Welcome to the 7th session of the Communication Reports and Council Oversight Committee. This is May 20, Onishi Inaba, Kaneli E. Kleinfelder, and myself, Chair of this Committee. Mr. Brown, could you in the first item item we don't have any testifiers for your committee today. If one last chance if anyone like to testify in communication 178.2 please speak up now. Hearing non-communication 178.2 request an update by the of Liquor Control regarding current status of the creation and implementation of the Department's specific travel policy. From Councilmember Holeco-Goro-Enaba dated April 1, 2025 and communication 178.3 from liquor control director Gerald Takase dated May 8, 2025, transmitting a progress report to audit report 2025-01. Motion to close file on communication 178.2. It's been moved to close file on communication 178.2 by Council Member like Council Member Kirkowitz. Council Member Inaba. Thank you. We did have the auditor come for a couple months back and I requested that the Department of Liquor Control come back to update us on their travel policy, travel policy specific to their department. So calling on the liquor department at this time to provide us an update as to where we are with the Recommendations specific to the travel policy Good afternoon chair Inhabah and council members Brandon Gonzalez administrative officer department of liquor control county of Hawaii The audit provided three recommendations to the department and the department has implemented all three recommendations. As the recommendation one established a department level travel policy with the help of the auditor who provided this a template. We prepare the travel policy that will go into effect July 1, 2025. As the recommendation to prioritize travel on a need based and road-specific framework, we have included those factors within our written departmental travel policy. And as to recommendation, the third recommendation about providing sunshine Law and Ethics training to all members, the Department coordinated with the Office of the Corporation Council and the Office of the Auditor in 2024. We re-implemented the training for Sunshine Law and Ethics at the fourth quarter of 2024. And whenever we have a new board member or commissioner join us, we coordinate with the Office of the Corporation Council to get that training to them, regardless of whether they may have received it if they served on another board or commission in the county. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gonzalez. So with the attachment in communication 178.3, that was, it says it was reviewed on May 1st and it was going to go into effect July 1st. Is that voted on by the commission or how does is that part of the roles of the department? What is, how does it actually take effect? Yeah, so we had a public meeting with it on May 1st at the commission meeting and they had no objections to the policy. Okay, so it's just a, they didn't take a vote to make it a policy. They took a vote to file it, I guess, on their side. I can't remember the procedureally what they did, but they were fine with the policy that was circulated to them. Okay. And where would this policy live? Is it in your department rules? It's gonna be within our department. Yeah, so I mean, my wondering here is that, at any time you folks can go and amend this policy, how does it have an effect of a role of the department to make sure that you folks are in fact following it, and that the commission has oversight of what is being proposed and I guess what they're not opposed. Well, I suppose the commission could ask for a status on how we've been complying with the policy. It can come up during the annual review of the department that we have every year with the commission, usually in December of the year, when they do a new review of the department. So there's a couple of ways where it can come up. As for where we will actually sit, really the fiscal brains of our office is our services assistant that does our fiscal and our HR stuff. So that's where a physical copy will be, if that's what's your question. Okay, thank you. Can I call on the county auditor, Reference was made to you with regards to the creation. We're providing of some assistance with this policy any comment Good afternoon Members of the committee Tyler Benner office the county auditor this time, we appreciate that the department has tailored template that we provided them to their needs. Maybe a point of clarification to last question that you've asked. When the Board of Ethics issued their opinion as to whether or not there was a structural conflict. Part of that recommendation included if there was changes to the Department of Liberal Travel Policy that they re-approach the board and the commission. And so you'd see in the attachment that was provided to you that there is signatures for those individuals and those should be updated if the policy should be changed. Thank you, so for clarification, you're saying that this policy was supposed to go or should be going back to the Board of Ethics? When the Board of Ethics are ruled their opinion on it, they said that you should take this in front of the commission and the Board. They should sign off on it. And then if there's any changes being made made to it that they should again take it before those bodies and get a new signature. Okay so Mr. Gonzalez did the members of the commission and the board officially sign off on this policy? So the commission has the board does not meet monthly so they have not been to meet yet. But when it comes to the rulemaking for the department level stuff, I understand where the auditor is coming from with the board of ethics recommendation. The commission actually approves and adopts our commission rules and our departmental rules and they have oversight over the director. So actually one of the feedback from the department's attorney was that the adjudication board didn't have to sign off for the travel policy for it to go into effect. So I don't want it holding up us adopting it too, that's why. Because the adjudication board only meets when we have violation cases. Okay, so I guess what we would like to see hopefully after this, you're saying that they already discussed this. So is there a sign version because right now the document in front of us is essentially the template with no effective date listed here. So do you folks have the sign copy already? Not yet, but when we do we can share that with you folks. Okay, well, for that then. Thank you so much for your folks quick action on getting this policy done and thank you to the auditor for your support. Chair, are you okay? Anyone else? Seeing no other lights for discussion. All in favor of closing file on communication 178.2 please say aye Any opposed very none communication 178.2 is closed with Seven eyes and oh eight eyes with Council member Kimball excused. If anyone would like to testify in communication 270 please speak up now. Hearing none communication 270. Profit grants compliance review for fiscal year 2023-2024. From County auditor Tyler J. Benner dated March 31, 2025, transmitting the Bavary Purchasing to Chapter 2 article 25 of the Viva County Code. Could have a motion. Motion to close file in communication 270. It's been moved to the close file in communication 2 7 0. It's been moved to close file in communication 2 7 0 by Council member. And now the second day by Council member Kagi Wada. Auditor better. Lowhawk committee chair Galimba and members of the Hawaii County Council. My name is Tyler better with the Office of the County Auditor. I'm joined in chambers today by Jasmine Santos, our lead auditor for this review. And Maxine Pacheco, staff auditor. Today we're presenting the results of the grant nadreview for fiscal year 2324. The fiscal year 2324 grant nadreview report evaluates how nonprofit organizations that receive county funding perform in delivering services and fulfilling their contractual obligations. Unlike our first review which emphasizes administration of the program, this review focused on nonprofit compliance with reporting requirements. At this time, I'll turn it over to Jasmine Santos to let the review. Aloha and good afternoon. My name is Jasmine Santos, audit analyst and lead auditor of this year's Grantson Aid Review. The scope of the review included 31 of the 69 participating nonprofit organizations representing approximately 44.9% of the total. These organizations operated 33 of the 75 funded programs, 44% accounting for $1,187,500 of the total $2,497,500 awarded in funds this year, which is approximately 47.6% of the appropriation. This sample was selected rather than reviewing the entire population as was done in our first year review to balance effectiveness with efficiency. Many of the organizations this year was repeat participants and given the timing of this review, which was during the busy tax season, we aim to avoid being overly invasive or burdensome. This review is not intended to be a full comprehensive audit, but rather to serve as a reminder that any organization receiving funding may be subject to review. The intent is to promote accountability and encourage ongoing compliance. It is important to note that two organizations, including in the original population, were later found to be ineligible and were never awarded funding. This has been reflected in the school calculation. To evaluate performance, we examined grantee submitted documentation, including narrative reports and financial records. The evaluation focused on whether organizations met their standard objectives, use funds appropriately, and submit it timely and complete reports. A standardized rating system was used to categorize each of the organization's performance as exceed expectations, meets expectations, or needs improvement. These ratings provided a consistent framework for assessing the overall effectiveness and accountability of each grantee. Key findings in this year's review indicated that most grantees met or exceeded their contractual goals and delivered meaningful services to the community. Many programs demonstrated strong outcomes and efficient use of funds, however, the review also identified several areas of for improvement. A few of the organizations had late or incomplete reporting and a few lack sufficient documentation to verify the service and or deliverables outlined in their contracts. Financial accountability was generally strong, although minor issues were noted in cases where supporting documentation was lacking over expenditures needed clarification. The report notes several observations in that improving program oversight and support. These include enhancing monitoring during the performance period, providing training and technical assistance to grantees, and refining performance metrics to improve the consistency in expectations and reporting. We would like to express our gratitude for the ongoing efforts to strengthen the operational framework of Article 25. Collaborative efforts of various organizations have enhanced the program over time and show commitment to continuous improvement. We look forward to the continued evolution of the GIA program. Thank you very much. Anyone? Council Member Inava? Thank you. Thank you to your office for your continued work to help us improve. It's been a work in progress from applications to reviews, to compliance, science and I believe our special assistant assigned to this is coming down. Should any members of the council have questions but we just want to make sure that we are being as transparent as possible being that this is a grant program from the council itself. So we will continue to take any recommendations and try to implement them. And together with Special Assistant Valdez, address any concerns from the public, from you folks, and from any member of this body. Thank you. Council member Connie Leake, quite full there. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for you for the non audit audit like that. I look at your rating system one, two, and three. I'm a criteria that you gave but in the actuals that you presented to us for the different non profits. I didn't find that rating system within the final report, free one. Is that purposeful or not purposeful? Or did I miss it? Excuse me. Page 38 of 38 actually shows the crosswalk between the one, two, and three minor exceptions, major exceptions and noncompliance, no exceptions versus the percentage. Okay, so the what was our total? Sorry, this was the one given to each organization or this was the rating card for each organization? Yeah, that was a standard rating system. And then is there a rating for each organization in the different orgs that you provided to us? Yeah, so for example on page 35, you see vibrant Hawaii, score 100%. Well, one of theirs. One of theirs, two programs, correct, right. And so that's gonna be 100% listed there, and then you can crosswalk that to the matrix on 38, which shows the one through nine score. Oh, I got you, I got you, I'm feeling you. I I was looking for a one, two, and three. Three, three, one of them. Okay. Okay. So the percentage was how they rated. Some didn't do very well. Some did. Some did one hundred percent. Right. Which is what you'd expect. You know, I really liked is that you. Is that you really dug down to determining what they said they would do and what they actually did. In some cases, you were unable to figure out what they said they were going to do because it wasn't clear. And then there was no parameters or really objectives to show that they met what they said they were going to do. That's correct. It's some of this was difficult. Some of this really falls on the shoulders of the county and if you recall last year we did a review as well. That we focused on the administration of this. So here's an example. You have three nonprofit organizations and each one of them deliver food and one of them they're deliverable because we allow them to select what what they're deliverable is to us. They select that they are feeding 30 homes a year. And then the next organization says that they're feeding 120 individuals for a year and then the final organization says that they're delivering 131,400 meals in a year and what you actually have there the same metric, three different ways, right? We're talking about a household, a household with an average family size of four, being fed every day. And then the meals actually being broken out into three meals a day for those four individuals in those 30 homes. And so this is what we find is, it is difficult to make a bench-line comparison between a lot of these organizations because of that. And we had other organizations that are doing very good work, for example, a classroom type learning, but the way that they described the program delivery was things like we want an improvement over the baseline. And there wasn't a baseline measurement to compare that to. And so as we started to have some teaching moments with these nonprofits where we said, you know, perhaps it's going to be more valuable for you to provide headcount of the individuals who are going through these classes. Or if you are going to provide a state that you're going to provide improved learning or retention of learning, then you need to provide a pre and a post survey that shows that they've internalized the messaging that you're trying to give them. If that's what you're stating you're going to do, you're going to have to empirically show that. And so we believe there was also some great comments from the nonprofits in terms of clarification in what we asked from them that will allow us to be a little bit more granular in what we ask for in future requests. So this was a teaching moment, it continues to be a teaching moment for both sides year over year. So we look forward to strengthening it over time. Okay, I think I appreciate that Mr. Bennett, thank you. Some of the worrying ones were moving funds to different categories are not specifying anything other than other expenses and And then not giving us an idea of what they're trying to do besides we aim to help the people of Hawaii County That's great. We all do right, but how are you gonna service and what we're outcomes? And if we can't prove that then why are we giving them money? I, we absolutely agree with that. And you know, we're happy to provide some guidance if organizations wanted to contact us, you know, on observations that we've seen over the past as they start to prepare into the future. But I believe that Ms. Valdez is doing that as well. So we look forward to either referring or providing that information if we can. Yeah, yes, please. The wording that I remember that guides the funding for the nonprofit grant and A programs to me is worrisome already in that we're qualifying a minimum of 2.5 million or 1.5 million per year, minimum of, so there's no cap. I don't like that. And so having a zero cap with an open door with policy that doesn't really direct exactly what has to happen or the objectives that we want met with those funds is a scary open door policy for a substantial amount of funding from our county to organizations that may or may not be fulfilling the objectives they say they're going to. In the first year's review that we did, we had made major mention of alignment to federal standards. A lot of these grant programs, sometimes they're complex funding buckets. To have a program administered locally one way and then having to abide by it in a separate way, federally makes it difficult for a lot of these small organizations that are resource constrained. So if there's an opportunity to look at the code and align it more to federal standards over time, I think that that would definitely help these small organizations who really do want to comply. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bennett. Thank you, Miss Santos. Appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Orangona? I'll go just want to thank Chair Inaba for all the work that you've put in to get this ViVi grant program to this next level and also to the auditor and your office for your attention to detail and incredible ability to review these kinds of things and bring this information to us in a palatable format. So we can understand the broader picture by looking at all those kinds of details. So appreciate you. Ayo. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Chair. Oh. Thank's a looker. Over here. Yeah, so thank you, Auditor Banner, and your team, for another excellent document. What I was wanting to highlight was your mention just now of adhering to federal standards or some of their similar processes. And I'm going to use this and please stop me if I'm going beyond as an opportunity to actually ask something of my colleagues here which is one of the things that we've talked to talked about in response to all of this is actually setting up before the ViVi applications go out something based on our needs assessment of where we would like to see funds directed, which is a process that is typical in federal grant applications at this time. So I bring this up in this context because it is relevant to this review, this compliance review, to get some feedback from folks about how they might like to see that done. Our ability to do a full-on needs assessment, I think, before the next grant and ViVi grant program is limited. But there are things out there like the Alice report, like the housing report, like some of the other, the child hood learning report. There are other documents out there that we could use to sort of frame what our current needs are. So my question is, do we want to try within the time frame before we have our next five eye applications to identify some of those needs in a way that would be more akin to how they would do things at the federal level. And feel free to Tyler to Mr. Banner to add to that concept in terms of the conversations we've had about a real related code amendment. I can't speak to the time constraints that you folks are facing, but we definitely would support. We've done a lot of sit-ins and trainings ourselves in grants and writing and grant administration over this last year. And it is important because you never know where the money is coming from, but the highest level of the land is the federal government and where the most money exists. And if we should have to abide by that that we should have a written policy and procedure on the book that aligns to it so it makes sense to move in that direction. Okay thank you. Councilmember Coguata. Thank you chair. Mr. I'm just wondering how you think since this wasn't done for all of the organizations this year, but clearly there were vast differences around compliance and even results maybe like as far as meeting their target population, things like that. We, I'm just wondering, can any of this be used in a way that helps us kind of going forward? I guess I'm particularly concerned with those who just like didn't give you information that you asked for. Maybe it wasn't required, so maybe we can't judge people too harshly in that light, because it wasn't required. But I do have concerns that there were some people that just simply seem to not respond to your requests. And then others who clearly struggled to maybe meet the goals that they propose for themselves in the project. So any thoughts