HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION

Transcript of Public Hearing March 11, 2000

Waimea Civic Center

Waimea, Hawaii

Members: Present: J. Ray, S. Bess, M. Herkes, R. Higashi, S. Irvine, G. Martin (from 9:15 a.m.), G. Yoshiyama

Absent: E. Alonzo, K. Balog, D. Kurozawa, J. Santangelo

And 6 members of the public in attendance.

The meeting was called to order at 9:05 a.m.

RAY: I’d like to call the 1999-2000 Hawaii County Charter Commission Public Hearing to order. It’s Saturday, March 11th. We’re at the Waimea Civic Center in Waimea.

Attendance. Present at this time, myself John Ray, Roland Higashi, Steve Bess, Marni Herkes, Sue Irvine, and Gary Yoshiyama, and we’re expecting a couple of more folks to come in.

If nobody objects, prior to Statements from the Public, if anybody’s in a hurry and would like to go ahead and make a statement before I go through a brief summary, they’re welcome to do so. So would anybody like to do that? Otherwise I’d like to run through briefly a summary of where we are right now. So is that okay? And on the table there are the short form summaries that we mailed out, as well as more detailed summaries.

Initially I want to make it very clear that this is very much a work in process. We’re very open to input on what we’ve suggested, as well as anything else that the public may want to submit. We understand that even though it’s kind of late in the process for us, that generally people don’t engage things like this until they get a little further along and they have some meat to chew on and whatever. So, that’s why we’ve been pushing to get proposed amendments out as quickly as possible. So, like I say, they’re very much in progress and there’s lots of things still to be decided, and a lot of votes still to be made, especially in terms of the language and the refining of some of these proposals. So we’ll be doing that over the next couple of months before we take our final votes on the proposed amendments, and of course, all that will just be proposed for the election, which will be voted on by the general public in November.

Going through the proposed amendments as listed in the summary, first the non-partisan elections. I think that’s pretty clear as far as, not only what that’s all about but, how that would work in terms the Primary vs. the General Election if someone wins 50% plus one votes, they automatically win in the Primary. Otherwise, the top two vote getters go on to the Special Election. There’s also an explanation that deals with the second proposed amendment, the possibility of having 3 at-large seats. So, in other words, if that was voted in then it explains how that would work for the at-large seats in a non-partisan election. So, in other words, if both those first two pass, then that would be applicable, that scenario.

The three at-large seats. I think that’s pretty clear. The one area that I want to go through is the scenario of allowing incumbent Council members, whoever were in office, to run for one at-large seat when this would be implemented in the year 2002. And the reason that’s significant is because that would be a one-time exception in regard to the present term limits, which are four-year terms. So, no matter where someone were in terms of term limits, we’re talking about a one-time exception, that if you’re in office in 2002, you’d be able to run for - The background on that is the term limits didn’t start until 1996, so that’s when they were implemented. So, in 2002, everybody would have served six years out of the 8-year term limit. So, if you wanted to run for a 4-year term in 1996, even though that would take you two years beyond the present term limits, that would be allowed under our proposal.

GRAHAM: But not allowed in the distant future if you have six years under your belt, you can’t run for a 4-year term?

RAY: Right, it’s just a one-time - And a lot of thinking behind that is just that practically speaking, those are the people that are most likely to have the most experience and interest in running for an island-wide race, so to preclude all those people from running for a four-year term just seems, kind of, impractical so that’s why we came up with that suggestion.

Number 3., the County Managing Director. If you haven’t seen the more detailed summary, this is a pretty wholesale reworking of the whole Executive Section of the present Charter, and we took some language out of City and County, Maui, a Charter from Lexington, Kentucky. But, basically we’re restructuring the whole Executive Section to create a Department of Management, and the Managing Director would be basically in charge of that whole department, which would include all the County Departments. The way it is in our present Charter, it has some departments assigned to the Mayor, some to the Managing Director, and a separate section on Boards and Commissions. So, in addition to that, there’s some significant language that we feel empowers the Managing Director position. If you look in Section 6-1.3, some additions there are: ‘Recommend to the mayor the annual operating and capital improvement budget; evaluate the management and performance of each executive agency’, and (e) ‘Prescribe standards of administrative practice to be followed by all agencies under the managing director’s supervision.’ So, this one’s a little bit hard to follow. In terms of how it’s presented, you’re going to have to get a copy of the old Charter and go through, and compare this new language. In other words, because it’s a whole new section, it’s not ramsayered out or underlined, these changes, so you’re going to need to go through that in some detail. And in the next couple of pages also, you’ll see there are a number of changes, but basically puts the Managing Director more in as the Chief Operating Officer of the County, and places him in that chain of command as the Chief Administrative Officer.

HERKES: Or her.

RAY: Or her, excuse me. So, basically the intent is for the Managing Director to be the Chief Operating Officer of the County. But in terms of the way the position is appointed, it’s still appointed by the Mayor and I’m glad I thought of that, but

the one significant change there is it does require Council confirmation whereas the present Managing Director position does not. So, it does put the Council more in the loop there.

Fire Commission. This language is pretty much lifted out of the City and County of Honolulu Charter. We followed it. The one exception is the language dealing with the removal of a chief by the Fire Commission is a little more liberal and easier to implement, the language that we’re suggesting in this. In other words, the language in the City and County Charter around this is a little more cumbersome in terms of the process it would require to remove the chief. So that’s the major difference in that.

If anybody else wants to chip in, if there’s anything I’m leaving out that you think is significant.

Department of Environmental Services. This is a major change. This basically takes two of the divisions of the Public Works Department and creates a new department. It takes the Division of Solid Waste and the Division of Wastewater and creates a new department to be focused, of course on those two, as well as recycling programs for the County. Additionally, we’re recommending an Environmental Services Commission be attached to that department. The genesis of this is the Administration had proposed to us moving the Wastewater Division to the Department of Water Supply, and we didn’t like that so we were talking a lot about different scenarios of how divisions might match up and what might make sense, and this is what we came up with. It would be a new department so in terms of a cost-of-government issue, certainly there would be a new department head, probably not a deputy, but we think in terms of the efficiency and focus, this would, and should, be actually a cost savings method of streamlining and better management of these two divisions. We are still discussing the Environmental Services Commission. We haven’t voted on that, just how that would be made up and exactly how that would work. There’s been some questions raised about calling it an advisory commission, would that need Council confirmation, and what the make-up would be in terms of possible geographic requirements as far as the Commission members. So, that’s still a discussion that’s ongoing.

