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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION

Transcript of Meeting of May 12, 1999

Hawaii County Liquor Commission Conference Room,

Hilo Lagoon Center

Absent and Excused: S. Irvine, D. Kurozawa

Absent: E. Alonzo, K. Balog

And 4 members of the public in attendance.

RAY: The May 12^th Special Meeting of the Hawaii County Charter Commission is called to order at 3:07 p.m. Let the minutes reflect that in attendance are John Ray, Chairman, Roland Higashi, Vice Chair, Steve Bess, Marni Herkes, George Martin, and Gary Yoshiyama. I had verbal notice from Sue Irvine and Daryl Kurozawa that they could not attend today, so we’ll expect the others momentarily, but let’s go ahead and get started.

You have a packet before you, and I tried to put things in the order that we’re going to deal with them, so Item No. III, the minutes. If you will recall, we deferred approval of the March 17^th minutes which we just received at the last meeting, and also included here we have the April 14^th minutes, which I assume we’re going to defer approval on those until the next meeting since nobody’s had a chance to read them. So in regard to the March 17^th minutes, which were distributed at the last meeting, do I have a motion to approve?

YOSHIYAMA: So moved.

RAY: Second?

BESS: Second.

RAY: Okay. Discussion on the -, this is the March 17^th minutes that were distributed at the last meeting. Discussion? I’ve just got a general comment. In reviewing these meetings, I find them not to be particularly substantive or easy to follow, and I think maybe part of that is, you know, the subject matter, or lack of, right, and part of it is probably the -, my leadership, or lack of, in terms of running the meetings, but they seem to be pretty helter-skelter and all over the place. But like I say, I think a lot of that is, you know, we’re just sort of free-for-all discussing the organization and whatever but, hopefully, they’ll be, you know, more productive as a recording tool and more useful to us later.

So all in favor of approving the March 17 meeting minutes? All in favor?

COMMISSIONERS: Aye.

RAY: Okay. The minutes are approved. The April 14^th minutes, do I have a motion to defer?

BESS: So moved.

YOSHIYAMA: Second.

RAY: All in favor?

COMMISSIONERS: Aye.

RAY: Okay. So I’ll remind you that we do have a meeting for next Wednesday, so we’ll try to approve these meetings -, minutes at that time.

Okay, going down in your packets, the financial status shows a balance of $29,045.07. The purchase of a file cabinet is the major purchase, and I’ll refer to that later, but we do have our own file cabinet now.

Let the minutes show that Mr. Santangelo has now arrived.

Okay, Communications, Item No. V. Included in your packet, there’s a little notice from myself regarding just general organization, some things I want to cover maybe later today. And then, also, what I did was I made a copy of everything that I’ve included, that I’ve received from boards, commissions or departments to date, so you’ve got a copy of everything that’s come in so far with, you know, with comments. Okay, any questions about that?

We’ve also -, I received two communications asking for us to mail out agendas and minutes, from Jason Armstrong with the Hawaii Tribune-Herald and from Jerry Rothstein.

HERKES: What do they want us to do?

RAY: They’d like copies of the agendas.

HERKES: Did they want them mailed to them?

RAY: Jason asked for them to be dropped off at his drop-off spot in the County Building, and I was going to do the same thing with West Hawaii Today with Bobby Command, because I’ve actually been calling him and giving him updates as far as what we, you know, were up to, and he did a nice article, other than referring to me as a lobbyist. But anyway -. So we we’re in touch with them, okay. So that covers Communications.

Statements from the Public on items on the agenda. No one here.

Okay, Unfinished Business, Selection of the Commission’s Attorney. I’d like to ask Mr. Bess to report on where we are with that.

BESS: Yes, Mr. Chairman, the subcommittee did interview all but one of the candidates for the attorney’s position and, unfortunately, we were unable to schedule -, we had scheduled an interview of the last remaining candidate, but we were unable to conduct that interview. So what’s going to happen -. As you know, Sue Irvine is on the mainland, and she had asked that she be part of the review process for all of the candidates since she had been a part of it for the first three, and so what we’re going to do is we’re going to be interviewing the last remaining candidate on Tuesday before our next meeting so that we will be in a position to recommend two attorneys or more to the Commission, as a whole.

I should mention that I just received word from Mr. Lester Ishado, who was a candidate, and he has withdrawn his application.

RAY: Okay. All right. Any questions on that? Okay, because of the public notice, I had talked to Mr. Bess about this, and so we have included that on the agenda for next week and so, hopefully, that’ll take place.

Okay, VII B, Selection of Commission’s Secretary. Could I ask either or both Gary Yoshiyama or Marni Herkes to give us a report on where we are with that.

HERKES: We have three applications that Civil Service has deemed appropriate, and we will be interviewing them. It would be nice if we could them done in the next week, and we will try. Mr. Balog’s not here today so -, but I’ll talk with Gary and see if we can get them -, see what his schedule is, what my schedule is, and when we can interview.

RAY: Okay. And then we’ve got two additional applications, right, that we have to send out for -.

HERKES: We’re going to do the three. Yes, Mr. Ray, we can go through all that, if you want, but in the interest of keeping the minutes readable, I thought we’d just say that we have three right now that are appropriate.

RAY: Well, I just wanted to explain that in terms of the time frame that we do have to send out two additional applications and give them five days to respond to deficiencies, and then, if they do qualify, then I assume we’d be interviewing them, as well?

HERKES: Uh huh.

RAY: Okay. So time-wise, Gary or Marni, do you have any idea if we -? Let’s assume we get the -, that the other two, one of the other two, you know, qualifies and we have to interview that person, as well. Where does that put us in terms of, you know, having a warm body hired and on board for the Commission?

HERKES: After we make a decision, say we make a decision within ten days.

RAY: Okay.

HERKES: Gary, how long does Civil -, do we have to -, can we hire right away?

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah, anytime. Yeah.

HERKES: Okay.

YOSHIYAMA: Right.

RAY: So -.

HERKES: We could have one on board by June 1^st.

RAY: Okay. Well, anything -.

HERKES: It would be a goal.

RAY: You can do to move that process along, it would be extremely helpful in terms of the schedule, you know. We anticipated, as far as especially going into departmental reviews -. Because I don’t think any of us thought through, you know, the logistics of, you know, starting this review process and, you know, interfacing with the County departments and whatever. But we really do need to get somebody on board as soon as possible, okay.

Budget, I put this on here. I don’t think there’s anything new to report there. We -, the budget, basically, we have the budget for this calendar year, which the balance will expire, and then we have the $100,000 included in the budget for next year so -. Okay.

Moving on, Office Space. As far as the County is concerned, we have purchased and located a file cabinet. It’s in, physically in the County Clerk’s office, which seems a little bit odd, but that’s where it ended up. And I went in and met with the County Clerk and the staff there, and was assured that we’ll have, you know, full, timely access to our file cabinet. And if the Clerk is in the -, is in a meeting, that we can go in and knock on his door and tell him we need to get into our file cabinet, and we’ll get timely access. At least it should be secure. But anyway, there’s a four-drawer file cabinet there.

And then in the Office of Information, we do have a drop-off box on the front counter, it’s there now, and everything should end up there. We do have a good system of moving documents back and forth from Hilo to Kona, where I am most days, so we can pouch stuff over to the Mayor’s Office on a daily basis, so that’s very convenient and that works well for me. And we can save on postage that way, corresponding with the County departments and whatever. Instead of having to mail stuff, I can just pouch it back over and get it back. So that works out well.  So, hopefully, those two situations will cover our needs logistically, assuming the administrative assistant we hire, you know, has all the, you know, home office capabilities that we need. Does that seem reasonable to everybody?

HERKES: Yeah. The only thing I was going to say is that next time you talk to the press, I think it would be important to make a point of the fact that we have drop-off places on both sides of the Island for anyone that would like to comment, so that they -, just to kind of start to talk about how accessible we are.

RAY: Okay. Yeah, I think that’s a good idea and, you know, additionally, maybe we should kind of formally decide, you know, what other, you know, documentation, you know, that we may want to be available. I know we had talked about past Charter Commission minutes being available, you know, in East and West Hawaii, and that is not the case presently. So if that’s something we want, then we need to get copies of those made and work out, you know, where they’re going to be if people want to go in. And is just the past Charter Commission okay, or do we need to go back to the one prior to that? That’s four volumes of the one prior or -.

HERKES: I think if anybody wants the prior ones, they can ask for them. I don’t think we need to make them available.

RAY: Okay.

HERKES: What is -, do we still charge $3.00 for County Charter booklet, or $6.00?

RAY: I believe it’s $3.00.

HERKES: Three dollars.

RAY: And they are available at the Mayor’s Office in West Hawaii and the County Clerk’s office in East Hawaii. But all of those things we need to, you know, make part of public notice or, you know, you mentioned letting the press know. We can do that, as well, but you know.

SANTANGELO: John, point of clarification. On that Charter, have we publicized well that it’s on the Web, because there -, if you have access to a computer, it’s free.

RAY: We have not, and I think we’re waiting to, you know, get out some sort of, you know, press release bulletin.

SANTANGELO: Put that all together.

RAY: Right. You know, I distributed, you know, one that had some thoughts I came up with in terms of just description of the Charter and whatever, and so I think all those should be included at that time and, you know, get the press on board, as well.

Reimbursable Expenses. To date, only I think three of us have turned in the forms for reimbursable expenses. If you do want to, if you do want to do that, I wish you’d do it on a relatively timely basis, and those forms are right here.

HERKES: Thank you. That’s what we need is a form.

RAY: Well, they were here at the last meeting, and I pointed it out at the last meeting. And so the most timely way to handle it is that if you fill it out today, then I can, you know, I -, one of -, myself or Roland need to sign the authorization, and then they can get turned in. So -, okay.

