HomeMy WebLinkAbout02/10/2021 Council minutes COUNCIL MEETING
FEBRUARY 10, 2021
The Council Meeting of the Council of the County of Kauai was called to order
by Council Chair Arryl Kaneshiro at the Council Chambers, 4396 Rice Street,
Suite 201, Lihu`e, Kaua`i, on Wednesday, February 10, 2021 at 8:31 a.m., after which
the following Members answered the call of the roll:
Honorable Bernard P. Carvalho, Jr.
Honorable Mason K. Chock
Honorable Felicia Cowden
Honorable Bill DeCosta
Honorable Luke A. Evslin (via remote technology)
Honorable KipuKai Kuali`i
Honorable Arryl Kaneshiro
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Good morning. Today's meetings will be
conducted pursuant to Governor Ige's Supplementary Emergency Proclamations with
the most recent relating to the Sunshine Law being his Seventeenth Supplementary
Emergency Proclamation dated December 16, 2020. Today for our agenda, we have
registered speakers, so we will take that at the beginning.
APPROVAL OF AGENDA.
Councilmember Kuali`i moved for approval of the agenda, as circulated,
seconded by Councilmember Cowden.
(No written testimony was received and no registered speakers requested to
testify regarding this agenda item.)
The motion for approval of the agenda, as circulated, was then put, and
unanimously carried.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: The motion is carried. Next item.
MINUTES of the following meetings of the Council:
January 21, 2021 Special Council Meeting
January 27, 2021 Council Meeting
Councilmember Kuali`i moved to approve the Minutes, as circulated, seconded
by Councilmember Cowden.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any questions or is there any
discussion on this item from the Members?
COUNCIL MEETING 2 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
(No written testimony was received and no registered speakers requested to
testify regarding these agenda items.)
The motion to approve the Minutes, as circulated, was then put, and
unanimously carried.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Next item.
CONSENT CALENDAR:
C 2021-35 Communication (01/07/2021) from the Director of Finance,
transmitting for Council information, the Second Quarter Statement of Equipment
Purchases for Fiscal Year 2020-2021, pursuant to Section 17 of Ordinance
No. B-2020-866, relating to the Operating Budget of the County of Kaua`i for Fiscal
Year 2020-2021.
Councilmember Kuali`i moved to receive C 2021-35 for the record, seconded by
Councilmember DeCosta.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any questions or is there any
discussion from the Members?
(No written testimony was received and no registered speakers requested to
testify regarding this agenda item.)
The motion to receive C 2021-35 for the record was then put, and unanimously
carried.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Clerk, let us go to page 2, bills for second
reading, Bill No. 1993, Draft 1 and we will take public testimony.
There being no objections, Bill No. 1993, Draft 1 was taken out of order.
BILLS FOR SECOND READING:
Bill No. 1993, Draft 1 – A BILL FOR AN ORDINANCE TO AMEND
CHAPTER 9, KAUAI COUNTY CODE 1987, RELATING TO PUBLIC
ACCESS-WAYS
Councilmember Kuali`i moved to receive Bill No. 1993, Draft 1 for the record,
seconded by Councilmember DeCosta.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: We have received some written testimony and
we have three (3) speakers today for public testimony. We are going to start with
Elizabeth. You have a total of six (6) minutes for your testimony. If you can see the
light that will show up—it will turn green when you start, yellow when there is
thirty (30) seconds left, and red when your six (6) minutes are up, if you need the full
COUNCIL MEETING 3 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
six (6) minutes. Just state your name for the record and you may begin your
testimony.
There being no objections, the rules were suspended to take public testimony.
ELIZABETH OKINAKA (via remote technology): Okay. Aloha, my name is
Elizabeth Okinaka and I wanted to provide input on Bill No. 1993. My input is that
the County is not putting in enough effort into community outreach. For instance, I
am here at a site that is set to be Kauanui 0 Koloa. There are burials and lava tubes,
and I have been trying for weeks to contact anyone to stop this. How can the
community have input when are calls are not answered? Even setting up testimony
for this was hard. The County keeps approving these developments with
culturally-significant sites despite public outcry. Just like this, it is set to have two
hundred eighty (280) units with no local housing. The Environmental Impact
Statement (EIS) is from 1976 and permits from 2008. In January they had heavy
machinery that crushed old rock walls. This village has men, women, and children
buried in this village. Many of these developers use attorneys with connection to the
County such as Ian Jung who work for these wealthy LLCs. You have Jonathan Chun
who is a former County Attorney who is not helping these LLCs. We are losing access
to culturally-significant sites like this every day. What is the County of Kaua`i doing?
Companies like Koga, who have been here fined ten thousand dollars ($10,000) for
illegal grubbing and grading with no permits are still contracted by the County to do
their wastewater reclamation facility trench. Councilmember Kaneshiro with his
Grove Farm ties, and you have Councilmember Evslin whose father is selling land
with kuleana titles. Katherine Kealoha signed off on the EIS report for the
Koloa/Po`ipu reclamation facility and the Eric Knudsen Trust paid the County of
Kaua`i two million dollars ($2,000,000) in 1977. It is ugly and it is sad and so vividly
demonstrates how these developers take advantage of the system as the County of
Kaua`i looks the other way. Thank you for allowing me to give you folks my input.
Aloha.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you. Next up, we have Roslyn
Cummings, if she is on. No, she is not there. Next up, we have Shawn Villatora.
Shawn, you are on mute.
SHAWN VILLATORA: E kala mai ia`u. Aloha, '0 Shawn Villatora
ko`u inoa. My name is Shawn Villatora. I am a resident of Haiku Valley in the
ahupua a of Haiku in the moku of Puna on the island of Kaua`i. For me, I am going
to be providing input on Bill No. 1993. For me, as a community member as a
poaikanaka as a wahine kanka maoli and also a cultural practitioner, it was brought
up to me that this Bill was in plans of possibly being taken off. For me, I did not even
realize it was even a Bill for us to be able to access preserved historical sites. As a
cultural practitioner and continuing to learn every single day, I think that is a very
sad thing to hear that there is possibly a chance for us not being able to have our
input. It is not like we are being sought out to be able to be a part of whatever
development or plans are that the County has for certain areas. For instance, right
now I am at Alakoko (Alekoko) Fishpond and so graciously able to be a part of a
community that is so passionate about this aina, but another thing is that there are
so many historically significant sites that we cannot access. For instance, Haupu
COUNCIL MEETING 4 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
right behind me. Haupu has multiple heiau that we cannot access as cultural
practitioners due to large landowners like Rice, Grove Farm, and others on the other
side of Maha`ulepu. For me, it is just the whole process in itself letting us know that
we actually have a bill that we can use to protect us, because what we are trying to
do is not to...we are just trying to reconnect with our culture and continue to practice
it. If we are not able to understand that there are laws to protect us, because if I
decide to go to Haupu right now to pule and practice and offer my offerings to lo to
God at a heiau called Keolewa, I would be considered trespassing and that for me is
not pono. I just wanted to be able to testify saying there needs to be more community
education that we have bills/laws that protect us when we want to protect our culture
and perpetuate our culture. Why do we have to feel like whenever we decide to
practice, which we should be practicing every single day—that is how I feel as a
cultural practitioner—is that at least we know that we will be in pono, we will be in
righteousness doing what we need to do and be present, because as a spiritual
practitioner as well, that whole thing about our connection between our ancestors is
being in an actual place that they were in. I just wanted to make my testimony into
this Bill, because now that I know...I hope that you folks do not get rid of Bill
No. 1993, because this Bill will help me as a cultural practitioner to be able to access
my preserved cultural historic sites without feeling like I am going to be harassed for
practicing my culture. So mahalo nui for you folks listening and look at how beautiful
it is today in Alakoko (Alekoko) and Haupu.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Okay, thank you. You will be able to watch
the meeting on the webcast live if you want to stay on and watch the meeting. The
Bill will come up later in the meeting.
Ms. Villatora: Okay, is the link in the E-mail?
Council Chair Kaneshiro: If you go to "County of Kaua`i webcast," you
can click on the County Council tab and you will see the meeting and video there. It
will play a live video of our meeting right now.
Ms. Villatora: Thank you.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: With that, let us go to Communications.
Councilmember Cowden: Roslyn is not coming.
There being no further testimony, the meeting was called back to order and
proceeded as follows:
COMMUNICATIONS:
C 2021-36 Communication (01/22/2021) from Council Chair Kaneshiro,
requesting the presence of the Managing Director, Director of Finance, and
representatives from N&K CPAs, Inc., to discuss the Comprehensive Annual Financial
COUNCIL MEETING 5 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Report (CAFR), Single Audit Reports, and Management Advisory Report for the Fiscal
Year Ended June 30, 2020.
Councilmember Kuali`i moved to receive C 2021-36 for the record, seconded by
Councilmember Cowden.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: I will suspend the rules. There will be a
presentation by N&K CPAs, Inc.
There being no objections, the rules were suspended.
BLAKE ISOBE, Managing Principal, CPA, CGMA (via remote technology):
Good morning everyone. I am Blake Isobe,
Principal at N&K CPAs. I have John Bautista with me here, too. He is the Senior
Manager on the engagement for the past couple years and now he is a Principal, too.
We wanted to spend a little time and go over a summary of the audits. We issued
three (3) reports that are connected with the audit of the financial statements. The first
one, which everyone is familiar with, is the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report or
the CAFR and the financial statements of the County. We also issued a second report,
which is the Single Audit Report. This report is required because the County receives
and expends Federal funds. We also issue a Management Advisory Report. This is a
byproduct of the audit that contains an additional finding that arose during the audit.
It is not a required report, but it is just an additional report where we provide additional
comments from the audit.
We will start off with the CAFR or the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.
First, I wanted to point out on page 11 of the CAFR, this Certificate of Achievement for
Excellence in Financial Reporting. This certificate is the twenty-seventh (27th)
consecutive year that the County received this award. The award is presented to the
County for preparing the financial statements in accordance with accounting standards
and submitting the CAFR by the due date, which is December 31st. There was an
extension granted this year, so there was an additional month that we had to issue the
CAFR due to COVID-19. The CAFR is broken up into a couple different sections. The
first section is the introductory section, which contains the transmittal from the
Department of Finance and the NDNA. The second part in the CAFR is our
Independent Auditor's Report and it goes on to our Government Wide Financial
Statements—the Fund Financial Statements, the Notes to Financial Statements and
Other Supplementary Information, and Statistical Information.
The first part that I wanted to touch on was the Independent Auditor's Report
which starts on page 14 and runs through page 16. On the top of page 15 is our opinion
on the Financial Statements. Here we issue an unmodified opinion or a clean opinion
on the financial statements. We also state on page 16 that we issued another report,
which we will cover later, that we did audit the financial statements in accordance with
government auditing standards and that report will be part of that Single Audit Report
that we will go over later.
The first statement in the Financial Statements of the County is the Statement
of Net Position, which is on page 30. On page 30, the County's net position overall
COUNCIL MEETING 6 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
year-to-year showed an increase of about forty-two million dollars ($42,000,000). This
increase is mainly in the County's net investment in capital assets. During the year,
the County completed the two (2) additional cells in the Kekaha Landfill and purchased
for the County's Affordable Housing Development. Those increases increased the net
investment in capital assets. I want to also point out that the County still does have a
deficit in the Unrestricted Net Position of about two hundred seventy-eight million
dollars ($278,000,000). I know we have covered this in the past couple of years as the
accounting standards required the counties and governments to pick up the liabilities
for the pensions and Other Post-Employment Benefits (OPEB). So with that totaling
about four hundred forty-seven million dollars ($447,000,000) for the County, they
created this deficit in Unrestricted Net Position. There was also a couple other noted
fluctuations on the Statement of Net Position. There was an increase to cash of about
seventeen million dollars ($17,000,000). Also an increase due from other governments
of about sixteen million four hundred thousand dollars ($16,400,000). Lastly, the
increase as I mentioned in the Net Capital Assets of about twenty nine million eight
hundred thousand dollars ($29,800,000). The last thing is the increase of unearned
revenue of about ten million eight hundred thousand dollars ($10,800,000) and that is
the moneys you folks received from the State for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and
Economic Security (CARES) Act that was not yet expended as of year-end.
The next statement is on page 31 which is your Statement of Activities. This is
like the income statement of the County. On the bottom, you will see your general
revenues. There was an increase of about six million five hundred thousand
dollars ($6,500,000) in total general revenues. Most of that is the increase in your real
property taxes of about ten million five hundred thousand dollars ($10,500,000). Your
program revenues, which is on the top, there was an overall increase of about
twenty-four million dollars ($24,000,000) in program revenues. Most of this increase is
about four million three hundred thousand dollars ($4,300,000) in operating grants and
about twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) in capital grants and contributions. These
increases are due to some of the capital projects that were completed during the year.
On the expense side, there was actually only about one million five hundred thousand
dollars ($1,500,000) increase in expenses. Overall, from year-to-year is flat.
The next statement in the CAFR is your Fund Financial Statements. This is the
balance sheet by fund and it starts on page 33. Here are some notable fluctuations with
an overall increase of six million dollars($6,000,000)in the General Fund balance. Here
you will see that increase is due to the increase in real property tax revenues of about
ten million four hundred thousand dollars ($10,400,000). Offset by a decrease in the
State Transient Accommodations Tax (TAT) distributions of about two million five
hundred thousand dollars ($2,500,000). The Bond Fund balance decreased by about ten
million dollars ($10,000,000). Normally that fund balance in the Bond Fund will
decrease as you expend the moneys from any bond float that you have. Your General
Capital Improvements Fund has an overall increase of about seven million nine
hundred thousand dollars ($7,900,000), but the General Capital Improvement Fund is
usually funded by transfers in from the General Fund. There was also some revenues
due to the issuance of the Special District Bond for Kukui`ula. That is the notable
fluctuations and the actual statements themselves. We also want to touch on some of
the significant disclosures in the financial statements. As I have mentioned earlier on
the statement on net position, the deficit in your Unrestricted Net Position of two
COUNCIL MEETING 7 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
hundred seventy-eight million dollars ($278,000,000) was mainly caused by the
reporting of the pension liability which at June 30, 2020, is about three hundred two
million two hundred ten thousand dollars($302,210,000), so a slight increase from 2019.
However, it has increased over the years as you can see on the slide. The Other
Post-Employment Benefits—this one again has increased, but up to two hundred
eighty-two million nine hundred thousand dollars ($282,900,000), but the net liability
because you folks have planned assets held by the Employer Union Trust Fund(EUTF),
the net liability is decreased by about four million dollars ($4,000,000). So that is down
to about one hundred forty-five million two hundred ten thousand dollars
($145,210,000). These liabilities are affected by the contributions you make along with
the ongoing increases in benefits. The current Fiscal Year 2020, the contributions that
were made to the Employees'Retirement System (ERS)for pensions was approximately
twenty-three million six hundred thousand dollars ($23,600,000), about three million
five hundred thousand dollars ($3,500,000) more than the prior year. The funding to
the EUTF for the OPEB was about seventeen million three hundred thousand dollars
($17,300,000), a slight increase of about seven hundred thousand dollars ($700,000)
from the prior year. Another large liability on the books is your landfill liability. As
you can see here there was a decrease in the liability of about fourteen million six
hundred thousand dollars ($14,600,000). There was a restatement to that 2019 liability
of forty-six million dollars ($46,000,000) and we will get into that as a finding in the
Single Audit Report, but the decrease in the landfill liability is primarily attributed to
the increased capacity, which increases the life of the landfill, and that liability is
recognized based on the expected remaining life. So as you see from 2019 to 2020, it
went from ninety-seven percent (97%) to seventy-nine percent (79%) full. The last
disclosure in the Financial Statements is related to restatements that were made in the
Financial Statements that we will cover in the Single Audit Report, Financial
Statement Findings. There was one (1) restatement for open contributions that were
understated in 2019 of about seven million three hundred thousand dollars
($7,300,000) and the landfill closure and post-closure costs which I just mentioned of
about four million four hundred thousand dollars ($4,400,000) understated in the prior
year.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Blake, I will stop you right there. Actually,just
finish the CAFR and then I will see if we have any questions before you move on to the
Single Audit Report.
Mr. Isobe: Yes, sure. Actually, that is the presentation we
had on the CAFR itself, so I am free to answer any questions.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any questions from the Members on
the CAFR? We will go through the audit findings later on in the presentation and we
can always come back, but just compartmentalize your questions to CAFR, Single
Audit, or Management Advisory Report. If there are any questions now specifically on
the CAFR, we can take it. Councilmember Cowden.
Councilmember Cowden: Most of my questions will eventually be for
Reiko. Will we be talking to her later?
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Yes, she is on.
COUNCIL MEETING 8 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Councilmember Cowden: When we are looking at the Solid Waste
elements, does that take into account any of the buffer zone requirements that passed
at the Legislature? Does any of that get factored into our landfill evaluation?
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Blake, would you be able to stop the
screenshare while we are doing the questions?
Councilmember Cowden: That could get addressed later, but I just did
not want to move past it without at least calling attention to it, that there is a new law
at the State level requiring buffer zones around our solid waste facilities and so far we
are kind of saying we are okay, but I think that might end up being an issue. My simple
question is, did it look at that or not?
ALLISON FRALEY, Acting Solid Waste Chief(via remote technology): I have
a response. This is Allison from the Solid Waste Division.
