I do. Ah, ah. Thank you for being here this morning. Today is April 8th, 2025. It is 9 a.m. I am calling this meeting to order. This is our special meeting for the committee on finance. This is our eighth session. And today's meetings are being held in Hilo. We also have folks joining us from Kona. And we have our out- sites as well. To begin the day, I just want to move on to the time and for any testifiers, we will be getting to you shortly. Please remember to silence your cell phones or other associated electronic devices, so it's not to disrupt the hearings today. Mr. Clerk, if we could go to public tests, oh no, let's do a roll call first, roll call. Mr. Limbaugh, here. Mr. Hustes. President. Mr. Inaba. Eon. Ms. Kagiwara. Here. Ms. Kirkowitz. President. Ms. Kimbo. Mr. Nishie. President. Ms. Villegas. Chair Connilly Klein-Felder. I am here. Chair, you have all nine members in attendance. Thank you very much, Mr. Brown. Thank you for your time this morning as well. Public testimony, please. Thank you, Chair. Just noting that we do not have any testifiers at your remote sites. We do have three testifiers here in the Heelow Chamber. First of which is Aslan Chalker. To be followed by Matthew Chalker, both testifying on Bill 32. Aslan, if you could come up to the front table, you can use the mic. You can press that green button at the base of the mic to turn it on. You'll have three minutes to provide your testimony if you could just reintroduce yourself as you begin, please. Feel free to pull that mic closer, yeah. Aloha Chair, Kanali Kleinfelder by Chair Houston and members of the council. I call them my voice shakes. I'm a little nervous. My name is Aslan Chakar. I'm a longtime resident of White Kaloa Village. Today I'm asking for your support for the allocation of funds required for the crucial second road for Waikoloa Village in the capital budget. In 2021 during the monofire, my daughter was about to turn one years old. And I have vivid memories of trying to plan her first birthday while the sky burned red above our house. When the evacuation order came, my husband and I were out of our house in less than 10 minutes, and we still got stuck in traffic. Imagine being in bumper to bumper traffic, watching fire burn less than three miles from you, trying to distract your baby and hoping she doesn't remember this. It took us 15 minutes to go less than half a mile to exit the village that day. And as's where's with the Hulu evacuation route open. That remains one of the scariest days of my life. And I hope you can understand why you received so many comments prior to this meeting telling you that a second road in the village feels like a matter of life and death for us. The fear of fire keeps me up at night and it's enough to make our family consider moving. I know there's not an extra $25 million in the budget to build a road for our village this year. I know projects like this take years and decades. Respectfully we have already waited over a decade. And if we go another year without it even being started, I truly believe in my heart that lives could be lost. We have worked and spoken with mayors and heads of public works and planning directors and housing directors and anyone who will listen to us. We have spoken with our state and federal representatives and absolutely everyone agrees that this is urgent and this is necessary, but for some reason we are stuck. We need to get started and we need your help. Today, I'm here as a scared mom begging for action to prevent loss of life. And I'll leave you with this. The report from our Attorney General's Office after Lahaina said that why Kaloa Village has, and I quote, 100% higher wildfire risk than any other place in the United States. 100% higher wildfire risk than any other place in the United States. 100% higher wildfire risk than anywhere else in the United States. Lahaina was at 98% risk. It is not a matter of if but when for the village. 30 seconds please. And you this council today can make a difference in our lives by allocating the money needed just to begin this project. We've heard many in government say they are for this road. They support and understand our needs but it is not enough to say you are for something. You all also have to stand up do something and maybe sacrifice a little bit. Mahalo for your time. Thank you so much for your testimony. Chair, your next testifier is Matthew Chalker to be followed by Bob Yonke. Matthew, when you begin, go for it. When you begin, if you could just reintroduce yourself, you'll have three minutes. You can turn that mic on by pressing that button. Thank you. Thank you. Oha, Chair, kindly lead, kindly Felder, Vice-Chair Hussis, members of the committee. My name is Matt Schocker. I'm the executive director and co-founder of Wildfire Safety Advocates of Y-Clowa, I'm also a resident, as my wife just pointed out, of the village itself. And I'm respectfully asking for you to dedicate $2.5 million from the capital improvement spud of this year for the engineering plans and design for the second road. This has been a long time knowledge. My wife just mentioned that a moment ago, your predecessor Pete Hoffman in 2004 wrote a letter attached to PUD number 73, saying that the village is already in a hazardous situation. It is already a cul-de-sac, and we needed a second road 21 years ago. In 2008, the South Cahalla Community Development CDP, sorry, CDP labeled a second road for Y-Clow Village as the single highest priority for the area. That was 17 years ago. The village has exclusively been growing since then. My family, we moved in in 2016. Everyone in the village is a transplant. It is continuing to grow I invite you all right now this is a thing that I do consistently in all of my testimonies the next time you are in the village please let me know I want to take each and every one of you personally to the north end where there is a tremendous amount of construction going on right now in the most dangerous part of the village. There are luxury houses coming in, there are workforce houses coming in, thousands of new residents are going into the most dangerous wildfire area in the state and they do not have a way out. We all contribute to traffic, they are going to be traffic, they need to have a way out. We know that there's the plans for a single lane evacuation road out of the North End up along Comic-Con drive. Appreciate that. That's wonderful. Hulu already exists. We have one existing single lane evacuation road. Again, wonderful safety valve. They are not sufficient. Hulu was open during the last evacuation. There still was an hour plus long traffic jam. A single lane evacuation out of the north end won't be enough for the thousands of people that are going in. We need to have a two lane road that fire trucks can drive up from the Pua Co station to the village while residents drive down. I also know that in a evacuation study that is being discussed right now for the village, that is vital. We want that more than anything else. That cannot be a delaying tactic for the ultimate thing that we need, which is a second road. We can't be spending a year and hundreds of thousands of dollars to be told that we already, to be told what we already know that we need, okay? What these are, parallel solutions. We need to know how to get out of the village safely. The road's gonna take five, six years at least, probably. We understand and appreciate that. While we are in that hazardous situation, we need to know how to get out. Mojale for your time and please come Thank you so much for your testimony. Chair your next test or your last testifier here in Healup before we transition to get out. Mahalo for your time and please come to the village. Thank you so much for your testimony. Chair your next test or your last testifier here in Healow before we transition to a testifier in Waimea is Bob Yunki. Bob, if I butchered your last name, I apologize. When you begin, you can reintroduce yourself. You'll have three minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of council. My name is Bob Yomke, you got it perfect. Thank you. I'm the government affairs representative for the wildfire safety advocates of Waikaloah. We submitted written testimony yesterday, which we would encourage you to look at because we put in a lot of detail about the planning history for this this road, But we want to remind you that it was the county back in 2008 after the 2005 fire that recognized that a second road was needed for Waikolo village in order to prevent the loss of life. What we're asking you to do here today is to start a project that's needed to save lives. This might have been a hypothetical issue back in 2008, but we saw in La Hina that this was why people died. They couldn't get out. And we know that we can't get out because when the mayor declared an evacuation in 2021 fire, people spent up to an hour just getting through the village to Y-Clore Road and then being blocked in traffic getting down to Queen Care. So we know we can't get out with the current highway capacity. It is not sufficient in the county recognized that. So what we're asking you to do is to honor the priority that was set by the county back in 2008 in our community development plan, which ranked this second road as quote a very high priority. And so we're asking you to start this project by just putting two and a5 million for the engineering work that's needed by Department of Public Works to start the planning for the project and to get the design finished. We have a commitment, we met with Ed Sniffin, who's H.Dott director. He gave us a commitment to help find some federal money to contribute to this project so the county doesn't have to pay for the whole thing. Some smart politics, I think if the mayor approached the developers, we could get some additional funds committed from private sources. But the county has the start project. Sniff and asked for the engineering report and a cost estimates that he needs to go chase the federal money. So we don't want to miss that opportunity. He's only going to be in the job until the next year. 30 seconds please. So we need the county to start this process to get the initial work done. And we think that $2.5 million is really a small part of you've got a $550, $57 million budget in front of you trying to find $2.5 shouldn't be that big of a challenge to get this project started. So please, we need your help to save lives. Thank you. Thank you so much for your testimony. Chair, at this time we can transition to Y-mail for our final testifier. Thank you. Chair and council members, we have Julia Allos testifying on 31. Julia, you will have three minutes. Please reintroduce yourself as you begin. Thank you. Aloha, mahalo. Aloha, Kakakiyah, Chair, Vice Chair, and members of the County Council. My name is Julia Alos. I've been a White Aloe Village Homeowner since 2001 and a resident of our district for 33 years. I come before you today, speaking and testifying on on my own behalf not as an affiliate of any specific community organizations that I volunteered with or currently serve on. I submitted an application in 2015 and was nominated in sworn in in early 2016 and currently served as a holdover for the South Gohalla CDP and I'm keenly aware Hawaii County's chapter on White Lowa Village's CDP that was given a high-place priority on the construction of a second access road to Queen Covana. The priority started a few years prior with numerous community members dedicated time and energy to help the county understand that our priorities and concerns and needs for its future. Prior to 2006 publication of Hologlova County adopted plan, the county spent money to explore options to finance this priority, including it in our chapter. They were indeed ambitious aiding and mitigating our fears that the priority was the top the topic was a priority. Sans Action, the indelibly inked print in this document is impossible to erase, but outright ignoring the risks of what was patently stated as a priority, becomes irresponsible. Words and print are not our salvation and an emergency, and we remain on edge and we're gravely concerned. The risk of ignoring it grows with larger, more intense and frequent fires, and continuallyunt and fan our fears of evacuation would no alternative road out of Waikoloa. Mahaloor to the DPW for chip sealing the Hulu Egris after the line of fire. It was a mere band-aid in the middle of a wild invasive, un-maintained grassy area that surrounds us. And it's definitely not a safe plan. The county should find a great alternative for our community to be safe. In September of 2020, a year prior to the August 1st monifier, I had pulled next door survey to our residents requesting they list their top priorities from our 2008 CDP plan. 47% of the respondents placed our second permanent access road as their number one priority. The county was presented the results and today no plan or future road exists. Just idle promises, in gone documents and notes that the developer will get this done. We've seen countless developers come and go, why county planning and poses onises by passing the buck for them to build the road. We full well know that it is essential for an evacuation. Waikolo is situated between Mamala, Hawaii and Queen K surrounded by thousands of acres of ungrown, overgrown and invasive species. We are often closed down on the map beside of Waikolo in the event of a fire as as Mama, LaHoa. I got one minute left. What is your plan B to get the thousands of cars out of Waikoloa? I feel that I want to bring up the fact that gambling is illegal in the state of Hawaii. Wide guard legislators continue to pull the lever on the slot machines and play spets at Waikoloa. We'll hopefully survive a wildfire by not mandating a permanent second access road. I feel we're just betting and it's a losing bet and it's not a matter of if but when is Chief Todd always said. Ladies and gentlemen of the council, please make this amendment a priority for Hawaii County and make sure that our Capuna, K-Key, Resort workers that live in Waikoloa, the keep our gold coast tourism thriving. Without La Caloah, where would the county be for revenue? Look no further, ask your line of county council and see what they have to say, model for your time. Thank you so much for your testimony and with that chair, those are all the testifiers you have at this time. Thank you, Miss Ari, Sallyali. Ms. Thurbrown, you ready? Please read in bills number 31 and 32. If anyone would like to testify in both bill 31 and 32, this is your last chance, please speak up now. Mr. Crick, I actually have a question for you. Yes. If in the preceding days we have more people wanting to testify, which could happen, should we open up the floor to test money each day? Is that appropriate? Yes. Each morning there'll be an opportunity for people to testify on either the departments that are that day or just to budget both bills in total. Beautiful. I appreciate that. Thank you. OK. So back to you. Okay, here's no further testimony. I'm gonna read both bills in. Bill 31 establishes an operating budget for the County of Hawaii for fiscal year July 1, 2025 to June 30, 20, 26. For mayor C. Kimo Alameda, date of February 28, 20, 25. Transmitting for consideration, the proposed operating budget for the County of Hawaii for the fiscal year ending June 30, 20, 26. This balanced budget includes estimated revenues and appropriations of 937 million, 740,000, $471, which represents a proposed 1.8% increase compared to the fiscal year 2024, 2025 operating budget. Introduced by Mr. Coney Lee Klein-Thawter by request and Communication 158.1 from Finance Director Diane Nakagawa dated March 3, 2025. Transmitted reports entitled Department and Agency's six-month progress report on program objectives for fiscal year 2024, 2025. And final status report on program objectives for fiscal year 2023, 2024. And Communication 158.2 from Finance Director Diane Nakagawa, dated March 14, 2025, transmitting corrections to revenues and expenditures within the proposed operating budget summary. Yeah, I have a motion to pay. Motion to forward bill 31, the proposed operating budget to Council with a favorable recommendation and file all related communications. Second. We have a motion by Council Member Aynava and a second by Council Member Viegas II forward Bill number 31 and Council all related communications. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you 28, 2025. Transpending the proposed capital budget for fiscal year 2025, 2026. And the capital improvements program for the next six years from fiscal year 2025, 2026 to 2030, 2031, which includes 81 projects requiring a total appropriation of 555 million of which 514.6 million are intended to be funded in whole or part by bonds 36.75 million to be funded by federal grants and 3.7 million to be funded by CBA community benefit assessments or other sources of funds. Introduce Mr. Kinley Kleinfeld or by request. Motion to forward bill 32 the proposed capital improvement budget to council with the favorable recommendation. The motion by Council Member Ray Nava and a second by Council Member Hustis to forward Bill 32, the proposed capital budget to the council with the favorable recommendation. Mr. Clerk, good to go. Thank you very much, Councilor. Thank you for everyone for being in attendance this morning. Mayor Alameda, if you'd like to get us started this morning with the presentation for the Office of Management and General Overview of the Budget. Thank you for being here and being punctual. I'm bringing the entire staff as well. I love it. Good to see you all. Remember to push the button and introduce yourself. Thank you chair. Can I eat client builder and vice chair who's this? Remember to push the button and introduce yourself. Thank you, Chair. Can I leave Kleinfelder and Vice Chair Hustis and fellow Compton Council members. Such a pleasure to be here. I'd like to also send out some love to everybody behind me and those in attendance. Thank you so much for being here as well. This is an exciting time. And yeah, $937 million budget, right? I asked Diana, I said, hey, so how big of this budget was this from last year and you're at 1.8% increase. So then I asked, that's a small increase. Can you look back five years to see if it was ever smaller? And she said, no, the smallest increase ever. So I said, no sense, look back a lot of five years because I don't remember it being that small so we got pretty tight budget and Before we start though, I got to share with you This so it's one thing to have a budget, but it's one thing to have an inspired workforce Because we're gonna maximize everything we have in this in this budget moving forward I mean just indulge me for about three minutes. Okay. This is We've been in this for about four months, and already so much has been done. Car motor swimming pool, right? Never have one water, now get one water. Cohella lights, four years, never have lights, now get lights, fixed the swimming pool. Emergency proclamation for Kau Kau, we have a plan, paving all over the place, most recently, old days, right? Now we're going to, and almost finishing a parking lot in South Kona, Clarence LUM 1 Park. I mean, it's incredible. So we have a staff that is inspired. Weime Banshees, we have backstops. The guy's stuff that was, this is like three, four years on hold. You know, and we're not done yet. This Saturday we went out to Al-E-Drive. We're going to present at Halahal Avay, one way. We're going to address that. I thought somebody in our team made that up. But that's like 20 years, that idea. Nobody acted on it. And so, we're moving forward. The call center, pretty soon again, blessing. Right, we moved out second week there. We moved out, it was like, how come we're not moving to the Yamada building for a central fire station? You know, it's all kind of corporate council interpretations. Well, we have a new corporate council. I'm not hook up with Yamada, pretty soon we're going to blast that building and move move our firefighters out of that very scary central fire station. I mean, these are things that has happened in four months. So yeah, we can budget of $937 million and that's only a 1.8% increase, but we have an inspired workforce and so things don't feel like getting done. Like we're going to feel like our budget's bigger. So I want to just say that. I also want to share with you that, you know, as a coming from the nonprofit world, I understand how to be kind of like a nonprofit because you cannot make profit because it you know and then you it shouldn't be in the red so like we got to be balanced so our revenues is really our budget and I believe by law we got to be balanced so if you look at our budget right you get 937 million and 660 million are that is our taxes Oh, we have a slideshow? Oh, we have a slideshow. I don't have to memorize this whole thing. Oh, wonderful. Okay, I'll look at that. All right. Okay, so there really is 660 million is taxes, but 80% is property taxes. So, you know, other taxes like GT tax, TT taxX, a few tax. We're getting grants, right? So first question I asked, if the federal government, how much of these grants we might lose, you know, about 56% is from the feds. But I don't think we're gonna lose it because mostly it's for housing, section 8 housing, and they wouldn't be that mean. So I feel like, although the feds is a consideration, like we got to consider that I don't think it's a concern for us. I think we can be okay here too. Then there's a big fun balance which we use in our expenditures. And so it lays it out right there. So the biggest concern is this wastewater obligations. And we all know that, right? And I got to see it, I can't it's been kicked again. So, you know, and I promised know that I got to say that can has been kicked Again, so you know and I promised myself I would never say that we inherited this from the prime administration because that was the catchphrase from the prime administration But it is what it is so so here it is and fortunately we have a Environmental protection agency that will hold us to the fire this time, which is good. And already $337 million is already being allocated for fixing the Kilkaway water situation. And so what that has done, however, if you see this slide is, you know, it just, it just bumped us up to a different level. So that, that yellow across to the $50 million is kind of what we, we expand every year on our average for capital improvement projects. That's the cash that we need for projects. Well, you add on Kyo Kaha wastewater, which is the red. And then you add on to other obligations, Kyo Kaha wastewater, Papakua Papakio, you add on Kau, Pahala, you add on the Alehu. Now, that's a lot of borrowing. And we know that when we borrow, we get about 20 years to pay it off, I believe. And so some of our debt service is from the second term of Mayor Harry Kim. So we're paying off some of our obligations there, but it'll continue. Fortunately, we have a really strong bond rating still, because we live on an island, they get planning economic opportunity. We try many people moving to the island. We have a hotel industry that is still not maxed out. There's opportunity on an island, there's different forms of revenue, people moving here. We have a very strong finance department. So, the reasons why our moderating will continue to remain strong, I feel. And that's good news for us, because then we can continue to borrow on projects that is much needed. So, we talked a little bit about the federal funding and like I said, it's a consideration, but it's not a concern. And so here's the expenditure. So if you add all that up, it comes to our budget, which is the 937 million. But what I'm proud to say is the biggest expenditure, because they say your values is judged by how you spend your money here. So public safety is huge. And so that's the biggest chunk of change right there. And I heard like law I've been hearing like a law Since I first started that second access road Well, third because the first is how you came in the second is Hulu the third is you know, Kamako and Nui maybe we're not sure yet But yeah, they correct And it's the first time I heard the 2.5 pitch 2.5 mil, for a study. I like to sit down after this and see how we can make that happen. It could be possible. But yeah, public safety is super important. And then you get pension every time. So just to let everybody know that we're not going to mess with that. And that's always been there. And then we get general government, kind of like the services we provide, parks and recreation. And of course, highways and streets is what you're seeing now. But we maximizing that, right? True our awesome, inspired workforce. And then the debt service is the bills that we owe. So we owe about 80 million every, almost like every year, which is frisky-least sound because you shouldn't be spending more than 10% of your budget on your bills and so that's good. So I feel like we we don't okay as far as our expenditures and such. And then there is there is a little extra you know from our fun balance. And so, you know, and that extra I'd like to support each of your districts. So we put some extra in repair and maintenance. We added another $4 million. We added some police officers. Keep in mind now, the fire administration, they're keeping their eyes on public safety too, which are commending for. They provided 25 positions for the police, 19 positions for the firefighters. That's awesome. We want to add a couple more positions for police, especially out in Ka'u because Ocean View is like rising crime. Okay, we also like add three more paramedics out in Makale Fire Station so we hopefully that gets through. This is not counting the four brand new ambulances that we got and amazing helicopter that's coming our way too. So, I feel like we're balancing everything out as best as we can. And the 20 million that we want to utilize for capital improvements are basically from you folks. So, when I they just can go down the line over here so like the Honoka um you know the park is all basalt and so we got to we got to fix those bathrooms get like eight bathrooms that we got to fix um and I kind of shared as I said you know using the bathroom is like a should be like a basic human right, you know, the right to air, the right to water and the right for use bathroom. Okay, so, so that's key. And then you get the, the Honokawa rodeo arena that the cowboy said, hey, that the cow cannot go out of the shoot coasted brook. Right? So that's recreation. We need that. And you get Papalo a gym that that's amazing. That's almost 20 million dollars They can go to a brand new open play court in Papaloa Jim that that's amazing. That's almost 20 million dollars. They can go to a brand-new open play court in Papaloa. Right? That was funds from from committed already, which is awesome. Okay. Then you get then you get a putting over there District 6 who, you know, I mean, this is not much in that area. Right? So we got to fix the pahala lights. I'm committed to that. You get the pool that you got right around fixing, but you get what he knows better than that. Let's broken too. We got to fix the power lights. I'm committed to that. You get the pool that you got right around fixing, but you get what he knows better than that's broken too. We got to fix that. That's what. Middle-leaf went down three times. They finally set okay to the renovations and we're moving forward on that. Then you get clients lump on park, which I think they need a play court. We're working on that. Like I said, we were working on that parking lot. They're super happy because of that. There's like 100 cars can park there. Prior to that, there was parking in other people's yards. Tilt truck. We were working on that parking lot. They're super happy because of that. There's like 100 cars can park there. Prior to that, there was parking in other people's yards. Total trucks was making my dollar in that area. And then you're talking, now you go district seven, right? I mean, we waiting for that match on that old days for be fixed. You know, get four of them, get the pervading out of it demolished. I mean, you're waiting way too long for that. You deserve that. So we would like push for that. Right. Multimvue Jim. Thank you. I mean that's completed but we got to we work the defense area for us. Okay guys, we need more parking on the side. And we can do that with these funds. Okay. We talked about bachelor's. In your district we need that matchroom, right? Corn and Eeking. So we're looking towards that, right? Fresh, you get your corn and a corn gym that needs repairs. And we committed to our part, we got to get Ohio and and the House to commit to their part, right? We also get some fire station roofs that got to be fixed, you know, and so we're working on that. Actually, we've moving the recovery program as fast as we can. We want to finish that in this year. But you also got to continue to commit, we want to commit to your, to your Hawaii Paradise Park Park. You know, and so, so we have some funds for that. And then Kohala, Waimea, Waikaloa, Councilmember Hustis, it's a big chunk of change that can be coming in a way because of the delay. So, you've heard it here, and we're committing ourselves to that too. And then of course, we need a skate park. We need a skate park in Hilo. And so, we're going to commit to that too. So, portion. So that's how you share a love. And I feel like we can do that while having an inspired workforce and people can feel like somehow a budget increase, but they only increase 1.8%. So thank you so much everybody for indulging me. I yield now for questions. Mahalo. Thank you to the body. Okay. Helped them to go over. Go ahead. Now I just wanted to thank you for your presentation. Of course, all of those very important things for the police officers are really important. So I really appreciate that and all the other things. And I also just wanted to say that I saw that your top priority was coming up with a wealth thought out financial plan to deal with these very large expenses Coming in the next few years, and I think that's really important as we've discussed before Having just a lot of thought and expertise going into that because yeah, but it's some big scary numbers So we want to make sure we get it right so that we can continue doing all the good things that we left to do. So I just wanted to appreciate that priority. I guess one thing that I did want to ask about is there's another aspect of long term, is that the long-term sustainability of Ireland as a rancher. I kind of see that firsthand, like drying trends, more and more droughts. So that does raise a lot of issues, not least being increased. So I'm glad that we are going to be working on addressing Waikuloa because it is one of the most dangerous places, objectively, not a lae who is in other places. Well, it's not as growing as fast and as populated as Waikuloa. So Waikuloa is definitely the priority. Another place that is growing as fast and as populated as Waikolo, so it's definitely the priority. Another place that is growing very fast is Ocean View and I think that also has huge wildfire risks as well even though it hasn't really come up as a priority. So I think in the future we're going to need to think about ocean view a lot because it is growing incredibly fast and unfortunately most of it is unpermitted homes. So it's you know even in some ways more dangerous because they don't have some of the fire safety things that are built into permitted houses. Yeah, yeah, so I know you're gonna be down there next month, so I'm sure you're gonna hear it in earful. Yeah, well, we can't wait. I mean, our townhouses have been phenomenal. I mean, the last town hall in Guajalos, but more 400 people is packed. And yes, fire mitigation has come up in almost every town hall. And so, you know, fire breaks, we need, we need to check out fire hydrants, we're going to make sure our assignments work, you know, our dip tanks, reservoirs, all that got to be, you know, looked at. And then, house and home assessments is a thing that we're pushing too, because everybody, you know, trees too close to the house, this and that. So as we go around with, with Firewise is excellent. I mean, the training that they provide, the website is great. So we'll continue to push that as well. Thank you. Thank you. That's my brother, I guess. Yeah. First off, I want to thank you after this is the third administration that I've been able to sit in the seat and serve in this role. And I think that's the most thorough and detailed presentation that we've had from a mayor. So thank you for that and thank you to your finance director for I know all the support that she's provided. One of the funny things about sitting in this role is we're the legislative branch. And so many constituents think that we're the administration, which can be very challenging, because we work closely with you guys to try and advocate for projects within our district, but much of it comes to the administration and the directors and the allocation of resources, and then literally just making it happen. So I want to thank you for the initiative that's been taken bold, courageous, especially in times that are, whoo, trepidacious with things happening on the national level and how that trickles down to us state and county, but I want to thank you and your leadership team and all those that work in county government and roles for taking action and moving forward. I do notice even just driving around in Kona, the difference in the roads. Thank you, Mr. Azavito. And then, you know, driving over last night, the areas and patches in places where, yeah, there's just, there's action. And I, having been raised, you know, coffee shack outhouse style. My mom's sewing our clothes, you know, pennies on the dollar to make stretch so far. I just want to point out this is an enormous budget that has continued to grow during times of trepidacious circumstances. And so I really appreciate this concept and recognition that we can do more with less. Some stuff doesn't have to cost more to be more efficient, effective, and bring vital support to our comma-ina and our maca-innana, people that live here, year round, and who are the breath and the life force of this place. So thank you for those steps and initiatives, and I know it's going to be a long week, but I just want to thank you for kicking us off with recognition of our needs and where resources will be allocated to serve those needs. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much for pulling this together and presenting. It really was a good overlook. I do want to ask a little more about the federal potential federal cuts, because I know you said you're not concerned. And I just, I've recently read not all cover to cover, but big chunks of the project 2025 kind of playbook. And in reading this section about housing I do have some real concerns because they detail what they want to do in the first year and and so I would if if you could take a look at that before the next time we meet I think it's it's really important that we understand what could be coming and and very well, you know, with a high likelihood. And with that in mind, I think following on what council member Vyaga said, you know, I know he didn't propose any changes to our real property taxes. I do think there are places that if we are going to need to step in maybe where we don't even have in our budget now kind of more similar to what happened over COVID times. If major cuts happen to food supports for people, things like that, the state will do their part, but I think we might also have to step in in that case. Housing obviously a huge issue health as well might if there are major cuts coming in these places that the state often plays a bigger role than we do in some of these but we may have to step in. I want to just have that conversation about, you know, what, what could we do? And for me, that's, you know, like I said, thinking of what council member being said, that's looking at real property taxes for not our people who live here. So that's the, you know, vacation homes, the investment properties, those kind of things. So I think there is room there and I don't think it would be outrageous for us to look there for funding for our people. Absolutely. I agree with you. I was talking to Sam Marroposa from K Koi and here's like you know at some point you guys might want to consider what we did. Small concomprations at the beginning but for the most part 80% of people felt like it was a good idea and that was the vacation rental you know you kind of like you like act like one resort we're going to charge you like one resort and we haven't entertained that yet but you know if push comes to shove there that's an example of perhaps we could look that way but Also keep in mind that I am looking at other alternative sources. TMT is one. If we were to build that thing, county should benefit financially from some of it. Parkalore, the lease is up, right? If we cannot benefit financially, then we should benefit in kind, help us build that road. You know, there's geothermal, option on the west side, another potential revenue generator. So we have our think tank, and we're considering those options as well. But thank you for mentioning Council Member Kajawada. Of course, yeah. I mean, I guess the added benefit to potentially increasing those revenues on the real property side is that potentially some people may choose to sell to a person who lives here or rent to a person who lives here as opposed to using it strictly as an investment property or a vacation home. So I would just love us to keep in conversation around this and appreciate what you've done here with the budget so far. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much, Mayor. Right. Oh, sorry. How's the weekend going? Yeah. Thank you. Sorry. I've got a little cold. So, appreciate the budget overview and appreciate the commitment to investment in repair maintenance, capital improvements. I think that those services that we provide in terms of facilities to the community are absolutely critical. So, do appreciate that. I will obviously ask this of your DE, I'm director when we get to that, but I'd like to know a little bit more about what the plan is with the emergency order for a healer wastewater and do we have like backup funding to implement that plan in some way? What are your thoughts about where we might resource that if we need to do something there? Yeah, you mean like if there's change orders and unexpected expenses where we're going to get the extra funds that kind of thing? Yeah, yeah and you know not necessarily with the construction agreement with with non-Pacific but with the emergency order is I understand it and actually I'm just looking for clarity about that you know the the emergency order allows the administration to do what is ever necessary to respond and so I'm wondering what are your all the answers of responding and how do we resource that if we need to? We all know that this is an environmental disaster. We're able to happen. I remember you saying that on the campaign trail. I was like, yes, absolutely. So I just want to understand a little bit more about that. Yeah, so this is kind of round numbers. But yeah, so when working with the civil defense, you know, they had a hundred thousand Put away I guess for Situations like this and so we looked at the at the pump stations So you got three areas of concern you got the two pump stations and then you got head works And so we already put an order in for two extra pumps in case in case one of those pumps go or two of them go out at the same time we have two extra pumps. And so that's we have funding for that already. Now if headworks goes out, there is a plan, but there's not a funding itemized budget for that because we don't really know what would happen and what kind of budget that would entail. So that would require further discussions with our group. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor, thank you very much for just providing us a highlight. I appreciate that you've represented each district and the discussion on what you see coming. I think that highlights your knowledge of the budget and is helpful for us to see where your administration is headed and what you've done. And I really do commend your team today because I've heard for the community a number of times what's been done. That's beautiful. Thank you. Thanks so much. This is a reminder office of management is next. So yeah, you want to run away you can but your department is up next. All right, we'll see what happens. Thank you so much everybody. Thank you sir Okay, our next department review is the office of management Trading off here Thank you for being here. Please introduce yourself when you're ready Thank you, Mr. RSelli for for helping with the slideshills and other material. And council members, please be clear about needing a recess for bathroom breaks, not gonna think. Wow. William Berhanti, managing director, good morning. Committee Chair, committee vice chair, and a council chair, and council vice chair. We and the rest of the council members. Thank you very much for allowing us the office of management or the mayor's office to present our budget, proposed budget to you today. Where should I say defend our proposed budget? I kind of feel like the backup quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, who comes in to take Tom Brady's place, but please bear with me. And of course, Mary Alameda being Tom Brady., that being said, all jokes aside, we're facing serious times and very uncertain times. But one of the things I recall is, you know, you go to any leadership meeting or anything of that nature going forward. always tell you, focus primarily on items that you can control, understand the items you can't control, and prepare best for it. But again, don't spend too much of your time on items that you can't control. And in this regards, this administration has taken, we take that to task and we take that very seriously. And going forward, you know, as we look at, you know, matters going forward, status quo was good. But if you look at the results of the election, the people of our community wanted more. Obviously, they wanted more because Mayor Alameda was successful in obtaining more votes in all nine districts and by a significant margin in each district. So that opened our eyes. It's like the people of Hawaii Island want us to do more. So status quo wasn't the way. So in that regard, immediately when our administration took our position and we came into office, the mayor changed the way in which the office of management is going to operate going forward. For the first time, I think in any administration, he created pods and these pods are specific to areas of concern and areas in which the, you know, when we went from our town hall meetings and we engaged with the public areas in which we felt was significant to our community. And these pods are a unique concept in which the mayor assigned a specific EA to be responsible for a certain area. For example, we have a health and human services pod. We have a public safety pod. We have a health and human services pod. We have a public safety pod. We have an infrastructure pod, and then we also have a pod to support our internal operations within the county. And we have EA's assigned to each pod. And so, you know, that's a novel concept. That's something that hasn't been, you know, initiated in the past. And it's something that today has been very successful. You know, we have our EAs are the go between. They're the go between our department heads who are responsible for each of the, you know, specific departments that are in the pod. And they're also a go between between the community liaison. You know, they're like a community liaison. They reach out, they talk to the public. They're the face of the public. When the public has a concern with permits, they call Merrick, or a deputy managing director. When the public has concerns with homelessness, they call Aaron Samura, who's our, you know, public health and safety, you know, EA. When there's complaints, when there's concerns with civil defense, concerns with, you know, something with the police or fire, they reach out to Clifford, Victorino, Victorino, and, you know, he's a former police officer and they utilize his expertise and he, therefore, takes the concerns and he reaches out to the various department heads. And that's how we effectuate communication. Because at the end of the day, the only thing that our office, the office of management, we're not building, we're not constructing buildings, we're not buying vehicles to to respond to emergencies. You know, we're not, I'm going out and obtaining federal finances for new section 8 housing, but we're here to ensure that all 20 departments are properly and adequately supervised, finance, and serve the public. Because at the end of the day, that's what we are. We're public service and that's what we want to effectuate. So going back to that, one, relationships. You know, I am, you know, explain that the relationships between our community and our office and our departments. Now, if you look at relationships between our mayor and other government entities across the United States. The mayor and I had the opportunity to attend the mayor's conference in Washington, DC. And we didn't just go for a conference to Washington, DC. We set aside. We were there for four days. We set aside two specific days. The first day we went and knocked on doors of Senator Shots and Senator Hirono, and we sat down with each of them. Well, fortunately, Senator Shots was in. Senator Hirono was grilling all of Donald Trump's appointees. So she was available to meet with us. But we met with the representatives, and we sat down and we explained our problems. We introduced ourselves. We explained our concerns going forward and how we can best one formulaic relationship. You know, day two, we went and we met with our Congress contingency, you know, for a name, it escapes me. Yes, yeah. And so we met with them. And you know, Congressman Case was very receptive. Although he doesn't specifically represent our island, he sat with us for almost two hours and we met his entire staff. And you know, so these are resources and these are all relationships. So that's where travel expenditures come into play. And, you know, so these are resources and these are all relationships. So that's where, you know, travel expenditures, you know, come into play. And, you know, so I think, although at the end of the day, we don't see the fancy new buildings, we don't see the new cars, we don't see, you know, anything of that nature from our office. We do see increased communication. We do see the ability for the mayor to text Senator Schatz, you know, directly one-on-one and get a response. And that's to us, to this administration, that's our goal. That's how we're going to be successful. And you know, we're at a Vulcan Bo booster, you know, benefit the other evening. And they said what makes Lorraine, or her nickname was the pig farmer. And it's because, you know, that was based on the fact that she brings home the bacon. And I'd like to say this administration, that's our goal. You know, we're looking to bring home the bacon. Because at the end of the day, it's our people. And we're not just here to make ourselves look good. We're doing that that's our goal and that's our intended goal because we want to better our community. At the end of the day we want to leave and I know this is set off and oftentimes it's overuse but we want to leave this county not four years in eight years in a better position than it was at any time in the previous, you know, how many years we've been in existence. So with that, I just want to kind of highlight again some of our objectives. One, prudent finances. I think it's clear with the mayor's presentation that 1.8% increase pretty much a status Oh, but okay. So this part of the presentation wasn't rehearsed enough, obviously. Prood of finances, productive workplace. A productive workplace starts with happy workers, starts with respected workers, and that's what our goal and our attention. Strategic objectives, the mayor talked about the ability as well as economic initiatives, those go hand in hand. The ability to identify and not just identify but effectuate alternative financial resources. We cannot continue and I say this over and over again, cannot continue to expect our people to cover the bill every day for needs and necessities that the county will have going for, the sewer treatment project. We just don't have a significant enough population base to make that economically feasible or sustainable in the long run. Our resilient communities, public health and safety, you know, we support civil defense. Our police chief and our fire chief are phenomenal. They do a great job with what they have. And we want to expand that and we want to promote that and we want to foster those relationships as best as possible. Inclusive government, we love and we enjoy our relationship with each one of you here. And that's the only way we're going to be effective is by working together. Mayor Alameda has sat down and he has discussed, of course, separately and individually, you know, a lot of components and a lot of aspects as to what items, what areas in which we can help each one of your communities. And I think he alluded to that. He identified those objectives earlier in his presentation. Open communication, I think that goes without being said at this point. And then finally, sustainable environment. Both from the environmental perspective with the introduction of the office Oscar, which I think is a great thing for environmental sustainability, but that goes hand in hand with economic sustainability. You know, the mayor often says, and I'm just gonna reiterate, you know, what he often says is, people aren't leaving Hawaii because of sea level rise or increased carbon or not enough trees. People are residents, our families, our friends, our kupuna, our cakey. They're living Hawaii because they can't afford to live here anymore, bottom line. They can't afford the housing and they don't have enough economic resources available. So that's a problem that we need to address and we need to address it now. And with that, I'm happy to address and answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much. Thank you, members. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, personally and professionally, thank you for your open lines of communication. From the west side, I want to also give a big shout out to Mr. Merrick Nishimoto. and the deeply felt transition for West Hawaii to have somebody to go to that consistently response. He's included in so many emails that I keep seeing and he always responds and that's huge. So thank you, Merrick, for that because for me personally and professionally it also eases some of that burden of constituency that doesn't understand that we aren't the administration though we do have the goal and vision of working close, but I have felt more support, more supported than I have before, and the ability to reach out to you and to get a response and to see collectively that management from the mayor's office extended effectively, authentically, and more equitably has been a game changer. So I just wanted to give that shout out from District 7 and from, you know, the West Hawaii Civic Center. We feel it, we see it, we have access. You work long hours and navigate issues that are so diverse, almost unquantifiable and impossible for anybody to know everything about. I see you, I you, and I just want to recognize from your team, the collaborative work that's being done and that that impact is felt and deeply appreciated. So Mahalo. Appreciate hearing that, you know, American, his staff, you know, they're fabulous and you're right. They work tirelessly, you know, for the corner community. One of the campaign promises and I hate to keep parking maybe because we want to be an info for four months but I keep going back to our campaign promises and one of the things we ensured was geographic equity and we heard so often during the trail, the campaign trail that you know Kona felt like the ugly you know stepchild you know to a certain extent that they never got you know the resources or the you know the I guess the focus and and the responses that you know they felt maybe the east side of the island east side side of who I got. And we just wanted to reiterate, we have to make everybody feel equal. We have to make everybody feel respected and wanted in order to come together and be one cohesive unit because this is one island. And we're one island going forward. And no particular sector is more important than anybody else. We're, we're all equal in that regards. And I'm glad, you know, to hear that from you. A council member of the Vellagas because, you know, that is definitely one of our focus areas that we want to ensure is that the corner people have a voice, again, open communication and not just a voice, but they get the proper response to their concerns. Because plenty of people can hear, without action, it's like nothing happened. So you need the two together. You need the communication. You know, we need to identify the problems and then from our side, we need the proper response. And I think to date, you know, like you mentioned, new as a video as well, you know, our team, you know, Kehau is a cost for housing director, is always in Kona. And we focus on the Kona community and it's very important to us that everybody has equity going forward. So thank you very much. We appreciate hearing that. My pleasure. I yield. Thank you. I also remember I used this. Thank you, Chair. All of the managers, director, appreciate your time today I think this speaks to your sentiment and the administration's sentiment this sentiment about connecting and making those connections, whether here locally or with our federal partner, state partners, and so forth. So I kind of just wanted to hear your thoughts on some of the increase in some of the finances, in particular for traveling, sister cities. And if you could speak to that a little bit, as well as lays, those sort of things, commemorative things that we share a lot with people and with go places, and really bring something from home to them. So if you could really speak about those particular pieces within the budget. Yes. Thank you very much, Council Member Hussis. Very Anticipate it. Hopefully I can answer appropriately. You know, like I said, we're a new administration. And in a new administration, a lot of what we do is to initiate and engage into established relationships. And you know, we do, we are proposing that increase in our travel. And you know, that's kind of twofold. One is to initiate and ingratiate ourselves to the other counties out here throughout the state, as well as the governor's office. I alluded to the fact that we're trying to create relationships with our federal contingency, because we all work together on this. And that's what we're anticipating with the increased travel is to allow ourselves to go and to travel, whether it be to the neighbor islands or to Washington, DC and to in order for us to engage and to foster and just reinforce relationships with our counterparts. Pretty much that's what they are. There are counterparts. And if we didn't do that, we would be operating in a silo. And oftentimes when we go to places and when to say for example, we went to the mayor went to Mayor Blanjyade's state of the county address in Oahu, you know, they reciprocate with us and they give us Omiyagi, you know, upon our return. They provide to our office. And you know, and that's, you know, customary. That's custom to Hawaii. That might be unique to Hawaii to a certain regard. And when we go, and when they come here, we want to reciprocate as well. And that's the increase in those funds as well, is just to engage and able to create those relationships and to have good will and good standing with the other counties. you know oftentimes we, we're not here. We're not trying to recreate the wheel. A lot of the problems we face, other communities, other governmental entities across the United States, across the state have been faced with as well. Say, for example, I challenge anybody to go into almost any community, which has decent weather like Hawaii, and ask them if they've ever addressed homeless before. And I bet you too, T, everyone will say yes. And maybe some have been more successful and others. And those are the ones we wanna rely upon. Those are the ones we want to have discussions with. What worked, what didn't work, why did this work, why didn't that work? Before we just continue to throw millions and millions of dollars at a problem and it never gets fixed. Because let me tell you up into this point in time, that could be a description of how we approach homelessness. And so we have to be able to broaden our horizons, we have to be able to increase our lenses and look at what out there is working. And how can we bring those ideas home so that we can utilize and we can get the most bang for our money in the long run and start seeing effective programs in place. That's just one example and I hope that answers your question. Thank you. Definitely, it's an overview on that and kind of your sentiment that you shared early on, I mentioned director. I'm not sure if we've made a substantial investment in our sister city program as we've seen here now. So if you could, historically, we kind of, the actual previous years have been zeroed out. We really haven't invested in that. You know, it's kind of like cyclical. You know, there's been some years, some administrations that have placed priority on, you know, establishing and expanding the sister city relationships. You know, sister cities is a way in which the county is able to, again, create a relationship with a similarly situated community internationally. You know, I think we have right now, correct me if I'm wrong, I think we have worked my staff. 11? Yeah, we have 11 sister city relationships and going forward. And we see the benefit of it. Again, a lot of what we do is through relationship, through communication. And that's something that we're not going to place. This administration has made a decision. It's not going to be on the top shelf, those relationships, but it's not going to be on the bottom shelf either. We want to foster those relationships. We want to engage with sister cities, but we're going to do it in an economically reasonable, feasible way going forward. So you'll see a little bit of increase, but not anywhere near that what has been spent in the past. And just remember, travel and the like, through inflation and stuff is significantly higher than it was maybe 20 years ago when we're looking at budgetary numbers for sister city relations. But it's a relationship that we want to foster, continue going forward. And maybe we might get lucky and we might add maybe a city in Portugal, only because you have a Portuguese mayor managing directly. Thank you. The only one I just wanted to touch on was, it kind of just makes me wonder the past expenses on mileage and auto allowance, because that's kind of a start, kind of, significant change there between our actual actuals and then I don't know if we've gone over this cycle because it was only budgeted at 400 and now we're asking for 20,000. Yeah, go ahead. Good morning Councilmember Estayan Nakagawa, Finance Department. Sure, so for the 1-1-12 for the mileage there is an increase our mayor managing director deputy managing director travel significantly around our island and in lieu of purchasing another vehicle this is a car allowance for these individuals who travel so often. So looking at like the this past this current fiscal year it was only at 400, are we beyond that then? And that's kind of what it seems to be. Yeah, and in these transition years, there will be adjustments that will be made, for example, and we'll talk a little bit about it later, but there are payouts for retirement vacations with the transition of administration. So finance works with each of the departments to make sure that they have the appropriate funding to cover those types of events during these transition years. Thank you, Director. And I do wanna answer your other question about the sister cities with the way it looks in the budget with the zero. You know, one of the things we did with the mayor's office is they had a category under, and it was called's entertainment and what we just felt was that was just not the appropriate name for these expenses and most of these expenses were related to sister cities so appropriately we put it in the sister city so it looks like a line-on line item but it is really those sister cities expenses that the mayor's office has used in the past. Appreciate that. Thank you so much. You'll share. Thank you, Chair. With that on the sister cities topic, can you just describe for us the difference? Because it used to be one lump sum. Now we've broken it down into travel conferences, sister city events, and then contractual services, sister city program, which has the bulk of the money. So just wanna make sure, because on our end, I didn't make it into this proposed budget yet, but for the May budget, we are looking to make sure that we are able to contribute, our portion when we do things for sister city from the council side. Sure. So for the differences between the 104, count the 104 is really related to the travel that the managing director spoke about in our island as well as mainland travel for our mayor's office. The 1-1-5 is really those events listed in more services, usually 1-1-5 are service related things that we contract for. If we contract with somebody to produce brochures, do reports, if there's payments for outreach activities, things like that that are listed under here, then those can be used under the 1-1-5. But like I said earlier, we also broke out the sister cities to its own category as well. Sorry, so yeah, just wanted to clarify, within the sister city section, we have the travel conferences, which is only 10,000. And then the miscellaneous is 40, whereas before 40 was a blanket, which I assume covered all travel. So I just wanna make sure that the travel is not being limited to 10,000 when we're looking to establish new sister cities. And I know we can move things around. There is some flexibility. I just think looking at how the trends of what was done in the past. This is how it was done. But we can still have some flexibility if the more travel funding is needed for these types of trips in the future. Okay. And then last question, I'm managing director under the main OCE, under travel conference reception. You folks added training. What is the intended training you folks are looking to introduce this year? I think not I think but I know. Training it correlates back to the concept of the pods. You know in in order for our EAs to a certain extent to be you know knowledge base and subject matter experts. We've identified that there may be some training that our EAs would like to send in order to increase their knowledge base as it relates to specific areas. We've already sent one of our EAs, I mentioned her earlier Aaron Samura, she's in charge of our homeless, not only just the task force, but our pod. We sent her to Los Angeles, as you know, Los Angeles has a significant homeless, you know, issue there, and they had a conference and a training there. So Aaron was able to, you know, attend with our homeless coordinator, that conference, you know, a month ago, and she brought back a lot of good information. She brought back a lot of good concepts going forward. And my understanding is we already engaged some of those concepts. And so that's one example of the training we're looking at. Perfect. Thank you so much, Margin, Director. Jerry, thank you. I'm just a member of your water. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, I'm just a member of your audience. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Manishing Director. So I totally support the training and the travel necessary to build those relationships, of course. And one thing that I'm happy is that you've got a team here so that when the mayor is traveling, hopefully you know you're here and in charge and in case of I just think about like the here so that when the mayor is traveling, hopefully, you know, you're here and in charge and in case of, I just think about like the LA wildfires and how horrible it was that their mayor was, you know, out of, out of the area. And I think about in case of emergency, I think it's really important that we have somebody here when the mayor needs to do his travel. So I hope that we can see that happening more. I mean, it's great that we have Merrick on the Cronaside, on the west side, but it's also really important to have somebody here on this side of the island when the mayor needs to be traveling and there's a lot of things mayors need to do around, you know, going to, you know, opening events and blessings and all those things. So I just, I hope we can see more of making sure that we're kind of covered because we do have, you know, the three of you as leadership and I think it is great if we can, you know, have that coverage. So thank you. I did want to ask, we have had one director who's already left this administration. Can you tell us a little bit about that plan or do you want to wait until we get to that discussion, to that department? Yeah. I'm not sure. Again, thanks for the question. I'm not sure that this is the appropriate form to address it. I'm. Well, I guess from your perspective as an managing director, is there anything that you can share with us about the plan for you know, leadership is there? Yeah, that's a great question. And we're very fortunate to have Hugh Ono as the director of the Department of Public Works. You know, he brought a tremendous breadth of experience and knowledge, you know, specific to that area. You know, because he was a previous, you know, director for DPW. And, you know, that was a department that we initially identified as a must need, you know, a department that needed to be, you know, assessed and needed to be addressed. And we needed to hit the ground running, you know, as we, you know, they won of our administration. And he offered us that. You know, he came in and, you know, he was seasoned. And that seasoning was good and bad. And, you bad. And when we initially discussed the situation with him, the opportunity with him, he was very positive. But from day one, he told us he didn't really have a firm grasp of how much time he could give to us. But he did offer us the initial engagement. And we're very happy to do that. And we brought him on board and he immediately effectuated change. We brought in New Asimito to be the deputy. And they started looking at the permitting process. They started looking at engineering. They started looking at the roads and the light and the bridges. And all these items that could really hurt us down the road if we didn't address those needs immediately. And he gave us tremendous leadership. And yes, yes, we were a little disappointed that his time was short. We were anticipating his engagement with the county to be longer. But it just felt for him that the time was right for him now. And I think he left a good roadmap, a great roadmap for the Department to follow going forward. And we will find a replacement. I'm not sure the replacement will be as seasoned, but it'll definitely be somebody who's qualified, and somebody who checks off all the boxes of what the mayor is looking for, as far as being the director for public work. So please allow us to continue with that process. We've already been in discussions and we've identified some people, and we'll just, I can assure you, we will present the best candidate going forward to you for your confirmation. All right, thank you so much. I appreciate hearing that. It's in the works. Okay, I yield. Thank you. Council member Kimball. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, managing director. I have a variety of questions. Starting with staffing and I don't know Diane maybe director. Not going to let us maybe a question for you. There's a previous at least established position. Sorry, I'll take this off. previously established position that yet allocated the Secretary to Boards and Commissions is that something that might come to us as a supplemental or are you looking at not funding that position in this year's budget? I know historically we've had a Secretary assigned to both the Police Commission and the Fire Commission and going forward, I'll let Diane address, how that transpired to be an internal staffing. Yes, so thank you for the question. This was a request with the prior administration to have a focus on the secret to the boards and commissions. And it's not yet allocated. So it's really up to this administration. And the mayor's office to decide the personnel needs of the office. So I think it takes some time to determine what those will be and if that position will be filled. But it is not yet allocated. Okay. So to that, and I apologize, we already have this discussion offline at some other point, but you know we within the departments for the various boards and commissions that they support spend a lot of Staff time where they could be actually working on the departments projects providing clerical support to the boards and commissions and so I would advocate for continuing to to proceed with with funding that position so that you can take away those clerical duties from the planning department for the appeals board and the planning missions and because then their staff could actually be focused on the work of doing the work in the planning department. Very good point, very good recommendation., that is an area that we have discussed internally with the administration and, you know, something that we will give strong consideration to go in forward because these boards and commissions are, you know, the work required to ensure that they're properly, you know, administered is very time consuming and you're right. you're right from their other work and that just goes towards morale and everything of that nature which again we wanted to ensure that our workers are comfortable and they're properly supported. So that's a great recommendation but forward. We'll definitely discuss it. My concern been doing a fabulous job bringing us really qualified candidates and has a lot more energy and enthusiasm. And so I think giving him some support to really flesh out that program. So not so much burden is on both the department's incorporation council to some extent. Mike has been fabulous, Alameda. You know, I want to drink the coffee that he drinks in the morning. No, the rice. Looking for that. It wouldn't you figure out what brand he's drinking? Let the rest of us know, because I think that would maybe make things a lot faster. My second question, something that I heard you say that I thought was really important was that as much as who I County is unique, we actually experience a lot of the same problems that mid-sized counties with both urban and rural areas face. And to that end, I would love to see both you and Merrick participate in the, it's called the International Management City Accounting Manager's Association. You're familiar with it. Minimal fee to become a member, $200 for each of you. But they do offer regular conferences, which I think would be, again, let's not reinvent the wheel. I do think that there's lots of opportunity for modernization around some key features that will make our government operations much more transparent to the public, which I think is a key goal of the administration. So I've already shared with Diane my dream budget narrative, and hopefully there are other ways we can look to modernize based on learning from other counties of similar size and constructs. So I don't know if there's a line I'd have been this budget that would cover membership and travel to those conferences but I'm happy to like flesh out some costs about what about what if I take to send you guys to those conferences twice a year. Yeah, we'll be happy to discuss those specifics with you going forward. I think it's a great idea. The other thing was the contracts that we have under 1-1-5, the community outreach, RSP and S activities. Is that our legislative liaison position? That's correct. It's Karen Tashima, is our legislative liaison.'s you know been engaged. She's been you know in Oahu for you know Back and forth quite a bit and she brings a lot of expertise. She you know She's a holdover or throwback from the Kino administration where she did a fabulous job there and you know To be a legislative liaison again. It's all about relationships. It's about the ability to get into a specific, you know, house representative or senator's door and to really advocate for the county of Hawaii. And not just advocate, but to see the results. And Karen does an incredible job with that. You know, legislators call her. You know, if there's an issue that, you know, might directly affect the California FOIA. And so, you know, that speaks volumes, you know, as to relationship building effectiveness. And she's very effective. Is that line item inclusive of her travel back and forth, so salary for the, is she just under contract during the session? Yeah, the contract is a limited duration just for this session and it does include some travel for her. So just to share with my colleagues and this is a conversation I've had with Marin and Director Nakagawa. I think that there's potentially a need for us, especially given the current circumstances, to be more active at the federal level in terms of, congratulate you just directed spending going after resources for that Wicoloa Road wastewater programs. And so, would be supportive of additional contract funding in this category for RFP to an entity to lobby for us in DC. I will just note that the other counties have that already. We are the only one that don't at this point. But that's something that I think under the current circumstances with our very extensive capital needs and then the need to work within the system that we're in. This is probably the time to start considering that that sort of context or was, you know, whether the other option is to bring somebody on staff that does that, but I think perhaps at the beginning we want to try it out and not actually create a position for that, does my very good recommendation. We'll definitely pursue that more. Thank you. And then just finally, I want to just, I think the pod concept is really interesting, although I don't fully understand how you've organized it. Could you just really quickly speak to what your thoughts are long term about that kind of arrangement and what you see the benefits will be in terms of productivity efficiency out of the county to have that sort of organization because I do think it's a move in the right direction. Right. Okay. Thank you. Again, the pods we have are public health and services. We have public safety. We have infrastructure and we have just general county welfare. And just again, the thought process behind it is to create a liaison within the mayor's office, so that our department heads and directors not only that they feel supportive and they feel that they have a direct link to the mayor, because we're talking 20 departments. And oftentimes, not all 20 directors, their needs are assessed immediately. But if they have a go-to person that maybe is just responsible for four of the departments, so at least that open line of communication is there. And we see our eAs every day when we come in in the morning. And we see them throughout the days. And Mara Alameda has an open door policy with his office. And our EAs can pop in at any time. We can address issues, say, like with animal control. Clifford has a situation with animal control. Or if there's something going on at civil defense or if we're gonna do, we're entering into discussions maybe with a salvation army creating a new homeless shelter in Kona and we wanna explore the various elements and areas of responsibility and resources that would be needed for that. We have Aaron there. Or if we have on a bi-weekly basis myself and the mayor, we sit down with a personal recreation and we sit down with the finance director and we go through whether it be projects for parks or projects that are coming up in finance. And, just affords a direct line of communication and better relationships and better responses because like I mentioned earlier is not only identifying the problem that's just one component fixing the is what the public wants. And so what that liaison does is that liaison creates accountability for the department heads, because there's clear expectations as to what the mayor's desires are and what the mayor wants. And that gets communicated through the liaison to the department head. So there's no, well, I wouldn't go as far as say no misunderstanding but the chances of that are significantly reduced. And it just affords more productivity during the day. I would like to share if I just make one more quick comment which is to say that I hope that that structure to some extent will also break down some of the silos between some of the departments that have similar data needs and other communication needs between the departments so that we see a little more synchronicity there. So I like the concept. No, definitely. No more silos. Just pods. No, I can't. Thank you. Councilmember Crickowitz. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, managing director mayor, for your outstanding presentation, WDMD Nishimoto. It's been really refreshing to be working with this administration to be invited into conversations where decisions must be made for community. And in the short amount of time that you've been here, may or you've been able to untangle a lot of knots that we have found ourselves in specifically around the recovery process. So I thank you for that. Thank you for your entire cabinet for being there. I've called with Diane Nakagawa sometimes at 8 p.m. with Jeff Darrow at 6 a.m. on Saturday. And so your folks are available. They follow through. You are proactively engaged and your engagement comes with a lot of care, a lot of compassion and innovation. You are solving problems and it's exciting to be here in the county at this time because you really do feel a culture shift, a mindset shift in how people are coming to work and approaching the work of serving our community. One thing that's always on my mind is workforce. And I'm hoping Director Nakagawa in future budget proposals where for every department, we note the number of positions, it would also be interesting, I think, to track the number of vacancies. Because I don't, I think the public doesn't realize how stretched we are from a human capital perspective, how few folks we have that are doing a tremendous amount of work work often wearing many hats to just get the job done Managing director you've been in the county You know several administrations have worn numerous hats and I'm curious what the strategy is around Getting those vacancies filled countywide. I know that you're working closely with Director Topo Hero on that, but just curious about the management strategy. Great question and we appreciate Council Member Kirkowitz your engagement with us because the team is everybody. You know, it's not just our administrative team, but you're part of each and every one of you, a part of the team as well. You may not realize it, but we consider you to be the subject matter experts in your district. And unless you're communicating with you and unless you're providing information and input to us, we really don't know if we're adequately serving your districts. And, you know, a great example is a couple weeks ago we had a significant issue with the lava recovery procedures going forward. And Ashley was kind enough to come in and meet with us. And she was, you know, she engaged with us. And she actually was part of the decision-making process. And I'm not sure a sure a lot of you know in the past that that type of relationships would have existed. So it's not just from us you know our desire to have that relationship but it's your willingness to engage and that's just a great example you know for us going forward and we want to foster that. So we appreciate it. I appreciate hearing that from, but I also want to thank you and each and every one of you for engaging similarly. As it relates to the HR, the Human Resources question, we know we're in difficult times since COVID. And I think we've identified, not I think again, it's pretty clear that we identified one of the areas of concern is the pay that we provide to our employees or the pay we're offering for vacant positions. It's just not sufficiently competitive with what the public sector is offering now at this stage. Maybe that will change, because like I said earlier, so much of these items are cyclical, there's gonna be time to where it's a private sector market, and it's hard for government to find employees, or if the economy is bad, you get the inverse where it's a public sector market, and it's hard for private sector operations to pay their employees. So, you know, you get the inverse where it's a public sector market and you know, it's hard for private sector operations to pay their employees. So, you know, unfortunately, we're in the private sector market. You know, the private sector is very aggressive right now. They're doing a lot of hiring. They're paying a lot of, you know, high salaries. They're providing a lot of, you know, bonuses and, you know, fringe benefits. And right now the county hasn't transitioned yet. We're somewhat behind the curve, and that's something we're looking at. But the county's hands are tied to a certain extent, because when we negotiate with our unions, we negotiate on a statewide basis. So the salaries that we offer here are not just salaries specific to the county of Hawaii, but they're statewide salaries, statewide umbrellas. So if there's areas that state wide, we're limited to and we're constrained with, we have to be a little more creative in what we can offer our people. So as a matter of fact, we just had a discussion just a couple days ago. Where we're looking to say, you know, when we do recruitments, there's be a little more open to the fact that maybe we won't just recruit at the minimum level or the entry level, you know, position. Maybe in the announcement, the recruitment announcement will give yourself a little room to have a little flexibility that, you know, if it's a hard-to-fill position or if we have a really good qualified candidate, we would have that flexibility. Of course, to stay within the limitations of civil service, but to afford flexibility to bring that person and offer, you know, somebody on board, just by, we recruit for the office of aging recently, found a really good candidate, but we had to recruit at the minimum level. We were constricted through HR. And that salary was less than what a lot of other mid-level managers are making across the county. So of course that salary wasn't accepted. And so now what we have to do is we have to go through the recruitment process again. And hopefully we can increase our offering because the job is attractive, but it's not attractive if you're going to be making less than what people below you. Colleagues below you are making. So we have to keep that fairness and we have to keep that reasonfulness in mind. And hopefully that will afford us the opportunity to bring more qualified people in. And we're also looking at maybe, like I said, looking at fringe benefits, maybe the opportunity for us to provide childcare for a candidate might be something that you know might make working for the county a little more attractive. Or you know we already look at flexible hours you know that's something that the mayor has engaged with the unions and that's a program we have in place now we offer flexibility where a county employee maybe work four days, four, ten hour days instead of five, eight hour days and give them the flexibility to have a day off or something to that effect. And so we're looking at various components, we're looking at various elements and we're looking at various enticements that will make working for the county the place to where people want to work again. Because I think that's been lost. Thank you, managing director. And I hope as part of that strategy, we're looking at some of the minimum requirements, which are often a barrier to entry. Definitely. Not only that, but we've already initiated discussions with HR to start an internship program where we can bring high school seniors or recent high school graduates who don't meet MQs, the opportunity to work for the counties so that they can work their way towards meeting the MQs, as well as college students as well. So we're kind of running the gamut, we're looking at everything, we're not saying no to much, and know, and we're just hoping that incrementally we can get there. Because, you know, we want to fill those positions, we want to take the burden off our employees because so many of our employees are having to do twice as much as work only because there's not enough people in the office. And I think, you know, to keep our staff happy, to keep them retained, we have to address that issue. Thank you. In your presentation, you noted a couple of strategic objectives, one of them being economic initiatives, which always peaks my interest. Now more than ever, especially when we look at the global conversation, the tariff wars, this push on the federal level to do things here at home. And I think that's something that we've been trying to do as I would like to say in Eilination, for some time is increasing that sort of economic security and creating a more regenerative circular economy. Do you have specific initiatives in mind that you are thinking about implementing to ensure that Hawaii has a strong and resilient economy, regardless of what's happening nationally and globally? I get very good question. And Mayor Alameda, he actually addressed that question earlier in his presentation. And some of the areas that we're looking at is so much of county economics and resources are based on taxes. And like a little too, we cannot continue to increase taxes. We cannot keep taxing our people. So we have to look at alternative areas of revenue and the mayor touched upon the fact that, hey, maybe STVRs, if you, like he said, if you're going to act like a resort, we're going to tax you like a resort. But we haven't done our complete due diligence with that. What we have to look at, what are the unintended consequences of moving in that direction? The second thing, the second area we're looking at is, he mentioned Manuqia. The telescopes is, right now we're at a time in which that issue may create some divisiveness in the community. But if it wasn't for TNT, what's on the mountain would be status quo. There would be no change. There would be no initiative for change. So I think the mayor is saying, yeah, I'll support astronomy. If it's done right and if it adequately benefits the county, and that could be a area of revenue that they signed a 50-year lease, that could be an area of revenue for the next 50 years, maybe for the county of Hawaii and their resource. The other component is maybe Pocalo training. That lease is coming up as well, very similarly situated to the telescopes. You know, it could be, it could create some type of devicesness in the community. People who agree, people who don't agree, but if we can, you know, every project that comes forward, the number one element or number one component is, does the impact of the project is are those impacts significantly outweighed by the by the economic benefit or the benefits that that project can produce and with say with a Boca-Loh, you know the Maraloo to maybe they can help construct the road in Wai-Caloa or maybe they can assist with the extension of the Danukai, you know, a highway from where currently ends, you know, at the old highway, Mamalolo Highway. Maybe take it all the way down to Queen K. And maybe they can engage with expansion of Queen K, highway to four lanes from that terminus all the way to Kuihai Harbor high harbor, because we understand that that road was built for the transportation of the defense vehicles through Senator Inoi at the time. And that's why that beautiful highway was built. That was the funding mechanism and funding source. So it's not just a dollar and cents things. It's kind of like what are the actual benefits we can get. You know, the other area we're looking at is exploring alternative economic or energy resources. You know, we get projects are presented to us almost on a daily basis. Wind, solar, geothermal. But one of the things, the first question that the mayor is asking is, okay, that's great, this project is good. How is it going to impact the county? And secondly, almost more importantly, how much is our county residents utility bill going to be reduced by this project? Because too many times they're saying, Oh, this is a great solar farm. It's going to generate 30 megawatts of energy. Oh, but your bill is going up by 5 cents a kilowatt. What's the benefit in that? You know, so we have, they have, when these entities come and present to us, we want to see how much benefit is going to be put in our community's pockets. And by community, I mean, by our residents paying their electric bill, we want to see real reduction in electric bills or something to that effect. So these are long-term, type economic, I guess, possibilities that we're engaging with. These are the discussions we're having, and you know, we hope that, you know, we'll start to see some significant results going forward. Thank you, and I hope due consideration is also given to our counties' comprehensive economic development strategy or SEDS. This is a community-driven document where community members identify the industries that they would like to see develops here on Hawaii Island and we'll dive into that a bit more with research and development. The last thing that I just want to say is you know a springboard of off of council member Kimball's comments about having a presence. Our county has has been noticeably absent on the state and federal level and I would support resources to ensure that we are building the relationships which are so critically important because we need our friends at the state and federal level. Not just in Boosky Times but most especially during disaster situations situations. And it's harder to work with folks that you don't know. So I do appreciate the investment in building these relationships with folks because we know that they will come in handy during the next crisis that we are sure to face. Definitely. Definitely. Definitely what we're going to be doing going forward. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. I'll see you in more lights. Manager Jim, Deputy Manager Director, a little bit of padding this year on the budget overall for the mayor's office, but from what I've heard, I like where you're headed. Sister City Program, I think, is a huge potential for a community. And then, you know, some things like Lays and different things, mileage, understandable. How many vehicles does an office of management have? Right now, we have, I believe we have one vehicle in Kona and two vehicles in Hilo. One vehicle, one of the two vehicles in Hilo is specifically assigned to our public safety, pod director Clifford and it's because he is mandated to respond to also defense emergencies and the like. So that vehicle is assigned to him. So we have actually just one vacant vehicle that the office shares in Heelow, okay. Thank you And then what is the mental health summit? I'm just noting some of the difference between the two different administrations last administration It's highly focused on sustainability. There's a lot of questions raised about the sustainability summits that were happening. So looking at this administration looks like the mental health summit is something that we're going to be moving towards. But you know, I don't know the specifics of it, but I know it comes under our health and safety pod director Aaron. So more she submitted that and you know, mental health is one of the areas. areas it historically it doesn't specifically come under the county it's more a state function you know it helped the health directive but AmeriLamida has identified homelessness drug addiction and mental health as key components of areas in which we're going to be able to better and improve our most vulnerable areas of our community. So that's something that we're going to engage in. Again, it's a conference. It's a summit in which we can go and we can pick the brains of the experts in the area and come home and implement hopefully some good programs which, you know, again, we're not just throwing good money after that. We see programs that are effective and have results that we like and those are the programs that we're going to move forward with going forward. I like that. I have friends family, and fire, and police, and from what I'm understanding and looking at our homeless situation, I would say most of our issues revolve around mental health problems and needing to address that and it's difficult. And I think there's a huge potential for something that we can do to address that for both the county employee side as well as the nonprofits and service provider side. So that's tremendous to see some movement of that direction. Mayor, do you want to speak there, though? Good. Okay. Well, we're fortunate, extremely fortunate because that's the mayor's area of expertise as well. His background is that and that's definitely a problem that's not going to get swept under the rug, under this administration. Beautiful, for sure. What is investigations for $45,000? I don't know if that's older, no other way. This is presented I can't tell. That's generally what we set aside for our internal investigations. It's unfortunate. It's something that occurs and happens when you have 4,000 employees, not everybody, unfortunately performs their duties and makes decisions that we feel are appropriate and those are money set aside to address those type of situations. We're hoping to be that they become less and less as we provide better a guidance going forward Does that overlay with what the auditor's office does? The auditors my understanding their investigations are more specific to department departmental functions Whereas these are specific for Employee misconduct or allegations of employee misconduct. Okay. And then just look at your office supplies and some of your basics and OCE, some substantial jumps from, I look at actuals, I look at budgeted, so I look at the actuals from 2324 and the budgeted from this current fiscal year into next. just looking at your copy yours and office supplies, what are you guys planning on doing with the the bumps up? I'll let our finance director address that. I'm guessing it's a pretty simple answer from this checking. Yeah sorry council member which line item are you looking at? Is it computer and office supplies? Within the OCE yeah. Computer and office supplies that actually went down that was reduced. Printing. 109? Is that what you're looking at? Yeah, and then 227. I'm looking at the actual some 2324 to budget it for this year Then going in the next year Yeah, we we can take a look at that. I'm not sure if it's one of their Coffee or subscriptions or what what that could be it was it is reduced from the 24 25 budget 7,000 we can take a look at what that might be. Yeah, thank you. Sure. Yeah. And then just to the managing director, looking over some of your program highlights, what are some programs that you guys are going to focus in on this year that we're budgeting for? I think I'm... Maybe like top three. Top three. I think the best way to identify our, you know, specific programs going forward is the creation of our task forces. We have a task force that we created for a cesspool conversion. You know, we're mandated by Department of Health to convert, you know, 50,000 cesspools to, you know, septic. to septic. And that's something we have eliminated amount of engineers available. And I think if we just calculated the math, there's no way the two or three engineers we have available to do that in the county can satisfactorily address that. Two is permitting the timeliness of issuing permits. The mayor, you know, at his committee meetings, he lays out the necessity and the benefits of having timely term permits and how it touches upon, you know, the increasing construction. The increasing, the construction hiring new employees, new employees have been able to live closer to the resorder. So they can work in those areas and it's just all interconnected. And so permits, you know, cesspools, we have HR task force, where we're looking at aggressive ways like I discussed earlier about attracting people and making the kind of a way the place to work on the big island. And that's three, we have two more task force. We have animal control, because as you drive on the highway, the mere legs to say animals seem to be more out of control than in control. And that's an area that we want to address. And it's not just the pigs and the goats in the sheep, but it's also the cats down a banyan drive. You know, and it takes everybody and, you know, it takes a concerted effort to, you know, properly address that. Okay. And then you have the funds necessary in the budget you presented to handle those different task force. That's correct. Absent, you know, something unforeseen. Yeah. Okay. I like the direction and I appreciate the, uh, the knowledgeable answers. Thank you. Thank you very much. We appreciate the opportunity to present. Thank you. Okay. See nothing further from the council. Thank you very much. The office of management and the presentation. Council members would you like a recess? It is 10.55. Yep, okay. Take a five minute recess. We will reconvening this meeting out of recess. Our next portion of our budget meeting is going to be the planning departments review of the capital improvement program. Mr. Darrell, if you want to come up and walk your way through the presentation for the council and the public on the capital improvement program. Loha, Chair, Conelli, Klein Felder, Vice Chair, Houston, and members of the Hawaii County Council. Jeff Darrell with the Planning Department. Just wanna say thank you very much for the opportunity to be able to present the overview of the capital improvement program budget process. This is found mainly in the county charter. Article 10 spells it out very well and there are other areas within the charter that speak to the responsibilities of different departments such as the Office of the Manager and Mayor and also the Planning Department and also Finance Department. With that we'll start. So, capital improvements are major non-recurring expenditures. What is capital improvement? What it is not is typical maintenance programs that are reoccurring operating budget type costs or operating costs. Those are not considered capital improvement projects. They can include land acquisition, infrastructure improvement that adds value to the land or improves utilities such as roads, drainage, sewer lines, parking, landscape, and similar construction. It includes new buildings or structures or additions to a building like a new roof. We get that all the time whether or not that's maintenance or falls under capital improvement. Those types of additions will be considered capital improvement projects. Nonreoccurring rehabilitation or deferred maintenance of infrastructure and buildings that cost 25,000 or more and the improvements has a useful life of at least 10 plus years. Planning, feasibility, engineering, or design studies are included as capital improvement projects and information and communication technology provided that the cost is 25,000 or more. The CIP process starts with the head of each county agency furnishing the mayor as the midst of any capital improvements, pending or proposed to be undertaken within the ensuing fiscal year and within the five fiscal years thereafter. So when we receive that layout, it includes the ensuing year as well as a five year or or a six year layout of how they're proposing to utilize those funds. Excuse me. The Planning Director reviews the list of proposed capital improvements contemplated by agencies of the county and recommends the order of their priority. Next, the finance department assists the mayor in the preparation of the capital budget. The managing director recommends to the mayor the annual capital improvement budget. And then lastly, the mayor submits an annual capital budget six year capital program and budget message to the council. And again this is all spelled out pretty clearly in article 10 within the county charter. This is our current timeline for this process that has occurred in fall of 2024. Agency heads share with the mayor and the managing director the CIP projects they plan to submit in January. On December 4th, 2024, the Planning Department oriented agencies, their CIP lesons to the CIP budget process and distributes CIP forms and the instructions. On January 3rd, 2025, this is the deadline for agency heads to submit all financial impact statements or FISs and supporting documents to the mayor and the planning department. January 13th through the 17th, 2025, the planning director met with all agencies to discuss the agency's priorities. On February 21st, the mayor submitted the capital projects package to the council within the March 1st deadline. March 2025, agencies discuss between March to May changes with the mayor and the managing director. So this is ongoing. March 28 is the deadline for agency heads to submit all new or revised FIS forms and supporting documents to the mayor via the planning department. And then lastly May 2nd, the mayor submits the amended capital budget and six year capital program to the council. These are the mayor's prioritization that was listed within the budget letter that had come to the or is coming to the council. Along with the main priorities that are spelled out within the charter, which is the general plan, the community development plan priorities, emergency expenditures and any other type of fundamental plans that we have. They are also the legally mandated projects. One of them that we're seeing right now is the wastewater treatment facilities. health and and safety, again, the general plan, support affordable housing, provide matching funds, and achieve, achieve a full within time and resource constraints. These are the mayor's priorities. This is the project data that is looked within the financial impact sheets or the FISs that we have spoken about. For each of the projects or each of the departments, they will submit to us a summary page that All of the lists of their capital improvement projects by order of priority. Along with each of those projects is this financial impact sheet that goes into detail about the entire project. Within that impact sheet, all of this information can be found, which department, the location of the project, the project eligibility, the project description, the justification and outcomes, long range plans that are affected, matching funds, legal mandates, sustainability focus, project readiness, expenditure phasing, which is that six-year forecast and the funding source. All of those again can be found on the FIS. These are different project funding sources. These have been spoken about this morning already. Federal grants, the debt service which is bond, state revolving, fund loans, etc., revenue sources such as fuel tax and other special revenues, state grants and other financing options such as fair share contributions or special financing districts. On the right side of those slide you will see for this proposed fiscal year the appropri, which includes approximately 36 million from federal grants, 514 million in debt loans, and other, which again is the fair share and the other types of funding sources for approximately 3 million, for a total appropriation of $5555 million. These are terms that are typical within the process. One term that you'll hear is appropriation. It has been explained to me that the appropriation is like a bucket and this is identifying the bucket, the appropriations. Once the council submits that, we have this bucket of money that can be appropriated for projects. I'm going to pass on upon authorization. That's more of a tool that we use for the funding and we'll go on to allotment. Allotment is when the monies are put in the bucket and so now we have the monies. They have been allotted by the finance department by releasing the funds for use. So they can be utilized now. A cum and cumberance is when the department and the mayor has executed contracts. And that money is now encumbered. And so they can go ahead and begin to expend those funds. And that is our next term expenditure. This is when the different departments begin spending the funds that they've been covered. So you've heard it said that the actual capital improvement budget is a type of wish list. And the reason for that is because you're identifying all of the projects that you'd like to see happen within the ensuing fiscal year. It doesn't mean everything has been allotted or encumbered. It's just been appropriated. The council has appropriated those funds. They can move on to the next step if financing is available for those particular projects. Our CIP budget drafts, the first draft is do no later than March 1st, which has been submitted, and the mayor shall submit amendments to the budget in the second draft no later than May 5th, and that concludes our presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Thur. discussion on the capital improvement budget? This program. How's the McKinley? Yeah, I just had a quick question about how the bridge and road repair CIPs were designated in the past. For example, in the district one there are a number of specific bridges and specific district areas within district one that have CIP allocations. Have we changed how we're doing that just as a serving universal designation within the CIP? I'm going to have the expert chime in. Council member Kimball, I'm not sure I understand your question, but we can definitely have. The plan is to have the department speak specifically to the CIP project. So when DPW comes up, we can certainly come back to that as well about any project specific questions that we have. Yeah, it's just I was wondering if there if I'll rephrase it. There were at one point specific line CIP's designated for specific areas. So, Hamakua, North Hilo, South Gohala, all of that for repaving efforts. Similarly, there were bridge repairs, damning specific bridges. And now it seems to be that there's just one bucket for all paving and one bucket for all repairs and maintenance, than having them designated to a specific location or. Yeah, I apologize. I don't recall when it was by district, but I do know now to provide some of the flexibility, some of those departments have it in that one category of repair and maintenance. Like you'll see it in specifically D.B.W. and in parks has a pretty significant allocation or budget in there for these types of projects. So some of the projects will be listed specifically, but these also provide flexibility for when something comes up, they can go ahead and use that appropriation. Okay. With respect to the fuel tax, then the calculations still in place about how much is allocated based on the amount of roadways in the district. And that doesn't mean we can give them that. Yeah, just a little bit of goal, but we can come back again to that as well. Okay. But yeah, same as we discussed I think about a year ago. Yeah, okay. That's I think it for right now. Thank you. Chair, real quick one thing I did want to mention that's kind of cause some confusion And that is that when departments present their capital improvement budget, you see the request for the current or the upcoming fiscal year. What you don't see is the previous two years. And those are also appropriated. So you have a period of three years where these improvement projects maintain their appropriation. And so they don't need to keep putting it back on the list until those appropriations are lapsed. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Emmerick. Oh, you want to ask. Okay, so if we have concerns about a lapsed project in CIP, should we wait and bring it up with that department when we meet with them? Yes, please. Thank you. Two just points though, I just, I do want to mention we we've had this conversation Between our departments in the mayor's office and we are looking to Make some improvements in the CIP some middle for next year to provide a little more clarity to those projects as well Thank you Kazura on issue. Thank you, sir. And you can correct me if I'm wrong with the, I remember, council can also initiate the appropriations for projects. Correct. Yes. Okay. So members, we could do our own where in the past we did where a council member wanted to get a self-coron-a-police station. and she appropriated maybe like 14 million and then we all added on to that appropriation so it came out to like 35 million projects. And so that's how the administration could get some projects on like for example, Kiloa Avenue, they did that reconstruction of that whole area. So we can initiate if we want it to on projects of what we want in our districts. So something to look at or something to think about. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, that's my seventh budget cycle. And I'm just going to bring this up again because it just flew by. I appreciate this list. Director, you refer to it as a wish list. What we also don't see are the list of projects that were appropriated two years prior last year. And director Nakagawa, you mentioned next year, we'll do things a little bit differently. There's a lot of time between now and then and I hope that with the new financial management system there is some kind of widget that allows us to track every single CIP project from two years ago up into the standpoint and the status of the project because there's a mix of different funding streams that go into project construction and it would be nice to know if there's been a bond that's been appropriated for a certain project or the status of something like has there been an EA? Are we going to be you know shovel in the dirt pretty soon? I don't know. And with so many changes within administrations, within personnel, with folks on this bias, it would be nice to have an objective document online that's updated in real time as much as possible just so that we know where various projects stand and we can take advantage of funding opportunities if the federal government ever shakes money back down our way. Councilmember Carco-Witz we completely agree. We have spoken about this over the last couple of years. It is one of the reasons that we added a CIP manager in our budget actually in finance. And we're currently recruiting, jumping ahead to finance a little bit, but we are currently recruiting for that position. And things like the status of the dashboard of these projects is definitely something that will be a high priority for the management oversight of this position. Director, is the CIP manager the same or different from like an assets manager? Because I think we talked about that in the past too. Somebody to monitor the progress, the maintenance of the various, you know, county projects and facilities. One in the same thing. I do know. It's a little different. This, you know, it's something that we could be a little flexible with as it is a new position within the county but the idea is for someone to have this oversight over all of these projects and be able to provide a status and to answer the questions and to provide reports in the format that people are looking for primarily right and but the departments will still have that responsibility of the asset management and things like that. But there will be more coordination, of course, with this position as well as with the those departments as well. Deputy, do you have something to add? I know, I was just curious. Moral support. I think I said that perhaps, and I think that's what I did in the early 18th century. I'm just trying to think of a question to ask you. Okay, that is very helpful, Dr. Nakagawa. I mean, these documents are great, but it's a lot of information to have to pour over. And members of the public just don't have the time to dedicate going through these documents, I think something a bit more digestible online would be really welcome. Okay and then Director Daryl, as these projects relate to the general plan, you know, where's the consideration around which of these projects we elevate to the top of of the priority list to implement upon. Is it public outcry? Is it the availability of different funds? Is it the general plan saying we really need this infrastructure? Like where does the general plan come into play? One question one and then question two. How are we making this decision on and explaining to community which projects we're acting on versus others because every single one of these projects is the top priority for a member of the community. When we meet, as mentioned in the presentation, the planning department meets with the liaison's, CIP-laysons for each department. We go over their list and we discuss each item and we ask them, how are you coming up with this priority? We do have with us the areas within the community development plans is also the general plan that identifies priority projects or priority directions. And many times there are improvements that are connected to the general plan as well as the community development plans on the list. The priorities unfortunately seem to fall to the greatest need at that point, like an emergency. and see their at. It also mentions in the charter these emergency expenditures. They're at, it also mentions in the charter these emergency expenditures. They're talking about projects that if they don't do anything, the whole thing's going to, you know, it's been neglected for up such a period of time that they have to do something now. And I see that a lot of times rising to the top of these lists, but along within that list, I mean the fact that they make it on the list is a good thing, right? And my reference to wish list wasn't something I created, it's something that many people always utilize, they say this is like a wish list. But really, it's the process. This is how you go about doing these projects. But again, we work with them to try to make sure that they consider the projects that are identified in the general plan and the community development plans. But they identified to us how they came up with their list of priorities. And I'm sure as you meet with each department you will have the same questions and receive the same responses that we received through our meetings. Anything to add Director Nakagawa in terms of like the funding priorities, how those decisions are made? Yeah, you know, goes along the lines of our presentation this morning from the mayor and really looking at one are legal obligations and mandates. Then those projects will consume a large amount of our funding, specifically our bond availability. So from the federal mandates, then to those safety projects. And then there's not a lot left after that to rise to, you know, to get to some of these projects, unfortunately. But it does, it is focused over the next several years. It will be focused on these mandated wastewater projects that take up hundreds of millions of dollars. Thank you for sharing that. You know, because Mayor mentioned earlier, we got to stop taking the can down the road. This administration has sort of made that commitment. So it's good to know what you folks are thinking about in terms of what we must do, our legal obligations before we can start thinking about tackling these other priorities. Thank you. I yield. Thank you. Did you go already? Thank you. Anybody else? Here's this. Thank you, sir. Just to piggyback off of the Councilmember Kirkowitz it. You know, I'm curious about, you know, we have, we're showing $555 million in worth of projects, but we can comfortably only really maybe afford $50 million on an annual basis. So I guess it's a hard question because each of these departments, all of the community members are looking for improvements, new gymnasium, new parks, all these sort of things. But, and we go through the CDPs, all the action committees and their lists, and the new administrations come through, and they add things on top of the list. So what more can we do to really parse that down to something where we are comfortable of paying for these projects to really bring it down to that control level and that $50 million range. Beyond the projects that are either legally bound to or obligated to do or public safety all those sort of things, I mean, what more can we do to kind of really parse that list further down? The list just keeps growing. Year after year we see, like I'm not seeing the projects, those who've kind of discussed of what's been kind of appropriated and asked for previously and where they sit on over time to become lapsed. So how can we really focus that mindset collectively as the county, as the communities really down to something that we can afford? Thank you Council Member for the question. It is a very difficult question and for all of us, I think as Council Member Kirkowitz mentioned, these are all high priorities for every single one of these communities. And for all of us, it's a heavy weight to hear. We want to do all these things. The reality is that we have these obligations that we need to do now, and that does limit our funding. One of the things that we have been talking about with planning in the mayor's office as well is setting expectations for such a large list of projects, bringing awareness to the really what's available in the budget to do. And, you know, so we kind of talked about getting to a list that we can share that is a priority list within this. We're not sure how we're going to do that yet, but I think to your point, as the list keeps growing, expectations grow for what is needed and the reality is for a while, it will be limited in what we can do. And I think we need to be open and transparent about what is available to do these projects as much as that is a hard message. It is the truth and it is hard for all of us to know that we can't do all of this. And we got to figure out a prioritization for it. Thank you, Director. Appreciate that. Sorry, I just wanted to add on to Diane's answer. I think another thing we can do to my apologies, Maria K. Kai, Deputy Finance Director. Another thing we can do to kind of part down the list is to be more realistic of what stage the project is at. Because I think right now we put the whole project and we're like, okay, this park's going to cost $20 million. But really, really this year, all we're doing is design. So that's only going to be $1 million, but really, really this year, all we're doing is design. So that's only going to be a million dollars. So maybe sometimes you put the entire project because then if we happen to get money, we want the flexibility to do the whole project or at least quite often as much as we can at that point. So sometimes if you part down the bad part about that is then you have to come back and re-appropriate the next phase and the next phase and the next phase. So, you know, there's kind of two sides to that coin, right? It would be more realistic if we just said this is the piece that we're doing right now. And therefore the money would be better. So I think that's just another thing we could do to create a more transparent list. Thank you. And I think some of the departments are really utilizing that six-year plan to your reference there, Emily, in terms of they can't get it done in all one year, and yet they're showing design planning construction all in that one year. So I think we need to kind of better utilize that six-year plan and showing how many years out is this going to take and you know, kind of be realistic that it's not all done within this fiscal, this upcoming fiscal year. Thank you Chair, I yield. Thank you. Councillor Murrer. Kimball. Yeah, thank you. Building off of what Council Member Kirkowitz and Council Member Houston said, my grandfather was a very skilled bridge player. And when we threw down a card rather than criticizing our choice, he said, as long as you have a reason. And I think that that's what I'm hearing from my colleagues here is as long as we have a reason that we can provide to our constituents as to why something was funded and why something wasn't funded, that helps us in our positions. In the absence of something empirical that we can point to to say why this project was prioritized over another project, then you run the risk of things appearing political and saying, oh, you know, Councilmember Hustis was better at advocating for District 9 than Councilmember Kimball was for District 1, right? And that's not a good look for any of us, you know. It shouldn't, as a body, we shouldn't be competing against each other for resources. We should be looking to the general plan and these other documents to say this is what's best for the community of the county as a whole. So I want to just reiterate, I'm looking for that reason why these choices are being made. In addition, with respect to the prioritization and maybe director, you can speak to whether there's still, I recall that there had been sort of a process in place ongoing that you guys were looking at the CIP selection process and management and maybe looking to improve some of the practices there. One of the things that I think we don't take into account in terms of the decision making with respect to prioritization is the lifetime costs, particularly operational costs as well as any potential costs with respect to sunsetting the facility if that's needed at a later date. So I just want to speak to maybe a greater highlight on that in the decision making process. I would actually recommend against the idea of only talking about the phases components because I think both at the state and the county level all too often we get stuck at one of the earliest phases design or engineering and then we don't actually go out to build. And if I were to think about a most inappropriate use of tax pay per dollars, it would be to pay to just design something that we're never going to build. And so I think that that whole life cycle should be something that is included in the decision-making. So I don't know, director, are you still working with planning to kind of refine the CIP process and the decision making to include some of these more detailed elements? Yes, as I mentioned, yes. We've had discussions on improvements to the CIP that we can make and we can certainly take that into consideration. I think we spent a lot of time during budget conversations talking about the long-term expenditures. And so I do appreciate that and I think there is a place for making sure that we understand just what things are going to cost, just not just for the the project but in the operation of whatever is done. So yes, thank you for that. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Dale and Ms. Nakagawa, I appreciate what you've done today because for six years I have sat and asked questions about the CIP budget and it was like pulling teeth especially from the last administration and extra-director current Actually incredibly frustrating is how it defined that especially last year. So just coming to us and presenting the capital improvement program and highlighting how it works, how it breaks down, how allocations work, how appropriations work, and what that means for the general public and how work accountable as a county to the citizens who pay their taxes and look forward to seeing projects done in their community is incredibly helpful. That I appreciate. Ms. Nakagawa. Sorry, I've had six years of this, so to get to this point is beautiful. Something that we have discussed, and I guess I'd comment by saying we will address the CIP projects that we want to see or need to discuss with each department so I won't go into specific projects but in the scene to the conversation today Miss Nakagawa. We have discussed in the past and this just came to me. We have discussed in the past looking at the county long range, how we rent buildings, where we do office spaces, where we want to be, because there's a cost of doing business when we're renting, leasing, et cetera, upkeeping buildings that aren't ours. Are we taking that into account in looking at the CIP program, looking at where we want to be as a county, and looking at our return on investment, and thinking about that as an overall picture, as we look to what we're going to do in the future with the help of planning, with the help of the capital improvement project list? Is that one pretty picture right now, or is it still disassociated? So, time to say we are starting to look at that. We are starting with the information that we need to move forward. So we have engaged a consultant through finance to do a space study for the county to look at all the needs of each of the departments now and in the future. So the first step for us is to get the data of what is needed. At the same time we are evaluating all of the leases that we have and yes we do have a good amount of spaces that we are renting because we are out of space. So we need to look at that, but you're right that that would need to be incorporated in a future CIP is our needs, but the first step is really figuring out so we're not so reactive on every time there's a new office or a new space or a new need, we're looking. We want the space study to look at the needs of today plus any growth in these departments to be able to plan accordingly and be more proactive rather than reactive and we see that as the first step to that. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. Because that means our kids, kids know that right now we're planning for what it's gonna look like for them and that we're not just looking at reacting to what we need in 20, 30, 40, 50 years because it doesn't make sense. We plan for it now, we build it, we save money by doing so even though it costs us now. Same way we look at wastewater, same way we look at everything else in the county, but we don't plan on our growth as a county itself and a need for space to put all of these positions we keep filling and creating and creating more of. So that's concerning so it's good to hear. Thank you. Director again the Kuleana of the Planning Department to fulfill the capital improvement project list and to give guidance to via the Long Range Plan via the administration and the priorities of each council member and district is yours. And I really look to you guys to come back to us and present that information and today you've touched on it. Yeah, there's some real firm improvement, but at least you made the first step. So thank you very much. It was very helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. We, this is our first year of doing this. We have a lot to learn, a lot to grow, but we definitely, in working with Director Nakagawa, with identified areas that we can easily improve. And we're going to next year should be a whole lot better. Including ways that we can better prioritize these lists, be able to provide you with better information moving forward. again adding on the two previous years of the appropriation so that gives you a very full picture of what's appropriated across the board. And any other suggestions moving forward were open to be able to make it a better process. Okay, I think a distinction that you made in your presentation and one that I understand to be critical to this is the difference between appropriated and allocated because we can appropriate things. I can do it all day long. Everyone here can put forward a project, appropriate funds toward and away it goes and it becomes this massive wish list we sit on and the community thinks we funded it. It's not true. It's not until we've allocated funding. That's the magic moment, correct? Yes. Okay, so the allocated funding list of capital improvement projects is what's happening, right? That's the main step is being able to allocate the funds. You still have additional steps. You have to encumber those funds through a contract and then you're able to expend those funds. Yes, okay. So I think that's the kind of information if you want to present a capital improvement project list that people can get behind, understand and see how we're prioritizing the county. That's what needs to be presented. That's the beauty that I've been looking floor for six years. Hopefully, next year I get to see it. That'd be beautiful. Okay, thank you. Okay, girls members. Okay, thank you very much. Hello, thank you. Okay. Director Nakagawa, Department of Finance is our next department. Thank you very much. Planning Department for your time this morning. Go ahead when you're ready. Do you need a brief recess or are you good to go ahead with your presentation. Of course, thank you. Good morning again council members. My name is Diane Nakagawa, finance director. Good morning, Mollia Keika, W Finance Director. Thank you for allowing us to be here today to be, you know, on the top of the list of departments to present today and where we, I would like to acknowledge and thank our finance management team who's here today with us. We have Lisa Mura and Kate Jo from Real Property Tax. We have Tetsuri and Lisa Tata from our budget division. We have Naomi Odell from our vehicle registration and licensing. We have our treasure, Chris Nakano, our assistant controller, Reed Tsawaki, our risk manager, Dan Chan, our purchasing agent, Stephanie, letro, our acting property manager, Eva Brahman. And that is our team. I said, no, me. So thank you for that. It's just, you know, this is the team behind all the work and I just appreciate what they do every day. To that real quick, I do want to thank all the departments for their hard work in the budget process. This did start in September. It is months of work that takes a collaborative effort of all, so I just appreciate everyone's time to get us to where we are at today. All right, so a finance department for fiscal year 26. The first slide is our objectives. This is in our program budget. This is the format you'll see the rest of the week from each of the departments. So the first slide is our program budget review. We'd like to start off, of with an integrated county financial plan. We'll maintain our fiscal policies, prioritars our customer service programs, we'll provide continuous training to improve employee skill set and cross-train and maintain written operational procedures overall, finance objectives for 26. Some of our program outcomes for fiscal year 25 so far, we've conducted eight training opportunities to the departments related to procurement, budgeting and accounting. We have created a budget overview for community education. It is recently done, we will get it out. It's posted on our finance website. It is an overview of the county budget process, something that we've talked about here, and we're happy to share that. It's just hot off the press, but that is something we have been working on. We also implemented a debt capacity model to evaluate our future financial obligations. This is something that we looked at the beginning of this calendar year, really taking a look at all of our wastewater applications. And what that means, not just today and this authorization or the authorization that Council approved last year, but all of the future authorizations that will need to happen. So that has been instrumental in really painting the picture of what our cash flow needs are and also our debt service. So one of the things that may share this morning was that graph and that is actually cash flow from you know our normal 50 million dollars to almost 250 million at some points with the mandates we have in front of us. So this model is able to be manipulated and we can look at different timing and it's been very useful. So that's something we've implemented. And of course, you know, with our, to talk about our financial planning, we just recently wanted to let you know if we're from our bond rating to AA plus and we just got that word last week from our bond rating agencies as we go through this issuance. So we're very happy about that and of course what that means is that we can continue to borrow with the best interest rate. So that is very important as we go through future obligations. Just some highlights for some finance highlights for fiscal year 25. We have begun our implementation of our new financial and human resource software. It is called Connect, COH, NECT. It is Connect. The financial start of our financial system will go live in July 25. I do want to again thank the many staff members who've been in implementation. Implementation is rough. It is four to six hours a day on top of their normal day-to-day duties. So we just really thank all those who are involved to get us to a system that is not 20 years old and in this day and the reports that we talk about all the efficiencies takes a lot of work to get here so really appreciate that the human resource management part of it will go live in 26 and we're still working on that as well. Centralized purchasing with centralized purchasing that we have with all the departments we did add another position to be more efficient to manage all of the county's needs. And equally exciting, we did execute a contract for a new bidding software through OpenGov. So this will provide a much more customer service friendly platform for our vendors as well as our internal staff. It'll also keep a lot of status and internal updates live in the system. So we're really looking to add this technology to help our efficiencies and finance. Talked a little bit about this earlier, our much anticipated CIP manager is out for recruitment. So hopefully we can get some results from HR soon, and we can head into interviews. And a lot of the things we talk about will be in this position's responsibilities. And finally, we have been sharing over the last few years. We continue to make customer service improvements in VRL. We are excited when the community is happy. We've added a new queuing system and of course, hopefully you know we've began to accept credit cards, which is a long time coming. It's the big complaint that we've had for a long time and the team's done a great job adjusting and we get a lot of positive comments. Not just about credit cards, but just the overall experience people have in our offices. So we will continue to work on those things and make an experience that sometimes people don't particularly enjoy and dread. At least make it efficient and something that our team can greet with a smile and that's some of the things that we've talked about. So we're happy that that's happened. This is a slide on our finance department staffing. Council member Kirkowitz, you had mentioned that each of the departments will have an overview of the number of positions they have as as as the number of vacancies. So you will see finance as 159 positions with 10 divisions and 22 vacancies. So we are at about 13.8% in our vacancies. Some of our challenges, of course recruitment is a challenge with our key position especially in accounting. But for, it's also training. We need to find more time to have the training that's necessary in these positions while doing the day-to-day. And that is a struggle, especially when we're starting up a new system, but we need to keep that going. Institutional knowledge. So we need to share the institutional knowledge of a few to the many. So we need to build our bench strength and that was happening that will happen through cross training and technology. So a couple of things you'll hear from finance today is really adding technology that will assist the team in building that bench strength, but also make sure that more people are aware of what is happening and it's not just stuck in in someone's head. So overall our finance budget is little over 22 million. It is a 2.4% increase over last year. Specifically we have added a budget specialist position. As you know our budget team consists of two. We have a budget administrator and a budget specialist compared to other counties we are under staff. But we also want to add the responsibility of a grant management system. So we need a little more help to do that. So between the specialist position and also the grants management software that we're looking into that has added to our budget. We've also added in a real property tax, our homeowner exemption audit. And this is a full audit of the homeowner exemption program and to verify things more nationally about if they're getting any type of exemption anywhere else in any other state. So that's one of the things that we looked at as critical in the budget is also making sure that we have the right tools in place to get the revenue that we should be getting. And so that's why some of these have risen to the top of supplemental is because they are particularly aligned with making sure we receive the revenue that we should be getting. One of the things that the departments will also talk about is any state or federal grants that they have. Are these state grants? It's through for our VRL operations, for our periodic motor vehicle inspections and CDL and partial for our registration and licensing. This is state funding of 1.7 million. We do not anticipate any reductions at this time to continue these operations. And finally, for the day's priorities and new initiatives for fiscal year 26. Full implementation of our new financial and human resource management software implement a grant management software for county wide use, implement investment monitoring software in our Treasury division, and complete a long-term financial plan for the county. You know, these are aggressive initiatives to happen simultaneously in finance. And it will take a big effort from our team, but these are the leaps we need to get to better, and our team is committed to make these things happen so we appreciate your time today and we are here for any questions you may have. Thank you, Director. To the council. I just want to say thank you very much and thank you for kind of lining all the departments up with the the standardized form so we can really start to see the overall picture by looking at all the departments together and I really do appreciate that and keeping it fairly simple but getting those necessary pieces in there really appreciate this having gone through this before when we didn't have that in place. So thank you so much. Thank you. That's not really safe. Thank you, Chair. So I have a couple questions. Well, maybe more than couple, but first one is okay. You mentioned about the credit cards having more resources and having them. We talked many times and I always ask you if there's a way of, I guess, accepting the fees that the public is paying because I feel if we can do that, then I think we can have more people paying online. Right, so have you folks looked at that or is that in the future? So that has been something we have discussed. One of the things we've also talked about that would help. This is kind of looking at. And it was mentioned earlier that the departments working together to make sure we have a coordinated effort on some of our projects. It's specifically we talked about Credit card processing but also that one payment portal So you will see that in IT's budget as well some of the things we talked about so having that kind of common Interface for the county and the cash sharing system. So what we have seen is that each of the departments are entering into separate contracts for these cash sharing systems and they have different rates and different charges. Economies of scale, if we did it more comprehensively, we may get a better rate. So those are the things that we've asked purchasing to kind of take a look at as well as if we were to combine these contracts. Would it be more attractive to get us a better rate? Now, that doesn't quite answer your question about would we pay for them, of course, if there was extra funding, yes, there is an opportunity for the county to pay some of these fees to alleviate that from the customer. But what we've talked about there is more of a case-by-case basis. So we do part of that with VRL for the kiosk because it's convenient, but it also provides our team in the office and the customers who go in for more difficult and complex, they have more time to do that. So it made sense to cover some of those fees. So we're looking at it on a kind of globally, what can we do to get the rates down, but then also individual basis on if that makes sense or not. Like, back when I was on the council, like for example, with property tax, each county was doing their separate, I guess, processing of their systems. And so I asked at the time was Gary Crowcawa, who was the tax administrator on Oahu. Why does all the counties work together and just have one program? And that way, if you're on Maui and you wanted to see something on Oahu or something, you could see those things, right? And wouldn't be like all different like how some of our county codes are, right? So he mentioned, and then he said, yeah, we would save the county's money, but it's just that at the time the administrators didn't want, they want one, it's separate, right? But so this looks good where if you can get all the payments from all the different departments, onto one system, that would be awesome. And the county could save some money in my, I guess, my guess scene, right? The other thing we talked about before was about all those vehicles in the parking lot in Alpuni. I know you mentioned that you folks did research on some of the vehicles and you guys got some removed, but they're still a lot more there. So have you have your department, I guess, look more forward into it into the different departments about what can be used or what, you know, what is not being used and we could transfer it to other police like for example, parks just recently had to do this financial leasing for like nine trucks right? You have anything to do on that? Yeah and you know there's still a lot more that has to be done you know we Deputy Director Kekai and I actually walked the parking lot and took all the vehicles down the ones that look like they haven't that they're growing grass on right? And things like that. We see that and we were able to remove some of them. But a bigger effort, it needs to be made to take a look at the usage as well. Because some are working. They're maybe old, but they are working and possibly could be utilized potentially as maybe pool vehicles or whatnot. But an assessment needs to be done through public works and automotive about the condition of some of these vehicles. So not too much further, but we do understand that those are areas in which we need to make sure what we have is either working and used or is not working and taking care of properly. And have you folks scheduled for the auction? Is either working and used or is not working and taking care of properly? And have you folks scheduled for the auction? Well, the older vehicles and so far? Yeah. You know, our intent was to have this auction to make sure that we have an auction, this fiscal year. We are running into a few resource challenges in property management. But we'll continue to look for if there's a way for us to be able to do that through. You know, just the knowledge and resource throughout the county will continue to see if that's something that we can provide for the this fiscal year. Okay, and the last things is about HR so we talked about that position wise So how long have you been waiting to, I guess, get the paperwork for getting that CIP position? So I think it took about six months, potentially, to get it through. This was a new position in the county. So those are a little difficult. Things that HR needed to make sure was accurate, was appropriate for the position we had. Some back and forth on comparable positions in other counties that maybe were a little different so it caused more questions so it took a little bit of time you know I know this is one that we're all anxious to get but it did take some time it's out now hopefully we can continue to know. So I mean when HR comes up I'm gonna ask them these. So because I feel the department should know the position descriptions of what you need. So to me, HR should be there to like reinforce and to just make sure legally it's allowable. Right. But not telling the department, no, I think that person needs to be da- Dada or this and that, right? I mean, no, we need to put this specific, you know, like job description and so forth. So yeah, so I'll be asking them about that because I think we talk about always trying to get more employees, right? And that's one problem because even when I was at the state, they would hire, they would, what and view the hire, but then Deer had to do the final approval. And that would take a long time. And then when they offer the person the job, they re-phone something else already. So you lost it, right? And on that note, the last thing I wanted to, you know, we talked about incentives for recruitment. So if an employee, count employee, could get their friends to apply for a job and they get higher than the employee would get this bonus. And I think you told me before, there's a possibility of there is possible funding to do this program. Is that correct? Yes, we do have a provision for recruitment and compensation that could be used. And it's it has been there for the last couple of years to be used specifically for recruitment or retention incentives. And so where's the hold up? I mean, what do we need or what the this council needs to do to help move this forward? So this specific idea of an incentive, we had some initial discussions with Corporation Council. And I think it just has to have a few more between Corporation Council and HR as well. You heard that Jay? Okay, we need to move on that because we're talking about we need employees, so need incentives to get more workers here and then you know as managing director mentioned about the pain right of how low it is and so forth so yeah we need to move on that thank you director. Thank you. Helps remember who's this? Thank you chair. All the director deputy thank you for your time. I'm just going to dive into some more of the numbers if that's okay with you. Council member, who's this? Thank you, Chair. All the Director of Deputy, thank you for your time. I'm just going to dive into some more of the numbers if that's okay with you. Just a question on, we'll start with the counts. Let's see, 512202, I'm sorry, with 111. The rental lease of equipment. So in the actuals million dollars, and then this current fiscal year, it jumped up to three and a half million. Yes. And then we're asking for another 3.2. Yes. Could you expand on that? Absolutely. That is our new financial system. That is eventually okay. And so we actually started this project implementation in fiscal year 24. So fiscal year 2324, but at the end of 2324. This is about a $23 million project. Wow. And we have both the annual subscription cost as well as the lease payment cost, lease meaning the financial lease, the tenure of financial lease. So it is a significant cost, but this is a crucial investment for the county to have. Thank you for the clarification there. And then the line below on the miscellaneous contractual services, this kind of a significant decline from the actuals, from million in the current fiscal, well, the actuals, and then different down about a quarter of a million. For that one, I would count for kind of like that decrease and either contracts no longer needed or training no longer needed or. I'd have to go look that one. Oh, you have that answer. Oh, reads so walkie our assistant controller thank you read please identify yourself yeah but yeah read so walkie assistant controller or a contribution yeah so the million dollars in last year's quarter 24 24 is we need to we're paying payments directly to Cherry Road in that account Yeah, so part of that was our Cherry Road payments Researched to other funding for this fiscal 25 moving forward. And, you know, we have our other FLSA consultant, other consultant fees as part of that as well. Thank you. I appreciate that. Let's see. We're going to jump on to, let's go to Treasury with 5124 and looking at those contractual services again, jumping up to the proposed is a quarter of a million for this one. And that's leaning on, that's line item 5, Daniel subscriber. It is. I'm not sure what the code is. There are treasury analysis services. Yeah, so one of the things that, and thank you to Council for also doing the introduction is looking at these services to evaluate, really evaluate our portfolio to make sure that the county is investing wisely and to provide any type of recommendations for investments. So this is something that these type of services have been showcased at like NAICL as best practices across the country and one of the things that we're looking at. What it also does is take a lot of the information from the many banks that we have and puts it all into one system. So again, I continue to talk about things that are institutional knowledge, but those are the danger in that it's in one person's head. Right? So we need to continue to build out that in systems and train and allow more access to information so that more of our team is able to do analysis, to do reports, to answer questions, but we need the foundation and that is part of the technology that's needed. Thank you. and then it on to real property tax division. I noticed kind of a decline in advertising on that side. So, less of a need for that. We can ask our real property tax administrator. and she I can show you. Thanks administrator. Good morning, Lisa. We are a real property tax. Not so much a decline. I think we're just making sure we're doing the ads as far as we've been spending the money on for the prior years. A lot of it was for tax sale, so that's attributed to the tax sale fund instead. Thank you, administrator, appreciate that. Cheryl, for now, well, actually, if directives you could just speak. I'll go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and provided. Oh, Councillor Bipper, where are you? Oh, sorry. Let's see on the general this is vehicle registration. Sorry. 5027, 115. And it shows up a couple places, I think, unless these, I know some of these pages are duplicated though. Yes, we do apologize for that. The finance one was duplicated. But it shows up under, these are just state fees then on there. Vehicle registration and the driver's license. Administrative costs. Yes, thank you for that question. So as part of the budget presentation, I talked about the state funding in our vehicle registration and licensing. This is the portion that gets basically charged back to those funding sources. Got it. Okay, thank you so much. Thanks sure. Thank you. How's members? Anything further? How's member Kimbo? Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Director, for the presentation. I'll reiterate, I think it was Council Member Covey, how does comments really appreciate the standard format coming from all those departments. It really makes it easier for us to compare apples to apples. I did want to highlight to Council Member Houston. If you, and correct me from I'm wrong, if you look in the general fund revenue side, you'll see an increase under investments, an interest earned, and that is supposed to be the flip side of the contractual money that we're spending towards financial services. So there's an estimated three and a half million increase in interest earned on all of our financial accounts as being the revenue benefit of investing in this consulting service. I wanted to actually ask administrator Neera a question about the audit. And just if you could go into a little bit more detail about the scope, is this something that is a mandate that we're required to do? And is there a reason that we're choosing to go outside instead of using our auditor in-house? Okay, so the Lisa Mayor, real property tax administrator, the Home Ex Home Exemption audit isn't just a review of how our Home Exemption program works. It's actually auditing every single name in the Homeowner Tax database. And to do that, currently we have in office procedures such as we run a check against the State of Hawaii vital statistics list and we pay the state for that list to make sure whoever passed away. We can send them the appropriate distance allowance letter so that if family is residing in the house, we provide them time to apply for the homeowner exemption for the future year. What we tend to miss is if they die out of state, if they're getting mail to their house here, but they have a home exemption somewhere else, it's easy to know if they're mail all of a sudden get sent to the mainland, then we can look and see if there's a home exemption there. But individuals are getting a lot more innovative and having things go to their postal mail stop and then forwarded on to other addresses or having mail picked up by somebody else staying in the house here. So this is actually an outside company we would have to do an RFP for. That would actually audit the entire home exemption program. So not necessarily the procedures, just making sure that people aren't taking advantage of a benefit that they're not entitled to. I understand. Okay. With this also apply with respect to highest and best use, and for example, folks that are offering a short term vacation rental claiming, well that they still get the exemption they just don't get the tax class but would you be examining that under this as well? So correct just for the record that if it's a hosted rental and the owner is residing there they would get the homeowner exemption just not the home homeowner tax class. And so if they are- And only though, right. The exemption would be proportional to this. Proportional. So the exemption amount can be larger than the proportion that they're reciting and correct. But it's not like a, I'm using 25% of the house so I only get 25% of the exemption. And I know that's a big misconception, but that's per the county code. So what they can look at is whether they are paying TAT because the state doesn't share that data. So if they're able to get that data through other means that we do not have access to, they could provide it. But it's unclear for the amount that we are setting aside if they will cover every single option, but we're trying to at least check off majority of the boxes. I'll just put it out there that if we needed to add a little bit to this line item to include that functionality with some of the other stuff that we're trying to do around TBRs, I think this would provide potentially an additional cross check for us in terms of, I'm sorry, in terms of some of the, sorry, my throat is really sore. Yeah, in terms of some of the things we're trying to do around that, so just putting that out there, and this isn't something that's mandated like we have to do over a few years. We're just electing. No, we have a compliance program and we haven't had an audit on the home exemption program, which I would imagine will come up at some point. We just try and do our best to make sure the people that are getting the pain, the lowest amount of taxes are the homeowners. Okay, thank you so much administrative. And then just director there was I just want to make sure that this software or this procurement specialist position I don't recall who on the dies whose idea was I think think, Madam President, Council Member Krugwitz to standardize our purchasing across the disparate departments, particularly for software, right? Is that what that position is for something else? No, that position was just really speaking to the volume of needs that we have county-wide and it centralized purchasing that means the same team of five or so has to go through all the requisitions you know for the county besides construction so that that was that position was really for keeping up with workload in the division. So is there still the intention to move in that direction where rather than each department having their own contracts there's cross department till contracts for things that everybody uses like? Yeah, Adobe. Yeah, right. So a couple of things one we're looking at centralizing the common software products to be managed by IT. So you'll see some of that, some of the software move from the departmental budget to the IT budget. So they can manage the number of users, single, get a whole, understand, good understanding of the license requirements. And the other thing is, if our purchasing office is staffed adequately, it provides more time to do the things that we need to do like looking at comprehensive purchasing throughout the colony. It is the right thing to do. It is really difficult, you know, even just like this credit cards and cashiering systems, everyone has a separate thing in place. It takes a huge effort to coordinate all the needs of the departments and get out a single solicitation. But we know there's many areas that we should be doing a coordinated purchase. And so more staff allows the team to not just do the everydays, but the special projects that could create efficiencies in dollars. Just last, sorry. I thought we had signed an MOU or the resolution came through with respect to the state sharing TAT information. Did that not happen? A new one? In the last year we had put something forward that was an agreement to share TAT. Oh, Kim, he's not here. I think he's in your TAT place. Yeah, he is. And she is actually out right now. I'll double check on that. I know we do have an MOU. I don't know if it's the one that you're thinking of most recently, but we can check on that. Okay. Just kind of pointing out, do we think that the line item, which I see is a reduction in terms of an estimate of TAT collection for the county for the upcoming years How secure are we in that number? I think we're saying 29 million as opposed to Actually didn't increase of I believe two million to 28 million Wasn't in the like 30 something this last? The actuals, right, but compared to budget. So budget was 26. I believe last year, 28 projected this year, 36, 37 collected. It is starting to go down slightly, which is why we're looking at that projection. We've been really cautious the first couple of years, especially with something that could change with many different events, but we're looking to stabilize. I think it's starting to stabilize is what our team is looking at now, but the last six months are so in the recent report I had we are seeing a slight decrease. Nothing worries them that we won't make our budgeted revenue but slightly. So that is why we're not being aggressive and going up to the like 30s at this point. Yeah I think that's wise. Just without all without all the uncertainty, from the economic side, elected expenditures on tourism is probably something that's gonna be early to go. So thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilor Merkardowicz. Thank you, Chair. Aloha, Director, Deputy. Thank you both and your teams for always being available to support our offices and the many departments and agencies that make up Hawaii County. I wanna just underscore the undertaking that you are setting yourselves up to do this coming fiscal year, launch simultaneously a new financial management plan and an HR software huge, on top of that and I think we were I was on the road to Kona Council and you're talking about the grants management system. I love that you folks made the decision to make this a priority and make it happen tracking our investments and then I'm really curious about the long-term financial plan specifically Specifically, as we think about the various income streams we have as a county and one of the levers that we were granted authority to pull temporarily, general excise tax, that sunset's in 2030 and right now the majority over 67 million I think it is, maybe more. A lot of that is going to supporting our mass transit agency. So I wonder what sort of planning is happening right now to think about if the state legislature does not extend our authority to leverage this past 2030. What's the plan going to be? Are we starting to think about those financial transitions now? Council member Kirkowitz, yes. Thank you for that. One of the things that you mentioned, specifically with GET is that how the county is predominantly using RGET and that is in our MASH transit. You'll hear a little more in their presentation this week on some of the things they are looking at besides grant funding, which will be a topic of our conversation, but really evaluating MASH Transit operations. MASH Transit's budget has increased quite significantly over the last five years. I think it was just 18 million or so five years ago. So one of the things that we have asked is looking at the data and the metrics from mass transit, looking at the ridership numbers, looking at the programs that have been initiated and what is the outcomes Of course looking at free fare options So they have you know done a great job in implementing the master plan But I think now is come the time when we need to evaluate all the things that have been implemented and are they right for our community and is that the right? Is that the right priority for these expenditures to happen? So that is a big priority and something we have discussed. And you'll hear a little bit more from Mass Transit. But through finance, Mass Transit and the mayor's office as well, those are things that we'll be looking at. Okay, great. I got to know that it's top of mine. I was reading over the budget and then the financial status reports for your department and the internal control piece caught my eye. There was an evaluation of the R&D grant's budget and procedures. As you know, this council adopted a resolution requesting our county auditor to just audit that department in general. I'm wondering is your I don't want to say investigation, but is your review complete and where your recommendations sent to the auditor? Is that something you can also share with us? You know, I don't think it's complete yet, but we'll check in that something. You know one of the things that we did with our internal staff, trying to provide guidance on, as we're seeing that things maybe were late and invoicing and things like that. So we're looking at the process in which the department handled their budget. So specifically, we asked our internal audit team to look at those accounting details and also where things were approved timing and delay but we'd be happy to share once we get that complete. Okay I'm just I'm curious about the grant's piece because as you launch this this new management system and as the council continues to refine how it deploys the ViVi grant program it would be nice if all of our grant programs that we are delivering as a county are consistent the applications that there's one portal that nonprofits can upload all of their documents to at one time and not share them with all council offices R&D fine as all the opportunities right just more efficiency within the So absolutely. And you know, Deputy Kekai has been leading the effort on reviewing preliminarily what's out there to be able to draft a scope of work. And yes, we do want something for those ex the grants of county is giving out to be consistent. So easier for those, especially the nonprofits's easier for them to navigate the system, keep documents, what's required in one is required in another. Yes, that is definitely one of the things that is a priority in the scope of work for this new system. Fantastic. Also, under internal controls, it was mentioned that finance helped to hire the CDBGDR internal auditor. I just want to confirm that we still have an internal auditor managing We do we do and it she actually reports to the office of management Okay, okay fantastic because I know that program is winding down. They're looking at phase three buyouts Okay, would it be appropriate at the end of the program to request a presentation at council? Sure. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Let's talk about punk. This used to be, you know, P&Rs baby, it's transitioned over to finance. Just curious about how that transition is going. I know that there are some personnel constraints. So I think this is your opportunity to articulate the needs that are needed from a personnel standpoint, personnel standpoint, I'm sorry, to ensure that we're carrying out this program in the way that the voters had intended it. Sure. I can start and Malia can definitely jump in. As you know, we, over the last year, we have spent a lot of time with the PONC program to evaluate all of the different areas. So compliance with contracts, how we look at the reimbursements, what we're asking of the stewardship, how we go about our meetings, the things that we look at. So, you know, thank you to former Deputy Brown. So, we spent a lot of time with property management and we were gaining a lot of momentum and we are facing some pretty significant staff challenges. So you know soon we'll be down to just a couple of people. We are recruiting and we have positions. So positions at this point is not the issue or funding for them. It is filling them. So we've had a one position, the property tech. Well, we're reallocating the property tech to a program manager because we thought we needed a higher level position, basically to basically handle this program, there's it's growing, right? The more property we buy, the more maintenance that's needed, the more stewards that we take on. So yeah, it's basically exponential. Every time we buy a property, we have to, you know, the county should be the best steward first, right? So a lot of the stuff that we're looking at too is taking on management plans within PUNK and then also a maintenance survey so that we can help stewards also like, here's the minimum things that should be done. But yeah, for positions, once we get that program manager, we're still waiting actually on getting it out to fill. We just amended the PD and created the position, reallocated the position, sorry, and then we had to go to consultation. So there's all of that. But yeah, once that's on in the street, we'll have the property manager at the program manager and then the property management technician and then also we're hoping to reallocate a program support tech to this program as well so that we'd have four kind of not fully dedicated but three fully dedicated positions with the program that property manager to assist it. So that's what we're looking to and that's how we hope to get to full strength where we can kind of implement our full goals of what we think the program can be. Thank you. That is fantastic. No, Steve. I really appreciate the work on that. Director, can we anticipate any bond ordinances coming to the council this fiscal year? Because I'm reading in the CA for under leveraged. Next fiscal year, I'm sorry. Yes, OK. OK. Yes. All right. Because we're under leveraged with our debt service. OK. Good to know. Yes. You know, I want to emphasize the need for training. And I'm not sure if it's your department or HR that is in charge of that $1 million training fund that departments have access to, is it your department? The need for training requests comes through finance. Okay. And I don't have a budget summary with me, but do you know the total spend down this last fiscal year? I do. Okay. Thank you. You knew I would ask this question. So we have spent about $140,000 of this funding source. And we have had significant participation from police, a little bit from HR, R&D, and DEM. That's this fiscal year. That is the current fiscal year, so we do have more funds that are available. We do push it with the department, any training needs that they have. Please send them in. So it is available. We do have more funds. Do you know what the ending balance was for last fiscal year? I don't have that, I don't think I have that one with me, but I can certainly get that for you. Okay. So a significant amount of money is still left in that fund. Okay. I wanna emphasize the need for your teams to have the time to receive training, with know, with the non-profit that I run every Friday, our production team works on skills. I don't know if we as the county have the luxury to close once a month to just dedicate our team to getting trained up, but we might want to think about that at least on a quarterly basis so we can stay up on industry trends, changes in legislation on the state and federal side and make sure that we're upskilling our workforce so they can handle you know modern day challenges. Absolutely. Okay, I'll be fully supportive of those kinds of policies. And then the last thing our community development plan action committees, they are frontline folks that have been charged with implementing these county plans. And I wonder if we could consider some kind of pilot program that empowers these entities with some funding. Some grants, obviously there needs to be some guardrails for how they access these funds and what the funds could be spent on. But is that something that we could have a bit of a conversation around? Sure, yeah. Okay, open to a conversation. I lied one more thing. Arpa, were all of the funds encumbered? I believe we had about 60 million allotted to our county. I just want to confirm that everything was in Cumberd at the end of last year and we're on track to spend by the end of 2026. I believe finance has now kind of wrestled control of the spend down from other agencies and you're kind of the accountability coach making sure that the departments and agencies spend the funding funding. Yes, so we have absolutely Incombert all the funds we received and now we are going through our required monitoring that we need to do and finances Does that reporting and so we can You know certainly at another time provide a progress update on where we're at with a lot of these contracts a lot of these contracts were executed late in the year. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. And we're working on that. but I had some questions around the General Fund Revenue, so it's not specifically about your budget, but I don't know when else that would be appropriate to ask. So, it's okay, okay, thank you. Looking at the general fund revenues, there's quite a few federal grants that say nutrition or food services and they're different pots of money. Are these mostly like Kupuna, Office of Aging Services or do you have us, I'm looking at page two on the General Fund estimated revenues? I'm in the, yeah I'm in this book. Sorry. I mean, I'm in the... yeah I'm in this book. Sorry I'm in this. Oh yeah. The work sheets, yeah. So many binders and binders. Sorry to ship gears on you like this. So page two there's several, there's 3301.01, there's a nutrition program for, looks like 800, little over 800,000. And then in the next section under federal grants, there's summer food service and high impact grant. And then down below in state, there's nutrition program. Are these Kaki, Kukupuna, what are these food services? I believe these are in our parks and rec department. Okay, so therefore part of these. Okay, so therefore like providing meals during summer fun, what else? The Meals on Wheels program. That's for our Guguna. Yeah, OK. There's also on the next page, DOH Snap Fluid Systems for about 50,000. Read said, read that. Oh, good. Great. Thank you, Reed. I can answer it Yeah, thank you. Just reintroduce yourself. It's okay. This is a controller. Yeah, it's because I used to be at parks, but the right, right. So food, the nutrition program is a contract with office of aging to create new services to our seniors. Okay, so that's seniors, all right? And a food service program is for our summer fun. Summer fun. Yeah. Then there's nutrition program under state grants. And it's also the same program with the office of aging. Okay. seniors. And then over on the next page there's DOH SNAP food systems under federal grants, 3309.55. I don't want to, I'm not sure what that one is. Sorry, I believe that might be R&D because they have a dedicated specialist for food systems. Yeah, OK. Thank you. All right. So I'm just wondering, let's see if there are any more food ones. I know Department of Ag and Food Support is being looked at a place for potential big federal cuts. Are these programs that we have the ability to fund if we lose this funding? Or is this been looked at or talked to specifically with either Office of Aging or Parks and Rec? So the communication, we've been reached out and been coordinated with all the departments on any federal or state funding. The communication happens with those specific departments and their federal partners. So they are hearing about it first, but we have asked to make sure that we're coordinated to hear. Now, so we've been actively monitoring, we have not heard any indication of any reduction so far. I think we are, you know, just preparing for that, but we haven't received anything at this moment. So, you know, just just waiting to hear. Are we in any now over COVID times? I believe we also provided additional support for food. Is that correct? Do you remember? Or I do remember. And yes, we did provide food support for those individuals who are isolating or going through those types of situations. Yes, we did. I'm just, if we end up losing or getting a big decrease in the SNAP benefits, I know that's mostly a state. If you want to say a state issue or problem to be solved, but seems like we might obviously have some state skin in the game there. Is it something that you've discussed at all as a whole or with some of the departments as far as what happens if we get a big reduction? Yeah, I think each of the departments will talk a little bit about ways in which they can adapt or adjust or adjust. And it really depends on the severity of the cut as well. So each department can talk about, we'll be able to talk about the state or federal funding that they have and any thoughts into how any adjustments can be made and any opportunities. So for like the snap, when we can talk with our and deal a little bit more. Okay, so for these, just bring it up with the departments then. Yeah okay thank you. You already mentioned the bus fares. I see them predicted to go from zero to 300,000 to 600,000 in the next two years. That's what we anticipate people paying and fares to ride the bus or you know I think there's more discussion that needs to happen on what that looks like and you know there's also a cost to going back to fares that needs to be evaluated so I think we all need the full picture of what that looks like and what those will be. But Massachusetts can talk about that anticipated revenue based on I assume their ridership and minimal to maybe no changes from what was previously charged. OK. I'll talk to them about that. And State Homeland Security Program, 800,000, just this year. Haven't had it in the past, it doesn't look like. Haven't had it, don't percie it going into the future. It looks like a one time type three. It's 331-0.87. It's just one time, do you know what I mean? Yeah, I believe that's the rural granted civil defense got to create hubs in the, yeah. Okay. Great. All right. Can you just say a little bit or you can tell me which department to talk to when we and I can do it then, but who mostly benefits from the block grant programming come? You have the CDBG long grant? Yeah, the three, zero, seven. It's through housing, but other departments can't imply for some of those funds. Okay. All right. All right. And right above that, there's also a big nutrition program income. Okay, John. Or two above that. Oh. I just got another memory. Sorry. I'm on just page six. It has a number. Um, 3607.01 at $210,000 for a nutrition program income. So we're, we're, it doesn't say this is contributed from private. I believe this is from PNR. This is from Parks. Yeah, okay. Okay. I can ask Parks then. Thank you. I don't think you're welcome. Yeah. Great. Are you old? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. As we talked before at our meetings and it was brought up about how I feel the Department of Finance is the department that needs to oversee all the rest of the departments on their spending. And I know you mentioned about positions and to have that manpower, right? Like I told you, I feel this body would support whatever you request to help all your employees to make a better job for the whole county. And to, I guess, make sure that we don't see all that wait for spending. So I'll echo that again to you that I support you guys totally 100% and like I told you before too, I really enjoy talking to you because then your vision of how you want to move this department, the finest department forward which is unbelievable. It's not like the old dinosaur days. I mean you're trying to to get up to technology, which is awesome. And I hope in that other departments would follow that too. But good, you're taking the lead. Thanks. Really appreciate your support. All of you have been very supportive. And we appreciate that. It is an aggressive plan forward for finance. But it's needed, right? And our team is ready. I do think that we could, you know, we could use a little more resource, but we're adding it as we can, as we can adjust to it, but we will be making big strides as we, as the years move forward. So thank you for that and thanks to our team for that as well. Thank you, Kelsa, Marbys. Yep, I'm just gonna be real fast. And just express from the bottom of my heart, thank you. You are being bold and courageous, and you're taking on a burden and a level of responsibility as well as accountability that I recognize you wholeheartedly acknowledge and are choosing this. And it is bringing our county into the 21st century, but it's a huge push and it's gonna, it's taking a toll on you guys guys And so I just want to personally encourage you to take that time for self-care to step back It's not all on you You've been entrusted because you are worthy you are capable and you do belong in these roles and So thank you for being willing to do this because it's a lot. But I personally and professionally appreciate you for all that you do and for your team because it's it's a lot it's a lot. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so far. I was looking at the these programmatic reviews and progress reports. And there was one thing in the real property tax division. I'm actually going to take a minute and highlight this. So RPT, this was February 28, 2025, called for a market correction. Whoever wrote that probably could be doing well in another field because the market did correct itself. And I just wanted to highlight that. So thank you. That was it. OK. OK. Positions under RPT. Given what we've heard and what the amount of changes we've made to the real property tax division, what we're requesting and requiring of them now, do they have enough positions going forward and is it budgeted? Because from what I'm seeing yet, the position allocations for last year, this year, next year, pretty much status quo. So if we're seeing a need to improve their ability to handle more constituents, more programs, more detailed programs within programs, are we setting them up to be okay, are we setting them up to be behind. So looking at positions particularly in this division, yes we've had discussions about the need for additional positions. So it is something that we're gonna have more conversation about what that particular need might be. Things do change and we have vacancies and retirements and we need to evaluate that. But this division is one that we could use some additional support. Okay, should we be looking for that in the draft two? Possibly. Okay. Okay. Being that they handle the property taxes for- That is correct. So it's possibly by something that we are looking at. Okay, good. Who's risk management? Look, there's one position, is that right? It is, our risk manager is Dan Chun. He is back there in the... In the light blue shirt? Is that you? Hi, Dan. What is your name? Daniel Chun. Daniel Chun. I'll be reaching out to you. I'm going to share a story that I got from someone in the community and then I'll get to where I'm going. They went to Kona about four o'clock and tried to do a transfer of license. Sorry, transfer of registration. They were told they could not, would not do it for a number of different reasons. The next day they went to Hilo and proceeded to do the exact same thing at four o'clock at the same time because they get off work at the same time and were able to do it. That points to a discrepancy between the two offices and two different places on the island, which I'm passing on to you because as I read through the programmatic review, that 99% of the excellent surveys are 90% or rated excellent. But then it doesn't say how many surveys were taken, which is really part of that statistical analysis is where we need to be and then I'm going to get to the amount of positions that we have. And the same question that I just raised, do we have enough positions for that portion of the department to handle the amount of incoming people and new licensees that we have and everything else that they handle? So you know just your first comment about the situation you know and out knowing more the details it's a little difficult to comment on but I will say that we have made a significant effort for one customer service training within VRL. We do receive eight lot of positive comments on the experience. I would say if you could read some of these you would be extremely happy with the the summary of the visit in comparison to other DMVs across the nation. And that is a consistent comment that we received. Two, we have also, we've made an effort to make sure that there are consistency across the offices. And that is something that the team had, they meet regularly, they talk about it and consistency in terms of the rules and responses is an effort. So, you know, I apologize for that particular situation, but it is something that we have addressed and have continued to address over the last few years specifically and that consistent service is something that we strive for and we have made huge efforts in that area. Okay, so positions going forward. You know, right now there are some vacancies that we're struggling with, specifically like CDL, but for the most part, you know, a couple of years ago we talked a lot about that we were having a hard time recruiting in some of our offices, but we have, I think, reached a point where we're doing well as far as the number of employees that we have. There might just be a few of these specialized positions like the CDL examiners that we need to fill. And we're just having a difficult time. OK, the CDL has actually decreased this year, I believe, looking at the numbers. as far as the number of CDL licenses that we decreased, correct? Yeah. Yeah. So, just looking into where we headed and what we're seeing trending. For me personally, every time I've gone into the vehicle registration license office over here, I've had a great experience and I appreciate them. And I also know what they go through each day. And I watch the line, I have been flowed at different offices as I go back and forth. And I know we've made strides and I do appreciate Naomi Odell in taking on what she's done. My big request is just if you need the positions I always feel like finance is very hesitant to ask for more while you do go through every single department to really vet whether they need more or less in every part of their budget. Finance usually is you spend so much time taking care of everybody else that you forgot to take care of yourself. Appreciate it. So make sure that you ask. Like Mr. O'Neil she said, make sure you ask for what you need and make sure you got what you need to help us maintain the core of our county, which is your department. Thank you. Really appreciate the acknowledgement of the breadth of responsibility that we have in finance. You're welcome. Thank you. Speaking through the audits, there's different audits. One, I was reading through from our housing agency yesterday. It wasn't an audit of the department. It was an audit just in general. We had county water supply, had some significant discrepancies in their financial accounting. So just following up on where we stand with ensuring that everyone's doing their proper, what's that was it? Is it GAP? What is it called? General accounting? GAP. GAP. GAP. Do you guys have any general accounting procedures? Are we doing it? Have you followed up with a different audit instead of come through and making sure that departments are doing what they're supposed to do. Yeah, I would say yes. I'm not particularly sure which one you're referring to, but yes, we are continually monitoring the policies and procedures in finance. We go through a financial audit as well. That's an external audit. And so that is an evaluation of those types of things as well that we can we to. I'll follow up with the different departments over this. That's all I have looking to the council. Yes, Mr. Nishikwali. Oh, I guess it's a kudos again too, but also to the people at the DMV. I didn't realize like I had to one of those changes of them or get a new car registration right. And it was like the day before Christmas or something like that. And I was surprised to see how many staff you had up front. And the person that I went to was a friend of mine and she told me this comment that that I guess you folks have this thing where you need X amount of staff to help the public and I was so shocked to hear that because then I was like if all the other departments had the same concept or that same feeling I think this whole county would. Yeah, so to me you folks are doing a great job and you need to pass it on to the different other departments but thank you very much. Thank you for the staff that was working with and Deavey. Thank you. That's great to hear. Thank you so much. Thank you. and bring Inaba. Thank you Chair. No questions. Just thank you again for preparing all of the departments so that they are uniform in their approach during budget and I'll always put my plug in for our grant management software which I know you folks are working on. I did. I was reading the transcript as I was at the county, I'll say to the county address. So it's on that. No questions. Thank you so much, Jerry. Thank you. Director, one last question. The commercial drivers licensing program salary in wages. And then a couple of different salary wages accounts. There's fringe benefits or state. What is that? I can't tell if it's new. It doesn't look like there is a, the number is in 23, 24, really small, and it may not be specific to just this one area. It's a. The only deal for vehicle registration. Oh, sorry. Oh, my turn it off. oh, down for vehicle registration and licensing. So the fringe benefits are charged to the state for our state funded positions. And every year we raise the percentage because it's on medical premiums that the county's paying, benefits that the county pays the employee, and so that gets charged back to the state. Okay, okay, so we're not paying for it. No. Okay. Yeah, it's those positions that are fully funded by the state, we're just making sure we account for all costs related to the personnel administration got it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for choosing them. So though Okay, seeing no further discussion Director Nakagawa and Deputy Director Kikai. Thank you very much Council members do you want a recess for lunch briefly? Because we are behind schedule. Quite sufficiently. Not at all. Okay, let's take a 15 minute lunch. Is that okay? Be quick and fast. Okay. Thank you. We're going to take a 15 minute recess. We will reconvene at 1.15. Thank fifteen. Thank you. Okay, hello, I welcome back. We're out of recess. Our next department joining us today is the Office of Housing and Community Development. We have today our administrative team for the department. Go ahead when you're ready with your presentation. Please introduce yourselves and for anyone who comes after, please introduce yourself for the record before you begin speaking. Thank you. Thanks for having us. I am K. Howe Costa, housing administrator and to my left, Kiko Mercado, assistant housing administrator. We're here to present the Office of Housing and Community Development's Budget. I just want to start with a little story. Yesterday we went to visit, I'm trying to visit all of our assets that we have under Office of Housing and Community Development, and particularly the ones with services, program services. So we went to one of our shelters, Kihei Puwa, in in Hilo. It's a family shelter, beautiful facility. We didn't even know it was ours. And we're pleasantly surprised. We were met by a staff member there, not a county staff, but a program staff of the facility, Raymond Reyes. And he said, oh, do you want to see one of the units? And this is a family shelter emergency shelter and we said, no, no, that's okay, we don't want to go in, you know, we don't want to bother, we don't want to bother. And I looked at his face and he kind of looked a little disappointed. I said, why? You proud? He said, yeah I'm proud. We're always proud. I said, show me. So we went in and he proudly showed us kitchen bathroom bedrooms. And so I'm bringing his spirit today to say we're proud. You guys are looking under the beds and in the cupboards at our budget. Welcome to our house. It's not going to always be neat and tidy, but we welcome you in and we're proud of our work. Okay. Okay. Okay. Office of Housing and Community Development is made up of five divisions. We have all of our division managers here today and I'll introduce them as we go through the divisions. Our first division is our existing housing division. Jade Ikepa is our division manager. This division is a workhorse of our office. It represents half of our, almost half of our budget, maybe more than half of our budget, half of our staffing. It's our Section 8 Housing Choice Program voucher program. We provide rental assistance to over 2,300 households monthly. We include special purpose vouchers in that, which you may have questions as we go through the budget for these different buckets of voucher types. Something special that I feel about this division is that they conduct all of the housing quality standard inspections for our Section 8 participants. So they annually, and then maybe more than annually if there's items that need to be fixed. And so they are, we have three inspectors who are engaging in our community with our families going into homes every month, every day, eight homes a day. And I'm really proud of our inspectors in the way that they treat our community and our families, our section eight participants. I really know how they have for the community that we serve. They do an excellent job. We also have two special programs, our family self-sufficiency program and our home ownership program. Those are programs that we have grown participation in and really excellent programs for helping build equity in our families and our participant families and really hopefully along with our overall goal of achieving home ownership, affordable home ownership helps some of our families, our participants, along the way to home ownership. Our second division is our grants management division, and that is Royce Chiroma. Notice the Aloha shirt he is wearing today for this special occasion. He manages all of our federal awards. You guys know CDBG, home, HTF. He comes in presence to you folks, all of our federal programs. Successfully manages are a affordable housing production fund. His team also provides technical assistance to our affordable housing developers, which includes environmental reviews, labor compliance, which is huge for our affordable housing developers, certified payroll. Third division is community development division. Division Manager is Annie Bailey. Monster of a division. This division supports and directs affordable housing developments through the tool on each process. Chapter 11 affordable housing obligation determinations, affordable housing agreements with developers. They develop our counties affordable housing projects. They manage a lot of congressional funds for these projects. They manage all of OHCD's assets. Toy, Gary, is our asset manager. We have over 26 properties. He inspects all of them. They fear him when he comes. He makes sure our assets are in good condition. Does a wonderful job and really cares about the programs also that are existing within our assets. The current fiscal year, this division is managing project development for 14 affordable housing projects. Our community engagement division, which is currently being managed by Kekol and myself. This is the division that manages our homeless and housing fund. And also our residential repair program, emergency rental assistance programs, financial empowerment center, community-based social service navigators, and our whole VIVI community of practice. And our last division and why we are here today is our administrative support division. This is managed by Sharon Espejo. and this is the team, the accounts team that supports all the divisions. Does the accounting help us to manage our grants or contracts? They prepare and submit our HUD annual audits. This is the team that processes 2.6 million in rental assistance checks to Section 8 Landlords monthly. So this is our team. These are the program measures and outcomes that we're presenting to you today. So just some highlights, which really I almost just said, the highlights, but community development, we have currently 139 units under construction, we've completed 200 units in this fiscal year. We are doing renovations on Kula Imano, elderly housing, you'll have questions about that because you'll see a decrease in funds, but that's because we are rotating vacancies so that we can do renovations like four or eight units at a time. We have Kukuuyola emergency shelter coming up, middle-break ground this year, vertical. Vertical, I think this year, hopefully. Heel of Memorial Hospital renovations will go out to bid. And the Affordable Housing Dashboard has been launched. And I want to talk about that if you just put a pin in that. I want to talk about that if you have questions about travel. Community engagement is the housing and home this fund we've been through that together. And I'm sure you'll have questions today. So excited about the work that Kiko and I are doing to really dig in, to really implement this program in a more strategic and impactful way, both in East and West Hawaii, very committed to our West Hawaii homeless initiatives. We relaunched the residential repair program or with administrative roles we're in that process. I also want to talk about the 14 individuals that we housed as part of the Kuavis Street short-term shelter that occurred during last administration. And there's something in the budget that I want to talk about with regards to emergency response to homelessness. Existing housing, like I said, 2300 plus rental, subsidized rental assistance, special purpose vouchers. We do an excellent job with our project-based vouchers. This is an incredible program for affordable housing developers. It subsidizes rent long term over 20 years. I've been told it's the golden ticket, and that our county implements this program more than any other county. And this allows us to be very competitive for light tech funding. And this is why our projects are coming along. I'm very proud of the project-based voucher program. It's the program that kind of like I, whatever you call it, like it was my training ground. I took on the project-based voucher program when I was hired. First with the county, really dug in to understand this program which is a development, it's a subsidy layer, it's a development program, and it's why I'm able to be in this position right now because I learned everything about OHCD through this particular program. We've increased participation in our family self-sufficiency program and our housing opportunities voucher program. We're doing onsite and hopefully some offsite hot my training. We talked about that yesterday in our agency meeting, major federal changes that are hoods rolling out implementation that we will need to train our staff on. Training in Hawaii is hard to find, so sometimes we have to send staff to these larger trainings on the mainland. Our grants management team has awarded 13.2 million for projects, affordable housing program projects. The RFP for the upcoming fiscal year has been prepared. We've administered over 9.5 million in federal grant programs through CDBG Home, HTF, and ESG. Those are all acronyms that we can talk more about later, but basically federal grant programs for housing. And then again, successfully assisting our partners with labor compliance. Last year we added a few positions. We added our information and education specialist position permanently. That's Chelsea Jensen. This is her PowerPoint that she's put together for us. She is an amazing asset to our department. She does legislative tracking, tracks all the state bills. She does all the council committee prep for me. She knows everything about everything, about everything that's going on in our department. And I'm so happy to have her. We added another technician, housing quality standard technician that's an inspector that goes out to inspect our section eight landlord properties. And then the housing and community development specialist, which is a position that I designed for the project-based vouchers. It's vacant right now because I'm picky. OK. OK. OK. Aloha, Kiko Murkato, Assistant Housing Administrator. So OK, how I, how talked a little bit already about our divisions, our five divisions. We have a total of 67 permanent positions and right now eight of those are vacant, but of the eight two are student helper positions that are currently unfunded. So really six. And we have four contract positions in place. And we were lucky enough in the past month, maybe a little bit over a month. We've hired five staff. And so that's really helping to fill the pukas for us. And we were lucky enough to have a lunch. We had lunch with everybody. This is something new that we're kind of starting forcing people to engage with us. Kind of like on Ohana, how Kihal talks about it. Sometimes the kids don't want to come to dinner, but you've got to come to dinner. But it was really interesting to talk story with them and the reasons why they were interested in coming to work for the county. None of them were coming from other government positions. And so this is their first time. And so they really provided us a lot of insight which we were happy to share with the folks about why they wanted to come and work for the county and office of housing in particular. And so I've been lucky enough to have one and one conversations with majority of our staff. And while we have seen some unusual turnover in the past few years, we're really hoping to stabilize that in one of the things that we're coming to understand is that our majority of our staff is working trauma adjacent every day. So people are in crisis and our staff is trying to assist them the best that they can through our housing voucher program, through our homelessness initiatives, through our affordable housing builds, right? So what we're doing is working to identify training that helps our staff in these spaces so that we can help to reduce some occupational burnout. And there are other things that we're doing around a law committee, other kind of internal community building initiatives. So it used to be, Aloha committee has existed at the Office of Housing for a long time. And it used to be that if you were new to the Office of Housing, you were on the Aloha committee because it was a way to meet everybody else on the staff and kind of have these kind of fun lunches, potlocks, set of re-urties and things like that. So the shift that we're making this year is that really honoring the intent what Aloha is. So you're not going to be forced to be on the Aloha committee. You are part of the Aloha committee if you have Aloha to share so that we can really build internally the things that we're trying to do. When Kiko and I started, we were trying to figure out our roles, right? Our role as director and deputy director, administrator and assistant administrator. What do these positions do? So we looked at our divisions and we looked at the work and we just kind of intuitively came to this place of internal work and the external work. And she said, I'll do all the internal work if you do the external work. So she's really taken that on and really working with her staff and really has intention to create a better work environment, a better morale to address issues in the workplace. And then I get stuck having to go to Council and Committee and all the external things. But it's a good way that we're working together. And I think it was managing director this morning that said that we have a, or maybe it was mayor that said we have an inspired workforce and we definitely feel inspired so we're trying to put that on to into our whole department okay so the good stuff now so this is our OHCD fiscal year 26th budget overview we're presenting a total budget of 53,274,413 dollars. Just really broad overview. Our housing programs are about 43 million dollars, almost 44 million dollars. That's our Section 8 program. Uluveni, which is a county-owned rental property in Konan, Hina Lani, that generates revenue for us. And then a few, a small revenue from our other leases that Gary manages. OCE is 2.2 million equipment, it's 324,000, fringes 2..2 million, and salary and wages $4.9 million. And that's our budget overview for fiscal year 26. There are some changes that changes in salary and wages. There's a $67,000 increase and that's attributed to overtime and temporary assignment, TA's. There are the changes in the other current expenses. There's a big increase of 800 and 86,000. 700,000 of that is attributed to the emergency shelter expense that we directly covered for the Punehauai, the Canal emergency move from the Canal when the Army Corps came to the corner of Punehau, to Kuava Street where we leased property to house those individuals that we were relocating until we found permanent housing for them. I really want to dig into that a little bit more during Q&A when you ask questions about OCEE and what this 700,000 represents. This 53 million, oh sorry, also the housing program, the 43 million that also includes our affordable housing, it also includes our affordable housing production fund money in that housing program. So other funding that is not part of this OCE city budget, which we also manage are those federal funds that Royce manages. The Housing and Homeless Fund, which is a general fund that sits kind of outside of our OH City budget. And then also we have our two other rental properties that have their own budget accounts, Kulaimano and Oulie Kahi. So those are budget outside of our OHCD budget separately. I did that, okay. Yeah, okay. Okay, so. OECD funding sources for the upcoming fiscal year total budget of 53 million federal awards are 43 million of our budget. Almost 44 million of our budget are federal awards. Oluveni has about 1.1 million in income that it generates for us. County subsidies, 3.2 million, 6.1% of our budget and that's a status quo. Right, a HP program is 5 million. So this is the, this is kind of like the breakdown of our budget. When you ask about federal programs, federal funding, county subsidy, what we get from county, this is our budget. So some of the priorities that are rising to the top for us as we think about fiscal year 26 have come from conversations with some of you folks, conversations with management staff in the office and community partners and just different community members, right, as we've been going around the island. And some just kind of intuitively coming to the top based on conversations that Kehau and I have as we think about the things that really would support the residents of Hawaii Island. So stabilized housing through rental assistance. And some of these, all of this is happening already, but what is going to come out of these are new initiatives, right, as we focus on preserving affordable housing and providing opportunities for affordable homeownership. So how do we support the increase of families of sufficiency for folks and then how do we continue to build and increase generational wealth when we talk about homeownership, right? And people having a place to belong to. And then, of course, really hearing what everyone is saying about our homelessness and housing fund and how we can work all of us together. It's a co-co thing. And how do we, this is really a priority for us to ensure that we are doing the best we can by the fund and by the residents here. And just some fun photos of our staff because our staff, I told my niece I was going to say this, maybe she's watching. She likes to say this quote, but our staff is Hamas. So that weight weight that top picture that top picture is our community engagement staff. This was at Kuava. We cut out the OSHA noncompliance part of the picture because they were sitting on top of a dumpster. The roll off and the guy said we can't take that bin unless everything is smashed down below the top So our staff went in and reorganized that dumpster so that roll off could take it and that is our team And that's who they are and that's who we are Thank you Thank you very much ladies. To the council. How's the member, Vegas? Love that. Leaning in, stepping in, sitting on, and crushing down when that's what needs to happen in order to get the job done. job done. You guys have taken over a department that has endured in immense scrutiny, lots of public and private criticism and voicing of concerns. And I just wanted to thank you for your ability to hear all that, not take it personally, but identify the pathway for solutions and to rectify the mistrust and the kind of uncomfortableness that has plagued your department, any department that has sizeable amount of money, right? And I've seen you in Kona being the outward facing attending the meetings, getting to know the people, physically visiting all the sites, creating those relationships and establishing a precedent of accountability, not just for the department, but with you as leaders personally. So I just want to thank you for that. I look forward to continuing to work together. I look forward to seeing the fruition of your transitioning, many of the programs and processes to become those that will be most more effective in serving our unhoused community and perpetuating the programs that are thriving. Personally looking forward to Ku Kui Ola coming online and yeah just continuing to get to work together so that's just a heartfelt thank you. I'm not going to get under the bed or get in the closet with all your numbers. We'll leave it to him. But I just want to express my gratitude because you really have endured a lot already but not withdrawn. Instead you leaned in and I just really, really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Oniji. Thank you, Chair. I just have a couple questions. First of all. that you leaned in and I just really, really appreciate that. I yield. Thank you. Council Member Oniji. Thank you, Chair. I just have a couple questions. First one is managing director and mentioning about families, friends, moving away because of the cost of living and so forth. And I got to meet with, you know, administrator, assistant and your, and about that property on High High Street. And so, you know, I guess to help with the cost of housing, the land is one of the major issues of the pricing, right? And so if we can, and get it worked out where we can do that leasing program, like how DGTL is. I think that should be able to help a lot of the families to afford a home on these properties. And so, you know, whatever I can do to help you guys out, let me know what I mean. I would bend over backwards to help you guys out and try to do something like that for our community. Yeah So first of all not part of this budget presentation, but I did want to apologize because at the last committee meeting I had said that I had never seen that amendment before and Kiko texted me to say yes You did we got it in the email and And so I apologize for that and that won't happen again. Right? Okay, so thank you. And also your visit with us to talk about that high-high property was really refreshing and kick when I really enjoyed and thought about the options that you were brainstorming with us. It really helped us to kind of expand our thinking around how we provide affordable housing and other opportunities that might be available for families that are not what we've typically done at OHCD. So, you know, we really sat with it after you left and we were like, wow, there's some really, that's a good idea. We were, we were, yeah, it was good, so thank you very much. Kiko's on the Broadway, about like the 65 year lease, right? I mean, that's also awesome, right? I mean, that's what we can, they can look forward to, you know, having that long term, right, of having a home. And the other thing I just want to mention is that and it was mentioned earlier. So, if folks like your staffing, some losing staffing, now you started to gain back. But the question is, are you folks losing your staffing because you guys train them, get them to a certain level and then they go to a non-profit. Is that a problem or that's not? Sharon might be able to speak better to this but I can just generally say in what we've been hearing it's not so much that they could be going to another non-profit, they could be going to government office, especially in our Section 8 division. This is very heavy case loads. Our staff are working very hard. And most of the time when they're addressing the folks that they're working with, it's a crisis. And everything is heightened. And we don't provide social service training for our staff. And so that's something something that we're exploring so that we can support our staff in the ways that might help them. Good. Anything was mentioned during finance was about the training funding that there's a lot so you guys could tap into that and also maybe the incentives and the bonuses that we talked about earlier too that could help you guys guys to retain these workers, right, because of the overwork that they're doing. So they got to get rewarded, right? So that we appreciate off there, all their hard work. Yeah. But the other side of the picture is that we do lose staff, because particularly in sectioning, because it's a hard job, our specialist work really hard. So there is some turnover there, but then that creates an opening and so then we start seeing everybody move up, right? And so we're often finding, trying to recruit for our clerk positions because a clerk has typically moved up through clerk to technician to specialist and up and that's the case right here. I moved up from division manager. Jade has moved up into the division manager position that I vacated. So we are constantly making space, but it's at the clerk level and that's the hardest position to recruit for because of the pay. So that's really the challenge is we have incredible potential to grow our future leaders and to have incredible succession planning within our divisions, but it really comes down to just kind of the entry level positions and hoping that we find really good candidates for the very entry level positions. So if there were any position that I would say needed really a lot of support, it's our clerks and our entry level and retaining them to move up through the program or through the department. And it's it's also that you bring that because, you know, I worked in government with the union. I'm hoping HGA is listening to this, but unit three, you know, members to me, they're the most hard-ass workers because without them, and they're the ones that have, like, the thousands of members, right, in that that section with that unit and without them, Coltie couldn't operate right and so we need to get the appreciation to them and give them that higher pay raises right and you know back then when with the previous administration when I was on we had to do the furloughs, right? And to me, when they were talking about that 5% across the board, I thought I guess that because I said that the clerks, you know, they make so minimum and to take 5% from them, I mean, it's really hard for them to live on, right? Whereas if you're making $100,000, 5% is nothing to you, So I wanted to do a scale kind of thing. So we had the argument, but yeah, I really want to push for unit three members to get a better pay. But thank you for bringing that on. Thanks. Are you? Thank you. Council Member Houston? Thank you, Chair. Oh, I'm sure Mr. Administrator. Thank you for the presentation. I really appreciate your passion and energy and that is distilled in your colleagues and your staff. I can really feel it. So thank you. And I just want to also recognize the time you took to visit with some of our North Gohala residents when I saw you last in terms of speaking with them about their particular issues. in your time, I would be able to visit with them and talk story with them about the work that they're doing in their community. in terms of speaking with them about their particular issue. So you know, you take in your time out of your day to visit with them and talk story with them about the work that they're doing in their community and kind of follow some partnership we've built and had there. So thank you, thank you for that. I like diving into the number. So I'm gonna look kind of the bed a little bit because sometimes there's a boogie man under there, But you got to look and make sure that kids aren't scared. So. You are really kind of kicked out of our tree dresses. We were trying to avoid this, but let's go. Yeah, thank you. I'll kind of go on a different couple of different directions, because I also want to talk about some of the CIP stuff too, but I'll get to that in a little bit. Could you speak a little bit about your offices and the administrative rental of that space? Is that that's the least space that we have? And I'm seeing that it is kind of steadily increasing over time. And we kind of had some conversation a little bit previously about you know how we grow as a county. How do we have the enough space and capacity for our staff and for these offices? Could you just speak a little bit about the office spaces you have there? Yep, so we are at the Kinneaule business plaza, but I never call it that. I call it Hilo Rice Noodle and that's what everybody knows. The building has the old old food fair on Kinneaule Street. I don't know the square footage of our office, but it's large. I mean, we have 50 employees in the office, and then we have a detached office within that same building for our community engagement team. And our lease is 20,000 a month for the two offices. Why has our lease increased? Just has. I just kind of see like a steady increase. Yeah, steady increase. It's a private lease. It's a privately owned. Yeah. You know, so we're releasing space. Okay. It's market. It's going to go up. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Thank you. And then could you just tell me a little about the, I'm sure this is part of the computer equipment and the counting software upgrades. Just kind of dive into a little bit what we're looking at there. Yeah. OK. Hold on one second. Counting with upgrades. which needs to be upgraded. But we're waiting to see how the connect rolled out and what would occur with upgrading that system. And then we have this really complex and old dinosaur time X payroll coding system because all of the employees have to code their time to each and every federal program that they work on. So a specialist may touch three different voucher types and they track their hours and have to code their time sheets to the federal program that they work at. Myself included, I have to do a time X for all of the different types of federal programs and by division that I, how my day rolls out. So that's an accounting software program that's no longer supported, that we need to look at upgrading. So that we're reporting appropriately to our federal programs and I think those are two significant accounting software programs that you're asking about. Oh yeah, our Section 8 software. So we use housing pro database MRI software which we will need to do upgrades to because of the changes, the federal changes that are slowly rolling out. We talked a little bit about this yesterday, the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act of 2016 is requiring us to change the way that we qualify applicants and it's requiring us to update our software system. And that's a pretty heavy software system because we have, I mean, the data that's in there is incredible, incredibly dense data. So. Thank you for those details. I appreciate that insight there. And then kind of looking at the miscellaneous contractual services, that's our housing production. And at least I'm seeing from the actual 2324, just under 7,000 towards housing production. And then it jumps to 8.4 million. And then it drops down by 3.9 million. So some fluctuation there in the housing production if you could just elaborate on that. Oh sorry. Yeah. That's. HP. Yep. No page number. So 546902 housing production line 115. And that's the balance forward. Right. Okay. I'm going to move this way. You can see what's I'm carrying. Yeah, one on four. No, other visitors are there. It's. 35. Royce, Sheromo, Office of Housing. And what I'm looking at is the expenses that were balanced forward. because in the first, we haven't really spent much well contracted anything. Most of the items were us trying to develop the administrative rules. So when that happened, or when that was completed, then we started doing the RFP and that's why the contract come up with a dollar amount amount increased because a lot of it was expenditures and what do you call encompasses for the contracts itself. And then yeah we had reduction because we had to pull back money for certain awards due to no commitments after the first year. So we pulled that and we're going to carry that forward to the following allocation. So it'll add to the $5 million. OK. Appreciate that. Thank you for the details. I'm going to jump over to, oh, let's see. Now just some fluctuations in depreciation for the Kulaimano elderly facility. I know it's kind of standard, but the one I wanted to jump to was the Oulia Kahi. In the actuals there was a, so this is 546802 line item is 341. The actual show, I'm not sure what these charges are for. It just shows a large figure of just shy of $400,000 in the actuals. I'm not sure what, and then of course it kind of tapers off to about $3,000 in the proposed. I'm just kind of curious what the 400,000 was in the actuals. We had flooding at Oulean, we did repairs. Yeah, Oulean, we need to do a wastewater treatment and then we still have units that need to beated, the flooded units. We have some units that need to be renovated just generally upgraded in order for Gary to allow them to be rented because they need some upgrades. But until we do that wastewater treatment, once we do the wastewater treatment, we really need to do like major renovation of Oli, but I think that 400,000 is probably the flooding renovations. Am I telling the truth? I'm telling the truth. Yeah, thanks for that. Because we just can't see what that actual was, what it was spent for, but I appreciate it. So pivoting a little bit so Oli, Kahi, there is some revenue generated from the rental, but that's pretty much offset by the expenditures. Like a regular basis, annual basis. Yeah, that property really needs some TLC, major TLC, but we've got to do the wastewater. There's some drain mitigation, flood mitigation that has to occur with the wastewater treatment. When we can address that, when we do address that, then that will address, then we'll be able to address the renovations of the property, better renovations of the property. I think the flooding renovations were probably just, probably just minimum, just to be able to rent those units minimally. Yeah. And we have some insurance increases. Oh, insurance increases on our properties. Yeah. That's considerable. Both Uluveni, do we resolve Uluveni? We've 50,000? No. 500,000. So our Uluveni property insurance went from 50,000 annually to 500,000 annually. There's 71 units on the property, I believe. 96. And I think I did like the breakdown of what that 500,000 dollars a year would be per month over 96 units. And I can't, I remember it somewhere, $536,000 or $536 a month. There's something crazy like that. Like that's what happens with this insurance issue. That's what's happening with our properties and how we have to raise rent to cover the insurance. So we're trying to resolve that somehow. And also we have to put in that project-based function. Oh yeah, and we're going to bring that project-based vouchers to Ulufini to subsidize the rent so that we stabilize our own properties as well as partner properties. Thank you. Yeah. In terms of, you know, the, the couple items on the CIP list. So they're two for Oli Akahi. Those are both looking for kind of county bonds, a appropriation for that. Are there any of the potential avenues for funding for those projects that we can pursue? You want to do that? I can move over. I can move over here. Yeah, right. Right. Hi, Ann Bailey. I'm the division manager for Office of Adosene. With the Oulee and Kahi wastewater treatment plant, we were just recently awarded a CDBG grant. Okay. It's only going to cover a portion. We think the estimated cost is going to be $ million possibly more. And CDBG is subsidizing us at a rate of I get 1.8. So we'll use that as well as CIP funds to cover it. We're going to get it done. Awesome. Yeah, just looking for those other funding sources to help kind of expedite these projects. Make them higher priority on the list. They'll thank you for that work and pursuing that. And then I'll just jump the last one and thank you for the time, Chair. The last one I'll jump to is the Kamakou Nui Loop Road. Yeah. Is this in collaboration with, I mean, it's coming from your office, but is this also in collaboration with DPW at all, or is it something that you want to undertake for the purpose of expanding our housing opportunities in the area? Is it something that you've had conversation with DPW about, because it's interesting to kind of see it, you know, the development of this area, fall under, fall under your guys, if it's, you know, a particular real project. So the Kamakoa Mini Loop Road is just an internal mini loop in that county property footprint for the purpose of opening up parcels for affordable housing development. But you know how I feel about this now. And it's challenging for me to talk to really, it's been on my mind since day one. And you know this, right? That I cannot, I personally need to work concurrently with our administration, with our other departments to address evacuation and second road exploration development to feel good about adding more housing units to the area, which is really challenging for our department and for and sitting next to me because they have worked so hard for so long. Housing development is a long process and Kamako Nui Master Plan has been from the 90s maybe. So I think the last master plan that mapping that I have that I brought out when we went out to look at the evacuation road. And I just want to express that that's my commitment to community is I will go out there and I will take that road. I'll drive that road. You know, we got DPW Deputy Managing Director to open that Hulu Sh- who the road for me because I said I'm not comfortable. I need to see what the evacuation route is for me to feel comfortable. And so here I am stepping into this new role kind of just saying Hold back hold back when a team has been working so diligently moving forward so that Kamakwa no you look brod if in any way The work that we're doing on that road the engineering that we're doing right now on that road can connect or be part of a larger engineering study and plan, design and plan for the second road and evacuation road would benefit our department as well because we, if we want to build housing in that area, we need to address this. We're hearing that loud and clear today and at every community meeting in your district. Thank you, Measure. Just, clarification is not my district, but I represent the district. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. That's my personal feeling. Yes. Thank you. I appreciate your honesty. Thank you for that. Yeah, I love these conversations with you. So thank you for your leadership. I will say it's not my department. It's the department I have recently entered. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's my record going to be. Thank you, Chair. Like'm still O.E. today in your Palaka and your Palipalai. You know, you're administrators, so we don't get to approve your appointments to these positions, but I'm so grateful that Mayor selected both of you to lead this particular office. You are like kids in a candy store where you are seeing problems, right, and are excited to solve them. So I appreciate that kind of energy and approach in this work. And I love that you've brought your division managers here. And they are able to help answer all of the questions that are appropriate for their budget hearing. So thank you, I love you guys and your team. I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about your housing strategy. That is something that you would like to do specific to Hawaii Island. And why you think that's important? We've talked for a long time about the need for housing. But there's a big debate about where that housing should go. And you know, as we work through chapter 11 updates and updating the general plan, it's on everybody's mind. Where are we going to put the housing that we so desperately need so that it's quality housing? And it's there's a suite of housing available based on your needs. If you, if you're ohana, if your family is growing, that there are options available to you at a price point that you can afford. So can you talk a little bit about the strategy that you hope to undertake during your time here? I'll try to be brief. You've heard some of you heard this yesterday at our Hoi County Housing Agency meeting. We need local studies. We need local housing studies. The housing study that we contract is, you know, kind of statewide, to me, it's just generalized the number, good data, but you know, the number of units that are needed, but we need to drill down deeper. And what is really needed in each community, not just number of units, but housing type, what does a particular community need for housing? I, when I started with the county, I was invited to Koala, Koala, affordable housing task force, and I thought that group was really just kind of amazing because something that they presented was and a housing needs that they did, particular to North Kohala, and the way that they engaged the community was through online survey, but they also went out to the Kohala reunion and did paper survey with everybody involved in Kohala reunion and they helped Kupuna fill out the survey and they got such rich data about what their particular, their particular community needs and then they've started to implement that through the Kohala community land trust, which we met with before our Kohala community meeting last week and it's just, and I'd like to see that in all community. I'd like to know the data and the need in the particular communities that we are living in, because it's not for us to guide housing, it's for the community to tell us. And we're here to listen and to guide housing based on a local strategy. I think that's what you're asking about. But if you're asking about tools and things that we would use to actually expand housing opportunities, I can talk about that all day. Yeah, I know. And I think the tool space is going to come with some of the recommendations from the ad hoc because we are evaluating everything that we have and identifying what we need to truly move the needle on this issue. I hope that the strategy also identifies the kinds of infrastructure that exists is lacking, is needed in order to achieve the community's vision for the kinds of housing they would like to see. And I bring up infrastructure because this council recently adopted an ordinance that Cheri Nabanae co-introduced that would allow for our county to utilize a portion of our general excite's tax for housing infrastructure. So it feels really appropriate right now to start taking a look at that. But we got to look at it quickly because this authority could sunset at 2030. And that is tens of millions of dollars that could be used to renovate some of the projects that council member Hussis was talking about, but also plan for new affordable housing development. So we don't have to get into it today, but I hope by the next iteration of the budget, we can start to see some, you know, penciling of numbers for what you'd like for housing infrastructure. Yep. Okay. Absolutely. Great. And then I just want to thank you for the opportunity to engage the consultant around the housing and homeless fund. I do have an interview scheduled, but I think it's wonderful that each of the council members were provided an opportunity to just weigh in based on our observation on how the funding has made its way into community and how we've all been sort of impacted by the various initiatives that nonprofits are rolling out in our community. So thank you for that. I look forward to the findings and how we can work to continue to improve the utilization of those resources and really solve the challenges ahead of us. Thank you. Chair Eilt. Thank you. How's the member I call you on? Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for being here and for all the work you've obviously put behind this and coming right on the heels of the meeting yesterday. You had a lot to do. I do want to go back. I know I've probably been the pessimistic one, maybe, or just concerned one more than others. And sometimes when Heather and I talk about stuff, she's usually the optimist. And like, it's going to be okay. It's all good and I'm usually the one going, I'm worried. And unfortunately in the last few months, some of the times I've been right and I wish I wasn't. I really love it when she's right. So I do want to talk about your priorities here because when I look at your priorities, stabilize housing through rental assistance, preserve affordable housing, provide opportunities for affordable home ownership, and prioritize homelessness and housing fund initiatives, I believe the top three are all based heavily on federal funding. Is that correct? And the last one's more county funding. For sure, the top one right now, right? Our rental subsidized rental assistance program is Section 8. You know, there's no county funding in our Section 8 program for rental assistance. Our Housing and Homeless Fund, There are some master lease programs where organizations are doing master lease of housing to provide permanent supportive housing or clean and sober living that justice involved housing. But for the sectioning rental assistance program, yep, completely federally funded. And the positions in your $4,000. $8,000. 82% of your whole agency budget coming from this. So most of your positions are either partially or fully funded by that. So I guess my question is hopefully I'm wrong and hopefully nothing comes of it. But if there's either partial with holding or not coming through with expected federal funds or the worst case scenario all, what are some of the things that you've been thinking about or planning for or just in case? I guess I'd like to hear what some ideas are just in case. So we're watching, I mean everybody says this, right? We're monitoring the federal changes daily. We're staying in touch with our industry leaders. We're talking with our HUD office. We're monitoring and we're not at this point at this point seeing any major effects or threats at this point to the rental assistance program, HUD's rental assistance program, which is a huge program federally. We're just one little county and we're $40 million. Think about Los Angeles County or some of our larger metropolitan areas. So it's a huge program. I will say that prior to, right when the new administration took over, federal administration took over, people asked me, are you worried about HUD funding? And I said, no, not worried at all. And I could be wrong. I think there will be impacts for sure. But the reason why I said I was not worried at all was because having worked in real estate for 10 years, and really in housing policy for many of those years and understanding and going to DC and doing advocacy work for housing. Affordable housing is, it benefits the investor. It is a huge tax credit program. Section 8 program is a wonderful program that provides stable housing for our entire community, 2300 families a month, but the check is cut to the landlord the investor, the second homeowner. I would be really surprised if our federal government started to pull the plug on their investors. The housing industry is a huge lobby. Real estate is one of the largest lobby groups in DC. So, when this administration took over, I was, I said, I would be surprised. But I have been surprised. So, you're not wrong. Your intuition tells you something and I believe in following your intuition. My intuition tells me something similar but a little different just with a little bit of a deeper, longer understanding on the market side, right, on the market side. So I don't know. We'll see what happens, but I'm concerned, but I'm, I would be really surprised if they really started to pull back on that, on that investment on their investors. So, but I know where you're going and you know and I'm super appreciative because what would we do if we lost Section 8? I don't know what we do if we lost Section 8. You know where would we find additional funding? Would we scrap housing and homeless and take that entire $10 million and put it towards rental assistance, it won't even cover half of what we do. And then what happens to all of our homeless service providers and all of those programs that we're offering and our emergency shelters. So it's it's it's concerning but you and I are just watching this each and every day and hopefully, hopefully you're wrong. Absolutely. I agree. I hope so too. But I don't know that that might be the case. I serve on a nonprofit board. I'm the chair of Hawaii Council for Humanities. It has nothing to do with housing. It's just a, so we do small grant making to archives and libraries and history day and these fun projects. And I had a board meeting over the weekend. Do we need to pull down our federal funds? It's a small $500,000. Do we need to take a quick advance before Doge does something? And the board was kind of split, but we said, yep, let's do it. Let's pull our award. So on Monday, we pulled our award down. And on Tuesday, we got the letter saying that our program was totally cut completely. The contract was no longer. So going into legal action around all of that, that's just my personal volunteer community work. So I'm seeing it in my own volunteer capacity in the community. It's where we're at. Well, I appreciate your input from the like real estate side and everything and hearing that. Yeah, and you know, we'll just have to keep monitoring. I think my biggest concern is that probably a lot of this may go down, if anything goes down will happen, you know, around October 1st, September, and at that point our ability to potentially raise revenues is passed for this understanding. Okay. And we'll keep it up. We'll keep it up. And we'll keep it up. We'll keep it up. And we'll keep it up. And we'll keep it up. And we'll keep it up. And we'll keep it up. And we'll keep it up. And you know, we have to pull levers or at least have the conversation about levers that could be pulled. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. The only other thing that I did have a few questions about those items in the general fund that are specific to your department. I think... Oh yeah, can you talk about... I think... Oh yeah, can you talk about the housing trust fund grant that is at almost 3 million and then drops down to 52,000? Did the settlement be asked for a favor? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, no, I can't. I'm sorry. It's so mean, it's been a while. I'm going to One more question. Sorry. You have here in the general fund revenues. There's housing trust fund grant. Last year was it zero this year at almost three million and next year down to 52,000 and then going 52,000 going out. Yeah, so we we get allocated how's it trust from the state in which is a HUD grant that goes through the state and comes to the county. We allocated every three years because there's a rotation that the funds are awarded to Hawaii County, Maui County and Kawaii. So every once every three years we're going to see that jump in the allocation and in the following year what happens that we have no allocation however our administrative costs we budget X amount. We split that whatever we allocate in total to the county for administrative costs, we split that into thirds. So every year we have an even amount which is about $50,000. So this $2,850,000 is going to basically be spent down over a three year. That's the allocation, that's a budget. And then we award, and we, you know, we do an RFP and we award to a developer or a nonprofit. And then the following year, we only allocate X amount. It carries over. It carries over. Yeah, it carries over for like five years. And the 52,000 is for your staff. Yeah, yeah. So of course. Got it. I think there was one over here. Yeah. Oh yeah, just to the the block grant program income, what specifically is that for? And I see it jumping up this year, quite a bit as well. Or yeah, from 119 to 250,000. What you're seeing is what we are allocating for program income. And so every year we allocate or appropriate X amount in order to receive the program income. It could be you know paybacks from some type of grant alone or a could be the RRP program. So how can you say what the RRP? Residential repair program. Okay. Yeah. So, reinstated. Yes. So, it goes back into the CPVG program in which we need to allocate it. And so, that's, we've been getting a little bit more every year. So, we want to overestimate just in case we don't, so we don't need to reappropriate additional funds. I see. Okay. residential repair program, what other things does that go towards, General? Mainly is that program that, because it's a loan program. That's why. OK. Revolving fund loan program? Yeah, it goes back. Are forgivable loans? It depends on the program administrator. I don't know. Yeah. Or our piece. Is it forgivable loan? Or it is. They pay it back and it goes into a revolving. It goes in the app. They pay back. The family pays it back. And then it goes back into the CDBG program. Okay. What is. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. That's all from me for now. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you very much. Is that for Councillor McKinble? Yeah. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to leave here in five minutes. I'm going to say really fast things. One, there's been a couple of comments both made about migration patterns and I want to encourage everybody to read the latest your hero report which actually contradicts everything we've always thought which is the kids are all moving away. It's actually they're actually coming back which is surprising so that I think is going to affect how we move forward with housing. When is the residential repair program going to be available? We're doing admin rules right now, right? We drafted them and they're under review in our office, so Then they go on to 30-day community. Yeah, okay, so a couple months a couple months. Okay. Yeah, and then are you? Is the program going to have to compete every year to be refunded? Or are you changing that? Because before they had to compete, right, with the other programs. Roy says it's up to me. So I would like to fund that program every year. I think that is a program we need in our community and we should not have to compete against ourselves to fund our own projects. But I don't know if I can do that. But that's what I'd like to do. I would support that 110% one of the best ways to address the hostlessness is to keep people and houses that they already have. And sometimes it's just that little bit being able to buy a fridge, being able to fix a, you know, water heater, whatever that can make that possible. Cessable conversion, co-porn out, 18- and a ways. Yes. that can make that possible. CES book conversion, AGM. That was going to be in my next thing. Are you in conversations with the housing administrator in Kauai about using SRI funds? Yes, I've spoken with Adam and he pointed me in the right direction for the DOH funds. I think Kauai is the only county that is accessing those funds right now. It's about $1 million a year we've been leaving on the table. They've divided it evenly per county. And obviously, as Managing Director mentioned earlier today, one of our critical areas that we need to spend some money on. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm speaking too quietly. One last thing. And so I'm sure you've been following the potential for the comma, Iina deed restriction program. Something we talked about maybe four or five years ago. Is there already sort of preparation, sir? How long would it take you guys to pivot to be able to implement a deed restriction program if there were some funding? Do you have some flexibility with your staffing that you could... So, Royce. Again, Royce has the purse strings. But you know, we're... You only have five minutes, but you know, I've been following that veil program and then wanting the group that wants to model it here. But I think we could do something like that on our own Comma Coa newy home ownership. That was a county project, home ownership project. 15 year, 10 year, 15 year affordability. It's coming up. The affordability period is coming up. I would love to explore. And I haven't said this out loud yet, but I would love to explore the ability to ask those homeowners if they would for a fee, a price, extend that affordability period. So $50,000 if you'll let us put the extend that deed another 10 years so that we preserve affordable home ownership in Waikoloa. It can be done. We've got the model. We did it already. It would be an extension of that affordability period. I think it's exactly what Kamai No Homes is trying to do and we are we have already done it and we can extend it. We also have the money to do that and I think that would be an amazing pilot project to show the state that it can be done on our own county home ownership properties. So thanks for asking that question. I'm aware that it might be something that the ad hoc is working on but happy to to happy to support because again I think it's a big bang for a lot of leverage opportunity to keep the... There's a lot of devil in the detail on that bill, right? And veil is a very close community. It's a very different model. It's very new. I do want, I would dig into the details a bit, but I think we have a potential pilot that we could start with. I'm sure you've looked, but the original Bill 139, or 739, House Bill 739, 740 were the two programs that Luke Ebblin, Ebblin, was trying to go forward for here, little different than the veil model. But they've since been amended so that we don't like them anymore, but the original sets. I think we can do something ourselves. Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Excuse me. Sure. If I may, I just have one comment on the UHRO study. I did ask them for the data from that study and it seems to be that maybe there are some of the calculations they made did not include data from our island. So we do have to dig in more deeply to understand if what they're saying is actually applicable to our island or they're saying a general statement about the state, but really it's not applicable to our island. So I just wanted to make that clear. I'm looking at it right now. Thanks, I yield. Thank you. Just a quick question. We recently had an affordable housing project, the one in Wayne, May, where the land was donated by the Beniox, right? And HICDC came in and, you know, I was really pushing for that added time frame because I understand the desire to create generational wealth, but I also feel like opportunities for affordable home ownership. Those homes should stay in affordable home ownership for a lot longer than they do because we essentially can't just continue to build ourselves out of this with the increase in population blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'm really excited to hear you saying what you're saying about petitioning people who have gotten homes in these areas. Please don't sell them at market rate. Please don't add them to the inventory of already inflated real estate prices that just leave us in the same place. right? Then we lose that affordability and then we have to find new partners, you have to find new funding and in this current national administration it really feels like they're not thinking about us. Every effort is being made to kind of smite the common man and provide tax breaks for the mega wealthy so that that I share your concerns. And I, things could get real. Interesting, real fast. But on the positive, I love to hear you saying that that, you know, recognizing, and I would love to work together on some new terminology. I kind of, you know, there didn't seem interest from them after trying to push on it. And it's much easier to just take but the status quo of percentages of requirements and years and da da da da da. What do they say? Insanity is the belief that you can keep doing things the same way and have a different outcome. And so we have an opportunity to, yeah, tweak that.. All right thank you so much. I yield. Mr. Nalva. Thank you. Just a couple questions. So I am looking at travel. You know, this is something that I bring up every year. But for you folks, especially there's different sections in travel, especially in the housing fund. And I'm wondering if this is something that you folks might consider just centralizing travel into the administrative section so that there's not pockets of travel money in for example, or, you know, a specific project's operating expenses. Sharon says it is now centralized in OHCD budget. And that's why the travel budget has increased because we are up-fronting in our OHCD budget travel costs to that are reimbursed by these other programs including homelessness and housing some of our federal programs. So we're moving that travel budget, all of the travel into OECD budget. And so that's why it looks like an increased. I'm still seeing the travel lines in those individuals' sessions. Are they going to be condensed in the May version? Or I hear what you're saying though, because I see some decreases. And with that. I'm still seeing those items funded within the individual projects. We still need an appropriation in the other funds to pay OHCD. It's duplicated. But he's wanting just one like one chart of account, not all that stuff like how it's broken out, yeah, by program. Yes. Yeah. You just want one travel amount not broken out by HGTF, existing housing, CDBG. Well, I guess my question is when you look at Uluvening for example there's a travel budget there and it begs the question of what requires travel for a specific housing project versus the general administrative expenses of the department. I think I'm over. Property management comes over. No. So what is that then? Director Nanka Gawa, if you have any input on this one, because it is unique that they have a special fund plus their own normal fund. Gary Wong of his housing. For Uluvini, Oli Kika and Kuleimano, they have their own budget. And that can be pulled into Orij City budget because they're separate entity. Uluvini is part of Orij City. But the the project still managed by the party? Yes, so my question is though regarding travel for specific projects like that, I can see where general administration and housing goes on trips to go and investigate and explore to some R&D, But what are those individual projects going on trips for? You're asking about Uluveni. Uluveni and... Kulaimano as well, they're going from 4,800 to 9,000. And's not a big sum of money, but I'm trying to understand why we can't centralize, which I think we're attempting to do, but there's still outstanding pockets of travel funds. And we can get into it after if we need, or directly not with dollars. You have an answer that you might want chime in Yes, good afternoon. I think I understand but I can work with OECD on what's needed for consolidation and some but the ones that are in different funds We'll need to stay programmed in those funds. So like Kulai Mano, Ouli, we need to stay there in those areas, not consolidated. So it's by fund. So the best we can do is have it broken down, coordinated in each of the fund areas. So if there's thing there and they cannot be centralized, my question is then what are the expenses? What requires travel for all of any housing that's on Hina Lonnie down the road from where I live? Like where are they going? So that's travel for property management because we use a third-party property manager So that would be travel for our asset manager to go to Honolulu to work with property management because our the property management company is Based in Honolulu so it's specific travel asset manager would use also to attend HUD trainings in Honolulu with regards to some of our properties that receive HUD funding. So it's just specific to that property. So that's not a county employee who's going to travel when it's in a specific. Our asset manager, he's our county employee. So he would travel to attend meetings with our property management company, our contracted property management company that's in Honolulu. So we're HUD training specific to that. I'm getting mixed reviews so I'll table this and have an offline discussion with you just to make sure because I can appreciate the efforts I just I want wanna make sure we're doing it in the best way we possibly can. And then also if you could just clarify please, we have lines here under the General OHCD for admin office rental, that's the heel noodle shop. Okay, and then there's another. Under the homeless, homeless section, there's an additional cost for homeless office rental now. What is that? Yes What is that? It's the allocation to their office because we actually have two offices in the Hilo Race noodle building. We have our main office and then we have a conference room not attached to our office and then we have our community engagement offices is down the hall. So it's just their allocation piece to our total lease for the, for OIT City. Okay, I think this is my last question and it's regarding under the homeless fund. In the last fiscal year, there was an allocation of, I believe, $195,000 for the grant manage the software. And now it's gone. We don't see it in the current proposed budget. So I'm just trying to understand, did we get something? Like a one time expense out of that $195,000? Or have we shifted our approach and the funding for the software is somewhere else. Neighborly? Oh, is this neighborly? Neighborly and we're sharing the cost with error. No. What? 195,000 for neighborly. There was the homeless outreach plan slash software. Do you have a number? Do you have a number? A fiscal budget. Or current, I guess. Oh, sorry. Page number. 151 in the pre in the current fiscal year. I don't have page numbers on the current. So it would be. In account number. Five, four, six, five, point zero, one, one, fifteen, miscellaneous. Which one? Oh, for, um, it's deleted from the budget. That's now a street, you mean when you software gonna have those, then I can't read. It's deleted from the budget? No, it's in the budget. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, so I hope I get this correct. You're asking about a budget line item that was in the previous budget and is now not in there. Yes. Yeah. So we were purchasing streak, which is the database that we were using for homelessness and housing data and also for Error 2 data collection. But we've shifted and we're purchasing a software to bring all of that data in house. So that won't be an expense anymore. It'll be, yeah, we won't have that expense at all anymore. The streak software. Okay, I'm still seeing streak there. It was 90,000. Now it's 50,000 in a proposed budget. But it sounds like you should be opposite. Like we should be seeing 195,000 now for bringing it in-house. So can you just help me understand? I'm using this fiscal year budget to purchase the software that will bring the data in-house. And then going forward, it'll be like a renewal, like an annual fee. Same like the grant management software that we have, which is Nibbordy. And which software is that you're saying that's the streak? Streek we will be no longer using. Sorry I don't have the line item in front of me and if it does say streak maybe that was just okay. We'll meet on this one. Thank you. Thank you. Okay a couple of randoms for you. Good questions to date. Will Viny furniture, $170,000 increase? That was already addressed. Sorry. Carry Wong, Office of Housing. That's for units rehab. Yeah. Different from other fund sources for rehab of this is just using the project funds to renovate the units. Okay. Thank you. Thank you Gary. Then ERAP what's emergency rental assistance? Probably protection in my program. How long are we is it continuous funding coming in from the feds? That's our full money and care is funding, right? Oh no, it's different. Yeah, era one and two, our era two is Paul September. Yeah, we have to spend it by September. So we have our emergency rental assistance program. They're pumping, trying to spend that money out, and then we do have new use available for that program and that we're using for some of the funds. So we have to spend 75% 50%, 75% in rental assistance, and then the remaining we can use for Cucuyola per minute supportive housing so that we're trying we're trying to get that all spent down by September so there's been a real push on kukuyola because you know really hard to spend seven million dollars in a few months but we're gonna try yeah it's like one of those lingering COVID responsibilities but then after September it's done yeah yeah there's there's good and bad to that so thank you looking at your CIP budget there's two projects I can't find as far as a actual physical impact statement for high high in ICCO. They're not in the CIP Submittal from your department. But they are allocated to $2 million a piece. What are those? Is that one house, infeasibility studies. So these are two parcels that we e-owned from the state to the county for affordable housing and we're infeasibility studies on one of them. I don't know for infeasibility on Inakoye. No, just on high high. Those are at. Those are at are, those are allotted funds this fiscal year correct? Are we allotted? For, CIP for high high and Inaquia? High high where I'm just going to be allotted right now. But do we have allotted CIP? No. Do we have allotted CIP? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So those are housing projects. Projects. Yeah. Subdivisions. Is your CIP budget your allotments? Is that covered in the housing fund? No. Different. our all-year revenue streams for housing in the housing fund? No. Different. Different. Are all your revenue streams for housing in the housing fund? Thanks for asking that. No. We actually all of our revenue streams total over a hundred million dollars. So the budget that you see today is our OECD budget but then all of our congressional money that we pull down from CIP, housing and homeless which is outside of our 53 million. Yeah we're well over a hundred million dollars that we're managing in funds. Yeah, 10% of our budget isn't housing. Yeah. That's impressive. Yeah. Can you repeat what you said? Actually, you have that in front of you? I have. I like it. I like it. I like it. What? If you give it to me, you should probably give it to everybody. I do. It was going to be part of our presentation today, but you're good to know. You know, I'm proud of the work we do. Like I said, when we started, I'm really proud of the work we do. We're managing a lot of projects, a lot of funding. Today, we are focusing on OHCD's budget, but in total, all that we manage, these people right here manage, any manages $50 million in project funding in a tiny little department of like five people. We manage $100 million dollars in federal county county subsidized funds with 67 people. What did you need say? Hamas! Right there. If I can, I love to see that magical document you have in front of you. I am trying to understand how much funds that we as a county apply towards housing. This is a round up $30, $40 million, we're at a billion dollar budget. Year processing $100 million roughly. That's 10% of the total budget for the Hawaii County is being addressing, is being put towards housing. So as we are viewing more capabilities of the County to enable, fund, and whatever means we plan on addressing the housing crisis and I'm not sold on that word. I really am not on addressing housing. Then it's just really great to be careful about how we continue to fund and where we fund from. That's it. So I'd love to see what you have in front of you. That helps me make decisions going forward. It can be later, it can be a communication. You can send it via email to the council members and whole, that'll be wonderful. Can you repeat for me what you said earlier? I didn't know you had 10 years in real estate, but you said something, I actually it was it was it was a it was a brilliant state you made a brilliant statement just now and that the federal government most likely and what I it was all I took that federal government most likely will not cut those programs because the folks that are being subsidized are investors and landlords that's. That's the same people who stand to benefit from most of the decisions being made. It's the same people I'm shining away from helping here because the people I want to help are people who don't have anything. I love that comment. Because you touched on like five or six different things in one nice cute little statement that was brilliant. Can you repeat that for me? Do you remember it was that this one of those moments of brilliance? It was a moment. It was a moment of brilliance. You'll have to watch it back. But it's really where I hone in on housing preservation and housing affordable housing home ownership for sale, right? That's where I really hone in on it because I just gave you a box of what I think about affordable housing rentals and there's you know just a big missing piece in the middle. My dad always said to me, K-How? Do you know how you make more money spend less? And so that thought of coming from abundance and housing crisis versus we have what we have, what we have, we have it we may have what we need But we have to store it properly We have to have good policies around it. So what we have in housing stock is preserved and available to our kids Right, so we can build build build and we should build more rental units, but we're not addressing getting out of that cycle if we don't attack what's right there in the middle, which is preserving and extending affordability. And there's great programs that we're already doing in those areas. I think we align in some of our thinking that way. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I really love that component of what you said earlier, which was they won't cut that side in your thoughts. You don't know. You know, your fingers crossed. I think you're lying though. Not only all those can happen in the next six months. Take it with the grain of salt. You know. The real properties act division did foresee the market correction in February, 2020, sorry, February 28th before, I mean, I'm assuming that was written before February 28th, which means they foresaw it somewhere in January. Yeah. And it happened in March. Well, COVID, market went boom in COVID. Yeah. Apparently, we have some billion people in the county and it's good to know. I appreciate, I really do appreciate that moment of billions and I'm, I'm gonna stick to that as we go forward. Okay, thank you. Anything else from the council for our housing and community development. Thank you very much administrator and deputy administrator or assistant administrator or whatever your title is. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. We're the moms. We're the moms. Obviously. We're the moms. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the time and thank you for allowing us to just to really celebrate what we do, celebrate our staff. You know, I mean, we could not have even stepped into this role and be where we are in four months without the incredible, like seriously, the incredible team behind me and Kiko that are so willing to teach us every day. We're learning every single day. So thanks, thanks for this time. Thank you. We're going to take a brief recess where we can be in five minutes. Okay, calling this meeting back to order. We got a recess. Our next department is the fire department. Thank you for being here chief and deputy. Please go ahead and juice yourself to the record and then go through your presentation. We'll go to questions from the council afterwards. Because we'll talk about who I fire department fire chief. Daniel Hopi deputy fire chief. All right, so I guess we'll move ahead with our budget presentation here for April 8th. So... then you'll be deputy party. All right, so I guess we'll move ahead with our budget presentation here for April 8th. So A little easier for me to see now. So this kind of goes over objectives for fiscal year 26 and some of the program measure outcomes from last year We did launch our EPR fireworks incident reporting system. Just think of this as how we track all of our calls. So in the prior system was about a 20 year old kind of reminded you of like one of those old windows systems like the boxes hadn't changed and everything else and we needed something that was up to date and was able to basically upload our information into the national fire and record system and we're running into issues with that. So we did switch over last year to the EPR fireworks and we're integrating new modules for vehicle checks and equipment checks and also the all the maintenance that's going on on our vehicles. So it's been a great success last year. We also exceeded our national average for the pre-hospital cardiac arrest saves last year and we able to secure funding last year through the kind of council and the mayor's budget for the Cajuniki Beach Park. So we've been moving forward. The tower is expected to be here shortly and will be establishing services. We also hosted the junior island or the junior lifeguard Big Island Championships and we won. So if you guys are interested and you want to come up into my office upstairs, you will see probably the most awesome trophy I have ever seen. This thing is like three feet tall. It's like a teaky man with a huge surfboard. It's super amazing. I got to make sure that we win again so that we can just leave it there permanently. And then we've had a 98 cents success rate for meeting our plan review deadlines and moving everything else forward. So we've been contributing to try and make sure that buildings are getting built in the island and progress continues. As for fiscal year 26, we're establishing a required limitless lifecycle replacement programs and maintaining the cycle for our emergency response goals. Part and partial of this is making sure that we maintain for the finance department a good vehicle and fleet replacement system. This is one of our bigger things that every year we're putting out a new plan with updated graph or data on pretty much every vehicle we have. And then what we're doing to make sure that we are ready to respond to the public in the past. You know, oftentimes the head mechanic just kind of looked at vehicles and goes, hmm, down broken a lot this year, maybe we buy a new one. So, we've transitioned over to using data to make good decisions and also to be transparent. So our plan continues to grow in length and data because we continue to add more vehicles to it as we expand the greater detail. So, this year it has everything if you guys want copies. I think I gave you guys copies last year, but this year we've added the MS vehicles, ocean safety vehicles, and our administrative vehicles as well as support services vehicles. I'm hoping next year we'll also bring in our boats and our helicopters so we can start really looking at that from a long-term perspective because helicopters are not cheap. So we should probably try to assault some money away because at some point they get old enough that we got to replace them. And we can't always rely on the SAR foundation to cut a $5 million check for us. So good thing to have. We've also been hitting our lifeguard tower staffing above 90%. Note that is for our towers that we maintain on different schedules. So we do have some powers we only work on weekends and things like that. So one of the things we're looking to do in the long term is to try and bring our staffing up a little bit in that section, but for the current schedules that we maintain, we've been doing a good job. We've also established some special funding requirements for the specialized tactical rescue and hazard materials teams. I'm hoping that budget next year will allow me to a I see him looking as like he's trying to hide back there Ted. Some line items, but I know this year we're moving into Oracle's a connect system. And so we're trying not to create additional areas, but we'll be hiring a special obj chief here shortly. And one of the goals has been to make sure that we replace our rescue equipment such as ropes, care beans, or specialized scuba gear, as well as our hazmat equipment on our regular basis. So our personnel have the tools needed to do. So that was one of the pushes we've done for this year going forward. And adopting our updates to NFPA. So the county of Hawaii amendments should be submitted before your guys review here in the next month or so. So that is we were talking with council services I think yesterday today. So we've discussed our lawyer to sign off on everything. We've got the latest version which is even simpler than ever and should be a pretty quick and easy process to go through. We're going to make it automatic. So we'll do most of our changes up at the state level. When the state adopts a code, it will flow through the county automatically. So you won't have to see us anymore in the future. We're just going to pass this. It'll go forward and we'll be good to go. And we simplify to a lot of things in there as well. And then obviously we've been working hard over the last year to promote workforce excellence and professional development within our department. Shout out to our Chief of Training Patrick Springer who's doing an amazing job. Thank you very much for last year, physically dumping a little bit of extra money for training. We, not going to go super deep on it, but the amount of training we are bringing in this year for our personnel due to some funding as well as some AFG grants and such like that is amazing. It is definitely an exciting time to be the fire chief and watch my personal out there just doing a really, really amazing job. Let's off the screen. OK, man, I'm at 2.4. OK, so some highlights from last year's fiscal year. We did put in about 1.2 million for a new stock truck and a brush truck So we should be expecting our delivery within the next couple months one of the things that it happened over the last couple of years is that we had not purchased any Fire trucks and with COVID and some budget restrictions We have fallen a little bit behind in our purchasing schedule. It's one of the reasons we had to develop the fleet replacement. So we get to explain why we needed vehicles. Previous fire chief had been buying two fire trucks a year, but when I became chief, we'd decrease the budget line item for the leases under 115. And so we were not able to go out and redo leases combined with COVID, which basically took our ordering process from order truck and get it in a year order a truck and get it in four years and now we have a sort of oppressing need. So one of the things the finance department did last year is what they did put an extra $1.2 million in our budget to go after a stock truck. Now these stock trucks are basically fire trucks but without really any customization. So they show you what it looks like and they're like, do you want it? And we're like, it's red. And they're like, yep, it's red. And we're like, we'll take it. So we're going to be bringing these in as a stop cap. They're brand new. They work. They'll meet all the minimum specifications. The cabinets may be a little bit smaller, a little bit bigger. we just don't get any choices. It's basically you take it as is but the finance department funded that and we'll be doing that for a couple of years to keep us you know going based. year, we just don't get any choices. It's basically you take it as is, but the finance department funded that and we'll be doing that for a couple years to keep us, you know, going basically until the trucks that they have allowed us to purchase this year arrive, which is literally four years from now, just because of the way the market has changed. So they've allowed us to pivot and move forward with that. And we're also waiting for a huge number of trucks such as brush trucks and and so on. Basically that we've ordered over the last couple years but just nothing has come because it's taking that long for vehicles to arrive. Ambulances are still coming in on a regular basis on our pretty pretty quickly so that side of the market hasn't really changed but the fire truck brush truck market is a little bit slow at the moment in terms of getting stuff. We also got a new Dotaida fire station, or engine for station 14 on South Coojala. This is through the sayers and a very wealthy benefactor down in that region, who also has benefacted a local hospital or two. So I'm very nice guy. And in addition to that, we've been working real hard over the last year with the basically change in our repair line item. So finance last year gave us about 750,000. Right now we're showing 500,000 in that second column. Spent, it's not that we're going to spend it 750. We just haven't closed all the purchases yet. But we've had over 44 garage doors are plared, we repaired our plimble vent systems, we've been working on some roopses and some get properties to get fenced. So it has been honestly one of the best years in my career for us getting out and getting stations repaired and maintained. In addition to the the shout out to Chief Pat Springer, 286 is for that nozzle forward. The training course integrating fire behavior, hose management and fire attack strategies. And so that's one of the programs they're bringing in this year for training. In addition to that, we are, I believe it, within this fiscal year, this coming fiscal year, we will have our community risk assessments, our standards of cover, our 10 year master plan and our five year strategic plan completed. And so those will be coming out shortly. So in addition to our fleet replacement plan, we'll have the document showing like our response times, where the best future station would be in terms of if we were to expand, you know, what kind of coverage gaps we have all back and data, GIS layers, and anything and everything else you could think about within the department. So this is sort of coming out of the audit. They had come out of the County Auditors Department a couple years ago and one of the things that we've worked on, we did also sit down with Tyler Bender recently to discuss our County Audits since we're coming up on the two-year mark and where are we? So some things we've been very successful and tackling and getting completed. A couple of things are still kind of pending out in the E2D list and so we've been working real hard on that but at some point probably after the budget season I think we'd probably gonna sit down with all of you and start talking about how we're doing on the things we're audited for but we've worked really hard on moving those things forward as well. And then you'll see some wonderful pictures of our junior life guide there and the the team that went out and did an amazing job this year and some of our fire specters and one of the fires we've had this year. As a breakdown for our fire department, it says we have 620 positions, which is not exactly true. I have 620 position numbers, but many of those positions for like the recruits and everything else are like TP. They're unfunded positions. They don't actually, I can't have a person in them and a person in another position. So I can never actually hire 620 people. My actual higher amount is if I was fully at capacity, we'd be 524. I just have that many extra numbers to be able to move people around and things like that. There's 60 for recruits and other 70 for our fire EMS recruit. and we have some in Ocean Safety, some other positions that are just on the books, but actually have never been actually filled out. So this is an FYI. That number is a little misleading. It's like we don't actually have that many. But we have three divisions, 10 branches, 12 sections, and currently we're showing 61 vacancies. at the double check on that in terms of everything. A lot of that actually comes out of our dispatch area, which has some decent amount of vacancies at the moment. And we have another 10 or so in Ocean Safety, but we've had agreements over one of the promotional processes, which basically halted our ability to hire or do any promotions. So we recently just signed off on an agreement with HGA to move forward and we're in the process of opening the first two of those areas, which is the WSO5, which is our battalion sheet for water safety, and then the WSO1s, which would be the new recruits. And then I understand MAB has the WSO3 and then WSO4 will open shortly there after it. But once we get those kind of handled, the move people up will bring people in from the bottom and that'll cover the vacancies in that area. Currently on the staffing vacancies for the operational side, we are looking at a class, right now we have a class of 12. And we have a total of expected vacancies because we have a group of guys who will hit their 25 year mark here on May 1st. So we are expecting 6 to 7 retirements from that additional to that personnel out. And their next recruit class on the operational fireside, we expect to maybe be able to hire 16 personnel because that will be how many vacancies we have on the fire operation side, which is pretty normal. It it's not even a full class. That said, if we do get the Makale Amulance Bill passed through on the state legislature, that will also open in additional six positions, which might allow us to have a slightly larger class. But we're only running one class a year, and this most recent class only had 12 personnel because that's how many vacancies I had available to bring personnel in. Actually, it was 13 be lost one, but we also have the list of our various sections that it should be noted that the Hawaii Fire Department is really three departments where your fire department, your EMS department and your ocean safety department. So we noted that it is really expensive and then within those areas we have training, prevention, volunteers, logistics, vehicle maintenance, emergency communication, the such as level one, and our IT section as well now, as well as the normal fire admin operations and so on. As for a budget, at least for this coming fiscal year, we've gotten no new positions, our budget is status quo, our equipment is status quo, and sort the breakdown of federal and state grants We have about 21 and a half million coming from our EMS grant to manage our EMS services Approximately another 1.9 million to manage ocean safety for our two state beaches and about right now 300,000 federal funds will see how go. Sometimes that spikes up a little bit depending on VFA grants or other grants that we may receive. We have put in for CWDG, which is a Community Wildlife Defense Grants to add additional positions within prevention focused on wildland areas. If we do get that, we're you know, that'll add several million and so on. We try to go for about 10 to 20 million dollars in grants a year and I often see, you know, maybe about a 10 to 20% ratio in terms of what we actually get. So those numbers can jump, but right now everything on the federal side is sort of just frozen. So we have no idea what's going on whether grants will open or whether we're able to apply for them or if the applications that we put in are going to even go anywhere because they're just how things are going at the moment. But we'll keep an eye on things and surprise you as things move forward. Our priorities for 26 are getting Kohani Beach Park going to make sure our hazmatter rescue sections and our air operation sections are being managed properly with the deployment of our special ops chief which we've been working on for several years as we redesign our air ops section. And then dealing with their scheduled replacement equipment and then working on new financial and human resource management software, which is basically that rollout of Oracle Connect. So it should be noted, one of the things that we've been working on with our new IT staff, which is a professional trainee position. And I may come next year to ask for that position to get converted to a real position in my department because my employee is amazing. But we've been working on dashboarding. So the goal is to actually pull data automatically out of our EPR fireworks, which is our call data. We have some lifeguard software, we have some software for other things that we're pulling and we're pulling all that data. We want to run into singular dashboard so we can have up-to-date data on every vehicle that's online at the moment, every vehicle that's down, every vehicle that's staffed, what our expenditures are on a day-to-day basis within a section, whether we're meeting goals, whether we're achieving where we want to be. So some of these things are going on. Part of that will be that rollout of the COH Connect system, as that new financial and human resource management software allow us to do exports of that data. We're sitting in some classes on that just earlier this week or last week. And the goal will be that just have real-time data, our fingertips to know how many people on overtime are right now on overtime or things like that. So we were able to really get granular and understand that we're running the ship as the way we're supposed to. So those are some things we're gonna be pushing out for next year. I think that is our entire slide show. Thank you very much, James. Calls members, calls all in easy. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, Chief. And, I'm definitely Chief. Yes. First of all, you mentioned about EMS. And the funding, like you mentioned, comes from Department of Health. And so, with the Makale, hopefully we can get the funding for the Makale Ambulance. Now, how will the Department of Health be providing those positions for running the ambulance? So our ask basically in that particular bill was for 1.7 million and that basically is just they check. So the checkbox into our bank account, so to speak, actually what would come into the fire department side of that is closer, maybe like 1.2. I'm just coming up with a random number there. There is a proportion of that as a man's might find the answer for, you know, retirement, medical health, all the other fringe benefits that are part of that process. The rest of the money would dump into the fire department's budget and be broken up into salaries and wages, but also things like, you know, when we're going to replace our view. that are part of that process. The rest of the money would dump into the fire department's budget and be broken up into salaries and wages, but also things like, you know, when we're going to replace our vehicles, so that it becomes part of that scheduled replacement process. I understand there is not much that is being actually approved at the state level in terms of additional expenditures. They're a little bit worried about what's going on with the federal government as well. But it seemed like the mockery amus might be one of the few things that actually makes it through the state legislature this year in terms of changes. There's been a lot of our politicians from the island are pushing really, really hard on it. So I've heard all good things. I think there was supposed to be some hearings on it today. I got to double check on it and everything in terms of the current status. But so far, so good. and if that happens then theoretically that'll add three EMT positions and three paramedic positions to our overall staffing. terms of the current status, but so far so good. And if that happens, then theoretically, that'll add three EMT positions and three paramedic positions to our overall staffing so that we have basically one paramedic and one EMT each day working out of the Makale Fire Station. We see it as one of our biggest areas of need at the moment as the Kailua Fire Station is just getting really hit with lots and lots of calls on a regular basis. So this would be their second end coming in to take on some of the slack and make sure that whether it's in the kind of North Kailu area or whether it's in Kailu itself, we'd have a faster response time. Good. And then just to let, well, just to note that if you folks need to help in support, you know, let the council members know, then we can do like a resolution to help and force the need for this island, right? And so that's how we can help out, right? So please reach out to us. I appreciate it. I know Chair Holacca has done an amazing job of putting in testimony and being very, very active and trying to make sure that push forward. So, but definitely we will reach out. Yeah. And to me, the more, like I get bodies respond, I mean, give testimony to the better, instead of doing just one lump sum, if we have like 20 people doing it, then it gives the numbers right. Yeah. But yeah, so that's good to hear. In my district, we have four beaches down in Kyukah. And it's alarming where we don't have enough, I guess you call it ocean safety officers. Yeah, and so during, especially like on the weekends or like summers coming up, so the beaches are going to get crowded from like in the morning to late evening because now the sun goes down at 7 p.m but the staffing We don't have enough right so the shifts are limited so Is it possible and this I can work with finance and the mayor is that I think you folks have like five positions that are part time and if we could if in the support of the department to see if we can make those full time positions. Any comments on that? be highly in support of it. One of our supplemental requests had been to deal with some of the positions in Kona that were part time that we wanted to take the full time also for similar reasons. It should be noted in Hilo in your district. Several of our towers are only weakened staffed. Right. And the reason is we just don't have enough bodies. Definitely that would be a huge starting to go into that direction. originally they had been like a summer higher system because you know there's just more traffic in the summer. But in recent years, we've had a really hard time finding people that just want to come work only three months. And then getting them qualified and everything was difficult. So we have the position numbers. It's mostly just getting the funding, and we can turn those position numbers into full-time positions. We'd be highly supportive of that. We think it would provide a better service to the public. And I think on that, I guess that could be requirement, but then it's like, you need at least what three officers per tower for eight hours. Is that like a minimum? So calculations on this are basically math for us. It's a fractional thing. And then it varies based on how many towers you have. It's actually a little bit over three. And the reason being we want to have two people working in any given time and a tower. We can buy our towers to have two people. There is an exception to that. The lele eve tower, which we ordered is a a single person tower just because of the space and everything else that had been in the past. That said, the single person towers can work when they're close enough to other towers, where guards can shuffle back and forth and things like that. But ultimately, when you think about I want to have two people working in a given thing, well, they're not going to work seven days a week. So then you need at least an additional person on how the calcs are done is it's about, you know, if you're working a 40-hour work week, it's 20, 2,080 hours a year, but then you might miss out sick leave vacation, and you take that fraction and figure out how many hours when either staff the Roman divided it ends up being about 5,600-ish hours divided by 1700, which gets us our number of 3 points something. Then you look in how many towers I have within the region. If it's just a singular tower, like we're down in the Kauu region, then pretty much I just need four people. If it's someplace in like Hilo where I could share between different towers and we can move guys, then we're closer to maybe, you know, 3.2 and then you're talking about three towers and I like we're at like 10 people for three towers. So it's a fraction but essentially we do run the numbers on it to figure out how many people we need to staff a tire effectively. Okay thank you. Next thing is facilities, repairs, maintenance. I mean, oh my god, I couldn't really believe when I got in this next term, how bad some places are. And one of them is in my district, like Waikia Fire Station. I mean, that, you know, members, you've also heard when they had the mohri mildo in the ceilings. And one of the firefighters got, you know, I guess sick because of that, right? So, you know, I know, I know you guys don't really have an up, like a budget to do repairs and to do, you know, like building a new fire station and so forth. So you guys depend on public works. So somehow we're gonna figure out a way where you folks can have a budget for repair maintenance because then in-house you guys can do these certain projects and we just had like with planning about CIP projects. I mean building a new fire station would be CIP, right? Building or replacing the roofing that might be a CIP, right? But then if we can maintain it like painting, you know, upgrading or you know, at least keeping it, I guess like, like new or trying to keep it new, you know, then the life span goes longer, right? So yeah, so to look at. Definitely agree. I should know, you know, over honestly the last four years we ran into smish years trying to push some of our projects. I've seen more movement in the last couple of months than I have seen it quite a while. We recently replaced our Pajola roof which as I when I was Faso and I was in charge of the repairs, I identified that and it had been noted that in 2006 it needed to be replaced and it took us 18 years to get that done. It looks great where we've moved forward. We do need to replace my kids roof. We need to replace Kalmanas roof and actually Kailuas roof. All three of those buildings are built around the same size. That's one of our bigger needs to happen kind of things. On the other side, finance did last year give us about 750,000 in our repair budget. And so Chief Chadwick, our assistant chief of support services has done an amazing job. Granted, those are the things that are sort of in our control. So garage doors, we've hired contractors, PlimeOvent Systems, which suck up the exhaust to stop us from getting sick from cancer, from the diesel fumes or things like that. And some of the other things that were able to hire people to do the maintenance and repair of, we have done problem with some of the things like the roofs is technically, you know, as what I've been told is that they need to do like an engineering analysis to verify that the new roof is not gonna blow away because it is a critical facility. and these things start jacking up the price pretty quickly and then it just kind of drops into that CIP bucket. So while... not gonna blow away because it is a critical facility. And these things start jacking up the price pretty quickly and then it just kind of drops into that CIP bucket. So while we have had an existing list, there's, it's one of the many projects in CIP and there's things like apparently a wastewater treatment facility that's gonna cost a billion dollars to fix, which you know is also on the list. And that's, I guess, our problem is what we are competing with so many other things. I feel like so many of the projects in the County Boyle have just been kind of kicked down the road and not solved. And here we are. But any support that you guys want to throw behind us in terms of having fire stations that are places that people can live in and work out of with a relative level of safety and comfort. That would be amazing. I know we have had conversations in the past about new facilities and everything else too. I should be noted. I just got emails and I'll be sitting down with some of the people over at Kukio who are looking to actually build us a brand new station in that region as well. And they would be paying for basically the station the vehicles and potentially salaries and wait just to start that thing up So there's other things going on as well. But definitely any assistance to expediting facility repair and maintenance is 100% supported by the fire department. Thank you. And on that note too, like with the K.O. I just went to go to a site visit at the chaos fire station. And I couldn't believe how, you know, I mean, you guys did do some work and, you know, like you put in the garage, the gates and so forth. But the leaking between the two rules, or the gutter and stuff like that, then I just kind of picture, oh my god, white chaos fire station, male and male do, right, kind of thing. And so it comes out of this, right? So I was told that, I guess, is there a proposal to build a new fire station in Kow? Is this a wish list or something? There definitely a shipment is set down several times with the previous administration on this one as well to discuss the possibility next to the park of expanding that area bringing in a new road putting in a police and fire station. We've talked about that being police fire slash training maybe for both of our departments in the same location or a training facility. I also understand there might be like a medical kind of a center and concept role as well. Right now, it is much like many other things. It is in the concept phase. Should note, our new dispatch center which will have its blessing on the 14th came from a plan set that was developed over 20 years ago for which the dream back then was a new central fire station, a new dispatch, a new warehouse, and a new fire admin on that site of which only one out of the four things is ever actually probably ever going to be built. So just as a FYI, I am very hopeful that things will move in that direction, but I also, you know, considering the amount of money that's being dumped in other things, I have no idea how or when that would be funded to move forward. But we're in support of it. We think it's a great idea. What is funny you mentioned about that because back in 2008, they had the plans, but they only had about $7 million and they needed, I think, 14 at that time to build. So, mayor at the time, don't fire. Are you going to be able to get the money? The restaurant money said well I'm not really okay with he's gonna take it out. So that's all. I'm gonna have a covered court got built from that funds but the thing was Mayor really wanted to do five of those covered courts in the five different districts, but that court cost about 3.2 million So it almost took over half of all that said it knew so I would lucky to get it in my district But yeah, but yeah, so that was yeah like he said it was planned long time ago But okay, so that's good to know cuz then I want to see if I can help with doing something with the existing KL station right now to help them. We appreciate any assistance we can have on that. It is, I want to thank Neil Azavito who came to the front of the station and repaved the asphalt, which we were worried someone was going to trip on how deep the ruts from where the tires went over were and then Sue us. So that's amazing that the garage doors have been replaced. We got some climb woven in there. There's been a lot of improvements, honestly. But definitely it is still two different buildings that they added the garage in the middle and then converted a hallway into an office and then we run into issues where there's catching things above the lights to grab the water to dump it into the trash can. Yeah, there's issues, definitely. So we would support any movement in that direction as well. Good. And the last thing I have is I found out that in Paradise part, the fire station there, I think they have outgrown that it's a house, right? It was a volunteer station that we took over. And so defaults have plans on maybe expanding. So there was a plan set in there to actually add some dorm space onto that building because we added the ambulance into that region, which at the time was the most important thing. Pahoa and Kiao ambulances were just getting wet, like super, super busy, and I should know. I think I worked on the ambulance back in those days out in Pahoa, and there would be shifts I'd leave at 8.30 in the morning and not come back until 5.30 in the next morning after call, after call, after call. So it was busy. So that ambulance has made a massive difference. But let me shove the extra people in that ambulance into the... I want to say it's like one and a half bedroom house that we have there. And now we have five guys living in there, four or five guys living there on a given day. It's a little bit tight, small kind, one toilet inside the building. So extra dorm space would be awesome. And I understand the designs were already made, and they were waiting on civil drawings and everything else. And we ran into some issues, last administration, and trying to get the plans pushed forward and whatnot when we were trying to move our central fire station Yeah, but we can talk about the work Okay, sounds great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council member here's this. Thank you chair. Well chief deputy chief. Thanks for your time today Just looking looking into, I'll start with the CIP. So for Station 14, the request for emergency generator, what is your conversation been leading up to this point about with one lecture about the PSPS, particularly for the impacts of that station? Do you have anything in place right now if they turn the lights off there or is this really the solution that you need going forward? It should be noted, if I remember correctly, Station 14 is running one of the older own N generators. It doesn't matter really what station you look on in this island unless they're the three newest stations, almost all of my stations are in need of upgrades or replacement of generators. We actually have an HMGP grant for power redundancy that's about $11 million that is proceeding along pace right now that'll hopefully fund. I want to say there's like eight or ten stations that we you know basically said these ones are like critical got to get changed over so I'm not gonna lie, most of our generators need kind of swapping out. One of the problems, however, is that these stations were built with little generator rooms, and the design back in the time when we built them, those generators were designed to just do critical stuff. Keep the refrigerator running, make sure the radio is still running so we can receive calls. And stations like Y-MAYA Fire Station, for example, they didn't even hook up the garage doors. So when the power goes out in Y-MAYA and there's a call, they got to run out there and then it takes about 10 minutes of just pulling on the chain over and then slowly, the door's going up and and just kills response time. But the problem is that the other side of it is like, if it's... and then slowly, the door's going up and just kills response time. But the problem is that the other side of it is like, if it's power is out, it's probably because we've got a storm or some rain or things like that. So it's not like we want to leave the door open because it's just going to blow all kinds of right through the station itself. So I'm not going to lie, most of our stations need new generators, but the generators that we're looking for are stronger and bigger that would take on that those additional roles of being able to open the garages during an emergency, but they will not fit in those same rooms. And so one of the reasons it's expensive and why we're talking about like millions of dollars is because they're going to have to trench, drop one of these things on an external, it a lot easier once we've done this work and we get these things going. There'll just be a pad next to the station with a generator on top, the electrical pieces will come. drop one of these things on the external, makes it a lot easier once we've done this work and we get these things going. They'll just be a pad next to the station with a generator on top, the electrical pieces will come out to it. And then that way in the future when things go off, it'll go on. And then when we want to replace that generator, then it's not $250,000 for trench work and everything else. just we buy in a generator, we pull the order one off, we shove the new one on, we hook up the plugs and we call it a day and we're good to go. But right now most of my facilities are not designed around that concept and they're not an easy swap out and there's a lot of work that has to be done. So we're working on that with grants, but also on the CIP side of things, it is all critical, but I don't have a great solution for you pretty much. Everything except for maca-late, high-high, and poh-hoa. And even those stations have run into some generator problems in terms of parts and getting maintenance because of the proprietary stuff that's going on. But it's one of our big, big pushes this year. We did have a lot of work done, and we do have a generator contractor that we get out there. And we've been working on automatic transfer switches and working out agreements with civil defense. and for stations that we've been able to hook up. What we can do is if we do run into power outage issues we can have civil defense bring out a generator and that we have an automatic transfer switch hook up where we can bring in connections from an outside generator that just is on wheels basically and then power station if we need to. So there are things that we're were working on on the side to make happen and Tip Chapman's been working on it. Sadly he's not in the back of the room otherwise I'd have him come up here and give more information. Thanks Chief. Yeah. I know the Kapuna Beach and Kuobay the state grants are basically covering all of our costs at those locations. Could you dive in further about what some of the ocean safety equipment is a little too on the the line items? I mean, so I hope you know beach the actuals 2324 was 22,000 This fiscal year jumped up to 100,000 and maintain it 100,000 and so they increases not that much more at Kuwait Bay But they definitely seen some increase there some kind of curious what equipment are being supplied to those spaces So interesting story For one of the reason when I became chief, it had been a number of years that the state had not given us any money whatsoever for anything except for salaries and wages. I don't know, they were, they were hurting for money or something like that and they just made a unilateral decision. And I didn't think that was particularly fair because my lifeguards are not allowed to work naked. So they need gear, they need surfboards, they need microphones, they need towers, they need trucks to get their ATVs and their jet skis to the beach so they can respond. There's a lot of other stuff in the county had been doing it basically paying for the state beaches to manage the programs on those beaches. It's $75,000 for one of these fiberglass towers. And they last the long time and they don't get me wrong, but it's still not a cheap expense. So that money actually was something where maybe I had to go to legislature and a bunch of emails were saying why isn't the state paying for their share? If you are asking us to manage a state beach, you should be paying for what it cost to run the state beach, not part of the cost. We didn't take it over because, you know, like, you know, we wanted it. It was like, hey, we're gonna work it out. We already have the lifeguards that make it work, but they're not paying their fair share. So I may have shot some emails, got some support to take it up to whatever level I needed to to make it happen. And the state eventually decided there was five state beaches in the state of Hawaii. They had about a half a million dollars and they basically stated that each beach would get a hundred thousand So the amount of money isn't necessarily a tie to a specific Like you know, we broke it down. We're gonna spend exactly this much every year It's just the state allocated a hundred thousand and then we spend what we need to spend to maintain those beaches Note that sometimes it might be a little more than we need and That is fine with us We also don't charge if we don if we don't spend more than what we need. So anything that's equipment we have a receipt and we send it over and they reimburse us for us. Perfect. Thank you. Could you just clarify under EMS, they're under the travel conferences acronym is KCC for tuition and fees. Kapilani Community College. And so it should be noted that they have a route, so one, at state fund, it's a state money. Two, you might notice it's a lot of money. If you're looking at the line item thing you are looking at. And part of that was we used to send our paramedics to go live in Honolulu to run on Honolulu ambulances as part of that training program. It hasn't continued, but the line item hasn't really changed over the years. It's not like I can use it for other things. It's built in for basically paramedic training or whatever else need be. We keep it there. hasn't continued but the line item hasn't really changed over the years. It's not like I can use it for other things. It's built in for basically paramedic training or whatever else need be. We keep it there because we never know. Right now, you know, because of COVID, we sort of meant to this online laptop-based training and the need for us to fly out and go through specific training elsewhere isn't there. But we still do have decent and cost in that line item on occasion when we need to get our paramedics over and we got to pay a bunch to make that happen sometimes. Thank you. And then looking at some of the volunteer, you know, support, there's one for, I'm just curious if, if, why co-hauled wrenches, the only ones providing, we're providing insurance for their such as kind of a standing agreement we have with co-hauled wrenches. So when they bought the vehicle, because they bought it, they made an agreement with the chief at the time that the Hawaii fire department or the county Hawaii would pay the insurance on the vehicle that they were going to donate to that purpose. So yeah, it was an agreement. Most of the other vehicles just fall under the county's self-insurance process. Okay. Yeah. In terms of training, I'm curious, you know, if you like we have, let's see, if you feel this is all the things that are our EMS teams and our fire, fire operators, this is really for part training. So do you think it's enough? It's never enough. What are you talking of? Not. It all not. In schools that have to take up, you know, in terms of adding on wild land fire training or adding other kind of capacity. And sometimes it's a time-dependent thing on what they can allow for. But I have, at the moment, you, kind of council, last year for being very generous, as much as we can capacity-wise use at the moment. Part of that is we did get an AFG grant, so that was half a million dollars to go to our training. Kind of council last year was able to dump some money in our budget last second. Chief Pat Springer is working 900 hours a week 100 hours a week to just get all those training going or whatever. It's not that I don't think we could do more training. I think there's capacity in our personnel to be better at what they do, but I don't think my training bureau is big enough to roll out any more training than they currently are. So if we were to talk about rolling out new training programs, what I really need is more people in the training section itself to be able to give that training. We've long talked about, one of the problems of the 4-A-Fired Department when I became chief has been that we did an amazing job of training recruits. We have great recruit training. And then it just dies, like the stops Right, so you get a year of training and then for 25 years. It's like read a book and Hopefully the guy above you who was in your position before you trained you a little bit before you got promoted There was never really a great deal of training on becoming a driver or a captain or a battalion chief It was a lot of pretty, you know, respectable, previous ranked personnel had taken the time to write guides and books and, you know, put all their notes together and binders, but the department never really brought people back in for officer training or you're going to do an officer training for a month or things like that because over time capacity and a variety of other things. It isn't to say that the Hawaii Fire Department couldn't do more and do a better job on the training side of stuff, but with a number of personal I have in training, every single one of them is working their butt off and doing an amazing job. If we were to do more, we'd need more. I, you know, as well see I need more people in there. And the long-term goal would be to have, you know, a portion of that training section focus in on the recruits side, but a portion of that section, which we've never really established, whose only purpose is to take training out to the field. And I have this vision, this magical vision where, you know, we have a flatbed, you know, tow truck and we go over to Kansas where like we want an old car We just take this car and we drop it off at a fire station and the fire station has an area in their fire yard Where the three shifts can come out and they each just take a third of the car and they can do practice their skills and guys drive out to like say hey Or remember we're gonna use here avoid the pinch points. We wanted a column then be column We want to cut low, we want to cut high, except when it's the electrical vehicles and we do the repetitive training. And the ability to do training on-site with our personnel at the station is the ideal, to be able to bring the training to them because the problem lies is if I ask them to do that training on their own, they got to take everything off the truck and then if we get a gun I want one call. Then they got to scramble and start throwing all their equipment and everything else back on the vehicle. So the idea would be to bring out a truck that's part of our training vehicle and maybe I bought a stock truck that will be working in training. They will have a full set of equipment. But you bring this thing out to the site and then they can actually use all of our training equipment and if everything goes on, they just stop, they put everything down, they walk into their truck, which is fully ready to go and then they go. And we are not impacting that 911 services without maybe hitting the budget super hard and over time. And so that would be the ideal dream that I have as a chief. But again, that's a capacity issue. Everything I think that is as possible to do in terms of a chief's Springer is being done and and then there's some extra on top of that. He's doing an amazing job. But yes, if you would like to somehow give me more, we will do more. I promise you that. Thank you Chief. The last question I had, you know, I'm grateful for, I think we're all very grateful. I'm the community's very grateful for the support of the Sarah Foundation, amazing equipment that's, you know, given to the county in particular departments. And just thinking of, as we receive these amazing pieces of equipment, helicopters, what more can we do to prolong their lifespan? We have for the one at station 14, it sits out in the marine air and the sun. And I've probably thought about this, and we've talked about it a little bit over time, but you know that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that, so you're thinking about it. That's the hanger that we're, at least the temporary, temp one is already in progress. I believe the sails are already purchasing it and Neil, lots of veto and our personnel are already committed to getting that installed and put up there. So that is already in progress. That said, it is a tarp tent, and it would be good long term to really consider these things in terms of other facilities and whatnot. Again, it has to be balanced with the county's other needs in terms of like wastewater or parks and rec and things like that. But definitely, my honest opinion is that every fire station should probably just have a 3,000 square foot warehouse in the back of it. They're at an extra vehicle or just hold stuff because it is amazing how much how small these fire stations were back in the day and I'm like if you go to the like the South Gohawala fire station yeah like you know the garage bays are filled with equipment but if you go behind it there's more equipment you know right because really when we when we talk about like and as a fire chief when I talk about how we as a fire department are going to prepare for the next line of what I need is the capacity to be able to just throw everything that we can possibly get on the road and shove it in that district and have personnel use the instant command systems and nims to make it work. But The first step is to have like those brush trucks, those off-road tankers, as well as the normal fire trucks and ambulances. And so we built a lot of our fire stations with not enough space to store the things we have. And nowadays we actually want to have vehicles that aren't staffed on a daily base but are sitting in the back of the station. So that when I have a red flag and we're like, oh, the weather's going to be bad and if something starts, it could grow rapidly. That I bring, you know, staffing back to 150%. So I'd basically hold over half a shift. Right. And I say, hey, you guys are just going to sit and wait. And if we get a brush fire, you're on the brush truck and you're on the off road tanker and they become staff vehicles for the day while we're running into these severe weather issues. You know when we we talk about August 8th we had seven fire starts that day. Three of them were down and we cranked those real quick, didn't really go anywhere but four of them started in Kohala region, two of them combined and run a Machuana area, became a big one that took out one of the warehouses and two bridges. One was in Kuala Ransh and one was up Walla-Mila farm lots in Waimea area. We have activated five communities that day and I had 58 units fighting fire between our department, Department of Forestry and Wildlife, PTA, and the National Park Service on scene. Comparative to Lake Lahaina, which had six units. So you can see the benefit we get from our volunteers from having extra equipment, you know, maintained and in good condition behind our stations and everything else is critical for our ability to scale and address the issues that come up on our island. But like the chopper is sitting on the sun right now, I have a lot of stuff where, you know, just not a lot of room to keep it sometimes. We've been at least in that area we've been very generous with our donors bringing in new brush trucks and new off road tankers and things like that and so it is not the only station. We've been working on some external tents to you know kind of come off of the building to park some of our personnel or our equipment under. Thank you chief chief. I appreciate your tough of knowledge. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Councillor Mabrabeges. Yes. Aloha. Thank you for being here. We've come a long way in the last few years from when you became chief and the, you know, the presentation that you gave us that in detail outlined the deficiencies you were working with from staffing to equipment to budget to all that stuff. So I'm glad to see us moving in the right direction. Huge Mahalo to the SAIR Foundation for all that they do to provide those pivotal resources. I just have a quick question about the tower at Kohaneiki and the status of that. I know there were some delays because of the manufacturing. I wondered if you remembered and if we had a... June. June? We're expecting a delivery engine. Okay, great. And then the tower will go up and our staffing will start. Fantastic. Well, I'd love to work together to do something special with Councilmember Inaba. That's seeing and get some going. Yes, yes. We were disappointed that it won't be there for Kakey Surf in two weeks, but totally understand and really appreciate your team. If we got any stuff going on where, because I have the staff, we already hired the staff, but we just have them kind of, you know, other places. If we need them there for an event or something like that, that is you're aware of, let us So we'll bring personnel in for the day to handle that issue. Okay, I'll reach out to you on that. We do have volunteer dads that do water patrol that day and so far and we've had a wonderful doctor that came down and last year a child actually needed stitches and the doctor did it right on the beach which was... Wow Wow. I know, right? Yeah. Shhh. If that wasn't supposed to be said, it never happened. I don't know. Anyway, community filling in the gaps when they need to be filled in for the ultimate health and safety of community. But just really looking forward to, and I'm forgetting all of a sudden the name of your lifeguard captain in Kona. Rick Yelvarez? Ricki. Yes big shout out to Ricki. He also continues to advocate for lifeguards at Waiaha, Honolz and that's something I firmly believe in and would love to see happen. That's our kind of urban surf spot beach area in Central Kona. Yeah, you should find that group of like nine people that like approves the budget and get them to like, no, no, but definitely the Hawaii Fire Department would be in support of that as well. We do think there's quite a few problems. There's quite a few beaches that people end up going to and that they get in trouble with. But we don't have the staffing and we don't have the towers there. Gotcha. Maybe one at a time we can start with some of the towers that we have that we are not fully staffing and each year go a little bit farther forward. That'd be wonderful. Well, this placement of a tower at Kohanaiki is long in the coming, and our whole community is wildly grateful for that. And so really excited to have that there. Yeah, thank you. That's it for me today. I yield. Thank you. How's the American Goets? Thank you, Chair. Thank you Thank you for one for the you know really great presentation. I think I started on the council when you were Faso so it's been really wonderful to kind of see your leadership journey and I also just want to say that when you're unable to be a council to present to us on various matters, Chief Fulby is a really, really excellent stand and I continue to be very impressed with his ability to just articulate the needs of the department and fill in for you. So I just, I haven't been able to tell you that, so thank you. And I see. I'll put it in his part. And then I see Mr. Henderson in the back there. So shout out to Roy and Tyson over at Prevention and Outreach. You guys are doing a phenomenal job kind of communicating about the department on social media. All of that is incredibly helpful and useful so that folks can see what's happening behind the scenes. I take a moment to share every year that our Fire Department is very special in that we have a couple of functions. Our folks are trained up to be firefighters and EMTs and paramedics. This is not the case in other counties and so we've got double duty on each of our personnel and that's that's huge. They've got a lot of work to do and a lot of ground to cover here. Also full disclosure my significant other is a firefighter. You probably met him, council member Onishi when you visited the KAL fire station because he has stationed there. So thank you for being an advocate for a new facility there. Chief, I hope you're not going to lose hope in a cold-ocated facility for fire and police and that training complex of the Pacific that you were talking to us about a couple of budget years ago given the position your brother is in and the state legislatures I think there could be some state support to help begin to at least start designing what that could look like. I'm all for it. So as I've discussed, but for the new members, I think one of the best things the county could have in terms of public safety is a combined training facility for both police and fire. And the reason is is you know, when you hire these recruits and they come in at the same time, they're gonna work 25, 30 years together and being able to respond to a scene and you walk over and you're like, hey, hey, man, it's been a while. All right, what do we got? Let's go. And that trust and camaraderie built at the beginning of the career pays dividends for decades. And so one of my goals has been to try and bridge gaps between us and the police department and really, really improve the service that we give to the public. So I honestly think chaos sort of that, at this point, kind of that center point between you know, your volcano, your Puna and your helo sides where a lot of things are coming into that section. So I think it's an ideal location. That said, I also, I think we originally started talking about that before I found out the wastewater plant was going to cost a billion dollars. So I do have some of my hopestached, right? But relatively, if we can make it work, if the state can help and maybe we can get some federal money or things like that, I am all for it. I think it'd be an amazing location. And I do think our fire station, police station need to move on the other side. I'd like it on the park side, just so that we can run around the track, maybe play some hopes with the kids if we're not getting a call. Maybe involved in the public, right? I think that's an amazing option there, but that's just me. I know that very, they, being off medical center center that group is exploring health facilities in the Cal region and so I just put that on the table because if if something is going to happen in the health care space right they're obviously going to bring in the wastewater infrastructure that's needed this could be a great opportunity to start thinking about planning for the builds out of what you're talking about. You know, I just want to spend another minute speaking to the critical need of expanding the, I don't even want to call it a fire station, like a firehouse in Hawaiian Paradise Park because it's literally a house. And so we could maybe get together with Chief Chadwick and the Building Division to really, and the mayor, let's bring in the mayor because he's able to untangle a lot of things, we've got to move on this. This has been a priority since I've been on the council and all of your predecessors have talked about this is a priority that we need to get done because HPP is really a growing community. So I'd love your continued work and commitment to make that happen. You have my 100% commitment behind that. Yeah, it needs to happen. Excellent, thank you. You've been tracking what's happening nationally, globally in relation to tariffs. And I bring this up because a portion of your budget is to this dedicated to updating HFD's apparatus. And I wonder is what you have proposed there, sufficient or do we need to think about increasing? I'm not, and I'm sorry, I don't know if the apparatus are manufactured here in America, but I'm assuming that some of the parts are fabricated in other countries, if additional tariffs are gonna be applied. I just, I worry about your inability to now procure these critical tools that your folks need because we don't have the money in the budget. So just something to think about, we have the May budget coming down in a month and a half or not even a month and a half in a couple weeks, sorry. I've lost all track of time. I can't believe it's already April. But think about it because I don't know if there's enough there. I love money. I should mention that. You know, anyone that wants to give me money, I'm going to say yes. I don't know as the answer, right? Who knows how these tariffs affect things? I worry. So when we really think about this, when I was Faso and when I was involved in ordering a truck for Pohoha fire station back in the day, and I was writing the CDVD grant, the fire truck for 450,000. They are over a million dollars and that is in my career alone. We've seen the price more than double. I do worry that the tariffs are going to jack up the price but I don't know what that price is going to be and it gets worse than that, you know, when would we even get the vehicle? I don't know. I know they do build them here in America and they're made out of aluminum for the most part. So the aluminum sky rockets, you can expect fire trucks to get faster and more expensive. One of the issues that we saw and COVID went from $600,000 to over a million dollars in fire truck costs partially because COVID wiped out companies, You know, the companies that were out there producing certain parts just vanished overnight. They couldn't survive the storm, so to speak. They didn't have the ability to keep people employed while they had to shut down their factories. And so they went belly up. And then you ended up with other changes that kicked in in terms of the transmissions where the transmission is doubled or tripled in price and those have been passed on to consumer and so because of that it has just gotten pretty pretty pricey. Yeah, hard to say, I've been tracking the stock market the last couple of days and watching that. So definitely I'm open to it. Perhaps maybe things just have to be considered with the finance department and like, how do we sequester a couple million bucks? We're for all departments to maybe reach into it if they need to because vehicle prices come in drastically more expensive or something. But a good contingency fund. Maybe. Yeah, something like that. Dr. Nakagawa, let's talk about how we might be able to put something like that together, at least just for this particular fiscal year. You know, Chief, there was an unfortunate drowning in my district last year, the drowning incident. I'm curious what steps your department has taken to outfit the various stations with equipment, location devices that could be deployed in these kinds of incidences. I know that we have fire rescue specialists that are trained in saving lives in these particular situations. But, you know, after that event, folks from the station reached out to me just hoping for some things, some kind of tool equipment, additional training or whatever. So I'm wondering if any progress has been made on that and if there's anything that we can do during budget to provide you with additional resources, so that your folks are trains but also for instance floatation devices are where they need to be in the event that fire can't be deployed. There's a member of the public that can help save a life. So the floatation device from the public, we hadn't looked into it. We'd look at some kind of like air powered, you know, where I could shoot a thing that would, you know, inflate once they hit the water. And we were looking at some of those to order. Um, interestingly enough, um, we have a dolphin three, which if you Google, um, it's very cool looking. It's, I don't even know how to, it is like a remote controlled life-saving raft boat or whatever. And honestly, we just received it the other week and we're probably going to be running some tests on that. And that was, that particular call was one of the impetus for us to move forward and try to find solutions, Whether it be choppers, we were looking at that third chopper. The sailors are bringing in as a possible solution in terms of night vision goggles. Because our ability to fly when the ceiling is low at nighttime basically disappears because we don't have the ability to fly by instrument only. Because our personnel aren't certified for night vision and instrument only flight at night where they can't see where they're going. So those are kind of the things we've been looking at as a possibility as well as some of the things that we can launch from the cliff. We're still working on some of those options but the newest one is at Dolphin 3 and yes we're still continuing on that. I don't know that we need anything special on the budget or anything else like that. We have additional, we have funding in our budget to manage those things. It's mostly been a conversation about how do we deploy, what kind of training, you know, it is a little bit more complicated because how many stations are we into and how do we train the personnel to use it, when do they use it, when don't they use it. A lot of those questions have come up, but we are continuing along the path to get that handled. I know it's complicated, but thank you for helping to move this along. It's very important to community. Just a couple more questions. I recall last year, and this is regarding recruitment and the need for more paramedics, so that we're running ALS and not BLS, right? Correct. And then I believe you were offering paramedics the opportunity to become firefighters. Has that program been successful? So we created a new class of recruit was basically what it was. And so when I talked earlier about how it said 620 positions, but it's not actually 620, that's because we have these like temp numbers that people go into that are not funded. There has to be a big composition elsewhere. So we use two numbers for the same position essentially while they're a recruit. And then if they finish the recruit, then they get a permanent position. But we have 10 of those positions that are dedicated to this Fire EMS recruit. And it's not intended for them to necessarily become firefighters. They don't actually ever go into the firefighter class directly. Instead they go fire EMS for gluten, they go into the fire medical specialist one class. But last year we hired one person. Part of the problem is that they're, you know, we have that state funding in the county funding and the state funding, those positions when they're vacant, we can use that to hire those fire a mess recruits. We had one guy from last year's class and we have almost filled up our paramedic slots as part of the problem. We've done a very well chief hunt is done an amazing job over the last couple of years of just pushing enough guys through the classes that were pretty good. We have a class of four right now and I think we have three vacancies. So when they finish this class, we'll have zero. Now that said, we also have promotions and other stuff so we we constantly run back and forward with it, but considering there's 48 paramedics slots, having only three vacancies is very good for the most part, right? We're talking like 7% or something like that, vacancy rate on our paramedic side. And we have four people in class that should be matriculating out shortly. That said, we do have one in our current recruitment process going through for that position, and there's a very good chance we will hire them this round, and we'll see how that goes. It's continuing to evolve, but that person is actually a paramedic, and then we basically bring them on, check their paramedic skills, and then run them through the fire training so that they're also certified as a firefighter, and then put them on a medic to work there, but but you're still able to help us out when we do run fire. Great, thanks for the update on that. Last question and I don't even know if it's appropriate to be asking you this but help me out here. Punas, a rural community, kausa rural community, we lack water infrastructure in the form of fire hydrants and I just think about the increase in fires across our communities. And so I wonder in addition to fire, do we need to be bringing in public works, water supply, to think about a strategy to go after some funding and deploy fire hydrants in communities? I know we have tanker trucks, they're wonderful, but I would love for there to be more fire hydrants in our rural communities. 100% support. Generally speaking, tankers are great, but they also require us to hire more people and then shut a water and do all kinds of other stuff to just keep water flowing onto the fires that we're at. No, there's a mixture of things, right? When we're talking like a structure fire, single house is burning and everything else, having a hydrant is the best thing ever. Allows us to get in, put water on it, and then extinguish that fire. When we start talking about like Lahaina fires, California, Marshall fire, paradise, there's no infrastructure in the world it's going to keep up with the kind of burn rate that those high wind driven fires are burning through. The pipes are not big enough. They're just not enough water to even be able to do anything about that really comes back to prepping the homes ahead of time and having our fire breaks and doing a better job on that side. So it's the pre-work that is going to matter more in the long run on that kind of stuff. But the hydrants would not hurt. So definitely I think you know the Paradise Pike Forest fire station has a hydrant and the reason it has a hydrant was because during the time that we decided to put that station down there they decided to bring the hydrant and do the work as part of that process and got grant money to make that happen. I honestly think Paradise Park, for example, would benefit by bringing hydrants at least down the main roads all the way down to the bottom. And while that wouldn't allow the entire community to hook up because there's, you'd need some really big lines to make that work, at least you'd have the ability for fire suppression not to fly all the way back up to the fire station to get water to come back down and continue fighting a fire. And that could save homes and that could service the community. It said there's, man, there's a lot, you know, from foreign forest, to Eden Rock, to, you know, have a dozen other communities that do not have that water infrastructure in place and digging down into the soil's expensive. So while the whole way fire department under thinks that it is the best idea ever to have hydrants all over the place, I understand there's just definitely financial limitations in making that happen. So yes, we would support it 100%. If it can be done, we think it's good. We'd provide support letters in that. Okay, I will follow up with you and it's appropriate to loop in water supply and public works. Sure. Wonderful. Thank you. I. I appreciate a lot of to chair Eald. Thank you. Councilmember, go to your order. Thank you chair. Thank you chiefs for being here. Just one thing I want to ask about Central Fire. What's the status on where you guys are right now? I think we're doing our blessing for our new facility on the 24th. 24th? 20 something. And moving in then? And the plan is to move in shortly thereafter. We're waiting on spectrum for internet connection so we can have some of our data lines coming in for radio and a variety of other things so that our personnel are able to do the work that they need to do. Okay, so end of the month. End of the month. That is our goal. Okay, great. I see that for CIP, number one is the Central Fire Station, Reroof Sealing, Host Tower Repair, Plaster Repair Paint. What, once you do that, what, what does that, are you going to be going back there? We, we need to look at some of the other things inside that facility, make sure it is safe for our personnel. And I think that's an ongoing dialogue with DPW. One of the major issues I had was the spalling concrete. So the first step is get our personnel out and then bring in some of the work that needs to be done and make make safe Long-term I don't believe Central Fire Station is a long-term good station to be in You know the electrical without a complete regut The building itself has its own faults But the problem lies in that the building is still within the tsunami and a nation area And it's not built for modern vehicles or size. And so our long-term goal if it is up to the fire department would be to potentially make it into like a training station. But that requires a new central fire station. We have two locations up the hill. One is four acres of land that has been turned over to us by the states that we can use to establish a new central fire station. And then the other one is a little bit lower. So we're looking at some different possibilities to put it up above the hill where we're not going to have to worry about a tsunami coming in and wiping out the station. You know, when I became shaved, it had been a project to come in and kind of, you know, do some work on the station. And I, they're the concept is we needed to band a central fire station, fix all the major problems. And then it'll be good for another hundred years. And my concern was one, I thought the scope was vastly underestimating the problems with our concrete. And then two, I didn't see the point in dumping so much money into a station that one tsunami is going to come and wipe out. I still vividly remember working when the Japan tsunami kicked off and was watching the Japan tsunami and then immediately being in central station and ripping computers out of the wall and throwing in our fire trucks and grabbing everything we could possibly grab on the station and taking it up to Hill and sitting in the cemetery at night waiting for this tsunami to come and wipe out our station in most of downtown. And I'm just like, we, I can't have a critical facility sitting in a location where we could just lose it one day like that, right? So I don't mind using it for administrative offices, for some training, other facilities. We have work that we can do out of the facility and we'd like to maintain it and keep it in a safe condition. But in the long run, you know, I am looking to have, we have some congressional requests in to try and get funding to do design of a new Central Fire Station, and we're looking at some locations just up the hill, which would allow us to be central to town, but out of this one on the inundation area, that's our long-term plan. Well, it sounds like we have lots of needs in the county government for space, so it can be used for something that we need it for. be good. I guess I'm a little wondering if this amount of work is going to get to a place where somebody can be in there happily and safely. And maybe that's not a question for you. Maybe it's a question for DPW or finance, but yeah, so yeah, I'm glad to see that the work is, but it is number one. So to me that says it's a top priority, but what it will be used for. I'm very interested to know. You know, definitely you've got to see what happens with the work that has to be done for the building. Whether my personal feel is safe and worth a lot of being there, we've got to look at some response times and figure things out. But definitely we're team players and open to figuring things out. you have any ideas and whatnot Fire Department is always available to try figure stuff out One of the thoughts have been that you know should we move back in and open up the new model place that we're you know Going to be in that also opens that place because we have a lease there for use with for the county for other reasons Right, so either way I think there's some potential there for things going on. Okay, I'll follow it with D.T.W. Thank you so much. Thank you. Council. Is there any use this? Thanks, sir. Just last question. I'm going back to some of the training and hands-on experience. And we've spoken a little about this and you've presented into the white little community about controlled burns, prescribed burns, and kind of capacity to do that within the departments and going forward. And if you have that, what sort of additional support you need from our state partners or other training apparatus that you need for that? For the assurance for the community and for your staff. Yeah, so we, I did reach out. Wackelor land is open to the concept. And I just recently reached out back to me and by email a few days ago. At this point, getting our personnel trained up and ready and dealing with the variety of paperwork and studies. I do not have personal on staff that have the expertise. And so we're exploring that concept and reaching out to our partners to see in terms of, you know, what exactly does that look like? How many people do we need and what kind of training or what kind of experts do we want to fly in and things like that? But it is on the list of things definitely as we've discussed. It's one of those areas I'm looking to build some capacity in. And I think there's a distinct benefit to maybe doing one of these right before we work into the peak of our fire season around communities and just kind of, you know, safeguarding our communities with a nice area that has already been burned off. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate that. Yep. Thank you. Any way. Okay Chief. Thank you for the overview so far. Brush truck for Hawaiian acres from your CDBG account from last year. Where is it? I was up there the other day and I didn't see it. There was some discussion about where it is, where it was, or it isn't. So, on brush trucks, we are waiting on see we have a brush truck for 11 alpha 11 delta eight alpha one alpha 11 Charlie brush truck 17 5 Charlie 11, and 5 on order right now. And we're just waiting for them to arrive. Which two and a half years ago, three years ago, maybe three and a half years ago, I started these, some of these are order from 2023 and then we'll provide our latest version of our Fire Department replacement plan on the fourth page is a list of every vehicle that's on order and just, that's gonna come, we're just waiting on delivery basically. IFBs were cut over two years ago for many of these things. One truck for the Ocean View volunteer fire station has arrived and that is the first brush track that arrived. If you have a lot of money and you show up at like one of these dealerships and you just like I'll take that, you can get a faster apparently and a rich guy in Kona has gotten a couple of those for us. But when you go to the county procurement system and you tell them we want the vehicle an ex number of time and they say we'll get a few in two years and that's the only bit, we'll take it and then literally it shows up almost on that two-year point. So... the vehicle an X number of time and they say we'll get a few in two years and that's the only bid we'll we take it and then literally it shows up almost on that two-year point so most things right now for your region are just waiting but we have a lot of stuff in order okay so ordered ordered and expected someday I bet that each and depending on which one some of them are coming faster, some of them are coming slower. I would estimate in the next six months we're going to see someone need to drop in. How is the roof at the police and fire station and police station because they share a roof in KL right now. It's a roof. It's, we, we, we, no joke, we do have catchment underneath the light bulbs to catch the water and then we have a hose that puts that into a trash can because when it rains, the building, the building, our office, our computer office where we do our records was a hallway that they put some doors on. It wasn't designed with this intent of being a actual room that people were doing work in. It was a hallway that we put a wall on either side and the roof happened to end above the hallway and it does not exactly work particularly well when it's particularly raining a lot and so it just leaks water. I don't know what you want to tell you. It's pretty bad. It's good. I just want you to say that. Thank you. I appreciate that. I've been there. I've seen it. I've had numerous calls. Yeah, it rains inside. Yeah, we just have a brother's when we do our computer work. but that's where our folks from the county do their job. I agree. So I looked over your CIP list and I saw that the police and fire station for a cow. I wasn't listed on the CIP list, but it was the police and fire station, which we've touched on numerous times in the past 45 minutes to an hour, has been dropped to priority number 12 and replaced by numerous projects. So it even reflects different roofing needs across the county, but not care all police or fire station. My understanding with the KL Police Fire Station roof issue is it's not that the roof itself needs like a new roof. The problem lies in the design of the building. So the roof comes in and it's got the gutter and the water and the gutter fills up to the point where it goes back up underneath the flashing and then drips down into the roof area. The complete redesign of that building would be necessary in order to solve the issue. And the problem lies in that building. We don't technically own it. We're leasing it because it is Shipman's property and everything else. And so I think the long-term consensus, and the other year, our number run priority when we were pushing for that KL police fire station. It was the number one CIP priority for the fire department and police department. We agreed to kind of do that. Since then, it's just seemed like we had to dump all that money into the other wastewater project and so I do have other roofs that are literally falling off the building and that have sent personnel in my department potentially to the hospital. I cannot pursue say that there's a direct correlation that my personnel was sick because of that issue, but we did have an issue at the YKF fire station where our sports count for fungus on mold got up over 150,000 sports, which is about 145,000 above where it is considered healthy. So it was a little bit high. And I'm not saying Kiaos is necessarily better but we are doing environmental testing and we're going out with our facility and making sure that nothing is popping up. But I don't know that throwing a new roof on that facility is going to solve the problem. If we could maybe redesign it a little bit or something like that, I think that is more likely. Or if they just came in a rhino line, everything on top of the roof to the point where nothing, none of the water could come back up under the flashing. That could potentially do it, maybe. But yeah, as the building at the problem isn't the roof is bad. The problem is is that roof is badly designed. It's just not built. It was a hallway and they're just like, oh yeah, it'll be fine. Turn it into an office and like, you know, if you go outside of your house where your gutters are, it doesn't always stay in the gutter. It kind of leaks a little bit and that's our problem is our offices right below the gutters. So I don't know that there's a solution. But I'm also not an architect and maybe someone from DPW could reexamine the situation and give me a different answer. That was just the answer I was told the last time I asked like why can't we fix this? So that's that's where we were. But I would be and I would endorse that anything that makes the life of my firefighters a little bit safer and more comfortable, 100% endorsed. If there is a way to fix that roof, I am 100% for it. But I'm not the expert. We'll talk about it with C.P.W. I'm not an expert either. What concerns me, chief, is that it was prioritized, I think is the highest priority for two different apartments. As I looked over to CIP list, I noticed it been dropped to number 12. That is concerning. As we look to address other projects across the districts of all the county, and understanding we each have needs, that is concerning to see it drop to the bottom of the list as we discuss it being a problem as we discuss it being an unsafe work environment and we don't even look to the possibility of looking at the project as going to design and planning phase we just drop it to the bottom of the list and say everything else is more important on that is concerning. I don't disagree with you on that bus. Okay. I appreciate that. Just in looking at other departments, we're currently paying 132,000 a year for the Shipman Warehouse for police and fire to rent that space. What shipman warehouse? It's the Shipman warehouse that we're using for both police and fire. I think it's a storage facility. So we have an ability to cross collaborate. Not aware of any warehouse in the shipment. But if there is a warehouse, the fire department is also paying for. I would love to know more about this facility. If you look in the finance department budget, under 338 rent of land and buildings and offices, you have the Shipman Warehouse number five, police slash fire to 132,000 a year. So we have other facilities that we use for the departments that we're paying for each year. And as I look down this long list of how to make us better in the future, and we start to consolidate our departments into new projects that we pay for, that we stop leasing land for and leasing buildings for, like we look at Central Fire Station and discuss how to fix while we think about how to build new. Same thing applies in KL. I'm done thinking about the roof. It needs to be fixed, that's for sure, so stop leaking out our guys. But we also need to look more alongside it and say, a new facility needs to be built based on population, calls for service, every aspect of what we do for public safety and not deprioritize it to the bottom of the list and say there's other things that are more important even though recognizing it is an issue that doesn't add up to me so I heard it touched on a number of times today but I didn't hear anything real about how we're going to address Puna as a whole. And that bugged me so. Thank you for listening. I, I, uh, 100% agree with you as definitely a designer. I can do to help let me know and we'll reach out afterwards to talk about more. I think the help would be when we come in with our draft tool that we think about how we prioritize what we're building where we're building how we're looking at long-term costs How we look to address that as a county properly used count and funding so we're not blowing dollars To look at our project. They should have been done a long time ago You know, so draft two of the budget and the CIP this would be a great space to look at how we can address it. Beautiful. Well, last question for you looking at the way we look at life cards, is who is counting beach attendance in the numbers that are in your programmatic reveal? We have a system that our life cards are counting and it's not... Also, there's interventions that they do and there's also beach attendance. And so that is our life cards counting the approximate numbers at different times of the day. And then they noted into our system and that pops out our number. Okay. That's helpful. Look at that. It gives us numbers, it gives us attendance. It may not be over. I would love to say it is super accurate, but I mean, when you look at the crowd, you're like, eeeeee, 50, you know, like I'm not 100% sure that it wasn't like 42, and then you do that over 365 days. It is a, I would say it is a decent estimate of like kind of how busy our beaches are. note, some of those beaches is hard for us to get good numbers, like Lely Eevee or things like that where we just don't have life cards in a regular base. I would say it is a decent estimate of how busy our beaches are. Some of those beaches are hard for us to get good numbers like Lely Evie or things like that where we just don't have life cards on a regular basis or even some of the beaches in Hilo where we only staff during the weekends. But we do the best we can within our systems. Definitely long term, it would be nice to get some kind of an auto pack counter system. Blue my mind when they're like every time they talk to the 42 people or 50 people around the beach they counted that as 50 interventions and I'm like see did 7 billion interventions last year. So that's you know divided by 365. Like you're only a hundred million people a day you talk to or something is that correct? Yeah Chief. So I with a grain of salt, but it does give some decent numbers for us to look at in terms of what's going on with our beaches. And, and I think helps us point to where we put life cards and what's needed. That, that I found really helpful. You know, definitely, like when we talk about some of our other beaches like Hanna or out in KonaSide, where we have numerous speeches, we just don't even have any people and there's people surfing and things happen and we don't have stats and we don't know what happened until, you know, and it's hard for us sometimes to even pull the data because they'll self-extricate and take that person up, you know, who is injured or things like that. So it's the only records are up at the hospital, right? So definitely the things we don't know are also a problem potentially, but yeah We think having a life-coded every beach Seven days a week is you know service to the public that would be a good thing to have Thank you chief Appreciate it. Thank you. Definitely Council Good to go. Okay. Thank you very much department of fire. Appreciate you guys Next department will be the civil defense agency to the council. Do you want to brief this? OK, no, let's keep going. Civil defense agency will be up next. Next. to the body. We are in recess for a few minutes while we reset back from recess. Our next department is a civil defense agency. Thank you for being here today. Director and Deputy, please introduce yourselves and then proceed with your presentation. And I will go to questions. Thank you. Good afternoon, Council. Tell Ms. Magnau, civil defense administrator. Good afternoon. I'm Barry Proyert, civil defense administrative officer Officer. And we have Bliscotto Administrative Services Assistant to help us out. Our budget continues to grow. There's some changes in programs, so you kind of see those adjustments that we had to make. But nevertheless, it still keeps us in the mode of responding and being able to fulfill our mission as far as readiness and preparation in the community. I think Barry's put together a good program here that he'll go over and we'll kind of tag team it as we go through this. You know, we've tried to keep it so that, you know, we understand what the county situation is with the big projects. So we have not pushed through, you know, any new things that would deter some of the projects that are going on in the county. So with that, I'll turn it over to Barry to start the program. Thank you. Good afternoon. If you see on this slide our overview for objectives for fiscal year 26, not a whole lot's changed for us. We have our community prep fairs that we've been budgeting for the last couple of years and we're seeing up to a thousand people at the last two events. So we think they've been successful. Keith, the thing is the second item here. We're establishing the auxiliary communications network. We have an auxiliary communications plan, which is based on amateur radio repeaters around the island where we haven't put the infrastructure out there. That's what we intend to do in this fiscal year with establishing that auxiliary communications network. For public information and warning, we do provide all the public information and warning for the county. We are not the experts. We do rely on the National Weather Service, Hawaiian Vocans, Berserbatory. But we do maintain the system that is used the mass notification system that is done for public information and warning. We also have access to the iPause, the Integrated Public Alert Warning System, where we can do television, radio, and mobile phones. We're getting a new partner in that goal this year, or this fiscal year, police department will become a part of our mass notification system. They will have a separate grouping, but they will be a part of the system and the whole budget is coming out of our payments coming out of our budget. The Alternate Emergency Operations Center in West Hawaii, another goal, where in the process is doing that now, but we have a facility, one of our requirements is to be robust, so we need to be able to operate if something were to happen at Hilo-Yoc. And we also, you know, it's a big island. Sometimes things happen on the west side and you need to be over there to manage them. So we're in the process of establishing that. We should finish that out in the next fiscal year. The big ticket item for us, you'll see, is the LMR system, land mobile radio system. system. That's important to us. It's 75% of our operational budget, our ROC budget. But that is the emergency communications. That's police dispatch to police officers. That's fire dispatch to fire officers. That's public works communicating when they're out in the field operating. It is the emergency communication system and the working communication system for all of our first responders. And we maintain that. The next thing up, we do manage the Homeland Security Grants for the county. We get that money. It's a, we're a sub-recipient to the state. And each year we get anywhere from 600,000 to 1.2 million depending on what were projects we have going on. 35% of those funds go to the police department for any projects they need as far as preparedness projects. This is a preparedness grant. And the last thing in our objectives we're moving for in next year is we are responsible for coordinating response for type one type two and type three incidents. Don't have many type one occasionally we get a type two but we have a lot of type three incidents ago on meaning that more than one department is involved and the 20 to 30 people might be involved in the response. So that's where we're looking at as our program objectives for fiscal year 26. Not a whole lot of change from last year because a lot of what we do is repetitive which is a good thing because we get better at it. When we move into the highlights for this year, landmobile radio system, one big thing that happened the emergency call center, we have completed installation of all the radio equipment, the cores in there. It is operational and being used right now, even though the dispatchers are still located at police dispatch at the Kapigalani street and at fire us, fire central. But the equipment that's being processed and their calls is located in the emergency call center, it is active. For preparation fairs, this is a big thing. We get a lot of requests to come and speak at groups, you know, 20 or 30 people, which is important to us because it gets us out in the community. But there's only so many of us. So when it comes to being able to reach a larger audience, we focused on the prep affairs. In fact, we're partnering with, I'm going blank here. Revitalized Puna with Miss Kirkowitz for. We're having a preparation sphair in Pahoa. Big event. We budgeted it. We actually spend probably last one or the first one. We spent about $12,000. A lot of that was on giveaways and food for preparedness, but getting people to the fair and that so they can see what's happening, what they need to do. So that's something we wanna continue and expand out. We're looking at this year, we, again, we're doing what we did, Hilo, Waimea, now we're doing Pahoa and Kailua Kona's the next one. Well, I believe we plan on doing four smaller regional fairs going into the 27th fiscal year because we want to reach out into the smaller communities because people get upset when we only go to Cona and Hilo. Understandably so because they're important too. With the multi-hazard mitigation plan, we started the revision process in this fiscal year. That's a plan that is required for us to be eligible for mitigation grants. It's also required for the preparedness grants too. So for us to be eligible for the money we bring in we have to have a valid and updated plan. The plan expires September of 2025. We started the revision process last year, and it is currently waiting on the final chapter, chapter 16 to be finished. Once that is done, it's already been through the review process for 30 days. We will be submitting that to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency and a FEMA concurrently for their review. And so sometime in July, August, we'll be coming in front of you with the plan to have it adopted. With community engagement, we've been working a lot with vibrant Hawaii because that is where we need to get out into the communities. We're emergency response. We have more. We're a lot with vibrant Hawaii because that is where we need to get out into the communities. We're emergency response. We have many missions, actually five missions areas for us, but preparedness is the number one thing we can do for the community. And that's what the community engagement is all about. educate the public on what they need to do, how they're going to be warned by us, and then what actions or what services we can provide to them. So community engagement is going pretty well. Okay, updating this slide, you know, we've got 12 total staff members. It says one vacancy, we just made that selection and we'll have a start date of May 16th. So we'll be fully staffed, given us a little bit more capacity like very ready to, you know, We tried to do these preparedness fairs to take out to the communities. We've kind of extended ourselves because we do take on other assignments or requests for other events that people old with the additional community liaison, this will kind of allow us to do that so that we're not putting ourselves out so much that when it comes time to activate, we don't have adequate staff. But anyway, will we fully staffed here, come mid-May? And then that person will be stationed in Kona. So if we have to activate the West Side, you'll see that person will be the first staff in that office. Very. Thank you. So when you look at our fiscal year 26 budget, you'll see the salary and wages is pretty consistent. It's down slightly because we had a long term employee who was salary was higher than the person we're hiring. So it's slightly down but you know we're talking pennies there. In our OCE budget the $1473,000. used to be, that's more than our budget was when I started here. But that's expanded because of the land mobile radio system. Some of the reasons it's gone up right now is we've taken over the entire cost for the, the MPLS maintenance, the multi-protocol labeling system, which both the IT network and the radio system use in theory gives us an infinite path ways should something happen. But we pay all the maintenance on that now. We are getting a site inspections for our land mobile radio sites. We maintain the equipment very well. That's a million dollar contract paying for the maintenance on the equipment. The sites haven't been maintained as they should be for the most part. We're in the process of getting the contract in motion to be able to inspect the sites, determine what maintenance we need to do, and then start that maintenance so that we don't lose this valuable piece of equipment, this system. And electricity for a long time, the electricity cost have just gone way up for our landmobile radio tower sites. So our budget is $190,000, $193,000 actually going in a fiscal year 26, and not only serves 14 of our 19 sites that we actually own, the other five solar power with generator backup. So that's the main reason our OCE has ballooned up. It's a land mobile radio system. When we look at our grant match account, we have that in there. That primarily focuses on the EMPG grant. The EMPG is emergency management performance grant. We've been getting $25,000 a year, and that's for planning training and for staff personnel, or you can't buy equipment or anything with that. But we do that does require a 25% match whereas the Homeland Security Grant which we're slated to get 800,000. That's the ballpark. That's an estimate. It's a high-end estimate for what we're coming into next year. But the Homeland Security Grant is a preparedness grant, and there is no match to that currently. So that whatever we get, we spend and we don't have to match it. When we look at equipment, as usual, we've set aside money for the land mobile radio system, air conditioning systems. Our radio equipment doesn't like to get hot. And so the air conditioning systems are a valuable thing to us. We have that money sitting there to replace them because Hawaii is not, it's hard on air conditioning systems. We are also replacing 40 iPads that were purchased in 2018. We use these, well in 2018 we use them for screening and everything at the airports. But right now, they're loaded with our damage assessment forms in that we use them for damage assessment following an incident. And that's the way we gather the data and stuff, the old. They do need to be replaced. And so we've here marked money to go ahead and replace those. So that's what we're looking at in our budget, the major aspects of our budget. The priorities moving into fiscal year 26. Again, the auxiliary communications repeater network. I mentioned that we have a plan, auxiliary communications plan. We're going to put the repeaters out. Right now we've got six repeaters we're going to put out across the island to establish this network we have an existing repeater on top of monoclea which we turn on and we test every Friday when we test through the silence so we test that radio system out but we need to expand out the reach for that And that becomes important to us in the community preparedness and the private and public sector continuity of operations. Because that is the way we're going to start getting information into the EOC and disseminating information, develop, work out that system so that we get better information out in the community and they know where to get it because we're working with the hub systems. We're also working with organizations that aren't part of the hubs. We don't operate exclusively with the hubs. We work with any community. So the auxiliary communication system is going to be built out. That's probably our biggest thing we want to accomplish there. The preparedness fairs, that's most important to us because that's how we reach the community, the most people in the community. the land is to make sure that the community is very important to us. The preparedness fairs, that's most important to us because that's how we reach the community, the most people in the community. The land mobile radio system, maintenance repairs, I can't say enough. First responders communicate with it. It's very important for us to maintain it. We stay on that. And so it's very important. That's a priority for us. And with the public and private sector continuity of operations, that's what we're talking about with engaging in the community. And the big thing is with the auxiliary communications plan, bringing that together. So we get, we see the radar, it's supposedly raining in Kona. Okay, Kona, what's happening out there? Okay, we understand what's happening now. We have a better picture of what's happening. And we talk with the National Weather Service. And sometimes they'll change the alert status based on the information they're seeing because they're looking at a radar. They're looking at instruments. They don't have information what's actually happening on the ground. And so we're bringing all that together next year, This go your 26. Thank you. Thank you, minister. I'm just a administrator. Appreciate your time. I'll be chairing and presiding at this point until customer currently client builder comes back. Council members, do you have any questions for our civil defense agency at this time? Council member, only she. Please. Thank you,, Chair. I just wanna say your department is very important to this island, not only fire police, but also civil defense. So, to me, whatever you folks need, I'm there to support you guys, okay? Thank you. Council Members, thank you, Mr. Onishi. Ms. Kimball, please. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Council members. Thank you, Mr. Onishi. Ms. Kimball, please. Thank you. I just wanted to share some folks in my district in particular, really excited about the ex-celery network and the way that that is progressing. So just on behalf of the community members from District 1, Mahalo for the efforts, like, is there's a training coming up soon that's going to happen. So they're very excited that the way it's going. Oh, it was two weeks ago. OK, yeah, wonderful. I just wanted to ask, I recall it was either last budget session or the one before we were expecting a big price increase from Everbridge. It doesn't look like they liked it up too much. They changed their billing method and that's why police was paying three four hundred thousand dollars to just do their mix on messaging. When we put out our RFP, we asked Everbridge, we said, look, we like you. You're a good company. You're the best one we've used. But we still put out, hey, we need a lump sum payment and we can't do this credit system. We just can't afford that. And that was a ask, we didn't expect that to happen, but they came back with a slightly higher price, lump sum price without the credit system. So what we were anticipating a three, $400,000 bill, they came back with, it was just about 56, 57? Yes. Yeah. So we're adding police to that. It's just under $60,000. And police, that $300,000 bill they were paying, is gone now. Wonderful. That's excellent news. I know that was something I was really concerned about. So, after further research, what I found out, there's so much competition in that market that it's driving down the cost. Yeah, excellent. Well, thank you for pursuing that because I was really anxious about that bill coming to do because I think it's been part of the real progress I've seen since I've started in the communications coming out of both civil defense and fire and police and all of that I think that we're leaps and bounds above where we started just five years ago so thanks for all your efforts in the communication. Appreciate it. Thanks Chair. Thank you council member. Are you here? Consum of Urgolimba? Yes, just briefly. Just wanted to say, um, happy to work with you if you want to do a fair down in my district. Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Councillor Boeber. That'll be to plan in the next year where we do the four fears in the around the county. Police, Councilmember Kirkwoods. Thank you, Chair. Really appreciate partnering with your agency on a number of projects. I'm very excited about what we have planned for the July activation. I have a question about the funding that the Council approved. I think it was like a FEMA grant, a million dollars for your agency, just a couple of months back. Has that been called back? It has been. Okay, can we talk about that a little bit? Only because there was so much hope in us being able to move on a lot of community driven initiatives to increase resilience and just community connection and get folks, you know, with community level plans and Ohana plans and so with that funding no longer available, do we have a backup plan? So that particular plan that was kind of coming through the Department of Health, directed to the county, is on pause basically frozen to the point where there's no access to the system. So we don't know where that's going to go. As far as backup, you know, we'll kind of have to look at what the different projects were being proposed and then, you know, kind of see where our other grants might be to take those up. Okay. So go ahead, Barry. So you asked what other options are there? The State Civil Defense will actually is Department of Defense. They run an HR program and that's about community preparedness like storm ready, tsunami ready. It's a similar program run by the Department of Defense and it includes planning preparation and different things that were included or being looked at to be done with this million dollar grant which is was specifically targeted for rural communications. Okay so there are opportunities. And part of what we're building out the auxiliary communication system. So that also addresses what this million dollars would supposed are intended to address. Okay. I'll start off with your offices. I'd love to see if you guys have kind of prioritized each of the activities within that one million dollar grants because there's an opportunity to perhaps approach what a community foundation. They set up resilience funds for each of the different islands and for me getting communities prepared and you know creating emergency management plans, neighborhood regional level is really important and I think this is where we might be able to get just some additional funding to ensure that work happens. Yeah, if you could kind of facilitate that discussion, we'll be happy to meet with you and prioritize and see what kind of what prizes can go forward from that. Okay. Yeah. If you could push the button there. Yeah, the committee that was looking at all those funds, they have set out all the projects they wanted to do and prioritize them. So that list is available. We can send that to you. OK, great. Happy to facilitate the conversation. And then I asked this every year. You know the CACO app that that the last administration was able to have developed with. I think it is doing creesoo and the AIO group. There was an app developed for our county. I just wondered if you folks have, Kaha, I apologize, thank you. Councilmember Husses, the Kaha app. If that's something that you folks have taken a look at, I'm not saying to get rid of Everbridge. I just think that if we can increase the channels of communication so that no matter what you're subscribed to, Everbridge, the Cahaya app, you're getting communications from civil defense and other county agencies. Were you guys able to explore that? I believe the KAHIA app was pretty much taking our messages and putting it out to their followers. Okay. You know, I think we've taken other measures to reach out to folks like you guys to push out our messages as well. So off the follow-up to see if that is still active. Okay, fantastic. Thank you. And I also really appreciate working with Jesse. In your office, he's really wonderful with the communication and outreach. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I yield. Thank you, Councilmember. At this point, oh, you'll, the chair over to Mr. Carly Kleinfeld, if that's all right. Thank you very much. Good question. Perfect. Thank you, sir. Mr. Eugies, go ahead. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Smith. It's a administrator. Just a question on the repairs the facilities in the budget for the landmobile radio inspection at 150,000. Is that a contract to be sent out? That is a contract. We initially tried to get the contract last year, however the bids came in significantly higher. And so $150,000, hopefully that's going to be sufficient to do that contract. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. And I think the only other question I had for now is on one of the CIP requests is the new emergency operations center. And so if you could kind of just expand on that a little bit, you're asking for 500,000 at this point for the design and survey and what you're looking for as you explore in that route for increasing services, new facility and kind of really greater outreach and forward thinking. Right, and just to bring up the speed, we just had a couple of years ago, we finished renovation renovation to our ULC. So we've got all the equipment we need, but we are way undersized. For day-to-day operations, it's fine, but when we fully activate, we just don't have capacity in there. to the point where it impacts operations. And so to fully continue to be operational, we need more capacity. And so hopefully designing state of the art, something that looks at where we can put people, but still have staff, offices and conference rooms and so forth. Yeah, we just need something new, something modern. When we saw when we responded to the 22 Monteloi eruption, we were operating out of Kilka Military Reservation. So it was an interim office space. But then we had other county facilities, like Antisalleys, where we had the big meetings. That was, I think, optimal to have that kind of capacity. So we saw that experience compared to where we're now. And I guess the need for bigger space just is evident there. Thank you, administrator. One last question on kind of the program, the program success with the preparedness fairs. How many people in our communities have, you know, kind of just a rough attendance, approximate attendance have attended, have engaged in some capacity one way or another at these fairs over time. So we saw over the years that, you know, the successful ones probably get like a thousand people in elo. Though I may own what's pretty successful as well, but I look at it as twofold. We're taking the opportunity to engage with our partners as well so that we learn each other's capacities and interact with each other more plus get the community to come together. It's quite a bit a big effort. we've had some some community events where I was not too satisfied with the outcomes, but I think we've kind of got a recipe now that brings the folks in and so forth. So it's definitely worthwhile. It's something we got to continue. Get us to stop with our message. Absolutely. Thank you, Mesh. I appreciate that. It's a good opportunity for, as you mentioned, to connect with partners within the county, nonprofits, volunteer efforts, and when that's supporting each other and really good for the community. So thank you for doing that. Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Hello? No lights. Okay. Thank you very much, Administrator. Appreciate it. Thank you, Deputy Administrator. Appreciate your time. You guys are pretty simple and clean as a department. Appreciate what you do. Thank you. Okay, Council, our next department to join us is afternoon, our final department is afternoon is going to be human resources. We'll take a brief recess while they come in and set up the presentation. Thank you. Okay, we're back from recess. Joining us now is the Department of Human Resources. Director, go ahead when you're ready. Now introduce yourself and your deputy or your partner in crime today. Yes, we'll go to questions and your presentation and we'll go from there. Thank you. Okay, perfect. Hi, I'm Summer Tokie Hero, Director of Human Resources for the County of Hawaii. My deputy, Danny Patel, actually was called away for collective bargaining negotiation issue today so he wasn't able to be present but here with me is Diane Sadiasu, our administrative services officer for human resources. So I'll go ahead and provide our presentation. I know you folks have had a long day, so we'll try and make this quick. Program measures and outcomes, just summarizing our goals and objectives. So we completed 418 recruitment, referred 307 list of eligible applicants to departments for hiring, processed 264 positionary description reviews, and 271 reallocations for recruitment. So basically this is the work of HR. So I won't read through all of those, you have the slides. Our objectives for fiscal year 26 are to continue to provide names of qualified applicants to hiring departments for consideration, to provide timely advice and assistance to all county offices agencies and departments, identify personnel training needs and develop programs to enhance employee skills, negotiate wage adjustments, and hours and conditions of employment through the collective bargaining process, and then identify, reduce and eliminate unsafe and hazardous working conditions through our health and safety division. So our highlights from fiscal year 25, we continue in the development of the enterprise resource planning system, specifically the human capital management module, which is going to replace fresh, which is the system that we've been utilizing for the last 20 years. That's been a very labor intensive process for our staff. They are scheduled in meetings for various modules, basically Monday through Thursday for about six out of the eight hours a day. So has resulted in extra work being put upon them, making it difficult to get their regular work done when we try and manage that. But we're excited to see that come to fruition and see the human resources component launch on that. We developed and implemented a safety continuity tool for specific positions. So basically, positions that would require personal protective equipment. And specifically, we analyzed the job. We included job hazard analysis, a list of the required personal protective equipment for the position and required employee training. And so when we initially developed this, it was a pilot where we looked at positions in the traffic division of public works. And so we went through and analyzed each position and basically put together a manual, so to speak, that we can give the supervisor so that any new supervisor that came that wasn't familiar with all of the positions could quickly review the position, specifics, and know what kind of training their employees needed, know what kind of hazards they're facing and be able to make sure that their employees get the correct personal protective equipment. So we've continued that process. We're working on positions in automotive and DEM. And so we're excited about that because there really wasn't a quick one-stop reference for people to understand those hazards and then training and personal protective equipment all in one place. We facilitated the employee of the Year Awards program. This last year we honored 31 nominees in the categories of outstanding employee of the year, outstanding supervisor of the year, and outstanding manager of the year. We also created a pilot mentor program to provide additional opportunities for employees to connect with seasoned leaders within the Comtee for supporting guidance. So that was a six-month program that ran from October and just concluded in April. We had a total of 24 participants, so 12 supervisors and 12 mentees, and we got great feedback from that. It's a great way for people to connect within the county and provide support and that mentoring component. So that was, we're excited about that. Okay, so the Department of Human Resources is comprised of eight divisions. We have 34 positions and currently we have four vacancies. I actually, I'm filling a position, effective may first. Changes to our budget. We put in a request for $350,000 for an ADA self-evaluation. We need to make sure that all of our programs are able to be utilized by everyone. And it's important that we're doing a self-evaluation to make sure that all of our programs are accessible. And because the county has grown and changed, we want to, you know, through an RFP process, probably get a consultant to come in and do a comprehensive evaluation of the county so that we can make sure that things are accessible and we can address any changes that need to be made. So the core budget for HR is, you know, about three and a half million dollars and that primarily goes to salaries and wages. In addition, we have the Employees Scholarship Program, which is our tuition reimbursement program. There's half a million dollars in there. We have the ADA modification and accommodation, fund $50,000. Our skills development program. This was our professional development training positions. There's 10 positions there, and I can get into that more later. We have the Cooperative Vocational Education Program. So this is a program where students who are in the CBE program at HCC can come and work in these positions for the county while they're going to school. And then the HR budget also includes workers' compensation, which is approximately $6 million. So for fiscal year 26, priorities and initiatives, we're going to provide training and implement policies and procedures related to the county code amendment related to nepotism. Should that bill pass council as recommended by the county auditor? We're going to complete countywide evaluation of programs and services and activities to ensure EDA compliance, so that was the supplemental request. We also want to develop and initiate a periodic countywide employee survey or surveys to address employee retention strategies and develop and implement additional internship and mentorship programs to create new talent pipelines and promo careers in government service. So I can take questions. Beautiful. Thank you very much. Administrator, director. Director. Director, thank you. We've had a couple back to the council council member on easy thank you chair good afternoon a long day yes so one question have they like I work well I talk to admittings with finance about doing incentive programs for our employees or to hiring or having our employees getting more workers to work for the county right and having some incentives for them to getting additional help. And so I've heard that you folks met with finance to admit with you and talking about that. We had a, I recall having a conversation with Diane about that possible suggestion. We would have to develop a program around that and figure out how we would or how the departments would be able to track who made the referral and figure out the context of when that kind of incentive might be paid. So it's definitely something that we would have to work on to iron out the details and work with our departments. So like, what is the timeline in looking into something like that? Because all, I mean, this morning from the administration, we've been hearing that there's a shortage of workers, right? They need to get more workers hired, right? And so we need to set thinking outside the box of how we can attract more people to apply for the county, right? And there have been private companies that has offered these incentives to their employees to get their friends to sign up for the application, right? So to me, how important is it to HR to try and do this recruitment incentive? So it's very important to HR to support our departments in filling their vacancies and we want to work with them to be successful in that regard. So that idea as far as providing an incentive to an employee who refers someone to the county that then I think we want to explore the parameters of that. Like would the incentive be paid when someone passes their initial probationary period and becomes a permanent employee with the county? Those are all things that we would have to be applied. And that's where you could take that model from the private industry what they did, right? Basically, so... So now I'm asking, so what would you need in order to move forward? Like, what kind of information? So it would have to be a more formal discussion to include finance, to find out what kind of incentive we could afford to even be able to provide for that. And then once we were able to discuss that, then we could work to develop a program. But it's really going to be, we would have to evaluate where the funds for that will come from. Oh yeah, so I've heard finance has the funding. Yeah, and so we can schedule to meet and discuss that and they can provide those details to us so we can look at that. Okay, thank you. The next thing is would be for hiring. What is a timeline from getting an applicant or before that, even to just to provide, I guess, that initial recruitment of a position to hiring that person, roughly, what is an estimated time of that person getting hired? So I recently provided the mayor's office with statistics and we went with the median, you know, as opposed to an average. But in this last quarter, well, the last quarter of 2024. Well, I can I guess speak to what happened first quarter of 2025 so between January and January 1st and March 31st there were 133 hires and median days from application received in HR to being referred to the department as an eligible applicant. That was 29 days. The median number of days from referral to the department to the job offer by the department was 55 days. So the median days from the date the application was received to the higher start date is 145 days. And then how much, how many days does it take to create a position? We're working with the department. So the department gives you what they want, like a job description of what they want. It goes into your department. How long does it take you, your department to come up with the final, I guess, wordings or the application. So if it's a class specification that already exists within the county, so if it's like a clerk three, an equipment operator, and we already have an existing class of work, those positions can be allocated and created very quickly. They call on. I would say conservatively a week. So challenges challenges are classification and paid division is comprised of three people only two of which are tasked with creating these new class specs for new classes of work. So these two people are serving the entire county, all 23 departments and agencies and helping them meet their needs. The challenge to, I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt, but the challenge with creating new classes of work is because we follow the state, I mean, all of the counties and the state use the same classification system. We look to see if another jurisdiction has a class of work and if not, then we work to create it. So what if the department does that part for you guys and provide you that we've searched Honolulu has this certain position, big island we don't. So this is what their specifications are. Here you go. So what we're looking for from the department is the actual position description. So we're looking for the position description so that then we can assess that with the class of work. So we're not asking the department to, I mean, departments do come to us and say they've seen this class specification, but our classification and paid division is still going to do the research. But then, I mean, but then, like I said, they're trying to help your department to process it faster. Sure. Right. Because they know you guys are limited with staff. So this way they can help you guys out. So if they can provide you with all the information, basically, they kind of did the whole homework that you folks, your staff would be doing it, right? So just, your staff would have to just confirm that, oh yeah, this is it, right? Potentially. I mean, sometimes the words mean different things. And so we have been provided information, you know, by departments in the past where it's, you know, there may be, um, a, a analyst, say, analyst somewhere in the title title and analysts can mean different things in different contexts and so just because you choose a class specification that has analysts it won't necessarily always apply and so that's where we do appreciate the research at the same time we also need to, look at the position description, which is what the department is saying, their operational need is, and then re-verify that information. Like, might have times where the department finds, like, okay, they need this certain position, and they find a law who has that same position, and doing the same work that we want and so they can just get that information and they can provide it to you guys right and then that will help your department to move this process faster right? Yes potentially yes. Yeah okay. So I see it on the screen so you folks do this internship with the colleges. So we participate in, we provide work for students at HCC that are in the CVE program. Those positions have been more difficult to fill because there's not as many students participating in that program. So I'm looking at other options for those positions and other ways that we might use them for different. I don't know that they would be students but well you know we have to re-evaluate that. I did have a meeting last week with the chancellor at Hawaii Community College. And so we're working on partnering for different initiatives. So I'm excited about that. We're going to be meeting on a monthly basis. We went over the programs that the county already has and shared information. And so I think that that's going to be good to renew and build that robust relationship. And then they can help assist us in some of these other initiatives as well. Yeah, because I was also, I guess, meeting with the chancellor. And this is in regards to our summer front program because we're having a hard time in recruiting. And thank you very much for helping us to the job fears that EFORX had and to help us recruit. But yeah, to somehow have the students work with the summer fund program but also getting credits for it. Right. And so but I guess it couldn't happen this coming year. So I'm hoping next year we can do that. But then also, the EFORX reach out like to the high schools? We don't reach out to the high school beyond the career fairs, because, you know, our positions have different requirements, but we would like to get to that point. That is the goal. So through the development of this professional development training position, we're looking at the next sort of iteration of that, would be level one, level two, and level one hopefully will allow us to look at either, it could be if someone is on work study in high school or high school graduates. Okay. So trying to build bridges over those gaps so that we can create more pipelines for people to come to count. So what I'll do is I'll work with maybe with White Care High School and see if we can do like a pilot project in doing something. OK, we'll reach out to us. And yeah, we'd be happy to talk to you. Talk sorry. Yeah, yeah. OK, thank you very much. I sure. Thank you. Tell a few members. Go ahead, bro. I just wondered if you could talk a little bit more about that program that you just mentioned, the skills development program, you said you had positions. Yes. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Sure. So it was, it's ten positions positions and so the intent of the positions was to provide opportunities for people who have a two-year degree to come to work for the county and basically gain professional level experience that could be utilized to help them to qualify for professional level positions in bargaining unit 13. So currently if someone had a two-year degree or education and experience equivalent to a two-year degree, they're limited to positions in bargaining unit three. And so what we wanted to do was create opportunities for advancement. So I know Chief Todd mentioned that he has a professional development training in his office and that's working well and we're very excited about the program. When we rolled it out and we started recruiting for the positions we got a lot of you know great participation from our departments they wanted to provide opportunities but when we were recruiting for the positions what we found was that people were applying that actually had a bachelor's degree. And we weren't getting as many qualified applicants for people that had a two-year degree. And then when you look at what would be related degrees, we're limited to what Hawaii Community College offers and unless they had a degree from someplace else. So we rolled back the program so that we could, you know, look at all the recruitment data and then reassess our path forward. When our recruitment staff, we met with our recruitment staff. And when they told me, well, people don't qualify because they have a four year degree, I went, well, wait a minute. There's people out there with a four year degree that still want this mentorship opportunity. I don't want to lose those candidates as well. And so we developed, the county already has the professional training level of work and our departments do utilize that as a recruitment tool. So say, for example, they're having a difficult time filling an accountant position that can reallocate it down to a professional trainee, provide the training, and then reallocate it back up to the permanent class. So we do have opportunities for that already in our departments, but it requires that a department use their permanent position and reallocate it down to provide that opportunity. So we carved out five of the 10 positions that we have and we made those professional training and they're in HR so that if a department wants to utilize one of those positions, basically HR is covering the salaries and wages but we're still able to provide that opportunity to someone who might not otherwise have it through this program. So, what we also wanted to preserve the original intent was to build that bridge for people that have the two-year degree. So, that's why we took five positions, kept them at professional development training, took five and put them at professional training, and then just sent out the revised procedures and a more comprehensive list of career path positions that we found that could be utilized for the program. sent that out to departments and we're excited to get their feedback and you know we're looking to build that program. I'd like to be able to offer more of those opportunities so looking at potentially having you know we're looking to build that program. I'd like to be able to offer more of those opportunities so looking at potentially having you know ten of each position as part of the HR budget so that we can you know help build more of that talent pipeline. We also have revised associated with that in our positions that require a four-year degree., its education and experience substantially equivalent to graduation from an accredited college, etc. And so we took that language and applied it also to the two-year degree program. So it's a combination of education and experience equivalent to a two-year degree. So if someone for whatever reason had to leave school before finishing their degree but had other work experience, the combination can be utilized. And then that's where when they come to the county, it's a civil service position. They get their paid full time, they get benefits. They temporarily fill that position. But then when they're receiving their training, they're also able to apply for positions on an internal basis, so they have that additional benefit. So I think it's a great program. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens now that we've revised it and hopefully we'll get greater participation. I also working with Hawaii Community College and partnership with them. I'm thinking that we'll be able to fill those positions. Terrific. That sounds like a really good program, because I know there's a lot of, well, I think a lot of the times it was the your graduates that just the position would want would want like a certain number of years of work experience and so they would be not not be eligible so this is yeah this is really great and I do hope that it works out and that you can expand it because I think that will make a lot more folks look at the county as a possibility. So does the department pick a candidate and then and realize that they don't have the work experience or whatever that they don't have to fit the description and then ask you for the training program position or is it the other way around they say, I want the flexibility to put someone into this training program before they even see anyone. So what we do is we handle it through the normal recruitment process. So basically the department comes to us and says they're interested in providing this training opportunity to someone. They identify who the mentor is gonna be. They identify what the career path position is that they're interested in. And we just wanna make sure that the person who's gonna provide the mentoring can provide that professional level experience, but also guidance in that process. So once the department says they're interested, then we begin the recruitment process. We start all of the recruitment internally within the county. We want to be able to provide these opportunities to our employees for their own advancement. And then, you know, based on how that recruitment goes, it may not, if we don't find internal applicants, then we open it up through an open recruitment process. When we have a list of names, then those individuals are referred to the department, and then they get to interview and make their own selection. It it's a partnership, you know, we're looking for the commitment from the department before we're going to start recruiting for the positions. But yeah, we go through the normal recruitment process and they're able to make their selection. I did also want to note that we have been looking at the minimum qualifications for our positions. And, you know, a lot of our positions had requirements for a bachelor's degree in a certain discipline, but there was always the caveat or related field, right? And, or related field or other related field is very subjective. And so, we removed the disciplines from the bachelor's degree requirement for positions that where there isn't some sort of specific licensure requirement or specific certification requirement so that you know basically we're giving credit for if you've completed your bachelor's degree we understand that there's a certain amount of independent you, analytical thought and process in achieving that. So I'll use myself as an example, having an undergraduate degree in American history doesn't necessarily seem like that's the roadmap to becoming the, you know, director of HR. But, you know, that's, so we're kind of trying to change that up. So that we're giving credit for a degree and not causing someone to be possibly removed from consideration because of a degree they pursued 30 years ago. Thanks. That's true. I think that's great. Councilor, we're here's this. Thank you, Chair. All our director, thanks for being with us here this evening. Sure, thank you. Just going to dive into some of the numbers and the worksheets here. Are you laughing at me? No. Okay. The first one is going to start off on the overtime. If you could just, we've had, we've seen kind of a jump up in the actuals from 2324, the 2425 and kind of staying at that estimate. Could you speak a little bit to that? So the overtime is almost 100% related to the development of this new software program. And it's because it's so time intensive for our staff during the regular work week that they're having to put in over time hours to complete their regular work, but then also to complete the requirements for the software developer. Okay, thank you. And then looking at the advertising line 107 there under 515102, we've gone up a little bit on recruitment advertising, 13,000, 2324 actuals. Are we kind of, is that a better estimate of where we should be? I think that that's hard to say. I would like to see us, you know, expand our advertising. It's, but advertising happens in different forms now, right? So, you know, nobody's, I mean, not a lot of people are reading the newspaper anymore. That used to be the way that we would advertise our jobs. Now we're doing it on social media. Also looking for professional publications that we can advertise in. So, it's hard to say, but yeah, that may be closer. Thank you. Yeah. And then in regards to the ADA self-evaluation, those are all of our county facilities. It's all the programs and I believe all the facilities as well. Countywide. Yeah.,000 would cover that. That's our estimate to be honest the last time an evaluation was you know when we contracted out it was significantly less so we you know ballparked it and rounded up and we're hoping that that will cover it. Okay and then there's also been kind of a change in travel related estimates for the collective bargaining. What was it? I'm not sure what it was years previously if it had gone through different cycles but it's kind of sticking out 18,000 now for the devil. So is a year, all of our contracts with the different unions expired June 30, 2025. And so that budget is to allow us to attend the meetings with all of the different unions. So we're in active negotiations for this year, for contracts to begin July 1. Okay, thanks for the clarification. And just that David Corp. Ventiv, is that a software, like a risk management or something? That's the software that we utilize to handle our workers' compensation claims. The workers' compensation claim. Okay, got it. And then just the last one on Narcand. as this being distributed at all of our facilities as well? What's in your budget here? That is being used to at different sites. So we're putting, we put the Narcan at places where we also have an AED to make sure that you know we're looking at the supply and refilling that. So everywhere we have an AED on the county there's also a Narcan box. I believe yes. Okay and we didn't I think we ran into some I'm not mistaken there were some challenges in the past about having that having that in the well, having it on hand even at some point, the liability. But maybe we've cleared that hurdle. Yeah, I believe that was resolved. And then we actually have gotten money from the state and Narcan from the state to help meet our supply need as well. OK, so just replenishing that across the county on that. OK, thank you, Director. Thanks, Chair. I'll send the camera. Thank you. Thank you for being here, Director. I wanted to kind of follow up on the line of question from Council Member Onishi. The 145-day estimate, how much of that is obligatory? Like we have to post something for a certain amount of time. So that actually doesn't include the time to post the position. So all of our recruitment are open for a 10 day period, we open recruitment on Sundays and then they close the following Tuesday. But the timelines that I gave were from the time that the application is actually received. So it could have been anywhere in that 10-day period. I see. Okay. Would you have any estimate at all of the number of applicants who then made it to a list and then by the time we got to be able to make an offer they had already gone and found another position. I don't have an accurate estimate of that because that part takes place in the department it would require that the department provide us with the feedback. It can look to see what can be captured from our recruitment software. I'm not sure if there's a category you offer rejected. I can have my recruitment stuff look into that to see if we could get an approximate number. Yeah, if that's something that's easily accessible, I'd love to just get a sense of that number because just thinking about what we do have potential influence over, obviously the collective bargaining is a whole other thing that we don't have a lot of influence over. But if we can affect the timeline either through additional staffing, it keeps, you know, punch points that constrict that process, whether it's within your department or with HR people in the individual departments. I'd like to look at investigating that because just anecdotally that's something that I've heard is that oh by the time we make the offer they've gone off and picked something up at Target or do something else. So it's certainly something I'd like to explore between now and the second budget because if there's some key positions maybe we should put those in now. Yeah, and we definitely encourage our departments to make use of the time when we're completing the recruitment. And even once the recruitment closes, it does take our staff some time to do the screening. We encourage departments when they even come in with the request to fill to say, hey, we want to recruit for this to position to already have their interview panel members ready to already have their interview questions ready so that as soon as they get the list from HR they're able to move on that as quickly as possible. Of those the 145 days that you mentioned is there a portion you could attribute to being in the the departments? Yeah, I will say that the 145 during the first quarter of 2025 is a little higher than average because that included a recruitment for internal promotions within the police department. And that's kind of a year long process. They'll establish eligible lists and may not have vacancies until later in the year. So if I compared it to say the statistics for the last quarter of 2024, we had 100 hires, median days from date application received to the higher date was 84. So you know, still approximately three months, yeah. Median days from application received to referral to the department, that was only 19 days. And then median days from referral to the department to a job offer being made was 42. So you know, it's gonna vary and then there's certain recruitment or situations that will you know affect those numbers but in the department generally it's going to vary and then there are certain recruitment or situations that will, you know, affect those numbers. But in the department generally, it's going to be somewhere between 30 and 60 days. Okay. That's helpful. Something for us to think about how to contract that a little bit. I noticed that you have about a almost 15% vacancy rate that seems, struggling to find people in the HR field? We have had some ups and downs. I mean, we are challenged like, you know, every other department, but, you know, I'm glad that we're down to four. So, you know, that's positive. Good. Thank you, Thank you, Chair. Anybody else? I'm Roni Shea. No. No. Councillor Buehra and Kirkwoods. Thank you, Chair. I really appreciate all the effort and innovation that you're deploying director with your department to get more of our rising generation into county government to get the experience to fill in the gaps in the vacancies. It's really exciting. And I was just with Chancellor Marata a couple of days ago and she mentioned meeting with you. So I'm really excited about all the collaborations that are in store. Just staying on this hiring piece and like the screening portion that HR is doing is that a requirement in state law that HR screens applications before sending a recommended this to the department. And like the only reason why I ask is because this is potentially a way to cut down on the amount of time that departments are able to have access to applicants for interviews. I'm just curious where that is coming from. I guess it's just Ben, I couldn't tell you exactly where that's coming from, but I think part of it is wanting to make sure that when we send a list of applicants to the departments that they've met those minimum qualifications, otherwise it could be that the departments would interview everybody and people wouldn't meet the qualifications. You know, we do get applications where people don't meet the qualifications and we have to, you know, either request that that they provide additional information or verification. So I think it's trying to make sure that when the department gets the list, they're getting a list of qualified applicants. If we didn't screen until the back end or if the screening fell to the department, that may present additional challenges for them But could we give departments that option to look at all candidates that have applied and perhaps HR in parallel with the departments can say, these are folks that we've looked at, you know, we rated them based on the MQs that are published. But I bring this up because I wonder about I think that apartments are in the best position to know who's a right fit for their operations. And I know a couple of situations where employees who are currently with the county were initially rejected by HR, but departments had requested for the full list of candidates. And you know, I'm not gonna name any names, but they're currently rock stars in the county. So I just bring that up because I'd love for the departments to be able to see everybody that's applied for the positions and have the discretion on who they would like to interview. So it would involve a rule change. You know, that process is outlined in the rules of the director of HR. That is, you know, like anything else could be considered, but, you know, changing those rules wouldn't be just as simple as changing that process. That's going to a lengthier conversation, but something that could be potentially evaluated. Okay, thank you. Just wanted to put it on the table. Appreciate you evaluating that. Thank you, Chair Ailed. I hope some of you are honestly okay. Thanks, Chair. So with that ADA program, does each department have their own ADA specialists? No, I don't believe so. I think some departments may have people, but not all. So, our ADA equal opportunity coordinator serves the whole county. Because you know because I remember recreation division, they did have a position there, right? And, but I don't know if there is like someone there now. There may still be a position there. So, like for them, like with the, I guess with the facilities, right? recreation facilities they would be able to help guide your department on how, what things gotta be looked at, or what gotta be improved. Yeah, and partnership together. Yeah. Okay, sounds good. And so, but you wouldn't know how many of these AD specialists would have county-wide. I think only parks would have one, but I would have to go back and check that. Okay. I'm not familiar with any other department having one. Okay. And the last thing I wanted to mention is that, you know, we did meet in my office and I asked you about, guess training programs or having trainers. And right now you said you have only an East-Wide, it takes care of a position in East-Wide, it takes care of the whole island. And so we can explain to other council members about, I recommended you you, you know, looking to get on Westway position, right? And maybe you can explain to them what you explained to me about that. So we currently have in our personal and organizational development division, Jennifer Sakamoto is the manager, and she has an assistant, and then we're currently trying to fill a specialist to supplement so that would be eventually another trainer. So we offer training programs on both sides of the island and you know Jenny does a good job of trying to meet know, just in general through our training catalog. But then if there's other special requests, we do what we can to accommodate those. We also, the county does also have a training fund where we're able to bring in trainers to supplement the training that Jenny is already doing with training that, you know, would be different things that maybe we don't provide. So we did a grant specialist training, finding grants and how to do grant writing. So that was a great opportunity for us to be able to bring in that trainer to kind of fill in the gap and in area where we don't currently provide training. So. So you be willing to look into getting another position for WS OI? That would be something that again we would have to evaluate. HR doesn't currently have been office in WS OI, but with an additional person that Jenny is currently recruiting for, that will definitely free up someone who could provide training specific to Westway. You mentioned about hiring trainers to train for grant writing. Yes. But wouldn't that be more under R&D? It was in partnership with R&D. So we helped yeah so working with R&D, Jenny helped facilitate that training. So they partnered together to make sure that they you know got everybody registered and yeah. So each department has an HR person. Yes. Okay. So is it possible to have like your department trained those HR personnel in the different departments in having that more knowledge to help with training of their employees? Yes, I mean we do work with our HR reps and provide them with the training and information, but as far as them actually carrying out the training that's provided by Jenny at this point, no, we are looking at other opportunities, maybe to have some trainings that are recorded. So not everything where we're tasked with doing them, you know, always in person and they can be offered more on demand. I mean, because what I look at is one person taking care of the whole island and that, I mean, we have what, how many employees over? 2700, right? Yeah, and so it's a lot, right? like what I did in the past was that with the prosecutor's office, these should have these trainers come down like they, you know, we pay like $15,000 for them to come from like the Michigan State or wherever, right? But then once they leave, whatever was taught kind of ends after that because there's not like follow up. And this person who came goes to multiple different places, right? So I got them funding to get the staff at prosecutor's office trained. So they could train the nonprofits and the DOE, like the physical ed teachers about safe dating. Yeah, so I mean something to look at where, you know, using, taking it outside the box, trying to see how we can utilize the manpower that we have existing. Yeah, and because I mean, to me, the departments do need, you know, employees, certain ones or certain areas need to get more training, right? And like you said, you folks did do that for traffic division, I guess, about the, I guess the job description of the job positions. Right. Yeah. And so I think, yeah, that is going the right way. Where if anybody comes in, then they already know, okay, this is what each position is, and what the role is, right? Yeah, it makes it easier for everyone, right? Yeah, but yeah, something to look at. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Council Member Rene Aval. Thank you, Chair. Hi, Director. Hi. Just wondering if you folks have some kind of metric on looking at the time frame in which some of positions have remained vacant. I just emailed you about a specific position, but wondering in general if you folks have that. Yeah, so I apologize. I didn't get to send the email email before I came over but I will get back to you tomorrow morning. It's actually a manual process for us to go through and look at positions but I did ask my staff to compile that data. So we have the information regarding all the vacancies when they were last filled. The next component of that is for recruitment and examination division to go through that list and we want to also document the you know what the recruitment efforts have been to fill that position. So whether we're actively recruiting now or when the last time a recruitment was run so that we have that data available. Okay great because I think that'll really tell. I mean obviously we're looking at minimum qualifications for positions across the board but if we're seeing that some positions on a continuous recruitment basis are not even being applied for or it's been vacant for one year for example in this in the case of the position I emailed you about it's really maybe prioritizing some of those positions if we know that there's a need and you know I'm looking at the scope of work that you folks do and it surely is a lot. I think I would agree with Councilmember Kirkowitz regarding initial review of applications and seeing I mean it seems like right now we've really centralized everything to the department, which might be, I guess there was benefits to that because you're having maybe a more uniformed thorough approach in reviewing those qualifications that are presented in an application, but at the same time, I can really hear what Councilmember Kirk-Witz saying and you know the two of us have outside positions that require recruitment and I can imagine how some of the review by some of the departments and may expedite and especially with some of the more technical positions then being able to kind of filter through whether or not the experience of the candidate is relevant or meeting the qualification established. So I think that would be really helpful across the board. Regarding your position as director and this is something that I'll be bringing to the council, but I'm wondering if you have any kind of assistance in providing a performance evaluation for other department heads like yourself who are appointed by a board or commission and if there's a standardized way that the Merritt Appeals Board has been handling your annual performance review and how that might be branched out to cover other directors or chiefs as well. Yes, so my evaluation is consistent and is performed by the Merritt Appeals Board. So every year I need to establish goals, three goals that I'm going to accomplish, then they also evaluate budget management, leadership, they send surveys to the department heads and then also to the employees of the department to get feedback regarding my performance. Whether or not that could be standardized across other boards or commissions, that would have to be something that you know they would consider but certainly you know the format for my evaluation is consistent. Great okay well I think being a E-Foxer HR would we be looking to you so I'll reach out regarding that and it's really at the request of one one of the commissions that they're trying to head in the direction and trying to support them, but ultimately looking to you folks. So I reach out about that. And then lastly, I see, and I think I recall last year, we have this big chunk of employee scholarship. It looks like it's not really, I don't even think we tap 10% of it. So in terms of the hiring incentives, I'm wondering between now and the May budget, if that's something that you folks could consider looking into because your current administrative rules allow for incentives and if it's kind of within the existing monies you have that may be something we can employ at your discretion now with the funds that are already budgeted within your department for the upcoming fiscal years. That's something you'd be willing to look into. We can look into that. So the administrative rules that allow for the recruitment incentives, that's usually paid to the employee that we hire. So this other program would be different, but we can evaluate that. Sorry, what other program? So this is that. Oh, OK, no, yeah. I'm saying that the scholarship money is not being used, and the rules allow for your discretion to implement hiring incentives. So instead of having to have a discussion with finance, we see that there's extra money every year in the scholarship account. And if you would maybe even consider creating a line between now and May that gives you that opportunity to move those funds over and give you the flexibility to implement those incentives being that your roles allow for it. It's not a matter of counsel or even the merit of Pillsburg needing to create in your role, the roles say you can. So it's something that we can just look into and maybe just create the line so that you have that flexibility in this next year? We can look into that. Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. Yeah, that's all. Thank you. Okay, direct there. Thank you. Oh, there's 20 park caretaker one positions in the department. I'm wondering what they're doing in HR. So that was a pilot program. Those are temp, on call positions. So basically we worked with UPW. It's supposed to be that those positions, you know, if parks was having a difficult time, if people were calling in sick and taking, you know, calling in sick and they had to close parks basically. So we developed a temp on call position. So we have people in those positions that are available if someone calls in sick, they can call them and say you report for work today. So that's what those are intended for. Is the pilot program done or is still going? It's ongoing. We did an audit of the program and then provided parks with some feedback because they have permanent positions that need to be filled. So we're working through that, but those positions are still available for them to use. OK, and then that professional intern same idea? Professional development training, yeah, and professional training, those are vacant in our position while, I mean, in our department, while we work to have departments help us to fill those and then they get transferred to the department for use. Okay, so those 30 positions are like more pilot program designed to bring people into the colony or make it a little bit simpler. Yes, to address particular needs, yeah. So let's say then you have 55 employees, that's including 20 workers' compositions. Your handling handling what I read was 8,600 applications per year. Is that right? I was 23, 24. That could be, yes. So in your working days then you have 33 applications a day. I did the math. My brothers has a horrible math, but I do try. I just want to clarify that the workers' compensation positions, those are kind of would be with those part caretaker and the professional training. Those positions are available for departments to use if they have someone who's on workers' compensation and needs to come back on leg duty. So they can't perform the full scope of their work. So we have positions that the departments can utilize to bring them back to work on a limited duty basis while they fill the permanent position to meet the operational need. So those 20 positions, you know, a few of them may be filled at a time. Well, that message was my math end. Can you actually have 30 people, no, 50, 35 people who really in your department are a core functioning group of providing services for human resources. Yes. So those 35 people handled, and I don't think all of them handled 8,000 applications or 8,600 applications. No. So how many people handle applications that are incoming for the county positions? So there's a manager, a recruitment and examination division manager, Michelle Simmons, and she has five staff members. So five people are screening those applications. How long has it been? Five people handling the number of applications it's steadily increased. I believe that we've had a staff of five for a couple of years. Do you remember? But prior to that, the staff was the event's bother. Did you ask for more stuff? We haven't asked for more stuff in recruitment. We've been meeting our goals as far as time frame to screen the applications. And like everybody else, space is always an issue for us too. Okay. Skills development program differentiating between the employee scholarship program. What's the difference? These are kind of high dollar amount values in your budget. What's the difference in those two? So the scholarship program is available to all county employees and so if they want to participate in say a bachelor's degree program they can basically get tuition reimbursement. Yeah so there's you know requirements for that but that's basically when The scholarship program is a tuition reimbursement. So there's requirements for that, but that's basically when the scholarship program is a tuition reimbursement program that's a great employee benefit. So the employees would go to school on their own time, but then turn in their expenses and be reimbursed. The skills development program are those professional development training and professional training positions where we're providing an actual on the job work experience and actual full time position for someone to fill and gain professional level experience in our departments. Okay. Do you overlap at all? Could they overlap? They could. Someone could be in the professional development training and a professional development training position and also be going to school. You have to have worked for the county for a year, but in the process of that, they could also seek tuition reimbursement. Could that fund be combined into one and still apply to anyone who wanted to come in and apply? I'm not sure how we would do that because it's two distinct things. But we can check into it. Yeah. Okay, so your department normally turns over a list of applicable people from the applications that you process in 20, 90s to a department, right? Yeah, that was the median for the last quarter. Yeah, that's your average for last quarter. And then the departments then take the lion share of the time and actually processing the applicants you pre-processed. And taking as long as 60 days, but at 145 days before they're actually hired, there's another 60 days in there somewhere. Yeah, so that was from hire like actually when they're reporting for their first day of work. So it varies, right? I just pulled the median based on the, you know, the information for the last quarter. And again, you know, there could be a variety of factors with that. But yes the first 30 days is with HR generally and hopefully less. And then the the remaining process as far as interview selection offer an actual higher date that's all with our departments. If you have more stuff could could you turn over a list of applicants to the departments faster? Yes. Wouldn't shave off a week, two weeks? That would be difficult for me to estimate, but it would be, you know, when you have five people processing that many applications within, you know, 30 days, then yeah, it would seem that a vehicle faster. Does HR help the department's HR process applications, or is it you could do the free screen, you had it to the department. Usually, once we're providing that list, that eligible list, we're not involved. We do have instances like, say for example, a new agency like Oscar, because they didn't have the staff to follow through and do the whole interview prep process. You know, we stepped with that. Help them send their notices, help them prep their interview packets, make sure that they had their panel. So there is assistance that HRA is providing. OK. OK. That's helpful. So if we were to fund your department more and give you more positions, you actually could do your work faster, but it's the department that's lagging and doing the actual application processing review of the personnel and then the actual hiring itself. Yeah, we all need to work together to improve those timeframes. Okay. Thank you very much, Director. Thank you. Appreciate it. And then what is your name, sorry? I'm Diane Sada Yasu, the administrative services officer with human resources. Yeah. You did my hiring when I first started this job. I remember you. Thank you for being here. Okay, Council anything further? Okay, beautiful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Council, we've reached the end of today's agenda. We are in recess until 90M tomorrow. Thank you everyone for your time.