I didn’t include on here, that should have been in Unfinished Business, just the topic of general organization and scheduling and where we go from here, and I’d like to table that until after the presentations, so -, we already have a couple of people coming on that.

And under New Business, I think I’d like to defer the Communications/Public Relations piece, as well, to that discussion when we talk about, you know, where we go after this.

So that moves us into, as Mr. Yuen comes in, New Business, B, Background Presentations on County Government and the County Charter. And I want to welcome Mr. Bethea and Mr. Yuen and Mr. L’Orange, who have all so graciously volunteered to come in and meet with us today and give us a little background and answer any questions we might have in regard to the Charter review process, the County Charter, or County government in general. So, welcome. You folks want to come sit at the table? Hi, Bob.

We’ll keep this relatively informal. I think we invited you here today to, you know, give us any input, thoughts, help on, you know, initially on getting organized, you know, the process, any processes you found, you know, helpful in terms of activities of the last Charter Commission. I’m -, personally, I’m particularly interested in any comments you might have about engaging the public, you know, just the whole subject of public input, you know, how to solicit public input, any thoughts you might have. But, you know, Bob do you want to lead off and -.

BETHEA: Okay, I will. Can everybody hear me?

RAY: Yeah.

BETHEA: I got kind of a cold, so I’m losing my voice. Well, when you invited me, I wasn’t sure what I could contribute. And I thought about it over the past several days and I’m still not sure what I can contribute, but I will try. One of the things we benefitted from was having a very good attorney, Chris Yuen here. I mean, it really, it really was a help. He was very good at keeping himself out of the policy decisions, acting as an attorney. I might have applied for the job and asked for your consideration, because I think it’s an interesting job, but I don’t think I could have accomplished that. I’d be, you know, expressing my own opinions, etcetera, etcetera, and I don’t think that’s the role of counsel. And I think that’s one of the things you need to get straight with whoever you do have, what you -, the expectations that you do have, who’s counsel for the Committee.

But anyway, I thought at least an appearance here would give me a further opportunity to disclaim any responsibility for single member districts or for the four-year term. Pete L’Orange over here, made that motion. No, Sherwood Greenwell made the motion, Pete seconded it. And I simply didn’t have the votes; that’s the real truth of it. It was me and the labor guys. And there’s a funny story attached to this. At the time, I didn’t favor the single member districts either, and our little group, which was a minority group, didn’t favor the single member district. But we thought, sure, if it’s coupled with a two-year term, that the voters couldn’t be so misguided that they would go for it. And so we thought both would go down in flames. In retrospect, for whatever it’s worth, I think the single member district was okay. But I think the two-year terms are ludicrous. I just think it’s very bad for County government. So we were just dead wrong in our analysis of what the public wanted.

I think, as I was trying to think about what your role is when you first start off, I think you should get some information about some very basic questions. In other words, get some information about the basic style of government. Are you going to be having any interest at all in the City Manager type of situation? And you may decide that no, that just -, that’s not going to work for us in this County. And if you get some background work done, get it dug up and get it read, then at least you can put that in perspective if you get some testimony about it.

The -, right now, we have what I think is generally considered a strong Mayor system because the Mayor has a veto; that’s the usual differentiation that I think of. And you have to decide, well, if we’re going to stick with the same kind of a system, do we want a strong Mayor with a veto? One of the things that was particularly disturbing to me was what I thought to be the disproportionate balance between the Mayor and the County Council with the County Council having the two-year terms and the Mayor having a four-year term. It just didn’t suit me. But I think that you got to get back at that and think about what you feel about it.

Another basic question is should people run for Council on a nonpartisan basis? Is this party kind of a set-up at the County level, where you’re not dealing with international policy or even national policies, you’re dealing with things of less significance. And I think we have seen, just to venture my opinions, some very -, a lot of discord arising out of partisanship because of the system we had, and I’d rather see Council people line up philosophically rather than on the basis of party.

RAY: Bob, can I ask you know, you know, what comes to mind when you say that is the City and County with is nonpartisan, Honolulu, and they seem to be, you know, have more discord or more turnover, more change and more partisanship, you know, that this jurisdiction. And it was funny, I was having lunch with somebody today and I was, you know, we were talking about that a little bit and, you know, the -, they brought up the point that maybe nonpartisanship actually leads to less stability, you know, because as, you know, at least with the parties there’s, you know, sort of more of a reason to stick together and keep the majorities together or not. And with the case with nonpartisanship, it seems to be even, you know, more willy-nilly and more fluid or whatever. But, you know, I know you’re a real observer of politics in the State and, you know, City and County is nonpartisanship, but they sure, you know, seem to be in a state of constant flux over there.

BETHEA: They do, it seems to me, and maybe it wouldn’t work.

RAY: I don’t -.

BETHEA: But I sort of think of periods here where you had, you know, just people lined up based on party lines, and people felt like they were kind of forced into decisions that they didn’t want to make out of, you know, basic party loyalty, and we got into this -, well, I don’t know, we got into squabbles about who controlled whatever limited patronage there was available to the County Council, as some of you well remember. But that’s just an observation. I think you have to think through that question, you know, whether -, I’m certainly not positive about the answer.

I was also thinking about the public testimony. I don’t think you’re going to have people beating down the doors to testify. And quite frankly, it’s good to hear it, but I don’t know how much of what you hear will actually be constructive. You know, I think you need to listen, but I don’t think that most people that are testifying will have opinions that are based on, you know, sound knowledge of County government and how things might work. So I always thought that you have to go out and you have to listen, and I may be basically in disagreement with Chris on this, but you’re there to do a job to get -, to have better resources than the man on the street and to think about what’s, you know, best for the County as a whole. And so I think you can take, and you need to take into consideration everything that you hear out there. And maybe this is one of the basic questions, but I don’t think you should simply reflect what you hear. I would hope that your job goes beyond that, to try to really think it through and take advantage of the extra information that you have. That’s simply a personal philosophy, and I think probably you ought to solicit opinions on that from these two people to my left. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. Did you guys feel like there was some real very valuable things that came out of public testimony?

YUEN: Well, I think that the -, from the government people, I think there was a lot of important, you know, information.

BETHEA: Yeah.

YUEN: From the general public, I think people have -, some people have good ideas, but they weren’t ready to be brought into the Charter or they were things that were a little more specific than what you actually are going to put in the Charter, and people want to sometimes put in things that are more legislative in nature than really the function of the -, the structure function of the government, which is a little abstract. Apart from something like single member districts, which had a lot of interest, political interest from the general public, most of the things that the Commission was looking at ten years ago, like the relative power of the Mayor versus the Council in budget is just not something that the average person is going to come and give testimony about.

BETHEA: Yeah, right as he was saying that I wrote down budget process, because that was something that I’m not sure we ever really felt we handled. There were some complications and time problems in there, weren’t there, you know, about does the Council have enough time and -? I can barely remember it, but those -, that was a problem area.

L’ORANGE: I think you should be as open as possible with the public. One of the things that amazed me is that one organization, let’s leave it nameless, had very excellent written material. When the president got up, he put his foot in his mouth and shot down everything he had written. I mean, he gave us just strictly B.S. And so I think it’s very important to give people a chance to show that, I mean to -, and to be questioned, if you have to question them, you know. I was shocked. One of the best reading material I ever seen, and then the guy that presented it, wow. And I think -. Well, let’s just leave it there.

But we had police protection in Puna. I don’t recall why, but there was some reason why we had the police protection in Puna.

BETHEA: Because it was Puna.

HERKES: Now, be careful.

BETHEA: I don’t know. I don’t remember that.

L’ORANGE: I do.

SANTANGELO: I’d like to -. Wait? Okay.

RAY: Is any -, we are perfectly prepared to start a little dialogue here, but is there anything -?

L’ORANGE: Yeah, I -.

RAY: You’d like to say as far as just sort of a presentation or -?

L’ORANGE: I think one of the things that was most useful, and I don’t think it was in the rules, I think it was an agreement on the Commission, is that we decided once we had voted on a section, that section was put to bed. We did not revisit it. Because we could have got into complete chaos if, at the end of the whole thing, we revisited a controversial area.

RAY: So, Pete, how did that work out, you know, timing-wise, you know? I’ve been trying to figure out how this will go. And we’ll, say we get, you know, a layer of departmental, you know, input and then we get a layer of, you know, public input or something, you know, comes up, you know, a little bit later in the game and whatever. Now -.

L’ORANGE: Never push the decision. Bob was an excellent chairperson. If somebody wanted to defer and leave that item for a subsequent meeting, we just did that. We didn’t -, it might be on the agenda, but Bob was a very fair chairperson and anybody could say let’s divert or let’s talk about that some more.

But once we had decided on a single member district, which I was very much in favor of, I deferred to Mr. Greenwell on the two-year term. He was a senior statesman, and I respected his opinion having been on the Council. I, personally, think the two-year term is too short, but I did defer to him on that.

But the -, I don’t think we could have gotten through, because we had a lot of discussion, it was very fair, it was very open, but I think that rule was one of the lynchpins. I think it was just a gentleman’s agreement.

BETHEA: I think that was it. I had forgotten about that. I had learned from an early negotiation with Jack Hall, who I thought was a great negotiator and you had a great ability with Jack to move through things, and it always scared the daylights out of me, but once we had gotten through a provision, we were through that provision, and then you didn’t try to find some leverage to come back and open it up, and it kind of made things go. I had forgotten that.

L’ORANGE: No, I think that -. And this one last comment that I was thinking about. Because, I guess, we had the single member district, we had lots of reporters in the back of the room all the time. And I felt very strongly that the only person that should speak is the chairperson about process or whatever was going on, because the reporters come and they want to know your opinion. And I don’t think -, well, my personal opinion is my opinion is going to be said on the mike, on the floor. I think debating it in the press the way the Council does some of their stuff is ridiculous. I mean it’s just -, let the chairperson talk for the Commission on matters of procedure and where you are and whatever and you’ll save yourself a lot of grief because they try to get stupid answers out of you or -, I’ve observed that. I don’t answer the press, so that’s a simple rule. But that’s just a personal, you know, prejudice. And I’m good friends with the reporters, but -. Anyway, that’s all I have to say, sir.