Councilmember Cowden: Okay, thank you.
Ms. Fraley: Our landfill does have buffers around it at this
time, so it is not impacted by Act 73.
Councilmember Cowden: Right, but we do not own that land. Okay,
thank you.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any further questions on the CAFR
from the Members? Again, if a question comes up later we can always ask it later.
Councilmember Kuali`i.
Councilmember Kuali`i: In your third slide when you were talking
about the Statement of Net Position and you pointed us to page 30, the actual statement
there. When you talked about the deficit in Unrestricted Net Position of two hundred
seventy-eight million dollars ($278,000,000), then under that the bullet is Pension and
OPEB with a total of four hundred forty-seven million dollars ($447,000,000), this has
to do with the State law requiring us to account for the future costs of that benefit, right?
How far out is that requirement and is that going to continue being that way or will it
change? I guess I should stop there.
Mr. Isobe: That deficit in your net position is actually
required by government accounting standards. So every municipality or every state
government needs to record these type of liabilities for other post-retirement benefits,
OPEB, and pension benefits. It is not just the State that is requiring it, it is just
Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) itself.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Okay. It is actually for all employees that will
eventually retire one day based on whatever they qualify for according to the State law.
Mr. Isobe: Correct. There are actuaries that do these
studies on both the pension and OPEB to do estimates on...there are a lot of different
things like vesting, increase in health costs, age, mortality tables, and so there is a lot
COUNCIL MEETING 9 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
of different information that goes into the projection on what the liability is today for
both retirees—people who have already retired and are receiving benefits, but also
current employees as they continue to work, they are earning this benefit that is going
to benefit them when they are going to retire, if they make the years of service and other
requirements to receive these types of benefits.
Councilmember Kuali`i: My last question on this is, is there a range or
percentage of what is required to be funded, if you will, or does GASB just require that
you report what the future liability is?
Mr. Isobe: GASB only requires that the liability be
reported and accounted for. I guess, all the disclosures are presented in the financial
statements. The funding requirements are not actually required by GASB. I know the
State has had different funding requirements for EUTF and ERS, so that is more
dictated by those boards.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Will it come up somewhere else in your report
on how funded we are in comparison to whatever the minimum the State requires and
maybe to other counties?
Mr. Isobe: The EUTF or your OPEB—there is a disclosure
specifically on how funded you are. If you want to look at page 99 of the CAFR, because
the EUTF is set up to where you have these plan assets specific for the County of
Kaua`i's employees, this table is being able to be presented where you have your gross
liability. It is kind of like a row forward; it shows what your liability was as of last year,
then the different costs that are going into there like the service costs then the accruing
interest on that unfunded balance. Then in the second column it shows your plan assets
that are there or your Fiduciary Net Position that is being held by EUTF, specifically,
to pay the benefits for your retirees, which is one hundred thirty-seven
million seven hundred thousand dollars ($137,700,000). Then the Net Liability is there
at about one hundred forty-five million two hundred thousand dollars
($145,200,000).
Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you very much.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any other questions from the
Members on the CAFR for now? Blake, we will move on.
Mr. Isobe: I want to introduce John Bautista. John is
going to present the second part of the presentation. I will run the slides and he will
talk. Go ahead, John.
JOHN BAUTISTA, Principal, CPA, CGMA (via remote technology): Now
we are going to move on to the Single Audit Report. So this is a separate report from
the CAFR that Blake just went over. We are going to start on page 6 of the Single Audit
Report. This is our report on internal controls over financial reporting and on
compliance and other matters. This is a required report to be issued whenever we do
an audit under government auditing standards.
COUNCIL MEETING 10 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
At the bottom of page 6, it states the report on internal controls over financial
reporting. If you flip to page 7, here we noted three (3) deficiencies that we determined
to be material weaknesses in the current year that I will go over in the next couple of
slides. If you go on to pages 9 through 11, this is our report on compliance for each
major federal program and internal control over compliance. This report is also
required to be issued whenever we expend federal moneys in a current year.
Moving on to page 10 of this report, here we state our opinion on our audit for
each major federal program. Here we state, in our opinion, that the County complied
in all material respects to the compliance requirements for major federal programs.
That means that we did not identify any material weaknesses or any findings on any
major federal programs during this year's audit. If you look below that, that is our
report on internal control over compliance. We noted here that we did not identify any
material weaknesses over compliance also. If you flip to page 11, this is our report on
the Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Rewards (SEFR), otherwise known as the
SEFR and here we state that we determined that it is also fairly stated and we provide
for a clean opinion for the SEFR. The SEFR stated on pages 12 throughl8 of the Single
Audit Report, and if you flip through those pages it details the various programs on the
County SEFR of which there was total of forty-two million eight hundred thousand
dollars ($42,800,000) in the current year. These pages lists out all of the federal grants
that the County has and the expenditures that were incurred in the current year. Now
there was an increase from the prior year's SEFR, which had a total of twenty-seven
million two hundred thousand dollars ($27,200,000) and this is mainly due to the
current year transportation grants that were expended and these are related to the
Lihu`e Town Core improvements. Also, there was a large amount related to landfill
grants related to the two (2) cells that were constructed for the Kekaha Landfill.
Moving on to page 21 of the Single Audit Report, this is the summary of audit
results. Here on the top it states that for the financial statements the type of auditor's
report that we issue was an unmodified or clean opinion. We did note that there were
several instances of material weaknesses included in the current year,but no significant
deficiencies or other material noncompliance to report on. If you look below that, we
have our Federal Awards section, here we also noted there were no material
weaknesses, no significant deficiencies, and also issued an unmodified opinion. There
were also no other compliance findings that needed to be reported on related to any of
the major federal programs. If you look below that we list the three (3) major federal
programs that we tested in the current year and these are the Bus and Bus Facilities
Formula and Discretionary Program, the National Infrastructure Investments
Program, and the Capitalization Grants for Clean Water State Revolving Funds. On
the next section below that, this is the threshold used to distinguish major programs in
the current year. This is based on the SEFR total. We also note that the County did
not qualify as a low-risk auditee for the current year. This was related to a prior year's
material weakness that we noted related to timely reconciliation of the County's bank
accounts.
Moving on to the next slide. This slide coincides with page 22 of your Single
Audit Report. Here we listed differences between each type of finding. Based on
materiality calculated in the current year, which is based on aggregated amounts in the
County's Financial Statements, a finding may be material, which we state as a
COUNCIL MEETING 11 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
deficiency which will not prevent or detect a material misstatement in the CAFR or the
Single Audit. We know the significant deficiency is less severe, but in quite enough to
note and report on and bring to the County's attention. Other reportable findings are
just instances of noncompliance that we are required to report under Uniformed
Guidance and the Compliance Supplement. In the prior year we only identified
material weaknesses in the Single Audit Report, which I will now go over in the next
couple of slides.
Moving on to the findings. This starts on page 22. I will briefly provide additional
background on each of the current year's findings. On this slide we noted a material
weakness related to the County's OPEB net liability. This was already touched upon
on the restatement note that Blake had discussed earlier that was part of the CAFR.
During the initial implementation of GASB 75, which requires the County to record its
netbook of liability, there were seven million three hundred thousand
dollars ($7,300,000) in contributions made after the measurement date of the actuary
report used that year that were not recorded on the balance sheet, but instead was
expensed. So this was due to a timing difference between what the Finance Department
determined to be picked up for the OPEB liability versus what the actuary actually
picked up for the OPEB liability. So this finding was basically due to the cutoff date of
the actuary report that was used that year.
The next finding we noted is on page 23. It is on the next slide. This is the finding
related to the County's landfill liability. This finding was also part of that restatement
note that Blake discussed in the CAFR. Here we noted that the County continued to
use a 2013 consultant report of its estimation of closure and post-closure liability costs
during 2019. However, the County had an updated 2016 consultant report that it had
received in prior years. The prior year estimation of the closure and post-closure
liability was updated using this 2016 report and this resulted in a four million four
hundred thousand dollar($4,400,000)additional accrued liability that should have been
recorded in the prior year.
On the next slide, this is our last finding in the Single Audit Report. Here we
state a finding relating to the reconciliation of State Grant Programs. During the audit
we noted three (3) instances where revenues and expenditures were not reconciled by
departments responsible for administering those grants, which resulted in revenues
being recorded in the wrong funds, such as the Federal Fund versus the State Grants
Fund or recorded to a project code that should have been closed in prior years and
recorded as a new project code. So this resulted in over statements of carrying over
balances from the prior year into the current year.
Moving on to the next slide, this is the status of our prior year findings. We
followed-up on any findings that we had in last year's audit—this is stated on page 32
of your Single Audit Report. The first finding was related to the timely reconciliation
of the County's bank accounts, which arose in prior years mainly due to the changes in
personnel in the Treasury Department—there was a lot of turnover in that department.
This year we have team support and we noted the timely completion of the bank
reconciliations; it was initially completed in July 2020 for the June 2020 month end, so
we deemed this finding to be accomplished in the current year.
COUNCIL MEETING 12 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
The prior year finding was related to the misfiling of information returns. During
the current year we obtained support from the County's Payroll Division and we noted
a calendar system being used to monitor deadlines. Also, personnel are attending
webinars to keep up to date with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) updates and
compliance dates. We also deemed this finding to be accomplished this year.
That was it for the Single Audit Report, so I was going to move on to our last
report, which is our Management Advisory Report.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: John, we will stop there and take questions.
Then we will finish with the Management Advisory Report. Blake, can you stop the
screenshare? Members, are there any questions on the Single Audit Report?
Councilmember Cowden.
Councilmember Cowden: Thank you very much. When I look at the first
two where we put it in the wrong year—the seven million three hundred thousand
dollar ($7,300,000) and the four million four hundred thousand dollar ($4,400,000)—it
is just a bookkeeping error more than any kind of missing money, correct? It just did
not get put in the right place.
Mr. Isobe: Yes, that is correct.
Councilmember Cowden: Especially relative to the landfill, I just want to
note for the record that we had difficulty maintaining leadership in this window in our
leadership for the landfill and the Department of Public Works, so we had quite a bit of
turnover and we have had acting roles, people coming into it. Allison or Troy, would
you say that this is part of what creates that challenge,where something...I do not know
where it is that we looked at the wrong year, August of 2013 as opposed to 2016.
TROY K. TANIGAWA, Acting County Engineer (via remote technology):
Councilmember Cowden, this is Troy Tanigawa, for the record.
Councilmember Cowden: Okay, thank you.
Mr. Tanigawa: I understand your question. I thought I heard
that you wanted to request confirmation from the department due to someone not being
in the leadership position in the Solid Waste Division that had contributed to this
misstep in updating the closure and post-closure costs, is that correct?
Councilmember Cowden: Yes, when I see a little bit of a challenge here
when I read through this the first time, I was not completely surprised because it seems
that there has been a lot of leadership turnover for various reasons, so I do not know
who to hold accountable for it because they are most probably not here now. Am I
reading that right, is it your department that would be putting these numbers together
or is it more in the Department of Finance?
Mr. Tanigawa: Actually, the Department of Finance requests
information from the Solid Waste Division regarding the landfill and the division puts
together the response. During this time, when the information would have been
COUNCIL MEETING 13 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
requested and prepared, there was not a permanent employee in the division head seat,
so theoretically that could have led to an absence in some quality control before the
information is sent back to the Department of Finance.
Councilmember Cowden: Okay, in our last CAFR report we had some
problems, basically when the Treasurer left. I have been following along as the
Department of Finance has rectified the problems, so I guess I am just listening in or
asking to see if there are still any types of weakness, so we will not make the mistake
again or if you need support in any way, just so we do not repeat it. Maybe the
Department of Finance is who I really need to be talking to. I do not know.
MICHAEL A. DAHILIG, Managing Director (via remote technology):
Councilmember Cowden, this is Mike Dahilig. This is an inter-departmental
communication item that as the County Engineer has mentioned—it needs to be
rectified. We have acknowledged the weakness finding, but it is, as we would
characterize it is something that can be rectified moving forward provided we use the
right study. So if we do any future studies that change the liability, we will ensure that
quality control, as the County Engineer mentioned, will be updated to reflect any future
studies related to closure liability, but at this point, I think using the most recent study
is essentially the crux of the finding and that we use the most accurate information
plausible when we give it to the auditors, so we will make that correction.
Councilmember Cowden: Okay, so it sounds like this is not something
that needs follow-up. You folks have it taken care of, correct?
Mr. Dahilig: We will make sure that in next year's audit
work, we will give the most accurate and timely information related to the landfill
liability as possible.
Councilmember Cowden: Thank you.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any other questions from the
Members? If not, John, we can finish up with the Management Advisory Report.
Mr. Bautista: Okay. Finally, we have the Management
Advisory Report. On page 3, we state that we noted an opportunity for strengthening
internal controls and operating efficiency that we wanted to communicate to your
attention and this starts on page 4. During the current year we noted three (3)instances
where payments were made that did not use encumbered funds or purchase orders and
rather were paid through voucher edit payments. So the County's voucher edit policy,
which was implemented in 2010, authorizes only specific transactions to be made
without a purchase order or a contract encumbrance; however, other payments can still
be made. If at the time of payment there is a memorandum of justification or support
of justification of why that payment needs to be made. However,we noted that...I guess
the failure to use encumbrances could lead to unknown commitments or unauthorized
transactions that could pass through and payment be made, so we just wanted to
communicate this for follow-up in the future.
COUNCIL MEETING 14 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Our other comment from the prior year on the next slide is on page 6. Basically
we followed up on the prior year comment related to timely user access reviews of
personnel using the various financial systems of the County. In the current year, we
noted that the IT Division performed an annual audit of all active and inactive users by
department to follow-up for whether they should be taken off the system or if their
access rights were reasonable given their positions, so we also deemed this prior year
comment as accomplished. Those were the only two comments for the Management
Advisory Report.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you. Are there any questions from the
Members on these or any in general if you do? Councilmember DeCosta.
Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you very much for the report. I just
wanted to clarify the last one you did on contract encumbrances. I just wanted to know,
how are we doing our payment schedule right now? We do not have any loopholes that
can happen where we can make an authorized payment where we are not sure of
documentation with receipts? That is not happening, correct? You folks wrote down
that there were four hundred sixty-one thousand five hundred eighty-one
dollars ($461,581) that was utilized, I just want to make sure there are no loopholes
that can happen in the future.
REIKO MATSUYAMA, Director of Finance (via remote technology): Hi,
this is Reiko Matsuyama, Director of Finance, for the record. I can speak to this. Based
on this recommendation, payments had gone out without any encumbrance. We think
that based on the recommendation that we have cured the finding. We have
implemented new policies and we have updated old ones. So now, blanket purchase
orders need to be used for every type of payment and this is going to cause a little bit of
hardship on some of the departments, because they will have to encumber money that
probably will not be spent, because they will have to overestimate what their units of
metrics are. If they think they will use a certain amount, they are going to have to
overestimate that in order to cover themselves on the encumbrance side,but it will close
the loophole in being able to make payments without an encumbrance.
Councilmember De Costa: Thank you very much, Reiko, for that, I feel
much better.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Cowden.
Councilmember Cowden: My comment and questions are for Reiko. First
of all, I want to say, "Great bedtime reading all week." It did not put me to sleep. You
did an excellent job in this opening. I remember two (2)years ago when we did not even
have a comment in there about the 2018 flood, and now the qualitative analysis, ahead
of the quantitativeness of the rest of it, was super helpful for me, so I want to give you
a really big high thumbs up for that. Thank you.
Ms. Matsuyama: I cannot take credit for it. Renee Yadao, who is
also (inaudible); she prepares it.
COUNCIL MEETING 15 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Councilmember Cowden: You are breaking up, who wrote that? Renee
Yadao, okay. Good job. It helped me, as a Councilmember, to be able to process the rest
of this report much more effectively. I want to turn our attention to page 8 and 9.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: In which report?
Councilmember Cowden: Pardon me?
Councilmember Kuali`i: Which of them?
Councilmember Cowden: The big fat one.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: The CAFR.
Councilmember Cowden: The CAFR. I found this was incredibly helpful,
putting all of our union pieces together to be able to understand it. When I look at it
and want to cut spending, I would think in this direction, because everyone received
raises, but what I think is really important that did not make it into the analysis is how
much turnover we have in really critical positions. I think that is important for why we
have to pay people well. I also want to say, I loved how so many areas were covered. I
just want to acknowledge the Department of Parks & Recreation, they have been
basically the safety net for our social problems for this past year. I am acknowledging
the hardships. They are on the frontline of the economic crunch. I felt you folks did a
great job of being honest of the hardships that occurred to our whole community with
our financial policies and our quarantine policies—we have had a really hard
time—that has been good. Here is my big question—that was a "yay" thank you for all
of this and the management discussion analysis—I thought we would be doing worse.
I was braced for us to be taking a heavier hit. It looks like our County is actually
financially sound, am I interpreting that correctly?
Ms. Matsuyama: Yes, I would agree.
Councilmember Cowden: Is it because the year ended in June...I guess I
am living in the sequel to this little novel here. I am living in the sequel, I would expect
us to be in a harder shape than this looks and that is the main reason and we had some
of that CARES Act funding that we have not spent it all yet.
