So we're going to be starting here in a few seconds. Thank you. Okay, we're ready. Great. Thank you. Aloha everyone. We are here in the Hilo Chamber and it is October 1st and we're on the 1130 agenda. This is the committee on government operations and external affairs. It's our 40th session. And I'm looking in Kona and I do not see a member of Nava. So member of Nava is excused. Here in the Hilo Chamber we have member Liloi, member Glimba, member Kirkaweitz, excuse but returning is member Kimble and we have member Connie Lee Kleinfelder, member Viegas, memberogawata, and myself Chair Evans. So we are going to start with Mr. Clerk. Do we have any testifiers? Thank you Chair Evans. We don't have any testifiers your committee, which I'd like to start with. Okay. Would you start with resolution 632-24. And may I, this instance, this is my bill. I'd like to turn over my chair to my vice chair, Lee Loy. Sure, let the record reflect. I have assumed the chair of this committee at 1225 PM. Mr. Clerk. Resolution 632-24 request the Mayor to give me a working group to develop a county radio plan. Seize to give me a working group necessity of representatives from the Civil Defense Agency the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency the Big Island Amateur Radio Club and other stakeholders to improve the county's radio communication and infrastructure focusing on emergency response for rural and isolated areas and to reduce misavans. Miss Evans, a motion please. Thank you. I move, I make a motion to forward resolution 632-24 to the Council with a favorable recommendation. Thank you. We have a motion by Miss Evans and a second by Mr. Coney, the E. Kleinfelder. Thank you so much. Miss Evans, please lead our discussion. Thank you. I had spoken to our director, Tom, Macno of Civil Defense. And he has sent someone. Hello? Oh, there you go. OK. So he has sent someone from his department, which please come up? Thank you. And would you please introduce yourself through the record? Good afternoon, Council. My name is Scott Urahar, Radio Systems Manager with the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency. Thank you. Thank you. So members, there is the cert teams in my district, community emergency response teams, that over this last year have told me about the importance of him radio operators and how they really see a critical need there. And the other thing is there's some fire wise, a fire wise committee that has been stood up in my community because of the concern of the wildfires in Waikoloa. And they also mentioned the importance of ham radio operators and this need in case of emergency and how they believe serve a true purpose and here are people that spend a lot of money training and they talk to one another during emergencies. They have learned about them and fielded there an important resource. Obviously we've had wildfires in my district, and that even heightened even more this ability of volunteers to actually communicate with one another during emergencies. So what I was thinking about was this idea of having a stakeholder group working with civil defense to talk about how to incorporate those volunteers and that ability into communicating during emergencies, any natural disaster, how we can use them and incorporate them into our ability to communicate during a disaster. One of the things about the radio operators is that nobody wants it to turn into bureaucracy and red tape and you know we're going to tell you what to do and how to do it. More importantly is to get everybody in the same room and talk about kind of what possibly what protocols could be put in place, how they could get information out, who would control the information, how would it be sent out, but to really encourage those, that type of discussion. And what was interesting is the other day in my MA, they had a emergency preparedness civil defense fair, which I was told came from PUNA. When you did revitalize PUNuna, they learned lessons from that. They thought it was so wonderful that they had a fair here in Hilo. And now they're having, they had this fair in Miami this last weekend. And the radio, amateur radio operators were there with their booth. And it just seemed like they were part of this whole discussion about how do you respond? And how do we collectively work with each other in response to a disaster. And then of course we just saw what happened on the East Coast. It's just horrible to see what happens. But you know, what can we do to improve communication? And anytime I've been involved in a natural disaster, always in the debriefing part of the community and everybody says, how can we improve the way to communicate, to tell people what's going on, you know, how they can get messaging. One of the things I realized with the helco, saying they might turn off the power in the drought areas in South Kohala, if they turn off the power, then maybe how do people communicate and it's possible they may have to turn their car on and turn their car radio on to be able to hear what's going on. If in fact, you know, people don't have solar, they don't have backup batteries, you know, they may actually not have electricity and the ability to connect a traditional way, right, which might be television. So I just felt the discussion would be really worthy and it would be worthy for our counsel to maybe support the idea of the stakeholders coming out with a plan. And I guess the last piece I want to share is it's very common at the state legislature to have these type of groups to get together the stakeholder groups. Because in the end, like I told Tom, if there's a recommendation that there could be something to help our civil defense interact better with our community. This becomes a tool to actually help you go get money. It helps you get funding because you've actually brought together the stakeholders. You've actually put together recommendations and analyzed how many radio-oppers do we have? You know, is there spots on our island that doesn't have repeaters so that him you know so is there something missing on our island that we could improve I see it as a potential as a tool for us to even possibly get funding and so that's kind of my take on it and can I I'd like to turn it over to you possibly make some comments sure so thank thank you for