RAY: Chris, anything to add?

YUEN: Well, I appreciate what Pete is saying and now I remember that it did run very smoothly. And I think that that was the agreement that -, something got voted on and that was pretty much it.

Whenever you’re looking at, whenever you’re starting off with a set of work like this, there are really three kinds of issues that you deal with. There’s the big, over-arching basic kind of question. In our Charter Commission ten years ago, this whether to go single member district was a big question. And if you decide to do that, there is a bunch of other things that you have to do that go along with that. And I think that the Commission dealt with that pretty early, as I remember.

And the same thing with City Manager. There was some discussion of it at the time. Nobody, I think, was that -, nobody was really -, there were maybe one or two people that were interested in it, but it was clearly not going to go anywhere. If that’s going to be seriously considered, then there are a lot of revisions that need to be thought of that follow after that, and that needs to be done early.

The second kind of change that one makes in a Charter are the things that may be -, that are a little more specific but they still really make -, they do make a real difference on how things work on the ground. And to give a couple of examples, at the last Charter, there were changes, the Police Commission. The Police Commission was given considerably more power to investigate misconduct at the Police Department. Another example, qualifications of the Planning Director, I believe, and was there another one that we put in the qualifications for?

BETHEA: Engineer.

YUEN: I think that was -.

BETHEA: Didn’t we?

YUEN: In already.

BETHEA: It was already?

YUEN: The third kind of issue is just the purely technical, what I would call purely technical issue, and that’s where you have provisions in State law that are -, that supercede things that are in the Charter, and you need to fix them because they read differently. And even though the lawyers can sit there and figure out that in this -, you know, and I don’t remember what exactly they were, the lawyers can sit there and say, well, this thing in the Charter is no good because it contradicts something in State law which -. In some cases, the Charter will supercede State law, but in other cases the State law will override the Charter. If you leave them in the Charter, people get confused, or people will pick up the Charter and they’ll say this is the way it is, and it just causes the lay person to get confused. Those kinds of -, the third area of issue was the kind of area that I think the Commission largely left to me to figure out what were those things. They had some input, certainly from Corp. Counsel and some of the departments that have run into some of these things. So I think that it works well to make a decision on the big things fairly early on.

And then I think that we -, on the other things we pretty much marched through, section by section, as a way of just keeping things in order and just trying to keep track of -, sometimes you’ll do something in Article II that then you’ve got to change something in Article XI at the same time and we would keep track of that. But for the most part, after dealing with the big questions, we pretty much just went through things in order.

Looking back, it was interesting for me, we have four or five binders like this from -. I don’t know if you saved yours.

BETHEA: No, I didn’t.

YUEN: I’m a pack rat.

HERKES: Each of you have four binders like that?

YUEN: Pardon me?

HERKES: Each of you have four binders like that?

YUEN: Yeah. We had a lot of -, we had a binder probably that’s just minutes like this, and then I wrote a lot of things. There’s some background materials, other people’s charters, things from the mainland, civics textbook type things on different forms of municipal government. I was -, and we have all these press clippings that I was looking through, which are very interesting. And I realized that one of the things that happens when you’re working on a Charter Commission is that there’s -, your -, a lot of the work is inspired by things that have happened in the past few years in the County government that have caused problems or have issues that have come up, and I -. That’s not a bad thing, you know, that’s the natural thing. You’re going to react to certain things that have come up.

Before the last Charter Commission, there had been a controversy involving the Police Department which is still not completely resolved, but there was a controversy involving the Police Department and the Commission and the powers of the Commission, and that led, I think, directly to some of the things that were proposed as changes in the Charter.

Mayor Akana had passed away, and that led directly to some suggestions about what-, and changes in when you have a special election to fill a vacancy, when you wouldn’t have a special election. If the period of time was quite short, you’d just let the Managing Director carry over until the next regular election, those kind -, those are a couple of things. The budgeting things -.

BETHEA: Yeah.

YUEN: Had been a point of contention between the Council and the Mayor for several years before, and that was a reason for trying to work on that. I agree with Bob that we didn’t -, the last Charter Commission didn’t really solve that. And I don’t know, again, with a perspective of looking back on a few years, the same kinds of issues still come up between the Mayor and the Council, and I think that some of that is just inevitable in a government involving separation of powers and different power centers -.

BETHEA: Yeah.

YUEN: Looking to assert their own authority. The Charter should be as clear as it can be, but there’s always going to be some give and take on those things. So -, and I -, and probably there are things that have come up in the last few years that are going to be part of the agenda and part of what the public expects for this Charter Commission.

L’ORANGE: On the budget, I was very uncomfortable with it, and it seemed to me like a timing thing. And the problem was that neither the administration or the County Council was willing to give us any recommendation or to work together to work out a solution that worked. And we didn’t know anything about the subject, really. But you know you got to wait until the State comes up with their thing and the timing seemed pretty short.

BETHEA: Tight.

L’ORANGE: Tight between the State budget and the other. But we didn’t feel that anybody, at least I didn’t. We knew there was a problem, but we didn’t know how to fix it, and neither the Administration nor the County Council or the finance people gave us any recommendations that we could -.

BETHEA: Exactly, because we didn’t know, or the County wouldn’t know what it was going to get from the legislature until the legislature was over, you know, what was going to come, so it was very difficult for the County to plan.

There was, however, and I don’t quite have it in my grasp, another fundamental difference between the counties, and that was how detailed the budget was, because that got into questions of what was the authority of the Mayor to transfer funds within a department and this and that. Do you remember that, Chris? And I think here we had a much more detailed budget than elsewhere, which kind of tied the Mayor’s hands. There was a difference between transfers within a department and transfers between different departments. In other words, the Council could pass a budget that is so detailed that the Mayor can’t do anything; yellow pencils are $1,346 a month or something. I remember that being something that at least it concerned me. And that raises one question is that if -, for those of you who are like me and didn’t have much of an understanding of how the budget system works, I would really focus on trying to get as much understanding about that as I could.

Tie one thing back to what Chris said, this whole thing about City Manager, get it out of the way quick, one way or the other. You may really decide, after doing some reading about it, it’s something you want to do and, if so, then, you know, really get at it. But I wouldn’t waste a lot of time on something you know isn’t going to go anywhere. It doesn’t mean you don’t hear from the public and what their recommendations are, and it doesn’t mean that they can’t change your mind, but I think you have to move through those kinds of things. And if you decide that you want to stay with the basic form of government that we have now, a Council and a Mayor, a strong Mayor or no, veto or no. And then, you know, you go down and get into the budget questions and the length of terms that Council people should have, etcetera, etcetera, how do you think they should balance out, that’s what I think.

And then we did, I had forgotten that, after we got some basic stuff out of the way, we tried to, for want of any other way, we tried to go through the Charter line by line and subject by subject.

One of the things that I would strongly recommend, and I have it back in my mind now, is I got the Charter and I must have read it three or four times, then I’d start over, and I would start making notes to be sure that I could understand what I didn’t understand, and then to try to fill in the gaps. So it would be really be helpful, I think, if you went through and really read the Charter, then read it again and read it again and, you know, then you get down to the things that you’re pretty sure you don’t know.

YUEN: You had asked -, I wanted to get back to your question on public input, and you know, I think it’s important to have hearings in the different parts of the Island so that people feel welcome to come and say things. We had a lot of press coverage, and I don’t see anybody here from the press. I thought that most of our meetings had press. I don’t know, I think that there’s -, there are assigning, the local paper I think is assigning fewer reporters to meetings than they used to. And then part of it was that we had a sexy issue, we had this political issue that was obviously going to be dealt with on the single member districts, but there was quite -, they pretty regularly, I thought they came to virtually all the meetings, even the ones that dealt with things that weren’t very controversial, and that, you know, it helps keep people in the loop.

RAY: Yeah, Jason Armstrong is obsessed with the special election, and when I told him literally that we weren’t going to be discussing it today, he said. well, let me know when you get back to that.

BETHEA: With what?

RAY: The idea of a special election. And I’ve tried to explain to him that, you know, this is just something that we talked about as a what if type scenario we might consider but anyway -.

As far as, you know, going out to the public, did you -, do you recall using any, you know, particular tools or methodology to engage the community more? In other words, did you go out with a agenda that you were going to be discussing, you know, these types of things versus just going out and, you know, have you folks got anything to say? In other words, depending entirely on the public, you know, for coming up with, you know, questions versus, you know, figuring out a way to engage them before you went out because that -?

BETHEA: Didn’t we go out fairly early for the general type of remarks that they would have?

YUEN: The Commission went around the Island pretty early, and we went to Ka‘u and Kona and Honoka‘a. Didn’t we have a meeting -. I’m sure we had a meeting in Honoka‘a. I don’t know if we had a -, I’m sure we had a meeting in Waimea. I don’t think we went up to Kohala. And I’m pretty sure we had a meeting in Pahoa but did not attempt to publicize the meetings beyond the regular kinds of notices that are held. After the -.

RAY: And did you get much input of -? You know, I know Bob commented not much input of real substance but, you know, I mean, how was the turnout and how pertinent was the, you know -?

YUEN: There were a few community organizations that had very extensive kinds of comments. There were probably two or three community organizations really came with, you know, a list of changes, and there were a few citizens who had gone through, you know, go through it and yellow pencil everything that they would like to see changed. There were -, more often, there were people that had a specific thing, but it wasn’t -, none of them were your TV classic public hearing with, you know, people pounding of the tables and -.

RAY: Okay. From a -.

YUEN: Everything was very civil.