Ms. Matsuyama: I would agree. The pandemic started three (3)
months prior to the end of this CAFR season, right, so we have not seen the impacts of
COVID-19 yet. I would say that we are lucky that prior Councils and Administrations
have implemented the Reserve and have taken steps to prudent financial and fiscal
decisions, so we were able to use that fund balance and it is going to carry us. The
problem with this Fiscal Year 2020 CAFR is this is only two (2) months down of
Transient Accommodation Tax (TAT), where in Fiscal Year 2021 we expect the entire
year down of TAT, so that is going to be a fifteen million dollar ($15,000,000) hit as
opposed to a two million dollar ($2,000,000) hit next year. I will say, we are lucky that
our Real Property Tax based is our primary driver of revenue, so right now we look good,
because the TAT is about nine percent (9%)of our revenue. So it is big, but it is not that
big. So I think you are correct in your analysis and going into Fiscal Year 2021 when
COUNCIL MEETING 16 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
they come back here a year from now and present that CAFR, we will see more of the
financial impacts to COVID-19.
Councilmember Cowden: At the bottom of page 5, the second to the last
paragraph, it says, "At the end of the third quarter of 2020." Does that mean
September?
Ms. Matsuyama: March 31, 2020 would be the end of the third
quarter.
Councilmember Cowden: Okay, so it is the fiscal quarter. There were
elements that I do not know if I agree with that, but that would be March.
Ms. Matsuyama: Yes.
Councilmember Cowden: Okay. Great job on writing this up. I found it
so much easier to work with and I felt like this has been really helpful for me in being
able to be prepared for our budget season that is coming up. Although, I will probably
at that time ask you a few questions, because we are in worse shape now. I think our
residents are in worse shape.
Ms. Matsuyama: We will be in worse shape, obviously because
we touched our Reserve to cover half of the TAT for Fiscal Year 2021, so I will just make
that comment. In response to your comments about how great this is, I need to give
credit to Renee and her staff in Accounting, because they dedicate the entire last part
of the calendar year for the audit and that write-up; I know she takes great pride in her
work and it is reflected on that report.
Councilmember Cowden: Okay. On page 4 in tourism, Renee did a good
job of giving us a preview into this timeframe, because we are looking at September and
November, visitor arrival numbers. So some of this is up to date, I do not think it
detracts from the value of this document. That might have been why I was a little
confused, so maybe we can say third quarter Fiscal Year, but anyway, again, very good
document. I appreciate it. I have tried to read the whole thing.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any other questions from the
Members? Is this the first year we do not have the P-card finding or was it last year?
Ms. Matsuyama: Last year.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Okay, good job. I think that was in every single
year that I have been on Council. Councilmember DeCosta.
Councilmember De Costa: Hi, Reiko. Thank you very much for all you do
and thank you for giving credit to the people who deserve the credit; that is a sign of a
great administrator. With that being said, I wanted to ask, when we lowered the
residential investor real property tax assessment value from two million
dollars ($2,000,000) to one million three hundred thousand dollars ($1,300,000), we are
going to gain a few extra dollars in our budget, would that go towards replacing some
COUNCIL MEETING 17 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
of the nine percent (9%) revenue that we are going to be losing from our TAT? Is that
going to help offset that a little bit? Did we run some kind of numbers to figure that
out?
Ms. Matsuyama: Yes, we did run numbers, but our numbers are
very, let us say on the high-end, because I am sure some of those four hundred (400) or
so properties that fall in that threshold will have long-term tenants on them, so our
numbers are high. That will not come into play until Fiscal Year 2022, so you will not
see any benefit in the next couple of years for that. Our Real Property Tax system is
even further on a lag, so I joke that in the Department of Finance—Renee is working in
the prior year; we are working in the current year; Ken Shimonishi, who is doing our
budget is working in the next Fiscal Year; and Real Property is working...we have four
(4) years that we are working on in the Department of Finance, so it is a little confusing
to get your head around the timing.
Councilmember DeCosta: I just would like to say, on behalf—I would like
to say our Council—I think you folks are doing a great job as looking forward. Our own
national government says four (4) years out before tourism may come back and I really
want to praise you folks for finding ways to increase our property tax, so thank you very
much.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any other questions from the
Members? If not, I will call this meeting back to order. Is there any final discussion
from the Members? Councilmember Cowden.
There being no objections, the meeting was called back to order, and proceeded
as follows:
Councilmember Cowden: I will just be real simple. I pretty much said it
already to Reiko. I appreciate our staff. I appreciate the quality of the document and I
know that I will be utilizing it, especially with some of our employment elements.
Thank you again to them and I want to just thank whatever departments maybe did
not get quite enough attention. I want to acknowledge the Department of Parks &
Recreation, because they probably get some friction from me because I advocate pretty
hard for the houseless. Good job Department of Parks & Recreation.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Is there anyone else? Council Vice Chair
Chock. Was someone going to say something?
Councilmember Chock: Thank you. I am not sure if you had something
to say, but I just wanted to also offer my thanks. I think this is the eighth CAFR that I
have looked at, actually more than that, but it has become increasingly more efficient
to me, I see a better job every year. I just want to give "kudos" to our Administration
and thank you folks at N&K CPAs, Inc. for the good work that you folks do in
collaborating to pull this together. I look forward to continuing to collaborate and look
for ways that we can improve, I think is really the reason why we do this annual review,
because I do see some shortfalls in our budget and Reserve Fund. I want to be able see
how we can leverage or move from this point and prepare better for what is coming, so
thank you.
COUNCIL MEETING 18 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Is there anyone else? John.
There being no objections, the rules were suspended.
Mr. Bautista: Also, on our side, we would like to say thank
you to all of the support provided by the Department of Finance, especially Renee. This
is the first time that we did the audit completely remotely and also this meeting
completely remotely. So without the Department of Finance's help, including Reiko and
Sherri, Ken, and all of the County personnel that we have been bothering for months to
do this audit, we would not have completed it today. Again, we would like to thank
everyone for all of their help for this year's audit.
There being no objections, the meeting was called back to order, and proceeded
as follows:
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you. I will call the meeting back to
order. Are there any final comments from the Members? I want to say thank you to all
of you, great audit. I think, over time as we have watched the audit, the findings have
been less significant over the years. I remember when we would have the same findings
every single year and I think now you see us getting rid of a lot of the findings that have
happened, doing corrective action on them, so I am happy with the results of the audit.
The finding we have now are more recording things, rather than errors, no
documentation, or things like that. I just want to thank all of you for your hard work.
Thank you to Reiko, her staff, and everyone for their hard work on the audit.
Councilmember Evslin.
Councilmember Evslin: Thank you, Chair. I just want to echo my
colleagues here and thank everyone for the hard work on the audit. When I saw this
on our agenda, I felt like we have just done this maybe a month ago. I feel like I fell
into a time portal over the last year. I cannot believe it has been a year already since
we have had you folks here, but I definitely want to echo what Chair Kaneshiro was
saying, it seems like we have had some significant improvements here. I remember my
very first term sitting down and there were significant issues with the reconciliation,
and I thought, "Oh, boy, is this how it always is?" But now it looks like we have made
a lot of progress, so thank you all for the hard work here. For anyone from the public,
this is a treasure trove of information, so it is really a worthwhile read. I look forward
to continuing to dig into it over the next year.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Carvalho.
Councilmember Carvalho: For me, in wrapping up, we have an awesome
financial story with how everything has been put together. I understand the total
picture of how everything...from the revenue and all the things we need to address
overall, but the team has done a tremendous job and I look forward to the challenges
that we have forthcoming as we look at our new budget sessions coming up, but I think
we have a great foundation based on all the work that you folks have done. Great job
and I look forward to working close on every step of the way, as we look at our new
incoming budget discussions that will really put some challenges on the table, but we
have a good start and foundation, so mahalo.
COUNCIL MEETING 19 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Is there anyone else?
(No written testimony was received and no registered speakers requested to
testify regarding this agenda item.)
The motion to receive C 2021-36 for the record was then put, and unanimously
carried.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: The motion passes. Next item.
C 2021-37 Communication (01/20/2021) from the Director of Finance,
requesting agenda time for a briefing from KPMG LLP, on the Information
Technology Division's Countywide IT evaluation project.
Councilmember Kuali`i moved to receive C 2021-37 for the record, seconded by
Councilmember DeCosta.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: I will suspend the rules. Nikhil and Jeff have
aresentation. Councilmembers, we will do as we always do, we will allow them to
P Y
complete their presentation first, then we will ask questions later.
There being no objections, the rules were suspended.
Ms. Matsuyama: This is Reiko, can I give an introduction
before KPMG, LLP (KPMG), dives into their presentation. Just part of public
awareness, this is basically a strategic platform for our IT; this is something that our
current Administration is really enthusiastic about. Technology is one thing that we
cannot stay statusquo on, we need to stay competitive. There are a lot of dollars
coming into...that will come out of recommendations from this project. It is an
overwhelming amount of money that is going to be talked about, but it is something
that needs to be done over the course of many years and what we are trying to do now
is find low-hanging fruit that we can get our hands around and try to make quick
fixes that will make big changes and big efficiencies for the County, so KPMG has
done a really good job of going through this. Just know that it is an ongoing
investment. There is not an end date, we are always going to try and improve, so it
is not like we will implement something and we are done with it, we implement
something and look at what is next. That is how we stay competitive and how we
stay proactive in the IT world. I just want to do a little "shoutout" to our IT Division,
you folks know firsthand when this pandemic hit, we really were able to pivot into a
teleworking environment. It is really credit to our IT team and how they were
forward-thinking in getting Office 365 up and going, so we had the ability to do these
Microsoft Teams calls. To be honest, we were well ahead of the game as compared to
all of the other counties throughout the State, so "kudos" to our IT team. With that,
I am going to turn it over to KPMG, who had done a really good job, but I want them
to share their findings with you.
CHRISTINE DUBOIS (via remote technology): Thank you, Reiko. Good
morning, Councilmembers, thank you for the time on your agenda today. My name
is Christine DuBois and I am joined on the line by two (2) of my colleagues that I have
COUNCIL MEETING 20 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
been working with the County, so you will hear from Nikhil and Jeff shortly. Thank
you for that great introduction, Reiko, and thank you to the team that presented just
before this; what an amazing feedback and discussion around an audit report, that
was awesome. Such a positive response to follow; it was great. As Reiko mentioned,
we have been working with the County, primarily with the IT team and Reiko's team
since last summer. We have provided a few updates to the Councilmembers during
the project and we wanted to give you a final update today, as we are wrapping up
the project this month. So we will take about twenty (20) minutes to walk through
the material. I believe you have received it in advance. There is a lot of content on
the pages and we are not planning to walk through word-for-word, but happy to take
questions or comments at any time. You can see here, brief agenda for today. We
plan to give you an overview reminder of the project deliverables, the approach, and
the guiding principles of how we came up with the recommendations.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Sorry, Christine, would you be able to share
your screen?
Ms. DuBois: Sorry, I am getting some feedback. We will
give a summary of the outcomes that we have reported in the deliverables.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Christine.
Ms. DuBois: That primarily focuses on what is going
well...
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Christine.
Ms. DuBois: ...and where there are opportunities for
improvement.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Can you share your screen?
Ms. DuBois: Yes, sorry. I do see that Nikhil was showing
the presentation, are you able to see it?
Councilmember Cowden: No.
Councilmember Kuali`i: No.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Okay, we got it now.
Ms. DuBois: I am able to see it on my meeting. Do you
want to try again Nikhil.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Okay, it is good.
Ms. DuBois: Okay, great. We will spend the majority of
the time going through the proposed future initiatives. We have discussed this with
Reiko and the IT team and wanted to give you an update on where we landed on those
COUNCIL MEETING 21 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
initiatives and then the overall roadmap view, so just one quick note for you, today is
a brief summary of much longer deliverables. We have much more lengthy reports
that we have gone through with Reiko, Del Sherman, and the team; you are welcome
to see those if you would like. In our presentation today, we have been an advisor to
the County and helping them step through this strategic planning process, but we do
not advocate for any particular public policy, either for or against, so I just wanted to
be clear on our role. Okay, I think we can go on.
Great. Brief reminder of the project objectives and each of the key phases. If
you remember when we introduced it to you last summer or fall, the project title
Holomua is loosely translated as progressing or moving forward. So we thought that
was an appropriate name for this work by the County that is really focused on
building a technology modernization roadmap. As Reiko mentioned, both for a quick
win now, but then also thinking through your more long-term infrastructure to build
a foundation for the next few years. I want to recognize that the County was already
beginning these efforts last year before the pandemic. You had already started great
work focused on improving the service delivery to your constituents and investing in
those long-term technology and IT capabilities. Then we know that the pandemic
emphasizes the need at every level of government, so not just you, but we saw it at
every state, county, and federal level, to really focus on improving your technology
capabilities and move quickly to adapt to new ways of working; so moving away from
paper and in-person services, moving towards delivering more information across
multiple channels, improving collaboration with the public and with employees, and
also more transparency, just being able to communicate better with the public while
everyone was working remotely. While this may be a weird time to be thinking about
laying the foundation and investing in this IT infrastructure in the middle of what
still feels very much like a crisis, as Reiko has mentioned, this is exactly the right
time to be doubling down on the things that you know are working well and that you
have already made good progress, but also making sure that IT planning is part of
your longer term resiliency and rebuilding effort. It was unfortunate timing when
there were a lot of other priorities going on in the County, but we think it actually
made a lot of sense to spend some effort on this planning phase.
You can see here, we had four (4) key phases in our project. We started out in
the summer focused on getting an understanding of what happens in IT right now;
so what is the scope of the IT capabilities, what are they provide to departments, how
do they interact with various other teams; we focused on gathering a lot of
information in Phase 1.
Phase 2 was more assessing against and operating model. So we have an IT
operating model that brings in leading practices and standard capabilities that we
typically see in government IT teams. So we provided an assessment against that
operating model to identify what is going well and highlight potential gaps.
In Phase 3, we focused more on that transformation strategy plan. So building
on the opportunities that we saw for improvement—really tailoring those into
initiatives that makes sense based on those potential gaps. That is what we will focus
on providing today; giving you more specifics on each of those initiatives. Then the
COUNCIL MEETING 22 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
roadmap brings them all together to try to demonstrate which pieces of the initiatives
might fit together and how you might want to think about sequencing them.
Finally, in Phase 4, which we have been focusing on for the last few months,
we worked with the County to think about quick wins and what we are calling
emerging opportunities; some ways to think about prioritizing future investment,
more of the long-term system and technology transformation, but also how to start
mobilizing and jump-starting some of the initiatives that do not require a cost
investment right now. So we will talk a little bit about that when we get into the
initiatives. That is my summary of the phases, I think we can go on to the outcomes.
Thanks.
I wanted to summarize for you on one page, some of the key activities and
outcomes. You can see that we conducted a ton of interviews across the IT team, so
not just at the leadership level, but a cross-section of the IT team and fourteen (14)
departments and divisions within those, plus the County Council, so we spoke to
many of you and your Council Services Staff as well. We did a fair amount of system
walk-throughs with different departments on some of their key current technologies,
so they could demonstrate for us what were some of the challenges, what were some
of the things that they like and think need to be expanded, currently. Then we
conducted some workshops more recently with some of our subject-matter
professionals to bring ideas of what is going on elsewhere in other governments that
are comparable to the county; just think about leading practices or examples of good
practices across the industry.
(Councilmember Kuali i was noted as not present.)
Here I would like to echo Reiko's "shoutouts" and give a huge thank you to the
entire IT team, but specifically Reiko and Del who were spearheading this. Reiko
from the leadership level and mobilizing all the folks to be involved in the project.
Del, Winston, and Max on the IT team—really helping us to coordinate all of these
meetings, get great participation from all the divisions.
(Councilmember Kuali i was noted as present.)
As you can imagine, this is a quick summary and we are giving you a snapshot
today, but this is over seven (7) months of work behind the scenes from all these folks,
especially on the IT team, so lots of critical thinking, feedback, and working
hand-in-hand with us, so we appreciate it, it has been such a pleasure. I think that
is it for the key outcomes.
Before we dive into the initiatives, we wanted to remind you that as we were
putting together the roadmap, we started with thinking through the perspective from
each of these key stakeholder groups. So this mirrors how we understand the County
does its strategic planning currently, and your target groups when you think about
IT and technology investments. So you can see the four (4) quadrants; residents and
visitors, we focus on understanding what technology is valuable to them, both for
them to interact with the County, then for you as the County to be able to
communicate information out to them and improve transparency. Local businesses,
COUNCIL MEETING 23 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
similar to residents; we focus on the addition of enabling the seamless
communications and coordination across government for them to be able to complete
those common activities easily, especially in this remote working environment. Then
employees on the bottom left, as Reiko mentioned, there has been great progress
recently on the IT side being able to enable employees to work remotely, collaborate
across departments, provide those tools, and so we really focused on what are the
tools on the underlying infrastructure that they need to be able to do their jobs
effectively and to serve the public even better. Finally, looking at a couple other levels
of government. So thinking through federal and state; focus on how to enable
collaboration there, improve the communication and data sharing, then comply with
regulations as needed. So those four (4) groups are the perspectives that we took
when we were doing the interviews and thinking about the leading practices that we
were bringing across the County. Okay. We are happy to take questions if you want
us to pause at any time, otherwise I think we will dive into the initiatives. Okay, I
will turn it over to Nikhil to focus on those.