Planning Department functions. There again, the major language change that’s being proposed here came out of an Administrative proposal to create a Division of Permitting, to take all the subdivision duties out of the Planning Department and switch them over to Public Works. So, rather than doing that, what we’re recommending is deleting language in the present Charter that would allow the Administration and the Council to do that if they wanted to. So, in other words, so those functions are not required to be. They still could be, but they’re not required to be in the Planning Department in regard to subdivisions. So, it just says they ‘may’ be transferred or shared, but they may not be. The two other changes: one is in the last Charter, as part of a Charter Amendment, there was language in there which deleted the ‘adopting rules and regulations having the force and effect of law’ and I’m embarrassed to say, since I voted on that - I was on the Council actually and voted on that being put on the ballot, I’m not sure just why that got passed, but our attorney, who also was very embarrassed that he didn’t recall it being on the ballot last time and picking up on that as an issue, did red flag it as an issue here, and didn’t think that was appropriate, and the Planning Department has concurred with that, so that’s basically correcting what seems to have been something that shouldn’t have happened in the last election. So that’s what that’s all about; and also, this additional language just clarifying our County role in matters relating to special management area, Chapter 205 under State Law. It’s just some clarification language there.

The next deals with the Legislative Research Office. Right now the County Council has two main offices; they have the Council Services Office, which are more related to the constituent concerns and Civil Service staff positions which service and basically set the agendas and prepare all the minutes for the committees, and then they have what’s called the Legislative Auditor’s Office which is not, and never has been, an auditing office. That’s never been their function. So, this is really, I guess, more calling a spade a spade, what it is, and suggesting we create, how it functions today, a Legislative Research Office, and describing as such, the way it functions now. There was a lot of discussion in regard to auditing functions, but I think that would require a whole new office, and a whole other function of the County, and while that may be worthwhile, that’s not what we’re suggesting here. We’re just suggesting a more appropriate classification of how that office functions right now, and we have tried to put in some language to encourage that office to operate more professionally. But the reality is these are political appointments. The voters have insisted on two-year terms, so the nature of that is that everything is subject to turning over as far as under the Council’s jurisdiction every two years, the way things work in terms of new majorities being formed, or not, so it didn’t seem appropriate, that being the case, to make this office independent in terms of what their function is. If they were truly an auditing office, then I think there’d be a strong argument for making that office more independent in nature, but that’s not the reality.

Holdover of Members of Boards and Commissions. This is really just extending the holdover period from 30 to 90 days. Just seems more realistic to get those positions filled, and not have vacancies.

Safety Coordinator. There again, it’s under the same category as calling a spade a spade. The way this thing reads in the Charter right now is not how it functions. Most of the functions that are described in the present Charter, they’re all done but they’re done by different departments and divisions. They’re not done by the Safety Coordinator Office, so basically what this would do is just move those positions and the function to the Civil Service Department. And that was a recommendation by the Administration and by a number of different departments in terms of how it functions. So, this is really in reaction to how that functions now within the County.

Planning Commission powers. I covered that. That’s 6 and 10 together.

Qualifications for Heads of Department of Public Work and Department of Water Supply. Right now in the Charter, there is a requirement that both of those positions be filled by a Registered Engineer. I don’t know if you remember, last year our Chief Engineer, head of the Public Works Department, retired and the Deputy, who was an engineer, but wasn’t a registered engineer, couldn’t step up into that position. So, that’s what generated a lot of discussion, whether this was necessary or made sense, and in discussing this in regard to Public Works and the Department of Water Supply, the thought was that the job requirement is really more administrative in nature for both of these departments, and there are lots of engineers, there are tons of engineers, in both departments already. So, the suggestion is to eliminate that requirement that requires a registered engineer.

Impeachment. Two changes; one that I think is fairly minor is just eliminating one word, and that’s a reason for impeachment, the word ‘maladministration’. Our legal counsel, and others that weighed in on this, just didn’t feel like that was a reasonable grounds for impeachment. The more major and controversial change is in the number of signatures required for an impeachment petition. And right now, the number of signatures required are only 100, and we’re suggesting it be raised to 3% of the voters, and that would be 3% of the number of voters registered in the prior election. And that also triggered the necessity to create a procedure to verify signatures, so that’s the other part of this section. And that verification language is similar to what’s in the Charter now for Initiative and Referendum. The differences are that there would be a one-year time limit on signatures, and we wouldn’t allow signatures to carry over from one election term to another. In other words, if impeachment proceedings started in a prior term, it wouldn’t carry over to the other. That’s one suggested difference, and the other is that it wouldn’t require the statement of social security numbers which, in our train of thought, violates Federal law. There’s a good explanation of this in the summary.

GRAHAM: John, could you tell us just quickly what’s the difference between ‘maladministration’ and ‘malfeasance’?

RAY: The difference between maladministration and malfeasance. We do have an attorney here who was Corporation Counsel so he is probably the best person to weigh in on this.

BESS: Well, it’s just my opinion, but here ‘malfeasance’ is where you have a prescribed duty and you fail to perform that duty. ‘Maladministration’ is you don’t administer very well. It does not deal with a legal duty and then being in violation of that legal duty. It would be a criticism, that instead of it being illegal, you would not be performing as one might like you to perform. Is that clear enough?

GRAHAM: I think the ‘maladministration’ is clear. The ‘malfeasance’ sounds like when you first said it, you were sort of saying it’s neglecting. It’s more than neglecting or it’s only neglecting?

BESS: It is neglecting a duty.

GRAHAM: But that’s all, right?

BESS: Or, it can be where you have a duty and you haven’t performed that duty as you should perform that duty.

GRAHAM: Well, that sounds real tricky. That sounds more like ‘maladministration’ when you say you should perform it.

BESS: I think if you stay with the idea that ‘maladministration’ is just a criticism, a difference of opinion, as to how one might administer government -

GRAHAM: Right.

BESS: Vs. where one is in violation of a duty that is clearly prescribed by law, and you fail to perform that.

RAY: The next is Special Counsel. This was a recommendation by Corp Counsel to create a potential conflict. Right now in the Charter, the Council has to approve the hiring of special counsel, and there could arise a situation where Corporation Counsel would be required, under bargaining laws and by the Police Commission, to provide a special counsel, and if the County Council didn’t want to support that, it would put them in an untenable position. Is that right, Steve?

BESS: Yes.

RAY: So, they’re recommending that, if they are required to provide special counsel, that it not be subject to Council approval.

Board of Appeals. This is one that is connected to the idea of this Division of Permitting, moving it out of the Planning Department into Public Works, or wherever. So the Planning Department suggested we move the Board of Appeals, and we decided a place to move it might be Corporation Counsel, and that’s what this suggests doing here. This one is very much under discussion, whether it makes sense to do this now since we’re not moving the subdivision duties. We’re just allowing that so does it really make sense to go ahead and move the Board of Appeals yet, if we’re not doing it? And then some other discussions came about is that if we were to move the Board of Appeals, maybe just from a lease conflict and pure administrative standpoint, the best place might be to move it under the Mayor’s Office and just have them administer it. It’s really just an administrative back-up function, is what they need. But anyway, that one’s still very much up in the air now.