RAY: Okay, from a process standpoint, input from the public versus input from the, you know, County departments, and, you know, how that works. In other words, you know, we ask for input from the County departments, or say we did all our County department review in June and July or whatever, right, and then we went out to the public, and then we got suggestions. Then did you go back to the departments for, you know, comments or input on things that had come up that weren’t covered initially or -?

L’ORANGE: I think Bob asked the question, I think the chairman asked questions of the department if there was something -.

YUEN: You must have sent a letter to -.

L’ORANGE: Needed more information.

YUEN: On -, and I think they were -, weren’t they all invited to -.

BETHEA: I think we took them -.

YUEN: Invited to -.

BETHEA: Didn’t we take them in groups or -?

YUEN: Yeah.

BETHEA: Have the finance people come.

RAY: Okay, well, let me give you a example, okay. We’ve already requested, you know, from the departments and boards and commissions, right, that they submit in writing, you know, what they’ve got on their minds, and we’re starting to schedule meetings. I’ve got a letter from the Fire Department saying, basically, no comment. Okay, well, I know that we’re going to get comment from the general public in regard to a Fire Commission or, you know, some things about the Fire Department or whatever so, you know, that’s an example of where, you know, initially the Fire Department, you know, might not have anything to say, right, and then we, you know, say we have a huge outpouring of folks that, you know, are -, suggest a Fire Commission just like the Police Commission or, you know, and that commission, just like the Police Commission, electing the -, I mean hiring the chief and whatever. So does that ring a bell, things like that?

YUEN: I would let the department know when the item was on the agenda for discussion certainly, if they missed it in the paper or something.

RAY: Yeah. Okay, well, let’s go around -.

BETHEA: Did we do an agenda before the meeting?

YUEN: Yeah.

RAY: John, you had some questions? Mr. Santangelo?

SANTANGELO: Just a couple. It’s interesting when Bob brought up the dialogue over the single member. I was someone that was pretty excited about that. I think that in practice, having been a Council Member, I don’t see how it works real well because of the trophy taking and the territorialism at the Council. On the other hand, I feel people are very well served having a servant that can step up in a small community and represent it, so I’m definitely in favor of the single member district, with its faults in a nonpartisan. You know, power and politics, that’s always going to be there, I don’t care how you -, what you call it, but I think I’m looking at the public being better served because it makes for more of a straight election. It’s real hard to plunk, you know; you get a clear winner. It clears up a lot of the things that the public likes to beat to death.

But -, so I guess the first question is how did single member come up? Was that something that the Commission itself, or was there some party or entity that brought that idea to you?

BETHEA: It was the Kona people.

YUEN: Well, it was constantly on -, it had been on the agenda.

SANTANGELO: Oh, okay.

YUEN: You know, the -, it had been voted on. I was actually surprised how many times it had been voted on, but there had always been a very strong interest, particularly in Kona, to have single member districts, and I think it’s been -. I’m sure it was debated at the very, the very first Charter, whether to go single member.

L’ORANGE: Well, there was always frustration in any place other than Hilo is how does anybody run without getting the vote in Hilo? I mean, that was the practical sort of thing. And there was -, the Shikada plan was a compromise that -, how many, we voted on three, four Charters before the County Council was finally, you know, it was -. So it is a controversy that went back to the initiation of the Charter.

SANTANGELO: I think you did a good job with that one. And so, but that brings me to the question, you know, with John, right, my supporter, John as the Chair, was pretty much what you said is a fair minded person and also has the work ethic and is open to suggestions.

My question I have, and this will be my main question, and this is where I struggle right now as a Commissioner, and it deals with the public input. My thing is informed decisions. And so I put it down as what is good government versus public’s wants or informed decisions versus emotion? So an issue comes up that may be emotional on a public viewpoint. How did you guys deal with that in terms of was there a process that you looked at and said how does this make for good -? Was there an ethic or -, you know, how does this make for good government versus, gee, I think this one sounded great but it’s, you know, emotional but it doesn’t translate to good government? Was there a process in that or -? And maybe I’m not making myself clear.

L’ORANGE: John, I think the Commissioners voted their conscience. They did their homework, they did their reading, they listened to the department heads, they listened to the public, and they voted what they felt from the information that they had was appropriate. And we had good discussion on the floor. I said Bob was an excellent chairman. We had disagreements; it was never personal. But we had good discussion. I think you, as Commissioners, got to go with your conscience. There’s no simple answer to that that, you know, public input is -, comes in when they vote on it, yes or no, I mean, that’s the final, you know, final say. You can’t tell from what comes in public hearings -, really a read of what’s, you know, what’s out there. You may have ten -, you’ve been on the Council, ten people scream against it, and you have all kinds of other people that, you know, that don’t.

SANTANGELO: I think that’s why I asked that question, Pete, because on a Council and in politics, you know, the hardest thing for me to learn, that was perception was the reality. But I felt like here on the Commission, we’re not elected, and so where’s our accountability? And I keep looking at myself being accountable to working with this group to create good government. And this is a Charter that’s been around for a while, so I, you know, I don’t see how it needs a huge bunch of -. You know, case in point, you got a Fire Commission. I struggle with what is a Fire -? Because this was brought up when John and I were on the Council, and it’s like how does that translate or relate to how a Police Commission works, where you’re dealing with -. I mean firemen don’t arrest people and deal, you know -, so it’s just getting that information. But that was my main thing is -.

So it sounds like you guys got your information, you held each other accountable to get your background and be informed, and then you had your discussion. When it came to putting something on the ballot, did you go for pretty much a majority vote, I mean a major majority, or was there something that was like -? How often did it come real close?

L’ORANGE: Simple. Single member district was 6-5, I think.

YUEN: No, no. no.

BETHEA: Seven-four.

L’ORANGE: Seven-four? Seven-four, yeah.

YUEN: Seven-four, yeah. Well, you have to have, to put something on the ballot, you need a majority of the 11; you need six votes. If six people vote for it, it goes on the ballot. That’s -.

HERKES: Simple arithmetic.

YUEN: Yeah.

SANTANGELO: But it wasn’t like a jury thing where you tried to get everybody to buy into this thing?

YUEN: I think maybe there was some attempt to arrive at consensus. I think whenever you’re sitting in a group like this, and where there’s a degree -, and I think the people on the last Commission, there was certainly respect for everybody’s viewpoint. So if -, you know, there were things where it had been talked out and people were going to definitely not come to a complete agreement, but I think there were other things where if by shading a word another way you could overcome someone’s objections, that people did that, you know, or to come up with a product that everybody was happy with. But there were a few, there were a few, of course, ultimate kinds of issues that was -, came down to a vote, and it was, as I -, the single member was seven-four. Probably most of the things -.

BETHEA: That was coupled with the two-year term.

YUEN: Yeah, I don’t remember -.

BETHEA: Yeah.

YUEN: How that one went but most of -.

L’ORANGE: Sherwood made the motion making the two together.

YUEN: And most of the -, most of them were probably unanimous.

BETHEA: Yeah.

YUEN: Most of the things that were put on the ballot.

SANTANGELO: Thank you very much.

RAY: Okay. Questions?

BESS: Yes.

RAY: Steve.

BESS: A couple. Chris, you particularly mentioned the value of government input, and I’m just wondering, was that input basically from the directors, from the managers? And how helpful -, how broad based was your input from the government employees?

YUEN: I think it was primarily from the directors, and that they may have kept some control over the situation that way because, you know, I’m sure that when the letter goes out, it goes to the director of a department.

BESS: Right.

YUEN: And that’s who’s going to get it. And that probably, for the most part, they didn’t put it up on the bulletin board and invite everybody to come up and say what they thought. People have -, you know, County employees, they do have free speech, you know. If they want to come to this Commission and say, well, we don’t really need a deputy director in our department or something like that, they, theoretically, they have the right to do that. I think that sure, we did get more of the viewpoint of somebody in the director’s position. I was surprised that there was -, there were a couple of instances of people who were a little lower down who came and presented things that I took not to be completely the party line though, so there was a little bit of freedom there.

BESS: Well, I -, the reason I raised that, I know that there may be people in higher positions that are appointees that may not have the understanding of government that some of the ones that have been in there for a number of years, and the question would be how do you stimulate that kind of input?

YUEN: Yeah.

BESS: So we don’t get a party line.

YUEN: Yeah.

BESS: I mean, what you’re going to have is -, I mean, I don’t know how the current mayor is going to handle this.

YUEN: Yeah.

BESS: But there could very well be an administrative meeting to suggest, you know, how the input to the Charter Commission would be handled, and -.

L’ORANGE: Yeah, but Steve -.

BESS: I guess I’d just like to stimulate as broad a based input as possible, is what -.

L’ORANGE: The letters come to -, I’m on the Board of Appeals. The letter came to the Chairman of the Board of Appeals. If there’s problems with the Board of Appeals process, the Board is the one that’s going to be familiar with the community and whatever hakakas. I don’t recall -, we didn’t decide anything at the last meeting that I recall; we had a very long meeting. But we’re going to have a chance to respond if we care to respond, and that will not necessarily be an administrative response.

BESS: Correct.

L’ORANGE: I think we got stuck in the Planning Commission, the Commission itself, dealing with the planning issues.

BESS: Yes.

L’ORANGE: We got some very good input from the Planning Commission, from the chairperson.

BESS: And how did you stimulate commission involvement? Was it -?

L’ORANGE: They were invited, I assume.

BESS: Did you have a public relations firm? And if so, at what point in time and what function did it serve?

YUEN: No.

BETHEA: I don’t think we did, no.

YUEN: No.

L’ORANGE: Couldn’t afford it.

BESS: Do you see a need for a public relations firm?

YUEN: We did prepare a mailing about what was going to be, what was being proposed, and that was just done -. I think we hired somebody to -, just strictly for the graphic aspect of it.

BETHEA: It was at the end, wasn’t it?

YUEN: That was at the very end.

BESS: Do you see that a public relations firm at an earlier point in time would have been helpful?