NIKHIL LOYAL (via remote technology): Thank you, Christine.
Hello, everyone. It is a pleasure to be speaking with you again. I know that over the
course of the past few months we have had a couple of updates on this project, so
some of this might be repetitive for you, but we just want to establish the foundation
for how did we get to our recommendation for the future of IT at the County of Kaua`i
should look like. It is imperative that we understand that some of our design
principles have being well before guiding principles in current state. What are some
of the opportunities that lie ahead for the County, and what are some of the things
that the IT team is doing well. So we are going to talk about that first before getting
into the details of the recommendations for the future. Christine talked about the
various sets of stakeholders that we have kept in mind, as we think about the future
of IT at the County of Kaua`i, now those include residents, visitors, local businesses,
other state and local governments, as well as employees. So keeping all of that in
mind, we have been working with these guiding principles that you see on the screen,
so there are six (6) of those, and these have informed with how we think about the
future of technology. Some of these are more important than the others, but we want
to bear in mind that all of these will have a role to play, in terms of how technology
updates down the line. As we talk about some of these, from our perspective it is very
important that the overall landscape of technology within the County of Kaua`i,
regardless of who the technology is serving, it should be connected to each other, it
should be integrated, and shall offer a transparent form of governance. At the very
same time, the County should not forget its essential role of serving its stakeholders,
therefore, from a technological means it should offer a single face of government to
all stakeholders out there. There are ways and means to do that, but our primary
purpose is to be able to keep in mind that there should be a single, one-stop shop for
a single face of government being offered to all external stakeholders as well. As
technology expands, as it grows, as Reiko was also talking about that this is not a
onetime solution, but rather an evolving solution. There should be an enterprise
architecture-driven means to grow the technology to develop that technology.
Therefore, the focus should always be on what is the right way to go about increasing
and improving the technology landscape, and that should always be anchored around
enterprise architecture as a whole, rather than developing, building, or buying
solutions in isolation. It is very important that this technology serves everyone,
COUNCIL MEETING 24 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
offered stakeholders, therefore this technology should be inclusive in nature. We
understand that we might offer some technology solutions which some residents in
the County might not be able to leverage or use. Therefore, our recommendations in
how to get to that technology should always be inclusive in nature; that is everyone
should be able to use technology or its alternative solutions. Going forward, there is
a need to build more digitized and standardized processes, not just within the IT
team, but across the departments and divisions within the County as well. Up until
now, what I will be talking about in terms of guidance principles are sort of wish lists,
sort of a blank check, but we also want to constrain it by saying that a lot of these
solutions should be cost-efficient, so cost should always be borne in mind. Going along
the same lines of how the IT team has been operating thus far. These six (6) have
been the guiding principles which we have kept in mind as we think about the current
state, but more importantly how the future state should operate.
Earlier we talked about us spending a lot of time understanding the current
state, establishing that baseline of how the County operates today. A lot of that falls
down through the mediums of a number of discussions that we have not just with
members of the IT team, so we conducted ways of IT discussions, but we conducted a
number of ways of customer discussions as well, with various other departments and
divisions within the County, also, with the Office of the Mayor, with various members
of the Council and Council Services, to be able to understand how do they consume
technology today. What they experience and what aspirations do they have for the
future, but in doing so we also acknowledge that there are a number of things that
the County IT team is doing well today, partly in terms of embarking on journeys to
digitize documents, to digitize a number of other capabilities, investing in a number
of further technical capabilities, such as extracting the Laboratory Information
Management Systems (LIMS) program, the human resources program, and sharing
that within the IT team that is sufficient mobility within the set of resources there
are, so there is opportunity or room to grow for each member of the IT team by taking
on new skills and new challenges. Modernizing or starting to modernize the IT Help
Desk, but most important, we want to acknowledge or what we have observed
firsthand as well, is how the IT team has been able to quickly pivot into the new ways
of working when the pandemic hit. Just for reference and to put into context, we
started this project a couple of months into the pandemic, not entirely the start of it,
but at that time we observed that the County had completely adapted to the new
ways of working. Thanks in large part to how the IT team enabled a large suite of
tools from a collaboration, as well as productivity standpoint. All of that is easier
said than done, so in reference we have been working with a number of other clients,
some of whom are multi-billion dollar operations with IT budgets upwards of one
hundred million dollars ($100,000,000), sometimes five hundred million
dollars ($500,000,000), so they have all of their resources at their disposal. From my
perspective, having worked with a number of those types of clients, I do not even see
a single level of difference in terms of productivity or how effectively we were able to
collaborate with members of the IT team, as well as other divisions and departments,
so I think that speaks volumes about how quickly the IT team was able to pivot into
that mode of working. We would like to call that accomplishment out. With that
said, we acknowledge that there are a number of further opportunities that are
available to the IT team and to other departments, in terms of what investments can
be made from a futuristic standpoint, as far as technology is concerned. So these are
COUNCIL MEETING 25 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
some of the examples that you will see over here. Some of these are related to
investment in technologies. Some of these are related to governance or processes. All
of these opportunities have translated into the recommendations that we have for the
future state, which will be talked about. Essentially, in summary, we were talking
about new system requirements or modernizing the systems landscape, investing in
new capabilities from a technology standpoint, as well as to be able to better solve
some of the stakeholder groups that we talked about; particularly, the residents, as
well as visitors, and local businesses. From a process and capability standpoint
within the IT team, we have also focused on how governance can be enhanced going
down the line, as well as growing the IT team and the capabilities within the IT team,
so on and so forth. These opportunities that you see on the screen have greatly
informed what new areas should the County invest in for a better future down the
line.
What you see here are categories of proposed future initiatives. We have come
up with nineteen (19) initiatives that the County should embark on. Those are
leading the ways of priority and the resources acquired to be able to implement those,
but essentially those nineteen (19) initiatives can be grouped into these seven (7)
categories that you see on the screen. Some of these would have a direct impact and
would be visible to the external stakeholder group, but a number of these also relate
to how the IT team operates and enhancing some of the processes in governance
within those. I will briefly talk about what these seven (7) categories are. From an
IT department perspective, we have talked about enterprise architecture,
governance, people and skills development, as well as IT service management. These
are primarily focused on how the IT team operates. That is, putting new enterprise
architecture skills. That is to say that, how does the IT team make decisions on
reviewing, designing, implementing, configuring, and maintaining any IT
capabilities within the system, so I should be able to have a baseline framework which
will inform all of those decisions down the line. From a governance perspective, how
does the IT team internally group together, as well as create new rules and
responsibilities within the team to effectively and collaboratively work with various
departments, help them understand what their technology needs are and help them
develop those technology needs over a period of time. From a people and skills
development perspective, there is a lot of great work that is already going on over
there, so continuing to doing those and investing in new skills that are required as
technology and the world of technology evolves around you. From an IT service
management, we talked about the (inaudible) initiative and the way for it already,
but ensuring that over a long range of...this is more of a service into the
organization—the Help Desk within the IT team—that is data driven, that is metric
driven, that provides an online channel of reaching out to the IT team for any kind of
maintenance requests. Some of the other ones have to do with more interest to the
audience or how they relate to the application portfolio that is rationalizing the
current landscape of applications and technology, but more importantly investing in
some new technologies out there, such as from an enterprise, planning perspective,
from a document management perspective, so on and so forth. Then from an external
to this group, as well, investing and citizen engagement as well as reporting
capabilities. If you remember we talked about providing a single face of government
out there. Ensuring that there is a capability in place that is a public portal where
all members and stakeholders of the County of Kaua`i can engage directly with the
COUNCIL MEETING 26 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
County of Kaua`i government regardless of whichever department they are
connecting with, so providing a single face of government out there. In the
background; ensuring there is a service oriented culture to be able to support any
kind of citizen engagement. Ensuring that there are particular forms of interactions
with various members of the stakeholder groups that we talked about, ensuring that
those are (inaudible) driven, effectively reported, at the same time, investing in
digital forms of payment as well, so bringing all of those under the same umbrella.
Finally, ensuring that information is readily available. Particularly to the County
leadership, that is Members of the Council, as well as the Office of the Mayor, so all
information being available at the click of a button or in standardized forms of report,
other than having to wait for long periods of time for standard reports that are out
there. These are the seven (7) categories that we have broken down or grouped as
initiatives and Jeff will talk about what those nineteen (19) initiatives are and how
we have started making progress on some of those.
JEFF MASUMOTO (via remote technology): Thank you, Nikhil. My name is
Jeff. It has been great to work with your IT Department and meeting all of you as
well and I want to thank Winston, Max, Del, and Reiko. As we go through these
initiatives you will see that they are grouped in several key categories. The first
category, as Nikhil mentioned was, enterprise architecture, so that is probably a key
theme that runs throughout a lot of these initiatives. Enterprise architecture that is
the intentional planning an implementation of systems, practices, people, and
resources to commit to the architecture that supports the entire enterprise, so a lot
of the progress that you folks have made so far in individual applications. This
initiative brings that forward to the next step to make sure that they are properly
integrated and you get the full leverage of all the capabilities of those systems. That
involves identifying a role to help implement this architecture, then the person in
that role would then execute on helping the County adopt the new practices, adopt
data governance procedures, and build out the network resilience on the underlying
infrastructures to support this architecture. The next area is in governance; so that
is the people and policies piece of implementing this enterprise architecture. So
putting together the project management practices, so that as you build up the
projects that are executed to implement this architecture are properly managed.
Then the second one is to identify an IT champion, who is someone who works within
the IT Department on behalf of or is a champion for the other department. For
example, Winston or Max would be the person who would be the champion for
Finance or the Police Department or so forth, and that is to ensure that all of these
projects at the IT Department is executingon or are integrated and worked well
P J P g
together. As part of that governance process, we would have strategic planning
sessions, and develop decision making structure to make sure all of this works
together. Next slide, Nikhil.
The next group of initiatives are the working systems. So far we have talked
about the governments and architecture; the actual system to come in place is this
initiative. I should note that when we look at what we call application landscape of
the County, which means looking at all the systems in place, overall, everything looks
very healthy. Starting from infrastructure of everything it looks very healthy, there
is good work being done, especially in the document management area, which will
support the initiative that Nikhil mentioned for providing better transparency and a
COUNCIL MEETING 27 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
single face of government to your citizens, but the only system that we would deem
as presenting any kind of risk is the AS400. That is where three (3) of the four (4)
initiatives in the Applications space address them. It is not specifically to address
the risk, it is not an impending risk, but it provides the key system that will take the
County forward in implementing this enterprise resource planning piece for
accounting and also leverage the ongoing project or initiative with the new Human
Resources (HR) system. It also addresses the fact that even though there are a lot
of...you have systems on the AS400, but it does not mean that those are actually
properly integrated and that is where the enterprise architecture piece comes in. As
the AS400 would be replaced by a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system,
by your new HR system, the enterprise architecture initiative will make sure that all
departments, processes, and data are properly integrated. Then the orange initiative
is for on-the-job training. It is key to have the IT staff prepared for these new systems
so that they can support you and the other departments in using these new systems.
Finally, the last group of initiatives are related to the Help Desk and the practices
for IT Department to provide the support, like I said, for you and the other
departments in getting the best use and biggest impact for your IT dollars from the
systems.
Ms. DuBois: Thank you, Jeff. I am going to talk about the
last few. Those initiatives were obviously focused on how IT team can transform its
operations, serve the departments better, and provide more coordinated planning and
implementation of systems. These last two (2) categories of initiatives are a bit more
outward focused, so these around engagement are focused on how the County can
better interact with your other stakeholders, so the public, residents, visitors, and
businesses.
This first one is around a unified engagement portal. We spoke about this with
the Council and with the Mayor, I know there is great support for that, then we had
deeper conversations with the IT team and with Reiko's team, giving some examples
of how this has played out in other cities and counties just thinking about having
one (1) website, which essentially becomes a one-stop shop to direct folks for all the
various ways that they might want to interact with the County, so just to make it
easy for anyone who needs to interact with the County for services, requests, or
questions, to be able to find that information easily. Similarly on the flip side for the
County to be able to communicate with your residents, businesses, visitors, all the
great things that you are doing, so you are able to publish announcements or have
those key communications accessible in multiple channels for your residents.
The second one here is around scaling digital payments. Again, great work
being done already as a partnership between IT and Finance to make sure that there
are digital payment methods that are available to folks that need to pay for County
services or interactions already, so there is a lot of good work already going on there.
This one is focused on how to take it to the next level and be able to scale those digital
payments across more departments. Obviously not removing the option of cash-based
or check-based payments, but just making this more available and more consistently
used. So encouraging your residents and citizens to be able to use these payment
methods more that will help increase the response time and streamline some of your
COUNCIL MEETING 28 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
County processes behind the scenes if you are able to expand those electronic
transactions.
Finally, we did have one (1)initiative focused on reporting, so making sure that
the IT team can help enable more transparency from the departments for reporting
information that either county leaderships, you as the Council, or department
leadership is asking for consistently, if you are able to define some of those consistent
use cases or reports that you are looking for on a regular basis and be able to
standardize that either through a system, a dashboard; it could take many forms, but
essentially, starting to put guidelines and standardization around some of those
reports will help you be able to get that information more quickly and help the
1 provide it more consistently to be able to stent)p o y to anyone who wants to receive
that information. That is it on the initiatives. We do have one more slide here, just
to bring it all together and remind you that this is part of the bigger roadmap
deliverable that we provided to Del, Reiko, and the team. Again, a lot of initiatives
focused on different types of improvement areas. We do think that some of them go
hand-in-hand. There are some dependencies where we would expect that some of
them start a little bit earlier than others and you can build on that progress, so that
is the high-level timeline that we have showed here. It is projected out for about
two (2) years. We divided it up into quarters here, but these can start at any time.
We recognized that there are larger budget discussions that are coming up, so as we
went through this roadmap and the recommendations with Del, Reiko, and the team,
our intent was that for that to be input to them as they are putting together their
budget requests and obviously discussing with you and the other departments as you
go through your budgeting process and your strategic planning process for this year.
Our goal was just to give you a report that is helpful input to that planning process
and arm you with all the details to be able to start these initiatives as you think is
appropriate for the County. That is the high-level timeline there. You will see that
Y g
we have started these initiatives as we went through them and some that we have
started a pilot or essentially jumpstarting some of the recommendations with the IT
team specifically, so we did focus on the enterprise architecture and the governance
aspects. We did provide workshops, guidelines, and industry standard materials to
the IT team for thinking about how to start implementing some of those initiative
recommendations that were zero (0) costs, essentially, so more of the policy and
reorganization along the team lines they were able to jumpstart that in the next
couple of months. You have had a really great enthusiasm from the IT team; really
great participation in those pilot initiatives. Again, I want to give a "shout out" to
Del, Winston, Max, and the team for bringing a lot of folks along. Everyone was eager
to learn, discuss, and think really critically about how to make good progress on some
of these initiatives even before you move into the next budget and funding cycle. That
is the snapshot of the report that we have for you today. Again, thank you for the
opportunity to work with your team. It has been such a pleasure and I will echo
everything that Reiko said at the beginning and I think other Councilmembers had
recognized your County team has done such a fantastic job in pivoting and being
ready to work remotely in this crazy new reality that we are all going through.
Everyone has been so enthusiastic and has been great on collaborating with us
remotely. We would have loved to be in-person with you for a lot of this, obviously in
normal times, unfortunately we could not do that this year, but it has been really
seamless and such a great process over the last six (6) months, so thank you.
COUNCIL MEETING 29 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Thank you. Nikhil, would you be able to take
off the screen share, please? With that, I will open it up for questions from
Councilmembers. Council Vice Chair Chock.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the
presentation, very comprehensive. I have followed the work that you folks have been
doing over the past few months and I appreciate it. I do not need to be sold on the
need. It is veryapparent that this is the right direction that we need to go. I have
Pp g
two (2) questions; the first is, have you folks looked at the intergovernmental
integration with state agencies and maybe even at federal levels on how it is we are
increasing our internal system and how we might be able to crossover for efficiency?
That is my first question.
Ms. DuBois: That is a great question. Jeff, do you want to
take that one.
Mr. Masumoto: Sure. Especially during our voice of the IT
interviews that topic came up several times especially in areas like vehicle licensing
and possibly also with the retirement system.
Councilmember Chock: Okay.
Mr. Masumoto: Just as a background, I worked for a data
house where part of KPMG would do a lot work with other state agencies and we
know from the state side the integration issues that they face when working with the
city and county, as well. There is new possibilities presented in emerging
technologies available, especially on the cloud and APIs, but it takes both sides to
implement that. So those considerations were looked at.
Councilmember Chock: Okay. I do not know if I have a sense of
confidence on our ability to do that, but I am glad that you folks are taking a look at
it.
Mr. Masumoto: In terms of your confidence, I actually believe
that you folks are well positioned to take advantage of any opportunities that could
come up, but I do not have the same level of confidence in every, obviously each state
agency has different capabilities. If the opportunity presented itself from the state
that you folks could be in position, especially with the new ERP system.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you. My second question is, obviously
you folks have an aggressive timeline scheduled here and I am appreciative. I will
go back to what Reiko started off with, which is we do not need to accomplish it all
right now, when it might be an absorbenant amount of money—I did not hear a figure,
but a budget plan is definitely something that I would like to tune into. I am just
curious as to what that looks like. What is the plan on solidifying an ongoing funding
stream in or to accomplish these?