The Department Head Qualifications. These are a number of relatively minor changes, just trying to beef up the professional standards for Department Heads. In addition, the way the Charter reads right now is all the Department Heads’ qualifications do not appear in that section. There’s a kind of a catchall section in the back of the Charter that deals with a bunch of Department Head qualifications, and we are going to clean that up, and have those qualifications appear in the Charter with the Departments. It’s kind of confusing the way it is right now.

Police Department/Police Commission. What we did there is we really liked the language that we got out of City and County of Honolulu from the Fire Commission, so the bulk of the proposed changes here are really just lifting some of that descriptive language about the Commission’s standards, how it functions, from the Fire Commission. So, if you look at that, it’s just similar language to that that we liked. And then the other two additions, (6) and (7), just have to do with reviewing the department’s operations and evaluating, at least annually, the performance of the Police Chief, and submitting a report to the Mayor and the County Council, so requiring an annual review. It is no change whatsoever in regard to the authority of the Police Commission, and we looked at that one very closely because of all the controversy going on, and our strong legal opinion was that the Police Commission is adequately empowered under the present Charter, that perhaps they just haven’t exercised that power for various reasons, but that they are adequately empowered.

Water Commission. A couple of changes here. Right now, there’s a kind of a broad geographical requirement in terms of the representation of the Commission members, and what that allows, as in our existing Police Commission, is to have the number of Commissioners heavily weighted towards one side of the island vs. the other. So this would require that the residents come from each Council district. And that brings up an interesting discussion. What happens if we eliminate the nine Council districts. And at first, we thought that that meant that we might have to eliminate the Boards or Commissions attached to those districts, but I think we’ve figured out a way to still keep those functioning with those geographical descriptions, and just get around it by referring to - If those districts were eliminated, the districts as existed in the year so and so, or whatever, but not go to a 6-3 or a change from the geographic residency requirement for those Boards and Commissions. So, the Department of Water Supply nine members would be tied to the nine Council Districts. And as I mentioned earlier, the Head of the Water Department would also - This is separate but the same department, not be required to be a registered engineer and that is a transition -

BOWLES: May I ask a question, John, just on consistency? In that second paragraph there, in referring to the Commission, it talks about the Chief Engineer, in the first paragraph there.

RAY: Yes, right, so that would have to be changed. That’s good.

BOWLES: So in the consistency of the language change, that would also be altered to the manager of the department?

RAY: Right.

BESS: Thanks, Steve.

HENRY: Could we get him to give us his name for the record?

RAY: That’s Steve Bowles, Waimea Water Services. Yes, that would have to change. So, in other words, if the requirement that the Head of Public Works not be a registered engineer, part of that section is that you change that around so there is no longer a Chief Engineer. So, what Steve is saying is, so you’d still have the head of Public Works probably participating in the Water Commission, but they wouldn’t be titled the Chief Engineer, so we need to figure out how to do that.

Salary Commission. We are recommending that the Salary Commission have the authority to set all the Department and Deputy Department Head positions. Right now, that’s subject to County ordinance, and it’s a very political process, and it’s created lots of problems, this is my opinion, in the past in terms of raises being able to keep up, not only with the private sector, but the public sector as well. You have Civil Service raises going up continually and positions in the departments where Civil Service employees are being paid considerably more than the Department Heads. So, it’s a real disincentive for somebody being a Department Head or a Deputy when they have to take a pay cut. And Maui County implemented this in 1994, and I’ve talked to them, staff and Administration people, former Mayor Lingle, and it seems to have worked out really well over there. We did put some language in there, at the end, that the ‘total salaries and benefits have a reasonable relationship to compensation in the public and private sectors’, so hopefully that would be the criteria for setting these. And we also made a strong point that we felt very strongly that the Salary Commission should very independently assess the job requirements, duties of these different departments, and set the salaries accordingly. In other words, right now, pretty much all Department Heads and Deputy Department Heads get paid the same, no matter what the size and function of the department, and that seems entirely inappropriate, but this doesn’t require that. There’s no way you can really require that. You can just encourage that.

And the last one is what’s called a Cost-of-Government Commission. There again, this is something that we lifted out of Maui County. Every other year, a Commission would be put together to review the cost-of-government to promote economy, efficiency, and improve service, and make recommendations to the County.

So those are what’s on deck right now, those 19, and we have four public hearings scheduled. We’ve just gotten all this information out to all the County Departments and as far as our mailing list, I think 280 organizations on the island were mailed a week ago, all of this information, encouraged to come to public hearings, encouraged to get us back input in writing. So, it’s a pretty comprehensive and up-to-date list of civic organizations, community organizations, business organizations. We’ve been meeting for over a year, had 24 meetings to date. All the meetings have been well publicized and in all the newspapers, there’ve been quite a few articles this past year in terms of what’s going on in the Charter Commission. And, as well, we’ve been the only County department, Commission, Board, whatever, to be totally on line for sometime, so we’ve had total computer access to all of our minutes, agendas, have all been available to the general public from that standpoint. So we feel comfortable that we’ve done everything reasonable to engage the public and encourage them to come forth. Unfortunately, there’s been very little participation by the public, and by the County, the Administration. We had a good round of meetings with the different departments early on last Spring. The County Council has been conspicuously absent from this discussion. We’ve had little, or no, input. There’ve been a couple of exceptions to that, but very little input from the County Council. We’ve made presentations to them. We’ve tried to encourage them to input since that’s probably the body that works most closely with the Commission.

And then one other reminder. While this is probably the most significant tool to make Charter changes, there are two other processes to make Charter Amendments. The general public can petition for a Charter change and the Administration via the County Council can propose a Charter change at any time. That just requires six members of the Council to vote for a Charter change to be put on the election. In fact, I proposed, and had, a Charter Amendment on the last election that I proposed when I was on the County Council. So, that’s not all that difficult a process. And it does happen on a frequent basis, usually more of a housekeeping nature. A department will realize they’re out of compliance with State law, or something that changes there. But, the one I proposed was pretty significant, going back to Council four-year terms, so that was on the last election. Anyway, this isn’t the only shot. It’s not like every ten years or nothing. If there’s a huge outcry for something then if the County Council members are responsive to that, or the general public, to some change, then there are vehicles to propose amendments. And in any case, anything that’s proposed goes on to the following election, as voted on by the general public, which this will be.

Our schedule. We’re hoping to have our final votes in the next couple of months, and get our proposed language. A big part of the amendments is the proposed language that goes on the ballot, which can be really difficult to say what you want to say. Not only to say what you want to say, but to be most understandable in terms of the public, in terms of what they’re voting on. And that’s been a real controversial issue in the past. I don’t know if so much for the Charter Commission as other, more controversial things that have been on the ballot, but anyway, that’s something that will take a fair amount of time. So anyway, we hope to have all that wrapped up June or July. And basically from there to the election, we’ll be employing a strategy to publicize, as much as possible, through printed matter, through different Commission members being available to talk to the general public in different forums, explaining what the amendments are.