BETHEA: I don’t.

BESS: I guess -, so you see the function of a public relations firm as being one that, basically, puts out the message after the fact. All the work has been done, and it’s just kind of frosting on the cake.

YUEN: Well, we were -, I think it’s -, it is part of the Commission’s responsibility to explain to the public what is being proposed in a neutral fashion, which is what we tried to do with a mailing, and not to -, the Commission is not pushing the set of amendments. The Commission has proposed them, but the Commission is not, you know, is not spending money to lobby the public to vote one way or another. It’s just -, it’s presenting a mailing that says, you know, if you vote yes on this, you’re going to get a single member district. That means we’re going to have nine districts that are going to be apportioned roughly, apportioned according to population of the Reapportionment Commission that sets it up. And it doesn’t go on to say, well, this is going to make the County run a lot better, blah, blah, blah. This is what it is. Do you want it? And go for it. I don’t think we -, you know, we didn’t spend a lot of money. I think we were required -, as I recall, there was some requirement that something like that be published.

BETHEA: I think there was.

YUEN: There is a requirement -.

BESS: It needs to be published.

YUEN: That an objective summary of the proposals be published in the paper, and that’s why this was prepared, and I think the Commission went the extra step of spending the money for a mailing that went out and -.

On public relations, I’m not sure at an early stage what that would do, if it would -, because it’s -, it’ll kind of distract what the Commission is doing. And I don’t know, you know, people are not stimulated -. The people are really going to be interested are the people who read the paper and are -, keep up on things anyway, and I don’t know that by really trying to publicize your meetings very broadly, that you’re going to get, you know, really great input.

BESS: Well, one of the things that has come up is that the Commission sees that there may be a need for educating the public as to what is going here, what this Charter Commission is all about, and providing them some background early on that might assist in getting people to come out. How do you react to that? Do you -? To what extent did your Commission feel that it had an education function early on, say prior to hearings or during the course of hearings, for that matter?

BETHEA: I don’t remember. I think we were-, my impression is we were trying to gather as much information as we could from department heads, people in government, and the public, so that we could understand what might be best suited for this County. We weren’t going out and just testing the wind with the public. I don’t mean to say that -, I’m not implying that you don’t listen to the public, but I don’t think that’s where the real source of information is going to come. You’re going to listen -. It’s really understanding how County government works, how the budget works, all of this other types of things, and then trying to figure out a methodology which best suits here. And so it’s like the average person in the public, if they come up and testify, they don’t really -, they haven’t been exposed to, hopefully, the volume of material that you’ve been exposed to. It’s the whole thing about representative government. You’re supposed to spend some time and consider all of these and look at the various alternatives and come up with a recommendation. And I think if you’ve done it right, that if people in the public went through the same process you went through, they would probably have the same answer, but they don’t have that answer initially. So that’s why without disrespecting the public, I felt that the solutions are going to be generated by the discussions among yourselves based on the information which you received, which includes the public, but it’s not the biggest portion of it.

L’ORANGE: Bob set the tone for our meetings, I think, my memory is getting jogged, is that we had to educate ourselves. That was the most important thing we had to do.

BETHEA: Right.

L’ORANGE: We had to educate ourselves as to what was in the Charter. And we had some academic types who came in with academic scenarios about different forms of government, not talking about County of Hawaii but talking about -, I don’t remember who they were but I -.

BETHEA: John Van Dyke from the University Law School, I think.

YUEN: Uh huh, right.

BETHEA: We had some -, remember that?

BESS: Was that helpful?

L’ORANGE: Oh, yeah.

BESS: And was that early on before you even solicited any material from the government?

L’ORANGE: I think the Chair scheduled things as they were available. Wasn’t that sort of -?

BETHEA: I can’t remember. I can’t remember why we had John Van Dyke. We did have him in, didn’t we?

YUEN: Uh huh.

BESS: Which raises the issue of, you know, like background material, and you’ve got four folders full of stuff. How was that generated? What kind of staff did you have to help you in assembling that? Was that your function, Chris, or -?

YUEN: Well, some of it is mine. There was a secretary that did -, would gather all the press clippings and prepare the minutes, and I think, to some extent, I don’t remember who had gone and copied the charters of the other counties, and somebody went and dug up some mainland material as well, and I’m not sure who did that. As I read through this, I was surprised at some of the things I did that I didn’t remember doing.

RAY: Okay.

BESS: Thank you.

RAY: Roland.

YUEN: I think the secretary was full-time, huh?

BETHEA: Yes, full-time.

YUEN: Full-time.

HIGASHI: Question, did you have verbatim minutes?

YUEN: Practically.

L’ORANGE: Yeah.

YUEN: Yeah. Practically verbatim. I don’t think 100 percent, but especially more at the beginning we did, yeah.

HIGASHI: Another question is who formulated the ballots, the ballot questions? Was it the Commission or County Clerk?

YUEN: We had a little bit of a conflict with that, with the Clerk’s office, and the -, we wanted to lump more things together that -, where it’s particularly the -, what we considered the housekeeping items, and so you voted on them as a block. And the Clerk, at that time, the -. The Charter was a little bit ambiguous as to how, who would make the decision. The Clerk, then, didn’t like that and wanted them all broken up. And I think the Commission -, the reason the Commission wanted to lump them is that we had about, I think 19 different things, and the concern was that people would be overwhelmed by having to vote on so many and that they would just tend to just, the hell with it, I’m going to vote no on all of them, which isn’t the way it turned out. But in order to make a better package for the voter, this Commission had wanted to lump a number of the different things together to come up, so there would be fewer things to vote on. The Clerk made us break them all out, but in response, partially, to this conflict, the Commission -, one of the things that was put on was a change that said the Commission, basically had the power to determine the form of the ballot.

HERKES: Did it pass?

YUEN: I remember the Clerk saying, well, there’s a feisty bunch out there. So that’s -. And the voters approved it, so now the Commission -. And, you know, you can only go so far with this, you know.

One of the things, if you go back to, if you go back to the very early attempts to have a Charter, they were -, I don’t know if it was deliberate or accidental, but they failed because of the way the ballot was set up, and you can sabotage a ballot proposal. And part of the reason why the single member, just to get this, the single member and the two years were put together was to keep it from being too confusing, because otherwise you’d have to vote on -. Because all the people that were in favor of two years were only in favor of it if you went to single member, so you didn’t want it -. Rather than have an if and only if type of question on the ballot, which people have enough trouble dealing with the kinds of questions that they get, but one that would only -, the two years -. The other way of doing it, the way to break it apart would be to say that only if single member passes, we would then -, are you then in favor of having two years? There’s also a way, and I won’t explain how to do this, but there was a way of setting it up so that it would almost guarantee both of them have lost, you know, where you have multiple kinds of things that you have to check on.

So this comes up and, you know, the -, my approach always is, you know, you don’t -, you present it to people, you let them vote on it, you win or you lose, and you don’t try to rig the ballot. But, you know, it can be done, and if you go back to -, and there’s a court case on this where the first, the first Charter was voted on back in May -, right when Shunichi Kimura was the County Chair. The way the ballot was set up was that there were, and I don’t remember exactly how it was done, but there were three or four alternatives, and there were inconsistencies in them, and if you didn’t -, and unless one out of four got over 50 percent, then there wasn’t going to be a Charter. And I think, perhaps, coincidentally or not, this was a period where the Charter was -. Before this, the County Clerk was elected, and after the Charter called for the County Clerk to be appointed, then the County Clerk set up how the ballot was going to be on the Charter.

HIGASHI: So -.

YUEN: That’s a long answer to your question.

HIGASHI: So in the final end.

YUEN: Yeah.

HIGASHI: Did the Commission formulate the specific question?

YUEN: Right. Right.

HIGASHI: Okay.

YUEN: The Commission will formulate how the thing is worded on the ballot and if any proposals are joined together.

HIGASHI: And as to form, the County Clerk decided -.

YUEN: Right.

HIGASHI: How the questions were bunched together or were left independent?

YUEN: The County Clerk, basically, last time, did not let the Commission join certain questions together and forced them all to be -.

HIGASHI: Is it now your opinion that -?

YUEN: Broken apart.

HIGASHI: What is permissible? I mean, you meant through this once. Do you think -?

YUEN: Well -.

HIGASHI: Do you think the Charter Commission has the authority to have the specific question presented and formatted?

YUEN: Yes. Yes. Right. Right. Subject only to like basic fairness of not presenting in a way that either -.

HIGASHI: So there’s not -, if you’re for -.

YUEN: Makes it -.

HIGASHI: If you’re for it -.

YUEN: Yeah.

HIGASHI: You’re going to vote against, and if you’re against, you vote yes.

YUEN: Something like that, yeah. So if there are a bunch -, for example, what we had wanted to do was there were things that were just technical, very technical kinds of changes, and we wanted to put all of those together.

L’ORANGE: Mandated by State law.

YUEN: Yeah, so -.

L’ORANGE: Yeah, I mean that’s -.

HIGASHI: Did you have a special election?

YUEN: No.

BETHEA: Did we have the final decision on what questions would be joined, or was the County Clerk referring to State law and saying we had to separate them?

YUEN: I don’t know what -.

BETHEA: Because I think the single member district and that went out combined, didn’t it?

YUEN: That went out combined because the people, the people that were in favor of two years were only in favor of it if single member passed.

BETHEA: Yeah, but didn’t it go out on the ballot combined?

L’ORANGE: That’s right.

BETHEA: So that for whatever reason, the Clerk didn’t control that.

YUEN: No, the Clerk had no objection to that because it’s really, it’s really -, that’s one change in how the Council would be done. You can join some things together, and I think that the Clerk’s point of view was that he felt that some of the things that we were joining together were unrelated.

BETHEA: Oh, okay.

YUEN: And didn’t want -.

BETHEA: Yeah, there was a State law there or something, I think.