on how this information can best be used by us to kind of going forward? Yeah, I'm kind of myopic on my responses here. I'm sorry for that, but as we start, if we do consider working towards some of those federal standards right now, I mean the way that the language is written in Article 25 essentially says that if you don't do your reporting or if you come off task that you're suspended and tell you do. And then when you do, you're then you're immediately okay. And I don't know without looking at it what the alignment there is to penalties versus how that would be written on the federal level. So that's something that we could provide you offline. Again, I think we're still in the earlier and more formative years of this. These organizations, a lot of times, I mean, it's interesting just in what was originally submitted and how many of those emails were no longer valid and how much turnover there is. And a lot of times, third party bookkeeping services and a lot of times those bookkeepers work for multiple organizations. So one of the observations that we made again last year and then pointed out again this year I think is that we do lack of software for compliance that we host that would allow them to post receipts against expenditures that they were actually incurring, which would really help with the original proposed alignment to the actual spend down in the categories that they said that they were going to spend them down in. If we make compliance easier for them, then there's less back end reporting and then less things that we need them to dig out. Last year, especially when we were asking them to pull receipts, what know, what we had is people saying some of our purchasing card holders, we organized the receipts by the vendor, so we have home people and home people and target and target. Some of them, we organized by, in other organizations, organized them by the user, by the the issuer, some of them organized them by date. So a lot of times when we're asking them to go back retrospectively and dig these things out and compile them, that's different asks for different organizations. So as easy as we can make it for them, we'll benefit from that as well. Right, and just pointing out the obvious that up to $50,000, sometimes much less than $50,000, these, we don't want to make these things over burdensome for these small organizations, especially. For some of the larger organizations, the amount that we are contributing to their overall needs to serve the community might be at the top end for us, but also might be very small amount in their overall budget, given they do. So people are really all over the map as far as both their ability and their, you know, just having the staff and everybody to get back to us and everything, but also just their, I guess, their motivation for it given, you know, what this means to their organization and what other pressures they're under obviously. Absolutely agree. Now we know that there's a front end eligibility criteria that they're having to meet and there's interim reporting that they're having to do while they're spending down. And then there's these these post activities that we're asking from them as well. So we're not trying to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, which is why we do a selective review process here as compared to a comprehensive annual review. Okay, okay. Well, I guess I still don't really know how we're, we're, I guess we're not using these as any sort of real evaluation of the organizations, but more about our process. Is that, am I, is that the take here? at this moment in time, that's the intent of these, yes. Thank you. All right. And just to answer your question, Councilmember Kimball, I'd be interested in looking at that and looking at federal criteria as long as we can keep the impact on what the hoops are that know, community organizations have to jump through. So that would be primary in my mind. Okay, I yield. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Come to member Nishi. Thank you, manager. Just a comment. I'm talking about the process. So for me, I would look at supporting and getting one more staff right, to help us during these grant times right, to help with the process right. And also, you know, we have the council approved multiple grants right. And so that person would be there to help the council. I know Jessica does a great job, but it's overwhelming I think with the amount of work that might not be there because she got to do it other situation too but if we can have one of your staff that gets hired to do maybe so much percent in helping the council with the grants to how would you you're coming on that if it's possible. We'd entertain a conversation on it. The way the article 25 is written is that either the finance department or council or the auditor can look at it. And what we found is that finance was filling the eligibility roll upfront. Council was filling the approval roll in the middle. And then there was nothing being done in a lot of respects on the back end of things, which is why we said not acceptable. We're going to step in and exercise that authority and start doing this. I don't... we can always use more resources. So I definitely entertain that conversation. I'm not going to discuss that out again. That's what it is, right? I mean, with hearing discussion, is that bottom line? Is that right? That part, right? Yeah And, yeah, so are you. Thank you. Cultural and Procurcuit. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your work on this. Really interesting report. I'm curious, what percentage of the organizations were exceptional? What percentage had, were in the minor exceptions category? And what percentage were in the major exceptions category? Thank you for that. So four of the organizations had a no rating. We were unable to rate, so that's 12%. No exceptions, so exceptional. Five organizations, 15%. The majority had minor deviations, so there's 1958 percent and then five of the organizations have major deviations, 15 percent. Your report doesn't go into details about what the various errors or lack of controls were. Is that something that you can provide to the council confidentially as we move into the next process of the ViVi grant program? I want to hone in on the fact that one of the comments that Council Member Kagi Wata made, these scores are not a reflection of the work that these nonprofit organizations do. The scores are in relation to their compliance within our grant reporting process. And I think we're all admitting to there's a lot of room for improvement on both sides. So as we continue to build this and make it easier for nonprofits to participate and for the council to kind of monitor grant making programs going forward. I think getting those details from you would be helpful because then we can identify what sort of capacity building and technical assistance and training we need to have available to support our nonprofits because I don't think we can get rid of the vivi. I think this is a lifeline for many of our nonprofit partners, but I do think that we have a responsibility to build their capacity so that they are able to go after larger, more complex grant opportunities that the county is not providing, but perhaps a state, federal government, philanthropic, sector up providing. So are those details something that you can provide us, auditor, Visantos? Well, we specifically excluded that because of the selective review of these criteria. So if we knew, if we had evaluated everybody in the population, you know, essentially if council made the determination to exclude certain organizations from the population based on a selective review when there were others that weren't evaluated, may not be a completely fair comparison. So in these, again, formative years and these first couple of years where we're really trying to stand up internal controls and safeguards to make sure that we can administer the program effectively. We're tackling, I guess, what I'd say is the low-lying fruit here. And then as the program matures, then that would be something that you'd see in subsequent years. So we probably wouldn't be prone to releasing that information on the selective population. I guess I don't know how we can go about improving the process without that information. And I don't think I'm looking for details per organization, but just at a higher level. These were the issues. This is what we need to do as a county to better support our nonprofits within this process. Because for me to just read here minor exceptions noted, I don't know what that means. I mean you give me the criteria here, but it's so general, I don't know how to make surgical edits here to support the nonprofits and their participation in the program but also compliance within the program. Okay. We can provide you some information offline. Okay, that would be extremely helpful. Thank you. And then I, is it safe to assume page 38 this is the rating score sheet? Was this also the basis of the questioning? Yes. Okay. So we reached out to these organizations and asked for those three exhibits. Okay. Because I had a couple of nonprofits reach out to me a little bit confused about their scoring because one of the questions was, um, upload your receipts, write your expenses. So they followed the instruction, upload your receipts. Then they received a low score because on the auditor's evaluation side, you didn't know what those receipts were for. But the question never asked them to itemize their expenses. So I think you acknowledged it earlier that there is room for improvement in how we are evaluating the nonprofits and their compliance. Yeah, that's correct. And at the closing of these things after debriefing our team also does a lessons learned in calibration session where we try to improve the process for future years delivery. after action review. Yes. I love those. Great. And then I'm just, you know, I'm going to pitch again. I've shared this with director Naka Gawa that as we, as a county, begin to implement this grant management software, which I think is going to be really fantastic for everyone. Before we do that, we should probably congenit meeting with our nonprofits to make sure we're all on the same page. Right? They do a lot of great work that the county is so, I think, eternally grateful for. They fill in a lot of gaps where government cannot potentially act. And so I think as we build out this new grant management program, they need to have a seat at the table because we need to understand like what is feasible in terms of not being overly burdened some within this grant making process so hopefully you can be part