HOLSCHUH: Could I ask a question? Maybe you just answered it, but once it’s all finished and wrapped up in June or July, there will be opportunity for community associations to ask for representatives to explain issues?

RAY: Sure, and I think the only thing to be sensitive to is we’re all volunteers. We will have met 30 something times by then so as the time allows, but I’m sure everybody is -

HOLSCHUH: Or maybe, if I may, I happen to be president of our community association. I wouldn’t begin to want to try to explain this with the expertise you did, but maybe you could prepare a packet of how to explain it for those of us who are in associations. Then we wouldn’t have to bother you folks.

RAY: Yes, sure. And understand that it is, like I said, very much a work in progress so there are lots of things on here already that we’re rethinking just how’s that going to work. And I think I can say that of all the things that we’re getting input from right now in regard to other changes, I think we’ve looked at everything that everybody’s discussing, so probably the most likely things we’d be likely to consider, and include, is things that we haven’t thought of, and I’m sure there are lots of things that we probably haven’t thought of, or ways to approach it. So we’re very open to that.

HERKES: Can I just add to that? Fred, when you were talking about community associations, you were talking from August to November, to the election. I would encourage you to get your community associations to this month’s meetings because this is when it’s in transition. After August, the Elections Office, the County Clerk, has told us we’re going to have to have something ready to go. So, at that time, it will be explaining what’s on the ballot, rather than having an opportunity of input. So the input might be better come at this time than later. And I think the document that Chris prepared which is over on the table, you can take as many copies as you like, is fairly well explanatory. The big one.

RAY: Just make sure you explain to people, like I say, that it’s a work in progress and to regard it that way.

Now, Statements from the Public. We have two folks signed up. First, Bill Graham. And Bill, use the mike please.

GRAHAM: Thanks for the very straight forward explanation, John and the rest of you. It does feel like the candor that you’re bringing to the process is real welcome and I’m sorry there’s not more people that are aware of that.

I had two little, what I would call, very minor issues I wanted to just bring up because they’re clear and straight forward, first. One is that this just occurred to me today when you were talking about the Department of Environmental Services, to me that sounds like a euphemism taken to the extreme. It sounds like a Department of Waste Management, and you’re calling it Environmental Services. I don’t know. That kind of thing feels a little offensive in some ways so maybe you’d do well to get rid of that.

IRVINE: It’s straight from the mainland.

RAY: We copied that from other Charters. The City and County was looking at a major reorganization a few years ago and that was the language they used, so just proactive -

IRVINE: I went out on the web a lot and talked to people in San Diego, looked at the City of Portland, San Luis Obispo, some cities in Washington, and whatever. And this is fairly standard language, however, the woman in San Diego said, well, that’s getting to be dated and she had even a farther out euphemism. So, whatever it was, I can’t remember what she said, I thought we weren’t ready for that yet. But that’s the explanation for that and the fact that the City and County of Honolulu did suggest having this sort of department a couple of years back.

RAY: But, if you’ve got something better.

GRAHAM: Waste Management. That seems like what you’re talking about. Your talking solid waste.

IRVINE: The other thing is that we really, really, really want to get the feeling of let’s recycle, let’s take care of our land now. Mandating something like that rather than leaving it where it has been in Public Works without some sort of statement that this is what we want to see happen.

HIGASHI: Also, under the Charter, they’re able to create a new department if it’s addressed in the Charter. This is going to be a growing concern from now on, and maybe for the next 20 years. Our feeling is that we need to get higher expertise in this field, and once we create a department, the Department Head would be somebody differently educated than we have in Public Works now. And once we have it established, other technologies come in, and other concerns can be addressed by this department. So what we may have in here now may represent some of the things that are ongoing, but there can be other concerns in the future and this department will have to address that.

GRAHAM: Yes, I think I get you. That even though it’s a bit narrow, as you specified now, it may broaden in the future, so it might as well have a title that will encompass that. Okay. Thank you.

Second, a sort of narrow, specific issue I thought of was when you’re talking about impeachment, and you’re talking about a 3% of the voters in the County need to sign for impeachment, it feels like that’s appropriate for countywide elected positions, but for elected positions within a district, all the impeachment petition votes should come from the district served, I believe. So I think I would like to see you all make a change there.

HERKES: We had quite a discussion on that.

GRAHAM: In the same way, I mean we don’t have impeachment at the Federal level, or the State level, or something, but I don’t feel I should be responsible for signing petitions to impeach Norman Mizuguchi, or something, just because he’s also in the State Senate, when I have a Senator in the State Senate. So, it just feels like it would be wrong for me to try to impeachment a Councilman from Puna, or something like that.

RAY: Okay, but most of the Council issues are island-wide, countywide in nature, so from that standpoint they do effect you as an island citizen.

GRAHAM: I was just going to say most of the issues of State Legislature are statewide too, but I don’t feel that I should be trying to vote for impeachment of Norman Mizuguchi because of some way he voted on some bills, or whatever other thing bothers me. That’s all. It doesn’t seem that it is a hard change for you to make. If you want to elevate the percent to 5%, or something, within his district, it seems like an easy thing. It’s not like you, sort of, have to do it this way.

HERKES: See, that’s a real tough issue for me, too, because I feel term limits infringe upon my right to elect whom I want, and so that impeachment in your district - having somebody else reach into your district and impeach the candidate that you elected to represent you is really hard. I guess the vote we took was island-wide, but I guess that’s what we’ll have to go through and see what comes out.

RAY: It is complicated by this 6-3 proposal as well, so you try to accommodate what may happen and that’s something that, of course, is being proposed on the ballot, so obviously you have to consider that. So, we’re just trying to come up with something that’s not too complicated. I think that certainly had some influence on going with this just one uniform approach.

GRAHAM: Okay. Let me just use that as a transition into my main issue, of course, which is it feels to me like the main thing - I mean, I don’t like the 6-3 proposal that you’re having on the Council districts and last time you were here, I gave you a lot of detail about why I felt people like myself like single member districts, and all that stuff. So let me just put that opposition of mine in a little bit of another light rather than trying to go over it again. Your Chairman, John Ray, sent me a copy of all this and when I tried reading all this material, it’s hard to make myself read it. It’s easier to follow it when John’s here talking to you about why we did this and why we did that. But for me to just grab and start reading about something or other in the detail stuff, I don’t want to do it. I want to go read a book, or I want to go watch TV, or I want to go outside, or do something. I don’t want to do it. So, I think what’s going to happen is when it comes time to November and the voters are dealing with the stuff on the ballot, and they’re going to get something in the mail, they don’t want to deal with it. So the point I’m stressing is there’s really two main issues I feel that you’re dealing with here. One is the non-partisan elections and the other is changing of the Council. Changing the Council elections, to me, can poison the whole thing you’re doing. People are not going to be reading about a department head or the Board of Appeals and try to make an honest vote on the validity of whether that’s a good change to the Charter. Maybe one in ten people who vote will actually do that. So, I feel like the whole integrity and thrust of this Commission is going to carry a lot of weight, like if you’re recommending things that people like and people feel confident in. On that basis, you’re going to carry the bulk of what’s here when it comes to the election. You are a Commission appointed by the Mayor so -

RAY: And confirmed by the Council.