HIGASHI: Next question is how much time did it take to deliberate, to form the questions, and form the ballot? Did it take one meeting, three meetings, or -?

YUEN: It was a rolling -. As far as what was going to go on the ballot, there were, there was -, the Commission was voting in a rolling -.

HIGASHI: I understand that.

YUEN: Fashion.

HIGASHI: At the end -.

YUEN: And then I think that near the end, I did a recap, you know, what we, you know, and I think I did this a couple of times in the course of -, just so we would be straight. Okay, what have we voted to put on? What have we voted not to put on? And then we -, because there was this -, there was a disagreement with the Clerk, we got up a little close to the deadline, as I recall, before we knew what exactly the ballot was going to actually look like and how many different questions there were -, how many different votes people were going to have to cast.

HIGASHI: You were faced with the deadline of the printing of the ballot itself, is that correct?

YUEN: Yes.

HIGASHI: That was your deadline?

YUEN: The Lieutenant Governor’s Office.

HIGASHI: Yeah.

YUEN: That whole -, there’s a deadline right -, I can’t remember what it was.

BESS: When you mentioned recap, are you saying that it was your function to basically, not only say what went on and what was deferred and what was voted on, but to come up with proposed language and then you would float that language to the Commission as a whole, is that it?

YUEN: Right. Right. I drafted -.

BESS: Okay. So there’s -.

YUEN: Most of the particular -, the language of the changes in the Charter, and I think I probably drafted the way that the question was going to be placed on the ballot, because it’s not always exactly the same thing. The language, the ballot may say, you know, shall the County have a single member district and two year terms? And the actual language that goes in the Charter is, you know, maybe a couple paragraphs to do that. So I think I did both of those things, and not necessarily at the same -, I think it was probably like a three-step process where the Commission would, just to take single member districts, they vote we’re going to have a single member district. Then I come in with a draft of what it’s going to look like in the actual language changes in the Charter, and the Commission votes on that and approves that. And then finally, we decide how it’s going to appear on the ballot, and they vote on that. But they’re not going to -, I think part of the agreement was that they’re not going to, you know, try to re-argue everything at each point, you know. Once you’ve made the basic decision, then you are going to move ahead and vote on the language, and then you are just -, it’s just a technical question of how it’s going to be stated on the ballot. What’s the clearest and fairest way to do that.

L’ORANGE: Yeah, we didn’t word-smith the ballot stuff. Our function was sort of do we understand what he’s saying? Is this expressing what we wanted to do? You know, I think that was more a reflection, I mean, we had confidence that Chris would do a good job with the ballot language in making it legal. Is it understandable was sort of our function.

HIGASHI: One last question, Chris. Do you recall about how many hours was required of your services?

YUEN: Well, I read in the paper that my bill was $34,000, which would work out, I think I was probably charging -.

BESS: Eighty-five.

YUEN: A hundred, hundred and ten or something, so about 300, and I was surprised to read that. But I attended all the meetings, and we had a lot of meetings. So that’s about what it was, yeah.

HIGASHI: Okay.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: I did a little checking with Sherwood Greenwell, a couple of items, and I’m fascinated by the Board of Supervisors and why that changed to a strong mayoral and Council, and I have, from Sherwood’s standpoint, he thinks it was a very strong Councilperson that they wanted to kind of disenfranchise and get back to a strong mayor because the Mayor would represent the complete Island.

In talking, people talking to me, they seem very interested in having a Managing Director, and it could be the global economy that’s driving this. I’m not interested in doing anything as a reaction to any one person, because my feeling is that the strong people in the Council will drive the Council; the strong Mayor will drive the Mayor. I think the Council was strong when Yamashiro was there; I think the Mayor is strong when he’s there because he’s a strong leader. But I don’t think that now in the global economy, I think the Managing Director -, I’m personally leaning towards a Managing Director, but I was fascinated by the fact that you didn’t have much discussion on that. And I don’t know if that’s because people didn’t bring it to you or that your Commission wasn’t really interested in it.

BETHEA: We discussed it early on.

YUEN: Yeah, I -, in fact, I was -, one of the things I didn’t remember was I wrote some material on it for the Commission. I think that there were -, I think Sherwood was interested in it, and I think -, am I wrong that you were basically -.

L’ORANGE: Academically.

YUEN: Academically.

L’ORANGE: Academically, I liked the idea, but my problem is how do you hire the person? I mean, just -.

HERKES: I know.

L’ORANGE: The practical, how do you hire? Who do you hire? We don’t have an awful lot of Managing Directors in the State of Hawaii, I don’t think, that would be willing to work for what the County would pay them. Yeah, that’s just a practical -.

HERKES: Right.

BETHEA: You know, that’s why I think one of the suggestions I made is find out about that, and if you’re interested in it, and everybody circulates the material. And then I think that’s a decision that you need to make fairly early on because if you’re going to go into that type of government, unless you just lift something from somewhere else, some other city that has it in the charter, that’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of time. So I -, which doesn’t mean you don’t do it, but if it’s just not going to fly, there’s no point in spending a lot of time. So I think what I was recommending, and I think we tried to get it out of the way early, and I think there was some people who thought, you know, that’s pretty good, but my goodness, you know, we’ve got to get this out in a year and a half or something, didn’t want to make a life’s career out of, you know, converting the system completely.

HERKES: Didn’t take them more than six months to do it from the Board of Supervisors to the mayoral.

L’ORANGE: Marni, it also seems to me, I can’t say this specifically, but it seems to me that there might have been a group that was strongly pushing for a Managing Director. It wasn’t looked with a lot of favor that their input was -.

HERKES: Okay.

L’ORANGE: Very useful. And I think there was some of that there, too, that for the public input who was pushing for it was not looked with -, and I’m not talking about Sherwood.

HERKES: No, I know that, yeah.

YUEN: I don’t think that it was ever voted on because I think it was certainly discussed and it was discussed early, and there was -, certainly everybody wanted to get informed about it, and after hearing about it, I don’t think that -, I think it was plain that, you know, it wasn’t going to get passed by the Commission, so it went -.

I’d just like to make one comment, from a legal point of view, and that is that you have to be aware that State law must have somewhere between 50 and 100 references to what the Mayor does in the county, and things like -.

HERKES: That probably did it, Chris.

YUEN: Things like declaring a public emergency; the Mayor has the power to do that. Rules and regulations, when the Planning Department makes, for example, the shoreline setback being 40 feet is a matter of a rule of the -, either the Planning Department or the Planning Commission, as I recall. The State law says the Mayor signs all those rules and regulations or can refuse to sign all those rules and regulations.

I think that a managing -, I think the County has the power to not have a Mayor and have a County Manager, but I think that if the County does go that route, then the County Manager must be invested with all the powers that the Mayor gives -, is given under State law, and somebody -, if this is seriously looked at, then somebody’s got to try to list these things down. You’ll see that there are quite a few powers that are delegated to the Mayor that are not -, you’re not going to be able to rewrite those powers and -, for the most part, at least, and say the Council -, well, no, we don’t want the managing -, County Manager to have those powers, we want to give the Council those powers. That’s -, those -, that’s an issue that’s going to have to be looked at very carefully. When they wrote all these State laws, they kind of assumed that you were going to have a Mayor. The old, you go back 30 years under the State laws, would say County Chair, Chairman, because that’s the way they had it.

HERKES: Yeah.

YUEN: Back 30 years ago.

RAY: Marni, any other questions?

HERKES: That’s it.

RAY: Mr. Martin?

MARTIN: I just had one question actually, maybe two, I’m not sure. But you made mention of going along and voting on items as they came up. You’d discuss it, you’d vote on it, then it would be tabled until you come to the point where it’s going to be written down, possibly put in Charter form, and then, once again, discussed and voted on, I guess a second time, to say, yeah, that’s what we wanted to do. That’s what we was thinking about. Let’s go with it. But then you also made mention that if you had public input, you possibly would change your mind. Did that ever happen where you guys went about doing your business, putting it down, taking a vote on it, then going out to the public, gathering information, having some sentiment on possibly that particular subject, and changing your mind?

L’ORANGE: Yeah, we took public input before there were any votes.

MARTIN: Okay.

YUEN: Yeah, they -.

MARTIN: I was misunderstood then; I thought that -.

YUEN: Yeah, the Commission went around the Island before it ever voted on anything.

The other thing, I think that -, say, one set of things would be on the action agenda for a particular meeting so, you know, once that was dealt with, you move on. And, you know, people can always -. If somebody comes and they, you know, make the effort to come to your hearing and they want to talk about something that you’ve already dealt with, well, you know -.

MARTIN: Yeah.

YUEN: We would let them testify but not necess -, you’re not going to go back unless somebody, you know, unless somebody on the Commission really wants to do that.

MARTIN: I guess one last question. Pertaining to what was mentioned already earlier about we had briefly discussed the possibility of a special election, and then we mulled it around as to formatting that particular issue, and what came up was, well, State law supercedes. And it’s my contention, and possibly some other Commissioners here that if this is a County Charter and it deals directly with County and nothing pertaining to the State, do we not have maybe some leeway that we could take a look at something different? Did you ever come up with anything like that where State law, like you was mention that one head -, you guys had to put in, it’s 15 actually, provides that the Charter Commission prepare the ballot format for amendments it proposed, you know. You guys actually said, okay, there’s a State law. We want to make a change here, and thank you for doing it, and we’ll make the decision this time pertaining to what we have.

YUEN: Gee, I have to look at that, because I’m not sure that State law says anything about -. You know, the Charter says something, the Commission can ask for a special election to vote on it. I’m not sure that there’s a State law that says you can’t.

MARTIN: Well, not so much can’t.

YUEN: Yeah.

MARTIN: I think the format as to how we go about the election is what the discussion was being mulled around, yeah, mulled over, I should say.

WURDEMAN: My recollection is what was being discussed was the possibility of running a special election under some kind of a more economical method such as mail in ballots or -.