of those conversations as well. We'd welcome it. Thank you. I yield. Thank you. Councilmember Hughes this. Thank you chair. Some good conversations from my colleagues here. Mahalo, Auditor Banner, Ms. Santos. I just wanted to jump back to on the timing of this compliance report. You mentioned it was kind of a stirring tax season. Was that, you think, one of the primary reasons that some of these individuals and organizations did not respond in correlation? No. Okay. So other outside and issues in terms of non-response them. Yeah, just non-communicative. Okay. And then in terms of timing, when did this process begin for you? I believe notice went out in November. OK. I mean, I do see some, you know, justification on, and I don't doubt the work that the nonprofits are doing here, but I do see some justification on, you know, how we distribute funds based upon, you know, the ability to show cause and use of the funds and so forth. So I do see maybe if there's an effort to push this a little bit earlier so that the ad hoc committee in the next fiscal year would have some of this information and identify some of the potential challenges with some of the nonprofits might face or even the council members and grading or ranking the next iteration of them them that there I don't know if there's any opportunity to start this process sooner. Your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think that that's feasible. Okay. I just see in terms of the ones that are non-responsive or even the ones that were flagged for being completely uniligable but yet had gone through the the whole process. I mean, there is something to say about having some of that information in the lead up to the review of the next round of applications. Yeah. Thank you. Any other thoughts on that? No, I mean, your questions and comments are well-reasoned. I don't disagree with you. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that time, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Nabo. Thank you. Just a request, perhaps, for a special assistant and Councilmember Kimball, communication 934.01 from the last term was the new ad hoc to review what happened this year and then perhaps making connections on how we can use your folks after action review to partner better when we look into making our next process for the upcoming by-by awards. So happy to serve on that if we do stand up that at off. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Auditor Banner and Los Santos for this very, it's very easy to read. Yes. I guess I, you know, I think just looking at it, like one of the things that we could do next round is be more explicit about wanting those kinds of numbers. You know, I think we just ask for measurable, but we don't say what kind of measurables that we really, really want. So just being specific about that would be an, I think, an easy upgrade to help all of us. And as to your question about, like, how do we perhaps address priorities? I believe our indeed is going to be doing a survey, so that might be, I don't know what the questions are, but perhaps that might be a way to experiment with that. We've talked about it a lot. I think we don't want to sort of limit folks because the needs can be eccentric but good. So I think this last time we had sort of relevant, add files. the needs can be eccentric but good. So I think this last time we had relevance, add five points, minus five points. So perhaps we could, if it is one of the priorities, however we define it, add a certain amount of points to that to give those applications a little bump. So yeah, those are some of my thoughts. Thank you again very much and seeing no other lights, close file, all those in favor of a collision file in communication 270, please say aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that would be eight. Eight in favour? Yes, thank you and none opposed and council members, council member Kami Ali, Kleinfelder,, excuse. Next item, please, Mr. Brown. If anyone would like to testify in Communication 272, please speak up now. Hearing none, Communication 272, Performance Audit 2025-02, Department of Public Works, Building Permit Process. From County Auditor auditor Tyler J. Banner dated April 30, 2025, transmitting above the audit report, pursuant to Section 3-18D2 of the Hawaii County Charter. Chair, motion to post file on communication 272. It's been moved by Council Member, in other seconded by Council Member Hewstis, to close file on communication 272. Auditor Banner. Good afternoon. CRCLC members, Chair Glemba and members of the White County Council. My name is Tyler Banner with the Office of the County Auditor. I'd like to take a moment to introduce my incredible team. This is Maxine Pacheco. She served as lead auditor for this engagement and Jasmine Santos staff auditor. We're pleased to present the summary of our April 2025 performance audit report on the Department of Public Works. DPW Building Division's permit process report number 2025-02. We want to extend our sincere appreciation to DPW administration, Building Chief Deputy and their team. They provided full free and unrestricted access to the epic system and relevant documentation. Before starting, we do also want to say that this has been a very dynamic situation. Lots of evolutions throughout our field are con drafting, meaning that many of the conditions that we observed at and shortly after entrance were subsequently addressed or partially addressed before the exit. Our objective was to evaluate the timeliness and efficiency of the building permit application process. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. Our to evaluate the timeliness and efficiency of the building permit application process, assess compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and internal policies, identify systemic issues contributing to delays or inefficiencies, and provide actionable recommendations to improve the process. Methodology including document reviews, examining relevant policies and procedures, data analysis, we analyzed application data from July 26, 2021 to March 31, 2024. Interviews we conducted with DPW staff and key stakeholders and observations and write-alongs with field inspectors. Auditors identified 13 findings. We made 29 corresponding recommendations. Management generally agreed with our conclusions and provided an extremely detailed smart response with actions that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. You can find the action plan on pages 93 to 131 of the report. And at this time, I will turn it over to Maxine Pacheco to discuss volume. Thank you, Tyler. Aloha, my name is Maxine Pacheco. I'm an audit analyst with the Office of the County Auditor. Let's begin on page 15 with figure 1.1. It's widely understood that the demand for housing continues to outpace supply and that this embalances places pressure on permitting systems rather than reinventing the will with untested solutions we focus on proven methods by reviewing similar efforts in other municipalities. This allowed us to approach the issue through multiple lenses and build on what's already working elsewhere. Specifically, we focus on volume time and complexity in navigating the permitting process. On page 17 figure 1.3, from a volume perspective, we found that the number of permits received about 15,600 exceeds those being processed or about 11,100. This chart is simple math and does not include permits counseled by the division or withdrawn by the applicant. Moving on to page 18, figure 1.4. Next, looking at volume on a daily basis, we can see that on average, the division saw 16 applications per day were incoming, while the division was only able to process 12 applications per day. On average, over time, this contributed to a backlog that we see as the yellow line. Finding one, the volume of applications contributes to delays. And we made the following recommendations. Exempt qualified low risk applications such as PVs, implement self-certification, provide public duty doctrine training, and enhance AI integration into plan review processes. That concludes our volume section. I'll turn it over back to Tyler. Thanks, Max. Resetting the issue and addressing it from a time perspective, we found that the department places great value in the words a complete application upload. Understand that this is a filtered result. Period over period improvements in permit process times may not reflect actual performance increases. Instead classifying your great number of submissions is incomplete. The department effectively removes them from processing timelines. This selected filter incrates the appearance of efficiency as only fully completed applications are measured, allowing the division to report improved metrics without addressing systemic delays or workload bottlenecks. In essence, the improvement is statistical not operational. Additionally, we noted major variances in individual application timelines assignment. If you see figure 3.1 behind me, so for example, on November 28, 2023, there were 17 applications uploaded, and the time to assignment ranged from same day assignment to 111 days. These observations and other metrics related to failure rates and resubmissions led to a finding too, that the permit system launched prematurely before full configuration and optimization. And recommendations were made that included adding a dedicated prescreening function and enforcing a date driven protocol. Strengthening customer education and outreach, reducing instances of resubmission, monitoring first pass rates, streamlining the workflow management, update staff and public education materials, consolidate reviews, some multi-agency steps despite adding to the timeline had pass rates over 90%. Improving interagency coordination, especially with regards to the department of health and the work that they do with individual wastewater systems and commercial kitchens. Automate invoicing an issue, perviginal permits for construction start, enforce consistent timeframes for permit evaluation processes, review and update administrative rules to establish maximum timelines for reviews. And that would conclude this section on time. Again, resetting the issue and looking at it from a lens of complexity, we navigated the portal meticulously as an unfamiliar end user to recreate the user experience and simultaneously benchmarked the application portal against another municipality who recently employed the software. Finding number three redundant data collection. The audit revealed the applicants are often required to input the same information multiple times at various steps across the process. This redundancy not only increases