GRAHAM: So a Commission appointed by the Mayor that’s putting through provisions which are very controversial, which will have a large vocal opposition. Maybe it will have a large vocal support also, but will have a large vocal opposition, and provisions we now live by which are not broken, in my mind, and have such sweeping consequences as changing the Council make-up, to me, really has a lot of potential to really poison your whole thing. And so it wouldn’t be hard for me to see, when the election results come out, that a couple of these major issues may go one way or the other, but the whole thing could go down because of all the suspicion, and all the charges, and all the controversy that surrounds it. So, given the fact, that I haven’t been to your meetings but I don’t believe the public has come out in force and said the way we elect our Council members is broken, we need to change it. I don’t believe that’s happened. I don’t believe that people feel that, and I believe that the whole discourse that goes on in the Council, with the wide variety of Council members that we have now compared to what we had ten years ago, is healthy for the political discourse in the County, even though I recognize that it has some detriment in the sense of the smoothness of operation, or whatever. So last time I spoke on the merits of it. I’m just encouraging you now on the consequences of what you’re trying to do here. I think it’s a big mistake and I hate to see a lot of your other work go down because of that, and I hate to do that myself. I hate to come out here and try to say I don’t think the Planning Commission is really listening to the people of the County when they propose this kind of stuff, and have that kind of stuff come back and have prejudicial consequences on everything else you’ve done, which it can’t help but do. So I don’t like to have to do that either. So that’s what I had to say. I just feel like you’re really taking a step in the wrong direction unless you really feel it’s the most important thing you need to do so you throw all your apples in that basket. Thank you.

RAY: Okay. Any questions for Bill?

MARTIN: Just a comment and possibly a question. Thank you for your input and I think it’s well taken that exactly one bad apple may spoil the whole bunch. And if in fact it is a bad apple, then the public will have the right to make the decision come November. As far as your statement that you like the single district representation, I think maybe there’s maybe a misnomer that you’re going to be losing that, and you’re not. You’re still going to have your single member district. Nobody loses their single member district. As a matter of fact, some of the districts get a little bit bigger because of the make-up on the 6-3. You still have six individual Council members from six individual districts, so to think that you’re going to be losing anything, again, is a misnomer. The plight of this particular amendment would be the three at-large, and we have discussed it time and time again, and tried to come up with some manner to make that a representative-type situation too. I don’t think we’ve succeeded on it to this point but to make it more palatable. I hear what you’re saying and, I guess, a look of impropriety might be there, but it’s not. Again, you don’t lose anything. You actually gain.

GRAHAM: Well, obviously I lose something or I wouldn’t be here speaking to you about it, right? You may not perceive what I perceive that I lose, and if that’s the way you feel, that’s fine, but clearly I believe I lose something and I’m educated on this issue.

MARTIN: Well again, I guess I’m asking for an explanation from you and in there lies the question, what are you losing?

GRAHAM: What I’m losing is three of the nine members of the Council, as the Mayor, will be voted on island-wide which means they will court the entrenched powers. As I perceive them, they will court for the money they need and the backing and influence of the Unions, of big business, of whatever, and they will, along with a couple of other members of the other districts become a strong majority on the Council, and they will have the jump into the Mayor’s Office more natural than running island-wide. I perceive that as a big loss for the power of my single member representative.

MARTIN: But again, I understand what you’re saying there too. I guess the counter is you still have six vs. three so to come in and have -

RAY: Six vs. nine.

MARTIN: Well, I’m using the 6-3.

RAY: Okay.

MARTIN: If in fact it does pass, you have three at-large. They have no power because the six still outweigh them and outnumber them. And the single members, if they were to ban together, if there were a problem, outnumber them.

GRAHAM: The six members will not ban together because they’re all from different areas of the island, and they all have different interests and things like that.

MARTIN: So with that said, and that’s where I’m coming from, and coming from Hamakua and having a great representative on the Council right now in Dominic, and him not being able to pass because nobody else wanted to back him up for certain things, or the Mayor perhaps didn’t want, he now has an ally because we, as individuals, voted for three other people. So now we can go visit those three and couple up with our guy, and now we have four. We have a stronger voice in certain situations.

GRAHAM: Okay. I just would say in the old days, we had nine guys we voted for, and we had our own representative from Kohala-Waimea which was Kalani Schutte, right? So we could go talk to Kalani Schutte and he could go along with the other eight guys in the island, and all like that. Unfortunately, that didn’t bring the kind of diversity, and representation, and value that we have out of the current Council, in my view.

HERKES: You guys in Kohala, as I said before when you came, have had some very strong Council people, Ikuo Hisaoka, Kalani Schutte, who have really done a lot of management -

GRAHAM: Excuse me. What do you mean by that?

HERKES: Who have really done a lot of the management of the Council in the years past and brought a lot of things to your district, which I assume is why you’re electing Council people, is to get the amenities to your district and to be able to provide services to your district. Now, in the 6-3 scenario, what I’m looking for, from Kona, is another representative. We have North Kona and South Kona, and I’m looking for another representative to represent that district. As Mr. Ray has pointed out, it doesn’t happen in the Senate and I may not get it in the Council, but that’s up to me. That’s something I can work on is get somebody to run. I’m not a member of the Green Party but I was very pleased to hear, and I can’t validate this, that they are in favor of this, because they see a possibility to get another representative. So there’s a lot of different ways to look at this, and I encourage you to try and see where we’re coming from. Where we represent our particular districts, we’re trying to broaden our representation, and then we’ll fight it out on the Council when we get a broader representation.

GRAHAM: Let me just say I think it would be smart for you to explicitly say, at some point to the public, whatever, what is really wrong now that you’re trying to fix because you have a straight forward system right now. The straight forward system we have works like the U.S. Congress. It works like the State Legislature. And you’re taking a straight forward system and you’re making it quite convoluted, and the convolution that you’re putting shows up all through here, how does the Reapportionment Commission work, how do the Board members work, how does the term limits work. These convolutions ripple all through your document and mess things up in the terms of complexity. Maybe they don’t mess it up in how they work, but in complexity. So, in order for you to bring a convoluted thing through, and present it for the voters and ask the voters to approve of it, even though people like me can say I don’t like it for this or that reason, I feel like you need to come through and say it’s worth doing all this convolution. It’s worth us doing this because this is what it’s really going to do for us. And I don’t hear that coming from you very much, that’s all. And let me pass this on to Fred, too, so he can say what he wants to say.

RAY: Sue, first.

IRVINE: I just want to thank Bill for coming and I’m hearing you.

