is funded by State dollars and the other by federal dollars. The first one is currently filled by an 89-day hire and the other ones says that it is, "Continuously recruiting, hope to hire soon." In both cases, are they being funded by grants; are the funds fully there? Is it just a matter of filling it and then continuing on the 89-day hire? April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kauai Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 34 Mr. Ushio: Let me clarify. For the Grant Fiscal Specialist position, that is a position that supports the Homeland Security Grant Program, a grant that we have received for many years. We are actively looking for someone there, but in all honesty, COVID-19 and the other priorities have taken precedence over our efforts to recruit there. We actually filled other positions before filling that one. The Disaster Assistance Project Manager and the other Disaster Assistance position are funded via Act 12, which has since been extended into Act 35 and Act 9. Those positions are meant to help us manage and implement the flood recovery funds from the State Legislature. Those are at no expense to the County. While we have ongoing projects and we have made some progress there, COVID- 19 has taken the bulk of our focus in the past year. Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any other questions for KEMA? If not, we can move on. Councilmember Cowden: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you, Elton. We will move on to Police. Kauai Police Department Committee Chair Kaneshiro: We have Chief of Police Todd G. Raybuck on the line. Chief, if you want to give us an overview of your budget and some highlights of your Department. We can then go from there. TODD G. RAYBUCK, Chief of Policevtia remote technology):gy): Good morning Council Chair Kaneshiro, Council Vice Chair Chock, and Members of the Council. Thank you for the opportunity to provide KPD's Fiscal Year 2022 budget and answer any questions that you may have. This year, KPD's budget request is $40,201,353, and is a 1% reduction from last year's budget. This is a decrease of approximately $415,000. 91% of KPD's budget is comprised of salary, wages, and benefits. This is a 1% increase over last year and the P g Y � remaining 9%of KPD's budget includes 1% for utilities, 1% for vehicle and equipment leases, and 7% or $2,700,000 for operations, which is a 1% decrease from last year's budget. The changes and variances FY 2021 budget are included on page 4 of our budget narrative that. KPD has three(3)funding sources, the operational General Fund, the Criminal Assets Forfeiture Fund, and grant funds. Nearly $2,000,000 that KPD receives from State and Federal grant funds and Enhanced 911 (E-911) funding offsets the Department's operational budget by nearly 5%. Included in the grant money is E-911 funding of $740,000, which supports KPD's dispatch operations as the County's public safety answering point. The Department of Transportation—Traffic Safety grants equal approximately $625,000 each year, and grants of nearly $200,000 to KPD's vice section primarily through the Hawai`i High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area to address much of the needed funds to address our community's drug problems. $73,000 in Federal grant funds provided by the Office of the Attorney General provides 100% of the funding needs for KPD's Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) program. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kauai Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 35 As was the case across the County, COVID-19 forced KPD to reassess and reprioritize our goals, to respond to the global pandemic. In addition to maintaining daily law enforcement operations for our community, March 3, 2020, KPD initiated many new internal and external protocols to protect the health and safety of our employees and our community. Since April 2020, KPD implemented many new operational responses due to COVID-19, including initiating roadway compliance checks due to curfew and stay-at-home orders, managing compliance between 500 and 2,500 persons in daily mandatory quarantine status through compliance and welfare checks that we began in April of 2020, and maintaining daily airport passenger screening for all incoming interisland and transpacific passengers to ensure compliance with State and County COVID-19 travel restrictions. In addition to prioritizing the physical health of our employees during the pandemic, KPD worked with a software developer to deploy a law enforcement wellness application. The application does not collect any personal information from the units providing employees and their family members 24/7 confidential access to resources on officer wellness, emotional health, self-care, suicide prevention, and direct connections to counseling and support services. Since initial deployment, the application has been downloaded 145 times and users have had more than 1,500 individual engagements inside the application. Although the impact of COVID-19 resulted in hiring freezes for a period across the County and KPD, I want to thank Mayor Kawakami for allowing KPD to continue hiring in our critical first-responder positions. Department vacancies continue to provide challenges to KPD operations, and we continue to focus on filling all of our vacancies. Earlier this year, I provided the Council an in-depth overview of the Matrix Group Staffing Report recommendations for KPD patrol staffing based on the baseline staffing levels of eighty (80) patrol officers. The Matrix Report provided a short-term recommendation to increase authorized patrol staffing by eleven (11) officers and one (1) sergeant. This budget does not have a request for those additional positions, but we anticipate filling all sworn vacancies during FY 2022. Between January 2020 and January 2021, KPD hired twenty-five (25) new recruits. We have fourteen (14) remaining sworn vacancies and seventeen (17) candidates for the July 2021 recruit class who already received conditional job offers. Three (3) candidates are pending conditional job offers and eleven (11) candidates remain in the background investigation phase. It is my hope that KPD will be able to fill all sworn vacancies in the July recruit class. There are currently eight (8) civilian vacancies. All eight (8) vacancies are either in current recruitment, in the process of recruitment, or in the process of interview and hiring. Moving into FY 2022, the Department's goals are to improve safety;improve employee safety, wellness, and resiliency; enhance organizational efficiency and increase community engagement. These are the same goals that we had for FY 2021. However, we continue to remain focused on these three (3)key areas that include our employees, our Department, and our community. KPD will continue to focus our efforts on providing the high level of customer service we have provided throughout the pandemic and to protect the health and safety of our employees and community members. COVID-19 negatively impacted our community policing and community engagement efforts such as our K-PAL youth program and Coffee with a Cop program. Although those efforts were placed on-hold, we were able to remain April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 36 engaged with the community throughout the pandemic through programs such as police meal distributions, kupuna lunch deliveries, Special Olympic awards, and kupuna holiday stocking deliveries. The pandemic delayed the organizational changes within KPD. We anticipate COVID-19 operations will be reduced in the next fiscal year in large part to the high percentage of community members receiving COVID-19 vaccinations through the great work of the Department of Health and continued compliance with COVID-19 prevention protocols in our community. It is my goal to refocus attention towards the Departmental reorganization plan and patrol schedule for consideration and implementation in FY 2022. In closing, I would like to thank Mayor Kawakami and Managing Director Dahilig and the Mayor's Budget Team for all the work and support they put into this year's budget preparation. I want to acknowledge and thank my executive staff for the hard work they put in to preparing each of their bureau's budgets and want to acknowledge and thank Fiscal Officer Daurice Arruda, who always works tirelessly and does the heavy lifting when it comes to KPD's finances. She helps me understand and know what I am talking about when it comes to KPD's finances. It is a tough job. Finally, I want to thank all of the employees at KPD. While we are here talking about the dollars and cents of the budget, they are the real nuts and bolts of the Department. I am proud of the great work that they perform, sometimes under extreme conditions, and for the daily sacrifices they make in service to our community. Thank you again for the opportunity to provide an overview of our budget and for the support each of you continue to provide to KPD. I am sure you do not have any further questions for me, but just in case, I am able to answer those for you now. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: There are no further questions. I am just kidding. Are there any questions on the Chiefs presentation? Nice try, Chief. Are there any questions on the operations synopsis from the Members? KPD did a good job of line-iteming any variances in the budget. I know that you most likely answered in advance a lot of our questions that we normally ask, so as we go through the actual line items, there may not be as many. I think you knew ahead of time what we wanted to ask. Are there any questions on the budget from the members? Councilmember Kuali`i. Councilmember Kuali`i: On the bottom of page 8 and the top of page 9, you talked about the 94th recruit class and twenty-seven (27) applicants for the 95th recruit class. Can you talk about the fourteen (14)job offers? Is that for the newest recruit class from the twenty-five (25) recruits? Did you get twenty-five (25) out of the twenty-seven (27) applicants? Chief Raybuck: Thank you for your question. I believe that is true. I think we lost...I am looking at my notes here. We may have lost a couple. We had six (6) applicants out of the twenty-seven(27) that withdrew or were disqualified. Out of the twenty-seven (27) we still have twenty-one (21) remaining. They have either been provided a conditional job offer, they are pending a conditional job offer, or they are still in the background check process. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 37 Councilmember Kuali`i: Further down on page 9, near the bottom, just before number 4, you talked about researching a vehicle list that will provide certain additional spaces. Can you talk a little about that? You have evidence which sometimes includes vehicles. With the current storage, is that area inadequate and do you need additional space? What is the plan there? What are the options? Do you not have any additional land space? Chief Raybuck: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify that. Yes. As you may know already, the parking is a premium here at our main station. The secured parking area behind the station, which is supposed to be intended for employee parking, as well as evidence, is overwhelmed. It is inadequate for our current needs. When this building was built approximately twenty (20) years ago, there was limited space then with the number of employees that we had at the time. Now it is even more limited with the increase of employees. The evidence vehicles that you are talking about...when a vehicle is involved in a certain crime, or a traffic accident, the Department is required to maintain that vehicle throughout the history of the court proceedings. That may mean all the way through conviction and/or appeal, which could be a very long period of time. In reviewing what our options were, as you mentioned, there is limited space and growth needs for us. That side of the building, outside of the perimeter fenceline, is owned by a private entity, which the County had anticipated and tried to acquire, but that has not happened at this time. In walking the lot, and thanks goes to Keith Perry from the Office of the Mayor, we discussed many issues that included perhaps even trying to reacquire some of the other space that is being used by other County entities so that we could maintain and control our ever-growing evidence in the back lot. Keith Perry and I discussed other options; one was coming up with the lift. Using that lift in a space of ten (10) parking spaces will hold thirty (30) vehicles. Because these vehicles are not necessarily going to be moved very often, and because they could sit in storage for many years, it makes sense for us to go vertical instead of horizontal, freeing up additional space for other evidence and our parking needs. I want to thank Keith Perry and our evidence team for doing great work at identifying which vehicles and equipment can move out there and they have done an outstanding job. Councilmember Kuali`i: For the $150,000 line item under Public Safety, is that a one-time cost? Are there no additional costs to that? Chief Raybuck: To the best of my recollection, the remaining $150,000, and I may have to ask Daurice to jump in here, is for us to move through the architectural design and implementation phase. Daurice, could you provide confirmation on that for us, please? DAURICE ARRUDA, Fiscal Officer II (via remote technology): The $150,000 is for going out to bid for the vehicle lift itself...for the equipment. The architectural design is already contracted, and we are working on specifications right now in order for us to go out to bid in the next year. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 38 Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. The only other thing, the land that is immediately adjacent, is that not just vacant with grass growing? Is there no ability for us to get additional land, even on a long-term lease basis, if we were not able to purchase it? Chief Raybuck: I do not know that I can answer that question. That falls more to the purview of the County Administration than it does KPD to acquire that land. The lift allows us to use the space that we currently have. It is not going to eliminate all of our space needs. It will reduce the space needs and allow us to mitigate some of the long-term problems that we have had with our limited space. The hope would be that eventually the County could acquire that land. If we are not able to use the $150,000 to purchase the lift, we would require some grading in that area, as well as providing perimeter fencing and other safety measures in-place along with acquiring the lease and permission to do so. Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember DeCosta: Since we are talking about collisions and accidents, I have a question on your collisions and accidents. What is the protocol with your dispatch group that calls out tow trucks to the area when vehicles involved in the traffic accidents are being towed? Are they being towed to a County area and then re-towed later? We seem to have a lot of constituents getting billed high amounts for the tow. I just want to know what the protocol is for using a certain tow truck company and whether that is open to all tow truck companies. How does that work? Chief Raybuck: Assistant Chief Mark Begley is the one who has procured the contracts for towing and he will be better able to explain the process for utilizing tow trucks. If I could have Assistant Chief Begley answer your question for you, that would be ideal. If he is unable to answer, we will certainly respond to you in writing. Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you. MARK BEGLEY, Assistant Chief of Police, Patrol Services Bureau (via remote technology): For towing of accident vehicles that are non-police evidence vehicles, we do not have a contract for those services. Our standard operating procedures for the officers on-scene is to request three (3) bids to remove the tow from companies as close to the site and to request that the towing company move the vehicle to the closest safe location on the side of the road. I have heard there are many occasions when the tow truck has removed the vehicle to the baseyard, and that occurs when there is no preference by the owner in situations when the vehicle is a rental or when there is insurance involved. We have begun to hear there are some issues with that. We are going to have to update our policies to try and address those concerns. Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you. The complaint came across to numerous Councilmembers about certain tow truck companies getting all the calls and April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 39 having the scanners telling them to show up at the accident scene. We just want to be able to be fair with our business practices and not have chaos going on with somebody getting a call and another person showing up to the scene taking the vehicle. A much clearer standard operating procedure would be appreciated. Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Council Vice Chair Chock. Councilmember Chock: Thank you Chief for the narrative. It was very helpful in looking at your review this year. Just a follow-up, and this question might be for Assistant Chief Begley as well. I am looking at the specific line item for evidence towing. It was brought up by Councilmember Kuali`i. Is the evidence towing related to the towing of cars? There is a line-item budget of$76,500. Can you confirm if that is the towing of vehicles and the contracting of tow companies for the removal of these vehicles. That is under Other Services, which I believe was an increase. I am looking at page 106. Chief Raybuck: I am sorry, can you repeat the page number one more time? Councilmember Chock: Page 106. Chief Raybuck: Assistant Chief Begley, could you answer this question. It looks like it is in the Administrative & Technical Bureau (A&T). Assistant Chief Begley: The Kaua`i Police Department has three (3) different contracts for the towing of vehicles. The evidence towing contract and single tow contractor is responsible for managing evidence tows and that is a separate contract from the abandoned/derelict vehicles managed by the Patrol Services Bureau. Councilmember Chock: Do we know how many tows they administer for us? Is there only one (1) contractor for evidence towing? Assistant Chief Begley: I would have to refer you to the Administrative & Technical Bureau for those numbers. Councilmember Chock: No problem, we will follow up on that. Chief Raybuck: I see Assistant Chief Ke is on to give you the numbers or to respond in writing. Councilmember Chock: In hearing Councilmember DeCosta's questions about what it is we are being subject to in terms of towing, I want to get a sense of what the need is and how we are spending our budget. ELLIOTT K. KE, Assistant Chief, Administrative & Technical Bureau: Good morning. I would have to do some research and get that information to you in writing. I do not have that information available to me at this time. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 40 Councilmember Chock: Not a problem. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Cowden. Councilmember Cowden: I have some basic questions. It looks like the way your budget is set up, you have all your salaries under Chiefs Office. Is that correct? Unlike how the Fire Department separates it out, you have all your positions under the Chiefs Office and then the expenses are separated for the Patrol, Investigative Services, and Administrative & Technical Bureaus? Is that correct? Chief Raybuck: Yes, that is accurate. Councilmember Cowden: We had a couple of presentations from you that showed the time trend. Would you say crime has been down substantially during the last year with COVID-19? Do you anticipate it going up now that we are anticipating more visitors,perhaps? I am curious if not having the visitors here impacted your demand. I know you had a different type of demand with COVID-19. Are you seeing a trend? Chief Raybuck: I can respond to you in writing with a specific breakdown of where we are with crime based on preliminary numbers. I do not have those in front of me right now. I can tell you from my recollection and anecdotally, that yes, crime did decrease during COVID-19. There are a variety of reasons why that may have occurred, and one is obviously a reduction in tourists, which is a reduction in population. Particularly this is a portion of the population that is vulnerable because they leave valuables in their vehicles and become victims of opportunity. When that population base is removed, you will see a reduction in crime in that regard. Several studies have identified that during unemployment times, when unemployment goes up and more people are at home, it is much more difficult to become a victim of crime in your home and it is more difficult to steal from someone when they are at home. You can see that there are different variables of why crime may have been reduced during COVID-19. We saw a dramatic decrease in the number of reported crimes across-the-board, of both violent crimes and property crimes. It may be any of those variables in play or all of those variables in play on why crime was reduced. During COVID-19, we continued to see, as we had in years past, an increase in calls for service...49,000 calls for service this year, which was also an increase over last year, despite the reduction in the tourist population. Councilmember Cowden: That is what I was really wanting to know. I thought you did a rather complete job on your synopsis. I do not have very many questions. I would think that we would have less costs when we have less crime, but it is just holding a baseline of service. I want to congratulate you for finally...it looks like this summer we will have all vacancies filled. I think we had many vacancies throughout the time that I have had this job. You are getting there. That is good and that was your goal. Good job on that. Chief Raybuck: Thank you. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 41 Councilmember Cowden: For the 4/10 schedule, when do you think that is going to go into play? Chief Raybuck: That is a moving target. I had hoped for it to be in place sooner rather than later, but based upon trying to squeeze out personnel, and use their services to continue to coordinate, it has taken a little longer than anticipated. I hope that we will get this 4/10 schedule and we are still working on the particulars of the staffing. There are a lot of moving parts that change depending on our Department's priorities and staffing. We are still going back to the drawing table to try and figure out a way to do that, as I think I may have mentioned to you...the 4/10 schedule would allow us to increase training and special projects time while on-duty rather than canceling days off and paying overtime. Hopefully we will get that done within the first or second quarter of the fiscal year. Councilmember Cowden: So, this budget for next year anticipates that u yet? halfway rou thh...or is it based on not havingthe 4/10 schedule g Chief Raybuck: I do not anticipate that implementing the 4/10 schedule will create a dramatic difference in our budget. As you know, for unfortunately many years, we had to rely on unpaid salaries to help supplement some of our overages. This would just allow us to continue to do some of the things we had to pay via other ways. I do not anticipate initially any difference. We will not know until it is implemented whether it will lead to a reduction in our budget. Councilmember Cowden: That is the clarification I needed. Before, we were using unpaid salaries to pay for the overtime for those situations. Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Kuali`i. Councilmember Kuali`i: Regarding vacancies, I know in the opening narrative, you had said that you continue to focus on filling all of your vacancies. Starting on page 91, Position E-23, Deputy Chief of Police. It has been vacant for quite a while. The HR Vacancy Report says, "Continuous review for promotional consideration." When do you anticipate filling that position, or have you already? Chief Raybuck: I submitted a memorandum on March 30th regarding the Captain and Deputy Chief of Police positions that outlines the recruiting efforts and opportunities. As I mentioned in the memorandum, I was unsuccessful at filling that position. However, I anticipate doing so and my goal would be to fill that position in the first quarter of 2021. Councilmember Kuali`i: The first quarter could be as early as July 1st or as late as the end of the quarter, correct? Chief Raybuck: That is correct. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 42 Councilmember Kuali`i: The other position is Position 446, Police Captain. Similar position with the same comment regarding promotional consideration. What is the plan for that position? Chief Raybuck: That position was vacated on August 1, 2020 due to a promotion. It is currently assigned to the Chiefs Office and part of the reorganization plan that hit a pause due to COVID-19. The goal is to move that into the Patrol Services Bureau providing two (2) Captains for responsibilities in that Bureau. The current promotional process is ongoing for Sergeant to Lieutenant. I anticipate that as soon as we can complete that promotional process, we wilLbegin implementing the recruitment for the Captain's promotional process. I anticipate if that promotional process does not take longer than anticipated, being able to fill that within the first quarter of the fiscal year. Councilmember Kuali`i: For the other positions, I will just group them all together. There are three (3)Police Lieutenants, five (5) Police Sergeants, two (2)Detectives, and two (2) Police Officers. When you talk about the fourteen (14) job offers, with three (3) being accepted, are those into positions that are listed in this budget? I only see two(2)police officer positions vacant, and of course this is as of March 15th. Is it safe to assume that all the upward movement is happening when you promote to the higher position and then the lower positions open? Are you anticipating all those new recruits going into police officer positions that are not necessarily shown as vacant right now? Chief Raybuck: That is correct. When I took office in April of 2019, there were approximately twenty-five (25) or so vacancies in the Department. They were all carried in the Patrol Services Bureau, meaning that we were more than twenty (20) persons short in the Patrol Services Bureau. We did a promotion shortly after my arrival for two (2) Lieutenants and two(2)Sergeants. We have not done any promotions between now and then. As you know, and as you referenced already, every promotion upward creates a vacancy downward. The focus has been on filling the Patrol ranks. That is where we get a majority of our canceled days off. I think I may have presented previously in the Matrix Report that we dropped roughly 162 canceled days off a month down to under 60 based upon filling those staffing needs. With that also comes a reduction in overtime and an increase in morale and officer wellness, because they actually get their days off. Fortunately, because of the strong efforts in our recruiting, background checks, and all of the personnel items that we have worked so hard at between HR and KPD to fill the vacancies, I see a light at the end of the tunnel. We are currently in the Sergeant and Lieutenant promotional process and will begin the recruits in the July recruit class. Those promotions will be dependent upon how many we can put into the recruit class. Once we do the promotions, it is important to remember that if we hired all fourteen (14) vacancies today, they do not actually hit the street for approximately 12-15 months. We do not see those boots on the ground serving our community face-to-face until they complete their training. The promotions have to be balanced with the police officers that are actually in the streets. Councilmember Kuali`i: We just finished the Fire Department's review, and they had a position that had the name"Trainee"in it. In essence, you have regular police April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 43 officers who are on the streets and then you have police officers who are in training for 12-15 months, correct? Chief Raybuck: The others involved in training are actually on the side of a position number. They are considered Police Services Officers. They do not have a specific recruit number. It would be filled under a position number for a Police Officer I. Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay, so it is broken down that way. Chief Raybuck: Correct. Councilmember Kuali`i: Considering all of the different promotions and all of the movements, do you expect to have all of this done within this fiscal year? Will you have everyone in their positions, including Lieutenants and down, by July 1st? Chief Raybuck: I think we have a lot of work to get there by July Pt, but that is the goal. Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember DeCosta: Chief, I am going to follow up on the question regarding the Deputy Chief of Police. That position has been vacant now for over a year, is that correct? Chief Raybuck: Yes. Councilmember DeCosta: Besides the Fire Department, you operate one of the largest budgets. I am a little worried that you might need some help. When do you think you will be looking to fill that position? Do we have any qualified candidates? Chief Raybuck: The Deputy Chief of Police position has been vacant since July of 2019. That was vacated by a retirement. For approximately six (6) months or so, I did have an Assistant Chief who was in the office with me, assisting me with some of those duties. I have continuously considered and looked at filling that position. The Deputy Chief of Police is a critical position in my Department and one I wish to fill. I plan on filling that within the first quarter. As you may know, that position is not by application. It is an appointed position that I select. That person has to be a person who is in support of me and my agenda in moving forward the programs that fit within our goals and objectives that I set forth in the Department. I continuously look at that and I am confident that I will get that filled in the first quarter. Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you very much. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kauai Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 44 Committee Chair Kaneshiro: We are most likely not going to be able to get through this Department before lunch. We will take a few more questions up until 12:30 p.m. and then take a one (1) hour lunch break. Are there any further questions? Councilmember Evslin. Councilmember Evslin: Thank you for a very good synopsis. Your Department consistently puts out a great summary, which is really helpful. For the Grant-In-Aid item, could you explain a little about where that went this last year? Chief Raybuck: The Grant-In-Aid amount was $499,000, I believe. That funding in the last budget came by way of a conversation I had with the Managing Director about looking at perhaps trying to utilize those funds to reduce the need for KPD officers to respond to specific incidents, particularly those where there are social service issues such as mental health, houselessness, and those types of issues. I think it was a great and novel idea, and one we looked at trying to implement. However, as with many things, COVID-19 distracted much of our attention to that issue. We wanted to utilize the funds for that purpose and intended to reach those people with social service needs. I and KPD discussed this with Adam Roversi and the Housing Agency as to how we could utilize those funds and be able to support our houseless community and those most affected by COVID-19. Working with Adam Roversi, we are identifying nonprofit organizations that will assist in providing temporary housing or rental assistance to houseless communities as we continue to move through this pandemic. In the next budget cycle, we did not request those funds again, and I am not quite sure if the Office of the Mayor will be looking to utilize those funds again through the Housing Agency or through another method. We have not been able to utilize those funds here at KPD. We did not request them again. Councilmember Evslin: Thank you for the update. I think that is a good example of how we put so much on your plate, including social services, and it is good to figure out ways to ensure that others can manage those potential problems. Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: We are exactly at 12:30 p.m. We will take a one (1) hour lunch break and be back at 1:30 p.m. to continue with KPD's budget. There being no objections, the Committee recessed at 12:30 p.m. The meeting was called back to order at 1:45 p.m., and proceeded as follows: Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Welcome back. We are on the Kauai Police Department. We are in the Chiefs Office division. Are there any additional questions? We went through a lot of the vacant positions. The write-up highlighted many of the variances throughout the budget, along with explanations. If there are no additional questions, we can move to the Administrative & Technical Bureau. Councilmember Kuali`i. Councilmember Kuali`i: On page 111, at the very bottom, the Public Safety line item, it went from $1 last fiscal year to $54,000 this fiscal year. Can you tell us what the new subsidized vehicle lights/radio is for? April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 45 Chief Raybuck: Let me refer here to my notes. Speaking from answer thisquestion if he would like to jumpin. memo ...Assistant Chief Ke can memory ...Assistant Chief Ke: This particular line item here is specifically for lights and radios for subsidized vehicles. In the past, we never had a line item for this equipment. We decided to add it in so that moving forward we can track these expenses. We have a certain amount of vacancies in our subsidized vehicle program, so we are trying to be prepared for outfitting those vehicles as they come forward. Councilmember Kuali`i: What is a subsidized vehicle again? Chief Raybuck: The subsidized vehicle program allows us to afford certain individuals in the Department, primarily Sergeants, Detectives, and above, to opt into the subsidized vehicle program. The program is described in the collective bargaining agreement and allows us to provide a vehicle...sorry, let me step back. We do not provide the vehicle. It allows us to provide an allowance to the employees for them to purchase their own vehicle. That allowance varies from $562 for those who are in certain assignments to $600 to those who are outside of those assignments. We currently have forty (40) authorized subsidized vehicles, of which thirty-two (32) are filled. We have eight (8) vacant subsidized vehicles currently available. The installation, vehicle lights, and radio installation is right about $2,500 a vehicle. That would give us right around $20,000 to purchase the equipment alone, but that does not include the cost for replacing vehicles or equipment for those vehicles that are cycled out due to the life span. That is where that dollar amount comes from. Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Cowden. Councilmember Cowden: Regarding the lights, I remember last year we blew out some of our blue lights when we left them on. Did all of that get fixed? Chief Raybuck: Yes. It was a struggle to get those fixed because of COVID-19. The vendor that we solicited the services from was able to come over and fix the lights that had problems. We have not seen any additional problems since that time. Councilmember Cowden: Okay. So all our cars are functioning now with no outages? Everything is behind us? Okay. Chief Raybuck: That is correct. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are the officers still keeping their lights on 24/7? Or are they turning them off and only keeping them on at certain times? I know that was he keeping them on all the time. the reason a lot of the lights were going out, because t y were p g April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 46 Chief Raybuck: The order still remains the same that the officers are to have their blue lights on in cruise mode, meaning going from a general call for service or when they are available for a call. There are particular reasons why the officers would not have their blue lights on. This could be when they are doing traffic enforcement, though the public would want them to have it on, and it is much to the chagrin of the people who get tickets. That being said, I do witness many officers with their lights on as it deters people from speeding as well. If they are going to and from work or are off-duty or on assignment, they also have the option to turn those off. Predominantly, they should be on. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you. Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember DeCosta: Regarding the $500 to $600 allowance, is that per month on each vehicle? Chief Raybuck: Yes. The employee gets $562 to $600 per month for the vehicle. They are required to come up with the upfront purchasing costs, as well as carrying the full insurance coverage. The County pays for liability coverage. They are responsible for all of the p maintenance and equipment repairs, including the replacement of the vehicle. What that allows us to do is not have to purchase those vehicles upfront. If we had to purchase those forty (40) vehicles and rotate them out, that would be rather costly. This kind of gives us a break from that with those forty (40) vehicles. It puts the financial responsibility primarily on those individuals for that purchase and replacement rather than on us. Councilmember DeCosta: How long is this monthly cost incurred? Is it over the life of the vehicle? If the officer owns a vehicle for five (5)years or seven (7)years, or even up to ten (10) years, do we continue to pay them that premium price? Or do we only pay it to them until the vehicle is paid off? How does that work? Chief Raybuck: Per the collective bargaining agreement, the payment is paid per month. That does not just pay for the cost of the vehicle. It is meant to pay for the maintenance, the upkeep, repairs, maintenance costs, replacement of tires, et cetera, and that continues while the employee is a participant in the program until they opt out. If they opt out, it goes away. The vehicles are currently authorized to remain in-service for eight (8) years initially and if they get a qualified mechanic to sign-off, they can get two (2) one-year extensions. Over the course of ten years, if my math is correct, that would be an average of$72,000 in payments. To put that into perspective, we paid about $72,000 for a fully equipped Ford Explorer. That is so you can see just where the cost is on that as far as a cost comparison. If we paid for the vehicle, we would also be responsible for the maintenance, upkeep, and repair costs. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any questions from the Members? If not, we can move to the Investigative Services Bureau. Councilmember Cowden. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 47 Councilmember Cowden: Regarding the autopsies and body storage, how many people is that typically for as it relates to the $270,000? Chief Raybuck: It really depends and I will tell you why it depends. Some persons remain in storage hopefully less than seven (7) days, so it does not cost us anything. However, unfortunately with Kaua`i being a tourist destination and being a destination where we have people who live here without extended family members, it may be longer. During the course of the investigation or with circumstances surrounding the decedent's death, those storage costs are increased. I cannot give you a specific dollar amount per person. It really varies depending on a lot of different factors. Councilmember Cowden: Do we contract out with the hospital or with a mortuary? We do not store them at the police department, right? Chief Raybuck: Fortunately, we have an agreement with Wilcox Hospital. They handle the storage for us and we have a contract with them where we pay for storage fees. It is incremental depending on how many days that person is in storage. It goes up slightly with each increment. That is factored into the cost. It is based on the number of decedents we have annually, as well as the average length of stay. Councilmember Cowden: As far as the coroner, is that under contract as well? Who is the coroner that does the autopsies? Chief Raybuck: I am the coroner. Fortunately, I am not responsible for the autopsies. We have a contract for a medical examiner from O`ahu who flies over to conduct those autopsies. Councilmember Cowden: You are the one who is in there who decides what had happened to the person? Chief Raybuck: No, fortunately, I am not. I have my detectives who are considered deputy coroners, so they are the ones who respond and conduct the investigation alongside with the medical examiner. Councilmember Cowden: Thank you. I probably should have known that, but did not. Thank you. Chief Raybuck: If it makes you feel any better, I found out that I was the coroner after I took the job. I found out during lunch when I asked if the coroner made death notifications, so you are not alone in not knowing that. Councilmember Cowden: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any other questions for the Investigative Services Bureau? If not, we will move on to Patrol. Councilmember Kuali`i. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 48 Councilmember Kuali`i: On page 119, under Other Services. This might relate to the question that Council Vice Chair Chock asked earlier about the evidence tows. There are two (2) line items. Abandoned vehicle tows for $125,000 and derelict vehicle tows for$135,000. I am guessing this is similar amounts from prior years. Have we over-expended where we do not have enough money in these line items and if so, where are you getting the additional moneys from? It would be good to see how it has been working over maybe two (2) or three (3) years. Chief Raybuck: Yes, the $300,000 to $400,000 figure included the labor costs associated with the abandoned and derelict vehicles, as well as the actual hard costs of the towing. I am going to ask Assistant Chief Begley to opine. He is the Assistant Chief responsible, wrote the contracts for both of these items, and will know how to better answer your question. Assistant Chief Begley: I am not sure I fully understand your question regarding those funding amounts. Councilmember Kuali`i: For these dollar amounts, abandoned and derelict vehicles, what are we paying for? How many tows are we getting? Are we having to pay more than that because we have a greater need? If so, how are we paying for it? Assistant Chief Begley: Those amounts are for the actual tows. For instance, under the $125,000 line item for abandoned vehicles, that supplies our contract to have a designated tow contractor respond and tow the vehicles to the Puhi Metals Recycling facility. It varies anywhere from $70 to $170 to tow those vehicles from their location on the island to Puhi Metals. The derelict vehicle line item of $135,000, those are for derelict vehicles at various geographic locations around the island. Depending on where they are, the costs vary. For derelict vehicles the amount varies from approximately $200 to $300 per tow to get it from its location to Puhi Metals. Councilmember Kuali`i: If we tow less...it is a per item tow? It is not like a contract where they are available to us and do whatever tows we need for a fixed price? Assistant Chief Begley: Generally, that is correct. Councilmember Kuali`i: Maybe it might be good to see the last couple of years of expenditures that have been paid for each of those line items so if you could provide that later. Assistant Chief Begley: Sure, we can do that. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember DeCosta: I did a little of the math here and if we run an average of between $70 and $170, the $110 average cost of a vehicle to be towed on the April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 49 abandoned or derelict side, that equates to approximately 1,250 vehicles on the abandoned vehicle side and about 1,350 on the derelict vehicle side. Is the contract a lump sum contract that the towing company gets no matter if they tow 300 vehicles or the full 1,200 vehicles? Assistant Chief Begley: No, we try to estimate at the beginning of the fiscal year how much money we are going to spend on abandoned and derelict vehicles. The amount that we request from the Council determines how we write the contract with the tow companies. We estimate the number of vehicles at that time that we anticipate the tow company to tow over the year. For instance, we budgeted $125,000 anticipating that we will need that money for abandoned vehicles. When we go out to bid for the abandoned vehicle tow contract, we estimate how many vehicles in each zone based on our prior year's work. It is based on how many vehicles in each zone we believe will need to be towed and the contractors will bid on that number of tows. For instance, the individual number for the winning bidder might be $100,000 instead of$125,000. We have never failed to go over that number of vehicles that they bid on. Every year that I am aware of, we always had more vehicles that need to be towed than were in the contract. We always had to add money to the contract to make sure that we have those services readily available to tow the greater number of cars than were anticipated. Fortunately, so far, we have budgeted enough money in our budget to cover that overage so we do not run out of money. Councilmember DeCosta: That is the question that I was asking. For these tow companies, they have a set amount of vehicles that they will tow when they submit a bid, or for the $125,000, if there is an excess amount of twenty-five (25) vehicles over on the projected side, do they still have to tow those twenty-five (25) vehicles, or do we have to pay an extra amount? Assistant Chief Begley: They tow for the same amount of money that they were originally contracted to tow vehicles for. Each of the contracts varies. Councilmember DeCosta: For abandoned vehicles, if it is on the side of a County road, it is considered abandoned and we are responsible for removing it, is that correct? Assistant Chief Begley: That is correct. Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Carvalho. Councilmember Carvalho: Regarding training, could you provide an overview on that? What does that entail for that specific service? This is on page 301. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: That is under the Criminal Assets Forfeiture Fund. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kauai Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 50 Chief Raybuck: Part of our training budget has been decreased and this year, we not only looked at moving additional moneys into that training area from Criminal Assets Forfeiture Fund, but being that we are a neighbor island, there is often training that we cannot anticipate and get invited to join from other counties. What they will do is offer training opportunities to other county agencies that we have not budgeted so we want to be prepared for that. Since so much of our training was canceled in 2021 and in 2020 due to COVID-19,we anticipate seeing an increase in training opportunities. We added additional funds into the Criminal Assets Forfeiture side of the house that we could not budget for in the General Fund. When other counties have that availability for us and offer those training opportunities,we can provide that training to our officers through that means. Councilmember Carvalho: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Kuali`i. Councilmember Kuali`i: The very next item, Other Services, it is going from $25,000 to $45,000. The explanation is related to undercover operations surveillance, use of other county's undercover officers, et cetera. Can you explain that a little further and explain why it has almost doubled? How does that relate to other counties? Is this in conjunction with us going to other counties and for them to come here? Is it related to training? Chief Raybuck: The undercover operations surveillance room in the past...some of those costs were covered through Federal grant moneys to help us with the funding to run the surveillance room and undercover operations. However, we also have to anticipate that we may have investigations that are not in cooperation with Federal agencies. When we co-op an investigation with a Federal agency, they typically pay for the expenses for surveillance and undercover operations. If we do not co-op with the Federal agencies, we are responsible for that fiscally. This is anticipating that we may need those funds for investigations that come up that we do not have the Federal funding to support. Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any further questions for Police? Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember DeCosta: Assistant Chief Begley, on page 120, there is a small amount of$2,000. It says that it is for advertisements for abandoned vehicle postings. Is that for the vehicle abandoned on the side of the road or is that to post for the bidding of the company that is going to get the contract for removing the abandoned vehicle? Assistant Chief Begley: We are required by State law anytime we post or seize a vehicle as abandoned to not only send a notarized letter to the last known address of the registered owner of that abandoned vehicle, but we are also required to post an April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Review's Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 51 advertisement in the local newspaper listing the vehicle as abandoned and giving directions to recover that vehicle before we can destroy it. Councilmember DeCosta: For your derelict and abandoned vehicle bidding process, do you open that up to the community? Assistant Chief Begley: That is correct. We just strengthened the wording in our abandoned vehicle contract requirements and that contract was recently filled. We anticipate doing the same thing for our derelict vehicles. That is advertised by the Purchasing Division so the public can see those. Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you for the explanation. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any final questions for the Police Department? If not, we will move on to the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney. Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Justin, please provide a brief overview of your budget, then we will finish with asking questions. JUSTIN F. KOLLAR, Prosecuting Attorney (via remote technology): Thank you again for your work during this challenging and interesting time for the County of Kaua`i. This is my ninth year coming before you to do my budget presentation. Time certainly flies. As you can see from our budget submission this year, we are requesting essentially a level budget. It does not mean that nothing has changed about the budget itself. I think we have highlighted the few changes that we have and we are doing everything we can to maintain our current level of services without adding to the County's burden on the budget. We had several grants expire and some funding that we count on that we received from the State every year has gone away due to the State's COVID-19 budgetary problems. We have stepped up and we are trying to do our part by leaving some of our clerical positions open and shifting that funding to support existing employees who were on grants that were either expiring or going away. We were very fortunate when the pandemic hit that we had invested in some technology resources in the years leading up to the pandemic. I want to credit our retired Administrative Services Officer, Art Williams, as well as our extremely amazing current Administrative Services Officer, Yvette Sahut for helping shepherd us through that process over the last thirteen (13) or fourteen (14) months. When the pandemic hit, we were able to transition seamlessly to an online and remote work environment while maintaining our schedules of in-person court appearances, along with the work that we do with the community, the public, investigative services, and making sure our clerks were still coming to the office during the pandemic. We made sure everyone was getting the support that they needed while we were running on a skeleton crew in the office. I am very proud of our team and very proud of what they managed to accomplish over the last year under very difficult and challenging circumstances. I want to commend our attorney team, First Deputy Jennifer Winn, Second Deputy Becky Like,Victim Witness Services Director Diana Gausepohl-White, April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kauai Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 52 and everyone on that team who really came together over the last year to keep things moving while we were in a largely remote work environment. I am happy to entertain any specific questions you may have regarding our budget. As I mentioned, it is pretty level. We are looking at a less than 1% increase this year. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember DeCosta: I noticed in your explanation on the third page that for Position 2830, Special Investigator, you moved that to an hourly account. Is that a position we took out of Regular Salaries and made it hourly? Mr. Kollar: Yes. Councilmember DeCosta: What is the explanation for that? Are we planning on saving the County money? Is this person putting in a number of hours more than what we pay the salary for? Can you explain? Mr. Kollar: Yvette can jump in if I am wrong about this, but essentially, we are able to put that employee on an hourly basis because that is what works best for them in their employment situation. That is just saving the County on the fringe benefits costs and allows us to pay the employee a little bit more on an hourly basis since we are not paying for the fringe costs. That is all that is. Councilmember DeCosta: Is that person like a private contractor? Mr. Kollar: No, they are still a County employee. They are just an employee that is basically on a contract. They are an appointed employee. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: In the past, was that position funded by another source? Is that a position that we just turned in a grant for? Mr. Kollar: We are hoping that we will receive funding from that grant application that could conceivably be used for this position. We do not know and we will not know for a while whether we are going to get that money or not. It is a competitive process that we have to go through. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you. Are there any further questions? Councilmember Cowden. Councilmember Cowden: I really like the way you laid out your presentation, especially when you are describing the dollar-funded positions. I see you are short some of your clerk positions. We all know how much value staff has. In the past, you have been pretty good at getting grants for a lot of these different positions. Where are you getting the grants from? Are you trying to get grants? Are those Federal grants for the clerk positions? April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 53 Mr. Kollar: Some of the grant moneys we are applying for right now. Those are primarily Federal in nature, although they are administered locally by the State Office of the Attorney General. The Attorney General is designated as the grant administrator for the State of Hawaii. The funds may originate from the Federal Government via the Department of Justice, but come to us through the State. So, yes, our clerks have sacrificed and worked really hard to keep operations going over the last year. It has been difficult for them to operate on a short-staffed basis. We have been able to achieve some efficiencies by making better use of technology. Again, these clerks are working very hard and have high-pressure jobs. They primarily start at 6:00 or 6:30 a.m. and look at the cellblock coordinating with core staff on getting them to court and out of cellblock in an efficient manner. I really have to say that they are some of the most valuable people that we work with both inside and outside of the office with the way they keep things working. We are going to need to fill those positions at some point. This is what we have to do to keep the bodies that we actually have in the office. This is what we have to do to keep salaries and expenses