Hello. I'm calling this meeting out of recess. We are in our special budget hearings. Before we begin, Mr. Arsely, do we have any testimony to begin the day in any of our sites? Thank you so much, Chair. Confirming that we do not have testifiers at any of your remote sites are here in the Heelow Chamber, we do have one testifier via Zoom, Missilvia Dolena testifying on Bill 31. So, if you could unmute your mic, you'll have three minutes. If you could just reintroduce yourself as you begin, please. Thank you. Aloha council members and chair, first, I want to acknowledge HPD for taking on some of the animal control responsibilities and all of the animal rescue groups who are saving animals lives from death row. And all of the heroes and She-ros those good Samaritans carrying individuals who volunteer to foster adopt take the animals to spare new to clinic to find owners to pick up animals on the road. Mahal Nui-Loha we need you. We don't we don't mean any disrespect to anyone and my testimony is not about blame, it's about solution. We cannot continue to throw more money to a problem, but we can invest in solution and preventative solutions are best. The system is broken and needs to be fixed. The animal control officers and county-texts at animal control are working tirelessly and are caring people struggling in a broken system. They're very successful models out there and protocols developed by NACCA, the National Animal Control Association, best friends, Alicad allies, and more that would work here. Why aren't those being implemented? These models would reduce intakes and reduce tax payer dollars. In these uncertain times with many people struggling financially, with property taxes going up, with food and other necessities, increasing in cost, to have 4.5 million tax dollars for animal control. It's being questioned by the community of the value they received since many of their calls go unanswered. It's critically important that the community has trust in our county agencies, including animal control. And it's been almost two years since this agency was created and the experiences of the community when animal control was called or mentioned has not been very good. I have some quotes from the community regarding the statistics that were posted for this agenda item. So here's one of the comments. I can believe that the response of two calls could be 90% of the calls that are actually answered because they don't answer the phone that much. Another comment. I want to know the actual number of calls animal control is talking about not the percent. Another comment. Since they don't answer the phone, the percentage is suspect. How about actual numbers of the calls being answered? It's another two. Sorry. 30 seconds, please. 30 seconds. Here's another one. I was bitten three days ago by a dog in Ocean View. The hospital called the police. Nobody showed up. Nobody called. The police dispatched took down the information. They transferred the call to animal control. And nothing happened I had to stay home from work because the pain and swelling in my leg is very bad. So the issue is animal control system needs to be fixed, calls need to be answered. Thank you so much for your is not able to see the public is not able to see the public is not able to see the public is not able to see the public is not able to see the public is not able to see the public is not able to see the public is not able to see the do have joining us today the Hawaii Police Department Chief, would you please introduce yourself and your deputy next to you, and then we'll proceed with our presentation, and then we'll go to questions from the council when we're done with that. Okay, yes, my name is Ben Moskots, I'm the Chief of Police for Hawaii County And Sherry Bird Assistant Chief with administration. Hawaii Police Department. Thank you Okay, take it away when you're ready. All right So the measurable program outcomes that we're looking for in the upcoming fiscal year are to continue to conduct concert recruitment to get ourselves up to 470 sworn and we'll have our current status status on that in a little while. To expand annual recall training, we started annual recall training. At the end of last fiscal year, it's been going strong this year. We want to continue that moving forward to help keep the officers on the street up today with the most current laws and tactics which helps prevent liability for the county. Our third goal is to, our third outcome is to increase grant funding by $400,000 with thankfully with the help of council we created a grant manager, grant program coordinator position last fiscal year that we've now gotten filled and we're starting to see results from that. And then finally to target drug trafficking organizations. So we've realigned our vice operations on both sides of the island to kind of help this focus of targeting bigger fish up the chain to help prevent the influx of controlled substances into our community. The objectives for Fiscal Year 26 remain the same to protect life and property serve the community, to actively involve the community and crime prevention programs, to gather necessary evidence quickly for successful prosecution to expeditiously recover stolen property and contraband to enforce traffic laws and then this is the asterisk at the end when we swear people in anything and everything else that falls upon us so help us God. So any other services necessary to promote the efficient operation of the police department and provide the overall safety of the community. So some highlights from our fiscal year 25 program. We have one of our goals from last year was to partner with the University of Hawaii and Hawaii-Kiaai School to develop pathways recruiting and involving youth keeping Hawaii Island youth on, Hawaii Island until they become old enough to start careers in law enforcement or as first responders is really huge for us. It's one of our main priorities. So we have partnered with the University of Hawaii in the fall. They're going to have an internship program where students will come in, their freshman sophomore junior years of college, and they're going to intern at the police department for college credit. That keeps us involved with them, them involved with us, and when they reach that age to apply for whatever that position is in the department, then we already have a relationship. So that program is already implemented. We also long, long, long suffering public facing website that was completely renovated. That program was implemented in November. And we've seen the traffic to our site double we've seen recruitment ref referrals from the website double which then means the number of recruits in our class is going to start to go up starting in July with that first wave of people who applied through the website. Also another highlight we created and filled vice lieutenant and a punal lieutenant so the so the Vice, I'm sorry, the Vice should actually say Vice Captain, the Vice Captain, not coming out overseas, Island-wide Vice Operations. We added and filled a second Lieutenant in Pune to act as a watch commander, human resources detective, Operation, sorry, Office of Professional Standards Detective, and a school resource officer, Audien White,olour. There are other positions as well that have been created and filled. Those are the ones that we wanted to highlight. And then the last highlight is something that's right on the verge of being visible from the public side that we've been working on for quite a while. And that was through a last minute add-on. Last year we got money to implement an automated customer service software. And the way this will work is similar to if you order Domino's pizza, right? And within a few minutes of hanging up, you get a text message that, you know, so and so is making your pizza. And then it goes in the oven and then it's out on the road. And you can expect the delivery in four minutes and click on the map. So we're not gonna have a map with officers,, but essentially, when you call 911, what's gonna happen is you then will get a text message about the status of the case. You'll get a reference number so that if later on, the complaint is, hey, the officer never showed up or the officer I wanna make a complaint or I have a really great feedback about the officer, with that reference number, we can instantly link back to the case. when the officer arrives. If there's a delay because something else comes up, the officer gets rerouted. They'll get a text message. The officer is still coming, but he was here, she was delayed. As the criminal, if once the officer arrives and investigates, and a criminal case is created, then the person, if they're a victim or a complaining witness, then they'll get a police report number, text message to them. So it all kind of happens in the background alongside of our CAD system with very little additional effort from our dispatcher. So we're really excited to see that kind of kick off and go live here in the next couple months. So the contracts in place, they're implementing the, those servers kind of work together now, and we're expecting some sort of public kick off in the next couple months, county department. more employees and positions in any other county department. And because we have so many people, we have more employees and positions in any other County Department and because we have so many people are also very complicated. There's 28 different divisions or assignments with the police department and of our 496 sworn positions which includes the positions that were created last year. We're currently at 57 vacancies. So the good news is we have a class of about, it's currently at 30, it's probably gonna end up in the mid to high 20s, that'll start in July, that will start to impact that. And then hopefully we continue this upswing of recruitment to get those positions filled by the end of this coming fiscal year. And then our civilian positions, we added a few civilian positions as well. When I got here it was 156 so we're up to 159 now and of those we have 39 vacant positions. And then finally the changes in last year to this year are our vast majority of our outlay continues to be salary and wages and with expected across the board bargaining unit Increases that's somewhat out of our control But the changes in salary in wages that's in the budget that you have now Is the addition of one additional lieutenant in Pune patrol the addition of three officers added for patrol in Kau and one admin clerk added for CID That's the difference between what we did last year and what's in front of you now. No additional changes to the OCE. And the only change in equipment money is that under the previous DIT director, DIT had agreed to handle all of the purchase of computers countywide. So I think money had been moved in a previous version from our department, from what we were going to pay into their department to pay and under the new direction and the new leadership that they're not willing to do that. So the moving of that money back from DIT to HPD so that we can continue to purchase our own equipment and servers and software and licenses. And then our federal and state grants continue to exceed a budget at a amount of $6 million every year and growing. We have probably another $250,000 that I expect we're going to get on Friday. And that number continues to grow now, especially with the implementation of our grant coordinator position. And then finally new priorities for the upcoming fiscal year. The first one, again, always at the top of all of my list is to impact the number of sworn vacancies who want to add a net of at least 30 officers. So the 30, the 20-ish net start in the middle of July will help. Not all those people realistically are going to stay the whole time of recruits school and FTO and get to the road. So, there continues to have to be this push and this wave of incoming personnel to impact that number. For the fortunate thing is year over year, for the two years that I've been here, we're the only county that's made increases in the number of sworn personnel year over year for the last two years. And I expect the same in the following year, especially with this big class. People are already completed. They've already finished the agility they're in background now. So those are real tangible people that I hope to be adding in July. Second, using best practices to complete a rebrand of HPD to encourage recruiting retention and community support. So in the coming months, you're going to see, we're going to kind of go back to basics a little bit and put out not hiring signs in front of the police stations just to continue to hit that message that we're constantly looking for people, for sworn positions, for dispatcher positions, for civilian staff. We're hiring in all career fields. So we're going to continue to push that, but continue to push it the same way we've done before, gains less traction than if we can rebrand it in sort of a new or modern way. So that's what that's about. And then we do have some facility improvement projects on the horizon, the vehicle licensing registration lobby area is a longstanding project. Unfortunately for the construction of our 1971 public safety building, the server room and the electric goal systems and the generators are directly underneath vehicle registration licensing and when it rains, the concrete between those two acts as a sieve instead of a barrier and then the server rooms and the generator rooms flood flood which is the last time you want them to flood is when it's raining. So continuing those facility improvements and including the potential addition of a chaos substation on a temporary basis pending a longer term contract or agreement with the county to build a new station and then also the painting of the public safety building which is another longstanding facility improvement that we want to continue to push forward. And then finally, complete art domain migration to ypleast.gov. So as we've added computer systems over the last 30 years to the county, they've been added in about 15 different servers and domains and locations and we last year were able to get the governing body that you know determines Internet addresses to give us permission to use YPLEASE.gov so we had YPLEASE.com at one point we use YCounty.gov but we're in the process of rebranding our re-aligning all of our servers and internal infrastructure under that HawaiiPolice.gov, which then means taking our stuff off of the County infrastructure, which reads of County infrastructure for other County purposes. So being able to move all that stuff over, the really only visible part that anybody will ever see is that our email addresses will change, but even that, we're aligning the mailboxes of the county server and the prosecutor server and our new server so that we'll all still be able to find each other. And I'm told that the transition is fairly seamless. So, but that's a big project that kind of goes on in the background that will eventually help to allow the police department to operate a lot more efficiently, free up other county resources. But it's not glitzy, it's not glimers, it's not the new emergency call center that we're going to have a big, you know, grand opening for, and you know, come in, everybody will clap and be happy. But it is a big thing, it just kind of happens without anybody really noticing it, which is, I guess, sort of where you want those things to be. So those are our priorities and new initiatives for the upcoming fiscal year and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much Chief. thank you very much Assistant Chief and let's call out the teams, the guy everybody behind you as well. To the council members, council member Oenee-C. Thank you, Chair. Go and Chief, Assistant Chief. So you know, I used to work for high-palt So that's when I look at your budget. First thing when I come to look at the police is one. So I noticed that there is a position, a clerk three position. So I know back then we never had a clerk helping us in high pal. So I was kind of surprised to see that. So I went to find out is this real or is this helping other people on the sections? So I can speak to the clerk three that so as you know we have the temporary morgue that's coming up on the east side to handle the the seat and on the east side, on the west side we have the same thing happening. So that particular one was designated for the area, the west side of the island to help handle that right now. We have our CID captain and his staff handling. You know, I'll say the intake, the tracking up until they're released to the funeral, the mortuary's. So that's what that position is for. So why is it under high pal? Well I'm sorry I might be talking to a wrong position then. Yeah it's under high pal. So the high pal one is that something that's existed before I got here. You're talking about from when you were around before until now, right? Not a change from this year to next year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. So that was the answer to the other question, which is the difference between this year and next year is the addition of that, that clerk. So there's a clerk position dedicated to Hype Out. Oh, okay. But then does, because there's no staff other than the clerk, right? And so, activities wise is based on your community police officers or your school resource officers if they use the funding for the budget of Hype L, right? Yes, that's correct. So does she oversee, or does that person see oversee other duties or just Hype L? That's my knowledge is Hype L, CP related related duties which does keep her pretty busy but including the inputting the times for our CP staff as well. Oh, so it also like with community policing there so they have different roles not only high pal but with community police the student school resource officers the she kind of monitors all the, or do other people work for them. Yes. Oh, okay, okay. Okay. So, with community policing, do you folks have a separate budget for them? So the community policing budget, and please chime in if I'm wrong, how old is the expert? Really, she should give the presentation that I just had to say to her. What I'll always say, she's, you guys all know. The, my understanding is that the community policing officers, salary and wages and budget falls into their individual district salary and wages. Okay, within patrol. Got it. Okay. So now I'm, so I guess the salary wages kind of answered my question on your question on your budget. I see that in your OCEs, like with all the activities I've officiating and so forth like that, is it possible, like maybe for next budget, that we look at including some positions on the east and west side? So maybe not as police officers, because I know it won't cost a lot and we need officers on patrol. So I'm looking at like how when I was there, I was a civilian working in that position as a direct director. And so think we could save money doing that way right on on staleys wise and also benefit wise but also providing the necessary activities for our youths island wide because I mean I think you know how high-pell used to be right before and how busy we were and you know We had like major activities for the kids right and was year-round and we also provided activities on the weekends So the parents could also enjoy watching their kids because they would be they wouldn't be working on the weekends, right? And so after one, the previous chief kind of made it where the community police officers and the school resource officers took care of this, it kind of went downhill, right? And also I look at recreation, parks and recreation, to me they're not fulfilling their role too. So now there's so much lacking of activities for our use from 14 and below but also high-pearl who used to run a student high school league. For those who didn't make the high school teams we would have a league for them to participate in in Hilo. So that's That's what I would like to see coming back. And also looking at how Hypeal can be a major economic stimulus for our island because we can run like statewide tournaments, maybe national tournaments under the Hypeal program. And because the Pell is nationwide. So we could attract other teams to come down in the different activities. I mean, you have any thoughts? Absolutely, that's directly in line with everything we're trying to do in terms of community outreach. And even that even has a recruitment and engagement angle as students get older, right? That positive experience with the police officer, whether or not they are interested in a career, helps to make them more responsible. community, which increase trust. That's absolutely right in our, the heart of what we're doing. So I would be happy to research to see if we have any position descriptions existing, or if there are already class specs for this, and if they, if it's been done before, chances are it still exists. But yeah, funding for those kinds of positions, we would be happy to, on recruiting and putting folks like that into the organization as quickly as we can. I was kind of told to stop with the supplemental position request for the March budget, so that may be a recurring theme of my test. You can talk to finest director leader. No, no, no. It's the process, right? But yeah, if something exists, then, you know, I'm all for putting those folks back into the organization for that purpose. And I always believe in public relations and so back then with the officers involved with their page, high panel, community policing, they were the, I think, the force, or police officers that would get engaged with the community and get them to, I guess, trust the officers, right? And then, like, with the, I've seen, for example, when Officer Paguet was at that he'll enter as a school resource officer. There are, I guess, criminal activities at what happened. for example, when Officer Paget was at Hilo Inter as a school resource officer, there were, I guess, criminal activities that would happen. And so he would kind of like talk to the kids and then he would get information from them. And that was like to me that eyes and ears for the department, right? Because then I mean, you were limited with patrol officers so for theives. And so we need the public to help, right? Bill Ventras. Yeah. And so back when I had Chief Viera, he came from Honolulu, he was totally in support of public relations. So that was really great when he was there. And I've been there, working there with maybe five different chiefs, but he was to me the best so far in public relations and working with the community. So I would like to see that more happening and I think that would help with the department because of your lack in of not enough, you know, patrol officers, right? and you? And in fact, with everything, right? And so that's why, too, I try to help with community policing. And I try to provide as much funding or whatever help I can do for them, because I believe that they are the ones that can reach out to the neighborhood watches. And we're trying to start up this business watch in industrial area so I'm looking forward to doing that working with the businesses. How's it? We'll work with your office and see if those positions exist what the budget is for them. Let's move forward. And the last thing is we had the meeting well yeah with HR so if we can take a position that is already existing like in Parks and Rec, and we can use that model, it makes a process of hiring someone faster, right? And they don't have to do audit research and this and that, right? And finding out on a different unit, the bargaining units and so forth. So that's something to that. We can work together. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Are you. Thank you very much. I just want you guys 100%. Thank you. Yeah. Tell us more of Vegas. Aloha and good morning. I'll put in a disclaimer here right now that this is highly sensitive and triggering topic. I've spent much of the evening awake. I think it's really great that you were talking about trying to encourage our young people to get involved in the police department. I have lots of great friends who work with HPD. But the irony of making statements about trusting officers when last night, one of my constituents, a 17 year old minor, a student at Konowana High School, was detained by Homeland Security under the guise of a minor's wellness check. And then taken to the Kaila O'Connor Police Department, their facility where yes, HPD had no direct involvement in the immigration Enforcement aspects of this but neither did they stop it Teachers principals Warriors tried to show up but by the time HSI has a minor and files the documents, essentially our hands are tied. This boy's been taken from his family. There's a quote. I mean, I have the recordings of the interactions in the police station where the HSI officer is thanking HPD for so generously allowing them to utilize our facilities. So coming back to what was just stated with this desire to have our young people participate and become law enforcement officers, the general public looks at law enforcement and sees Homeland Security, immigration, ICE, and the police department and paint them all with the same brush. And that's what's happening to our police department is it's being utilized, manipulated, and coercively included in actions like this. This boy is my constituent. He's a 17-year-old that now we don't know where he is. This is what's happening in counties all over the state. Homeland Security is utilizing administrative warrants under the guise of minor wellness checks, but as soon as they have our children in their custody, our hands are tied. And I just don't understand how anyone could believe that somebody, how can we say, how do we want people to become police officers? And this is what law enforcement is currently perceived as doing. So I am, and as I've stated, I am so grateful for what you guys do. And I recognize, Chief Bird, we spoke outside this tricky line of, yeah, it might be at least you know they utilize our facilities because then we know but if we know and don't do anything we're complicit history is repeating itself here. It is not okay to take minors with documents not illegal immigrants legally here. Students in our high schools, members of our community, and utilize law enforcement facilities for them to be held in and then swooped away, where finding them ever again may be impossible. Another student was deported to Honduras within one week of him being picked up on a wellness check. So I'd be siege my colleagues in the council who voted in support of the MOU we passed last week. Call it back. Change it. This is our chance. in the council who voted in support of the MOU we passed last week. Call it back, change it. This is our chance. This is our chance for justice and to protect the children in our community from being taken illegally. From our communities, their families, their homes, their schools. I yield for now. Council members. Council member, good. Would you like to respond? I don't know. I don't know what kind of response is appropriate in the budget for I'm setting about Consumber V. Agas' comments. So no, we certainly can talk offline. I can share with the information I know but not in the context of a budget hearing. I don't have any comment. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Perhaps we can take this conversation up. And I think we should. And I think there's a venue to take it up. So we'll move on for now. Ocean View, police station, it's a capital permit budget lab stuff. Thank you for the, I mean, so glad that we have more officers in the CAU. And I'm assuming that we got them because of data. And the data probably will point towards Ocean View. So if they have a police station, they can probably be more effective. So wanting to talk about that. Sure. So yes, thank you. So the current budget you have in front of you, I think includes three police officer to positions. So logistically, in order to have one person on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, accounting for vacation, and sick, and come time, and leave. And holidays, we actually need five bodies to have one person around the side four point something bodies but essentially five bodies equals one additional person on the road. So that in terms of what the department requested the goal is to add officers to rural areas to ocean view to the to the Puna Patrol District, to the North Gohala Patrol District even, because you're correct the data from our audit showed us that the response times there are extraordinarily long. So while I'm happy to see that an Ocean View substation of some form is on the path, somewhere in the future in terms of a capital improvement project, the position is for us is the first thing we have to get. Because I have to get the position that I have to challenge with us not adding positions is this, right? the fiscal year comes and goes, and then at this time next year, if we're able to get to a reasonably close feeling of the existing positions we have, I can't then start the pipeline to have someone take a test and take an agility test, then go through a background and get polygraphed and do a medical exam, do a psych exam, do an interview, all those things that take four or six, six, six months, and then hire them and then have them in recruit school for another six months, which gets to a year, and then field training, which is another four months after that. I can't start that process if I don't have the positions to start the process, right? So even completely filled, and I think the code district would have five or six more police officers than they have now because that's where some of the Varvary you can see is lie is in in patrol districts. But the ability to add those now helps me to create the position and get that person in the pipeline to eventually fill the position so that once they're ready to fill the position that I can get them on the road working in the patrol district by themselves answering radio calls. I'm hoping that additional lead time to get that done is the time in which we can secure a location. And even if we don't have a full built out functioning police station like we're talking about in Kau where they're going to build something on three four or five acres with the police and the fire and all this wonderful great, great sublock everything else. but in the meantime in chaos it's a pretty good example the station we have now is disvolving down so we're working with working with a real estate company to find a lot and have them build a temporary structure on the lot that we can lease as a storefront so even if it's a short term stopgap like that once I have people in the pipeline to come on and fill those positions, I'm all for that. And I think we've talked about that before to have, you know, an area that officers can respond to on that side of the district, the district is enormous. And the travel from not only who out of tuition views is takes a long time. And you can't do it quickly because you can't do it quickly safely. And so officers end up back and forth and back and forth. having a place that that they can respond to calls from the majority of the time, having spawned that side is absolutely one of those. Awesome. So you'd be supportive of getting it back in. Because I think it did lap. I mean, I could be wrong. Yes, absolutely supportive. Okay. And just bringing up an idea that I saw floating, I heard floating around which I was really excited about was the idea of co-locating animal control facility with a police station over there in Ocean View because that is something that I really, really want. Because you know, people are getting bit. Yeah, there in Ocean View like on the regular. So yeah, I think anytime you can co-locate similar county functions, it saves time and it saves infrastructure and it's just safer and better for everybody. That's certainly something we would go for. Awesome. One thing I noticed like looking through your report is that you have like a word processing center. So I'm most wondering have you guys looked at AI to make that faster? So we have at the end of, was at the beginning of 24, somewhere around December 23, January, February 24, we did a pilot project with the company that we purchased our mobile data computers from. And basically this was a software where the officers could dictate or read their reports and the software learned their voice and it learned all the Hawaii places and the big out places. And it was actually a very successful project, a very successful pilot. The end of the day though there was a significant cost associated with it. So we put that cost in as a supplemental budget last year, and it didn't make it. And it's, I think, in again, with the mayor's office to see whether or not they're going to try to put that in for this year. So the thing, there's a lot of actual benefits in addition to just writing reports. There's a small microphone. It's maybe half the size of this little boom mic, and the officer can grab it from the computer and ask the computer to do things like check on the registration of a car. And that'll then interact with the computer systems that are up, and it'll spin them back the information versus them having to divert their attention and type while they're driving, which we absolutely don't want them to do. So yes, and we found a solution that would work. It's a fiscal issue at the moment as to where we can find the outlay of money to pay for the software. How much is it? What is that? Yeah. Yeah, you don't have a number in there. I will give you the exact number in a second. Number 18 is the one that we gave to the mayor's office. Awesome. 446,000, I want to say, I think, 450, 450,000. Wow, yeah. For open, so supposedly open source. Yeah. But it has to understand pigeons, so I'm sure it's that's. Well, so the other problem is the stuff that we're, that's true. The things that the officers are dictating also are, there's some of it is like criminal justice information, people's names and dates of birth, social security numbers. So whatever that solution is, has to be one that encrypts data at rest and in transmit. And there's all kind of FBI rules about it. Yeah, I could just ask them to dictate into their iPhones, and that would probably also do a really great job, but from a security standpoint, I think the FBI would shut us out. All right, thank you. I yield. Thank you. Council Member, who's this? Thank you. Morning. Hello, Chief. I just a question on the sublock security. Both Kona, South Hilo, both of those are contracted out. Both the same figure in the budget, as at the same capacity, same, okay, I'm getting nods in the back. Yes. All right. All right. So the record, all he's nodding yes. Okay, thank you. Gonna jump to, kind of, I'm just curious on the mileage and auto allowance. It group one, group two, is that related to area one, area two? Nope, so Group one is, it's contractually obligated, certain assignments, patrol, traffic, I think criminal investigations is Group two. Most of patrol and traffic is Group one and then other officers are Group two and I think there's like a $38 difference between what their monthly subsidy is, whether they're group one or group two. OK. Thank you for the clarification there. And then in terms of the police headquarters, I don't really like to look at the Salarn Witches that much. But there is a jump in $3 million for Salarn Witches for police headquarters if you could speak to that a little bit. Yeah, so that's the bargaining. No, so we took the vice units away from each individual area and put them under headquarters because they fall under the deputy chair. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you, Chair. Thank you. Tell us about the people. Thank you. Thank you both for being here. I have three different areas of questioning. I'll start with opioid settlement funds. Had you folks previously received any funding from that program for HPD efforts? So we did have a, we were going to purchase handheld mass spectrometers that officers and vice could use in the field. So when the new mayor's administration, the old mayor had agreed on it and signed off on it and by the time the new administration came in, we were told we had to stop the procurement because the new mayor had to sign off on it as well. And when it was sent to the new mayor, there was an issue because the county had something to do with the relationship between the state and the settlement and the county had changed So we were waiting for for that additional domino to be pushed over so the American sign is so that we could have it. So we have tried. Okay. bureaucracy has stymied us. Right. So that was one of the things I don't know if finance can speak to. I noticed that the opioid settlement was zeroed out in terms of the revenue side. Are we not expecting to get that money anymore? Or what's the status of that? Good morning, Diane. Nakagawa Finance Department. Give us a minute and we'll check on that. OK, great. Thank you. The other question I had was it came up in the State Association's discussion of our legislative package this last year about all the counties as you mentioned are struggling to fill vacancies. And one of the strategies suggested by Maui was to allow officers that were met the retirement requirements, they were retired, to be able to come back and serve on the force well still continuing to collect retirement. I guess I'm just looking for yes, no, is that something you're supportive of? We were ultimately told that that was not a legislative thing that would be something that could be dealt with through the collective bargaining process, which I believe we're undergoing right now. But what are your thoughts on that mechanism for filling some of these vacancies? So allowing people who are going to retire to come back is controlled by the Hawaii by statutes. So that's an ERS issue. We can hire them back as contract employees. If HR and finance are agree that these positions are historically hard to fill, which seems a low hurdle to meet for police officers or dispatchers, right? Then we can bring people in on a contract basis for hard-to-fill positions until we fill civil service positions. One of the challenges is there's a time difference between the when the person retires and I think it's a 12- 12 month period before we can bring anybody back full time on our hard to fill position. So they would have to be out for a year. I think the Mali proposal or the one that Shopo was backing would allow them to, you know, on Thursday retire and on Friday begin collecting, you know, working this other position other job. So my understanding is we can't do that under the current ERS structure with who are your vice-stetrics. So that there was a bill and that has since died at the ledge to make that case. Yeah. And so I'll follow up with you and HSEC later about the feedback that we got about why it was an legislative fix. But it's something that were it to be able to be addressed in another way you guys would be supportive. Absolutely. The problem we have is that people here because it's more affordable than other counties reach 25 and retire almost immediately. On a law who there's people with 30, 32, 35, 40 years who can't afford to retire. So they have, that's a difference in a problem. Right. good problems versus flat and all. That's a good problem. But yeah, if we can incentivize people to stay for a year, 26, 27, 28, that at least gives us a buffer to continue increasing the number of full-time sworn. Right. Okay. All right. I'll follow up with you on that. And then just lastly, wanted to understand the different grant programs that you offer, particularly the impact grant, I noticed there's a high-travel budget for that. What is exactly entailed in that program? So high impact, all years reminding me, is the height. So that's the high impact drug trafficking association. So that's, we actually have monthly executive meetings. I was there at one yesterday, but it promotes cooperation within between federal and state and local agencies to focus on importation of drugs and drug enforcement and drug trafficking organization targeting. So their money, Hawaii, high-dose money flows through the Office of National Drug Control Policy. So their budget has been kind of steady for the last five or six years. They don't know what's going to happen because of the questions at the federal level. But one of the things they talked about at the meeting yesterday was that of the four counties there's one that spends all the money that they send and that's us. And there are other counties that I guess if they don't spend the money it's allowed to remain for a period of years and build up while they go through whatever procurement for these things are that they're granted money for. And there's talk of taking some of that money away from the previous years and giving it to us because we're able to spend the money that they want to send us. So if there's a fluctuation that is likely the reason. Okay, so what is the travel contract services under this related to specifically? Is that allowing for partners with HBD to travel? My guess would be that's... I'd be like portraying conferences, maybe some cooperative investigations that are going on. Okay, okay. And then there's the other police grant program under 5218. What is that, that program? Is there a title? It's just called police grants too. That's why I'm asking. Because I have, there's no descriptor. Oh, asset forfeiture. So as we get state and federal asset forfeiture money that deposits and it's been depositing historically for a long time, the primary use of asset forfeiture funds now that we're spending back out is higher education reimbursement. So on top of the county's program, whatever the county doesn't cover, we cover. And then I think we've also purchased a van, a prison transport van, or two things that, you know, were outside the scope of what the council was able to fund. So those are probably fairly broadly. There are certain guidelines with what we can spend it on equipment. We can buy equipment. We can, I think, provide training. We can do training as long as it's within the course and scope of like the officers duty. So for higher educational reimbursement, if you know, you've already exhausted your county maximum or you're not eligible for the county program for whatever reason, you have to get a pre-approval. Here's the course I want to take and it relates to my job and here's how, and then we can use a grant. That's it for for Germany to fund that request. OK, all right. Um. and it relates to my job and here's how, and then we can use a grant. That's it for future money to fund that request. Okay, all right. With respect to, I lied, I have four questions. Since we're so waiting on the opioid settlement. With respect to the six million, roughly in state and federal, what percentage of that is federal federal and do you have any concerns about any of those funding streams? So three million is federal and no, I don't. We've been reassured by most of our federal partners that in terms of law enforcement, they're not expecting large cuts. And a lot of the, like for departments where we have task force officers, that appears that the ability for them to reimburse us for over time or time that the officers are spending a task force operations that appears in our budget as a grant. So we kind of draw down from that. So that's probably a big chunk of what's in there and why it recurs every year at about the same amount as opposed to a special part of money to buy a one-time thing. Got it. Okay. All right. That's all the questions I have for now. I don't know if Director Nakawa you were able to review the opioid settlement issue. A little bit. We're looking further into it. But you know if you you can see the revenue is actually in 2324. And as you know part of our process is when we appropriated in that year you aren't going to see it in the next year. You'll see 478,000 in 2324, but I think there was more appropriated mid-year, so that's what we're checking on as well. Okay, all right. I'll follow up with you folks after. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Kogiwata. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, folks after. Holy. Thank you. Councilmember Kogiwata. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chief and Assistant Chief for being here this morning and your staff. I have three things that I wanna just touch base on. One is in CIP and noted here as your priority with facility improvements, the public safety building painting, the very first time I met you, this is what we talked about. And I completely agree that the condition that that building is in is very discouraging, disheartening, and probably doesn't do you any good for recruitment as well. So, I really hope you can get that done. Unfortunately, I did see it on the LAPS report as one program that the mayor actually didn't keep in at this time. So, do you have any feedback on that if you talk to this administration? Once we talked about this and thank you for the call the other day about this, it was it was I was reminded that the the new public works director when they came to visit and we you know intentionally had them sit in the conference room right in front of the you know moldy walls and stuff. They were of the opinion that it didn't need to be a capital improvement project the capital improvement project designation was something that came from the previous administration and the previous DPW director. The current DPW director said we could fund that out of our current whatever other current funding we had, which would allow us to get it done a lot quicker. So that's in talking to you about it before that distinction kind of slipped in my mind. So that's my understanding is that we were able to just contract out and have somebody come do it as opposed to the county handling it as a capital improvement project. Okay great. Do we have both the mayor and given that we no longer have that director there in place at DPW. Do we have DPW's acting director and the mayor's wanting to do this? Yeah, I'll check the prior, I'll check with the deputy director and get back. Okay, please let me know if you think we need to get it off the laps report if it's not been prioritized. Thank you. Second one, downtown Hilo community policing and the crime unit that you had pulled together. I know there was a lot of good feedback from the public at first when the crime unit had been patrolling. And then there was kind of, it seemed like a lag. And so my question is around the budget, is this due to just shifting in priorities or is it due to shifting in resources or what's been going on there? So last year as a supplemental in the May budget, I think you folks added one sergeant and two police officer, two positions, specifically for that. That's been the last of, and in terms of priorities for HR to create positions and help us through that process, those were pushed off until the end, because we already had people on special assignments. People, officers in control who were doing this as a side job. So I'm not sure that it became less of a priority as much as they're assigned to the entire area. So anything from, you know, on a call all the way to, the Pune area is kind of their their purview for the crime reduction in it. So I'm hoping that once we get those positions finally established and filled we can give it more resources to that but my guess is it became not deep prioritized as much as something else. Well, I guess superseded it perhaps in terms of crime terms of crime reduction. Yeah. OK. So I think the concern that I'm hearing from the public is that community policing is doing what they can around things like homelessness and stuff. But we really need a crime unit dealing with some of the crime that's happening in the downtown area, you know, assaults and drug action, things like that. So, and sex trafficking, all that stuff that's happening in the downtown area. So, if, yeah, whatever we can do, if you need any, you know, what we need to do, if there's anything I can do, we can do to help get that going again. Or, yeah, I know some of those folks said that they were like pulled off because there were other things going on. I think even a community meeting with the new people that are there, I know you have a new officer who's kind of taken the lead there. And yeah, whatever we can do to kind of assure the public that we're still very much on this I think would be helpful and then you know seeing officers about I think that's one of the things they just they want to see some of them. And again the challenges that I agree with you and if we can get to that point I think that's that's that's the right goal to for. The challenge is if I pull control officers out of South Helipotrol to do this special thing, then there's one or two less people to respond to 911 calls, which then, I mean, we're playing with the other side of the sea salt at the same time. So, like I said, I'm really hopeful that our current and upcoming recruiting push is going to get us close enough to where we can start to expand the numbers, especially in South Hill of Patrol. So, South Hill of Patrol is nearly completely filled. I think there's one they can see after the middle of May when we have another personnel movement, but I still don't have enough staff to take away from calls for service to go do proactive stuff like that, except for on short term.. Did I hear that they got some like, patrol bikes and stuff? Yes. So we got some of those electric powered bikes. And my understanding is we're waiting for training. So we got them through a grant, through a State Department of Transportation grant. And then they've actually also already approved us to get another wave of them. We're trying to get the, and maybe it's happened now. I have a lost track of it. We're waiting for the specialized electric bike training people to come to teach the officers how to use these things before they, you know, they're caught. Sure. Okay. They like to try stuff and you have a tendency to crash. Okay. So I want to make sure they're trained safe. Thank you. Okay. Well, let's continue to be in and dialogue around that and see if we want to do a community meeting or something like that. And my last thing is touching back on what council member VIGA spraud up just an budget thing. Are there any potential trainings or community you know, relationship building events that we could support in the budget that could specifically kind of look at some of the issues that she brought up that are new and happening and maybe we haven't had a focus on as much before because we didn't need to. Sure. Community events and meetings those cost us nothing. We just just rearranged people's we have admin and CP staff that would just move people's schedule's around to 10 minutes to do that all the time. In terms of training, yeah, I think if there's if there's something out there that we can find that would be, you know, worth the counties money to bring people in or send our people there to become trainers for whatever that thing is absolutely. Okay. The challenge and to the county finances credit they found a way around this challenge. Our training budget outlay is so small compared to what we actually spent on training that it's hard to budget for things. So normally when we run out of training funds which, correct me if I'm wrong, was like August or September for the year, for the fiscal year, or at zero already, then what we've been doing is going back to the county contingency, the billion dollar contingency fund, which I shouldn't say in public because the other directors are watching. But I think we tap more of it than, it's not a secret, I'm being prestigious, of course. We've tapped way more of it than any other county department. I know that there's a I think there's an increase in the budget you have from 100,000 to 200,000 so maybe we might make it to December before we kind of run out of runway with the 200,000. But yeah in terms of as long as there's flexibility from county finance into funding that thing if it's already spent out there. We're off with that. Okay, well let's work together to try to pinpoint what some of those trainings might be. That's good. Okay, thank you so much. I yield. that thing if it's already spent up or off with that. Okay, well let's work together to try to pinpoint what some of those trainings might be. That's good. Okay, thank you so much. You'll thank you, Jack. Thank you. That's my regards to it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chief Mosquitz, Assistant Chief Bird. How oligree to see you. Appreciate all of your leadership and hearing all of the progress that's been made over the the last fiscal year. Some really remarkable achievements with the youth and community engagement, workforce development, the refresh of the website. So information is more accessible. I love hearing about the software that's going to give people a reference number so they can continuously track their cases. I want to say that on that for just a little bit, you heard the testifier earlier talk about I made a call for service, nobody responded, no one from police, no one from animal control, which I kind of I find hard to believe that there wouldn't be at least some kind of follow-up or touchpoint from either of the agency, so I'm sure you get that I just, I wonder how we address situations like this. So most common when I hear this as an issue from people in the public, it's that, and we go back and check. Because I'll say, well, I called on this date at this time. And here's the complaint that I made. So we have CAD data that will document every call and we can tie that call back to an officer who showed up. The problem is a lot of times, especially in really rural areas, we're showing up way beyond people's expectation of time that we're going to show up and they give up or they've gone on to the next thing or they don't notice that we've shown up because it's 30, 40, 50 minutes later. I don't know. In this particular situation, I'm not sure. But having that number, having that document. 40, 50 minutes later, I don't know. And this particular situation, I'm not sure. But having, again, having that number, having that documentation, provides us a lot clearer accountability and access as to how to track that person's call. If I had that person's call, number was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, with the system, I could tell you, oh no, look, officer, so and so it did show up. And they arrived at this time. Here's what they found because even when they show up and they report their findings back to dispense That's all logged and recorded with the system I could tell you, owner of the officer's home, so it did show up and they arrived at this time. And here's what they found. Because even when they show up and they report their findings back to dispense, that's all logged and recorded, whether they make a police report or not. Okay, so there is a paper trail. There is. Yeah, and I, someone was injured, right? There was bodily injury here. And so I also follow up with fire because I would think that some kind of medic services would have been deployed to ensure that that woman was okay. You know I was going through the operating budget and looking at some of the statistics for the Pune Patrol District. Over 7,000 calls for service criminal related. More than 19,000 non-criminal related, that's over 27,000 calls for service last fiscal year. And I run the numbers. That's like 74 calls a day for Puna. And very significant. And we know the statistic, right? Puna is the size of a wahu. You've got eight folks on patrol on a good day. So I really appreciate that you've allocated or requested for an additional lieutenant patrol position because the district is growing and there's a tremendous service need. But I just I want to thank you for investing in the community. So I think when I got here, we were 12 or so vacancies and put, I think we're down to six after the May personal moment. So we've been trying to add one or two police officers to put each time we have a new recruit class that comes on and graduates. But even then, once we fill up that six in the next year-ish, the challenge for me is what comes next. Because if I can give you 10 people, that adds two. So instead of eight, it's 10, which is great. But 74 cases a day with 10 people is still probably in the in the overwhelming category. So anything we can do in terms of continuing to add PO2 vacancies to Puna as we can start to fill them up is is appreciated. And your folks out there are really awesome. I have a great working relationship with Captain Padere, you know, your guys and women. They show up and they they're always very responsive when I reach out just the other day. I had to coordinate with Neal Azavito and Captain Padere to clean up a county property in downtown Paola that was being overrun with some squatters and other trash debris. And they were there to provide support as we cleared out that property. Because there was some funny business that was happening there that was kind of having a negative impact on the town. And I bring this up because I wonder within your budget, is there funding for programs to do things? I want to say we didn't see, but that's not possible because we don't have enough jail space to kind of implement that sort of program. But what other programs could we leverage in partnership with your department to just clean up a lot of our downtown areas, which are suffering from, you know, petty crimes and blight? So that's a great question. And I think there's probably an opportunity to partner with public works in whatever that thing is, because while we certainly have a lot of authority in making people leave or keeping people out or enforcing whatever those rules are, our statutory authority kind of falls off after that. So, but at the same time we're I think really good community partners in terms of, you know, throwing on the t-shirt and the shorts and painting over the graffiti or helping DPW to clean the rubbish out of the yard. I mean, none of those things are law enforcement duties or responsibilities, but the community policing officers, I think, do a very good job of that. So if it's a budgetary concern or a budgetary program or process, anything like that, I would think we would partner with DPW. So I'm not sure if there's like a more clear line. I'm not one to tell you I don't want money at all but I just am thinking in terms of placing it in the right spot to help these kind of projects. I don't know if DPW has that kind of an account or sub account. If not then it would be just operating OCE for the for the patrol district and we would ear market for whatever those projects might be. Okay, I'll follow up it. It sounds like we could explore changes to the built environment and employ some additional community policing strategies with with your team. We do have a strong neighborhood watch group sort of re-emerging for that area. And downtown Pahoa is one that is accessed by students before and after school. So I just I want to make sure that it's safe for our kids and our families. Thank you. And then you know just the last thing, anything that you know I can do as well as Councilmember Onishi and Councilmember Canaley Eclinfelder with the KL station relocation. We are happy to help write letters, make phone calls, help to try to find some funding, because that station does serve three different districts that are represented by us in Pune. So thank you for your work on that, and we are here to support. Thank you. We have a really good momentum building in terms of a longer term solution with a four to five acre arrangement with Shipman and Land and then for the you know in the future construction project, I'm not going to be here to ever be able to use that facility. I'll be long since retired, but if we can find a lot and we found a lot. So again working with Shipman, we found a lot that's close to the police station that we're very actively negotiating with them. Like what's the the right solution? Do we lease the lot? Do we buy the lot? Do we? Do they put up a structure that meets our needs? And then we lease it from them. And when we're done and we're ready to move on, they can lease it to the next person. We're actively exploring those options on a weekly basis to try to get out of that chaos station and have something that's safer and more approachable for the public to at least officers can use and totally get to that longer term solution. I wholeheartedly agree. Thank you. I. something that's safer and more approachable for the public to at least officers can use and totally get to that longer term solution. I wholeheartedly agree. Thank you. I really appreciate it, Teriold. Thank you. I was wondering, oh, what is she? Sure. I had one question because I just seen prosecutors out there saying, I just wanted to get your thoughts on how you folks feel about how the court system is being run. And, you know, because prosecutors used to call me up even prior to when I was on the council about how they're releasing, I guess, arrested, other than what you call arrest, you know, people. And they, I guess, go through the system and then they get released on supervised release or whatever, right? And so they're back on the streets and then they make troubles again and you guys gotta arrest them again and so forth. So what's your thoughts on that? And maybe how we as a council can help. So that's tough because, and I feel for the judges who are making these decisions because there's not any place at age should proceed to put pre-trial felons or repeat misdemeanor offenders. There's not the space doesn't exist on Hawaii islands. So in terms of short-term solutions, I don't know. I don't know. And that's very much in terms of state. So when you get put on supervised release, someone is supposed to be supervising you, but that how many people can you have one person supervising, and then they probation you to more people. And yeah, I'm all for thinking of creative ways to help that process. And the offshoot is we end up releasing people who are violent or dangerous to the community, because there's no place put them because we have people at each trip will see that have 15 traffic warrants or whatever. So that's so far out of my, I got a lot of ideas but none that are productive probably. We have looked at law enforcement diversion kind of programs. I mean this is lower level lower level offender. It might not be the people who make the news about being SRM that are violent or dangerous. But we have looked at diversion programs working with the prosecutors to keep people out of the law enforcement system. So we respond to a shoplifter, who's the first time shoplifter, are low level drug offense. And rather than have that person charged and put into the criminal courts if they get arrested and there's a way that the prosecutors can divert them outside of that in terms of services, that that would be, that would be probably some funny questions for the prosecutors in terms of diversion. But I'm absolutely, I'm absolutely into that. If we can take a low level offender and divert them from becoming a much more repeat or high level offender, that's an investment in the community member in the criminal justice system, in the police department, in the prosecutors, in the courts, everything, right? We're not gonna stem the tide of people coming in if we continue to do what we've always done. I think what we can do is we can all brainstorm where we got lobby our legislators on the big island to create the other holding, the other jail on the corner side, west side, right? Because everyone comes to the Hilo one, right? And I hear it's like 50% about so if we can relieve that space here, then that could help us on the east side. So I'll get in contact with the department and the chief and with the prosecutors. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. How's the workingable? Yeah, I just had a question on the repair maintenance side. Any plans to do any additional work to dispatch? So yes, probably. The emergency call center opens on Monday. Well, we have the dedication on Monday and it opens the following Tuesday or Wednesday. Our plan is to get the operations moved up there in the next two weeks and then go through what we have now at the Helo Station, kind of refurbish everything, refresh it and keep it available as a warm swap. If something happens or we need to cut back over, then we have a secondary site that's two or three miles away that we can respond to and pick up where we left off. So in terms of upgrades to the Helo site, now that we're operating Helo and the ECC at the same time, any upgrades we do, we've got upgrade refresh computers or upgrade software, we can do on the non-active site and then switch people over and then do it on the other site and switch people back. But a lot of the funding for that kind of process improvement and dispatch hardware software technology comes from the E911 board. So that's kind of a sub-grant from the state. Okay, all right. So you're gonna keep the existing places kind of a backup. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Chief. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. I have a couple of all ups for you just and good good conversation today. How do your calls for service criminal calls and citations guide the department into staffing or do they? They do. It's um in terms of where we're going to put staff, it's calls for services one aspect. Geography is another. In the South-Ela Patrol District officers can probably handle more calls logistically because things are closer. So they can get from call A to call B more quickly. So we look at response times, we look at existing staffing levels, and then for service. Calls for service probably more than crime data because a call for service that requires an officer to be dispatched and sent to a place to do a thing, whether it results in a criminal investigation or not is still a resource use. So whether it's the officer went and reported a crime or the officer went and got a report of the neighbor who's being in nuisance. I'm going to spend the same amount of time investigating a crime or not a crime to be the calls for service data is probably more important. But those are the two things we primary look at. Those three things. The geography, the calls for service, and the response times with the existing staffing. Okay, in your... Well, it's in the proposed operating budget, but you kind of detail each district and call for service not like information, but I don't see in there time for response, response times. So the response times was, it was included in the audit that the county did for us, maybe about a year ago, early 24, I think the audit report came out. That's available on their site. They have a listing of bi-districted, and they might beat what the response times are. Okay, might be good to put it in there. As I reviewed your operations, you've worked out each district, and what happened, how many burglaries everything but Not what the response time was and if that's a guiding light for the department on how you Plan to staff or what we should be budgeting to staff each district and not not being council districts But more district areas that you refer to Helps us guide where we want to see our staffing and his data at the back of the decision. Very good, thank you. Okay. I did not see HPD's presence in the CIP list. Fabulous. There's everyone's got a section, not everyone. Most people have a section but not HPD. Your name is not mentioned in here at all. That was part of my concern with where I heard from fire yesterday. I know what was talked about earlier regarding the CAO opportunity, as well as other projects that were brought up. Were CIP priorities in different forms and in different numbers last year? I didn't see you this year. Is there something coming? It will be. Thank you. I think that would be good unless I missed it finance, but I don't think that I did it in Seattle. Okay. Yeah. I got it. Shaking back there. Okay. So make sure that you're You're prioritizing what projects you want. You know, I stand for kill. I cannot stress the importance of that facility enough for a number of reasons. But I also heard customer Galimba ask about a CIP project for Ocean View. I know there was a fencing project that was as a supplemental, I believe, that was on the project for Heelow last year. I don't see anything for you. So go back interview and make sure those are in the May budget. And please work with fire because the cold location as you discussed is a key component. Thank you. Also on that list, the morgue, which should be to me, a CIP project that we are either pursuing or not. And I cannot, maybe we talked about yesterday to finance for looking long term, and we're looking at locations and costs for the county over 20, 30, 50, 100 years from now. And we choose the temporary, temporary, temporary, and rent, rent, rent. It's gonna cost us a fortune in the end, and it doesn't make sense for the county employee. I'll just add on the search for the permanent more we are looking at properties so that's you know process that's ongoing. Good. But yeah we're looking into the properties. Good good good thank you Sherry. I noticed 2526 requests. We saw decreased detectives, police officers, twos under operations. But I also heard you state at the Council and Precuse this that we are re-aligning the positions in different aspects of the department. Is that why I'm seeing decreases in movements and increases in salary wages? Yes. Decrease positions, actually decrease costs in CID, same thing, corner police. Good, good. Touched on, I don't know like I got the answer or I may have missed it. The police costs for our officers for being in patrol is excessive. Tires, oil changes every month, they're putting, I think it's like 10,000 miles in a car a month. It's something crazy. Is that being addressed departmentally? Is that negotiations ongoing? Where are we standing? So there is a, the amount of money that we provide to officers to drive their own cars is it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's their minor standing as a state is working with the HRP directors to actively attempt to renegotiate the next contract. So that $600 or $562 or $535 or whatever it is, the schedule one is scheduled to amounts are the contractual obligation. So they're careful how I describe this. Yes, maybe that's where I stop in the public hearing. I just You know, I know the negotiations being ongoing. It's something that's out of my hands at least at the moment once there is a new contract if if you know if we feel like there's a disparity between what You know the cost is specific to the big island as opposed to what the cost is other parts of the state Then we do have the authority working with county HR and finance and you folks to negotiate supplemental agreements for special rules specifically for our county. So obviously, I'd have to be very clear. I have a daughter and friends in the police department and I listen to what's going on, but what interested me was how much wear and tear they put on versus the normal citizen and how much that cost is tires oil all of it is getting more and more expensive and We got to keep up with how much it actually costs them and understanding we provide a Lotment per month for them for the vehicles, but even the cost of a vehicle is going up, so Okay, and the story Looking at the training hours that you budgeted this year, which is 25,000, but you're actual for 23, 24 was 36,000. So have you set in your budget your ability to train the way you want to with what you're budgeting for 25, 26? The short answer no. We were instructed for the mayor's budget to keep those numbers status quo. The things that impact training in the police department, there's a training account, $100,000 to $200,000. But most of the training that we do is on duty. So it's being absorbed by salary and wages. If I have an officer from Puna who's coming to, you know, some sort of crisis intervention training, there are Puna salary and wages is paying for them to come to the training. So that that $100,000 or $200,000 or the county contingency money is paying for the cost associated with the actual training, bringing in outside instructors or, you know, logistics associated with the training. training hours. If you're seeing a training hours, my guess is that's associated with new officer training as opposed to incumbent training. So we have kicked up both. And so that hearing that PO1s who fall under administration and the amount of hours that they're spending and the budget they're spending is way over what we have budgeted doesn't surprise me because even though this office, for that 10 months it takes for me to take a civilian with no police experience and make them a police officer in Hawaii County who can go out and act on their own in 100% of the time is all that money and that budget overage is absorbed in the administration part of the budget. And then my understanding is what we do is we use the fund savings for not having that person as a PO2 in Puna, and we move it over to cover the cost that falls under administration. So once that person is ready and we move them into their assignment in Puna, now their regular salary, and we just come out of the Puna budget. But while we're training them, we're using the money from the vacancy and Puna to train them. But it's in a different part of the budget. Okay, maybe just double check. Because your actuals in 23, 24 was 36,000 hours. If you're trying to process and get more officers and recoup classes and it's gonna be a heavy load for training, then make sure you've properly a lot of the amount of funding you need. I have tried. Okay. Thank you. Okay. That is okay. And then I saw a 33 more police officers this this coming 2526 as a request by the department is that right? That is the request that made it through in the but the mayor's proposal. Yes sir. Beautiful. I appreciate that. Thank you to the administration for seeing the need. Okay. Although I'll do that, you know, Chief, I just appreciate what you're doing. And, you know, one final comment. The mayor touched on a mental health summit. From what I gather in listening to the amount of calls that the police officers and fire officers or fire department staff respond to a lot of them are mental health related. So as this mental health discussion starts to emerge, there's what I'm seeing coming. With the mayor's office guiding that charge, please be present and having the data to show how much of your time is being spent responding to mental health calls and how that interlocks with the department and what we can do to decrease the workload for our officers and help the community and work with our nonprofit service providers. Agreed, 100% and the other aspect of that is the mental health toll that it takes on first responders to respond to all these things. And that's a cost that counties and local jurisdictions across the United States have not even begun to address in a sufficient way, in my opinion. but that's actually another realistic tangible cost that's associated with the whole issue. But absolutely, we'll be there. I think it's, I'd say 30 to 40% of the time that the department spend is relating to mental health. That's my total guess to me right now, but I think it's pretty close. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much chief anything further from the council Okay, thank you very much for your time Council members brief recess or keep plugging away go for it. Okay We are recessed for a few minutes. That's what we set up. Thank you. Why is it always good? Mr. RSL, if you could introduce and then we'll go for the test warning. Thank you so much Mr. Chair. Just introducing Carriifying on Bill 31. Cario, when you begin, if you could just reintroduce yourself, you'll have three minutes. Mahalo, I'm Cario's and I'm here to testify for animal control. My input is mainly due to having stray cats that came into my property and trying to comply with state statute 142-99, which requires all owners, all property owners, if a stray animal, domestic animal comes onto your property, you are there to get it back to the owner or take it to animal control or humane society or face a $500 fine, which is a high fine to do. When a mother cat and her kittens got trapped in our dog kennel, I caged them up, took them to Humane Society, then to Animal Control, being directed by Humane Society to do so, was told by Animal Control that they cannot take what they called feral, though that term does not exist in either our state statutes, nor in our county statutes, all domestic animals that are unknown are strays. So it does comply with 142-99 and also with our county code four. In that, I got involved with Suley Loy and conference calls with Matthew Rennel. And my main concern was one, I had cats that were obviously not neutered and obviously were not known to me nobody had checked for any ownership on the mother cat so we don't know the mother cat at that point I was told to just release them not my problem I asked Julie Loy if she thought that was the best idea and she confirmed no. Given the state of our county having animals that are unneeded, released, re-released into the environment wouldn't be a good idea. My vet owned that, would not take care of the animals since I admitted that they were not mine and he can only deal with that. I was able to get them into pet fix and stay. However, by the time I got all five kittens in, which was months later, and going in the rotation as pet fits allows, I noticed animal control was using pet fix. And they were taking the valuable poocas for community for their own neutering. And much of that was because they did not have a vet. They were as Matthew Ronald told C. Loy, C. Loy, they were in the process of getting a veterinarian and that they would be on the ground running when they came in. They were not. It took over a month to get all of the process registration. Through our conversation, we could- Thirty seconds please. it was determined that most likely due to the volume, they should have two vets on staff. One, in case there is what happened to this vet, they left soon after coming, and two, to make sure that our county is well covered. That the two vets, they had extra time, could spend on these non-owned community pets that we have. That's my testimony. Thank you. Thank you so much for your testimony, Chair. Those are all the testifiers you have right now. Thank you very much, Mr. Aroseli, for keeping us on track. Our next department is the Department of the Prosec—our office of the Prosecuting Attorney. We have today joining us our Prosecuting Attorney, Kelvin Walginn, and his team. Mr. Walginn, when you're ready, introduce yourself, introduce your team, and we'll go to your presentation. Yes. Can I ask you a council question? Do you hear me okay? You're good. Okay, thank you. Model everyone for giving us the opportunity to present. Cross-City Attorney Keldin Walgian. I'm here with our team, our business administrator, Grant Maggata, seated at the table. And in the gallery, we have first-step the prosecuting attorney, Shannon Kagawa, accountant, Jim, I'm a manzano. Victor went to direct the tar bin of Vides and chief investigator, Daniel Pang. Our mission is to pursue justice with integrity and commitment. We seek justice for victims of crime and for those who can't stand up for themselves. Our goal is to make a white colony a better and safer place. Now, for the last couple of years, you've got to have heard me talk about our office's multi-faceted approach to addressing criminal justice issues. And given the time constraints, I want to take an opportunity to talk about something else. So, and it's something I think I think it's really important that a lot of people might not understand. And that's the role of the prosecutor. The American Bar Association, Sanders for Criminal Justice, identifies the prosecutor as an administrator of justice, a zealous advocate, and an officer of the court. Furthermore, the primary duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice within the bounds of the law and not merely convict. Consider the interests of victims, respect the rights of all persons including the criminally accused. So we have ethical obligations. The system works like this. The police investigate the cases and they provide the investigation to the prosecutors who then review all the facts and circumstances presented. Prosecutors don't pick and choose the facts of a case. We take a case as is. When evaluating a case, a prosecutor must address whether the state can prove all elements of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. That's a very high standard. It's the highest burden of proof that exists. Unlike in a civil case, most civil cases, the standard is a preponderance of the evidence, which basically means that something happened more than likely. Prosecutors are the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system. We determine if there's enough evidence to charge a case, we determine if the facts warrant a dismissal, we consult and confer with victims of crime, and we determine what's a fair resolution. And when the time comes, we argue for an appropriate resolution. But more than that, prosecutors have to be problem solvers, and we have to assess the overall broader goals of the criminal justice system. Now that we've covered the roles of the prosecutor, I'd like to cover our objectives in this upcoming fiscal year. Core prosecution, we've got a great team of dedicated public servant attorneys who make sacrifices each day in our community and I'm very proud of each and every one of them. There have been many successful cases over the last year that highlight the collaboration between our police department here, the Hawaii County Police Department and our local and state federal law enforcement partner agencies. Dillon Paul Leslie was sentenced to a 25-year prison term in relation to a corner armed robbery and a April 2023 escape from each trip, who say Trevor Shoemaker has seen was sentenced to a 20-year prison term in the causing the death of 63-year-old Randa Friedman on July 17, 2022, in a traffic collision, which occurred at the intersection of Mamolo Hall Highway and Akina Place in Kona. Set Spidell was sentenced to 10-year prison term after police recovered 18 pounds of methamphetamine, two ghost gun 9-millimeter pistols, a Mac 10 assault pistol, during an execution of a search warrant at a Kyokaha residence. Sunny Porto was sentenced to a 10-year prison term for charges of electronic enticement of a child during Operation KK-Shield. In Donkin Mahi was sentenced to a 30-year prison term for the sexual assault of a minor and kidnapping of two other minors in September 2022. That case garnered national attention when Hawaii used the second ever Miley Alert was sounded in the system, including the first ever time that we utilized the wireless alert messaging system across the state. These are just a few of the successful prosecutions which concluded over the last year. We continue to have deputies assigned to work with HPD specialized units, and also assigned to specialty treatment courts like drug court and veteran treatment court. We believe in a multidisciplinary team or MDT approach to addressing domestic violence and sexual assault. Given the effect of the MDT approach, we are going to be meeting with a expert, a retired California prosecutor in the next couple weeks to discuss, establishing an MDT approach to addressing elder abuse cases as well here on our island. In addition to the specialized vertical unit prosecutors, we've recently named team leaders within areas of expertise within our office, sex assault, traffic safety, unsolved homicides, appellate and post-conviction relief, domestic violence, legislative and vice. The purpose of these team leaders is to identify and suggest policies and procedures within their area of responsibility, developing coordinate and service training for police and prosecutors, and assist supervisors with case assignment and delegation. Improving the criminal justice system. I firmly believe that we have the most effective collaboration between police and prosecutors in our state. We continue to be the only county which openly shares data between agencies, streamlining processes and enhancing services at the same time. You know, I extend my mahalo to Ben Mosquitz and Deputy Chief Reed Mahuna for continuing that open line of communication, which ensures that Hawaii County has a law enforcement that actively works collaboratively with each other to keep our community safe. We facilitate, in court, a large number of trainings for our law enforcement, service providers, MDT agencies and community stakeholders. We train HPD recruits, participate in regular in-service trainings. Just to highlight in August, we're coordinating a statewide training, utilizing Department of Transportation funds. This year's topic is gonna be investigating collisions involved in entire driving. We're going to be providing field sobriety test resurification, discussing analyzing crash data, expert witnesses, and reconstruction dynamics. We're also hoping to facilitate a child advocacy training in the next year for all of our deputies. Our grand coordinator, whose position was allocated by council this fiscal year, is actively working with service providers and looking for funding opportunities to fund that trade, that advocacy journey. Police continue to recover stolen and unregistered firearms, gucks switches, sawdust shotguns and ghost guns from prohibited persons like felons. In fact, according to a March 5th Hawaii Civil Beat article, Hawaii County led the state with the most filed ghost gun charges since the law was enacted in 2021. Fight, we have filed 42 charges. Maui was second to us with 17. Honolulu and Kauai have yet to file any ghost gun charges. To address firearms concerns here on Hawaii Hawaii Island, I met with State House reps, Chris Todd, Gregor Illagon, and House Majority Leader Sean Quinlan prior to the legislative session. I drafted a couple of bills for their consideration. One such bill, House Bill 137, was successfully introduced by Rep Quinlan this legislative session. And it provides the felons be subject to a mandatory prison term if they're found to be in possession of a firearm or ammunition. To my knowledge, it's the only bill that was introduced this legislative session which aimed to address gun violence by holding repeat and serious offenders accountable as opposed to disarming law-abiding citizens. The bill has been transmitted to the governor for his approval and signature. Juvenile justice system. Our crime prevention unit continues to facilitate monthly by-jack meetings promoting wraparound services for our youth. We participate in quarterly meetings with juvenile justice state advisory council and have deputies especially assigned to juvenile drug court. Last month, we coordinated a free training event featuring nationally recognized trainer, Officer Germaine Dalloway, who's better known as talk-up. Nearly 100 attended and they learned about emerging drug trends, how to avoid detection, mushrooms, synthetic THC, creatum, TNF team, which is gas station heroin, vapes, potentiator drugs, marketing and branding techniques, and drug concealment. We co-sponsored career expo fairs for both high school and middle school students twice a year. This passed February over 1100 middle school students from across the way, either interacted with over 60 presenters who spoke to students shared their duties and responsibilities at their current position, their career path, their and provide a helpful insight into what a career in those areas or responsibilities looks like. The tentative date for the high school career expo would be this November and we appreciate our partnership with other county departments including the Department of Parks and Recreation for their, for the venue. In collaboration with the Department of Likker Control, we, we organized an underage drinking prevention and awareness, radio, public service, announcement contest for middle and high school students. Moving to community and crime prevention initiatives, we've noticed a correlation between filing cases, robberies, assaults, murders, and situations where the offender has a documented mental health history. These situations oftentimes are frustrating because it seems as if they could be easily prevented. But for simple intervention, diagnosis, and services, what's exacerbating this issue is the fact of our limited resources and services that we have here on our island, given our population size and the rural nature of our community. Influx serious narcotics, no secret, methamphetamine heroin and fentanyl continue to plague our island. In addition to the lethality concerns, narcotics do have a significant correlation to other, the commission of other crimes given these concerns of white County has prioritized addressing distribution level offenses. HPD recently announced the establishment of an island-wide area one, area of advice unit that is designed to work between both sides of the island to create more stream, stream line than being more consistent between Hilo and Kona. andona. Homelessness remains a significant concern, housing and poverty, as we all know, are identified root causes of crime, especially concerning where we're talking about justice involving individuals and those who are reintegrating back into society after serving a period of incarceration. These people are highly susceptible to reoffending and entering back into the criminal justice system. They need the access to the right types of needs and services. We've seen a 41.7% decrease in the number of traffic fatalities on our roadway on April 4th. HPD reported that there have been seven fatal crashes resulting in eight deaths this year compared to 12 crashes, resulting in 14 deaths during the same time period last year. Contributing to this is just the reality of the circumstances of our roads here on our island, the undivided highways, lack of sidewalks, overhead lighting, things like that. Our office participated in drive with Aloha, mural program at Keal and Ka'u High schools. Ka'u is actually the third mural on our island with Kohala High School being completed last year. Drive With Aloha has a statewide program to paint murals on school campuses. It incorporates an educational presentation for our students with traffic safety partners and it offers a time for us to talk story and engage with our youth about the dangers of impaired driving and the consequences. We were also able to collaborate with Marquis Mollamita to proclaim January 27, 2025, as Drive with Aloha de on Hawaii Island. We're hoping to work with Ken Nishimura and the Drive with Aloha team to paint an additional four murals on our island in the next two years. The next one is planned for a Cali-Kai High School and that's in August. H-Sripple C still the most overcrowded correctional facility in the state. Judges are still referring to the overcrowding issue as a reason to release offenders which does not promote trust and confidence in our criminal justice system. On April 7th, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation released their most recent statistics indicating that the current overoccupancy is at 131.9% with a head count of 298 in a facility that's designed to accommodate operational capacity of 226. What I think is important to notice of those 29 298 in custody 91, 91% of those are being held in felony charges. We still don't have a correctional facility in the west side of the island, nor do we have a dedicated mental health module like you do in a Wahoo, which necessitates transports for inmates for proper accommodations to a Wahoo. Good news is that the new housing, the new commonanna housing unit, when it is finally opened, will accommodate an additional 48 beds. The dedication ceremony was this past December, but they haven't opened it yet. Victim services. Our victim assistance unit or VAU assist victims that witnesses as they navigate the criminal justice system as a March 31st VAU has serviced 3,412 victims of crime. This fiscal year, the U.S. staff by highly trained victim advocates and support staff who support victims by providing case updates, referring victims to community resources and offering emotional support during what can be the most can be a very traumatic frustrating and confusing time. One of our focuses has been to initiate victim services earlier in the criminal justice process. In other words, we're not waiting till a case gets referred to our office, especially on like a pending felony investigation if it's you know, depending on the seriousness. We've identified this time as a crucial point in building rapport, providing support, and easy victims concerns, and participating in the process. Last fiscal year, council approved allocation of two victim services assistant positions. We continue to try to enhance our services. One of the positions is for Hilo and one of the positions is in Kona. We filled both positions. These are dedicated to assist victims of crime in lower level offenses. Our misdemeanors are petty misdemeanor offenses, and they also assist some traffic matters as well. So these were the types of crimes that did not automatically receive victim services. Now this is also something that's unique to our county because the other counties do not offer victim services for these lower level offenses. The EU is also instrumental in coordinating community events like this month's National Crime Victims Rights Week, Activities Child Abuse Month, Awareness, and Sexual Assault Awareness Month. We also continue to be the only prosecutors office in the state with a dedicated Restore Justice program. Next slide please. Last April, we rolled out our new case management system called Prosecutor Your Barbarate by Carpelle or PBK. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was during budget presentations last year that we actually had the PBK staff here on island in Hilo and corner to assist with the go live implementing. if I remember correctly, it was during budget presentations last year that we actually had the PBK staff here on Island in Hilo and Kona to assist with the goal-life implementation process. Since then, we've obtained our new email domain and transitioned to Microsoft 365, which offers additional services and resources to all of our staff. PBK has essentially modernized enhanced case management for our office and the wider community. It integrates with HPD's Spill Brecker Management System, axons, body-worn camera footage, which is where our officers wear, at Evidence.com. It offers paperless case files, provides electronic discovery, for defense counsel, facilitates the sharing of data with the judiciary, and can be accessed remotely. It provides improved victim services like real-time notifications. And it also has features to provide statistical analysis and some tools for investigations. We're completing the PBK rollout this year with the distribution of our new equipment laptops, monitors, and desktops for our staff. We've been working with the judiciary and our county and state bar associations to gain, to advocate for the availability of Wi-Fi in our courthouses. Believe it or not, our island does not have Wi-Fi access. So as a result, what we do is our deputies will take Wi-Fi hotspots with them to court so that they can remotely access our system in the courtroom with their laptop. Our MIS team is also currently assessing internet bandwidth capabilities of our three office locations, yellow, m&cona, and to ensure that we have adequate bandwidth and to determine if upgrades are necessary, which may require additional funds. I also think it's important to share that during this current legislative session, state legislative session, we've tracked over 130 bills, we've submitted a testimony in about 30 and I've personally testified virtually on a number of them. To date in fiscal year 25, we've processed 17 contingency relief fund requests for a total of 118,000, $312. These funds were used to support nonprofits in our community addressing issues such as homelessness and training, reintegration, domestic violence, and supporting our youth. Next slide. Thank you. Our office consists of 135 positions. We have three office locations like I had mentioned earlier. We currently are at 105 full-time employees on staff. We have two future employees who are currently in the process of onboarding, and we have interviews for three additional positions scheduled for the next couple of weeks. So we're hoping to be able to fill some of those vacancies. As we all know, one of the greatest challenges employers face is staffing and being able to retain employees. You want to retain your employees because they're the best, because you train them and you've invested time into them. So that's important to us. We continue to have to compete with competitive salaries, benefits and flexibilities that other offices and employers afford their employees, such as working from home. To fill vacancies, we continue to be aggressive. In addition to utilizing the typical county-wide advertisements, we create our own ads that we share on social media. They also get shared by other platforms as well. We've attended career opportunities and resource fairs all over the island throughout the year. With our attorneys, vacancies, we advertise in the state bar general as well. Start the state bar association, I'm sorry. And we've also worked with HR to allow substitution of education in lieu of work experience to meet minimum qualifications for positions because that's something that was brought to our attention. You know, there's a lot of applicants out here who go to school, they get a degree, and then unfortunately they can't qualify for an entry-level position. So by incorporating this type of substitution of education and dual work experience, we're able to provide an opportunity to love all of these young people. Okay, despite competitive salaries, our most significant staff charge remains is with our attorneys. One of the greatest struggles that we've been having is that there's a limited applicant pool. This is nothing new. I know I've talked about this for the last couple of years, but it's something that's really impacting, I think, all of the government attorney positions, especially across the state. And I think what contributes to it, unfortunately, in a long time, for a long time, what we relied upon as in the prosecutor's office, Public Defender's Office, Attorney General's Office, is having a feeder program through judiciary law clerks. And these judiciary law clerks were typically one year law contracts a bit after. They come through there one year, then they go off and get jobs in different areas. But some of these positions have been starting to be renewed. As a result, we've lost that applicant pool. What we've done is we've offered 89 day contracts for lock clerks. And sometimes it's for law school graduates who are waiting for their bar results, or others who have their JD. What happens is it's difficult for us to compete with an 89 day contract compared to the judiciary's year, because these 89-day contract employees are not eligible for benefits like pay time off. And that puts that significant disadvantage. It also may impact their ability to claim the continuous employment. So what we're proposing to do is to move to a one-year law clerk contract, and that would afford those types of benefits for those individuals. We also believe in investing in the future by providing volunteer internship opportunities for people interested in the criminal justice system or in a legal career. We currently have seven volunteers and one law clerk in our office. Next one. Okay. We have a total proposed status quo budget of $14.9 million. About $3 million is comprised of grant funds. We currently anticipate approximately, I think it's 13 grants covering expenses and staff salaries associated with a number of important issues and concerns including family violence, sex assault, traffic safety, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse, technological improvements, firearms or under noncompliance, car theft and electronic crimes. These federal and state funds are used to implement innovative programs, support prosecution efforts, educate the public, improve criminal justice system and purchase equipment. Okay, moving forward, this fiscal year, our primary goals are retaining our experienced employees, complete our new case management system, transition and integrating with our new partner agencies, enhance career pathways for the next generation of attorneys and public servants, continue to prioritize innovative criminal investigation and prosecution strategies, identify seek additional grant funding opportunities to support public safety, further enhance victim services, and further expand upon our community building efforts to address domestic violence, sexual assault, substance abuse, mental health, juvenile justice, and crime prevention. In order to achieve our goal of making Hawaii County a better and safer place, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our budget prep team, um, Gretna Gata, Jemima Manzano, the rest of our physical team, extend my Mahalo to the council, the mayor's office for all their support, and last and certainly not least, I'd like to extend a big Mahalo to all of our staff for all of their hard work and dedication to our community because we would not be able to serve our community. As well as we have without our staff. Mahalo. Any questions? Thank you very much to the council. I'll turn on the call. You want to thank you, chair. Thank you, prosecuting attorney and your staff and Alan Bartolome. I think you got left off that list maybe. Thank you all for being here today and for preparing this and you know, Keldin, sorry, prosecuting attorney. You talk very fast. So I think I got all that, but I have a couple of questions. I tried my best to keep it short, but a lot of you for me. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. One thing the police chief just talked about was diversion as being a strength. Is that something that your office also works on? Sorry, we do have diversion efforts. I mentioned earlier that we're the only prosecutors office in the state that has a restorative justice program. It's a diversionary process which it's victim centered. So the victim has to be the one to want to initiate. But you bring an offender together with a victim and then they're able to sometimes get to the root cause of whatever the issue is. These are very beneficial in situations where perhaps there's going to be a continued relationship between the victim and the offender. Neighbor disputes are a really good example. Most times people aren't going to move, right? So they're going to continue to have this type of relationship in contact. So if we can settle a dispute utilizing the research justice process, it can be very, very effective. There's a lot of different types of diversionary efforts. Back in, I think it was 2000 and 2021, I believe, during the pandemic. One of the things that we tried to do was get creative, was we tried to run a drug, a pilot diversion program, which was what I like to refer to as a, it's true diversion. So what that means is a case was initiated by police, they call an on-call prosecutor that on-call prosecutor would evaluate the case, the facts and circumstances presented, the individual's criminal history had the media certain criteria, the vents had to fall within a certain criteria, and essentially, if that individual chose to be willing to enter the diversionary project, the goal would be that they would obtain a substance abuse assessment, follow any recommended treatment until clinical discharge. And if they did that, they would agree not to file charges. Now, this was in the heart of the pandemic when a lot of individual servicing incarcerated were being released. and because it didn't have that, I hate to say it, but the hammer or that punishment hanging over people's heads, a lot of individual serving and parserity were being released. And because it didn't have that, I hate to say it, but the hammer or that punishment hanging over people's heads, a lot of them didn't follow through. So we had, I think, 12 people enter into the program, none of them follow through. So it just kind of shows you that sometimes you can provide an option, but if you don't have a accountability factor, a consequence that people won't necessarily follow through. So that's kind of the difficulty sometimes with diversion. It really has to do with the individual. So in your budget, it's under the restorative justice piece. The restorative justice is those positions are vocal funded positions. Okay. And then also. I saw one other thing around substance abuse prevention. That's probably a good. I would say maybe helping with. Yes, before people get. So we have a crime prevention unit. It's staff by three staff members. A program manager and two special project coordinators. One of the special project coordinators is dedicated to substance misuse and then that also kind of overlaps into impaired driving. Okay, so dedicated to facilitating capacity building efforts in our community. Okay, do you feel like you have enough in your budget to do what you need to do in these areas for diversion or trying to keep people in committee to serve. We're always willing to take more funds to assist us in accomplishing our goals. One of the things that we had brainstormed about with our crime prevention unit is expanding. And I touched on it a little bit about mental health and homelessness. When we have special project coordinators, one's dedicated to substance misuse, like I mentioned earlier, the other position is dedicated to domestic violence and sexual assault. Now, there's a whole bunch of other areas that we could improve upon and address. And one of the ideas was mental health and homelessness. So, we do have a supplemental budget request, item requesting an additional special project project coordinate position that will be devoted to mental health and homelessness. Okay, thank you. That's really important to know. And then you said something about mental health assessments, I think, being in, you don't have those available or we don't have them in the community available. Is that what you were saying? No, we do have mental health assessments available. It's just we have very limited service providers. So oftentimes when we're talking about just as involved individuals, these are people who oftentimes have what we call dual diagnosis. So they have mental health and substance misuse issues. And the availability of those programs is very limited, especially for looking for something where we want to have like a residential treatment program where you want to have somebody in-house, like a in-bed and have treatment in the facility as opposed to an outpatient treatment setting. Okay, I thought you said something about sending people to a Wahoo? Oh, okay. So each triposie does not have a dedicated mental health module like how they do at the Wahoo Community Correctional Center. As a result, they don't have the same type of staffing or facilities to accommodate individuals that might need a higher level of care. And those individuals oftentimes would have to be transported to Oahu. Okay, but that's not in the purview of your office. That's just a reality of the system of the public seat. Okay. Trying to understand how long we're going to do law. Okay, but that's not in the purview of your part of your office. That's just a reality of the system of the public seat. Okay. I was trying to understand how to understand all of our problems. Finally, my last question has to do. We had a presentation around sex trafficking and one of the disturbing things that we were told is that there haven't been any successful prosecutions or even maybe I don't know. Could you elaborate on that? Do you have funding to and I didn't see it. I also didn't see it in your priority. So I would love to hear, is there anything we can do budget wise that would help with going after these sectors? Very familiar with the issue at hand. You know, we've heard from a lot of community members about the concerns they have about sex trafficking happening in our community. It's not something that we take lightly or something that we disagree that is occurring. But the reality is this, the reports aren't coming into law enforcement. So we try to encourage people to come forward and share their concerns. Now, victims of crime may have many different reasons why they don't feel safe in coming forward. Whether they believe that they're susceptible to being revictimized by going through a process of having to testify in court, that might be one thing. They might actually fear for their safety. Maybe they don't have a successful safety plan to get out of the situation that they're in. Sometimes it might be a situation of a power and control dynamic where the individuals just might not have resources available to get out of the situation. There might be a minor. Maybe it's an immigrant. So I'm just as frustrated as those community members, they express those types of concerns. This past state legislative session, they introduced the bill and you know, at off the top of my head, I can't remember where exactly it is. I believe it's, I'm hoping that it made its way to the governor's desk where it's been transmitted, but it's House Bill 111. And our office was the only government agency I think that supported and provided testimony supportive of that bill. And that was a bill to hold individuals accountable civilly to increase the statute of limitations. And that to afford another purview for victims of crime to seek some sort of, you know, recompensation for injuries that they may be able to get in the civil system as opposed to their criminal justice system. But the crux of it is that we need to encourage people to come forward. When we do have individuals who are victims of sexual abuse, I can tell you that those are probably some of the toughest cases. Our victim assistance unit can probably share more and our sex assault prosecutors can share about just how difficult it is. Oftentimes, prosecutors get criticized because the first headline in a newspaper article will say in a deal with prosecutors for serious cases. And the reality is we can't jump up and tell people, well, the biggest part of the picture is that these victims, they're so brave, they've come forward, they've already testified whether it be for the grand jury or during a preliminary hearing and they've already exposed themselves. We can't ever tell someone that we guarantee them a win. We can't tell them that. And when individuals weigh those types of circumstances out, maybe they've moved on, maybe they're a good place in their life. Sometimes they don't want to revisit a lot of things, but they'll speak up about their circumstances and share about their past experiences to educate others in hopes that maybe it'll promote awareness and prevention. So all I can say with respect to the trafficking is, please, if you know someone, encourage them to come forward. Hawaii County Law Enforcement is willing to help them, to support them, and help them get through the, get through that, this, ordeal. We have victim service providers as well with our office. So just, if you know anyone, please encourage them to come forward. Is there any budgetary enhancement that would help with trying to get these cases prosecuted? The issue is not about getting the cases prosecuted. The issue is in getting people to come forward and report. So if you had no cases even come to you, is that what you're saying? We don't have cases referred under sex trafficking. Okay, so maybe we need to support the police department in there. We need to support victims of crime to encourage them to come forward. You know, the other thing is I think oftentimes people might not understand. So when we're talking about sex trafficking is from a prosecutor's perspective. It's the definition of what sex trafficking is in a way, her revised statutes. And perhaps that might be something that a lot of individuals might not be a little bit hung up on, because they might not realize that the conduct and criteria to establish that element of that crime is very specific. And what they might think might be, they might think that some conduct rises to that level, however it doesn't. And it doesn't under the law. And that's why I kind of shared a little bit about the role of the prosecutor. A lot of times it's frustrating for us because people will come to me and they'll share about a circumstance that is very frustrating, you know, or what they feel is unfair. And I sympathize with them, because I agree with them that it's unfair, however, it's not a violation of criminal law or anything that we can enforce within our current county and state laws. So what I do is I often encourage them to talk to their lawmakers, their state representatives to share their experience. And maybe why we need to make amendments. That's why I spent so much time during the legislative session. Thank you. I really do appreciate that. No one had a problem. I can definitely look into that. And then I just want to thank you extra for working with Council member Kirkwitz on the dangerous dog issues. I really do appreciate it. And thank you for the council member Kirkwitz. All right. Thank you. I yield. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Campbell. I thank you guys for being here and thank you for the excellent comprehensive and compact presentation. And particularly, do this graphic, which I love, this format instead of pie chart. I think that was your request. I'm glad you like it. Thank you very much. I had a couple of quick questions. More technical in nature with respect to the budget. Under the 5271.288 to victims, what's going on there with the regular salaries and wages versus the miscellaneous salary and wages and that can a realignment? I'm sorry could you see the line? It is two seven five two seven one point two eight. Vicks eight to victims. Yes. Page one two three four of my budget book. Hello, good morning. Grant and I got the business administrator for process. Because I remember'm working with you. Could you repeat the question again? I'm sorry. Yeah. So what I'm noticing is that last year's budget for regular salaries in wages was $400,000 with $34,000 for miscellaneous salaries in wages. And then we have an adjustment for the proposed 2526 where the regular salaries and we just drop down and the miscellaneous comes up. I think for for fiscal year 26 I think that was addressing that we had to make in the salaries in fringes. But I can look more into it and get back to you. Okay. All right. But it would be just sort of difference in over time or decisions. Again, yes. So with the victim witness, or the A2 victims grant and the Volca, we've been, there's been a reduction in the funding for the VOCA side. And so we've gotten additional supplemental funds through the victim witness grants, the A2 victims fund. And so we've been moving some of the salaries, the positions between the two grants. OK. Shoulder and balance it out. Okay, so does that also pertain then to 5271.56, the victims of crime act where we have the 2425 with 654,000 for regular salary and wages, 346 for miscellaneous, the fringes. And then, well, with that, we're just seeing a gradual reduction. Are we moving staff out of that? Okay. So I'm going to bring out Tar-Benevige. She's our director for Brickdom Assistance yet. We also go, used to go to the same gym. She's much stronger than I am. I'll just note that right now. Do you still go? Oh, yeah, yeah, me neither. Okay. Okay. Worked out well. So essentially last fiscal year the AG's office We tend to get the amount ahead of time because we're about two three years behind Unfocused so we know what we're going to anticipate getting so our standard base in victim witness in the previous years It's always been about 93,371 dollars And then we ended up getting last year year, the supplemental, our supplementary request of $350,000. Given that we knew VOKA was going to deplete drastically in the next few years, the AG's office already put in for this coming fiscal year our standard amount to be now $443,371. As to the base amount of 93. So we're trying to adjust accordingly with state funds. Okay. Okay. And so that is, that's anticipated that the current and so we're probably been anticipating having to get more funds in the future as well because Volkut is again going to decline in the next couple of years. Okay. And both of these things are ones that I'd like to see continue funded well. So if we need to step in and fill that gap, I think that that's something a lot of us share interest in. Thank you. I was asking HPD about any funding coming to you guys from the opioid settlement funds. No. No, I don't believe so. OK. And then lastly, just super curious, what is the bill? Remember, you mentioned the bill that you worked on with Christad and again then Around the gun hospital 137 Okay, thank you now that my radar I'll go check it out. Thank you. Congratulations on getting it to the governor's death Thank you one one thing I want to share you know about the Because maybe others may have the same question, but you know with the the vocal funded positions, those oftentimes are also very difficult for us to fill, because they're vocal funded, they get renewed, and they have expiration dates, so they're not permanent positions. So a lot of times staff members will, or a potential employee is one permanent county job, right? So they're going to be discouraged from applying for these positions, but there's whole crucial and important. So we've incorporated requests to convert some of these positions to permanent positions and it's part of our primary supplemental request. I understand that funding is very tight this year. We listed out and believed 10 positions that we're hoping that one day we will eventually be able to convert to permanent. And a lot of it is because to address these types of funding, filling vacancy issues. Because these are the ones that we have a hard time filling. It's these temporary positions. So I understand that 10 would be very difficult to convert. However, we did provide a priority list on one through 10, as to which ones would be most impactful, where a lot of times they impact individuals who are backfilled, like two or three times. So we have positions in our office where someone is in a position, their temporary, because the person that they're in is a permanent status position of a person who is in a vocal funded or a criminal prosecution position. Just to provide some context to the request. Just I know that there's differences. What are some of the general, are these attorney positions or they? These are legal assistant positions, investigators, victim witness advocates, legal clerks. And yeah, for the most part, those are the types of positions that they are. I can say, well, that would be very difficult to fill, especially when you are struggling to fill some of those permanent positions as well. Especially when, if you have two positions available and one's permanent, one's a temp than likely they're gonna want the permanent and then Unfortunately, the the temp position might might be hanging out there when they're temp based on funding It gets even worse when it gets closer to the end of a fiscal year Because then it gets to the point where we're so close to the end of the fiscal year where they can't earn benefits because we haven't gotten the confirmation of the money's going to be there for the next fiscal year. As a result, you may lose another ability to fill that for like three or four months. Well, I look forward to discussing the supplemental, because I think these are important roles for the prosecutor's office to thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Oli, sir. Thanks, Chair. That's one thing I hear about state and federal grants with positions wise, you know, like, for example, police, they give like three years of paying the salaries and so forth. And after that, the county has to take over it, right? And so now we got to scramble to find the money and so forth. But, yeah, this came, we'll mention, just put it in your budget and move forward. I had text Allen a while back because I was watching this show on the TV and had about Mother's Court in Honolulu. So I asked Allen about that program because it seemed like when I was watching the whole thing. It seemed interesting and it looked like it's working, I guess, in Honolulu. So my question to you is, are you folks looking at doing something here? And I know you got to work with the courts and you got to work with Mr. Kim to see if they can implement that. But also Alan mentioned about outreach court, which I think could go to a broader spectrum of more, I guess, I guess different categories of people, I guess not criminals, I don't know if they're caught in crime, but you know, those situations were. Right. So what would you suggest? And also, how would we be able to help you if you folks want to implement something like this with the courts and how the council can help. Sure. So great question. We actually are making some traction with women's court. Third Circuit has recently in their budget had requested for funding for a women's court here on Hawaii Island with a pilot program Aracona and Judge came actually put that in and I believe there was a I can't think of the the bill off of my head, but there's a there's a bill member I'll probably has it someplace where he's tracking home, but um We did our office did provide support for that for that and it's um to create a pilot Position program, including funding for the positions. So they're looking at trying to do a pilot program for women's court in Kona. And then eventually, moving it over to Hilo as well. It's going to be sort of like a division of drug court. The outreach court, I believe, what he's referring to is community court. They have a model that they used in Honolulu and it was more like the lower level offenses and to help individuals oftentimes homeless who they've tried to use it to address traffic finds, not appearance in things like that because sometimes these individuals, they just don't make it to court. So instead of waiting for them to come to court, they go to the community and meet with them in the community and try to address their issues. Maybe converting some of their fines to community service or other types of resolutions or basically trying to clear their docket. take care of all their cases and get them the docket so that, because they might not be as responsible in meeting all their obligations and court appearances, resulting in the issuance of warrants, which creates additional arrests, further burdening police prosecutors, and the rest of us in the justice system. That's something I'm totally willing to work with, Council on. I know Council Member Kirkwood has been advocating for community court in Puna for a really long time. Maybe it's something that we can try to partner up in. You know, try to maybe get the ball rolling and maybe do like a meeting and then further looking at the model that's already been instituted. Honolulu we have the right composition with our judiciary, with our chief court judges that they would support instituting a program like that here on our island. Okay. And is there a bill for that funding for that too? I will, not for the community court, but for the women's court. I can get you that bill number. Yeah, and then send them to all of us and then that we can send in testimony in support. Sure. Okay, good. The other thing is, you know, I always went out on the previous council. I supported domestic violence and till today, well, this, I mean, two years ago and even And like last year, I did my Christmas holiday messages for domestic violence and also for drinking and driving, right? So you know, since I came back, I haven't really reached out yet to whoever is a coordinator for that now. So can you maybe give like a brief update of what's going on and maybe they can contact my office so I can get involved again with them? You know, it's an interesting that you mentioned that. So that's our domestic violence and sex assault special project coordinator position is one of our vacancies right now that we're set to have interviews very soon. So once the position is filled, I'll have that person reach out to you directly. And then as far as with the substance misuse, I can have this special project according to reach out to you. It's real Miller. I'm sure you've worked with her before. Okay, great. Yeah, I mean, and I didn't recognize you terrified. So like I mentioned the other day about, you know, providing funding for trainers, because I think someone, I don't know if it was HR, but can't be like train the trainers. And that's what we did with Tarragans, with the prosecutor's office, and did with the safe date, right? And they used to go to the high schools, like Wai-Kai schools, one of the pilot projects with the students, and they were working with the physical ed program. And then also they were training the nonprofits that would want to continue that or with their program but yeah so I still want to reach out and help you guys out on that part yeah because I don't know if you're still certified or if there's somebody else you can come up. Yeah. So to my knowledge, there was no, I guess, real expiration date on the certifications. I did look into the recent curriculum. Not much has changed. I conceptually everything is still the same. Just would probably need to purchase new core clubs are just new subscriptions and stuff like that. But my understanding is there's still several schools who are implementing safety. So it's great. But I do agree I think to expand our services to people I think bringing in a trainer to not only just train, but train trainers, right? And that for us really helped, we were able to train a bunch of facilitators over the years on safe dates. And so are you still doing it? I'm not. So who is it? No, well, so it's the high school. I mean, because that was the idea, right, was that the schools would eventually take over as long as we provide the training, again, the curriculum and just teaching, like at Waikia High School, for example, right, we would kind of teach them how we would facilitate the curriculum. Okay, but there's nobody in the office now that kind of what oversees. No, I suppose planning on having someone would look too. Perhaps that's something we can consider working with our with coordination with our victim with this team and our crime prevention team. Okay, okay, sounds great. Yeah, just let me know how it can help. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll remember. Excuse this. Thank you, Chair. Hello, Professor Karyan-Saryan. How are you? How are you? Thanks for your time here today with your staff. Mahalo to Council Member Kimoffer asking about some of those fluctuations in the salar's and wages. So, appreciate you answering those questions there. I just wanted to dive back into kind of that same. Hello to Councilmember Kimmel for asking about some of those fluctuations in the salaries and wages. So I appreciate you answering those questions there. I just wanted to dive back into kind of that same area in the budget lines on the total aid to victims. There's the travel and training and then the miscellaneous charges. There's nothing in the budget for this fiscal year, but then. So this seems like a kind of cyclical thing there, but then in the miscellaneous charges jumping up to 30,000 from what it was in actuals from just shy of 4,000, if you could just expand on that. Okay, so for that, the 30,000 miscellaneous charges, it's, it's funds that we have set aside for to eat for victims but for this grant there's a 10% restriction and so so part of that restriction we have budgeted there we're not we can't use it yet until they release the the restriction but it's there in case we in case it does get released and we can we can utilize that but the but those those one is the hope victims. Sometimes you have to fly them out of their safety. That's beyond. In case it does get released, then we can utilize that. But those ones are the hope victims. Sometimes you have to fly them out of their safety. That's beyond the travel. It's the victims funds itself. Okay. Yes. Yes. The other travel, I think, is that's more reference for our staff. Yeah. But there was nothing in the serious budget for staff this year though. Among her many hats, she also receives the grant. The vote. Like I mentioned earlier, funds are decreasing and so right now our priority is to keep staff funded. Also to with FOCA there is a restriction on how much we could spend for training and travel for our budgets. I believe now it's at 1% again and so but based on my projected numbers this coming fiscal year I'm I barely have enough money just to kind of staff and again to be able to provide some funding for emergency services for victims. Okay, thank you. And then just you can, the one other question on the Volca maybe you can't answer some territory too is under the miscellaneous contracts. Now requesting 90,000 for this proposal school year. Just miscellaneous contracts or anything particularly looking for. So that's what we hope to be able to subcontract out to nonprofit agencies for sexual assault and the misguided services. Okay, thank you. So typically they would, we try to provide those types of funding for sexual assault support services like the YWCA, sexual assault support services program or the Tata Family Service for their domestic violence services. They also receive a lot of federal funding such as Volga. We're all taking quite the hit with Volga in the next few years. So if I do have that extra funding, I want to be able to provide that. They also provide a lot of advocacy to victims of crime that are beyond our scope in the criminal justice system. So the shelter, the WCA goes to singing exams and provides advocacy for victims throughout that process. But we try to do what we can at least on our end with the that small pot of money for emergency support services. Thank you for that clarification. And then prosecuting intern, I'm not sure on this one, the Traffic Safety Train Project. The actuals for travel specifically 19,000 and then the current fiscal year 133,000, what have your expenses been on debt for your staff on travel and expenses there for conferences and so forth? Because you're requesting the same and this proposed that I'm just kind of curious how we're, how we're, how we're, how we're spending that. The traffic safety training is our department transportation, grant funded project. So the reason why the, that travel amount is quite large. It also covers the travel for all the outside agencies that fly in because it's a statewide training. So we have every county police department prosecutors office department of attorney general's last August We had in addition to those agencies. We had department of law and we had a do care. We had us park rangers. We had the control. We tried to invite as many people as we could. But a large number of those are off from off island that covers that travel expenses. Okay. Is that have any history connection with the Vision Zero project and the county past past years? I know that that's sort of connection with enough on the year with Division Zero. Okay. Sorry. No problem. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council member. Council Member Nubman. Good morning. Good morning. Just a question regarding the partnership with Lickard. You shared you did some radio programming. Can you share a little bit more about that? Our crime prevention unit partner with the liquor control, and we put together a underage drinking and prevention substance abuse awareness campaign project. So we advertised and students, middle school and high school students were able to come together with a 30 second radio clip, and that was actually to actually air and we selected winners and then the winners received gift cards. So one of the things we learned from the project was that we and I guess this dates us right but we live in a day and age when a lot of these little school high schoolers don't really listen to the radio anymore right. So maybe next year we'll do something in a social media clip or they talked about doing ads for like online streaming services like Spotify. And it was a very interesting experience, but that was the part I should be doing with Likker. Okay. And then for that was that funded by you folks or by Likker? Likker did the gift cards. We just help put together and coordinate. OK. They're coming in this afternoon and an ongoing theme throughout the budget with them is the community programs. Yes. They have a special line item for. So I'm hoping and I know Director Takase in conversation is working to try and make better use of those funds and I know programs like this partnership hoping that your office it seems that you folks might be a little bit more strong in the area of public programming can offer some support to get that funding out through these different outreach programs. So I just want to encourage that and I totally can do it. So we'll mention that to him this afternoon. I'd very much appreciate that. You know, what we did, the Ka'ou mural at Ka'ou High School. And Brandon Gonzalez with the liquor industry actually came out with us. And he used as an opportunity, I know he was networking with the faculty and staff and I think they were discussing project grad and things like that. So I think it's a great opportunity for us to partner together between Likert and Prasya's office. Perfect. And yeah, part of what's going on there is that they've been making effort with the project grad funds, but Project grad maybe isn't a thing as much as it used to be as well. So understood. If we're not able to program that money that way, then looking to these community programs and outreach that hopefully help. You know, um Want to since we're all here. I think we all share that uh an interest in you know, um, especially with the youth. One of the ideas that I had a while back was trying to put together something that, like maybe like a concert setting for our high school graduates and use it as an opportunity to promote some positive messaging, whether it be substance misuse, maybe domestic violence related about, you know, tindating things like that, use it as an opportunity to bring people together from different areas, bussemin and, you know, promoted by using music. So I mean, if it totally willing to try to work and collaborate with you guys, if you guys want to try to work to do something like that. I think that'll be really exciting for our community. Brilliant, thank you. And then just one question about the numbers you might have mentioned. Sure. The overtime has consistently been over what you've projected in the budget. I might have missed that, but could you just re-explain that? Sure. I think with the new case management system, we encountered, um, getting people trained up to speed. And I'm really hoping that now with it essentially integrated with the, we just completed the final integrated grants actually are really knowledgeable about this. And we just did the final integration with HPD. And what it does is essentially it populates the reports into our system, which will save time. And I think as our staff gets more comfortable with the case management system, we should reduce those overtime costs. Also, I'm hoping that as we continue to restaff our fill our vacancies, we're going to get to the point where there's going to be less overtime. A lot of it's related to the vacancies. And for, I think, for a long time, like our legal clerical positions, staffing in corner is very hard. And it's because it's not because of the office. It's the circumstances, the cost of living, and things like that. Our legal clerical positions are lowest paid positions. So we've utilized hiring incentives and hiring about the minimum that try to encourage and bringing in experienced staff members. Oftentimes we're attracting them from other county departments, however, so we're actually contributing to vacancies and other other departments, unfortunately. But you know, we're like getting our good people to serve in the best capacity, right? I'm hoping that with the advent of the the new case management system, bringing in fill in these vacancies that those over time hospitals down. Okay, thank you so much. And in terms of recruitment, I guess we just want to say, we had the discussion with director Tokio yesterday. But for all of the departments, as we make it through the fiscal year, and if we're facing difficulties specifically with recruitment and HR procedures, you know, that might warrant another conversation here at Council to see what we can do to resolve and expedite the recruitment and hiring of individuals. So just mahalo to you and the team for being here today. Thank you. Mahalo. Thank you. Council member Gourgwood. Thank you, Chair. I'm so glad that Chari Naba brought up some of the potential collaborations with Department of Liquor. You folks are doing so much to engage community and youth. And I think that liquor needs help spending their money. And you folks are definitely need and need of additional resources. So we'd love for that to be explored a bit more because a lot of the things that you are doing are really reaching kids and the message is resonating, which is really important. Prescuitor Walgind, if you could maybe just take a minute to talk to us about a program that you and I were involved in when we were in middle school youth builders and how that is something that you might want to reconsider bringing back because not only did it help us with building our leadership skill sets, but it exposed us to various agencies within county government. Thank you for asking. Yes, youth builders thinking back to that in middle school and in high school, it was coordinated out of the Frost Years office and essentially what it did was it provided a vehicle for youth leadership. And we were able to network. We learned about leadership skills and it's something that I think is really essential for us to try to work forward with the youth and try to promote public service and leadership. Because I feel like that's something that we've lost over the last couple of years. But I'd like to share that I found a renewed interest. I think from a lot of people who have been going to reach out about public service leadership and I think it's largely in part because we have a lot of people now in leadership roles who are you know maybe a little bit younger and these kids oftentimes I guess can relate with them. So yes I'd like I'd love to try to expand upon The program, I did some research on it, was run out of our crime prevention unit. And the crime prevention team, I think, once we fill vacancies, we can try to assess and see how we can continue to work with them. The Youth Builders program has actually the namesake. Naleo and Alpio has been continued on with anti-polytic moralis and she's one of the partner agencies that is the coordinator for the career expos that our office participates in. So although the Naleo Nau Pio namesake has since left the prosecutor's office, it continues on in the form of the careers, providing career opportunities for our youth. But I've talked to Antipala as well as Charlene Mazzohar from high school, who's both since retired. And they both are very interested in helping us work to develop a potential maybe a youth summit or some other sort of event to help promote youth leadership in our community. Fantastic. Thank you. You know, Concember Kagiwata asked a bit earlier about some of the mental health and homeless outreach solutions. You talked about a position. You know, there is a homeless and housing fund. I think it's about $12 million this upcoming fiscal year. You know, if this position were to be funded within your office, what role do you see this individual playing in terms of working with all of the folks that, you know, do work in this space and also are getting grants from this county fund? You know, I'm thinking it would be a very good opportunity for us to collaborate between our crime prevention unit and our attorneys units because our attorneys for the most part have the most knowledge of these justice involved individuals and maybe the right individuals who might be appropriate to receive further support. So I think if we can have them work together this special project coordinator could then, in addition to, you know, assist with capacity building efforts and with those in the, those agencies that support those in the homeless community, we could also use it as a means for the attorneys to help divert these individuals and get them to their proper resources and services that they need and hopefully divert them out of their criminal justice system, taking away from services they could be provided elsewhere by police prosecutors and the rest of us in the justice agencies. Okay. We, I think, are gonna be embarking upon our third round of funding really soon. There was a consultant that was recently engaged by the Office of Housing to just kind of evaluate progress, areas for improvement. I'd like to connect to you with that team, as well as administrator Costa, because you're identifying a lot of gaps in service that perhaps isn't evident to nonprofit providers. And so I think you have a lot to add to the conversation. That would be great. Okay, great. And then your top two subliminals. Our first one is when I mentioned earlier about the positions. I understand it's a tall order ask. Remind again that the specific positions. Um, get the list grant. How about I turn over the floor to grant, you can go over the, the 10, the list of the 10 positions. Okay, so we got a, we have 10 positions that we submitted for a supplementary request to, to provide a county funds to, so these are the grant positions. So the first one is our legal assistant too. The second one is our victim witness counselor too. And then our third is a victim witness, we have another victim witness counselor too position. And then two more victim witness counselor, one positions, two legal clerk one positions, an investigator five, and then a legal assistant to in our co-office. Okay, thanks for sharing that with us. I don't think we requested a copy of everyone's subliminals this year, but as we are finalizing revenues, would really like to work with the administration to make sure you folks are getting the support that you need so you can deliver the critical services. I love the work that you do because there's such an emphasis on prevention and getting to the root causes of crime. Thanks for the update on the Women's Court. I was able to speak to Judge Kim about Community Court and you know he loved the idea but he talked about the constraint that we're facing because folks don't want to become public defenders. He mentioned that a lot of folks are having to fly in from other islands to handle cases that are happening here. And I just wanted to share that publicly because we have a lot of great ideas, but oftentimes we don't have the people available here to fill in those roles. I don't know if it's still on the table to think about community courts throughout the various communities or on Humbike E. Islands, but it would be nice if we could maybe you know talk to Chief Justice and then Judge Kim to see if we can make that a reality in the next year. Totally agree. One of the things I wanted to share that did speak to public defender Johnny Kenaga last week and I asked him about the because the public The public defender's office has been dire need of attorneys. They've, they're so short in, in corner that they stop taking all class A felonies and DUI cases necessitating bringing in private counsel, flying them in, sometimes from a walk who could take these cases. Also, they had public defenders flying in as well. And then in Hilo, it was impacting coverage. He reported that they had just, I believe, hired two people for Kona. So they should be back up to staffing in Kona. And I think they had one more person that they were looking at hiring in the Hilo office. So perhaps when these vacancies are filled after some, you know, a period of time, maybe we can revisit and I can talk to them about the community court idea. and they might be able to be staffed. But at the same time, maybe we can start having the conversations with the jury's share. Okay, fantastic. And then, you know, Chief Muscois was here earlier. Talk to him about sitting down, having conversations about addressing some of the crime in light in our downtown areas. So I want wanna make sure that you're involved in that conversation because there's gotta be successful models across the country that we can take a look at implementing here. Appreciate your continued support and always showing up and coming up with innovative solutions. Are you guys still handling your own social media or did you hire somebody to handle that? I still handle it myself. Okay, so prosecutor's not a PIO. Yeah Alan helps. Thanks you guys I mean it's really impressive the kind of information you guys are pushing out and then the last final thing that I want to say is just go Cardinals, go ahead and I are proud graduates of St. Joseph High School Class of 2024. Thank you Chair That's right. I'm sorry. Sorry 2004. Oh my now you're dating yourself. Quarrait premium pregnant day. Thank you. Thank you. So you mentioned in your presentation about the West Hawaii corrections center. Yes. What's going on? I know the last thing I heard was they kind of had a site But they found some native plants or something like this to yeah, so what what's going on? So so my understand so I think that happened I think I think that happened before they actually ended up building the the current Quart House the new Quart House. I think they decided for goal, the jail, and then they ended up building the courthouse. I might be wrong. As far as the conversation on the construction of the jail, I'm not sure where it's at. I know I've been advocating it for a while. I know that there is concerns about the location. People don't want in their backyard, and I understand that. But I think there's viable state land that's available on the west side that could fill public safety needs and offer a better alternative than what we have currently. Because the two R transports one way daily, I think it's a lot of burden on our state agencies, corrections, sheriff's department, but it's the burden of the concern on that transport, on that one way to our transport, and a lot of things could happen. So I think that's of particular concern. The other thing is when you're having individuals who are West of the West all your residents and they're being incarcerated on the east side of the island You know and their representations in Kona it doesn't limit their ability for their council to to meet with them Correct, you know, so all of those types of things I think if we had a facility on the west side it would decrease the occupancy on the in at the at your policy and then we could provide also move towards creating and bringing back that trust in our system that when someone when a crime is committed a fender can be held accountable and also that there isn't this this air of we're only releasing them because it's overcrowded and because I think that's putting the whole sending people the wrong message to our community about what we do to keep them safe. Yeah, no. And then one time you and Ali text me about that situation where the judge released what was charged on what domestic violence was then. Yeah, I mean that was like, that was shocking. Right. And the excuse of like it's being overcrowded. I mean, that was shocking. And excuse of being overcrowded, that's really poor. And for, I hate to sit on the website, they talking about not in our backyard, but look at ours in Hilo. We have elementary school, which is maybe a mile away. Maybe two miles up. There's another elementary school. And then right below is a high school. And when middle school, intermediate school, I mean, they're surrounding my houses. Yeah, you know, it's funny because I've spoken to middle school children and high school kids who have asked me the same question they've asked me. When we talk to, we go into the community, we meet with students. So one of the, I've had more than one kid ask me, why is the jail located where it's located? You know, because they drive past it. Right. And it's interesting, right? Are you right? They have that that says, I have to get kind of explained about like history and why it was located at the time and the composition of the community was different and whatnot and you know at time, the jail was county and now it's state. And they don't understand any of that. All they understand is that you could stand on the sidewalk in front of Easter pussy and throw a rock and hit the intermediate school parking lot. That's all they recognize. So I'm hoping that one day, we can see that priority shifted towards creating correctional facilities, appropriate ones on our island expanding upon services. Because right now, it's because of the limited space that they have, they also aren't able to offer the type of rehabilitation programs that I think our community needs. needs because I might have a feeling that everyone just gets when someone's convicted of a crime. Most of these individuals are eventually one they're going to be reintegrated back into our community. But if we are expecting them to reintegrate successfully, we need to provide them with the tools necessary to succeed. And that means giving them the proper programming to address their issues. And if they're not getting it while they're incarcerated and they were expecting for them to get it when they come back into the community, but our community is limited at what we have, then what are we expecting to change? Right. Nothing's gonna change. They're gonna reoffend and they're gonna come back into the system. Until we stopped overcrowding, corrections cannot put in those programs. Right. Right. So that's why we need the second correction center. So I'll reach out to our legislators on that side to find out what's going on and to see how we can help and it all work with you folks. That would be great. I know there's a lot of emphasis on Honolulu. I'm a that, you know, what about Hawaii Island? And I'd like to see the priority change shifted towards our island. Right now, there is what many are referring to as a proposed super jail to be constructed on Oahu. And because of their overcrowding issues, but like I always say it, you know, statistically, historically of each year policy has been the most over occupancy correctional facility for years. I mean, decades and we haven't seen, we've seen exponential growth in population. We haven't seen a construction of a new facility. Other than the wing that they recently built, built 48 beds But they're talking about like a I don't know billion dollar Facility in a waffle and the reality is a waffle has a number of correctional facilities One one facility in particular while well is a dedicated rehabilitation Facility if you look at the numbers. It's it's it's the occupancy rate. I think it's under 50 percent pretty consistently. So if they would Prioritize the bodies that they have at ultra-pussy and getting them into Yava because their sentence felons at ultra-pussy Then we could possibly reduce they could they could address their own overcrowding issue and then maybe we can focus on Hawaii Island You You know, I cannot understand how they cannot, like, look at the model, what the federal has. The tensions there in the Honolulu International Airport, or DEMKII, then you know, international. I mean, it's just a bill. Looks like an office building, right? I mean, to me, that could be built wherever, right? Even like someplace Goulani or whatever. I mean, and it's simple and it's like, what is that? It's the way they can build it. You don't need as much space, right? And the only other thing I wanted to mention to the public is that, you know, I guess sometimes when they read in the papers about arresting, getting released and so forth, And I think some of them, they must say, what did the prosecutor's office do, right? Why these guys got really, then the story doesn't really explain everything. So I just wanted to make a public that, you guys are doing your job, and it's just a court system that does their part, which is that, you guys, it's out of your hands. Thank. Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Wong-Jane. Thank you very much. I don't have too many questions on your budget. You're one of the more straightforward departments and you do a lot of good work. I'm touching on some of the things I came up today. Did you track SB 2757 from 2024 session. I'm not familiar. Okay. The state enacted the measure. It was it was revolving around the definition of sex trafficking. And that was through the work of Dominique, separate who came in front of the Council a few weeks back to kind of update us on where they stood. Important's being really addressing the language and how we review sex trafficking. And I really honed in on what you said as far as cases coming in and relating to sex trafficking, they might be a number of other things as the definitions apply. Yes. But in the states and act of that bill, they're hoping my take is the intent is to enable us as different counties and municipalities to really address how we review those incoming cases, work with HPD to identify how to really hone in on what they're seeing and what you need to make that first big win. And I look into it because as I'm seeing we're doing stings here in Hilo and Stings in Kona to address buyers for sex activities, especially with minors, that opens the door for you to make your first case in that realm. Which would be huge. And sex trafficking versus this exploitation is, they're related. And looking at it as an exploitive act, that can open the door for your department to do some good. Appreciate that. Yeah, other than that, I don't have any questions on your budget. Thank you. I do have one question for the intern. The intern, well, sorry word, opportunity that you have in your department. Is that on your website? Can I direct people to that? You can have them just You can just have them call me you have my number just have them call me Okay, and then I'll direct them to where they have to have to go. We've been getting a lot of Bullstem that is called cold killed. Oh I think the members of the public because I know a lot of kids in school want to participate You to participate. You can have them call 9610466. That's one option. You can also have them reach out to our executive aide, Alan Bartelome, they can email him Alan, ALLEN. Bartelome, B-A-R-T-O, LOME at Hoi Broskittor's.gov. Okay, so no link though on your post can you turn attorney website. No, you know our website really needs a revamp. So we're gonna be working with our DIT team and we've got a new additional information system analyst who I think has some experience with web design. So we're hoping to revamp that. As of right now most people, they'll reach out to us on our social media media they'll DM our message.com. That's another way they can reach out and we'll link them up. Right now the biggest issue that we have is space. So like I mentioned we have seven volunteers but we're still going through construction. I don't know a couple of you guys have toured our Heel office. So there's a big section that's like not available for us. So space has been an issue in our Kona office though if there's anyone that's interested in an internship volunteer work in Kona a lot of a lot of space. It's easier to get someone into the into the office. So there is on our website there there is a link for volunteers. It's not really internship, but there's some information on there, some forms to give people an idea of what they need to fill out contact information or whatnot. So that is on our website. Yeah, but it's kind of geared more towards volunteers, but interns can, and then there's a link to the email for our office as well. So if they have questions you can call Kauden, Alan or uh, uh, uh, check out that, that link on that page. Okay. I saw that as well. I was looking for that link to put up for everybody, but I didn't see it. So the volunteer application is the way to go right now or just calling the department. Yeah, either way. Okay. What you said worries me. It's like what I saw for electricians. There's not enough people coming into the field for whatever reason. And so helping to bring a man and get him interested, high school, college, whatever, just get a man and get him moving great way to do that. So you're volunteer program. Right. And that gives him the foot of the door. Also that rule set in which allows people enrolled in Richardson School of Law to practice law concurrently. That's beautiful as well. Yes. Thank you very much, Prishat. Thank you. Mahalo. Yep. Thank you to the team. OK, Council, it is 11 and 52. Do you want to take a brief lunch and then go to animal control? OK, let's take a 15 minute recess. Animal control, bear with us. We're just we're behind. Like we always are you you you Okay. Okay, welcome back. We're coming out of recess. Our next department is the Animal Control and Protection Agency. We have the director here and his team. The director, please introduce yourself and your team if you like. And then we'll go to your presentation and then to questions from the body after. Okay, great. My name is Matt Rannels, I'm an Ministry of Framework Control. What I think today is Devon Chang, who is my personal secretary, but she's also teeing into the Administrative Services Assistant position temporarily. So, all right, I guess we can get started. So, thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and talk to you today about our budget and what we've accomplished in the past year and what we look to accomplish in the next year with our budget. So, all right. So this this past with our budget, we've taken on a lot of stuff, a lot of projects. But the operations within the shelters, we brought in about about 350 animals a month on average, anywhere between 300 to 350, which is a pretty good number for our shelters because our maximum occupancy at one given time is about 120 animals. So we at least have to have a turnover at least twice a month of our spaces available to us. About 30 to 40% of those stalls are taken up by case animals, animals that we're holding for, dangerous dog, cruelty and neglect things like that. So it can continue to condense down the space available. But most of our animals that we bring in, we process through and any that are not claimed within our shelters, we have a process for getting them back out to the community or back out to their owners. And part of the process is for us to span new to those. So this past year we did about 687 animals through our shelter. Or actually this past eight months or nine months. We did about 687. We did about 745 animals through our facilities that are licensed in the county now, which was a pretty good increase. And over last year. We also had about 96% rate, actually 90% or above on all of our service calls, which I know is a is a hot topic within the community as far as our service calls go. We are still trying to make improvements to the phone system. We tried to work with IT this past year also with White Telecom to bring in fiber optic into our facility to allow those phones to better increase. So we're still working on that project. Okay. Let's see, this year we're projected to bring in about 300, 3,200 animals, which is an increase over last year, which it actually might go over that, probably more in the range of about 3500 to 3600 animals for the year. And about 1700 of those were projecting to be able to return to owner or dot-doubt through a organizations. So, an overview of our objectives for this coming fiscal year. We're hoping that the renovations within our facilities can increase or at least start. We've been waiting for that to happen, but it continues to get pushed back by things that take priority in the county which we understand. But we're also looking to implement training programs to improve safety with our staff and facility. We're starting to get more staff and more supervisors within the facilities which allows us to create more programs to allow those officers and the Kennel staff to work in a better and safe environment. We also just like this past year, we are looking to do six additional licensing, vaccine, and microchip events within the county to those hoping to be spaying new events. And so, those are what we've pushed last year, and we're looking to do it again this next year. Also start building some outreach tools to better serve the public. Some of these are involved with our software that we've purchased this past year. And so it gives the public a little window into how they can help themselves and help us in the process of finding homes for those animals. Okay. And also implement operational procedures and address each task that the job duties and tail within the facility. So, okay. So like I said, we did six outreach events this year so far. Those events have been very successful within the communities we started in KL and worked our way around. Last one was in January in Oceanview and we got a great you know feedback from the community as far as those events go. I'd really like to continue those. As long as staff we can do it within our current staffing. I'd like to increase that over time but taking one step at a time. Like I said, we had we had pushed for dog licenses within county. It has drastically increased over last year to the point that finances and has said that the numbers of tags that they had available have actually been depleted so they've had to order more tags for the year. We also filled the contract that are in our position. This particular position has actually gone through two contracts this year so far. So we're in our second one which actually started just at the first of this month and we're hoping that we can keep this one with us for a lot longer. So she's a great addition to our facility and to our agency and hopefully to the county as well. So we've also pushed really hard for new hires within this year. We've been, I feel like we have a constant flow of interviews going on in our facilities, but we've put in about 25 new positions or new hires for our agency which has been, it's been a huge push for us. As far as our staffing goes, we have 48 positions total in our two facilities. Right now we have about 16 vacancies and we can't do it fast enough. Honestly, we've been packing away the positions and making sure that we get as many recruits in as possible to fill those positions and interview the most appropriate candidates for those positions as well. So it is difficult, of course, on the cone aside, basically because of the pay that we're offering, it does afford itself a little bit of challenges within that area. So we only have the two facilities. A lot of our current staff that works in Cone actually lives on in the helocyte. So that does create some challenges for, especially on an agency that relies on nighttime service calls. But this gives a breakdown of some of our positions that we have been filling for this year. For our fiscal year for this coming year, we have actually decreased from last year. We put through for a lot of trucks, a lot of equipment when we first started our agency. We're starting to, although we haven't gotten any of those in, we have, you know, backed off of that to a certain degree so that we can start filtering in those and getting them out to our officers to drive on the road. We are dwindling with the current stock of trucks that were given to us at the beginning of our agency. And so we're desperate for those trucks and vehicles to come in. We also have, as far as our budget, we have a decrease in our, obviously, in our equipment. Last year we put through for some of our big veterinary stuff, like our big mobile unit and things like that. This year we're putting in for smaller things for veterinarians to be able to utilize within our facilities things like chemistri analyzers and patient care units. We're also putting through for a large walk-in freezer because right now we're currently using basically, you know, Costco bot, it's freezers and it's not appropriate for what we need or the volume that we go through. So those are some of the things that we're putting through for and are in our budget for next year. So I did, We are going to start increasing our bids for some of the grants out there for animal control, and animal care and sheltering. It hasn't been our primary focus just because we're still trying to build our, the depth of our agency. and so allowing us to grab some of those grants out there and provide them for the county is one of the goals for this next year. For this upcoming year, we're going to continue on with the microchryping campaign. We feel it is extremely important for our community. It has made an impact on our numbers. The numbers that we can return back to their owners. We've seen an impact because of the short-term identification of those animals, the ability of for us to identify the owner immediately and return it back to those owners, gives us the ability to clear out our shelters, to get the animals back to them and decrease our overall numbers that ultimately do not give return to the community. We also are going to start a new campaign on our dangerous dog, laws that are coming out. or a 711, it has a very distinct change that is going to drastically affect the community and the way we impound, house, and return back to their owners for the dangerous dogs that are in the community. And some of that campaign may involve radio spots as well to try to give us the ability to get that information out there for the public because, like I said, it is such a drastic change. And we are going to continue on with our spandier events and vaccines to try to make those available to the public for free because there is such a need in the community. We get lots of part of our cases, we get lots of viral cases within the community and it's a cost and availability to those people that is the problem. We also are going to partner with more local and national organizations to implement implement these county-wide campaigns, getting grants to provide information for the dangerous dog laws and for span neuters within our community. Those are things that we can bring in outside organizations to help us fund those and to give us available tools and stuff within the nation to be able to provide that locally. Okay. Also, I'm gonna be implementing a loss and found website. It is part of this new software that we have implemented this year. And so people can log on, post the dogs that they find in their community, post their own lost dogs out there in the community, and it will run for about 30 days for that spot, and then it falls off after about 30 days. So it gives kind of a central location for people to look at if they find a dog they might go on that website, and even if they don't post it, they can look to see if somebody else is posted that that dog. So currently we're relying on Facebook and some of the other social media posts and word of mouth to try to get some of that information out there which this might streamline it a little bit better in the community. We also are working on our implementation of SOPs for our agency, administrative rules, things like that. We've been waiting to implement some of this stuff because of staffing, if you don't have the staffing to even start implementing some of these rules and SOPs, it's kind of a drop in the bucket to what the problem is. So those are our major priorities for this next year. So try to give more depth to the public and give more outreach to people. I think that's it. Thank you. Thank you very much. To the council member, Houston. You wanna start us off? Sure. Thanks, sir. We'll open a straighter. Appreciate being here today. Thanks for your patience. Going through the other presentations. Here with us. So thank you so much. Of course. I guess I actually have a concern that your budget is decreasing for an office that needs to expand even further. And of course it's not requesting and asking for more vehicles. As you mentioned, this was kind of the big purchase previously. What are the conditions of your vehicles now? I mean, if you're only, I think the budget's only shown or request for one new pickup truck, what is the state of your vehicles right now? Currently we have about four working trucks within the agency. Two or three vans, I think we have three total. One's one of the smaller vans. And we've put through for I think six or seven total trucks, two additional vans, I think three SUVs total. And two more SUVs coming. Okay. And so we feel like with what we have, we have enough on order for the personnel that we have. And so I didn't want to put anything through that was unnecessary. I'd rather put that into other areas. And we do have plans on growing the staff, especially when it comes to outreach. We feel like, you know, currently we have set staff or jobs such as ACOs or Animal Control Officers, Kennel technicians, you know, leads and things like that. But our outreach is really where we would like to gain more momentum within the community. And through that we would need staffing to do some of that. And it's not necessarily a staff that is dedicated to just doing outreach or just doing, you know, that would be staff that we could have secondary jobs within the agency as well. you know, veterinary technicians, you know, a permanent veterinarian within the agency, those are jobs that we feel like we should be adding over time. But with the current growth of the available money we felt like it was not a program for this year. Thank you. What is the trajectory or pathway for the ACO to step into that lead ACO role with those positions being unfilled right now? Well, it's challenging because we don't have enough as far as in the county, a lot of available trained personnel to be able to take on those roles of the lead. In fact, our supervisor on the east side, he just recently moved over from California with 12 years of experience on an animal control facility there. And so it, you know, bringing proper people into the position, whether it's locally or nationally, that's the challenge to be able to give us the right people for those positions. So, sorry, 12 years experience and not qualified for the lead role? No, he qualified for the specialist, which is the next step up from the lead. Got it. So the lead is still something that we're lacking right now. Got it. Yeah, on both sides of the island, unfortunately. But we're grooming people to move in that position. They all start off at level one and work their way up to the four position. And we have some people that are pretty close to that right now. And your main capital project is the renovation of the East facility then. Yeah, that project has been talked about and some things have gone in the works with a temporary office at the facility, although it is not functioning yet, we're still waiting on that to be put down and connected up and everything. The rest of the facility is still as it was the day we moved into it. Okay, had a good conversation with you the other week talking about you know the regional challenges and you know either the vehicle miles are put on or the distances are the staff is going to assist community and community members. So I guess one of the requests I would have is going to have a good conversation with a landowner as well as members of the administration about a North Hawaii regional facility and kind of reactivating that space. And so I would love to see, you know, that is a capital and perimeter quest for acquisition of that parcel. I don't know what it really looks like because there still has to be ongoing conversations with that landowner, but they're receptive to it. And so we just kind of have to work here within the county to kind of find that most appropriate space there. But that's something that I would love to see on your capital budget kind of list going. You know, it doesn't have to be like this for school year, but like looking ahead as we start mapping that out. Yeah. Yeah. And I know I think we both talked about the same property. Yes. We did set aside money in this last budget, which we continue to this one for a lease of that property, if it ever did come to that point of leasing it. And I'm as much in and I'm pushed to try to get that that position or that that facility as well up and running as well as one in the south to be able to give us more abilities to to service the county right now. We're bringing people from either one side of the island or the other and it could be as much as an hour and a half to two hours sometimes depending on the number of calls we get. Absolutely. Thank you Commissioner. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Oonishi. Thank you Chair. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Yeah. So you mentioned about getting staffing on the West Side is a problem. You mentioned about, well, vehicle purchasing new vehicles, right? So I wanted to bring up finance if they can I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. they have it hard time getting employees and you know I can imagine when parks and red public works and planning come I mean mean, they would have that problem too. Is it possible or is it where the county can do this or is it a contract within the unions, but you know, with our health benefits right now is employee paying 50, 50 or 60, 40 employee? I'll have to go check the percentage, but the county still plays a significant portion of that. So to me, if the county can control that, maybe on any position on the west side, then we've got to set boundaries. Like the county pays more, maybe like 75% county, 25 employees. Cause. Yeah, you know, other counties have explored this incentive in order to retain employees. And certainly something that we have done some preliminary due diligence on, so as an option. Yeah, because I think quite, they look in 100% right? That is correct. Yes, okay. So, yeah, so, you know, something to wear, there's something we can, you know, those West Hawaii, you know, people who want to apply for the county position, yeah, who have some kind of other benefits. I mean, pay is okay, but also health insurance is really high too. and especially if you have a family, right? That the other thing was mentioned about field course. So. I mean, pay is okay, but also health insurance really high too. And especially if you have a family, right? The other thing was mentioned about vehicles. So we have a whole warehouse of vehicles on Alponi parking lot. So I'm finance to go look to see how many vehicles are available that are not being really used. And hopefully one day, you know, you can come up with a number for us. And that way they can share with the different departments that need more vehicles instead of purchasing, we have those already, right? Yeah, we're happy to continue that and working with DPW to get a more accurate number. And possibly, you know, like I said previously, automotive will probably have to do some assessment on the vehicles to make sure they're in, at least running condition, and then maybe be able to offer it up to some of those departments in those times of desperate need while we're waiting for the purchase of vehicles. But, you know, and they're, right. And in their reduction, what looks like a reduction in their budget, it is primarily the $610 last year, $1,000 that was for their vehicles. No, it's good. Like you said, you guys traveling, it's like, are fired, the ambulance, no miles that they're putting on in a year, right? So within three years, it's like obsolete to read the ambulance, you have go a new one right replacement because they're breaking down and so for yeah and down there at Waikia station that's a graveyard of all the fire ambulance down there yeah and a lot of our trucks that we currently have they're working are well over the three you know three three hundred fifty thousand miles that put on them. So a lot of them are at the end of their lifespan. Okay, thank you. But thank you. I do want to quickly mention in their budget, they are a fairly new agency. And it looks a little different. It's because the first year we kind of added, it was all in one area. And now we've actually done it properly and broken it down into the areas. As we got more and the agency got more familiar with the needs, we were able to more accurately put it in the different categories. So that's why you see it a little differently than the other departments for fiscal year 2425. Good, thank you. Another thing is, you know, like how DM, they have like certain Saturdays, they do drop off stuff you know different kind stuff like TV, or electronics and some days like certain fluids and all this kind stuff like liquids and stuff like that. Is there a possibility of you folks doing something like that for like animal control or maybe a Saturday if you want to get you know you don't want your pet anymore you can drop it off to you guys on this the at-disciple location. Yeah most of our facilities currently have open intake where if somebody wants to drop off an animal they give us calls and make sure that there's an officer around to accept the animal and then they can relinquish their animal. We call it on our surrender of that animal and we will take the animal. But then what if you make like a special day? Could do that something like that? That's something to explore. I mean it you know we would just have to make sure that our space available. We'd have to coordinate that to make sure that the space is available to bring the Amazon. OK. We try to control and make sure that we don't have a overcrowding population at our facilities, just because the facility itself is at such a condition that we don't want to make it unsafe for the staff. And so yeah, we do control most of the population that comes in. So what is your maximum capacity? I mean, I would say at any given time, I think the most we've had is somewhere in the neighborhood about 160, 170 animals. And so those end up, you know, we have outdoor runs that are emergency in case of like, Fourth of July or New Year's Eve, where we get such an influx, you know, we may bring in 60 to 70 animals in one day. And that is a huge, huge amount of animals to bring in at one time. So it was like the corrections over here. Oh, I know, I know. It is. It's different. It's a different kind of correction. It's only so. Oh, yeah. I guess so. Yeah, I mean, that's it. And, you know, I look forward to working with you more in that our discussion that we had prior meeting. So thank you very much looking forward to it. Yeah. Thanks. Oh, and a little nicer. Okay, thanks. Thank you. I'll remember Kimbo. Hi. Thank you, Ms. Raider. And first of all, I just want to acknowledge what a Herculian task it is to start up with agency from scratch. And you know, as much as we hear the complaints, I want you to also know that we know how difficult and how much Time it takes to actually accomplish some of these things Within the governmental bureaucracy. So thank you for forging ahead. Wanted to ask, we were talking about facilities. So the East Hawaii facility is the one in Portland, Oregon, and Oregon. Is the money for the improvements still there? Where are we in the process? The application is there as far as the money that we requested for it. It hasn't as far as I know hasn't been in the set aside yet for the actual improvements. Some of the work is still yet to be addressed as far as contractors and things like that. So I think there's still a process that has to be involved in that. So we're using it to how is animals? We're using it currently to how is animals? OK. Because it required a septic upgrade, right? Currently, it's on, it is on, it doesn't need the septic upgrade to function appropriately. Okay, and I know there were a number of other things, but we own it now, right? We do, I know. We do, I know. Yeah, lucky, yeah. I know. Where are we with my band and the old shelter up there that was in the community? It's something that we've been going back and forth with since I, almost since I started. I mean, probably about a month or two after I started, I started working on trying to get that property, and we've been going back and forth with the property owner and with our county property management to try to get that property. And so far, we've reached a couple of challenges with it. And so we talked about a lease agreement. We talked about purchasing the property. There are some challenges with that property being in a trust. And so some of the removal of that and getting it out of that situation is some of the challenges. Let's not buy it. I'm just going to put that out there. But maybe Lisa. Yeah. I mean, I'm looking for something. That piece of property is ideal for the North, just in location and the fact that it's set far enough away from the public. But there used to going there. Yeah. And it's hard for our dogs to make more noise than the airport does so it would it would definitely be ideal. Right okay. You know I wanted to ask we have if we'll we'll talk to Parks and Rec about this later but you know we have the ability to sponsor take money to sponsor a facility or parts of the facility through the Parks and Rec Program. You think there'd be any public interest in being able to do that with animal control facilities? I don't know, the Heather Kimball Shelter. I mean, I'm not me personally. I'll put just about anybody's name on a building if they're willing to give us the money for it. So I am not against free money and to get the facilities that we need to function within the county, I'm willing to entertain anything. Okay, I will have to look. I don't know if the code would require legislative tweak to allow it to apply to animal control facilities. But if that's something you're willing to entertain, especially if we're potentially looking at a sanctuary space down in the future, I could see people actually want to have their name on the pieces of that. That's what they do in Lennight. OK, what is the, you alluded to the change to the HRS, but you didn't tell us what the significant change actually was, and I'm sorry, I'm going to be following. Some of us may know, but I didn't, I did not alluded to that, but it's, it covers dangerous dogs and the dangerous dog cases that we get in. Currently, you know, there's not a lot, there's a lot of holes in the current situation and the current intake of those dangerous dogs. And with the new changes to 7-Eleven allows us to fill in those holes and to give our agency a little bit more control over how those animals are moved in and out of our facility and return to their owners with restrictions which allows us to have a better monitor of those animals for the future of those neighborhoods that those animals go back into. It also gives people more known vacation of those of those dangerous dogs in their neighborhood. Those owners are required to have posting on their property that their dog has been deemed dangerous by animal control or the police. The police have the same capabilities. It allows our officers to go back and monitor the conditions of those animals and the restrictions that we put on them, which includes confinement for the animals. If their animal is not confined, it has to have a basket muzzle or be confined for anybody that is in the household at the time the animal is out of their confinement, they have to be 18 years of age. And so these kind of restrictions are things that we don't have currently. And once our officers have the ability to deem a dog dangerous, it allows them to have that ability to say, you're not following these restrictions, we're going to need to confiscate your dog again. Okay, so interesting. Because I recall one of the, when we were initially setting up the agency and looking at the HIRS and then mending our code here with the dangerous dogs, that one of the issues was, I think Jen and I were talking about the same day, holding dogs that were in criminal cases for the length of the time that it took for the case to go through and that just backing up backing up Yeah space that we have available so does that change this because they can go back to the owner That's what we're we're implementing so with those dangerous dog cases the case can continue regardless of what the status of the dog is in our Facility and so once we deem that dog dangerous, the dangerous designation lasts for three years. And so whether or not the owner is prosecuted or the owner is, has a case pending, is totally separate of our, are deeming the dog dangerous. And allowing us to put the owner, owner has the responsibility to implement these changes to get their animal back. And once they do, we can monitor it and make sure even if the case by itself is going in its own direction or only at the time. I mean, last year, I think the longest case dog that we held was over 400 days. And so with those kind of conditions, we would like to get those animals back to the owner of the possible or but the law also gives us the ability to make the decision that if this animal is so dangerous to the public or that the injury sustained from that initial bite are so outrageous that we have the ability to make the decision of whether or not the animal should be returned period. Okay that's good to know because I'm not loving this I have to say. Yeah. Especially when you're already understaffed and now you have another enforcement component that I mean that monitoring would be great if we had enough people to actually do it. Yeah. It's you know it is an extra burden on our staff. As far as our officers go, they will have to monitor these people and put them on a rotating recheck schedule. But it does free up space within our facilities. It gets those dangerous dogs out of our facilities, so safety is increased within our facility. you know, for those animals, want you keep them in a facility like that, for any length of time, their own training starts to degrade. And whether or not they can be returned to the owner at the end of that stage is questionable. And so we want to try to work out to what's best for the animal and for the owners and for the public, because we want make sure that those dogs, you know, unlike right now where we may have to return a dangerous dog to an owner and there's no follow-up, no restrictions, nothing that we can say, hey, this animal is dangerous to the public and we need to keep continuously monitoring it. We can do that with these changes and rather than having a revolving door for those dogs that have no restrictions, the owner gets the dog back and it ends up back in our shelter within 48 hours. I know we're anticipating some more chapter 4 changes from my colleagues here, so I look forward to to work conversation about this. It's a bit of an intractable problem, but I think we can just continue to improve. And again, thank you for all your effort in getting this agency set. Of course. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Gilema? Yeah. Well, who is first? Who's first? I don't know. Okay. How's the member of Glimma? All right. Yeah, so I just wanted to, well, I also just recognized that you've been making really steady progress and we're kind of talking about your anti-fam base. I think it's actually getting a little smaller, even though you still have some core. But I hear the compliments increasing over the complaints as well. Right, yeah. And I think this passionate people, yeah. Yeah. Well, love animals too much, perhaps. But yeah, there's that ongoing complaint about not being able to get through. So I'm wondering if there's anything that we can do to help get that, you know, physically get you connected up to something that has more capacity for calls. It's more money. I wish I could say it's the money issue. It's really the construction issue of the problem that we brought the fiber opt to come to the property. But it requires a certain level of equipment to be able to hook it up completely to our system. and until the construction is finished, they're not willing to put that that equipment in to be able to completely hook it up We we have approached small alternatives, but some of them have not panned out You know including satellite phones things like that to try to get the connection But right now we're still working on that initial system that was in place, which was pretty much just a house phone. So it has its challenges not just with the number of calls it can receive, but also with the number of messages that it can save at one time for us to go back and check them. And so if a person's on the phone for any like the time, they could get two or three calls at one time. And we get anywhere from 70, you know, about 70 is probably our max, but anywhere from 20 to 70 calls a day, an average about 50, but it does get overwhelming. And sometimes those dispatchers, can't always go back and go check the messages every single minute. So, you know, every couple of hours they'll try to check those messages and make sure that they're pulled. And then with the house system, it only saves, I think, something like 45 messages at a time. So there's some of them do fall off the radar, which we try to find ways to get those messages checked more frequently, including having some of our clerks go over and check the messages while the dispatchers are answering calls. And so it does get challenging. And we would like that system improved. It's probably our number one complaint. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, you know, in itself maybe an improvement that, yeah. And when it finally gets improved upon, I think it'll make a drastic change to the way people New York are called and takes. I wonder if like, have you looked at like a like an on-screen service? Maybe because that's what the vet's do, you know? So yeah, after hours. We looked at maybe contracting it out to a there's a couple of mainline services. I think Hawaii, or Maui, Humane Society did at one point. And I think the Humane Society on Oahu as well contracted that at one point, but they've also moved away from it because it's hard to find a service that can one, you know, properly dispatcher or officers to the right locations and also, you know, because a lot of the roads on this island, you kind of have something you have to have some really good knowledge of the area, otherwise you could get easily lost. And Archie dispatchers, one was a, he worked on insurance claims and so he spent, he spent the last two years driving around this island learning all the back roads and the other one was a dispatcher for a great number of years with the police department. So she knows a lot of these roads as well. And it's easier for her to work with our officers because she can dispatch them so easily. And so that's my biggest fear with switching to a contract service would be that we lose that touch with the officers and with the island topography. I see. I you probably have better percentage of calls answered, but you might not have the information that you need to actually respond because it'd be just like a road somewhere. Yeah, somewhere. No real difference between, you know, we get some calls that are like, oh, there's a band and her step, the stop sign, you gotta take a right, and then it's, you know, You know, and so it's, you know, some get some calls that are like, oh, there's an abandoned her step, the stop sign, you have to go right, and then it's, you know, and so it's, you know, some of those calls can get crazy and in our dispatchers handling pretty well. Yeah, yeah. We have talked about moving and possibly to the main dispatch center and with the police and fire, which is another option, I did talk to the mayor about that. And it is something that we've entertained. It's just a matter of one, they have to get the center up and running completely in two findings base for animal control to be in that same facility as well. Okay. But you think that might work potentially? It potentially could work. Because it would allow our dispatchers to still be on island and make sure that you know they get you know good contact with our officers as well during the day. So it is something that we're working on. Cool, thanks. Yeah. The other thing and we were kind of talking about this a little bit outside just here is like morale, you know, like you said you have a a hard time with keeping folks and getting folks. And I mean, you know, one of your requests is ballistic vests. So I mean, this is a pretty hardcore job. So I feel like they need to get more recognition. Oh, yeah. Yeah, around that. Yeah. We've been building the staff and one of the the things especially in the same relations to the police department of giving quarterly or annual recognitions of an officer. We've also talked about our success stories type board, you know, whether that's on Facebook or one of the social media outlets is another option to be able to recognize those officers for doing something above and beyond just like the police department does. So something that we like to do. Okay. I mean, potentially, I don't know if you'd be open to this council member, Renabo, and maybe we could put them in the Javeo lineup a couple times a year and get an animal control officer in our submind for animal control because it is as we've been talking about a public safety type service. Yeah. I mean our officers, you know most animal professionals come into the industry with heavy passion for animals and it's, you know, we don't necessarily see the best of the best of the public, a lot of our locations that we go to. We see some pretty horrific cases. And so those officers, the burnout rate is pretty quick. The job satisfaction is low. And so for them to keep them around and keep them going every single day is a struggle sometimes So so yeah, it's it's definitely something we need to work on better morale and better Better recognition of those those officers Yeah, I'm success stories. Yeah, sounds good. All right. Thanks so much. I yield. Thank you. Does Callie Wattam? Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Administrator, for being here. And your staff, thank you very much. I know you've been filling in a lot of gaps. So just following up on what my colleagues have been saying, I'm wondering if there's anything we could put in the budget to help even with like mental health and support for your staff because of the type of work it is and the strain that they're under and in order to try to maybe alleviate some of that. So it'd be really good for you to maybe think about what may work and you could also maybe check in with folks over at Fire Police because they do have some things in place for there. People who are on the ground who see really hard things. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't understand that.. And one thing, I come from the veterinary background we're required to do annual continuing education. There are a lot of national conferences, a lot of national organizations. And even just the camaraderie of being able to go to a conference once every couple of years or something for an officer would be something that would greatly increase their performance and their ability to function and cope with the environment that they work in. Because knowing that somebody else is going through the same things that you're going through is sometimes in itself its own form of therapy. That's right. Yeah please think about, you know, what could be added to the budget for us to try to support your team. Of course, okay. Going back to the issue of the dangerous dogs and what you explained going forward with the new HRS definitions and everything, Do you have the appropriate staff and the appropriate training because you're going to have to be doing new things like making those calls? Can this animal go back into society or is it really too dangerous to do that, which is a really hard call to make? And I would think would need very specialized training. Do you have the person that can do that? Or is it going to be a multitude of people? And do they have the specialized training? Or is it in the budget that do you know how you can get that training? And do we have a budget for them to do that? I think with our current staffing, we can make those determinations between myself. We have a transfer coordinator that already does behavioral evaluations and then also throughout veterinarian. I think a community approach when it comes to people within the facilities to be able to make those calls and the boots on the the ground, which is the officer, can also help to make those determinations as well, only because they often see those behaviors from the standpoint of it being out in the public or out in the open. Once they get into a shelter setting, the valuations change just because of the behavior changes of those animals. And so, I think overall it would be everyone to make those calls because we don't want to make the wrong call, but at the same time we don't want to put an animal out there that puts the public in jeopardy. Yeah, I would suggest that you have very clear kind of guidelines and perhaps training for all the people that are going to be doing that. So that you're all on the same page kind of like what are we looking for you know and that you document really well because that's going to be a contentious issue with the public. So yes, yes, director. Yes, if I could, I just like to add. The training provision is there. We do promote that a lot internally, but in a lot of what you've just spoken about, we'll be very supportive of this type of training for our team in the current year, and it is in the next year's budget. It's very simple to submit a request. It's just a one-page, we just review it, but these are the opportunities we want staff to have, especially the specialized training. So I just I need to I want to put in that plug and say that that funding is there and it can be utilized by all the departments. So if you need it, it's there. Thank you. That's good reminder. So yeah, let's make sure that we really do that because you know we're gonna have people contesting right and it really need we need to have that paperwork and everybody's on board together. I want to protect you guys. Oh yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. Okay great. So for your for your vet, is this, is your vet, I don't see it listed under this, is it the employee contract? Is that your vet? We do currently, yeah, she is currently under a contract. It's not a permanent civil servant position. I see. And we're, you know, we would eventually like to move it towards that. I think it would be more beneficial to the contract veterinarian to have the full civil service designation and full benefits with that come with that as well. But, you know, that is a well paid position. We didn't skimp on it on purpose because it is such a challenging position and a challenging position to fill. anybody who takes on that position has a certain level of mental fortitude to deal with shelter medicine. It is probably one of the most challenging areas of veterinary medicine. And so we've had somebody in the past and, you know, lessons learned, you know, of best practices, somebody who's seasoned as opposed to somebody who's new out of school. You know, those things are things that we've worked with to try to find the best person for the job. And, you know, as far as that position goes, we still feel though that it needs to be a full civil servant position. That you think that would help with recruitment and retention potential? I would think it would help recruitment because it shows our dedication to the position from a county standpoint, which would allow them to say, this position is fully funded in the county and it has the support of the county behind it. And to be honest, there is such a shortage of veterinarians in the county and state that if we show that we support that avenue and that profession, it might promote more coming to the county. So I don't know if you heard the testifier this morning, but one thing she brought up was maybe there should be two vets for the animal control. And I see some wisdom in that. I also just see like you say like the camaraderie and supporting each other, maybe it would help with retention. A little bit. But also if somebody, then if one position does drop off or you have turnover, at least you're not left with nothing, looking forward, is that something that potentially, you think may want to shoot for? I think as we grow as an agency, currently with the number of facilities that we have, I would say one is probably sufficient. It does create as challenges for the agency if one leaves. We do have a boy there. We do make that up with outside services that we use. We have a number of facilities that we take our animals to. But I think one thing that that position, even as a lone veterinarian needs, is the support staff to go with it, you know, including veterinary technicians and support staff for her for her area of interest, you know, you know, having one animal that is bring cared for for an injury that comes in, whether it's a hit by car or something like that. If we're waiting on a known or that, that animal may need 24-hour care or may need care that our current staff can't support. And so she would be the one to be giving almost all that care. And so giving her additional staff would probably be the best support right now in the long run, the second veterinarian. I foresee as an agency if we could provide more outreach, especially for span neuter, to have multiple veterinarians because it gives us the ability to have multiple clinics at office as ends of the island at one time. Right. That's right now you don't have any vet techs? We don't have any vet techs except for myself, which is licensed in the state. But we're relying on our kennel staff to help us out right now with giving supplemental care. All right. I would say that that would be a priority. I would think for a vet tech. In order to also just try to keep that bet, where you've had such a hard time recruiting and retaining a bet. And if supporting them with a vet tech is one of the key elements, let's make sure that goes to the top of the priority list. It's one of the top portions of my priority list. The question is, the chicken or the egg, which one came first. so now that we have the veterinarian pushing for the vet tech is an easy, easy push for me because if I had no veterinarians, they're awfully hard for me to push for some support staff that for someone that's not even there. And one of those trucks you ordered is a mobile vet unit, right? It is. It's a well-outfitted spanned-noodle type of unit with X-rays and anesthesia and everything already in it. So, we could park that, and it's multi-use, you know, we could use it for span neuter events, we could use it for outreach, we can use it for major disasters within the county to be able to provide care for animals that are recovered from disaster areas or lava flows, things like that. Okay, when is that one due to? It was head-on lengthy delivery date, but December is the set date for delivery. So once you get that, and then you also get your services in Orkinland, the space upgraded, you'll have at least two spaces that Vets could use, right? Yeah, okay. And currently we've had the veterinarian set up in an old, they call it the cat house, but it's a, it's where most of the cats were kept at the facility. We finished off the inside, put up some air conditioning inside for the surgical area and another place for a laboratory area to be up. And so we didn't close those spaces to give them more depth. And you know, for instance, we're putting through for some laboratory equipment. Those spaces are crucial to get set up prior to those items being purchased. And so these are all little pieces to the puzzle that we have to add. And you can't run too fast with this. You have to take each challenge as it comes along. And the veterinarian position is probably one of our biggest challenges, because it affects everything from our intakes to our processing of our animals and what the outcome of those animals come to as a drastic effect when you have or don't have a veterinarian. Yeah. Well, I'm very happy to hear about the changes to HRS and hopefully we can get on the right track with this. Thank you so much. I appreciate you both. I yield, Chair. Thank. Hi, Administrator. Great to see you. I feel like I've seen you all the time these days. You know, you've really been a pleasure to work with over the last few months. You know, a council member, Gellimben, I have been working with you and Office of Prosecuting Attorney's Office and the Restort of Justice Division, Mayor's Office,p Council, like almost 20 people on a Zoom call to rewrite chapter four and align ourselves with the new HRS and 7-11 and the urgency around these changes to the chapter are because the county needs to have adopted what's in 7-11 by July of this year. So we're working really, really hard. Sorry, I didn't mention police. They're also involved. Just wanting to make sure that across the different county agencies, everybody is aware of who's doing what at what point in time and making sure that you have the clarity that you need in the code so that you can continue to deliver a critical service. And I just I want to acknowledge the work that you've been doing with your team to build an agency without the luxury of time sort of stopping because while you're doing that you're still having to response or calls for service. I reached out to the testifier that testified earlier today, Sylvia Dolana, to just get more information about what she mentioned. It wasn't actually her. it was a friend of hers. And so she's not sure if police or animal control did in fact respond. So I just want to let you know that I'm following up to make sure that, you know, there was some follow-through on the county side. You know, it's really stark that you've got a 35% vacancy within your agency. And many nonprofits, members of the community, they have great ideas and I think a lot of really great intention. And I wonder if you have identified a way in which these organizations and individuals can help in a volunteer capacity and a part-time capacity. I don't know if you have any ideas that you want to share today, but I'd love to be able to harness some of that energy and that good will and use that to help advance your work in your mission. I mean whenever somebody asks if I can volunteer for your agency or If I always try to direct those individuals to our partner organizations. Because to be honest, without the effect that the partner organizations have on our agency, it doesn't, we stop dead sometimes because of the lack of movement from those facilities. As an example, just a couple of weekends ago, we had a rather large event set up by Aloha Iliyo, and it brought in hundreds of people into the event. And because of that event, 16 or 17 animals were adopted out of that. And because of that movement, we managed to move a good chunk of animals out of our facility. And so because of the volunteers and the effect of that and because of that movement we managed to move a good chunk of animals out of our facility and so because of the volunteers and the effect that those events have or you know it really has a huge effect on us and you know we don't want to put anybody's safety at risk with our facility. You know our facilities run need some improvements, bringing volunteers in also creates a liability for us. And so I usually try to push people towards those partner organizations, and we support them in everything that they do to make sure that animals get moved out of our facility and into theirs as fast as possible. And so, I always try to push people into those community organizations because they really need the help. They need the support, they need the funding. And without the volunteers that they use, they really don't have the ability to make a difference. Great. Thank you for sharing that. I am going to share that I am concerned about your budget decrease, especially within the OCE and you talked about this really wonderful community outreach event with a nonprofit partner. I'm wondering if you want to revisit using some of these funds to do more of that this upcoming fiscal year. Okay. Yeah, I mean we would love to increase our outreach. You know, it had such a huge effect on, well, one morale within our department. Those people got to see the public and see the effect we have on it. It affected the public because they see us out there doing and making the difference not just coming into their neighborhood to pick up a dog, but also coming into their community to help them in ways that aren't necessarily what people would expect us to, with giving out vaccines, with giving free microchips, things like that. Those are things that have a huge effect on their animals and the quality of their animals' life. And so those events are key for us. And I would like to put more funding and more effort into those. And it also has a matter of staffing as well for that. OK, let's check in offline to see what it costs. Funding wise, capacity wise, people to do that. And then we can present that to the and hopefully you see an update to your budget in the May draft. Okay. Okay. Sounds great. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Okay, director. I'm looking at your positions right now. You have 18 vacant positions, correct? Yeah, somewhere in the neighborhood that I think, see, they're all funded. Yes, all funded. We've been, like I said, we've been packing away as many people in those positions. And so it's been a constant, I would say, since last budget we had five people that were civil servant positions filled in our agency, and now we're up to something like 32 total. So it, you know, we've been working to try to fill those positions. And it's not that we're not, I mean, before coming here, we were just discussing our next round of interviews for some of those positions that are empty right now. So we're working on it, we're advertising for it, even at the event that we were at a couple of weeks ago. We had the position descriptions and links to the positions online so people could apply to them. And so we're trying to hit the ground as much as we can to get those positions filled. Okay. Looking at the budget you presented, your actual is in 2324, 1.44 million. Budgeted for this year is 2.7 million. And then the requested for next year is 3.1 million, but the staffing has been the same every single year. Number of personnel is 48. So is that just due to not having the staff to fill the positions or? There's a couple of reasons why we have an increase in our SNW for this year. One reason is those Kennel tech positions, once they made them into civil servant positions, they came out at a higher pay rate than what previous was. And so it drastically changed the SNWs for the coming year. It changed a lot of things for our department, because some of our other positions weren't getting quite the same amount. So it changed things quite a bit. Hit up the cost. Yeah, at the cost. Okay. So it's actually okay. Yeah. That's helpful. Thank you. How many animal insects have you done this year? So far, I just pulled the numbers this morning because I want to make sure I had the most accurate numbers. So far to date, I think let's see. 2500 intakes total. Okay, that was your total amount budget for this year. So as of here till June 30th, you're actually going over what you budgeted. Oh, yeah. We're going to go away over what we budget. And even the generic number of 3,200, I think we're going to go over that. So we have consistently since we opened increased our numbers every single month. I would say with police numbers, they were averaging about 190 to 200 animals a month when they had the service. We hit the ground running and we haven't decreased under 200 a month since we opened. And in fact, we've increased about 25 animals a month every month. And now we're sitting at close to 350 animals a month. So yeah, it has our effort just to try to get as many of those animals off the streets. And so we don't have a controlled, you know, we control our population within our department, but we try to make sure that we have intakes available to be able to bring those animals in or get them off the street in forms of owners' renders also, so we don't get animals dumped in locations or abandoned, and we can take those animals in for them. Okay. So if staffing stays the same and your numbers are increasing, Are you tracking where your calls are coming from so you know what areas to promote your staffing needs in? I mean we know where they're coming from for the most part That we have a lot of really distinct districts within our county that we get most of our calls from You know and a lot of are from Michelle's district, but you know, those animals that are dumped sometimes in that location aren't necessarily from that area. And so I wish I could say we can make an impact everywhere at one time, but we try to focus our efforts in the areas that we can Knowing that we still have to expand the agency into those areas If we had the locations to be able to service. I know we would make an even bigger impact in those areas that are harder hit Okay, where do you present that that anywhere? I don't have it currently in front of me, but I can get it to you if you'd like as far as the numbers go for those areas I we are our current software does track in mostly a visual method of how many calls we get in an area every year and in the ocean of your area is does get a lot of calls we don't have available staff dedicated to that area. We have to kind of divide it up between our east and west facilities. And each of those calls can be up to, you know, a couple hours, few hours of time for each call. So, you know, if we get a call for a stray and down in that area, and, you know, that dog may or may not be there by the time we get there. Oh yeah. That makes sense. I'm just thinking, given what I'm hearing, how we make the decision on whether it's the Heather Kimball, animal control facility in Waimea, or the Michelle Glimbo facility in Waimea. Yeah, it's a tough call because, you know, even at that facility, Even at the old, the main society facility in Waimea, we get calls because people still want to relinquish their animals there and with nobody at the facility, they end up tying them to the fencing. And so, you know, there's still a need in both the areas. It's a toss up, honestly, of which one is probably the most important. I would say both are. You know? Yeah. It came up today. It's not, I mean, it's part of your budget because it's the expensive year department. But when we, when we amended chapter four, one of my huge concerns was what happens when we hold a dog in a case it takes five years to try Mm-hmm, and I think I may have even put forward an amendment to fix that and it was shut down But ultimately your department suffers because you're holding that dog now so to hear that you have a way forward Is good yeah, but I was always frustrated by that hole that was left that you have a way forward is good. Yeah. But I was always frustrated by that hole that was left, that you guys ultimately have to fix. That bugged me. Well, and the benefit, too, with that law coming out, is that any dog that we have holding currently, we can deem them dangerous and start working with the owners to get them out of our facilities. Maybe. Maybe I was thinking about this when we brought it up. Maybe you should take that owner and put it into the cage with the dangerous dog. And then let them handle their dog. And then we can deem how dangerous that animal really is. Yeah, yeah. It might be a good way of just reminding the public to be mindful of their own animals. It's definitely something to think on. Okay. Looking at your program total requested 4.5 million for 2526. I believe when this was being handled by the Humane Society, I want to say we are budgeting 2.3 for the program, but we are only utilizing 1.8. So we are now a few million dollars over where we started. Yep. The amount of calls they get regarding animals, probably outweighs anything else that get calls from a district. So is there a need? Yes. But I'm just mindful that we started at about 1.8 with a nonprofit service provider helping us and now we're at 4.5. And I understand that. You know, it from the standpoint of our budget, and if you go back and ask those agencies whether that was enough, I'm almost positive you'll get the same response that it was not. He made society was supplementing their own money to cover the cost of animal control. The one that came after that was heavily underfunded, which became a disaster. The police, you know, it's been historically underfunded agency. And, you know, if you look at the budgets in the amount of area that we cover, and even look at the other islands, they're budgeting for their animal controls, we cover such a huge area. It's hard for an agency on this island to cover with the resources that we currently have. We want to give as much to this community as we can and to this county and for us to be able to function properly. You know, it may be an increase that may take it to that. Because ultimately, you know, if you stretch the resources so thin that those individuals that are doing the job are getting burned out faster, it creates more challenges for our agency. And I don't want to get to that point where we're stretching those resources too thin. Okay. Thank you. I'm very mindful of that. We started at about, let's say, 2 million. Now we've doubled. Yeah. And if we keep on that track, it just gets real costly. My big problem we had in the beginning was he made society didn't have to answer to us. Now there was no tieback for the administration of that branch for animal control was not really obligated to come back and give us any kind of report other than we spent this much money. Yeah. And what we spend over years exactly, what we budget for, we're not, if we increase this agency when it comes to more facilities, more personnel are going to have to be added. I have a rounded idea of where we'd end up, but it's a matter of growing into that size of an agency. Are there ways of decreasing that cost? There definitely is. Whether we do pair up with police on some of their facilities or their requesting, or whether we have more transport officers instead of, you know, to be able to transport from one facility to another. In other words, instead of having a large facility in one location, have two very small facilities that can be serviced by a transporter, you know, to get those animals to our main facilities and take care of. Okay. So efficient means of drawing into the The size of an island that we are with limited budget. Okay. I like that. That's good. I like efficiency Do you take cats at the animal control facility in Orchidland? Do we take cats? Yes, we do take cats If someone if someone trapped the cat and they said hey, I got a cat I got a brain. Would you take the cat? We currently don't take feral cats now now feral is a it is a question We'll definition I always sell people You know owned cats are you used to identify by law every every animal withers I mean cat or dog should have a micip. Somebody who takes in an animal and feeds it by law is providing care and service for that animal and is the identified owner of that cat. And so it is a very hard definition to put into it. So what I just heard, if I had a cat, I bought it and didn't have a microchip, you would dismiss it because it was feral. More likely, yes. Okay. Yeah. But the longer you hold that cat, the more you become the owner of that cat. I think more so it's just the communities. Like I think we heard this morning, but I've heard it a number of times, so I'm asking.'s a lot of cats out there, and they're being coming more and more of a problem. But when people are wanting to fix it, whether traps are available or not, they feel like they don't have an option, so they dump it somewhere else or whatever. And I think the biggest challenge is to find a location to be able to provide them a place to take it. You know, we've been working to try to come up with solutions for those cat issues. It is a very contentious issue because it is a very passionate issue. There are a lot of passionate people when it comes to cats within that community. And so it is something that we are trying to tackle from a mass standpoint because it is a it is a constant call for us to take care of the problem. And as a comparison when Humane Society had their contract they took in all animals at the time. Their intakes were somewhere in the neighborhood between 10 and 14,000 animals a year with an 80% mortality rate. And so, you know, it, I would say the staffing would drastically increase if it was an open intake on cats. Okay, let me ask you a hard question then from what I just heard maybe I'm maybe I'm putting these numbers in their own place But if they did 14,000 in takes per year For 1.8 million plus whatever else they had we've done 2900 in takes 2324 for 1.4 million so far we're we're tracking to be about 3,000 intakes this year for 2.7. Sorry, that's wrong. For 4.9 million, are we doing what we previously did? No, are we falling behind? We're not falling behind. I mean, we're tackling the major problem of dangerous dogs, which was our primary focus when we opened as an agency. Farrow cats are lumped in with mongoose chickens and pigs in the same aspect of having feral populations within the county. And there are quite a few. And I have talked to Diel and Ar about this. You know, those animals are lumped all in together. And so it's hard to define for us, not just us, but for the public as well, where that line is drawn, you know, between a personally owned cat, which the only way for me to identify if it is a personally owned cat is if it is microchipped and owned by a person. Okay. I'll thank on it. Okay. It's a tough, it's a tough, it's a... I get a lot of calls for cats. Yeah. That's the big one. Yeah. We get a lot of dangerous dog issues, not putting that aside, but cats seems to be big. And the numbers between what was being done by Humane Society and we're doing now is really a big discrepancy. I'm not sure what your mortality rate is, but I know that's part of the issue. Our mortality rate is somewhere in about 40 percent. 40 percent? Yeah, okay. And so, yes, we try to control that number. You know, we try to find as many of those animals as homes as possible with the current feral cat population on the island, cat population on the island, the majority of those cats would not find homes. Okay, so that's where the challenge is. And an increased staff to be able to handle that would be the challenge because a cat that is owned by somebody has a very different animal than a cat that has been out in the wild for years. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. OK. Council. Oh, that's a real capable. Yeah, just one last question I forgot from B4. You mentioned that we're going to have our own pet reunification pet farm. We hit, we're using pet pet love before and why have we decided to take them? Pet co-love, love, lost pet system is a great system. This one is mostly dealing with just what's on the island. So, you know, that was a nationally identified program. It's not that it doesn't necessarily cater to everyone as far as those animals may or may not necessarily be, you know, existing your neighborhood or, you know, it's a national program. We're trying to find something a little more locally. People can communicate a little bit better that way and, you know, you don't have to necessarily sift through a good number of animals to find the one that you have or that is lost. But we're not building it ourselves. No it's part of our current software that we purchased. Okay. It's an addition to it and quite frankly I really like that part of it because it allows us to provide that service to the public. Right. Does it have that AI piece where it tries to do facial recognition? I don't think so. It allows somebody to log in and post the animals that they find if they want to do it multiple times they can. And then it allows people to communicate within it to each other so they can get reunited. Okay. Thank you. Just for that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much, Director. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rainier. Okay, we'll take a brief recess and then set up for our next department today. Thank you. you you Okay, we're back in from recess. Our next department is the Office of Corporation Council. We have today our two team members introduce yourself and then go to your presentation and we'll go from there Good morning good afternoon Renational Corporation Council and with me is assistant corporation council J. Yoshimoto and also my private secretary Jen Kool-Ali ease in the back there noticeably absent is our administrative officer who left the county a few weeks after I started. So, baked, you're all indulgence in any numbers or anything like that. We've been trying to, you know, do the finance and HR piece with everybody kind of jumping in. So to start off, the mission of the Office of the Corporation Council is to support county government by providing proactive and effective legal representation while maintaining the highest standards of professionalism and always acting in furtherance of the public interest. So essentially we are the counties in house lawyers that provide legal advice and representation to the entire county. Let's see. Our objectives for the fiscal year is basically what we try to do is establish an environment that cultivates and encourages the department's core values of what we call TAPS, which is teamwork, accountability, professionalism, progress, and service. We also seek to support professional development of our employees, whether it be staff or the attorneys. We also strive to improve and embrace new technologies to perform work more efficiently, and then always trying to work on training, whether it be trained and provide training to our county officers and employees. For our program measures on the left-hand side of the screen, you see several program measure outcomes. The attorneys have attended 41 training events, provided training on, let's see, actually the numbers are a little bit different. We have updated numbers, provided training on 32 occasions. We've received training on new components of our existing software, legal research tools that we have in-house. and then our litigators have prevailed in several cases and I'll expand on that in our next slide. So the accomplishments for our litigation division, they have prevailed in three Hawaii Supreme Court cases, one 9th court of appeals case. They've received dismissals with prejudice into US district court cases and then of course you all are familiar with the settlement reached in the Kiala Kiehi wastewater treatment plant case. For our counseling and drafting division, the numbers like I do have some updated numbers other than what's on the screen to date, we have reviewed 1,453 contracts as to legislative documents and drafting of those documents. We've done 38 regarding reviewing and commenting type work. We have performed that 1,870. Our legal opinions number 258 and for meetings we've participated in 1,571 meetings to date and then as I said earlier as to training we've provided actually 54 training sessions were provided to the county with about 243 attendees at those trainings. Let's see, as to staffing, our department consists of 35 positions. We have actually 10 vacancies. Of the 10 vacancies, two are for attorney positions, and then the eight is for staff. So I'm really just wanted to take the opportunity to thank our office team. We've been doing a lot with less, less bodies, less staff people. And then people really jumping in to help where they can and an example is Jen trying to perform the work of our HR and finance person while doing her job as well. For our budget, it's basically a total budget increase of 20,770. So our total budget is $5,521,884. I believe that the $20,000 increase from last year is due to various increases just in costs overall in our OCE. Things such as publications, subscriptions, things of that nature. And then lastly for our priorities for 26, you know we do want to continue focusing on the feeling of vacancies. We have recently hired two attorneys in our office. They've joined our litigation division, but we are looking for two more. The secondly, we want to continue with training and using our existing West law. recently received a training on an AI type research tool that's connected to West law. So basically it allows us to do searches with the assistance of AI and then the results are linked directly to West law so that we can search more quickly, effectively. The tool also does things like summarize numbers, give you summaries of timelines. So we're still, we just had training last week, so we're still trying to fully understand the full breadth of the tool, that tool. But everybody's really excited. And we're pretty much keeping up with the legal community, which a lot of them have converted and transitioned to using AI in their practice. Thirdly, we are always focused on training, whether it be training our attorneys and then also providing training to countywide, everybody involved. I know that there was a question in another session where there was an issue of whether or not board and commission members received training and I just wanted to reiterate to this body that our attorneys do meet with every board and commission member when they first sign up and are provided training on sunshine law ethics and then their general duties and responsibilities in accordance with whatever that board or commission is tasked to do as well as whatever state or federal laws that are relevant. So we do provide that training. We are looking at whether or not we should utilize some sort of maybe software or some manner in which we can keep better track of our training and our employee training and, you know, maybe boards and commissions. We do keep track internally, but maybe it's something that it can be across the county and just so that everybody's aware of the type of training that's involved and who is participated or not participated. And then lastly, I believe last year, our office came before you for funding for a case management system. We went out, we did do some exploration, went out to bid on that, but the numbers came back really high. So we are kind of regrouping and still want to pursue some sort of case management system so that we can keep track of all of our cases and all of the work that we do. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Open to any questions. Mr. Oh, thank you. I just wanted to say good thing I know Jay at pure office because I'm always calling him out mother so thank you Thank you, Cosmaker. Thank you chair. Thank you, Corporation Council I've really appreciated all of the support that both you and you Renee and Jay have provided my office and all of your deputies Have been extremely helpful and responsive. So thank you. You mentioned filling vacancies and I wondered if your strategies were similar to what HR Director Toko Hiro talked about yesterday with that professional development model and then prosecuting attorney Kilden Walgind also mentioned a strategy today. I'm wondering if they're similar if you had something else in mind. Our's are very similar to the prosecuting attorney's office. We have consistently advertised locally. We've got in responses even from the mainland. The challenge I think is while we get applicants from the mainland, it's really wanting to see a commitment to physically move from the east coast to Hawaii. And so it is still a challenge though to recruit people that, of course we would love people that already live on the big island, but it's just been a challenge and especially because we're competing with the other governmental agencies like the prosecuting attorney's office, like the attorney general's office, we're all kind of judiciary, we're all kind of fighting for the same pool of people. Yeah and I think that Maui salary commission just increase the salaries for various directors and positions and it's like over 200,000 right some of their legal folks are getting paid deputies not even like directors so Maui I think is going to be scooping up a lot of folks in this field. So I, yeah, I was just curious about your strategies and I'm glad to hear that you're, you're exploring a variety of things. Thank you. Supportive of your budget. I yield. Thank you. Councillor Raghavila. Thank you. Thank you both for being here and for presenting a very easy to understand because it's very straightforward your budget. I want to just throw out the question now that you've been there for a few months and have gotten the hang of things. One of the things that we've discussed in the past is this issue about corporation council, you know, basically being appointed by the mayor and then needing to kind of cover, represent, work with both council and the mayor. Do you have, now that you've been there a little bit, do you have any feedback or thoughts on that issue because it's is something we've kind of been talking around for quite a while. You know, it's something we've kind of been talking around for quite a while. You know it's an issue that I would say that I think through almost daily and I'm sure with the attorneys but really I always actually come back to the basic and the foundation is our charter, which says that we are the chief legal advisor for the entire county. So it's an organization as a whole. So we don't approach, I guess, legal issues with the lens that there is some sort of initial conflict just because there's an issue between the council and the mayor. That's not the lens that we look at the issue through. It's really one of how can we help the organization as a whole and so our advice is going to be the same to this body as it is to the executive branch. And so I understand that tension, but I still come back to the foundation which is our charter. And that's our charge is to the entire county. Yeah, understood. I guess I'm just thinking about when, for instance, a council member really wants to put forward some new legislation or something, but we also know maybe the top administration is not super in favor of that or behind that. Sometimes, the legal rulings or the legal advice we may get, you know, I think it's, you put you in a tough position. I guess that's, you know, in order to, you know, we're trying to figure out how can we do this legally and, you know, through the right channels. But if you know that, you know, your boss basically doesn't want that to happen, I think it can kind of put you in a tough position. So I appreciate that you are considering this regularly and that is really important and thank you for that. Can I just add, I see our, in terms of resolving any, you know, I see our job is really calling it like it is and providing that advice to you all. And then it's really up to the client as to what they want to do with that legal opinion. So while I understand what you're saying and it does, you know, we want to please all of our clients. So, you know, we try to do that. But it's not a matter of us taking sides, but one of just making the call and then letting you folks decide what you want to do with it. Well, once again, I do appreciate that and I do appreciate that you are thinking about this. I still think it's just a hard position for you to be in some time. So thank you. I don't know, Jay, you've been here for a while. Do you have anything to add on that issue? Just as we're looking at the budget overall, right? And the possibility of maybe funding a separate position in the, in our, you know, area council services, clerk's office. What are your thoughts? Do you have anything else to add? My thoughts are consistent with Michele. The county is an organization, right? And so not to rehash or repeat what she just said, but it really is looking out for the best interest of the county, right? And attention or the concerns that you've seen or you've heard observed have been ever since, I began with the county, 2005, right? But I think it's a healthy discussion to have to make sure that we're focused on, you know, what's before us, what our job is, right? Our job is to advise all the county departments, counsel, everybody included. And that opinion will be, you know, the same. It doesn't matter what issue it is, you know, we're going to give it to you as we see it, right? So, but I think raising questions is good because sometimes there may be perceptions out there that are speculative, you know, I mean, but really when you talk to us, we're here to provide you the best information we have, best opinion we have for the entire county. So one. All right, thank you both for that. I do appreciate remaining in conversation on this issue. Thanks, Thank you. Councillor Rinawe. No real questions with the budget. Thank you. Very straightforward. I just want to address what Councillor Neill call you out. We did have a bill in the previous council term to shift the appointing power from the mayor to the council. Councillor member Kirkwoodson. I worked on that bill. Some of the members concern voted against that measure. So without making any changes or suggesting any changes, I think should the situation present itself where there may be a perception of a conflict. Members can bring it up with you folks at that time, but I don't think we should be discussing that any further at this point being that there was an opportunity to change it and members of this body chose to vote against it. So no response required. Thank you. Chair, you'll... Thank you. How's Mary Kimball? Thank you and I'm going to take the opportunity to weigh in on this too, although it is not directly budget related to say I respectfully strongly disagree with Council Member Cogu, about his position on this, and I'll just respect. You guys represent us as a corporation and you're not the gatekeepers with respect to legislation. And so you may advise us that in your interpretation, a particular piece of legislation may not comport with other parts of the law, but that doesn't mean we cannot still introduce it and have the discussion and ultimately our body is the deciding body about whether or not we go forward with it. And if it is ultimately illegal then we may be sued and you know whatever. But my I think we wander into dangerous territory when we try to say it's us versus them with respect to legal guidance, legal guidance is legal guidance and you said that it's the facts. I bring it up in the context of I do think it is useful for us because you guys are short staff you have about a 30% vacancy rate. For us in the legislative branch and this is where I'll bring it back to the budget to have a dedicated attorney for legal review with regard to legislation that we want to put forward. So going through and reviewing past cases, particularly looking at wording, things like that, I think having an attorney within our legislative branch here, that makes sense not to provide the Corporation guidance, the corporation council, but to provide us legislative guidance specifically. So we have budgeted for that in the past. We've just never felt it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember O, did you see? On that note, when I first got in, we did have a position, right, Jay? A legal one, especially, so what was called. But the problem was that person couldn't really, I mean, could give us some legal advice, but if it's wrong, the person wouldn't be able to defend us in court. Correct? It's more complicated than that. You're basically a court. Basically, it's a bottom line. I mean, we need to have Corporation Council to give us that advice. And in case they make a mistake or, you know, and something happens to the Council members, then you, theression council represents the member. Yeah, that's for the charter. Yes, yes. So, but then with this position, yeah, that person doesn't have that authority. And so that's why, in one way, we gave it up because it wasn't useful because then it would be like a double, kind of like, what is that? Like, double process, right? Cause then we have our, this person reviewing our documents and might say it's a certain way, then we go to a compression console, they might say something else, and then we go on conflict right there, right? So I wouldn't support that. I would totally support just coming directly to you guys and having your advice to us on how we move forward on legislation. And then in case anything happens, we have a full straight there, you know, back in the south. So thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. CC, show in. My one question for you is, and maybe it was asked when I was out, I don't think it was, did you set up your budget to handle some of the incoming large cases, even special contracts we have to have, to handle like Hon like Honokao and things like that that are upcoming. I believe our special council amount remains the same as last year. No changes to that. I think it's okay at this point. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Thank you. I appreciate the timeliness of your presentation. That was helpful because we needed to get back on track. Thank you. OK. Our next department joining us today will be the Department of Information and Technology. Thank you very much, Corporation Council, for the succinct presentation. We'll take at a recess. Next department joining us today is Department of Information Technology Director. Go ahead with your presentation. Introduce yourself and your team when you're ready. Good afternoon, Council. Corrie Stone, Director of Information Technology. Here today also have Luan Tokeshi and Jean Murmordel, both helping out with our accounts and HR side of things. So starting off with our program measure outcomes, we've replaced outdated network switches performed an internal vulnerabilities scan of the network. Coordinated critical upgrades for the county digital document permitting and financial systems, creating an initial cybersecurity awareness training plan, installed computer management, antivirus, and end user security software to the county computers and purge the disabled active directory user per 90 day retention procedure. This has kind of been, you know, what we were doing prior for our previous or current current fiscal. And then we also have for our overview of the next 2526, we're looking to provide a reliable and managed network for the county, expand and maintain the county server and application support, maintain and enhance the reliability and resilience of the county's information technology infrastructure. Continue improvement of information technologies, because customer support and services by establishing industry standard and guidelines. And finally, providing training expertise and technical support to the county departments and agencies in the development, design, and implementation of the GIS and the Paris deployment. For our FY25 highlights in our administration area, we started to consolidate software and hardware purchases to streamline county technology, county-wide technology needs and enhanced security standards. And a lot of this was when we initiated the IT directive that we worked with finance to start doing more of a county where the IT was in charge of the purchasing of computers, laptops, monitors, and in the comments offer that a lot of the departments are utilizing. In our network area, we conducted a comprehensive, countywide assessment of hardware, firmware, and network security status. We did a lot of changing out of switches that was in the previous fiscal where we purchased close to 130 different switches to upgrade throughout the county We also facilitated in it fiber installation to multiple locations This was done in the previous calendar year where we had upper funds that were utilized to address a lot of the locations where previously we didn't have the funding for. So we were able to do that with R&D's help that had the upper funds. And then we continued to address a lot of the areas. We finally got our monolotify station onto the county network. They had a cell reception device forgetting onto the county. So that was one of the things that I was working hard to try to get to because a lot of our first responder locations was already on the county fiber, police stations, fire stations. So we're doing a lot to try to get all of those on the county fiber. In our user support and applications area we increased staffing and support capabilities at various county locations. You know we previously had a person over here in a county building. We have a person at the Alpuni Center and then with West Hawaii Civic, we have staff over there that helps out. I've been seeing that it's a big benefit with having IT in these larger areas so that it makes responding for these any kind of things that come up a lot faster for us to reach out to the different departments. So that's one of the things that I was also trying to talk to the different departments. There's a lot of departments that have their own IT staff. And so one of the things that I was looking at was trying to see if some of the other larger departments like Finance, DM and Partion Rec, they don't have an actual IT staff person person and for me I feel that it's a good conduit to the IT department just like where all the departments have an HR person and a finance person to me I think having an IT person for these large departments will help them kind of facilitate things so that when they need assistance they actually have a person that with the expertise that can work with the IT department. And that's something that I've been trying to see if we can do for a lot of the smaller departments like you know clerks, R&D, mayor's office, you know I was looking at maybe a possibility of having you know having somebody that was just kind of for a lot of those smaller departments, and that person could take care of those small departments. And that's something that I've been trying to bring up and mention at the cabinet meetings. And another thing that we've done with our user support was the deploy didn't install the workstations to replace that end of life equipment. That's again leading towards our IT directive of getting all of the PC refresh that we're going to do each year as well as the Comments software that all the department's utilize Trying to keep that where the procurement can be a lot quicker by IT taking the lead on that And that's one of the IT directive forms that we'll be sending out prior to the next discussion of the budget And that's's something that we're gonna try to do. Our user support application group provided support for various applications in the county and then our GIS systems provides support to multiple county programs and departments. For our applications, one of the big things was the new finance and HR application that we've been looking at to replace our current 20 year old application. So that's been something that we've been working. The current budget is based upon the current budget was put together with utilizing that new software and application. So that's been live and with finance utilizing it with the departments, we're working with the vendor to address the next financial piece of it as well as the HR side. We are looking to go into hopefully 2026 where we'll be able to do online time sheets and that's something that we're looking forward to. our department. We've got 40 funded positions. Five years ago, we had 25 positions when the previous administration came in. They went to increase it by 10 positions and then asked for an additional five with got to 40 funded positions. Our department is kind of broken up until user support, system support, GIS and an administration area. Within our administration area is the management, the fiscal and HR personnel, our GIS support, and then within our system support, it breaks down to a network section, an infrastructure services section, and the cybersecurity section. User support has our help desk and service desk, as well as our applications team. Within our, at the time when we created the slide, we had 12 vacancies. We recently did interviews and we'll have two people starting May 1st. So it won't make it 10 vacancies, only because one of them is at internal already. But it is a movement so that we can actually free up additional entry-level positions so even though We're hiring two people We are only gonna have we're still gonna have 11 vacancies But we are looking to Because those vacancies are gonna be entry, we should be able to fill those ones fairly quick. Some of the challenges we've had within our vacancies is outdated position descriptions, and that's something that we've been working on, as well as because we've had movement within the county in our department, we've opened up various entry level ones. So we do have two positions that will also be interviewing this month as well as we're looking to have multiple positions open up this in the next month. Once we can get our updated position descriptions submitted to HR. So we are actively looking at filling our vacancies and we're getting a good turnout, especially since we can look at the entry levels, but we'll have opportunities at our last last town hall meeting in Kohala, that was one of the first town halls where actually a person come up to me and asked me about opportunities in IT. They had a son that is out in college and doing IT, an IT degree, and was looking to see what kind of opportunities. And I had mentioned that we will have entry-level opportunities that are coming up. The only thing that we, one of the other challenges is a lot of it is in Hilo. And so for us, there's been questions on different locations. I've had conversations with Councilmember Hustis about just the opportunities where if county facilities had opportunities in other areas like in Y-Mail, we had where there was, we've had previously had like court council and R&D council and other departments that were looking at if there was an opportunity to have some location in Y-mail and you know that would also give us an opportunity to have some kind of county not necessarily a county facility that we would own but something where there would be a group of county departments that we could support and that would give us opportunities to have other IT locations for staff. And that was one of the things that I kind of mentioned. Again, at that Kohala Town Hall, they were asking mainly because they wanted to be in that area and the Kohala Y-Mia area. So I mentioned that, you know, in the future there might be something that we can look into but right now most of our vacancies are located in Hilo. We are almost fully staffed in the corner side because I'm the director. We have a temporary analyst position that we will be be posting hopefully soon on the corner side. But sometimes with temporary positions, that kind of is another challenge because people are looking for permanent. And in our FY26 budget overview, there was some changes in our OC section, which is the PC refresh, the consolidation of software subscriptions. There's, we also have some funding from finance to do a refresh of our county website. There's a lot of ADA compliance things that's coming that we have to make sure that our websites are going to be compliant and so we are putting together an RFP to do it countywide so that we can get consistency. There's a lot of departments that might not like look and feel but we need the ADA compliance stuff that came from HR or something that we have to be concerned with and address. So we're looking at doing a countywide refresh. So we're putting it in an RFP for that. And another project that finance was wanting to look into was an website payment platform. We've already started some conversations with vendors on trying to get a website where we can basically have all of the different county, you know, like your VRL, water, everything that you need to pay at one location so that you can pay your county bills by just going to one location and address it. So that was something that was also added into our new budget. There was a change in our equipment that was reduced. There was a one time award for 3 million for our infrastructure redundancy project that was from the previous administration and a lot of that was for the equipment to be that we have at our civil defense and instead of getting them moved over to the new ECC of the growth and wanting to expand new equipment was ordered for the ECC. We've that through already and waiting for final budget and the notice to proceed for those ones on that equipment. We also utilized that funding for 12 locations where we're trying to put better INIT and fiber, and that will get us better security. It'll reduce the monthly, since there's no monthly costs with our economy fiber, that'll reduce the monthly for the departments that are paying that monthly fees and then it also gives us again better security because instead of them having a internet connection they'll be with the county network so the visibility will also be a lot better for the county and then on our priorities and new initiatives for FY 26, one of them was to improve communication and strengthen the relationships and boost morale without a department, develop a hiring plan to fill open positions by updating outdated job descriptions, focus on employee retention through ongoing training and development opportunities, focus on improving IT customer support by adopting industry standards, expanding automation for user setup and software maintenance, and adding into the development of a countywide asset and inventory system. Enhanced the county technology infrastructure by improving network security, monitoring threats, deploying services to boost speed, reliability, and security and implement employee training programs to mitigate risks. Support our countywide GIS needs by providing training expertise and technical assistance for GIS solution development and implementation across departments and agencies. And this last one, collaborating with departments to enhance their technology capabilities, this one was the shortest, but to me, the most important, because for what we do within accounting, that's basically what a lot of what our projects is involved is where we're working with the departments on their projects, like with this finance and HR, with assisting with the epic, with a lot of the different things that are coming into the county that we're assisting with just yesterday. I was on a call with trying to find out what other counties are doing with their GIS. So there was a meeting that they had with GIS from Hawaii County, Hanalu and Maui County. And so they're gonna try to do a quarterly meeting with that. And I'll try to be involved so that I can kind of better understand where we can help and collaborate with the different counties. That's the end of my lines. So one thing I wanted to add was that we are looking into because of this financial application in HR, we are trying to put together a supplement of three additional application positions, mainly because we see the need of how this will be kind of a big and major impact within a county. Already we're working in trying to because of the scope of doing time sheets online for all county employees, we have to do assessments of checking all of the facilities, making sure that the employees are able to get onto the county network or at least an internet access to be able to do their time sheets as well as all the different things that will come with this because of it being online and employees being able to do their reimbursements and other types of things that we're looking at being aware and we're gonna need some additional assistance or support. So I'm open for questions from anyone. Thank you, Director. Help some members, thank you, Chair. Just a couple of good questions, Director. You know, I think I'm supportive of the concept of having some of those bigger departments have their internal IT person but assuming all of your current vacancies were filled within the department would you folks be at a adequate staffing level to take care of our existing departments? Some of it but still because the county is as a whole has grown just in technical needs, even with the additional that we have, that we have the fill, it's still just like with they try and finance. It's still where the departments have an IT person. There's somebody that they can look through for assistance. A couple of good examples is DEM right now. They have some for their CCTV application and stuff in their vehicles. When I GIS support, we're trying to help them. We found out that the computer equipment in the trucks were outdated and needed to be upgraded and a lot of different things and those things wasn't brought in with ITs It was kind of where the M took the lead on that and so you know coming to us to help with the GIS out of it When outdated, had they had their own IT, they could have also been maybe a little bit better prepared. Another example is when we help finance with their credit card implementation, their software that they were using for their more vehicle locations, their software was behind six revisions. And so having to do some of that, I think if they had like an IT person that would kind of help to prepare some of the things that they can have. And even with our PC refresh, having that person that has the IT knowledge and the department might help the make things go a little bit quicker and having that person that could be the first line where they can reach out and that was one of the ideas you know for me. Okay so you're saying that with those three additional positions that you're talking about and your current positions being filled you would still want. Yeah and for me it's just that it's a better conduit for the departments to have that and working with the IT guys. Okay thank you and then just a question regarding training you folks have $200,000 under technical training, 225, what is your plans this year for training for your department? For the training, so one of the other things that I've been working with is, we've been collaborating with R&D and Workforce Development. And of the big things that you know I'd like to try to do and help is where we can get our communities, our island you know families to be able to come to the county to work. So one of the things that we've been collaborating with is trying to set up training R&D already had purchased 20 laptops and 20 iPads with a grant and we're just going to help with IT's assistance and with all the places where we've gotten internet access that we're trying to set up training opportunities for not just county employees, but also for public, for cakey, for seniors. We want to be able to give the opportunities so that we can have our families from Hawaii be able to stay here in Hawaii and giving them the opportunities. One of the passions I have is trying to work with R, work with R&D in that way and that's, you know, we're trying to add to our training capabilities so that we can find out if there's other partners out there that want to work with us so that we can offer this across the island. With a lot of the districts we've been, you know, lighting up their parks, their community centers, gyms with Internet access and having that ability. So one of the things we'd like to do is offer that and having that with the training ability that we can offer to pay for trainers outside of the county to come and assist us as well as for our internal staff to be able to go and get more training and having that ability. Okay, yeah, just wanna make sure that we have a solid plan there because previous, there was only $150 and we jumped last year to $200,000 from $150. And the spending has been low for this area. So you want to make sure that any of these areas that we'll lose, you know, what historical values were there before, but we just want to make sure that if we are going to keep those funds there's a plan. And then with that I believe that's all the questions I have for your department. I had a question about your travel earlier. So we ended up talking to the director, not the college, just to explain registration versus, oh, what registration is covering. Yeah, and so I was talking to our finance side. And so a lot of that was because of the conferences and a lot of it, like for even for myself, when I was in the department, you know, the 2020-16 was like the last time I recall when the training. And I think after that, there wasn't really a lot of training that was offered. And then recently, that's when the directors was trying to bring back training. And I believe some of that was why it came back and why you see the amounts there. When I went to the training, the average cost for the registration was about 2 grand. And so roughly about 10 to 12 people could go out to training. And so that was one of the things that we're trying to bring back into the department. Perfect, thank you so much for those explanations, Director, I appreciate you. Thank you. How's the member? Who's this? Thank you, Chair. Hello, Director. Afternoon. Just a question on the increase of internet speed of the line item budget. Is that for all of our facilities? It's a contract. So all of our facilities, or specifically in Hilo and Kona. But ready for all of the locations, where again, right now, we're trying to look into the facilities that don't have internet and trying to see what kind of internet solutions we'll be able to do for those nights. So we kind of maxed out bandwidth on some of these other places then too? Yeah, so recently we had 12 locations that we submitted and we already have the appeals to move those ones from where they some of those sites didn't have any internet and some of those ones had just a high speed internet and we were able to get them to the county fiber. So that was where we're trying to kind of get that better speeds on some of those locations. Okay, and then the contract for the cybersecurity at 1.3 million? Yes, so with that we have we recently purchased with a vendor to do penetration testing. I've never had this contract before. No, no. So we kind of had done some internally previously, some internal, but we didn't have nothing that was more consistent and with a lot of talks of cybersecurity and being more secure, that was one of the reasons why that came, you know, that's one of the reasons why that thing came about. I don't think we even had a cybersecurity budget line item like maybe two years ago, you know, that was something recently that was brought in and it's because of a lot of the talks about cyber security and so one of the things besides that penetration testing that we will now have that we can do internal and external. One of the things that we're also looking to is trying to see if we can get some cyber security managed services that way we can have something that would be 24-7 for us. A lot of the county, I mean as you know we're not 27 support for IT but we'd want to make sure that we can be protected and so one of the things we're looking at is where we can get some separate security manage services and something that we're looking into. Also another area was our backups. We're looking into having them be more protected. And so that was where we're also being, trying to utilize that funds for that. Thank you. I'd love to, I couldn't talk to you later about an offline about just some of our vulnerabilities that you see kind of on that outset when we do that testing, but. So another, I'm another thing I was going to mention is that we do have currently starting this month will be initiating. We'll be talking with Tyler, the opioid and internal audit. And so that will be with the industry standards. And so we have previously, I want to say and talking with our legislative auditor, IT had deferred the last two requests that came from them for turning on audit and so when he reached out again we will be doing that and starting that this month actually. So once we work with that we'll be able to kind of learn more about any vulnerabilities. Also received an email from civil defense with an opportunity from outside from the military as well to also assist in that. So I mentioned to him once we do our internal one, then we can also reach out to one from civil offense to see if that can also point in other vulnerabilities that we might have. Thank you. In terms of the Esri software, our GIS, do we have licensing capability for all our departments if there's interest? So we actually are working with our Esri contact on doing our renewal and so we are looking at that. That was one of the things that was brought up at that meeting yesterday about some of the changes that's coming with the Esri. So, you know, with that, where I believe in July we have to renew that one. So we're looking at this is coming with different changes, different ways of how they're doing the support on that as far as the licensing. Kind of like a network scale. Yeah. So and then it also depends on the, from yesterday's meaning, I believe some of it also depends on the sides of the county. So that was one of the things that came up. But I am going to try to find out more information about what we did recently get a quote for the renewal. But we can definitely look into the licensee and know that and get more information for you. Do you see that other departments, there's a demand for that use in their day to day operations or interface with the community? Yeah, we actually have various departments have their own GIS and lists and within our department, there was some, sorry, there is gonna be kind of like I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, there was, so I'm sorry, there is gonna be kind of like a meeting greet that we'll be having next month, where our GIS staff is putting together kind of with the other GIS analysts in the departments and they'll be putting together kind of, I haven't seen that agenda yet, but they're basically putting together something and I can send you guys an invite if anybody wants to. I think he said it was gonna be like from nine to three, sometime next month, and you know, if you guys are interested in wanting to see what kind of Jay isS. stuff I can definitely add. I mean that's definitely one of those you know especially in that field where some of the training allowances could be allocated towards to bring those members that are up in either other departments that are using the technology and then the collaboration with your department to kind of advance their own skill set with GIS. Yeah I did find out that from within our Esri, we already have some of the, for conferences, that's already within the, it comes complimentary with the Esri contract. So some of those, outside of our department, those GIS analysts was also invited to go to those conferences for that licensing complimentary. Thank you. The last question I had is on, it came up actually, a customer recurrent product of whistle defense is the Cahaya app. And is that something that still sits with your office? No, I don't believe she had mentioned it previously, even in confirmation with she had asked about, you know, trying to look into that more. I haven't had the opportunity yet to kind of try to look into that some more, but definitely, yeah. Is that something that administration is aware of wants to use it, utilize it, and we're talking, you know, you mentioned interface with, you know, pain for services on the website. I mean, this is another way, it could be, it could be in a potential other way. Correct. And it's something that's been kind of collecting a little bit of dust for some time. And I think we had civil defense alerts on there. And there's just another opportunity to engage with community and share information. and I wasn't sure if you want to take that on or if that's something that we have capacity for. I guess Director has some. with community and share information and I wasn't sure if you want to take that on or if that's something that we have capacity for. I guess Director has some comments. Yes, thank you Council Member for the question. The Cahia app was something that was developed or implemented in the last couple of years or so. I know that the team in the mayor's office has been very much engaged in prioritizing messaging and how to get a coordinated message out. Definitely hearing the concerns about different messages in different places and wanting to make sure that the county provides messaging out in an efficient and proactive manner. I think they're looking at that and it may be something that might be discontinued based on just new ways in which the county is choosing to get out information. But it is very much top of mind in making sure that messages are coordinated and getting out as quickly as possible. And in a place that's easy to find and definitely knows that this is a county sponsored area. So it may be something that might be discontinued. Okay. Thanks for the information. Yeah, I mean, I do appreciate the sentiment of trying to bring everything together, like, you know, on the website, or that these paid services, just trying to bring it all into one one one sort of atmosphere. Yeah, and I think that going back to what the finance director was mentioning about the app, I think that was why still civil offense will, will that the community and the county, people know about the texting because we want to make sure that something is gonna be available. And you know people know about the texting because you know we want to make sure that something that is is going to be available and you know that sometimes will be more readily we're especially with everyone with cell phones being able to get messaging and stuff. Thank you director. Thank you chair. Thank you. Thank you Chair. So you you mentioned about the training and well, customer memory, now I'm a mention about the funding for the training. So if we are able to somehow work within our districts with a community center and the community, like we can get them laptops, would you folks be able to help us with doing training? Yeah, and that was one of the, and that's why we said that we were trying to collaborate with R&D, so we definitely would like to, you know, collaborate with anyone that we can and, you know, utilize the researches that we have. Okay, and then would it be better if, like, we as council members purchased for contingency funds that's that certain center and then so have it here? Initially what we were doing is trying to Because of it being limited. That's one of the things where because we're having those 20 laptops and 20 iPads already from R&D You know, we feel like that could be a good start and that what our intention was to be able to take that to any of the districts, any of the locations. So really trying to not have it where we're doing like five at the same time. So really trying to see we can go and you know say we're going to do, you know, one district, you know, one month, another district, another month. But trying to really making sure that the research we have, trying to go out and I'm Focil one district, one month, another district, another month. But trying to really making sure that the resources we have trying to go out and facilitate that. And like I said, we recently have worked with R&D on collaborating. And so we're kind of getting together again to see what other university partners or outside partners won't want to reach out. And then we can plan. But we definitely will reach out to council members to see in their districts if they have anything that they'd like to focus on. And flexibility on hours? Like it could be like they're in the morning for our coupons. Yes, yeah. Later after, like, six o'clock for our working families. Yeah, and definitely, and that's one of the things, especially, you know, with working with R&D, you know, I'll also be, you know, reaching out to a parking wreck. You know, we know majority of the parking gyms, they kind of start later and they go to the later. Right. Maybe give opportunities there. And then with the ones that are not open as far as the facility with their workers, we might be able to work with the admin or the supervisors so that we can open up again for what we can do some training with others and being able to utilize their facility earlier as well. So. So I guess maybe some other recreation directors might be reaching out to us. But then the other thing I wanted to mention and you mentioned that earlier in your presentation about staffing and how this building had someone in this building that used to come and help us with any problems we had with our computers and laptops and whatever, even connections with our printers and so forth. But we lost that person because of, I guess, office space. Yeah. And so we had talked and I'll be reaching out to other department heads in county building seeing if anybody does have an available space. I believe previous administration that was one of the things that was also asked that that's why it ended up being in one area. And so I will be trying to reach out to county building department heads and seeing if in the county building, if there's an office base that we might be able to utilize again. I definitely see that it is a big benefit. We already have seen it again like you mentioned after the person had to go and not be in the county building. We had a lot of departments say, hey, you know what happened to the person that we had. I did that. Yes. And we see that also in the other areas, right? Opuni, WCC, it's a big help, especially when they're right there. No drive time, they're walking, then they can come in help out and be available. And so we'll definitely be