HIGASHI: I think the word ‘convoluted’ may be a wrong word. I think we’re still striving to make sure that the Commissions that we addressed are represented well, so the representation of making the Commission is to ensure that we still have nine members, and they come from specific districts. So in the Commissions, so that it doesn’t get confused with the 6-3, or whatever, we took special consideration to make sure that each Commission, where there is 9, can come from single member districts that are now. Many of them are not. Some are seven under the old system. Some are six historical districts and three at-large. And just let me add, the other idea that I’ve heard people from Puna say, at least they have an opportunity to vote for four Councilmen who may represent them. So, that’s another way of looking at it.

GRAHAM: Yes, I understand that. We used to have the opportunity to vote for nine.

HIGASHI: Right, right, right, right.

MARTIN: I guess to touch upon something you said earlier about the system being broken. I don’t think we looked at it as being broken. I, myself, looked at it as being an opportunity to have change and giving the voters the opportunity, if in fact they want the change. As you’re saying, there may be a majority that doesn’t want it, and it’ll not pass, no problem. As least give them the opportunity, and as our Chair has mentioned earlier, once it does become final, it becomes a sale, right? And we have to put this out in the manner that people are willing to accept it and understand it. I think that’s going to be the key. Whether they’re for it or against it is going to be their prerogative, but a good salesman can sell ice to an Eskimo, and that’s what it comes down to.

HOLSCHUH: Let me just ask a question. Fred Holschuh from Honokaa. I didn’t ask to testify but I was just curious. I understand a letter suggesting, and I’m not suggesting this is the right way to do it, but I had heard about this letter that was sent, I guess, to you and the Council about suggesting the districts be enlarged with two representatives from each district, so there’d be four districts, creating eight people, and then the Chair elected island-wide. Was that considered by the Commission, and whatever happened to that idea, and is there still a possibility to consider that?

RAY: We talked about that from that standpoint, and I don’t think anybody thought that was a particularly good idea so there was no advocacy from anybody here. I mean, there are lots of scenarios. You could use the Senate Districts and go with three members from each Senate District. It’s kind of a simple way to look at it. What is being suggested now, by far, follows the more standard model throughout the country that’s employed. This is a pretty standard way of doing things, the six single member and the three at-large, and the variation on that that the one person island-wide be the Council Chair. A lot of folks go with the highest vote getter of the at-large seats as the Council Chair, or the Mayor. So, that’s a standard way, but I think that’s something we do need to point out. This is a very common way of organizing the Council districts. It’s something that’s followed in an awful lot of jurisdictions. That’s not to say it’s the best thing for here, but it’s a very widely used model vs. the thing that Keola suggested. The other one seemed even more convoluted and harder to understand, or whatever. The other thing that has appeal for this, from an efficiency standpoint, is you’d eliminate those nine districts, as far as having to deal with them in terms of elections and separate balloting, and whatever. It’d make it a lot simpler if you go with the six House Districts and then that makes the election process simpler, a little more efficient, if you look at it that way. So, you could say that’s another argument. You go with your State Districts and somehow deal with that.

HOLSCHUH: Forgive me for not - maybe this is written somewhere and I just didn’t understand it. The at-large seats would be at-large island-wide, everybody votes, and they can come from anywhere, three people, but theoretically be elected from Kohala, anywhere. Actually, you just made a comment about the Senate Districts.

Was there any thought to linking the at-large to the Senate Districts and what happened with that?

HERKES: They voted it down.

RAY: We just decided that was not the way to go. But, yes, we discussed that.

IRVINE: John, the reason behind thinking that that wasn’t any big improvement is that everybody could still come from Hilo because of the nature of our -

RAY: Could still come from East Hawaii.

IRVINE: Yes.

HERKES: Look where our Senators come from now. I proposed that and John pointed out where Kona Senators come from now, or where they live. John, can I say that they told me this is not the appropriate time to bring this up. There are 14,000 people in each Council district now. I think that’s too many. I’d like to see Council people representing 10,000 people. We’re doing a census. We’ll do a reapportionment and that is maybe the time that we’d look at how many people - I think there’s going to be 15 or 16,000 in each Council district when we do our reapportionment, so how many, and that’s what I’d like Bill Graham to look at - How many people should be in each Council district? Should we have more than nine people on the Council? Should we have more than six single member districts? Should we have 10,000 people in each district? Can a person represent 15 - 16,000? That won’t come up for two years, until we do the reapportionment, till we see where the Council districts - but the Reapportionment Commission is certainly the one to handle that, and that’s where I’d like to see some change. But, this is not the time to do it.

RAY: Sounds like you’re kind of arguing against your vote for the six districts.

HERKES: No, no, no.

RAY: Because that’s exactly my argument why the nine districts make a lot more sense, and the dynamic on this island is more geographic than population. I think the difficulty, when you create these larger districts, and especially when you come from West Hawaii, and you have to work in Hilo, and then represent an even larger district, that it just becomes about impossible to physically service that community, especially when you get the larger districts. It’s not nearly the issue in Hilo. It’s easy. These guys work in Hilo. Geographically they represent a relatively small district. So, it’s a fraction of the time in terms of commuting, just to get around and all, but anyway.

MARTIN: One more thing, if I may, Bill, that you made mention of, and I’d like to thank you for coming out and dialogue is great, and I think we need more of this to stimulate us when we do go back and, if in fact, we’re going to change anything, ho’omalimali what we’ve got here. But I’m a mechanic by trade and I went through a journeyman program with four years as an apprentice, and you made mention about the jump off for this at-large to go to Mayor. I think it’s a great opportunity for the public at-large to look at the potential runners that possibly would be Mayor down the road at some point in time. So actually, again, to me, it’s a win situation. That’s just my opinion on that.

RAY: Okay. Fred Holschuh, come up.

HOLSCHUH: Thank you. I’m Fred Holschuh from Honokaa and I wanted to make a comment about the Fire Commission, if I may. But John, with your permission, may I just make three other quick comments? Is that legit?

RAY: Oh, sure, sure.

HOLSCHUH: First of all, I want to thank you folks for what you’re doing, on behalf of all of us. Quite honestly, it is relatively shameful that there’s not more people here today, but I really think you’re doing a terrific job with this.

Secondly, how would the Environmental Services thing be if you just called it Department of the Environment, because that, sort of, leaves you with this good sense of being the environment, encompassing all these things including, as you folks suggested, the recycling initiatives. And I just throw this out as a thought.

And the third thing is we are, I presume, when this is done and voted on, going to rewrite the book, the Charter book. Will that be rewritten? Okay, because that’s fairly cumbersome with this stuff all stuffed in it and so forth.