Ms. Matsuyama: This is Reiko. I will jump in here. As it
relates to the budget, we want to make sure that we, as in IT, have the capacity to
COUNCIL MEETING 30 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
implement as well, so we are not going to come to you folks and ask for an
abosorbenant amount of money that we will not be able to spend. Right now we are
chipping away at certain things that we know we can confidently accomplish. We
probably will not ask for the big chunks of money in the Fiscal 2022 budget, because
we do not think that we can execute at this level and we do not want to fail. So that
is it in a nutshell, but we will be communicating with you folks, maybe in phases as
we look to implement certain things. The ERP system is one of the things that it is
going to take a lot of money, it is going to take a lot of change with the County. It is
going to take a lot of manpower. It is one of those things that touches almost every
person in the County and those types of things take even more will to make forward
progress. We purposely did not give you any kind of dollar amounts, but it is a
significant cost that would be spread out over the next few years. With the ERS, it is
going to take a long time, so we want to start it fairly soon so that we can do a
complete overhaul within a reasonable time period.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: I just had a follow-up. I see that some have
started, we are implementing some of them, do we actually have budget numbers or
priority on any of these initiatives on the timeline as far as EA1 is our biggest priority,
it does not cost any money, it is easier to implement that would be something that we
could do now versus the ERP which is not on the timeline now, which is obviously
going to cost a lot of money.
Mr. Loyal: We did work with the IT team to prioritize all
of these initiatives and in terms of what is more important than the other one. We
also wanted to balance that against some of the resource requirements that would be
there for each of these initiatives. We have provided a rough order of magnitude
estimate for all of these products and initiatives, which Reiko also mentioned that
those are being defined internally. At the same time, it appears that there are a
number of financials for which we did not require specific funding to get started, such
as those around enterprise architecture, although there would be additional hiring
required to be able to support that all, but in terms of establishing the framework,
providing the right set of knowledge, articles around what enterprise architecture is,
how it can be implemented, as well as some of the governance initiatives. That is
what governance roles embodies would be required down the line, how will they be
maintained in either a strategic forum or a traditional forum. We also started to help
out with an example of one (1) department and one (1) project those being the
Department of Parks & Recreation migration to a newer version. From a project
management perspective within the County team as well as the IT Department
champion role that we are recommending, how would that work? So we use that as
an example to work with the IT team to demonstrate what that would look like in
action. What does a day in the life look like? So we have started working on some of
those already and the County IT team has started making significant progress along
some of those, which are currently zero (0) budget related.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Before we get into more questions, we have to
take a caption break. We will take our 10-minute caption break now and then, I know
we have Councilmember DeCosta, Councilmember Cowden, Councilmember Kuali`i,
and Councilmember Carvalho, on the list for questions, so 10-minute caption break
and we will be back.
COUNCIL MEETING 31 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
There being no objections, the meeting recessed at 10:27 a.m.
The meeting was called back to order at 10:42 a.m., and proceeded as follows:
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Welcome back. We have a question from
Councilmember DeCosta.
Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you. Hi, how are you folks? Are the
other two (2) people on?
Council Chair Kaneshiro: They are all on, you can just ask.
Councilmember DeCosta: I have a couple of questions. First of all, I
wanted to make a statement actually, I feel like a grade school kid in a high school
trigonometry class today. A lot of information, very comprehensive, and I want to
piggyback with Councilmember Chock. I know we need it. I am all about technology.
We have learned a lot. As my primary job as a school teacher, we have to teach
curriculum virtually, so we had to learn how to use Microsoft Teams meeting with
the children in the classroom and it is a challenge, but technology is the way of the
future. What worries me a little is, will this make us more cost-efficient as far as
manpower in the office using this technology, would we need more people to monitor
it? Will it take away jobs? That was one of my questions. I can ask my three (3)
questions first and you folks can answer it in order. The second thing I wanted to ask
you folks, if I am confused right now, I can imagine our constituents out there who
may have to use this program to pay bills online or to do the technology part. The
last one I wanted to make sure, would you folks offer tutorial videos for our
constituents out there, so they can click on it and learn how to use it or would you
provide all the training or is that another cost to the County that we may have to
come up with training videos for people to learn how to use this. My last one would
be, I asked this question with Reiko and Councilmember Carvalho, when we first had
our one (1) Microsoft Teams meeting, when that payment is due, let us say you had a
Real Property Tax payment or let us say you have a rental agreement that you are
doing for your property tax to be lowered, because you are following the County Code
under renting under Affordable Housing, would you folks send an alert, red button or
red bar that lets the constituents know that they have to make this payment, because
in person-to-person a lot of times people have it on their calendar, but if you are going
to do everything online then people might miss that opportunity. I just wanted to
know, how are we going to make this transition very easy for our community
members? Thank you. I can repeat any question if you forgot any of the four (4).
Mr. Dahilig: Councilmember DeCosta, this is Mike
Dahilig. I just wanted to thank the Council for the opportunity to have this discussion
about the IT future. I think as you folks have seen what is going to be critical for us
moving forward is that we actually have a comprehensive roadmap for our overall IT
infrastructure across the whole County. This is not something that has been
necessarily done before. We were thankful that the Council was willing to make the
investment and be able to create this roadmap to be able to hold us accountable in
taking care of things progressively and over time, so that we at least have those
benchmarks and we are able to identify low-hanging fruit that we can start to create
COUNCIL MEETING 32 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
momentum and build that snowball to be able to move towards a more digitized
operational picture across all of our platforms. Our intent is not to replace jobs and
I want to be clear on that first question, Councilmember. There is always going to be
more work than is demanded of us as a government then we are able to provide—that
is just going to always be the chronic tension between what we are expected to do as
a government civil servants and government officials versus what the capabilities
are. So there will always be a place for people within the County if they are still here
with us, to be able to take part in this digital transformation. I think that is where
first and foremost we want to be able to have the tools necessary to be able to ensure
that the folks that are doing our critical work for us, are able to do so as the standards
for operations change and as the expectations of the public adapt and change as well.
One thing that is attention as you prescribed in that second question really relates to
how we are handling and making sure we are not leaving anyone behind. We have
experienced this before when we went through the E plan review transition about
five (5) or six (6) years ago and there was a concerned effort for the Building Division
to literally call in groups of many users and be able to come in and discuss how
we...sorry, I just had an elf walk into my office and try to tell me something...literally
try to move forward and bring people along. We had the super users, we had a lot of
other users come through for the training process and we will do as much as we can
to do that outreach as we make those transitions through that process. It is very
clear that there are going to be people through the transition process that will have
a harder time making those transitions. Like you are suggesting—we have offered
training in the past, we have made transitions, when we make these big transitions
to new platforms, programs, or interfaces with the public that is something that as a
best practice that we will commit to follow when we actually go through that. I think,
ultimately as we want to go through the process of resourcing, we will be coming to
you folks through the budget discussions and talk about prioritization as to what we
can chip off what is entailed and we expect that all the questions you are raising will
naturally follow as the accountability factor in whether or not the Council wants to
appropriate resources to a particular program. We welcome that feedback
we
welcome that accountability, and I think this plan actually provides that template
where the Council has a tool to also hold us accountable and say, "Hey, where are we
on this transition? And are you folks making sure that you are balancing efficiency
with maintaining a healthy workforce, whether or not you are doing the proper public
outreach and the platforms are not confusing and that you folks are making sure no
one is left behind with training and those types of thing."
Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you, Mike.
Mr. Loyal: Thank you, Michael. I think you addressed
the great part of the first two (2) questions that Councilmember DeCosta had. I would
just like to compliment it by saying that a number of these initiatives that we have
talked about, I think you should look them through the lens of efficiency rather than
just cost efficiency. That is to say that all these initiatives will help various
departments, divisions, other stakeholders within the County and outside of it, to be
able to effectively use technology to further advance how the County operates today.
So you can think of these as investments in terms of technologies that help various
divisions and departments do their jobs a little better, rather more efficiently and
ensuring that information is readily available when it is required and help
COUNCIL MEETING 33 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
standardize some of the processes that you undertake currently; example, project
management across various divisions and departments. Also, most importantly
providing technology to various residents and visitors, so that they can effectively
utilize and work with the County government. As an example, they should be able to
go to a single portal to be able to raise any kind of request or raise any kind of incident,
be able to track it in real time how progress is being made and all of that is recorded.
You can use all of that information to further enhance how you provide those services,
make decisions based on that accordingly, so that you are able to say, "Last year we
saw that there were one thousand (1,000) requests which were denied in terms of
making any reservations for the Department of Parks & Recreation. How can we
better improve that? How can we make that more efficient—provide that information
more readily to various other stakeholders within the County." I think a lot of that
should be looked at from the lens of efficiency, both from the IT team standpoint as
well as outside of the IT team. I just want to address your fourth question in terms
of looking through any of these initiatives functionality of features like reminders for
any kind of bill payment or any other payments, can be made. Councilmember,
remember when we last spoke, I think it was in December, you had brought up the
same question, which we think is a great feature to be added to the list. Now that
you have gone through that process, we can confidently answer that through the
initiatives that we have from an enterprise planning standpoint as well as citizen
portal, as well as digitized payment standpoint—these are features and
functionalities that can be added to the billing module within the app itself. That
billing model has the capability to ensure that for various kinds of payments,
scheduled reminders can be sent out to the parties who are responsible for making
those payments. Now those payments can be for any kind of recurring payments that
you have, such as for any kind of tax payments that either local businesses or the
stakeholders have to make, or it could be for a one-time payments, which could be
scheduled for when those payments are required. So it entirely depends on how the
systems are designed—what features and functionalities that you want in those
systems, but can easily be addressed with the billing module within any model that
you would be looking at.
Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you for answering all four (4) of my
questions. Thank you very much.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Next up is Councilmember Kuali`i.
Councilmember Kuali`i: First, I want to say thank you for such a
thorough and encouraging report or roadmap as it is. Thank you, Mike for your
comments as well. I believe over time it will be a significant investment, but I also
think it is a well worthwhile investment. I believe that efficiency is inevitable and I
think that we are not necessarily the first to do this, so there are probably examples
out there of how effective and how efficient moving in this direction can be. I
especially appreciate that it will help us be more accountable. Not only us to the
citizens, but perhaps based on how the citizens engage with us, the citizens with us,
ensuring that accurate information is being shared both ways. I see it in general as
improving the way we provide services and improving our services to the public. One
of the things that excites me and it comes a little later in the timeline, is what you
call unified citizen engagement portal. I am curious if you could share, maybe not
COUNCIL MEETING 34 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
necessarily today, but as a follow-up, examples of how this might be working well
with other municipal governments and some of the challenges that they have had, so
that we do not necessarily make the same mistakes and do something different. The
other point to, and Mike addressed it a little bit about not leaving anyone behind, is
your principal of inclusive technology. So as we create this unified citizen
engagement portal, how do we make sure that we are able to allow as much as our
citizens as possible to have access?
Mr. Masumoto: Nikhil, before you go into the portal piece of
it, just a note on inclusive technology. I believe the County as a government agency
still has compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Section 508 for live
view websites and we did not see any evidence of you being out of compliance in that
regard. But the level above that is what we call inclusive technology or we call
inclusive design and taking that step up of making sure it is not just compliant, but
also has high contrast on your screens for kupuna to read or the text is tabable so
that people with mobility issues can access it, like you said, "Big red buttons" and so
forth—those are design considerations.
Mr. Loyal: Thank you, Jeff. Christine would you like to
share our experiences of other public portals?
Ms. DuBois: Sure. I think it is a great question and we did
put together a bit of case study in some examples of what has been happening in other
large cities and counties that have moved towards this more unified portal. We gave
some examples specifically for New York City to think about citizen engagement
around some of their planning and business processes. Then Lafayette, Louisiana
was another example that we gave that has a fully integrated portal and so we did
provide some more information on that to Reiko, Del, and the team, and I am happy
to share that with you.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you. Just to follow-up, when you were
talking about the inclusive technology, so that is more about how the technology is
actually on the hardware made available and going beyond ADA. I was thinking of
the word inclusive as reaching everyone, because if we say, "You can do it online."
But the citizen in a remote area does not have a computer then they really cannot get
online. So I guess it is just a matter of us making something available closer to them
in some public area, whether it be a public library or what have you.
Mr. Loyal: Absolutely. We include that in the definition
of inclusive technology. So if you were to take a case that would substantiate what
that means as an action as. For example, for a variety of services that payments have
to be made, those could be made either through checks, cash, or through online forms
of payment as well. Of course there should be a push in the future to ensure there is
more digitized forms of payments being utilized by various stakeholders. But we
should not do that at the cost of completely shutting down other traditional forms of
payment,just because a number of people within our world will be still utilizing those
or do not have access to any form of digitized form of payment as well. In that case,
inclusive means ensuring that all those channels of payments are still available to all
COUNCIL MEETING 35 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
stakeholders, but with a clear push towards ensuring that more online payments are
encouraged to meet the requirements of the future.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Thank you.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Cowden.
Councilmember Cowden: Mahalo, Christine, Nikhil, and Jeff. My
understanding is this first Project Holomua 2020 is really just an analysis and a plan
map, correct? Are you folks going to be who implements our enterprise architecture
or are you going to help us identify a third-party or is it someone else?
Ms. DuBois: We started some work with Del, Reiko, and
the team on sharing some recommendations for policies and ways to organize the
team. We have done a few workshops specifically around enterprise architecture and
governance to get that team started, but I guess I would punt that one to Del if you
want to talk about future plans. I am actually implementing the enterprise
architecture piece.
Councilmember Cowden: Let me just be clear in case I am not asking
the wrong question. Do we have the software that we are basically looking at
identified, where we have this holistic integrated system, do we know...is there a
company that we have decided as our provider for that?
DEL SHERMAN, Information Technology Manager (via remote technology):
I can probably handle that. This is Del, IT
Manager for the County. Nice to see you all this morning. As far as identifying a
specific vendor that will help us to implement for these kinds of solutions, no, we have
not done that yet. Instead what we have created is a roadmap...
Councilmember Cowden: Okay.
Mr. Sherman: ...that will help us to make decisions in the
future as to which vendor may be a good fit to help us with implementing these
various technologies, but in order to reach that point, we would have to go through
the regular procurement process in releasing, perhaps a request for proposal or some
other avenue of procurement in order to identify those vendors.
Councilmember Cowden: Thank you.
Mr. Sherman: The one thing that we have done already
using existing resources is move forward with creating a subcomponent to IT, which
is basically an enterprise services team and we have used existing personnel to do
that and we have redirected their focus from what their responsibilities were
previously to being more focused on enterprise planning and thinking to the future
in plotting out our course for getting us on the right track with having a
well-coordinated approach to these various enterprise services.
Councilmember Cowden: Thank you.
COUNCIL MEETING 36 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Mr. Sherman: Does that answer your question in part?
Councilmember Cowden: Yes, it does. I just wanted to make sure for
people who may be had less of an understanding in our viewership, that what is being
presented to us, is a map of what we need not of what we are actually doing, so we
are a little early to be thinking about the "red buttons." We are recognizing we need
"red buttons," but you folks are not making these "red buttons." Not yet anyway.
Christine, Nikhil, and Jeff, I want to give you a big compliment. I know the first
meeting that we spend together, I talked to you for about two (2) hours. I really went
in depth of what I wanted. I just want to acknowledge, I had given a really big wish
list and you hit every single point. Thank you so much. I feel heard, so that is great.
I made a few comments on different pages, so I want to bring them out for the sake
of everyone. Like on this stakeholder page, we do not need to pull it up, but when we
look at everyone equal, whether it is the other layers of government, local business,
employees, and residents, that is essentially important. A problem that I see in our
ability to be proactive and transparent is regular residents and businesses need
information to help them navigate without the need for an educated staff or an
attorney. Councilmembers need that too. I think if we achieve this roadmap it is
going to help people like myself do a much better job and probably be a lot less work
for staff. I like the single face of government. I think the capital.hawaii.gov with the
state is a good example, because it is probably equally helpful to the different layers.
On page 7, under investing and technical capabilities, the LIMS program, I want to
focus on that for a moment because that and the payroll are my priorities. This might
be a question for Reiko or Del, but the land information systems is something we
desperately need. That helps us all look at what infrastructures are coming in, where
developments are happening, hopefully that would map out where historic and
culturally significant areas are. How far down our roadmap is that from where we
are now—LIMS? Anyone who might be appropriate to answer that, I am sure it is in
Administration not KPMG.
Mr. Sherman: This is Del, again. I can take that question in
part and welcome others if they want to comment on this as well, but as far as our
LIMS initiative, that is our Land Information Management System, it certainly fits
into this roadmap that we developed through our Holomua 2020 Project. As far as
how long it is going to take to fully implement LIMS, it is a pretty dynamic project,
so it is always changing. Some of the goals and objectives are moving even as we
speak, but I would say to have something comprehensive and functional that will
address a number of the issues that we have identified, will probably be at least a
year out before we reach some of those goals. To be clear, it will be an ever evolving
product. It will be continually changing and be modified where to meet our present
needs.