MARTIN: Correct.

WURDEMAN: Things like that.

MARTIN: Correct.

WURDEMAN: That are not provided for in the State law. And I think probably if it ever went to court, they’d say the elections are a matter of state-wide interest, that Chapter 11, which is the election chapter, would prevail. That would be my guess. I don’t know what Chris think about that.

YUEN: Well, I haven’t thought, I haven’t thought about it so -. But, you know, I don’t know. I’m cautious about, you know, sitting here and giving you an opinion on something I haven’t really thought about very much. But you get -, if you try to do an election by procedure that people are not familiar with, that’s -, that in itself raises questions from people.

MARTIN: Sure. Well, I just think that, you know, as a Commission, and setting forth law that pertains and directs our County, it may take some changes, yeah. I’m sure like you guys put into place, you know, single district. That was a big change.

L’ORANGE: I think practically speaking though, you don’t have the time to even think of a special election because you’re going to have so much input and getting the information out to the public and so they understand everything, but it’s only 18 months until the next election.

MARTIN: Well, there’s a possibility of doing it, I mean, again, just, you know, mulling it over, there is some outside chance of it happening.

L’ORANGE: Yeah, sure.

RAY: Gary, any questions?

YOSHIYAMA: Thank you for coming and sharing all this information. I find it very interesting. I guess my question is can you come to everyone of our meetings?

BETHEA: No.

L’ORANGE: We’re not on the Commission. We’ve already served our time.

YOSHIYAMA: Do you want to receive your appointment?

BETHEA: We’ve done it.

YOSHIYAMA: I don’t have any other questions.

RAY: Okay. Well, great. Thank you all very much. We have the Mayor waiting in the wings, so everybody just stand up -.

BESS: Thank you very much.

HERKES: Thank you.

RAY: And stretch and -.

SANTANGELO: Thank you.

RAY: The Mayor will be -.

RAY: Welcome, Mr. Mayor.

YAMASHIRO: Thank you.

RAY: Thank you for coming in. And just wanted to have this chance to chat with you and get any thoughts, insights that you might be able to share with us in regard to County government and the Charter Commission. And also if you could, I know you’ve been very supportive and active in terms of getting the department input on board, and helping to coordinate that, so maybe if you could, you know, share that with us as far as, you know, what’s going on there.

YAMASHIRO: Well, let me start with the departments, that’s probably the easiest. We have -.

RAY: Okay.

YAMASHIRO: Reviewed each of the departments’ proposals and, generally, we have tried to focus them on things that are necessary to improve efficiency. There’s a whole bunch of nice-to-have stuff that they were considering proposing, but we have suggested that they just concentrate on the basics and not put too many bells and whistles on the proposals because there’s going to be enough changes in the Charter, and to try to make sure that we focus on things that have -, should be done first. So I think the changes from the departments are going to be coming in. They are not a whole lot, there are a few. There are some structural changes, like I believe the basic -, the biggest structural change probably taking Wastewater out of Public Works and combining it with Water. But, generally, focusing on each of the departments, what they feel is their particular needs. Things like whether nor not we should have a Fire Commission or a Public Safety Commission were discussed. That’s up to you people. We didn’t think it was something that was necessary to continue the operation of the department; it’s something that’s -, but so I think with regards to each department, you should have a pretty concise presentation from them.

RAY: Okay.

YAMASHIRO: As far as I’m concerned, you know, basically, the Charter is our basic governing document for the County of Hawaii and, as such, has done pretty well for the last ten years and before that. Going through it today, I just noticed some housekeeping things, like there’s no way to fill a vacancy in office for Mayor or the Council if the vacancy is for less than two years and more than 60 days. There’s a way -. The Mayor’s Office, if there’s vacancy that’s within 60 days of the next regular election, the Managing Director serves all the way through. The next reference to a vacancy is if it’s over two years and over 60 days. There’s nothing to say what if a vacancy occurs less than two years from the next election. And I think, I guess by silence, does that mean the Managing Director serves all the way through? Or is there, you know -? Because they define vacancy in the Charter as resignation, death, and whatever, and they provide two scenarios of filling the vacancy, but nothing if it’s less than two years.

In reference to the Council, it refers to vacancy occurring more than two years, which is an impossibility since the Council’s on two year terms. So that I think’s the housekeeping thing that should be addressed.

Structurally, we are not suggesting any change with regards to structure of the government between the executive, administrative branch under the Mayor and the administrative branch under the Managing Director. We think, basically, the functioning has worked and can continue to work. We are looking at some changes, although I figure some of those can be done administratively. Looking at the processing of subdivisions after zoning being totally in the Public Works Department as opposed to being partly in Public Works and partly in Planning. We feel once the Council has acted on a zoning request, that is the policy decision of the County of Hawaii, and that the subdivision of the property really is a function of the engineering and the Public Works section dealing with roads, water and other things not really having to do with a Planning function.

What has happened on a practical basis now, is the Public Works building inspectors go and inspect a lot being constructed. They don’t look at the setbacks, because they say the setbacks are a Planning function, and only look at the actual construction of, you know, whether or not the construction is being done in accordance with Code. So sometimes we have a building that is conforming with the Building Code, but it’s violating the setback, and that may or may not be picked up at that time sometimes. It generally gets picked up on a subsequent sale of the property when somebody comes in and says, okay, I want to have the property surveyed, I’ve got a buyer, and then they find out, well, this house is built in a setback, that kind of situation. So we feel that consolidating the responsibility into one area would more clearly define those responsibilities and make it easier for the people to carry out their roles. We don’t think it entails any major personnel shifts there, but there may be some, which we will have to be working with the union to take care of. But other than that, leave it to your good wisdom and graces.

RAY: Okay.

YAMASHIRO: Because everything I say is going to be construed as am I trying to change the Charter to take care of something else. Like I’ve already talked to one Green Party candidate, and she asked me, "Am I going to be running against you again?" And I said, "Oh, no, the Charter says I can’t run." She says, "Well, you got a Charter Commission meeting." I’m not asking you to delete the term limits, believe me. I’m very happy with term limits.

RAY: Okay. Going around the room, John, any questions?

SANTANGELO: I guess just one real quick one, Mr. Mayor. You talked about the Wastewater and Water. What about, has -, will there be anything and has -, have you or your department thought about solid waste and how it could possibly be changed?

YAMASHIRO: Solid waste is sort of an entity in itself. We are looking at different methods of handling the solid waste but within the department.

SANTANGELO: Departmentalized.

YAMASHIRO: Yeah.

SANTANGELO: Like with the Water -.

YAMASHIRO: We see no place you can put it, you know. With Wastewater and Water seems to be a natural connection because the Water Department sells us water, somebody uses it, then they throw it away. And in the future, that wastewater may be a resource. In Honolulu, they’re already finding uses for irrigation water, and actually, in Kona, it’s getting to be to that point. The problem in Hilo, it’s not going to be to that point because we just got too much water. We feel if you put the responsibility for disposing of the resource -. If I collect -, if a guy collects the money for selling you something, he should bear the expense of processing to dispose of it. What you have right now is a situation where Water sells the water; we get stuck with the Wastewater bill to process the water and dispose of it. Maybe if you put the two together, the cost may come down as a combination.

SANTANGELO: Thank you.

RAY: Steve.

BESS: You know, I know that your focus has been on trying to make government more efficient, and I’m assuming that that means at the lowest possible cost. I’m just wondering, you know, to try to drive down the cost of government, and looking at it from the standpoint of the Charter Commission, is there anything that we can do?

YAMASHIRO: You know, unfortunately, the cost of our departments are not driven by the function of the departments. In deference to my friend on my left, I think the Civil Service laws and the question on privatization has to be looked at, and unless those are addressed by the legislature on a comprehensive basis, that is going to be a major problem. And part of that is because technology has changed so much. We are doing things in different ways. We are processing information in different ways. And the question -, the thing we did 20 years ago, does it still apply today? Do we have to do what we did, you know? Plan approval, do we have to do plan approval? You know, like I tell my departments, you guys are all working hard, but are you really working at something that has to be done? In changing how our compensation system may be structured, right now if you look at Civil Service, it’s basically not geared to what a performance-based, but more on a supervision-based. If you are one level, you get a certain amount; if you supervise more people, you get a bit more; if you get higher rank, you get a little bit more. As opposed to saying if you can do, if you have a given workload and you come out with a satisfactory outcome and you can do it in a certain way, should you get more money. But that, I don’t think can be addressed by the Charter.

RAY: Okay. Roland.

HIGASHI: Mr. Mayor, over time, departments have changed, they’ve become larger, have bigger budgets, but some departments have minimum qualifications of, let’s say Public Works, have minimum qualifications to be the head is an engineer. What is your feeling about having a person other than an engineer heading that department?

YAMASHIRO: I, you know, I would support a change that would allow managers to be appointed. You don’t necessarily need an engineer to run Water or the chief engineer to run. If you had a good administrator, and who could back himself up with staff who generally are Civil Service engineers, I think, basically, what these department heads are doing, they’re getting to be very sophisticated managers. And Public Works, you know, you span everything from Engineering, Solid Waste, Wastewater, Building, and so I think it has some merit and would possibly be a change that could be productive. There are people that said, well, how can a guy that doesn’t know engineers, doesn’t know engineering supervise engineers, but I don’t necessarily feel that’s quite correct.

HIGASHI: Okay.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: I take it from your comments that you made in the beginning that you are satisfied with the present Mayor-Council setup, that a Managing Director -.

YAMASHIRO: But I’d rather have another Council, maybe, but -.

HERKES: Well, I didn’t say who was in it.

YAMASHIRO: But, you know, we are always tempted to make structural changes to correct present problems, and I don’t know if a structural change is really what is necessary. I have looked at the City Manager system. That system works, although it has -, it’s not as simple as some of my friends on the Council, I think, are supporting something like that, because you just don’t fire these guys.