I wanted to make a comment about the Fire Commission, and I’m speaking in favor of this proposal. I’ve been involved as an Emergency doctor for 28 years now, on this island, working with many Fire Chiefs and paramedics and fire people constantly. And it’s a great group of people, and it’s a wonderful organization we have here on this island. I can’t say enough about them, and quite frankly, I never, ever want to see EMS separated from the Fire Department in Hawaii County. I think it’s just a wonderful marriage. However, I’ve often felt, going back to the late ‘70s, all the years I’ve been on the EMS Commission which I have been on continuously since the ‘70s, the Fire Chief should actually be appointed by a Commission. The political nature of this appointment, and this in no way is meant to be disrespectful to any previous or current Fire Chief. Many of them have been good personal friends of mine. It just doesn’t make any sense to have this be a political appointment in my estimation. I think this is a great idea to do it this way. I had two comments, if I may. I don’t want to say any more about it. I like what you’ve done. The underlined things are additions, I presume, this language is additions. I was just wondering whether, instead of saying fire protection and prevention and emergency rescue in Section 6-4.2, it would say emergency medical services. Did you give any consideration to that because rescue implies rescue? Our County fire rescue specialists, or MICTs and EMTs, do a lot more than actual rescue work. I mean, they do the gamut of healthcare.

IRVINE: What section is that under?

HOLSCHUH: 6-4.2 Statement of Policy, third line. I’m sorry. Yes.

IRVINE: Okay, down at the very bottom of our page, 6-4.3.

HOLSCHUH: It’s the Statement of Policy, ‘purpose of this chapter is to establish’, and so on. Basically, unless somebody in the Fire Department feels that it ought to say -

RAY: This is lifted out of City and County.

HOLSCHUH: Really? Well, they’re different. They’re different because -

RAY: Okay, maybe you can submit that language change to us.

HOLSCHUH: Okay, if that would be okay, I’ll send it in. Unless the Fire Department has an objection, it just seems to make more sense.

RAY: No, no. We just lifted this totally out of City and County.

HIGASHI: Fred, what was that change you proposed again?

HOLSCHUH: Where it says, on what is in my document, the second line, ‘fire protection and prevention and emergency rescue’ I would change to emergency medical services, which is EMS.

IRVINE: Let me ask. Way down below that it says, in Section 6-4.4 or 3, depending on which version you’re looking at, ‘(b) Train, equip, maintain and supervise a force of firefighting and emergency resource personnel.’ Is that okay?

HOLSCHUH: You could just say emergency medical services personnel.

IRVINE: Medical personnel there too.

HOLSCHUH: EMS personnel. The State EMS Services, under the Department of Health, is in fact called EMS. It is EMSS, Emergency Medical Services System, and that’s what our County group is under.

HERKES: Put emergency medical services and rescue?

BESS: Yes, that’s what I would suggest, as well.

HERKES: Because I like the rescue part.

HOLSCHUH: Sure. Although it is implied in EMS, frankly.

HERKES: Well, it’s implied but it’s not really spelled out.

HOLSCHUH: But sure, that’s fine. Sure. And the public will understand.

HIGASHI: One thing. The EMS is a contract with the State. The State actually provides the EMS services by contract with the County. So if that service is terminated, it shouldn’t be reflected in our Charter. It’s kind of an ongoing year to year deal that we do it on a contract basis, because in Oahu, they do it differently.

HOLSCHUH: Well, Roland, forgive me. I would argue that the opposite would be true. We ought to maybe mention it in the Charter so we can pick up the pieces, God help us, if it were ever terminated. You know what I’m saying? My estimation, that language ‘EMS’ which is a national standard, unless maybe I don’t understand something about the way one writes this in the Charter, and that may well be because you guys are way more versed. I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think EMS is definitely just State EMS. In other words, EMS is a national term, and I like EMS and if you had EMS and rescue, that’s fine, but EMS is emergency medical services. There are documents and courses and textbooks on that.

HIGASHI: That’s fine.

BESS: Following up on what Roland’s saying here, I’m just wondering whether or not, if that is a concern, about putting medical services into the Charter, that what we might do is just say ‘and emergency services’ and that the record clearly reflect what we intend by that is, and I’m talking about the record of the Charter Commission, that what we’re intending is clearly medical services and rescue. And then that way, if there was a problem down the line, emergency services would be interpreted that way.

HOLSCHUH: That may solve it. Yes, seems reasonable.

RAY: In any case, it would be helpful if you submitted something in writing just to -

BESS: Yes, please.

HOLSCHUH: The only other thing, I was just more curious. As I mentioned, I’ve been a member of the EMS Commission for many, many years now and, quite honestly, I suppose I shouldn’t say this here, but I’ve been extremely frustrated about the advisory nature of the EMS Commission all these years because through five different Mayors, you make recommendations and whether they do or do not want to listen to you is an incredible amount of energy that’s been spent on trying to get things done in EMS. But I’m wondering what happens to the EMS Commission. Fire Commission - Is this entity - This in no way takes away the EMS Commission? Does the EMS Commission come under this, or does that still -

HERKES: Who appoints the EMS Commission?

HOLSCHUH: It’s the mayoral appointment. It’s a mayoral Commission, so that would stay as is or does this imply changing that?

HERKES: Where is it in this Charter?

IRVINE: Not in the Charter, I don’t think.

RAY: We haven’t discussed it. It’s not something in the Charter, but that’s a good point to bring up.

HIGASHI: Because it’s an advisory Commission, similar to the Elderly - Aging Commission.

RAY: Right, so the Mayor has the authority to create those types of Commissions, and that’s how it’s dealt with in the Charter.

HIGASHI: And it runs with the Office of the Mayor.

HOLSCHUH: So by creating this, it wouldn’t preclude that in any way?

RAY: No, it would, but it wouldn’t protect it either.

IRVINE: Fred? Yes, I was wondering, could you conceive of the Fire Commission covering the kinds of things that your EMS Commission does right now, or maybe they should be combined? If you have any thoughts.

HOLSCHUH: Well, perhaps. I don’t want to belabor this now, but perhaps. The only thing is the EMS Commission, although I’m frustrated by its relative impotence, sorry for the word, but the ability to really pound the table and get something done - That has been frustrating to me and this sounds like this has a lot more teeth in it, this particular Fire Commission. The problem is this is a five member Commission. The EMS Commission, I don’t know how many members, but we had a meeting last week and there were probably close to 25 people there, about 15 of them, I think, are Commission members, and there’s tremendous participation in that from all aspects, all parts of the island, all walks of life of people, and so on. It’s a good question. I don’t honestly know the answer to that.

MARTIN: How do we have this one set up? As far as what, though? No geographic. How’s about one of the Commissioners come from their department?

RAY: Well, we can look at that, yes. Okay, thanks.

HOLSCHUH: Thank you.

RAY: Steve Bowles.

IRVINE: John, could I just ask, were we going to have copies of the Charter here? I mean, the County probably has an extra 20,000 copies of this thing lying around in the basement, and we should get them out to the public at this time, because we will be re-doing it.

HENRY: I can ask but they usually charge.

HERKES: Tell them we’re not going to buy them.

IRVINE: Well, it’s time to give them away because it’s not going to be valid for that much longer, if we have a bunch of them.

RAY: We’ll follow up on that. Steve. Can you use the mike?