time and effort for applicants, but also evaluates the risk, elevates the risk of data inconsistency and errors. Recommendation to reduce redundant data collection. Information entered once should be propagated across necessary forms to reduce inputs. Finding four, manual process drives workflow. Despite technology promising to improve workflow, media manually intervenes, including application interpretation and rewrites of data, recommendation to eliminate manual processes, review and eliminate legacy processes that have little or no value in the current environment. Finding five, no contact validation categorization. There's a lack of systemic validation and categorization of contacts, safeguards, built into the application portal. Recommendation is to validate and categorize contact information, introduce validation protocols to ensure the accuracy of contact details. Additionally, categorize contacts based on the roles applicant,, contractor, architect to facilitate targeted communication. Finding six insufficient clarity to guide data collection. The more info screen lacks context or direction for applicants, which leads to confusion or inconsistent responses. That this contributes to delays in processing due to incomplete or incorrect submissions. Recommendation, refine the more info screen to include clear guidance and structured prompts that direct users on how to provide accurate and complete information. Finding seven building division uses outdated forms. Some of the forms currently in use are outdated or superseded, which leads to discrepancies between applicant submissions and current code or procedural requirements. Recommendation is to eliminate outdated forms. Replace outdated legacy forms and integrated into the portal. Finding eight, not utilizing digital signature features, although the permitting system is capable of accepting digital signatures, the electronic process still requires physical signatures. This adds unnecessary steps and slows down the workflow. Recommendation to enable digital signatures. Enable and promote the use of digital signature capabilities within the permitting platform. Finding number nine, improve accountability and transparency. Lack of a defined application completeness standard and an absence of formal complaint process creates uncertainty for applicants and weekends public trust. Furthermore, the division lacks structured training in continuous improvement practices. Recommendations include defined application completeness through ordinance to standardized expectations, implement a formal, complaint handling process to provide applicants with a reliable way to voice concerns and seek resolution, engage a six sigma expert consultant to evaluate current workflows, and provide lean sick sigma training to staff to foster a culture of process improvement and accountability. And that concludes our complexity section. The next item we explored is inspections. Building inspections are integral to the successful implementation of general building process serving as a critical checkpoint and ensure safety compliance and quality throughout construction. They verify that each phase of the work aligns with approved plans, building codes and safety standards preventing cost liars and helping projects stay on schedule within budget. Regular inspections also allow issues to be identified early and resolve promptly, supporting a smoother and more predictable journey for applicants. Contractors we spoke would generally appreciate the inspection process when it's administered in a way that helps guide and assist the the building function. Conversely, when building inspections are delayed or inconsistently applied, they can disrupt project timelines inflate costs and undermine confidence in the entire building process. With even when permitting functions are operating efficiently, inspection related bottlenecks can erode gains and prolong project completion. Well, the primary focus of this audit was on permitting performance. Inspections are a vital part of the overall user experience, ultimately impacting the county's ability to meet broader housing and development goals. Finding 10, no policies and procedures. The building division lacks written policies and procedures for inspections and management oversight. This results in inspectors developing their own methods, which leads to inconsistent documentation, enforcement standards, and overall practices across disciplines. Recommendation to establish policies and procedures. Create and implement written policies and procedures for inspections and management oversight to promote consistency, accountability, and adherence to best practices across inspection teams. Finding 11, limited management oversight. There is no standardized oversight process among inspection supervisors. Supervisors do not have dedicated vehicles rarely conduct field spot checks despite PDs calling for a significant portion of their time to be in fieldwork follow-up and lack consistent methods for reviewing work or resolving issues. This weekend's accountability creates uneven enforcement of inspection standards, recommendation to increase management oversight, development and forces structured oversight framework for supervisors including routine field spot checks, work review protocols, and consistent procedures for resolving deficiencies. Ensure supervisors have daily access to vehicles to support these responsibilities. Finding 12 lack of training, the building division does not have a formal or ongoing training program for inspectors and supervisors. This results in underutilization of critical tools like the Epic application and creates knowledge gaps regarding new code requirements and specialized inspection areas. Recommendation, develop training program. Implement a structured continuous training program that Epic System Usage, updates on industry code changes, and specialized inspection training. Track participation and maintain records to ensure accountability and coverage. Finding 13 lack of critical enhancements in Epic. The Epic System Lacks Roll-Based Access Controls allows unrestricted back dating of reports and suffers from inaccurate geolocation data. These deficiencies compromise oversight, data integrity, and inspection efficiency. There's also no exception reporting to identify outliers or errors in inspection activity. Our recommendation to enhance epic system functionality, implement role-based user access, develop exception reporting for inspection anomalies, and improve geolocation accuracy to support field operations and data integrity. That includes the inspection section of the report. Regarding waste fraud and abuse, audit standards require that we remain mindful and document known or suspected waste fraud or abuse in government operations. During the audit, we ask management if they're aware of ongoing investigations or pending litigation. Management reported ongoing investigations and pending litigation. As this body may be aware, OCA operates a waste fraud and abuse hotline. During the course of the audit, our fraud waste and abuse hotline receive calls related to potential abuse. While looking at the process, the audit identified internal control deficiencies and made recommendations that we believe will add much needed safeguards to prevent, detect or deter vulnerabilities and breakdowns. Investigations related to individual actions and behaviors through the hotline are looked at independent from the audit, which focus on process. If abuse is suspected determining whether a specific act constitutes abuse often requires a legal or adjudicated process, which is beyond the auditor's role. In conclusion, DPW Building Division has made meaningful progress over time. There's substantial work that needs to be, needs to continue to be implemented. To improve, we recommended a three-pronged strategy, reduce volume by expanding exemptions and self-certification, improve processing time through date-driven prioritization and automation, and simplify complexity with clear guidance, updated policies, and technology improvements. These steps taken together will ease the backlogs and prove accountability and create a more predictable and transparent permitting system. Continued oversight and strong management follow through will be critical to ensuring these changes take hold. Subsequent to the release of our report, but developed independently and in parallel, the Hawaii State Legislature has introduced Senate Bill 66, which aims to speed up the building permit process and cut down approval delays by making the permit process faster and more predictable by establishing a 60-day deadline. Counties must decide within 60 days whether to approve a permit provided. Provided the plans are certified by license The plan is to provide the plan to be approved. The plan is to provide the plan to be approved. The plan is to provide the plan to be approved. The plan is to provide the plan to be approved. The plan is to provide the plan to be approved. The plan is to provide the plan to be approved. The plan is to provide the plan to be approved. The plan is to provide the plan to be approved. application is code compliant under SB 66 that responsibility would shift to license architects and engineers while counties would continue inspecting during construction. Notably our audit found the county lacks documented policies and procedures to ensure code compliance. We feel that SB 66 aligns very well to our audit findings and recommendations. Governor Green has until June 24th 2025 to sign a Vito SB 66 until then we're monitoring closely to understand how this may impact the audit findings and recommendations. If SB 66 is enacted it would go into effect on July 1, 2026 and remain in place until June 30, 2031. In closing if SB 66 is signed into law why county's DPW will be required to amend chapter five of the construction administrative code and revise its administrative rules governing the enforcement of code and regulation. The county should consider what external resources the division might need to ensure compliance. These changes will be necessary to support the expedited permitting process and clearly define the updated roles and responsibilities of the county staff and licensed professionals. Mahalo for your time and attention. We'll turn it back to Council's for discussion with the department. Thank you for this very detailed and thorough report. DPW, would you folks like to go over the management response this time? here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good afternoon. New as video acting deputy guard for public. I'll pass it on to our deputy director, our