covered for them. That is what they have to do. Councilmember Cowden: We have the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act coming out of the Biden Administration. Perhaps there will be moneys in there? I think that is the next round of funding. Mr. Kollar: That would be great. I know the Department of Justice is still working on filling a couple of their key positions and some of their Senate-confirmed positions. We do not have a great sense yet of whether we are going to see available revenue streams from the Department of Justice beyond what currently exists. I will note that Congress finally re-authorized the Stop Violence Against Women Act which we depend on for a lot of our funding to fight domestic violence. They have also made available the Victims of Crime Act funding to keep those revenue streams coming to the states and counties. The local jurisdictions depend on them. I am cautiously optimistic based on what I see coming out of Washington D.C. and of course, we communicate with our legislators regularly at the State and Federal levels. I would say I am cautiously optimistic. Maybe we can look at filling those vacant positions later in the year once we know that additional funding is going to be coming in. Councilmember Cowden: Thank you. I just recognized how important having things organized is for constituents going through the process. Mr. Kollar: Absolutely. Councilmember Cowden: And the trauma if someone is adjudicated,both for the safety of the community and fairness to anybody that is in the adjudication process. Mr. Kollar: We run a people-centered process. Our vision of seeking justice largely centers on getting outcomes that benefit public safety, but also ensuring that we are not retraumatizing people who have already been through very April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kaua`i Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 54 traumatic events. For my staff, one of our core ethical values is that we treat everyone involved in the process as if they were our friend or family member going through the process. We treat people with respect and with human dignity, whether it is someone accused of a crime, or someone who has been a victim or witness to a crime. It could be a defense lawyer, a judge, sheriff, or whatever the case may be. We treat everyone with respect, because that process, people going through criminal involvement with the criminal legal system, is perhaps one of the most difficult events in their lives. We want to recognize that, appreciate that, and give that the value it deserves. Councilmember Cowden: Thank you. I recognize the importance of the whole team, including the clerks. Mr. Kollar: Absolutely. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Evslin. Councilmember Evslin: Thank you for your presentation. Regarding the American Rescue Plan, at a quick glance, you are among the hardest hit of any County department due to State budget cuts. You are especially hard hit because of State-mandated positions, which they are then cutting funding for. Do you anticipate, with the American Rescue Plan, not necessarily funding coming through the Federal Government to the County for these positions, but with the State being able to refill their coffers and changing their position to fund these positions going forward? Obviously, that is speculation. Mr. Kollar: Hope springs eternal and we will see what happens at the State level. They are going through their budget process and we have been scrambling to deal with different situations happening over there. We were able to get the Senate to put funding back for the Crime Victim Compensation Commission, something they zeroed out in their initial proposal. I do not know if they are seeing things that are giving them cause for optimism as well, but we are hopeful that as the State patches some of the pukas that they will be able to restore some of the program funding that we depend on. We have received funding under the Career Criminal Prosecution Program for decades, and while it has been steadily decreasing over the years, this is the first time that it has been zeroed out in its entirety. As you mentioned, we are required by State law to have a Career Criminal Prosecuting Program and the State is required to administer funding for that program, but they have chosen to not prioritize that funding so far in this session. We work closely with our State representatives and we appreciate their support. We are very hopeful that as the State's financial picture hopefully improves, in a sustained way,that that funding will come back, because we really do need it. Councilmember Evslin: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any other questions? Councilmember Kuali`i. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kaua`i Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kauai Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 55 Councilmember Kuali`i: Following up on the question and discussion we had earlier on the Wages and Hourly Pay item...for Position 2030, that is the position with the $81,598 and there are two (2) other Special Investigator Positions 9111 and 9113 with the same title, but with salaries of$28,579. Are those used for 89-day hires now? Mr. Kollar: Those positions are currently filled by 89-day hires. One works two (2) days a week and the other works three (3) days a week. They are essentially splitting what used to be a full-time position. We came before the Council probably seven (7) or eight (8) years ago to ask for that position to be split into two (2) half- time positions and those two (2) incumbents are still in those positions. They are part-time and are both retired KPD detectives who work for us as investigators. Councilmember Kuali`i: For Position 2830, Investigator, that was covered by the Crime Prevention Justice Division grant that ended in September? Mr. Kollar: Yes. Councilmember Kuali`i: From September until now, were you covering it with funds transferred from somewhere else? Are you applying for this grant again? Mr. Kollar: It is from the same pool of grant funds. What we are asking for out of that pool of grant funds is described a little bit differently, just because of the way the program changes over the years. It is the same pool of money. Councilmember Kuali`i: So that is all coming from the Federal Government to the State and from the State to us? Mr. Kollar: Correct. Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember DeCosta. Councilmember DeCosta: We are very concerned here with overtime. I know this is only for one position, but with the Hourly Wages account,who manages this employee's overtime? Or is this employee contracted to work just forty (40) hours a week and there is no overtime so they could earn a higher hourly wage per hour? Or do they have the ability to collect overtime depending on the case load and investigation time needed? Mr. Kollar: That particular employee falls under me and I am the supervisor. Any overtime that happens in the office has to be authorized by me. As you will notice in our operational highlights from FY 2021, we have reduced overtime significantly over the years. While there may be occasional overtime required of that employee or of other employees, we take every step to minimize that and we have reduced it from prior fiscal years. April 5, 2021 Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Departmental Budget Reviews Kauai Fire Department, Kaua`i Emergency Management Agency, Kauai Police Department, and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney Page 56 Councilmember DeCosta: That you for being so cognizant of that situation. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any additional questions from the Members? If not, thank you Justin. Mr. Kollar: Thank you all. Committee Chair Kaneshiro: I would like to recess the Departmental Budget Reviews. We will reconvene at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, April 6, 2021, where we will hear from the Department of Finance, Office of Economic Development, and Planning Department. There being no objections, the meeting recessed at 2:31 p.m.