BOWLES: Yes, I guess I can. I just want to make some quick comments. First, I wanted to thank you because I happen to agree that the Council, as it stands right now, is broken, and I think it needs repairing, and I would be supportive of the approach you’re taking. I’m not sure that we want to have a Council, though, that’s the size of Oahu’s to represent that group of people. I totally sympathize with John’s problem of geography since I work all around this island, as well as around the State, and I know how difficult it is to go from point to point. I can imagine what they have to deal with when they have to deal with people to people.

HERKES: Well, I used to work with a State Representative that had a bigger district than this island.

BOWLES: I had a couple of points that were just spinning through my head while we were going through this. One is a point of confusion that I run into all the time, and it’s driving me crazy. We have a Water Department which has a Commission. I would like to see that Commission change from Commission to Board. The Island of Oahu has the Honolulu Board of Water Supply. I would like to see us have the Hawaii County Board of Water Supply. And the reason is because the State, in it’s infinite wisdom, created the Statewide Commission on Water Resource Management, and people refer to it as the Water Commission. And then people in this county who don’t know anything about the State, call this Commission the Water Commission, and there’s incredible human confusion out there by the people who don’t know the system. And this is an opportunity, to me, to just clean it up, change it to a Board, get rid of the word ‘Commission’ because we can’t change the State’s, but we can change the County’s.

MARTIN: Can I ask a question on that?

BOWLES: Yes.

MARTIN: Isn’t the State one an ad hoc commission?

BOWLES: Oh, no. It’s the most powerful body in the State now.

MARTIN: I know it is and I know there’s been a lot of controversy with some of the things that they’ve been proposing, but I thought once they were done with the work that they were doing -

BOWLES: No, you’re confused, and this is part of the problem. There was a Review Commission of the Commission’s work. That’s Freddie Trotter and his gang that went on the dog and pony show. And I think this is an opportunity for us to just clean this language up.

HIGASHI: It’s a good idea.

BOWLES: That was one point, and then one other relevant point related to this, because of our economic change in this County, and it’s just a concern and I felt I need to bring it up, and it relates to diversified agriculture. And John knows that we’ve been wrestling with this problem from around this island repeatedly, and it relates to the water and energy. And somehow, nowhere in our Charter are we able to deal with the issue of diversified ag as related to energy and water, and they all become intimately related in our economic growth. So the only question I’m posing is isn’t there some way in which we can deal with this kind of a thing, either in Research and Development, one of the departments having some sort of a task in which it must be sensitive to this issue? We try to do it in R&D now, but it simply doesn’t quite get to where we’re going because where we’re going in the future is a break-up of land that’s phenomenal, and that’s breaking up all the rest of the support services. And we have no agency in our County government that can seem to grapple with that. We must entrust it upon some State agency that doesn’t understand, and I’m not saying you guys can go back and do anything, but while I was sitting in the back of the room going through this thing, I’m realizing that we’re missing an important element of our economy somewhere in our Charter. And I just wanted to throw that out on the table. My main point was the Board.

RAY: My response is I think that does fall clearly under the R&D Department, especially in terms of the type of job description people have. They have an Energy Coordinator. They have an Ag position there. It would seem obvious that that’s the place where that function needs to take place, so I’m not sure.

BOWLES: Couldn’t we beef it more, a little, in the Charter somehow?

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: We did talk about this a bit, and I’m always questioning what R&D does because somewhere in the Charter, under their section, it refers to people needing expertise in related field, and I said what is related to nothing, because we don’t say anything in the Charter about quite what they’re doing. And maybe this is an opportunity to spell something like that out.

BOWLES: I think that’s my point and I believe that’s where it should be. That it needs some kind of beefing up to reflect where our economy going.

RAY: We can talk about this, Sue.

BOWLES: Yes, I don’t want to make an issue today. Sitting there thinking somehow this is not coming out.

RAY: Steve and I are always cooking up ideas for things like this, continuous discussion.

IRVINE: If you come up with something, let us know. Write us a letter.

RAY: Actually we did have a Natural Resource Commission.

BOWLES: That’s unrelated, John.

RAY: I know.

HERKES: Let me read you what the current Charter says, page 11. ‘Provide staff leadership for public and private development programs, enterprises and plans including economic, social and cultural proposals which enhance improvement of the County community.’ So it would be easy to insert wording in that; ‘improvement of the County, especially in the areas of agriculture and energy’.

BOWLES: That’s my point. When you put it in these generic terms, you lose the purpose. I’m trying to say we need to establish the purpose and challenge the department with that kind of a situation.

HERKES: Right, okay. And then I’d also like to challenge you to write some wording for the General Plan because that’s where that really comes in.

RAY: We have, actually. We’ve met with the County under the heading of the Water Roundtable and discussed these issues, and we are in a state of dialogue with the Planning Department.

BOWLES: And I would want to say, Marni, that we did emphasize that very much so, and I thought it was taken by the staff very well. I got the impression that they really picked up on the idea.

HERKES: Because I think you’re right. That is one of our most important issues.

RAY: Okay, let’s see what we can come up with as far as language in R&D. Anything else, Steve?

BOWLES: No, just while we’re here, it’s just a matter of this issue of energy is such a critical thing on this island. In fact, I just opened a piece of paper this morning, at home, inviting me to go to a conference in the Phillippines sponsored by the State Department of Planning and Economic Development, or whatever it’s called.

HERKES: HEI just bought a -

BOWLES: In the Phillippines.

HERKES: Yes, they just bought a -

BOWLES: And we’re going to sponsor something in the Phillippines. We can’t even deal with it in our Third World. The energy on this island is where we should be emphasizing, not in the Phillippines.

RAY: Any other statements from the public? Okay, moving down the agenda.

Financial Status Report. None today.

Communications. Did everybody get the communications from the Kona? There were a couple of Kona community groups, in regard to Neighborhood Boards. Were they distributed?

MARTIN: Yes. That one with all the signatures on it, yes?

IRVINE: Recently?

RAY: Okay, I’ll get those distributed. I got a letter from the Kona Palisades Community Association and then from the Greater Kalaoa Community Council, or something, which is basically all those North subdivisions, north of Kailua, saying that they had presentations from the League of Women Voters in regard to Neighborhood Boards, and that they very strongly supported those. So anyway, I pulled out my material and we can all, hopefully, review that. I think that’s going to be a hot topic of discussion at the Kona Public Hearing on the 25th. So, I’ll make sure those letters get distributed.

Unfinished Business. Does anybody want, under that, or New Business, to discuss anything today on the Charter? Okay.

Announcements. Next meeting. We have our Public Hearing in Hilo next weekend, followed by Kona, followed by Volcano on the first of April, and then we’ll have our regular meeting in April in Hilo.

Okay, if there’s not anything else, I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn.

MARTIN: So move.

RAY: Second?

HIGASHI: Second.

The discussion ended at 10:40 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Sharron Henry

Secretary-Administrative Assistant