deputy chief Aaron Spillman. Hi Aaron Spillman deputy building chief. The question reminded me was on the management response. Oh yes, if you want to, I just wanted to give you the opportunity to go for your response before we start having comments in case so that we don't have to cover anything that you would say. Okay. Yeah. Just an overview then. Okay. Management response starts on page 93 of the report and includes a letter to Mr. Tyler Banner. Thank you to the County Auditor's Office for providing this report. The management response includes the recommendations that are listed out in the audit report, as well as responses about the building division's position on those recommendations and following with an action plan where we're warranted for tracking and implementing programs to address these recommendations. And that continues through page 131 and includes the opening and the conclusion about those management responses. Thank you. Is that general enough? That is general. I, there was very detailed timelines for each action. Anything else? I think we can go to council members then. Council member Houston. Thanks, Chair. Hello, Deputy Chief. Deputy Chief Spillman, were you part of this conversation? I know you're kind of new in the role. So did you have any opportunity to present any recommendations from building division? Recommendations after the audit? Yes. In terms of the management response to the auditor, I'm so an auditor's office. Yes. We're part of that process. Yes. I worked with the auditor's office to review the drafts, one, two, and three, and then work to help out with the management response as like a background support. Okay. I just didn't want to make sure because you're rather new in the role, so I don't know if Chief Sonomoro was also part of this conversation too. Yes, she was. Okay. Okay. I just had a couple questions if you could elaborate on and I'd love to hear from my colleagues but I'll just want to start off on the training opportunities. It's kind of referenced finding number 12. If you could elaborate a little bit further on what you've been exploring for training opportunities Within within department and also within kind of the public realm too Sure, so within the department we look often at the ICC Which is our international code council and they provide trainings throughout the year on different Topics the one we're looking at for this year is the International Existing Building Code, referred to as the IEBC. There are other opportunities as well. And we recently, last week, Tuesday and today, staff was invited and attended voluntarily, was the International Energy Conservation Code, the IECC training. Last week was residential, this week was commercial. So those happened throughout the year? Kind of on a regular basis then. Somewhat, yeah, they have their preferences for when they want to do it. We can actually request and engage with ICC for training officials to come out under contract or via Zoom and we've also been looking at that for other specifics. Last year, I want to say it was in the summer. We did have a two-day training session with the ICC and so less than a year later we're continuing with more trainings. For the Interagency Corporation, we're talking about multi-agency, oftentimes with the state, other departments. In that regard, I believe it has to do with training on the epic side of things and how EPL or back office works, how those agencies would review and implement without downtime or without things getting lost. And so we've been working with multiple agencies that the last big push was with the Department of Health Wastewater and that was an active pursuit to work with that agency to bring down the review times. Thank you Deputy Chief. I was just kind of looking to see if there's, you know, you have regular training opportunities both here within the Department and multi, you know, interagency as well. Just trying to see if there's an establishment and a routine of training that's provided for staff, kind of like a schedule. I mean, for the finding that says lack of training, it's pretty stark for me, so I don't know if, you know, there's a step forward and adding additional training, more opportunities and kind of building that out as a kind of a timetable for that. And then, yeah, please. There isn't at the time, but certainly something we're going to be looking at. I think part of it is the balance between necessary training to bring everyone up to speed and maintain that level and also just getting the work done. I think that's the juggling effect. Absolutely. Absolutely. We understand. Sorry to cut you off. No, that's perfect. Thank you, Deputy Chief. The other question I had was on page 91 alludes to Epic Enhancement. So if you could elaborate the investment and additional investments were kind of being made to enhance Epic, where we're taking it to the next stage and next level, how to streamline some of these processes using what we've already invested in, how to add additional modules, whatever it takes to kind of expand our use, interface with the public if you could elaborate a little bit on that. Sure. So Epic Enhancement, 91, page 91, has the two notes, the role-based access controls and the exception reporting. Roll-based access controls has to do with identifying and categorizing each user to a certain priority level, or ability to put in or take out information, and that's going to allow us some oversight as well. But also, let's say that I don't have approval to do something. That I wouldn't be able to do it. That saves some, well, it's an organization thing. But it gives us the hierarchy and protocol. The exception reporting has to do with things that might be pulled, let's say out of order. Let's say there's a county project that wants to be expedited and that gets directed to us, then the exception reporting would track those individual things so that every month or every year, there could be an easily identifiable report. Because the data and the EPIT program are so in depth, there's a lot of data that can be pulled out and then we just set that up in advance. I mean, I'd answer your training question. I mean, they're definitely connected because there's an opportunity to train staff more about if you, if we're adding additional layers to Epic, I mean, there's going to be more training that's necessarily needed. What sort of financial investments do we have to make in towards towards epic to kind of Grow it build it out further Sorry, I don't want to be all of it. No I'm actually not a not a budget finance guy. So I have to defer to that. I'm not sure what the technical Dollars are what do you see in terms of the what we have currently and limitations? I mean, a lot of these things could be maybe streamlined the process, the recommendations from auditor, through what we have, but maybe we need to expand it upon a little bit further. So you could speak to the limitations that were kind of the barriers that we're running into with Epic right now. I actually think the Epic system is come a long way, at least from when I was using an impried it. And the two aspects that we're not using and they're in this report, one is the inspectors module and the other is the code compliance module. And with both of those, which would of course need training and bringing stuff up to speed, would make a more robust holistic program where everything is in one software instead of different aspects of building being in different pieces of paper or computer systems. Thank you. And then to Acting Director, is that something that we're looking at adding and building out a bit more of those modules? Yes, as long as it speeds up the process. Okay, we'll go always everywhere we need to. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate the time, Chair. Thank you. Going over to Kona, are you anything there? I'm here. All good. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Cunney at Lee Kleinfield there. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, gentlemen. We're missing. Who's missing today? Son of Moral. Where is she? She's absent right now. Okay. Mr. there's billman. A lot of things this is a pretty healthy audit. I think I don't think the fact that the two people who put the epic system into existence and began its process here in the county are not here today and do not work within the county I think is extremely telling.. So I started with that. No one at this table, obviously. Let me start at the beginning. The, I mean, the one of the questions that was in advance of this audit was how long applications are stuck in the intake process. Meaning they haven't been dropped into the system. They've been submitted, but they haven't been actually up, up, taking and given to one of our individuals to begin review. Was that number anywhere in here that was the reference? It is. I see. Mr. Bender to any he's probably a well-dinner information if you want to lean on him 37 So the average was 37 days in the queue before assignment. Is that correct? At that time correct. Okay. March 18, 2023. I'm just trying to read through this night. I think Mr. Bennet was quite clear and just pointing out that this was an average that averages can be misleading given that somewhere 111 days and somewhere just a few days before they are brought into the system. So that number is brought to me by the community again and again. You're not counting the time we sit in the queue before we're assigned somebody. Has there been any move to less in that intake number? Yes. Okay. And what was that? Staff has been working over time. We thank the staff a lot. Holidays and weekends. Bringing that number down. We also have a priority queues which are detailed out in this audit where say you're a hospital, you might come in as a higher priority than say a small tenant improvement. So it's not that everybody's waiting in the same line. It's that everyone's waiting in a series of lines depending on the project type or permit type. And then those are addressed in a priority order to reduce the time waiting. I think what you're referring to is after the customer has submitted the application, they've paid for the plan review fee and now it just waits, right? There's this purgatory period before intake takes it up. We're trying to reduce that. And I want to say that towards the end of the year, the beginning of this year, we saw time periods as low as two weeks or less. And so sometimes it just really depends on staffing and how many are in the queue. Of course, what type of permit project type you're under? Okay. Good. Thank you. So I want to hear that this report really does point to we know what the problems are. And I think we've known for decades. It's just how we address it. That's so good to hear we're finding solutions. That's Mr. Banner has always said, it stopped the listening to the problem, start asking for solutions. So that's, that's right, really. I love the beauty of what he does, but your department is gonna have to do that. So, a good luck. Well, I think one of the real important graphics that I pulled out of this was that our application volume is actually bigger than our processing volume consistently. Yeah, the blue and yellow line graph. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty clear. We get more applications than we are able to process on a continuous basis. And that has gone back to looks like 2001. Sorry, 2021. So it has the department made progress in increasing staffing to be able to bring that number down or match the two. Bring those lines closer together. We have made some hiring, some staff improvements, and we're continuing to do so, hiring on more staff. And like you in the graphics and numbers game, so bringing on more staff as a direct correlation to processing times and we are actively pursuing improvements. They're not, sorry, you may have to continue. There may not be actual, in this date range, there may not be actual incidents or causes that happen like for example when blue beam went down. That may not be reflected in here and they're maybe I'm confusing this issue. No, okay. So hopefully these lines reconverge and then we're gonna be producing as much or more than what Is coming in that would certainly be the goal That would be a deal Something that I I mean I spent 10 years doing that school and solar work and I couldn't help but noticed that 25% of our permits Our residential PV permits, so there's an easy win there as far as decreasing incoming permits and our review types as well as addressing that divergent line of applications versus what we're able to process because if we can limit Reviews on certain types of permits coming in That's brought out in this in this audit. I think we can do some work as far as limiting the work that your staff has to do at the same time Last questions one last question. Thank you. Have you done any work in addressing the public duty doctrine training? We did see that in the report and it is something we're very interested in pursuing and that's on the list I believe there's a timeline action item list there to bring in staff and train them up on the public duty doctor. Or then just what people are learning on their own, no direct training. I think that would be tremendous. Yeah, okay. Are you okay? Thank you. Councilmember Anishi. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to add about when someone submits an application during our budget time, during the budget time, in March, we asked that same question. And we're told, well, I would mention, but a building sheet chief it thinks about 30 days before it gets out from that application night so you're seeing now it got reduced from March to now the time that's been in there. My time limit may have my time period may have been longer than what Chief Sonor Mur talking about I may be going back in my memory to say November December and just knowing that things were taking a lot longer up to 60 days And out of to go into the queue. Yeah, and that was in my private practice for whatever reason and I think I tripped that to staffing and having several causes that affected the ability to speed that up. Now we actually see it speeding up and that's very positive. So when did it start speeding up? Because that is in March we're at 30 days. So that was 30 days one month. Yeah, so that was probably leaps and bounds over, let's say October and earlier of 24. And between March and today I couldn't give you an exact number, but I'm going to say that it's closer to 30 and less and we're trying to keep it. It's kind of still 30 so. Yeah, we're trying to. And that's where I think the time wise, like folks mentioned, to get it approved within a certain period of time. But because it's in that first stage, that adds to the amount of time being people have to wait. Plus to add to that, once it gets approved and for someone to get get issuance of their building permit, that takes a while to correct. Sorry, can you repeat that question? Okay. So when the application is approved for the applicant to get their building permit, how long does that take? Sorry for the it depends answer, but it does sometimes sometimes there's a there's a queue for sure and part of that is the Clerks I'll process the permit notify the applicant that the project is ready at that point the applicant pays for the permit fee and Also submits usually submits the project declaration right If the project declaration has already been submitted, that's one less thing, but because of timing and how we all work, it's often at the end. So in the average, what takes up on maybe another 20 to 30 days to get issued? Shoot it. I wanna say it's less than that, but I don't have that data. Okay, because in my previous, I was a permit expanator. And we're seeing waiting for that to be issued out. And part of the, I guess, the comments we got was that because of manpower. They had, because they were the collector doing so many different things that, I guess, to issue it took another time because they had to review everything again, make sure everything is all documented or stamped or whatever and then boom they could issue right. And then like you said, they got to wait for that other form from the contractor, right? What RM, RM, yeah, I really needed to be the signature. Okay. Well, so I'm yeah, hopefully that can help. You get that going faster. It is and thank you for that. Um, what I was thinking of when you're mentioning this is that you're right, the clerical staff is doing both the intake and the all process. And at one time too, they were also intaking for all of PV student, right? Yes, correct. Yeah, and so it was like overwhelmed. So one thing we've done is we've implemented daily reports. And those daily reports really help our teams that track and understand what the priorities are. Okay, thanks. There's one about third party review. I wasn't supported at that. I really liked that. But what I found out recently, it's about corruption. Because the third party reviewer, individuals, applicants could pay more to get that process done faster. So I now I don't want that to happen, right? Because then we need to think of something better. And that's where, as Mr. Benner mentioned, about that state law now with that SB 66. Yeah, if governor signs that, that's beautiful because what I really wanted to see was that if a developer comes in and they have the certified Hawaii license, be able to stamp your project as an engineer or architect, and you have the funding you move forward. You take all responsibility of their project. I believe that we should do that, because then they don't have to go through a county process. They take the liability of doing their development. I feel that could be done. They request building to get their inspectors, to inspect that they make sure that the work that they're doing is following the county code. Right? And if they're not, then it's the engineer and the developer takes responsibility. Right? So that's what I think can happen to if the administration agrees upon that. For the training, as was mentioned, I've seen where new staff come in and they got to start fresh. For being on building inspect, I mean the book must be thick right and to go through all that is ridiculous and we'll take time and so and the thing is they won't follow the book right whereas you had a 30-year veteran they know the ins and outs they don't understand what's going on so it a process faster. So I mentioned at budget, you folks got to look at having that overlap where You're gonna have you're gonna you know someone's gonna be retiring maybe in December Maybe like in October You folks hire someone and I know you can't have two positions with the same numbers So like like I said before, I think police, but I know fire, they have temporary numbers. So when the recruit comes in, they have a temporary number. And then once they pass and they graduate, then they get their permanent number. So that's what I think you folks need to do because I've seen where in the past, some reviewers would let this go. And now the new guys, they don't let that go. So architects or engineers who deal with previous reviewers was like, OK, this is OK, going past. But now it's like, oh, no, it's not. So I had to do multiple meetings with the director to explain what was going on. And then they would understand and then just kind of like, okay, they can move forward. So that's something where you guys got us a look in at to have that overlap, the shadow part. Because you can get them as much training as you want, but if they're new and you know, the learning is still a big tie, right? Here, Timer has gone off, so could we perhaps? Okay, I owe you a little bit for that. Thank you. Come back for you. Council member, thank you. Thank you for noticing me. Who are you? Thank you all for being here. Thank you again Auditor Banner and team for an excellent report. I'll just start by saying it you know as you all know I have a spouse in the design industry and so I have a front side seat to interactions with DPW from that angle of things and so I don't want to seat to interactions with DPW from that angle of things and so I don't want to not admit to that be real open about that. I have a bunch of questions. I want to start kind of following off of what Council Member Nishie was discussing which is SB 66, third party review, self-certification. I lump those all kind of into one thing. And I notice the way I interpret the management response is that, yeah, nice maybe, but there's still a lot of need for controls from DPW. Is that an accurate reflection of what I'm seeing here? And could you maybe expound more on the department's position on these particular mechanisms for expediting the permitting process? What's there a third one associated with that it was self-certified third party review? Did you mention SB66? All together. Okay. A timeline enforced by the state? I speak for the building division. Is that okay? It prefer if you speak for the building division in that role right now. I think the concern with self-certification is that not every design professional carries E&O, errors in omission insurance. That could be a big concern for homeowners who may be left in the dust if some professionals don't fulfill their obligations. Third party review is promising. I think one of