Councilmember Cowden: Okay, thank you. My next question is
probably Reiko or Mike Dahilig. Two (2) years ago around this time, I pressed hard
for us to fund the whole six million dollars ($6,000,000) that were asked for IT
upgrades. I do not know if we have spent all that or if it got absorbed back into the
budget or if some of that is left, because we had a lot of aggressive ideas including
getting a roadmap, which really should be step one, so that we are holistic and
integrated. Where are we at on that Reiko or Michael?
COUNCIL MEETING 37 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Mr. Dahilig: Councilmember, this is Mike. There are a
number of items that, as you have mentioned a couple of years ago when we were
high in a position to make investments in our IT infrastructure, we had asked for
funding for the Land-Use Management Information System, the full implementation
of that, as well as HRMS system. There was a debate at the time, as you have
mentioned, whether or not we should also be developing a roadmap if we are going to
go and make these large investments in these two (2) areas and whether or not the
roadmap needed to come first or whether we could do these things in parallel. The
call at the time was to do things in parallel and at this point with HRMS we are very
close to getting to a point of where we can announce moving forward through the
procurement process and being done with the procurement process. Del and his team
have also been working on LIMS, where they have been picking away at pieces of an
overall LIMS system that will, once woven together, will constitute a more upgraded
and digital platform for our users at the Planning Department, Department of Public
Works, Department of Water, and the other departments to be able to now use. The
work has been progressing, the work has been moving, as you know the Council did
vote to reallocate some money that was committed a couple of months ago from LIMS
over to HRMS just based off of the way of mapping the needs and the ultimate
procurement part has shaken out, but that level of effort is still being maintained
with respect to the amount of investment that is going into our IT infrastructure. So
we have been pleased with Del and his team. They have "taken the bull by the horns."
They are a small shop, but they have been diligently been trying to pick away at this
piece-by-piece and they are getting there.
Councilmember Cowden: Okay, thank you. I think this is going to pull
our County forward substantially when we achieve this collective goal. We are kind
of moving decades in technology, so especially with the paper time clock going into
the HR, I think we are going to find that is going to make a big difference for our
budget. I think the LIMS is going to make a bid difference with our transparency
and our ability to be proactive and help ordinary people be able to answer critical
questions. The other piece that is a big deal to me, so thank you for putting it on the
very last page, the very last item; is a dash board. I want a dash board. A dash board,
just like what you have on your car, you can look at it every day and we can get a
quick look at the County health and the County project health and even where
developments are going on. So I think, for everyone, whether they are a citizen and
a business, it creates equality amongst the regular residents to just have a little bit
of a fighting chance against the really rich, because we are rapidly losing our lands
and our accesses and everything like that, because we do not have that kind of
information. So I appreciate all of that. My priorities are LIMS and HR. Del,
Winston, and Max, I want to thank you all, too; our team. I would say that is it for
me for right now.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Carvalho.
Councilmember Carvalho: I just wanted to also say, mahalo to the
Finance team and everyone. This in particular, having coming in now and reviewing
it and seeing all the information, and I like what Mike mentioned, how this is a
roadmap in place and in working order, if you will, but I wanted to just hone in on
slide 5, I think that is an important one, the stakeholder needs, overall, from the
COUNCIL MEETING 38 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
resident and visitor, the local business, the employees, federal, and state government,
I think those are the four (4) areas that has jumped out for me. I just have a couple
of questions on those four (4) areas. For instance, for the resident/visitor; we have
talked global, but I wanted to ask a question specifically within this area and how we
can enhance the support to our kapuna in that particular area—residents and
visitors. You do not have to answer, but to me, that is a big one because I talk a lot
to our kupuna and a lot of times they have difficulty transitioning. So how can we
make it easier for them? The local business part of it, I think, I have a lot of questions
or input from our farmers in general on how that technology can tie in. Employees, I
know, prior to this could be as simple as this, but my point is, if it is done already,
great, transitioning from the paper timesheet to online time sheet—I think that was
a big one just as an example internally. Then the federal government side, to me,
the whole emergency response part and how we are honing in on that or enhancing
that. At least in those four (4) areas and how far are we from targeting those areas?
Sooner than later. Those are my questions.
Mr. Dahilig: Councilmember Carvalho, this is Mike again.
As it relates to those four (4) constituencies, I think it is very clear that, as mentioned
previously, there is a certain aptitude level that we do need to be cognizant of across
the spectrum when it comes to peoples cover-level and peoples familiarity with
technology. I like to joke about how my parents would buy iPhones, but then they
would not know how to use them and they would constantly call me, even though they
are on O`ahu, how do you do this or how do you do that? But after a while, the
coaching and the patience has to be there, so in terms of support for kapuna, our
residents, and our visitors,just having patience, I think, is a cultural expectation that
we would have in any kind of roll out plan. It has to be sympathetic to the idea that
not everyone has the same type of technological base level and that we need to walk
people through, be welcoming about giving advice as well as be open about having
the right staff and right interface with the public, to say, "We can help you." We see
that a lot with how we have been doing a lot of the COVID-19 digital items. That is
something that is not necessarily germane to this discussion, but I think it is
indicative of just good customer service, in that when we have questions about how
to find something online or how to apply for a quarantine exemption or these types of
things, we just need to be there to be able to walk people through and be patient with
that. It takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of investment, but over time people become
familiar with it. When it comes to local business, what we have heard and as you
have mentioned, people want to be a part things that will make their lives easier, so
Reiko and her shop, as well as Del have been pushing digital transactions as a way
to provide options for people that just want to take care of business and run. We
always want to balance that with a good front door, making sure that people know
that there is a human touch element for people that want that human touch element,
so that is never going to go away, but in the meantime we are also hearing from local
businesses that they just sometimes do not have time to run all the way down to
Lihu`e and take care of things. So those are things that we are always going to be
open to and listening to when we are trying to look at how can we be interfacing with
the County easier and small local businesses are very important for that. When it
comes to our employees...again, our employees have driven a lot of the initiative here,
in terms of wanting to not have to waste time doing certain things. You are always
going to have a certain segment of our employee based that do not want change and
COUNCIL MEETING 39 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
that is ok, because things are done a certain way, but when we start looking at
whether we need to start doing things from an efficiency standpoint, it is also a duty
of us to constantly review our processes to ensure that we are doing things in the
most efficient manner so that we are not wasting taxpayer money. When we look at
things like online time sheets, that is where it is very important that we are not
spending time inputting and re-inputting things on paper, but that we are also
tracking things and making sure that we are best utilizing our scheduling, resources,
and our Human Resources in tandem appropriately to make sure that we are not
accruing unnecessary overtime or we are able to identify abuses that may be
happening because there may be too much overtime that is given. That is very
difficult right now, given our manual system, so that is where our employees come in,
but we are going to need their buy-in and their cooperation and that is where, again,
that patience in being able to work through the problems, work through the
perception items that change may be hard, and we are going to need to be able to do
that. Our Office of the County Attorney, when it comes to the federal government
has actually been very already adept to adjusting to what is kind of the standard in
the norm, let us say our federal court system. Right now in the federal court system,
everything is digital filing. Everything is digital interfaces. That also sets the pace
for us when we are moving forward and having to receive grants or interface with
reporting, and the folks that are working in those federal touch points are going to
have to also catchup in order for us to maintain a good standing with the federal
government and have them be confident in our ability to take federal resources and
be able to extend it in a matter that is responsible, accountable, and is in the public's
best interest. So we will continue to look at that in the emergency response, same
thing, all the COVID-19 items that are coming through is predominately digital
communication using their online reporting systems being able to ensure
accountability reporting. We are migrating in a realm where more and more, we are
going to be in habit of having digital aptitude as part of our overall wheelhouse. Just
for those four (4) constituents, Councilmember, those are what we are doing at this
point.
Councilmember Carvalho: I appreciate that. The point was to...there
were things already happening in place and now complimenting the bigger picture
that can really help enhance efforts out into the community and into the various
areas, so mahalo for that update. Thank you.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any further questions from the
Councilmembers. Councilmember DeCosta.
Councilmember DeCosta: I have one (1) question. I do not know if it is
a...I do not know if I have the ability right now to ask this question, but being this is
a very new service out there, how many other counties across the nation are digitizing
their process like how we want to and that company or those companies that we may
solicit, as a recommendation to use for their software, what is their criteria to put
their product out there that sells us as a selling point that we should use them,
because I know today in our college world there are a lot of students graduating in
writing program software and I am thinking that would we be better off...this is a
hypothetical question, would we be better off in the county, hiring one (1) or two (2)
program writers and program managers out of college than to go and buy a program
COUNCIL MEETING 40 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
that is already in place that might cost us a lot more. I do not know. That might be
something you want to look at. Maybe that is not the time to ask that question, but
my lightbulb is always working. You do not have to answer that, because I do not
even know if I can answer it, but I am throwing it out there.
Ms. DuBois: Sure, I think that is a good question. We can
start and Del or others feel free to jump in. In terms of what other counties and cities
are doing...so I cannot give you an exact number, but I think your County is very
comparable to many others, both big and small, that we see across the country.
KPMG is privileged to work with a lot of cities and counties and I think pre-pandemic,
but more especially now in the midst of the pandemic, all of these efforts around
digitizing forms; moving from paper to electronic, digitizing payments, improving the
ways that you communicate with your residents and your businesses, everyone is
going through that, because everyone was forced to go through it. So as we
mentioned, the County was already taking some really good steps to invest in that
and put the tools in place before the pandemic, so I think you are well on the road
there and I think as we mentioned, you are ahead of the pack for a lot of the
collaboration tools and communication things that you have already implemented.
Hopefully that makes you feel a little bit better, that sort of everyone is in this. We
did share some leading practices with Del, Reiko, and the team around some other
cities and counties that have started to invest in some of the more citizen portal or
electronic payments, things like that, to give you some leading practices and some
examples of what is happening and what has worked well. In terms of your question
about, how do you resource this and how do you think about these new technologies,
I think our overall recommendation when we were thinking through these high-level
initiatives with the IT team was, rather than trying to go the route of building
something custom for the County, leverage as much as you can from existing products
and platforms that are alreadyout there in the market and we know are working
pretty well for comparable governments. So that could mean products that are based
on the Microsoft or the sales force platform. You could look at some of the bigger
names that are more focused on, they provide the general infrastructure and platform
to do a lot of things, then you can narrow down from there, what is most relevant to
the County and sort of customize and configure what makes sense for you. We see
that as a general trend in the industry, I will say, for a few reasons. It allows you to
be able to focus a customization on what you actually need, it saves you time and
money, both in the short-term and the long-term because you are able to leverage
what has already been built and what we know is already working for other
jurisdictions, rather than having to start something from scratch or higher developers
specific to just one (1) particular solution. So that is kind of the general logic that we
recommend and that we think works pretty well for other cities and counties. Does
that help answer the question?
Councilmember DeCosta: It does, but you still told us you would save us
money if we go into something that has already been used in other counties across
the nation, but we still did not come up with a cost analysis if we would have our own
IT hire as a person or as a group and what would be the cost benefit to the County to
customize our own program versus something that is already out there that is
working. Not to say that our project or that project is better off, but I am just looking
at financial moneys, what are we talking about? In the millions of dollars to buy a
COUNCIL MEETING 41 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
software package versus hiring two (2) people out of college who would be working on
it for a couple of years and paying them salaries through the County having them
manage it? I do not know. I am just looking at the most cost-effective way to save
our County money, so we are not just putting money out there because something
looks good or because someone was recommended, so we should buy this package.
That is all. Thank you.
Mr. Masumoto: Just to add onto what Christine said, and I
hope this addresses your question. In terms of a large software recommendation, say
for example, you replace your UPC system, the actual cost of the package software is
actually a smaller percentage of the total project cost then the implementation done
by a consultant to install, implement, do the organizational change of management
and so forth. Specifically to the develop software, that is actually not as big a
percentage of the total cost of ownership compared to the actual implementation.
When you look at the implementation and the consultants you bring in to do that or
do it yourself if you want to do a lot of that work in-house, that is still available. In
terms of implementation partner, this is self-serving disclosure data house is a
Hawai`i based company, but you receive the tax dollars on the island or in the State.
Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you.
Mr. Dahilig: Councilmember, this is Mike, again. I just
want to add in one other statistic for the Councils entertainment. Typically, when
you look nationwide, you typically have one (1) IT support person for every
twenty-seven (27) employees in an organizations, one (1) to twenty-seven (27) or
one (1) to thirty (30), and right now, Del and the shop have just a little over a dozen
employees when our ratio at about one thousand two hundred (1,200) or one thousand
three hundred (1,300) employee base should really necessitate forty-five (45) to
fifty (50) IT employees. Del and his shop are literally working from an industry
standards standpoint about a quarter of what normally be needed to support such a
large employee base as our County. So they are doing a bang-up job, but as Reiko
mentioned, there is only so much capacity that we have in-house to be able to do all
the things that we want to do. So looking forward in terms of how we look at industry
standards for resourcing that if we do have a plan, there will also have to be a
discussion on the backend standpoint of how we are able to be successful in looking
at our own internal resources to keep up the infrastructure necessary. Just like we
would with roads folks, just like we would with our parks and those types of things
that I am sure these budget discussions as they come up,just right around the corner,
will kind of identify that, but I will not want to give an illusion that Del and his team
are supermen, they are great heros in the County in terms of what they will do, but
the capacity that they have really only has so much when we look at it from a
comparative industry standard. So I would like to set that expectation here.
Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you, Mike.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any further questions? If not, I will
call this meeting back to order. Is there any final discussion from the Members?
Councilmember Cowden.
COUNCIL MEETING 42 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
There being no objections, the meeting was called back to order:
Councilmember Cowden: Thank you. I want to thank Councilmember
DeCosta for asking some very good questions. We are a part of the National
Association of Counties (NACo), so a big advantage of that, is that we are able to work
with many other counties to see how they are handling things. This is your first term
in office. When we go to these conferences, there are rows of software companies that
have hundreds of engineers for years developing the type of software that might be
there. So there are a lot of choices and when we look at someone with a roadmap like
this, KPMG would be people who have some expertise and the skill set or the breath
to be looking at similar sized counties. So I wondered, it does not sound like it is yet
there, but if there is guidance towards existing software where we can adapt things
into this. What I want to say then moving away from that is that, even though I
realize this is hard for some of our long-term staff and I know our Treasury
Department quit the same day we received our computer system in and that is why
we were behind in the last CAFR—is that all of a sudden we did not have a Treasury
Department. It is a big jump to make, but there is a new generation coming up and
it is not so hard for them. What I would hope for and our IT Department is not
necessarily young, but they are very dexterous and capable that this creates
educational opportunities and career empowerment for our own staff. So when we
are able...I like how this roadmap is super inclusive of our people and I like that we
were just given the explanation that we are understaffed relative to IT, so maybe we
can be bringing in people from Kaua`i Community College (KCC) in or our own
residents coming in to fill these positions, but I am very happy with the job that they
did. It has been some time since I had worked in this industry, but this is what my
technical training is in at one point, as a software engineer/electrical engineer, and
in having run my own businesses and done the IT part of it, it is not a simple task.
What I am hearing in the roadmap all resonates with me, as best I can tell a right
direction. So the next real big piece is, what do we take our Granicus is really good.
We have some things that are really excellent on our existing kauai.gov website. We
have some really great things and how do we fold that in with the rest and I think it
is very important as we are moving forward in the world and I want to just end my
statement with both a thank you to Jeff, Nikhil, and Christine and also to our own IT
Department for doing an amazing job of getting us through this COVID-19 window
where we are doing everything remote and I get that has been both a distraction and
an opportunity to show how important these changes are. Good job everyone. Good
job Finance Department. I am very pleased with the product that we are getting and
if there are ways that are appropriate to continue to work with your organization,
KPMG, I am supportive with that idea.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Evslin.
Councilmember Evslin: Thank you, Chair Kaneshiro. First off, thank
you, Christine, Jeff, Nikhil, Del, and the other half dozen people or so from your folks
company that were in our initial meetings. I have to admit that when I first went
into our initial meeting with you folks, around six (6) to eight (8) months ago, I was
not super excited. I thought, "Oh, here is another consultant who is going to give us
some cookie-cutter solution to some problem." I was just blown away by how you folks
ran the meeting, by how you were starting from the ground up and trying to really
COUNCIL MEETING 43 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
dive deep into what our needs were as a county all-around and I was really impressed
with the works that you folks did and I am impressed so far with your output here. I
think looking at this from a holistic perspective instead of trying to solve these narrow
things that often mend up maybe creating other issues. Just to highlight a few things,
I think that we have talked about, I think the efficiency component here is really
critical. As we all have experienced in the County, often we have really good policy
ideas end up dying an early death because we do not have the manpower capacity to
implement them. Every single time a department is really overstressed or
overburdened and it is hard to add to that, so I think anything we can do through
technology or efficiency or other measures that can free up manpower really helps all
of us to a better job of serving the public. Just as a quick example, we used to get a
lot of E-mails about abandoned cars. If an E-mail comes to me as a Councilmember,
I forward that E-mail to our Deputy County Clerk, who then forwards the E-mail to
file a report with Kaua`i Police Department (KPD), KPD gets back to the Deputy
County Clerk, who then gets back to me, and I get back to the person—it is this whole
convulated system that takes up a lot of effort and now KPD has this great online
portal where you can just go, it takes you two (2) minutes to report a car, better
service for the person reporting, better service and easier for KPD, it takes us out of
the loop, and saves everyone time. I think those types of things, this is a keen
example, but when you compound it really makes a big difference. Just to highlight
also the equity component that was brought up by Councilmember Kuali`i first and
Mike Dahilig spoke about it and Councilmember Carvalho is also really critical.