HERKES: Right.

YAMASHIRO: And I got a recruitment notice from I think Beaumont, Texas, which is a city of about 140-150,000 people, and the City Manager is I think $175,000 a year, you know, so if you really want to go to that system, you’re going to have to provide a compensation package that will be competitive to recruit the type of people -. Only when you have an elect system, you have stupid people who will take less. But that -, the City Manager is not working for ego rewards. But so, you know, and the other thing is a lot of the City Manager systems has a system which once the City Manager’s appointed, they appoint everybody without confirmation from anybody else.

HERKES: Right.

YAMASHIRO: So, you know, once you appoint the City Manager, he appoints the Chief Engineer, he appoints the Finance Director, and you just -. Most of those are like contracts; you just don’t get rid of them because you change majority of the Council or whatever, you have to have cause. The contract has to be expired or something like that. So you may have somebody that looks good going in that you may not be happy with, and you may be stuck with them for a while, you know. Like football coaches at the University of Hawaii, you may have to buy them out.

HERKES: Okay. Thank you.

RAY: George.

MARTIN: No questions.

RAY: Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: You have quite a few agencies, I don’t know if you call them, within the Mayor’s Office. Are you comfortable in that? You know, like Civil Defense and Housing and Transportation, right? They come -.

YAMASHIRO: They come under the Mayor’s Office, yeah.

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah.

YAMASHIRO: That has, you know, that structurally can go any other place. The present Transportation is there because it’s been an experimental agency for, I don’t know, Steve was probably Corp. Counsel, maybe it started before him, but at least 20 years. The people are now Civil Service except for the bus drivers, and so, you know, there is still a question whether or not we’re going to -, we should continue that or just privatize that whole thing.

Some things like Civil Defense, because actually I am the Civil Defense Director for the County, Harry Kim is the Civil Defense Administrator for the County of Hawaii, but under the -, the four Mayors are the Deputy Civil Defense Directors for the State of Hawaii under General Richardson, and so, actually, I am the responsible party in that situation. So, you know, that makes sense in that section.

Aging is there now. Aging is under the Mayor’s Office. It’s functionally actually under Parks, so that could change.

But besides Transit and Civil Defense and Safety, I think the others could be moved around.

YOSHIYAMA: I got one more question on commissions. You got any feelings on, you know, commissions, number of commissions, types of commissions?

YAMASHIRO: Well, we got -, you got two types of commissions, basically, those that are charter or statutory.

YOSHIYAMA: Oh, okay.

YAMASHIRO: And then you have those that are appointed by the Mayor but terminate with my office. So Committee of Status of Women and some of those, you know, the Bicycle Safety and that kind, a lot of those just go away with the Mayor. The Charter provides that you can appoint as many as you want. But the statutory commissions generally deal with the Police Department, Civil Service, Water. I think they serve a purpose.

YOSHIYAMA: Okay. Thank you.

RAY: Yeah, along those same lines, you know, it’s interesting, obviously, I had never read the Charter, I didn’t realize which departments were until I got on this Commission, as far as, you know, what Gary was saying, as far as the agencies under the Mayor versus, you know, under the Managing Director, and I doubt very few people are aware of that. I think most people assume that you’re directly in charge of, you know, all those departments as well as those agencies. But I don’t know, somehow that just doesn’t particularly make sense to me that why the Managing Director would be Public Works, Parks and Rec, Fire, versus Finance Department or the Planning Department or -.

YAMASHIRO: I think if you really look at them structurally, what it is is those that deal with broad policy issues, where the finances are under the Mayor, the ones that deliver the service on a day-to-day basis, that actually deal with the public, are under the Managing Director, you know.

RAY: But -, okay. But practically speaking, in terms of issues that we’re dealing with today, say solid waste and whatever, does that still seem to make sense to you or -? Solid waste comes to mind as that’s such a major public policy issue now as far as handling solid waste in the 21^st Century, right, and you know, so it’s not just pick up the trash and throw it in a hole now.

YAMASHIRO: No, it’s a major concern, but basically, once we’ve decided on a protocol for handling it, it’s going to be gone for the next 20 years. It’s just what are we going to do? Are we going to landfill it? If this plasma arc furnace really works, then we probably have our solution. They can do it for $50 a ton. We could generate electricity, eliminate waste, and get rid of most of what we generate here, including plastic and tires so -. And once that happens, maybe you don’t really need a Solid Waste Department, all you need is trucks.

RAY: Yeah. Okay. Any other questions? Okay, well, thanks very much and thanks for -.

YAMASHIRO: Thank you.

RAY: All the help in, you know, soliciting the input from the departments. And we are going to start -, next week, we are going to meet with a couple of the departments, and then later today, we’re going to discuss how we’re going to -.

YAMASHIRO: I think you could probably schedule more departments per day than you think because -.

HERKES: They’re going to be short?

YAMASHIRO: They’ve been skinnied up a little bit.

RAY: Okay.

HERKES: We don’t get to see their wish lists.

BESS: Now, do we ever get to see those changes that might be nice?

YAMASHIRO: You can ask them.

BESS: Is that how they’re labeled, nice ones?

RAY: Okay.

YAMASHIRO: They got a bunch. You probably got to watch what I had to watch because you got guys in Parks talking about stuff in Public Works and Fire, you know, they’re all picking up the other guys or doing certain things. I said, "Wait a minute, focus on your own department when you go to the Charter Commission."

RAY: Well, you know, we talked about that earlier and, you know, certainly County employees, as citizens, can have a level of input, as well, right, so -. Okay, well, thanks very much.

YAMASHIRO: Thank you.

MARTIN: Thank you, sir.

HERKES: Thank you.

BESS: Thanks.

SANTANGELO: Thanks.

HIGASHI: Thank you.

RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 5:30 p.m.

RAY: We finished our background presentations on County government, and I want to revisit one item of Unfinished Business, the Selection of Commission Secretary. In regard to that process, can I have a motion as far as that hiring process?

HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, I move that we delegate the authority to hire to the committee.

RAY: Second?

MARTIN: Second.

RAY: Okay. Any discussion on that? All in favor?

COMMISSIONERS: Aye.

RAY: Okay. So, hopefully, that’ll expedite that process.

On the other item of New Business, A, Communications/Public Relations Committee, it’s my understanding that we’re going to hold off on that decision for the time being and use our own existing distribution network and the press to get out the word and let that suffice for now. Is that -?

SANTANGELO: I’m not opposed, you know, with these meetings coming up and some sort of an informational package of going out to someone and contracting one specific job, and I don’t how this Commission feels. But like with this paper you generated and, you know, I think there is a possibility to putting a two or three-page thing together that could be put in the Sunday paper that announces our meetings and informs people what we’re about. And I wouldn’t say hire a public relations firm, but certainly it’s possible to contract one thing.

HERKES: Would you like a motion? Would you like a motion?

RAY: A motion?

HERKES: A motion to -.

SANTANGELO: To defer?

HERKES: Hold off on hiring the public relations firm?

RAY: Yes, please.

HERKES: You got it.

RAY: Second?

HIGASHI: Second.

HERKES: Now, discussion.

RAY: Okay, now discussion. Thank you.

HIGASHI: Mr. Chair?

RAY: Yes.

HIGASHI: Probably once we see the strength of our administrative assistant, perhaps she could be doing some of that, putting the press release out. If she needs help, maybe some of us can help her but hopefully -.

SANTANGELO: But are we going about this in a way that restricts? I thought we had discussed two ways of going about hiring this person in the first place, and one was where it left all that open. The other one was rather restricted in a job description.

HERKES: I don’t understand the question.

RAY: Okay. I -.

HIGASHI: Yeah, me, too, but anyway -.

RAY: John, you haven’t reviewed the applications, but they are very talented, versatile people that we’re looking at that really have a lot of capability.

SANTANGELO: But the process we’re using to hire them leaves that open for them to have a broad spectrum of responsibilities? It’s not like something that comes out of Civil Service?

RAY: No. I think that -.

HERKES: That’s an insult.

RAY: I think their skill -.

SANTANGELO: No, I didn’t mean that in a negative sense.

RAY: Excuse me. I think their skills will accommodate the wishes of the Commission. It’ll be -.

SANTANGELO: Okay. Thank you.

RAY: Entirely a function of how many hours, you know, we want to -.

HERKES: We want to pay them.

RAY: Have them on the job.

HERKES: Right.

SANTANGELO: Thank you.

RAY: And I believe, it’s my understanding that we’re going to just pursue all avenues of publicity affordable and available to us, you know, through the press and through direct mailings, and let’s start off that way rather than go into the public relations major ads. Mr. Martin.

MARTIN: To augment what you’re saying, Mr. Chair, there’s that new flyer that’s being sent out for job openings and legal notices. Maybe we can put some information in there, too. I mean it’s another avenue.

RAY: Okay. Anything we can think of. And, you know, we will get this, you know, one page or more, you know, description ready to go and sent out. Okay. All right.

HERKES: Are we going to vote? Are we going to vote?

MARTIN: There was a motion on the floor, I believe.

RAY: Oh, excuse me, a motion on the floor. All in favor?

COMMISSIONERS: Aye.

RAY: Opposed? Motion carries. Announcements, next meeting date is on May 19^th, in this room at 3:00 p.m., and additionally we’ve scheduled a meeting for May 26^th at 3:00 p.m. in this room.

And, additionally, let the record show that we have scheduled public input meetings, location to be determined later, but June meetings on the 16^th in Hilo, on the 23^rd in Kona, both for 5:00 p.m., tentatively, and the same type of meetings, public hearing meetings for all four Wednesdays in July, 7^th, 14^th, 21^st, and 28^th, all tentatively scheduled for 5:00 p.m., in locations to be determined later.

Do I have a motion to adjourn?

MARTIN: So moved.

RAY: Second?

BESS: Second.

RAY: Okay. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.

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