reaching out to the other department head for county building scene if we can find another space. You know like we had earlier Cooperation Council and we talked about separation of powers and basically Cooperation Council represents everybody administration and legislative right. So I look at IT as the same way. I mean, you cannot like say, oh, you're legislator. So we don't really serve you not top priority, right? You service anybody who needs help, right? Yeah. And so I think we should be helping if we have space within our office. For offices, we could maybe offer that to you. And so I'm hoping that if you don't, if there's no other departments that have space and say we do, then we can offer you that. But yeah, definitely I'll be reaching out and then I'll give you a few to chair myself. Yeah, yeah. Okay, thank you. No problem. Yeah, just following up on that note, I don't utilize my office in the clerk's office up there. I think it's full of storage materials or whatnot, but there's a space right there, which you're welcome. Keeps it close. There you go. Crisis averted. Only everything could be that simple. Just quickly as I was sitting here kind of trying to go through my county emails, something that I, it's kind of ironic, but like the internet service for me to do my county emails from this room is horrible and from Kona Chambers. I mean, he's hooked up to a live, you know, I don't even remember what that, an ethernet port in order to be able to utilize our laptops in this room. So just wondering what the opportunity for improvement is for us. So one of the other things, again, we're trying to get a lot of these upgrades of internet access and one of the other things that we're trying to do is also upgrade a lot of our wireless access points. Yeah. And hopefully that will help. I did recently in fire administration upstairs. I did. We had an outdated access point and when I put an upgraded one in there for Chief Todd and a fire area, he did mention that it did, you know, seem that he could see it a lot better and their speeds doubled. So we will be trying to look into trying to do that across, you know, our county facilities. And so we'll try to see if we can get a lot more. That would be great in Chambers. I mean, it's just, it gets difficult. I can't, I can do some of my phone, but I can't do it on my computer because it keeps shutting down that email account. And then I'm rebooting. And yeah, just thank you so much because I have you here that we can definitely look into it yeah yeah fantastic and please do follow up with the use of that space upstairs because that could be a perfect connection thank you so much thank you I hope you'll remember I I was really happy to see that line item about the managed security service. Can you tell me who the vendor is or vendors? For right now, we're still in looking with various vendors. So we haven't really selected anyone yet. It's something that we're trying to just check and see where we can get and what other opportunities we have. One of the big challenges for Hawaii is is trying to get people on island if we can support from Hawaii also because of the time difference. So there's different things that we're looking into, but it's something that we're definitely trying to check where we can get up in there to assist us with that. Excellent. Yeah. So very much support that and long overdue. Thanks. I'll spend more time telling you what. Thank you, Chair. So I just have a question about your PowerPoint on the staffing page. Just the 12 vacancies are maybe 11. That's great. You have all the divisions and branches noted here. Are they concentrated in certain areas? They spread out evenly along the branches of division. There's fairly even out within our department right now because we had a large, well we have five that's supposed to be set for the playing computers and that's kind of like our entry level and that's in our user support group and with that we had a few people move around and so you know because we have the movement within our department another life you ever call in Paschiga Chinese office they mentioned about getting another analyst and their analyst came from our department. So we are, you know, there's opportunities within the county and so with us, especially in that five deployment, user support staff, that's like our entry level and because we've got people moving into opportunities to get move up that allows that entry level one to be available. And like I said, once we can get some of our other positions filled where we're doing interviews, there won't be able to do the recruiting for that. And then hopefully, during this summer, especially with, you know, the college kids come in home and different opportunities. So we're hoping that we'll have some entry level ones that will become available this summer. And then we can fill our entry level. And then, you know, again, trying to get other positions within our department filled. Okay, great. Thank you. just a note note, I mean, this is a note to the administration too, as I thought that was really helpful for animal control. Had their different divisions that said how many vacancies in each one. And I thought that was a great way to get an overview. And then just my last, I guess it's more of a statement on your challenges of filling these vacancies. Unlike a lot of the challenges that we see in this across the scope which are kind of outside things not under people's control, this one seems very much within the control of the county. I know it's not just you, it's agent. Yeah, and then working together so I really hope that you know you can figure out the time to make this happen because it kind of seems like a challenge that can be overcome fairly simply. You know what to do. You can do it within our county and get it done so I just hope that you have the support you need to get that done. Yeah and I believe I believe it was something that HR actually had submitted out to all of the departments into getting a lot of their position descriptions upgraded from things that was very outdated. And so that's something that we are addressing and we're having our managers look at their various positions and trying to get the descriptions updated. I imagine that there are additional challenges that you didn't put here in filling these positions other than just the outdated descriptions that just call up I'd applicants or yeah, and my first, you know, my first, I'd say two, two months in the position, you know, one of the big things I did was, you know, reaching out to finance, reaching out to HR, you know, and trying to, you know, find out, you know, what kind of things were being done, you know, areas that we can address. And things that we needed to look at. And so, you know, that was some of the things that we went and did. And some of the challenges we had was, you know, not having our managers being, you know, managers. And so that was one of the things that we addressed and that was where we saw some of the morale come back. And so again, having our managers be in charge of facilitating the recruiting and being in charge of the interview panels. So that was some of the things that we took on. And since then, that's one of the things that we were able to do. Even though, again, we had some vacancies, we did fill a bunch of positions. It's just that some of it had happened internally where we had movement. we had, you know, then the recruiting for their positions. Okay. So that's stuff that we're working on. All right, thank you. So hopefully by next year, this one is no longer the challenge that you're facing there. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time and your staff's time. Thank you. I yield. Thank you. Councillor McKinble. Yeah. I'm a super question in your conversations or who are you that you've created with the other counties around their G.S. Hey, Director. Plenty of super questions in your conversations or who you created with the other counties around their GIS programs. What are the arrangements within the other counties? Do they consolidate all of their GIS specialists in their IT departments or do they do like we do where they have folks that have expertise within the? So this one was the first meeting I was involved in. So kind of just kind of a quick meeting everybody. It seemed like a lot of the other colonies were a lot smaller with their staffing. And again, some of them had challenges where they have to work with their IT department. So I think some of them was outside of the IT department, but hopefully I'll be able to go to these quality meetings and learn more and we can collaborate from understanding all of them are realizing Esri. So that's something common within everybody. And I did recall being in the meeting where RGIS was working with other counties and collaborating and trying to utilize some of the things that they're utilizing. So we're definitely going to try to learn more. And I believe they did bring up some training opportunities where Ez we might bring down someone to Oahu and then invite the other counties to be a part of. I'm just always thought it was a potentially missed opportunity for us and so many of the departments have GIS-based data that we didn't have a more centralized system for that or at least a set of data sharing SOPs like fill out your metadata and use the syntax for the day and use the syntax for TMK's whatever because if we had a little bit more standardization it would be a mechanism to share. Yes, and I believe that was some of what I recall from the meeting. They did talk about some of the like, I guess the flyovers, the discs that's going out to like Honolulu County and then being able to share the data. So they were requesting two different drives, one for them to have internal and then one that they can share out to other counties so that's something that we'll probably definitely look into. Yeah we've had in the past some opportunities to partner with outside entities that had GIS-based data to actually bring them in and Eric can probably fill you in on some of that looking at floodplain areas, looking at near-shore water impacts things like that. And so, you know, I think there's there's an opportunity to talk about the structure there that would best support the data sharing both internally between departments and externally whether it was that this was all organized under IT rather than having. I think it's good that we have IT specialists in each department but I wonder if the GIS should be a little bit more uniform and consolidated under IT. And I think that was one of the things with us having this kind of bring together with the other departments that we're having next month. I think that's one of the things that, you know, they'll be trying to like, you know, see what what data other other analysts are using, you know, what can be, you know, collaborate with and definitely keeping them a standard. Okay. Yeah, I'd be interested and I participated before in some of those conversations with Esri, so I'd be interested in doing that. Thank you. Thank you, Director. I don't have any questions, William. Thank you. Thank you. Yep, thanks. Is it? Everybody knows this moment? Wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, I'll get it. Let me find something. Oh, I got one. Okay. Are you done taking staff members from the council section of the building? Um, noting one. It depends on, it depends on when you find good people and you guys found good people. So I can't help it. But yeah, that's what John told me already. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, I guess I'll be working on the wireless access point for council mix. Thank you very much. Thank you for bringing your stuff with you. Thank you so much. Thank you council members. Thank you. Okay, well, brief recess. Thank you Welcome back we're out of recess Next department is going to be the Department of liquor control Director is here and his team go ahead when you are ready Gerald and take us away. Introduce yourselves please and your team members if you so choose. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I mean go to our questions if there are any. Good afternoon members of the council. Sure we're on so early today. I'm just a setting sun. But good afternoon I'm Gerald Takosti, Director of the Control of the County Roy. With me is Brandon Gonzalez, who is our administrative officer and behind me is Stacey Walgill, our licensing officer. And with her is our accountant. I guess somebody you guys should all be familiar with this at or e. So we would like to start off with our presentation. Some of the program measures outcomes and then objectives. We process 68 contingency grants. We're in the process of getting together our 2025 project grant. We have completed our rule amendments for the year. And those have been published and adopted. We're doing enforcement and educational programs and train liquor law training to licensees. Overviews, we do all the liquor license applications permits and support of our licensees throughout the year. We probably have about 400 licensees total in this county now. It's probably a little heavier on the corner side. They probably have a little over 200. This side is probably about 190 something. We try to support public youth programs that would promote compliance with the LECAR laws. As I said earlier, we provide licensees of training for liquor law compliance and we also provide training for our staff, board and commission. Right now, our critical positions are filling our licensing licensing enforcement vacancies. We have actually just filled our licensing tech position. But we have two openings in our part time investigator slots and one full time investigator slot in Hilo, which we had just if you filled it with one of our investigators moving up into licensing. So that's there. We're trying to fill up the corner slots, but we've had just a lot of turnover in corner. I feel like we should have a differential to kind of help them out on that site. We are providing online services for all of our forms and the card license applications as well as payment fees. This year we're embarking on subsidizing the use of credit cards. So right now, if our licensees use credit cards to make payments, the things they have to pay the service fee. But we just signed an agreement with Armander, and we will start taking over that. So hopefully that'll make it easier and more user friendly for our licensees to use the online process. We have been providing our campuses in ICA, Bill being loaded recently, so we will work with you folks on that as well. We've been trying to increase our outreach for Roger Grayat. We actually just talked to a vendor who may be willing to assist us in working on Project Grat. Really, the hard part of Project Grat is just getting the parents who's usually the organization organized and they are able to follow all of the county requirements. But I recently talked to Ben there and he's going to check with his board but if it does work and I think it will, they will kind of be a one-stop shop that we can, if a school comes in, we want to do the project, but I don't know, we can do all these requirements. We can forward it to them and they can help them do it. So hopefully that will remove some of the impediments to the kids actually being able to use the money. Our staffing, we have enforcement, the department's made up of what we have 20 positions, broken down into enforcement licensing and ministry services. We have nine commissioners, one from every council district and as well as five education board members. Like I said, our challenges right now are recruiting workers and retaining them. But we also have problems recruiting volunteers for the boards and commissions, although that's I don't know that we're actually recruiting volunteers, but the I think the mayor's office is having some problems trying to fill all the slots all the times. And we also try to provide support to other governmental agencies where we can. This is our budget. No new changes to positions. All of our slots are funded. We will see some increases in janitorial costs. The online user fees as well as building leases and maintenance. right now our cone office is located at the, I guess what used to be the old mayor's office. So we moved out of the West Voice Civic Center. So we leased the building and cover costs there. I think next year our leases up so we'll have to ring a go sheet then hopefully the things haven't changed too much. We have no changes in public programs and we receive no federal state funding. Our major priorities for the upcoming years, taking on this online user fees and paying for those. And we will see how that comes out, whether we're kind of hoping it's going to be something that's workable for both our licensees as well as for us. If it does, then I think it'll make everybody's life a little easier filling the critical vacancies. We will get one more investigator in Kono starting June 1st and then we'll be fully staffed on that side as well. We try to provide as much support to our licensees as possible providing classes, I think twice a month in Kono, once a month in Hilo, and also having special classes for our bigger licensees. So we will actually go out to them the hotels and things where it's hard for them to get everybody in. But we can go out to the hotels and we will provide the support in classes to those. We try to do it elsewhere, but it's been kind of hidden in this. We need a kind of a big employer to be able to do it. And that's all I have. Brandon wanted to cover a few of our highlights for evokes. Good afternoon, Council Chair, members of the Council. My presentation is just a little more quickly just to give you more background of who we are, the department and what we do. Keep in mind that our budget that we prepared to you, we feel it is accurate and necessary for carrying out our mission. We view ourselves as a facilitator and resource. Um, oh my goodness. The, we help businesses that make alcohol, like olabru, kuleana rum, konabru, twelfth island distillers. We help businesses that distribute alcohol. Yeah, the screen doesn't show. No, that's not it. It's not displaying on the main screen. Thank you, Rayleigh. Oh, because it's on that. Yeah, perfect. There we go. Thank you very much. Okay, that's a relief. So we hope businesses that either make, distribute or sell or serve alcohol, stay in compliance with all the applicable federal state and county liquor laws. We have a director. So when we're talking about Department of liquor control, that's what I'm trying to describe who we are. We have a director and office staff, 20 positions total. We take care of the day-to-day operations. We have a liquor commission made up of up to nine community volunteers. Their function is to grant or deny applications for liquor licenses. We have a liquor adjudication board of up to five community volunteers. They determine if a licensee violates our liquor laws if we get to that. And who we are, we also assist communities with liquor-related issues. So what do we do, Brandon, just summit? We do our job to get things done. We look at ourselves as we keep the economy going and we provide our communities with opportunities. Communities sometimes want more services and recreational things related to alcohol. Some communities are more hesitant. We don't do what we do for awards recognition. We are proud that because of our outreach and our overall philosophy of being a facilitator, we get a lot more collaborative work with our licensees and the businesses and we have a lot less friction and tension with the licensees. You might see in the news in other islands, you know, bars and restaurants suing the liquor commission and stuff for action. So we are fortunate that our working relationship is really good with our licensees in that regard. Our liquor commission meets every month. We do alternate meeting in West Hawaii and East Hawaii for accessibility. And our Likker Commission balances the interest and concerns of the community, along with the interests of the business that wants to get a liquor license to sell alcohol. We are able to process our applications for liquor licenses within three to six months compared to months to years and other jurisdictions. For example, one jurisdiction had to create a special license because their ability to issue a license within a year, they couldn't do it. So they were doing a temporary license in the interim. Our licensing and enforcement staff, they kind of do it all. They help the business apply for liquor license or permit. Our enforcement staff or our liquor investigators keep the, help the licensees keep the liquor licensees by providing education and information about the various liquor laws. So our overall philosophy as a department is to seek voluntary compliance rather than punitive enforcement. So if our investigators wear many hats. You're going to be ambassadors, if they see an issue they want to bring it to the business's attention and address it and have them come into compliance voluntarily. So it's no longer an issue. If there are violations that happen with the law, then it's the liquor adjudication board that meets as needed to determine if a liquor licensee violated a liquor laws. We do not measure our success as a department by the number of citations or our violations we issue or the fines we collect. Our success is, actually we look at it as a success if we don't have that many violations because then everybody is operating according to the law and then the business is is doing good. Now I have to kind of to our horn which is gonna make you out uncomfortable but I just want to highlight some of the things that we do that we don't even even figure out, hey, that's something good. We are able to process the licenses faster. We provide guidance and input to other counties from a department level and also for the board and commissions. For example, through COVID, a lot of the ideas that came from our office and Kauai, we worked with Honolulu and Maui to draft the emergency rules for Tugou Alcohol, which was not allowed before that. And then as we were moving through COVID and coming out of COVID, the governor's office used our rules emergency rules as examples to change the state law, to allow Tugou sales. On a local level, we tried to keep our local businesses and communities working and making it easier to get through all the COVID protocols by providing cleaning, disinfecting, sanitizing supplies. Another initiative that we partnered with a lot of people, State Department of Health, County Council, the Office of the Mayor, Attorney General, to address this opioid crisis going on. The director just mentioned I believe there's legislation coming forward now for that as well. We were able to provide 700 tree Narcan doses to various on-premises liquor licenses in July of 2023. at the time and the common there is unlike other islands, we didn't have to make it mandatory because of our relationship with the licensees. So they're appreciative to be given that resource. And we thought it was a successful program. So we'll probably talk about that more with future legislation. Other things that we have done, we've partnered with the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney on ramping up some of their underage drinking prevention and awareness programs. We have in the past had also partnered with schools on issues of self-esteem. That was a brave project. We do provide career mentoring to teach civic responsibility and respect for the statewide program of under 21 NOCAN. And we also help facilitate bring the drive with Aloha Miro Project to Hawaii Island. The artist was actually one of our presenters and speakers at our State liquor commission conference that we had to host a few years ago. So that got the ball rolling with that. So we're happy to see that program catching momentum on our island. That's kind of all I have. You guys can see the numbers in the budget documents for this year. Thank you for letting me talk. Thank you very much. Council members, Mr. Onishi, glad. Thank you, Chair. So good afternoon. So you mentioned two things that really caught my ear. What's that one? You mentioned about their fees being paid online using credit cards and you worked with the vendor to waive the fees. That's right. Well, we're not going to waive the fees. We will pick up the fees for them. So right now the way it's set up is if you want to pay using a credit card you're going to pay I think a 2% or 3% credit card fee as well as an initiation fee but basically we said okay we'll pay for all of that to try and make it and so you get out with the vendor Yeah, well, we just said we'll just bill us for that. And so your fees that you charge is the same amount, but with whatever profits you make, whatever that's how you pay it. Correct. Okay. So something to look at it as well, because I was pushing finance to do that overall. I mean, you know, so it It's a little easier for us because they're really painted in the end themselves, but it's spread over everybody. Right. And then what can feedback do you get from that? Well, we're just starting now. What did you start? We're going to start it with this renewal in all July 1st but we've had the credit card payment program in place for about two or three years and I want to see maybe about 30% we're using it. So once this is implemented can you report back to us like after six months to see maybe it might rise up to 60 or 70 percent? Sure. And that might be a reinforcement for finance to look into. Yeah. Yeah. Can I put it on there? Because so, that's all I know. Really? It's, you know, then it's going to be the, you know, I don't know. No one is going to be able to do, you folks be a pilot project. Yeah. how it goes. Okay, and the other thing that you, oh, okay, you have been hard time in recruiting. So earlier, I brought up the land from finance. And you know, we've been hearing a lot of the other departments saying that they have in hard time recruiting or keeping employees on the west side. So I mentioned to her maybe something to think outside the box is to having a county help with their health insurance. Maybe the county paid 75% of the health insurance and then they pay only 25. Whereas I think right now it's about 50, 50 or 60, 40, right? The employee pays and so forth. On Kauai, as Director mentioned, agreed, was in Kauai, they're looking at... They paying the whole thing, 100% to keep recruitment, to keep their employees. So that's something that I think we're going to have to start looking at. Yeah, I think, you know, especially on the West Side, I mean, we've had people applying for west side positions that actually live in Hilo, but I've kind of discouraged them from doing that because I really don't want them driving cross-Island at two in the morning. Right, right. But, you know, I think the positions, or the people are more on this side, but to find Surabal housing or even to find housing that's It's it's tough, you know, and I recognize we're not paying Probably what we should be paying right and if you if you have a family it costs more to right? So with that savings that could help with their rent or whatever. Yeah, so we would agree. Also yesterday we had with HR about incentives or even bonuses. So there is already an okay from finance, corporation council. And HR just got to, I guess, work out the kinks on the program. And so that could be another avenue of how you guys can help with retaining these workers. Okay, so something to work with other working with finance, right, to get that done. Yes, we've floated several proposals and it's kind of like, let us check, but the problem with working in the county system is, you know, everybody's going to kind of be even. So yeah, but like with the prosecutors, if an upvastation is doing that already. If one director is that true? Because I think that. I'm not sure if I'm not sure on the details of that one. I do know that we can do incentives already for certain positions and that would be up to the department to work with HR on determining what is the proper incentive for those positions. Okay. So you can. Okay. That sounds good. Okay. Good. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. I hope some member will call you out. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here, Director, and for all your staff. And I have to give a special thank you to Nissa for all her help with our CRFs. And we do have a couple more coming. Sorry, late. I know. Getting them in under the gun. Project grad. Can you tell us what the uptake is for this year or far. So currently we have 45,000 committed to seven schools. Seven schools only. Okay. And you think one of the issues is that they don't know how to do the paperwork? It's a lot of paperwork I had to do in my self-ad. Really? And I think that's kind of discouraging them. That's why I said I just, in fact today I just talked to one of our vendors and asked him if he'd be willing to to kind of do it for other schools. And he's going to go back to his board and check, but he see. of our vendors and asked him if he'd be willing to kind of do it for other schools. And he's going to go back to his board and check, but he seemed to be thinking that he could probably do it. Well, that be a fee for us or not for us. I think. Well, I guess it will be because I told him we'll probably pay whatever the fee is, so not reduce the actual award to the schools. Okay. All right, I think we should, yeah, let's keep reassessing how this works because it seemed like maybe the uptake level when it was coming to the districts was a little better. I mean, and we have the ability to help people get through it. So I just, I'm not really sure why. I'm also questioning, I think we heard from our prosecuting attorney earlier that maybe that like the big school funded graduation parties may just aren't as popular as they used to be, is that the sense that you have? Yeah, it could be. I think it kind of goes through cycles. You know, if one class has a good one, then maybe everybody also be enthused by it. But, you know, if it kind of dies by the wayside, then, you know, there's kind of a loss of interest. So we did talk to the prosecutor but he's thinking about trying to do something on a bigger scale. Right. And so we told him yeah we would forget. He's gonna get like Bruno Mars or something. Yeah. Okay. Um last time we talked about some ways that you might be able to kind of help promote in addition to just having the pot of money there, but promote some of these ideas around alcohol-free grad nights. Were you able to implement any of those things? Well, we just haven't been so working on it. You know, she's trying to identify all the schools. I think we have all the schools on our list now. Okay, definitely the bigger ones. Yeah, I thought we were talking about things like, you know, trying to showcase fun things that you can do at these, you know, drug and alcohol free events and you know, trying to get it out there so people might get excited about it. Was any of that able to be implemented yet? We haven't implemented it. We have talked to the prosecutors because they kind of have actually staff that can do that. That would be great. And that's where we're kind of talking with the broad doing things. Well yeah, anything you can do to help make these opportunities available to our youth, I think, would be great. So thank you. One other question I have. I understand that somebody approached you trying to talk about more environmentally friendly cups to be used for events that the disposable plastic ones are normally used and that it wasn't deemed a possibility because it's not completely clear. Can you explain a little why that is? Because most of the I forget who it was. Yeah they did come to us with a plan, but usually for our uses, we kind of asked that alcoholic beverages being clear cups so we can easily identify what's there. Because most of the events have a mix of over 21, under 21. So if they're not in clear cups, it makes it a little hard for when our investigators go around to determine what people have. So that was kind of the challenge. If you can get it to a clear. Right. I just, I guess I'm a little, I don't know that people can tell by just looking at something, whether the cup is clear or not, whether it has alcohol in it. So if I may, I met with the woman, and I got to see the samples. And so right now we're in a room that's well lit. I turned off the lights and I said, so these events are happening at dusk or in the evening. We don't have overhead lights. That's been one of the observations. And it's not just the investigative staff. It's the staff of the business that have, they're required to make sure there's no underage drinking or over service or tampering with the drinks that they prepare. So it's harder for them as well if the cup is not clear. And that's why in the industry the non-alcoholic beverages are allowed to be served in opaque cups. And that's one visual cue that makes it easier for the workers. If any of you guys have worked in food service, that's why there's, you know, those red fuzzy looking soda cups and then there's the clear cups with all the alcohol, right? So that that was okay. Well that's one thing I guess I hadn't I just feel like it's not obvious to tell whether this red juice has vodka in it or not by just looking at it and so I don't really see the visual of being able to be an excuse of why not to consider going with something that's more environmentally friendly. So she's close. She had provided a sample and actually we said, yeah, why don't you try and use it for this event. And then the sample actually got to her and she was, oh, it was too flimsy. She didn't want to use it. So we're close there. We're working with her. And that's the thing for the workers and the staff, they're not going to go up to a person a stranger and then like try sniff your drink or say I want to try it. It's a visual cue that's, is the first thing as humans that assist in making the overall assessment. And so that was a real helpful sitting down with her and trying to explain that aspect. Okay, but how visually can somebody tell if something is a red juice or a red juice with a kind of? So for events of all ages, we get a list of the alcohol being served and the types of alcohol. So most of it is just beer or wine. So if it's an amber colored liquid, right? It could be apple juice. It could be, but then, but if you see that, and they don't have a band on or a drinking thing, and they have an amber colored liquid, and they're in an area they're not supposed to, part of the totality of the circumstances, that's probably beer. So then there would be a deeper inquiry, like, I wanna see what's in the cup, I wanna smell it, right? So. Okay, it seems to me like the visual thing is a little bit, iffy anyway. Yeah, it's not all I get it. It's a very minor part of telling whether it's something or not. I mean, yeah, anyway, I appreciate that you're willing to look into it and talk about it. I hope that you can keep moving forward because, you know, all those plastic cups that for every event that go into our landfill is just very disturbing. All right thank you so much. I appreciate it. All right that's all thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Oh that was forever good. I just wanted to thank you for that overview of here at. I thought that was useful because it is, you know, a little bit, not something that at least I interact with, so didn't really know how it works. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. We know we've been having the travel discussion and we'll be seeing you folks in May for hopefully and hopefully an update on your department's specific travel policy. Then this, so everyone knows, I guess I'm not going to spend a lot of time going into travels and so I'm going to be meeting with the department on Monday to really get a better handle on what travel looks like also with another bill coming down the pipeline and director Takasi and the team that they shared about the Narcan and looking down the road if that's something that we will require in our county and perhaps reallocating funds within the existing budget to cover that expense and ultimately reviewing to I think this fiscal year on thanks to the team and two members of this council we We did our best to get out the information for Project Grad so as part of that meeting we can really determine if we want to reallocate some of the money that are currently specific to Project Grad and contribute towards some of those joint efforts with the prosecuting attorney's office and with the police department. So we'll say those discussions for next week. I just wanted to point out the presentation that was that second presentation that wasn't something that was transmitted to our office correct? correct? Correct, Chair. And we are working with the council staff to make sure that it's properly submitted as a communication. Sorry. correct? Correct, Chair. And we are working with the Council staff to make sure that it's properly submitted as a communication. Sorry, I was not aware of that protocol. Okay, thank you. I just want to make sure because just in general all of the departments are following this prescribed manner and we don't, for the record of other departments who have yet to go, we don't want supplemental presentations just to keep things in a consistent format as provided by the NC Department. But yes, please do submit. So sorry. Thank you so much. I'm a little chariot. Thank you. Maybe I'll start there. I have nothing else. Okay. Now, how many? I have nothing else. Okay. So, liquor establishments were fined this year to date for underage drinking? This current year, I think none. For this current license year, you know, we haven't done our compliance checks yet, where we send in under 21 decoys to attempt to buy. So that's what the director is was probably thinking. We did have one in West Hawaii, one case so far, of liquor to minors. Okay, keep up with good work. I've heard some things that were interesting in the community. Okay. Yeah, we get reports from parents and things, but you know by the time we get out there. They can't identify the establishment, but they usually can't get any farther than that. So we can't cite the person, but they have informed us and we will work with the licensees that you guys are kind of a known establishment that it's easier to get liquor at. And they don't want to be that person. So they kind of stepped up there in enforcement as well. We helped them with placement of the products. A lot of times they're not even buying it from there they're just stealing it walking out the door Actually, we've had two cases and we're not naming businesses, but I can recall two cases not with this past liquor liquor license year for liquor to miners Thank you good It sends a clear message to the community. Keep up the work on it, being and not serving underage. That's really the role of your department. One role of your department. Thank you. appreciate you. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. That brings us to the end of our agenda today. We are in recess. Tomorrow's meeting will begin again at 9 a.m. And it is 3.46 p.m.