Sorry,just one more quick story. Our neighbors were trying to sign-up for the vaccine
distribution, recently, through Hawai`i Pacific Health, and they did not have access
to internet. My wife works in IT at the hospital, so we thought, great we will sign
you up. The hospital has this great online sign up form, but you need an E-mail
address in order to make a reservation. So there was no way to sign them up and we
did not want to put our own E-mail address for Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA) reasons and there is no way around it, so they could not
get signed up. My wife, because she is in IT was able to figure out a backend solution
there. But I think this has been, obviously, a nationwide problem with vaccine
distributions and those with access with technology and have the time to figure out
smart phones and these sign-ups have been able to get early access to vaccines often
and those without are left behind. I think obviously, this is a massive problem with
no easy answers as we try to transition to better technology. It is important to keep
for most in mind here that we are not leaving people behind in this transition. Just
lastly to close us off, Christine in the beginning mentioned that she seemed happy to
hear that we were so excited to hear about our audit. That we had such a good
conversation about it, but I think what really gets my blood pumping here is data
management, data base stuff, and how to correct and report on data and I am so
happy to see this as such an integral component of the work that you folks are doing
here is helping the County set up the systems and processes to compile in and present
data and hopefully open data platform models. Last thing that the one-stop customer
portal is super exciting. I think often people's big frustration with government is that
they call about a problem and they get bounced around between a bunch of different
departments and no one knows division so-and-so or whatever their problem is, they
do not know how to find the correct answer. Whereas, at business, you call a business
with the problem and they end up solving it for you. So the one-stop customer portal
is so critical and I am excited to see us moving forward. All that said, lastly,
COUNCIL MEETING 44 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Christine, you mentioned the case studies that you had presented to IT would be
great if we could see those and I am really excited about the work that you folks are
doing. Thanks to you folks at IT, Del, and everyone else for the collaboration.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Is there anyone else?
(No written testimony was received and no registered speakers requested to
testify regarding this agenda item.)
The motion to receive C 2021-37 for the record was then put, and unanimously
carried.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: The motion is carried. Next item.
C 2021-38 Communication (01/20/2021) from the Acting County Engineer,
requesting Council approval to receive and expend an additional $20,000.00 of State
funds, from the State of Hawai`i Department of Health (DOH), and to indemnify the
State DOH for the Fiscal Year 2021 grant cycle for the HI-5 Deposit Beverage Container
Program, which will cover salary increases for program staff associated with the
Unit 13 bargaining agreement, as well as increased County fringe benefits costs.
Councilmember Carvalho moved to approve C 2021-38, seconded by
Councilmember Kuali`i.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any questions from the Members?
Councilmember Cowden: I have a very simple one. Just so I understand.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: I will suspend the rules. Councilmember
Cowden.
Councilmember Cowden: We are just basically moving...this is just a
transfer of money, right? From our HI-5 moneys to offset our Unit 13, which is
professional, is that right?
There being no objections, the rules were suspended.
Ms. Fraley: Can I answer. Hi, this is Allison in the Solid
Waste Division. Aloha.
Councilmember Cowden: Hi.
Ms. Fraley: All this is an addition of funds to an existing
grant for the program that will cover two (2)staff that are paid by the State and because
there was a salary increase for those staff, the State is adding funds to pay those salary
increases, as well as to cover the County's fringe benefits, which were a little bit higher
this year. We can never tell at the beginning of the fiscal year what the fringe is going
to be, we find out after. So this is just covering all the costs of the staff.
COUNCIL MEETING 45 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Councilmember Cowden: Thank you. I appreciate the creativity and
dexterity to find a little bit of extra money. Thank you.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any further questions from the
Members? If not, I will call the meeting back to order. Is there any final discussion on
this item?
There being no objections, the meeting was called back to order, and proceeded
as follows:
(No written testimony was received and no registered speakers requested to
testify regarding this agenda item.)
The motion to approve C 2021-38 was then put, and unanimously carried.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: The motion is carried. Next item.
CLAIM:
C 2021-39 Communication (01/19/2021) from the County Clerk, transmitting
a claim filed against the County of Kaua`i by Guiller Ruiz, for damage to his vehicle,
pursuant to Section 23.06, Charter of the County of Kauai.
Councilmember Kuali`i moved to refer C 2021-39 to the Office of the County
Attorney for disposition and/or report back to the Council, seconded by
Councilmember DeCosta.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any questions from the Members?
Is there any discussion?
(No written testimony was received and no registered speakers requested to
testify regarding this agenda item.)
The motion to refer C 2021-39 to the Office of the County Attorney for
disposition and/or report back to the Council was then put, and unanimously
carried.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: The motion is carried. Next item.
COMMITTEE REPORT:
PUBLIC WORKS &VETERANS SERVICES COMMITTEE:
A report (No. CR-PWVS 2021-02) submitted by the Public Works & Veterans
Services Committee, recommending that the following be Approved as Amended on
second and final reading:
COUNCIL MEETING 46 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
"Bill No. 2816 — A BILL FOR AN ORDINANCE TO AMEND
CHAPTER 15, ARTICLE 1, KAUAI COUNTY CODE 1987, AS AMENDED,
RELATING TO FLOODPLAIN MANAGEMENT,"
Councilmember Kuali`i moved for approval of the report, seconded by
Councilmember Carvalho.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Are there any questions or discussion from the
Members on this item?
(No written testimony was received and no registered speakers requested to
testify regarding this agenda item.)
The motion for approval of the report was then put, and unanimously carried.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: The motion is carried. Next item.
Bill No. 1993, Draft 1 — A BILL FOR AN ORDINANCE TO AMEND
CHAPTER 9, KAUAI COUNTY CODE 1987, RELATING TO PUBLIC
ACCESS-WAYS
Council Chair Kaneshiro: We took public testimony earlier today and we
did receive some written testimony on this item. I believe Councilmembers have
questions. I will suspend the rules. Council Vice Chair Chock.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you, Chair. Is the Planning Director
here as well? I know there was some last minute testimony that came in and I wanted
to make sure that the community had some background on its origin and the reason
for receiving this today. I want to thank Councilmember Kuali`i and Councilmember
Cowden, I know they were looking into this as well, so I just wanted to be able to
provide that explanation. Thank you, Chair. Ka`aina, can you give us a little bit of
background on this?
There being no objections, the rules were suspended.
KA'AINA S. HULL, Planning Director (via remote technology): Yes. Thank
you, Chair, Vice Chair, and Members of the Council. Ka`aina Hull, on behalf of the
Planning Department. What is before you folks is one (1) of several bills that Council
Services and our staff found to have somewhat just languished and fallen by the
wayside years ago. This is one (1) of three (3) or four (4) of those bills that had just
fallen wayside. This was introduced back in 2001 with no action by the Commission.
So just as a housekeeping measure, we were sending the bills back to you folks just
to receive them, just to put them to bed. Now, that is not to say that some of these
bills, this one included, do not have merit to them, but because this was introduced
COUNCIL MEETING 47 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
by a Councilmember that is no longer on the Council and able to have those
discussions with the Planning Commission and other Councilmembers, it was
appropriate to receive this, but if there is a Councilmember or Councilmembers that
still would like to reintroduce the bill and begin the process anew, the Department is
open to that.
Councilmember Chock: Ka`aina, it seems like this Bill might have
some merit; however, it is my understanding that a particular measure or the intent
of this Bill is outlined in other sections of our County Code and I am just curious if
you can expand on that, because one of the reasons for receiving this is because of its
redundancy, is that correct or no?
Mr. Hull: Thank you, Vice Chair. It is redundant in
that it is already required under the Subdivision Ordinance as-is, that public access
could be created during the process of subdivision, even during the use permits or
Special Management Areas (SMA) use permits. There are also Public Access Shorline
Hawai`i (PASH) and State laws that allow for access to sites that families or
practitioners have accessed in the past. I will say the draft bill that you folks have
further goes into more specific details in pulling out historical sites and cultural sites
for access; it does highlight them further—the Department has no objections to that.
I think it could have some merit if reintroduced at a certain scale. I can say that
public access and cultural practitioning or more particularly, historic preservation
are not necessarily one in the same, so the Department does have some concerns
where by the draft bill, if reintroduced, requires the Planning Commission to create
public access to a historical site, say through the subdivision process because a
historical site is really just in the State of Hawai`i, it is any nonresidential structure
that is fifty (50) years old. So does that mean then, every application should now
have public access to these structures that are over fifty (50) years old. Then even
like the State Historic Preservation Program, which is modeled after the National
Historic Preservation Program, as far as the registry is concerned, to be on the State
or National Historic registry, those are primarily concerned with preservation
purposes. Just because a property owner avails himself or herself to be able to be on
the national registry for historic preservation purposes does not mean that property
owner is going on to avail the public to be able to access their historic house. If you
live in a historic home for preservation purposes, you might want to put in their
registry, but it does not mean you want to avail your lanai to every single member of
the public that wants to access it. That is why I say the requirement of"shall" is a
bit concerning, should Councilmembers want to reintroduce it, but overall there is
some merit to the proposal though.
Councilmember Chock: To confirm, the proper means for moving this
measure forward would be a reintroduction or a new bill by any one of our
Councilmembers, correct?
COUNCIL MEETING 48 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Mr. Hull: Correct.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Cowden, then
Councilmember Kuali`i.
Councilmember Cowden: I have asked our Deputy County Clerk if he
could put up a document for me for a moment. It is a comparison of Bill No. 1993,
Draft 1 with our existing Code, which is Section 9-2.9(e), public accessways for any
subdivision. I want to acknowledge our excellent staff, Codie, who helped us to
understand why Bill No. 1993, Draft 1 basically did not move forward because Bill
No. 1996 created this. We have the two (2) compared, so in Bill No. 1993 the top one,
I have highlighted and underlined "shall" and in the bottom one Section 9-2.9(e), I
have bold and underlined the word "may." Is Matt Bracken on for a moment? By the
way, I am not trying to change it, but Matt, do you want to define the difference
between "may" and "shall"?
MATTHEW M. BRACKEN, County Attorney (via remote technology):
Generally, one creates a requirement, while
the other one provides the ability to do something, but not the requirement to do
something.
Councilmember Cowden: Right, so we just had the example of maybe a
lanai is not going to be open to everyone, it might also be that a grandparent's grave
is not open to everyone. On this same paper that I have handed out, it says, "The
Planning Commission may also require public access to and the preservation of all
significant historic and archaeological sites known or discovered on the parcel to be
subdivided, as determined by the..." and this I underlined and made larger, "...the
Planning Commission after seeking..." I saw this, and was like, "Okay, we do not
need Bill No. 1993, because the existing Code basically gets it," but when I first saw
Bill No. 1993, I thought we will need that so badly. Why do we not have it? Well, we
do. The problem is we do not observe it. So this little pile of papers right here, that
I am showing, this is just since December when we saw Bill No. 1993, this all happens
to be Koloa outreach to all of us, by the way, about the Koloa field system and there
is a sewer line going in. It took me a little while to find that information that was
approved in 2009 that is in this pile. It was given to me by one (1) of the speakers
this morning, so that happened in 2009, Katherine Kealoha had signed that as the
right piece. We saw two (2) women testify this morning. Part of my seeking, because
that is what I really want to start to ask, is what does it mean to seek, because to me,
seeking is reading, responding, and then I went and looked. I went on an
approximately 4%-hour field trip with them. I did four (4) field trips to Koloa since I
received this. I am going to ask Matt, what does it mean, "the Planning Commission
after seeking," what does "seeking" mean?
COUNCIL MEETING 49 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Mr. Bracken: Can you please tell me which Ordinance you
are looking at?
Councilmember Cowden: Kaua`i County Code 1987, as amended,
Section 9-2.9(e). When we "seek," what does the word "seek" mean?
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Matt, would it help if we put it back up on the
screen?
Councilmember Cowden: Yes, I will put it back up on the screen.
Mr. Bracken: Yes, that would be good.
Councilmember Cowden: This is just Koloa, but there has been Kilauea,
Polihale, Kauapea, and Lepeuli that were raised since we noticed this Bill No. 1993
in December—that many has raised an issue. See where it says, "As determined by
the Planning Commission after seeking and receiving input from affected agencies,
• and community and cultural groups." I am saying, we do not do that. I would give
us a "D." That is in my view—this does not happen and I want to talk about why it
does not.
Mr. Bracken: When the subdivision process begins, the
Planning Department will actually send letters out to sister agencies, whether they
are in the State or the County, asking for input on the potential development and
those documents are then forwarded to the Planning Commission. So this "seeking"
that you are referring to is when the department actually sends out those letters to
other agencies. In any situation it could be community members as well.
Councilmember Cowden: When we have a Planning Commission, how
are they trained? That was probably for Ka`aina, how do you train the Planning
Commissioners what their responsibility is to seek this information?
Mr. Hull: Thank you, Councilmember Cowden. As far
as an orientation of Planning Commissioners, they can take several hours when they
first get appointed, but I can say that our Commissioners are also given training and
recently have been given training, in fact, on the Ka Pa`akai 0 Ka`aina v. Land Use
Commission analysis and the necessity of the reviewing agency or body to proactively
seek out cultural practitioner input on discretionary permits. So the department does
also require that during the application process that the applicant also participate in
a Ka Pa`akai 0 Ka`aina v. Land Use Commission analysis that shows...they have to
go further than just say, not sending out letters to cultural practitioners, they have
to proactively engage cultural practitioners to see if there are any issues, concerns,
or sites that may need to be mitigated or addressed.
COUNCIL MEETING 50 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Councilmember Cowden: The third person who did not quite make it,
who was online, but somehow did not speak up, Roslyn, very strong cultural
practitioner, seven (7) children, maybe somehow that is why she did not make it to
turn her phone on. All three (3) of those, there were others that I thought were going
to come in from these other places, all three (3) of them have felt really unresponded
to and we walked the properties there where the first one lives, demonstrated...we
saw where grave areas were crushed. There is really profound impacts. There was
no reach out to them. I think what happens, is that a citizen has to know to look on
the County website and has to know how to look it up. I will ask you, Planning
Director Hull, right now are the Planning Commission meetings televised in the way
the Council Meetings are?
Mr. Hull: No they are not. We do not have Granicus at
this time. Unlike the Council, we do actually publish the notice and allow any
member of the public to call in and testify during any Planning Commission meeting,
as well as to sit in and watch and listen in to the meeting in its entirety.
Councilmember Cowden: I listened in to yesterday's meeting in its
entirety. I live right around the corner of it, I am part of a very active group that is
concerned that...this is the Charles Summers property in Kilauea about a grading
and grubbing in a very historically and archeologically significant place. It takes
attorneys to ask me to ask staff, how to be able to see this. There are no live links on
the website. If I, as a sitting Councilmember who is very interested in this topic,
must have a lot of assistance and attorneys who are representing people who are
being impacted by this property that is represented by the last County Attorney and
prior to that, the attorney who wrote the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance (CZO) is
who has helped him to isolate the community out of those parcels. It is not even a
revolving door—it is a one-way door—where we have our key County Attorneys start
helping these extremely wealthy people, either as their attorneys or they become the
directors of these development companies and it is near impossible for regular
residents to navigate it.
Mr. Dahilig: Council Chair, this is Mike Dahilig. I am a
little confused on the topic of discussion and whether or not we are being asked a
question concerning operations of the Planning Commission...
Councilmember Cowden: I will clarify it.
Mr. Dahilig: ...versus being asked to answer items that are
on the table regarding interpretation of law and a bill. We are more than happy to
have discussions concerning operations of the Planning Commission if that is
something that the Planning Committee Chair or the Council would like to talk
about,but my understanding is that the agenda item as posted under Hawai`i Revised
COUNCIL MEETING 51 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Statutes Chapter 92, which is the exact statute that we are being called to task to
abide by, is starting to deviate on the topic regarding what exactly is the bill that has
been posted up through the Council agenda.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: I think if Councilmember Cowden can sum it
up, I think her question relates to the public being able to have input on certain
Planning Commission items and maybe you can try to answer.
Mr. Dahilig: Right.
Councilmember Cowden: It is deeper than that.
Mr. Dahilig: Council Chair. I would also like the opportunity to respond concerning
our duties under the Hawai`i State Constitution, HRS Chapter 6E, and in court cases
like Hui Malama I Na Kupuna 0 Hawai`i Nei v. Wal-Mart (2009) and Kalekini v.
Yoshioka (2012), if that is what the Council would like us to go through in terms of
the litany of case law and constitutional obligations as to what "seeking" entails as
part of the overall permitting process, so I can go through that to be able to explain
what our constitutional duties are for clarification.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Cowden, would you like to
hear that or do you want to try and sum up your questions?
Councilmember Cowden: I can sum up my question, but if you are going
to share with me something I have no idea about, please go ahead.