summarizing all of that. From civil defense agency, we've actually seen a lot of what you've been talking about in the past, in terms of making sure that there is reliable communications out to the community. So over the years, we've been working on a program called the auxiliary communication service. So this program is to enhance emergency communication capabilities across the island, recognizing that effective communication is imperative before, during, and after an emergency. The ACS program aims to bridge communication gaps by partnering with local communities and involving amateur radio operators. So one of the mission, the key mission of the program is to ensure communication reaches the most remote areas down to the last person, the last house, the last block, the last community. The way we're doing this is by implementing these initiatives or objectives of the program. We're out to collaborate with established community groups to strengthen communication networks. Leverage the expertise of licensed amateur radio operators to support emergency communications and to develop robust communication systems that remain operational when traditional networks fail, such as cellular, because we saw how that happened in line. So in involving the community, we've reached out to CERT, the community emergency response teams, and they do have amateur radio operators embedded already within their groups. And we're also providing training for those individuals on the ACS program and asking them to participate with us. We've also reached out and partnered with Vibranholy to make sure that the hubs have OE to communicate and to make sure that they also themselves have amateur radio operators so that they can communicate on this network. And one of those things about getting information in and out of the emergency operation center is we've developed what we call net control. So this is a group of people that will be inside of civil defense during an emergency. And they're going to be communicating on the ACS communication network. So they're going to, they've already had all these established communication routes with all of these individuals. And one of the things we can say is, you know, we definitely want to practice what we want to implement. So every month we practice this. So as you all heard, it's the first day of the month that 1145 sirens went off. So before that, the ACS program activates. It activates the repeaters to make sure that all of the operators can report back. Did they hear the siren? And this is a way to not just practice, but something we've heard from Lahaina is, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. So we encourage all the operators to practice this so that they can become familiar with it every single month so that this is not something new when an emergency hits, they know exactly what to do, where to go, and how to communicate. So we practiced this in September. We had 32 participants to report back. Did they hear the siren on through the ACS program? Right now we have two repeaters. It's located at Waikelow Fire Station, number 16, and on top of Montaquia. And one of the things I did wanna take the opportunity to do is kind of make a call to action to amateur radio operators. You know, we want these individuals to partner with, with, with vibrant toys so that they can be embedded in the hubs and they're not out there by themselves. They can reach back into their areas because they're strengthen numbers. There's always strengthen numbers. So that is my call to action to all the amateur radio operators out there. Please participate. Join us so that we can make sure that the communities are informed because that's during an emergency is critical, having information out there. And that's pretty much what I had. That was a really great overview. When I was talking to one of the Big Island amateur club, he really liked the Rezo, because what he said was, is there's different clubs on our island. And they really need to start working better together because they kind of have their own little groups, but he sees some real advantage to have all the groups come together and start talking about how they work collectively together when there's an emergency. I just wanted to add that. My thought on this resolution was to postpone it for two weeks and allow more of the radio amateur working groups to come up with some maybe a little more language in the rezo for a little more robust what we're trying to achieve with it. That was my thought. But thank you. Thank you. Are you? for a little more robust what we're trying to achieve with it. That was my thought, but thank you. Thank you. Are you? Thank you, Ms. Evans. Mr. Coney, are you crying out there? No, thank you. Are you for being here today, Director? And thank you, Ms. Evans, for bringing this up. Just a comment, really. Our local radio station, KWXX and Chris Leonard, absolutely amazing resources and information. And they're also, I mean, and the civil defense side, they are, what is the correct term for them, tractors, you know? We call it the LP1, the local primary one. So they're the ones that transmit the emergency alert broadcast. Yeah, so he's an incredible resource. And he would probably be well suited to be on a working group to discuss this kind of thing. So just offering that for the conversation and appreciate the idea again and thank you for your time, director. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Anyone else? Seeing none, thank you, Mr. Oehara, for being here. Great job. Waikahe School graduate. Really appreciate that. Just to offer some other comments, because I heard the maker talks about maybe postponing it. In support of this resolution wherever you wanna go with this, I want to appreciate the conversation because we're right in the middle of her king preparedness and all those great things. This is a great way to advance just more conversation to our communities about preparedness. I do like the suggestion by Mr. Conelli-Cleinfelder and it sounds like the department is already kind of in the throes of that but what would be really great is to the point of the call to action is maybe just a little report out of this committee or stakeholder group to share a lot of the information on what these hand radio operators are doing in collaboration with the Firewise programs with civil defense. I share that because I think some kind of report that possibly being a little greedy here, that maybe I could leverage as it at the state to talk about insurance and how we here in Hawaii County have all of these stakeholders who are involved with readiness and preparedness in an effort to show that these fire-wise programs and these communities are actually helping or doing its part to maybe reduce homeowners insurance. So I do think some kind of white cheat or conversation or report out of this action committee would be helpful and maybe we could use that as a tool to demonstrate to our insurance companies that our communities stand ready to share good information so we can help reduce the cost of home ownership insurance. Those were my thoughts. I look forward to you miss Evans what you want to do if you want to see this continue to move forward or you're looking to postpone miss Evans. Okay well I look for your guidance but I do want to amend it and add a little more substance to the language of the rezo. I could advance it and give them the first counsel hearing or I could postpone it and bring it back so I would kind of look at but basically just to give a little more up to it. Keep it here. Okay, I'm playing with that. So I would move to postpone resolution 632-24 to the committee hearing on October 15th. All right, we have a motion by Ms. Evans. Oh, we have a second. I see. And be some behind the curtain by Mr. Conelli, Kleinfeld, the other two postpone resolution, three to dash two four to our committee hearing on October 15th. Any discussion on the postponement members seeing none? All those in favor of the postponement, please say aye. Contrary reminded Mr. Clerk, we have eight eyes with Mr. Inaba excused in route at this time. I think the next matter is resolution of 568-24 willing. Oh, I got the nod from our chair that I'll keep the chair here. Mr. Clerk, resolution 685-24 please. Is there any testimony for resolution 658-24? Hearing none, resolution 685-24 amends resolution number 464-24 to add the Emergency Solutions Grant Program to the 2000 to the 2024 County Void Annual Action Plan to be submitted to the United States Department of Housing Urban Development and to modify the authorization to execute agreements. As the Emergency Solutions Grant Program to allow for the direct receipt of federal funding and clarifies that only the mayor may execute and submit agreements related to the 2024 County Hawaii Action Plan issued by the Evans by request. Miss Evans, a motion pleased for resolution 658-24 to the council with a favorable recommendation. So moved. Great. We have a motion by Miss Evans and a second by Miss Galimba. Miss Evans, please lead our discussion. Yes, unless we have someone from the Royce. Yes, Royce. Please tell us about this resolution. Thank you. Royce Sheroma County for housing. This resolution is going to adopt. I'm sorry, amend resolution 464-24 because we need to add the emergency solutions grant program to the authorization for the mayor to submit the action plan and the execution of the grant agreement. Since the original resolution was done in April of this year, we haven't gotten firm notification from HUD that we were awarded this grant until recently and this grant basically is to provide services or fund services for the homeless service providers and it includes items such as street outreach, emergency shelter cost, homeless prevention, rapid rehousing, assistance and assistance with the payment for the data collection through the homeless, they call it the homeless management information system, HIM, IIS. We are receiving approximately $272,000 for this. The history with this is that traditionally, it would be the state who would receive these funding, the State Department of the Human Services. However, for 2024, they have declined and therefore HUD offered the funding to the three neighborhoods Maui and ourselves for a county took up on the offer and therefore we will be receiving these funds. I am here to answer any questions if needed. Thank you. Thank you. I have no more questions. Thank you. Ayo. Great, Royce. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. Any other members' questions regarding the resolution? Ms. Kakiwata. Thank you. Thank you for being here, Royce. So how will you divvy up these findings, basically? According to the emergency solutions grant, ESG, we need to work with the, they call it the COC, continue of care group and we'll be working with them once we get the final K from HUD. And from there will be determining what their needs are. And basically that's how we're gonna determine what how the money will be dv up to them. Okay, so these are organizations that we're already contracted with to provide homeless services. And this is just what they do, they have to apply or give you a list or something of things that they wanna do in addition to what they're already contracted for? We will be working with them closely as far as whether they have any needs and items that they need to, you know, that has some shortage of funding and will approach it that way. Okay. Well, you need to amend their contracts to do this. Depends it either we're going to, for us, we're going to have to do a new contract because there's different requirements for this program. And therefore, yeah, if they want to amend it and include it, but it might just tie their hands to the other program that they are already obligated to do. Okay, great, thanks. Will you be bringing it to council to see how what how this money is used? Yes yes we'll be reporting it as with the annual action plan. Thank you so much appreciate that. Thank you Miss Kauiwata, anyone else? Well I just want to take a moment to thank you Royce for standing ready, you know, the fact that you know The other county passed up on it and we were ready to receive these additional findings I just really appreciate you and being aware of that Members we have a motion on the floor to forward resolution 658-24 to the council with a favorable recommendation all those in favor, please say aye. Contrary minded, Mr. Clerk, we have eight eyes with Mr. Inaba in route excused. All right, I see no further business. All right, this meeting is adjourned at 12.48 pm. Thank you everyone.