Mr. Dahilig: Sure. You have hinged a lot of this discussion
regarding "seeking." When you are looking at Kaua`i County Code Chapter 9,
Section 2.9, Subsection (e), that you have been placing up on the board. We are
required, as Matt has mentioned, under the Hawai`i State Constitution, to preserve
historic properties or protect historic properties and that has been found in cases like
Hui Malama I Na Kapono 0 Hawai`i v. Wal-Mart in 2009, as well as further when
they are dealing with the rail project in the Kaleikini v. Yoshioka in 2012, so if you
want to take a look at HRS Section 6E-8 and Section 6E-42 and 43, there are
processes that are set forth in the historic preservation statute as to what all State
and County governmental agencies are required to do in terms of seeking information
as to historic properties before it conducts any action that may be official
governmental business. So I will refer you to those two (2) court cases as well as
sections under the Hawai`i Revised Statutes that specifically spell out what are our
obligations. If you look at KCC Section 9-2.9(e), it is essentially a codification of what
is the constitutional and statutory standards as it relates to historic preservation and
consultation. Specifically when you are looking at the statute, it says, "Before any
agency or officer of the State or its political subdivisions approves any project
involving a permit, license, certificate, land use change, subdivision owner, in other
COUNCIL MEETING 52 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
entitlement for use, which may affect historic property, aviation artifacts, or a burial
site the agency or officer shall advise the department..." and this is the Department
of Land and Natural Resources, "...and prior to any approval allow the Department
an opportunity for review and comment on the effect of the proposed project on
historic properties, aviation artifacts, or burial sites consistent with Section 6E-43
including those lands that are listed in the Hawai`i register of historic places." So
there is already a codified process for us to go through State of Hawai`i Planning &
Development Agency (SHPDA) as well as the public notice under HRS Chapter 92,
as well as whatever is laid out in each of the county ordinances related to public
notification. I want to make it very clear that there is already requirements that
have been established in our State laws, in our State Constitution, in case law by the
Supreme Court, in case law by the Intermediate Court of Appeals, as well as our own
County Code that lays out what is the process for engagement and if there needs to
be a change in how that is done, we are more than happy to have that discussion
about whether additional legislation should be proposed either at the State level or
at the County level, but this is a Constitutional standard that essentially is set forth
under many case laws that have been litigated on these items.
Councilmember Cowden: Thank you so much for bringing that up. With
these people who are very concerned, we stood there at the signs, saying that it is a
ten thousand dollar ($10,000) fine if they were to walk into the areas and it gave the
State Historic Preservation Divisions (SHPD) phone number, so we called that and
there is just a recording. It happens that the Burial Council goes to the very same
recording. There are three (3) points that were called, there were no return calls, and
it was the same voice who happens to also be the Land Manager for those big land
owners in that Koloa area. So there really is a serious challenge when we have one
to two degrees of separation between familiarity including between the attorneys and
key department heads here that should be a check and balance. I am going to be
asking for an audit of Boards and Commissions and the Planning Department,
because it is too profound how we do not take the spirit of the law, which is intended
to help people be able to hold on to their cultural access to the land and to the
pathways. The spirit of the law is subjecated by former County Attorneys or people
within our County legal system, supporting these people who have so much wealth
that there is nothing even close to this...and yesterday, I listened to the Planning
Commission meeting specifically for this. Mauna Kea Trask was the attorney and it
was probably less than one (1) minute, and I have been paying attention. That was
one (1) hour for a whole month for the Planning Commission. I would say the
Planning Commission is as important as the Council or just about, unpaid by the
way, but I think we have a real problem. I think we need to be moving with
transparency and I think that people are afraid. There were three (3) other elements
that were going to testify this morning. They are afraid because they are still held in
check by these last County Attorneys that do not have the money to fight it. So we
have a problem and I want to fix it. Thank you.
COUNCIL MEETING 53 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Do we have any questions on this Bill?
Councilmember Kuali`i, did you have a question?
Councilmember Kuali`i: Not a question.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Okay. Are there any other questions from the
Members? If not, I will call this meeting back to order. Is there any final discussion?
Councilmember Kuali`i.
There being no objections, the meeting was called back to order, and proceeded
as follows:
Councilmember Kuali`i: I just wanted to go back to the simple process
of it all and I wanted to thank our staff Codie who did a thorough analysis for both
Councilmember Cowden and I, and found the details of Bill No. 1968, which came
before the Council at the same time this Bill No. 1993, Draft 1 was before the Council
back in 2001—quite a while ago. The other Bill No. 1968 was the Bill that passed
and that became Ordinance No. 777 and that became codified into the Code,
Section 9-2.9(e) that they were talking about, so it did address that specific language.
In fact, the receipt of this Bill No. 1993, Draft 1 is appropriate at this time and if
there is any other improvements to the Kaua`i County Code 1987, as amended, it
should be sought, then it would require a new proposal of a new bill. I do not think
at this time, Councilmember Cowden and I feel that is necessary, because the wording
is there and then as Councilmembers are talking about is applying what is already
there. So I wanted to thank Codie for her thorough analysis to get us to this point of
receipt. I also want to thank the testifier Hope Kallai who gave such a thorough
testimony this morning where she included the state law and HRS Chapter 6E-8
and-42, and the six(6) review steps that are there, which involve historical properties
and SHPD and the requirements of the County having to follow State requirements
to make sure that you are finding out about in potential problems and making sure
that there are mitigations included. We just need to make sure that we are doing
what needs to be done and following the State law, but as far as receiving this Bill, I
think it is a simple matter.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Council Vice Chair Chock.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you, Chair. Just out of the spirit of
discussion on this since I am in agreement about receiving this, I think this is not the
right route to move something forward. Based on the Planning Director's comments,
I am a little interested in an improvement aspect of it. I understand there are a
couple of aspects; one that you folks are addressing or Councilmember Cowden is
addressing in the action piece of inclusiveness, but the Planning Director also said
that some of the language indicated in the existing Bill that we are looking at may be
useful moving forward, is that what you folks, the two (2) of you, would entertain?
COUNCIL MEETING 54 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Councilmember Kuali`i: I just think that potentially, and maybe
Planning will have to clarify this, the biggest issue obviously, when you hear the
"shall" and "may" and if you look back to the bills that were considered in 2001, Bill
No. 1968 was passed and became Ordinance No. 777, that was the one that had"may"
and that became part of the law, and Bill No. 1993 did not pass. So if it was a matter
of trying to do the "shall" again, then we are going to have to work it out with the
County Attorney, work it out with Planning, and I do not think Ka`aina said that the
requirement of "shall" is concerning, so if it is that, I do not know what the point
might be. But I do not know what he might have meant by a little tweaking, it might
just be housekeeping type of things, because he did also mention the concern about
the State defining historical sites as structures that are fifty (50) years or older and
obviously that is not what we are talking about, we are talking about ancient
Hawaiian cultural sites that need to be protected.
Councilmember Chock: I think that is what I heard from him on the
details, not the "shall" or "may." Okay, well, we can look at it further. Thank you.
Councilmember Kuali`i: Of course having all the PASH, access, State
laws that already exist.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Is there any final discussion? Councilmember
Cowden.
Councilmember Cowden: In the spirit of discussion, some of it is not
even ancient. It might be great-grandpa, right, it is actually not that ancient. When
I see the passion of these young mothers, and by the way everyone matters, but when
I see someone who is so deeply busy and including with all the remote learning and
everything else, how near impossible it is to be able to standup against these issues
and the only way that they know that it happens is because of the heavy equipment
driving over the burial site that prior to that had been quiet. Then them discovering
that it is going to be the pool site of a new building. It is just what we have is
inadequate in the way it is implemented and when I am talking to attorneys who are
calling me to help understand what is on the Planning Commission meeting, they
should be able to figure this out. What I am seeing is that it is so removed from the
intention of how this is framed that our next generation—there will be nothing left
for them and that the Hawaiian culture—I respect all of our cultures, but the
Hawaiian culture is very special and unique to this community, as is the language.
So everything from being able to access the beaches or be able to go...you practically
have to have a law degree to navigate the public outreach process and I want to see
that change. That is what the LIMS system, where I feel it is important. It would
not have taken so much effort to find out that this...I do not really have a problem
with the sewer line, but we went up and I talked to the folks who are building it and
they did not know it was right next to a wildlife preserve for the blind spiders, they
COUNCIL MEETING 55 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
did not know it was right next to these graves, there is nothing there where they even
know that they are on top of a historic place, and that is what the first testifier this
morning said, "These people have just gotten a ten thousand dollar ($10,000) fine for
grading and grubbing." What we are seeing with a lot of these patterns is that it is
easier to say you are sorry, beg for forgiveness, and get fined, than to go through the
process of actually following the rules and protecting things. So we have a chronic
problem that needs correction and this is going to open that up. Bill No. 1993, I have
no problem receiving it, but we need to look at what we are going to do working
forward to have a higher integrity system.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember DeCosta.
Councilmember DeCosta: Thank you, Council Chair Kaneshiro. I am
very impressed with Codie getting to do all the work and especially Councilmember
Kuali`i and Councilmember Cowden for diving into that. Impressed with our
testifiers even if there were just three (3) and I know them in our community. I think
sometimes we think we only have three (3) testifiers, but actually they are testifying
for a lot of people who do not have the time to testify. I am not a native Hawaiian,
although I did marry a native Hawaiian and I feel I can perpetuate my three (3) boys
to have the same cultural rights as every indigenous person across the nation. I think
language protects people's actions. Our Planning Commission is chosen and they all
come with their own background, characteristics, and personal feelings, so I think
having the correct language holds everyone accountable. I think there is a big
discrepancy between the words"shall" and"may." If I would use that in my classroom
and tell all the children that they "shall" have recess or I would use the term they
"may" have recess. That means at the "may" I make the decision, at the "shall"
everyone goes to recess. I am excited to assist or work to make sure language is in
place that protects our indigenous people. Thank you.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Carvalho.
Councilmember Carvalho: I agree that cultural sites are very important.
I am Native Hawaiian, so I understand the importance and the emotional side of this
whole discussion, but at the same time we need to make sure, from my
understanding, if anything is going to be changed we need to do it again, a whole new
bill, everything, right? That is my understanding. So what is on the table right now
is as-is and we look forward to more heavy discussion. I, too, had people calling in
and asking the same questions on how this particular...although three (3) testifiers,
like Councilmember DeCosta said there are many more who are very concerned and
I think now is the time, we have it on the table, we are talking about it, but the
Planning Commission and their responsibility and kuleana, I think it is important
that we look at it and see if there needs to be any kind of change and how it happens,
but making sure that the cultural side is accessible and open to the people. That, to
me, is a big part, especially to these young ladies who provided the testimony and I
COUNCIL MEETING 56 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
have talked to a couple of them, too. Anyway, I just wanted to put that on the table
as well.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Councilmember Evslin.
Councilmember Evslin: Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the dialogue
going on here, the work that was done by Councilmember Kuali`i and Councilmember
Cowden, and Codie for her research. My few years that I spent on the Open Space
Commission, it felt like so often everything that was coming through our agenda felt
like mistakes that were made thirty (30) years ago through subdivision agreements
that maybe were not upheld and accesses lost and there was so much recognition, I
felt like at every Open Space meeting about not making the same mistakes that we
have made in the past and I know that the County has made every effort to try and
learn from the past and patch these systems up, but I agree that it takes continued
vigilance and I want to be sure that twenty (20) years from now, we are not looking
back at lost access or lost cultural resources that occurred during our watch here, so
I do agree that continued vigilance is necessary and if that requires more work on our
end, then certainly I support that. I want to clarify, one (1) of the testifiers in the
beginning made a claim or a statement that my parents were selling land with a
kuleana lot on it—that is not true. There is no kuleana lot on my parents' property
and I just actually looked at the title report again just to double check, so I am not
sure what she was referencing, but I want to clarify for the record, that it is not true.
Anyway, thank you all again for the discussion today.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Anyone else? For me, I just want to say, it is
appropriate to be receiving this Bill No. 1993, Draft 1. It is from 2001, language has
been updated to pretty much encompass the generality of Bill No. 1993, there is a
discrepancy between"shall" and"may,"but I understand why you would use the word
"may" versus "shall." "Shall" does not account for every single situation that comes
up, "may" gives people the ability to have some leeway on what is historic, what is
not historic, what people may want access to, some may not even care if they have
access to an old house that is owned by someone who has been in their family forever.
The public may not even care if they want access, so that "shall" and "may" I think is
important. But again, it does not prevent anyone from coming up with a new bill in
2021 that updates any of the language that has already been incorporated. Council
Vice Chair Chock.
Councilmember Chock: Thank you, Chair. I would just say, I think it
is difficult when we look back in time, as Councilmember Evslin has said, to do
something regarding a decision on an easement back in 2008. I have not read the
transcripts on that, but I hear the concern that is being brought forward and I think
the changes that Council Chair Kaneshiro is talking about in updating this is really
about, at what point does that community input and voice get lost and that should
not be lost. While it might not have been in their generation, now entitlements are
COUNCIL MEETING 57 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
being acted on and new voices and new concerns are emerging, so that is a difficult
road to travel, but I think that it behooves us as leaders to find a way for that to be
heard. Thank you.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: We will take a roll call vote.
(Registered speakers requested to testify regarding this agenda item.)
The motion to receive Bill No. 1993, Draft 1 for the record was then put, and
carried by the following vote:
FOR RECEIPT: Carvalho, Chock, Cowden,
DeCosta, Evslin, Kuali`i, Kaneshiro TOTAL— 7,
AGAINST RECEIPT: None TOTAL— 0,
EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0,
RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0.
Ms. Fountain-Tanigawa: Seven (7) ayes.
Bill No. 2816, Draft 1 — A BILL FOR AN ORDINANCE TO AMEND
CHAPTER 15, ARTICLE 1, KAUAI COUNTY CODE 1987, AS AMENDED,
RELATING TO FLOODPLAIN MANAGEMENT
Councilmember Carvalho moved to approve Bill No. 2816, Draft 1 on second
and final reading, and that it be transmitted to the Mayor for his approval,
seconded by Councilmember Kuali`i.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Do we have any final questions from the
Members? Is there any final discussion from the Members? Councilmember Cowden.
Councilmember Cowden: I am going to vote in favor of it, because I
understand the needs to have this go through quickly are important and it is my
strong hope and I wanted to keep it on the table that in this existing term of our
Council, whether it is this year or next year, that we work to make sure that we
address the problems that have gone unaddressed or unclarified in it that I feel have,
so whether we all agree or not, well, that would remain to be seen, but I want to make
sure that we actually improve in strength in this floodplain management, so that
there are not typically older houses end up being flooded as an effect of being built.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Is there any other discussion from the
Members? Councilmember Evslin.
Councilmember Evslin: Thank you, Chair. I will just echo what
Councilmember Cowden said. I am happy to vote to approve this Bill today. I also
COUNCIL MEETING 58 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
recognize the need and the pressing time constraint here to ensure that we uphold
our National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), but also recognizing at least, the need
to look further at our flood ordinance to ensure that we are appropriately straddling
the line between ensuring that a kama aina family can repair their home when
needed and to ensure that people are not abusing a law to rebuild homes, sometimes
entirely within dangerous floodways. Certainly looking forward to working with the
Administration and just looking into it more.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Anyone else? If not, we will take a roll call
vote.
(No written testimony was received and no registered speakers requested to
testify regarding this agenda item.)
The motion to approve Bill No. 2816, Draft 1 on second and final reading, and
that it be transmitted to the Mayor for his approval was then put, and carried by
the following vote:
FOR APPROVAL: Carvalho, Chock, Cowden,
DeCosta, Evslin, Kuali`i, Kaneshiro TOTAL— 7,
AGAINST APPROVAL: None TOTAL— 0,
EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0,
RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL — 0.
Ms. Fountain-Tanigawa: Seven (7) ayes.
EXECUTIVE SESSION:
ES-1043 Pursuant to Hawai`i Revised Statutes (HRS) Sections 92-4 and
92-5(a)(4), and Kaua`i County Charter Section 3.07(E), the Office of the County
Attorney requests an Executive Session with the Council to provide the Council with
a briefing and request for settlement authority in the matter of Roy Gal vs. County
of Kauai, et al., Civil No. 20-00011 JMS-WRP (U.S. District Court for the District of
Hawai`i). This briefing and consultation involves the consideration of the powers,
duties, privileges, immunities, and/or liabilities of the Council and the County as they
relate to this agenda item.
Councilmember Cowden moved to convene in Executive Session for ES-1043,
seconded by Councilmember Kuali`i.
(No written testimony was received and no registered speakers requested to
testify regarding this agenda item.)
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Roll call vote to go into Executive Session.
COUNCIL MEETING 59 FEBRUARY 10, 2021
The motion to convene into Executive Session for ES-1043 was then put, and
carried the following vote:
FOR EXECUTIVE SESSION: Carvalho, Chock, Cowden, DeCosta,
Evslin, Kuali`i, Kaneshiro TOTAL— 7,
AGAINST EXECUTIVE SESSION: None TOTAL— 0,
EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL— 0,
RECUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL — 0.
Ms. Fountain-Tanigawa: Seven (7) ayes.
Council Chair Kaneshiro: Seeing no further business and hearing no
objections, this Council Meeting is now adjourned.
ADJOURNMENT.
There being no further business, the Council Meeting adjourned at 12:23 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Oki
JAD K. FOUNTAIN-TANIGAWA
County Clerk
:jY