the big concerns is how will our current workers and staff take that? How will the unions address that conversation? But certainly third party review is available, including through the ICC. Maybe one of those related concerns would be paid a play. So those that can afford it can and those that can't, I don't know. We don't have a grant program that would offset those costs. I think those are our concerns. SB 66, I know I've read it. I know I've weighed in on it. I don't remember the exact language. Does it have to do with? Basically for residential permits, if the department doesn't do anything with them, I forget with the number of days they settled on. I want to say it was 60. Then it just goes to automatic approval. So I think one of the background concerns with there may be interrelated here, but maybe with SB 66. Thank you. The onus now falls on the owner. Let's say a plan doesn't get reviewed in the office. And it goes out directly to the field. Maybe at 61 days, it goes out to the field. Contractors building, just like they normally would. Maybe there's a new code thing. Maybe there's something that was missed. No big deal. But when the inspector goes out to inspect, if that's not code compliant, it's going to have to be rectified. As you know, it's far less expensive to change ink on paper than it is to change concrete and steal in the field. So that's, I think, a background concern that we have that may not be evident. I think also related to self-certify. I'm not sure about third party review, but possibly related to self-certify. We don't know what the unintended consequences would be, namely with the insurance companies and the lenders. So lenders and insurance companies may walk away, and that might drive the cost of housing up, which we don't want. I want to thank you for basically articulating all of the thoughts I had in my head about these things. Particularly for those of you that were not present on Council, the last term, I believe it was Councilmember Chung had introduced some language that would allow for self-certification and we did have a lot of the design professionals in the community come out and say, hey, but wait a minute. I mean, they themselves were actually asking for that second check and insurance and loan viability is a big part of that and particularly professional liability insurance for design professionals has just skyrocketed year after year. And if they are self-certifying, that's going to be very difficult for those businesses to hold on. So I did have concerns about those recommendations and I think that you articulated them very nicely. Similarly, Councilmember Camille Klein-Felder was talking a little bit about the prioritization and so one of the recommendations was a uniform process of prioritizations of projects as they come through. And one of the department's responses was a manual tracking of those that kind of skipped the queue. We're going to a different queue. Can you speak a little bit more around that? Because one of the concerns and note disrespect out at her banner that I had generally with this report is that not all permits are equal. And I think that you did just to segregate them a little bit versus residential and commercial and whatnot. But I think there's even finer granularity that really affects some of the differences about how things go through this system. So can you speak specifically to prioritization and maybe be a little more detailed about what you think the department should do to improve that aspect of it? I mean, should we treat all permits as equal and just push them through? Personally, I'm not a fan of that last option. I do like the priority cues. I think they show the importance of those varied aspects. I want to say, high up on the list, number one, might maybe even as emergency permits. So that would be, let's say say fire or flood happens and somebody needs to rebuild before they or do tenant improvements before the permit can be issued. There's a process in our HCC that allows the applicant to notify the agency and then continue with the construction work while they're working on the drawings to submit. So that seems like a very hopeful aspect of of course, the emergency. So we think think yeah it has to be done. I want to say for we have a model home package program so not the model home package design applications themselves permit applications but rather when it comes back in to be set on a permanent law with its site plan those are done in a much faster priority with a dedicated timeline. So those permits don't get caught up in, let's say, all the other things that need attention. I do like the fact that we break them out. There are quite a few. I want to say something like 17 priorities. So it can be a little much, but it gives us a subcategory for every permitt type, most of the permitt types, and allows us to track those individually. And most recently we've broken out 10 in improvements less than 50,000 from 10 in improvements more than. So let's say you're doing a small, say, an existing restaurant and you're doing a facelift type of thing for $49,000, then that would theoretically be processed faster than a brand new commercial mall, if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. I think was a lot of the response that I was looking for, What I think might be rather than standardizing the process so that all participants move through based on their initiation time. Having some real clear guidance and you guys don't have rules, but I understand you are allowed to do rulemaking. Something around some rules about what prioritizes a project, like you said, emergency things under a certain threshold. Do you operationally have dedicated staff that you have somebody that does all the prefab permits? You have somebody that does? I mean, that might be another thing to consider too, is dedicated staff for the specific pipelines based on the type of project? We currently have five plans examiners, so they do it all. So no. Yeah, yeah, I understand. But yeah, right now it's someone's out, we pick up that slack with the other people in the office and we don't have like maybe programs might be, we don't have dedicated staff for only that one thing. And so basically they're cross-trained in all the permit types, starting with the easy ones, moving into more complexity. And that gives us depth on the bench, but also allows, hopefully more continuity, the story she was speaking in that earlier. Okay. Consistency, sorry. Yeah, yeah. Moving on to, I want to just highlight, you made this comment and this was something that just, by the way, I was reading this instead of catching up on last of us last night. So I'm behind things to you folks. What I'd like, this just lines stuck out to me and it's something you said just a moment ago. The inspector's role is to assess compliance with the construction code. And you mentioned that in the context of self-certification. Do you think that that is an accurate assessment of the inspector's role? And the reason I bring that up, and just I'll finish this question, I have some more but I'll reveal my time. The reason I bring that up is because the results of this audit vary if you think that the inspector's role is to ensure compliance or if you think the inspector's role is to ensure Adherence to the design documents that were permitted by the department and so Depending on what you think the role of the inspector is The response here changes In my opinion, the response of the inspector is always compliance with the construction code. They're very... The response here changes. In my opinion, the response of the inspector is always compliance with the construction code. They're very well-made-be things that are missed in drawings. For example, we're given easy example smoke detector may not be on the plans. Even if everybody missed it, they architect the engineer, the owner, the contractor, the plan's examiners, still has to be installed. So we advise our inspectors to start with the plans, use those as their starting point, and then pay particular attention to life safety items for compliance with the code. Thank you for that answer, and I just conclude by saying I think that that adds even more weight to the auditor's recommendations with respect to the inspector and their oversight, because they have that code compliance component to their responsibilities beyond just making sure the as-built matches what's on the drawings. The argument time, thank you. Thank you. Council member Kirkowitz. Thank you, Chair. Deputy Speelman, there are a number of actions here with time-bound deadlines. Some of which are coming up June 2025 and then later progressively through this year. I'm curious, are you folks on track to meet the deadlines that are identified here? Thank you. That's a great question. Some, you will have noticed, I've already started and it's been in progress. The other ones that are coming up this next month, we're going to be jumping out in front of our big push has been this May 23rd Upgrade to the EPL system, which is our back office of Epic So once that deadline is gone. We're gonna assign staff reconfigure and shoot for those June 2025 dates because we've got two steps of mental process Cloud delta guidelines. You've got reports for interagency review, tracking and analyzing various deviations, workflow adjustments. Yadayadayada. It'll be a busy summer. It will. And I'm worried you guys are going to get summer break. All joking aside though, who is principally in charge of overseeing the implementation of these various actions? Don't all jump at once. OK. Good afternoon. Acting, building, chief, Keoni Thompson Yes, oh, okay Yeah, I've been it's been two weeks since I've been working with building the business right now I think there was an announcement right I don't recall seeing an email about Miss Sonamora no longer serving as It's only a temporary building chief. She reassigned to a different section within public works. Sorry, this is breaking now. I'd like to know who's in charge. I mean, you know, Aaron's here answering all of the questions that I'm just curious if he's going to be making sure that we're staying on task. And as acting acting director I'm in charge okay and everything will follow me okay so this Q&A will be acting chief building chief and Aaron Spill me will be acting definitely and I know the book stops with you director as a video but I think at the end of the day you have a lot of different divisions and projects that you're overseeing as the director. I just want to know the day-to-day individual that is going to be managing the implementation of all these different actions. Is it Mr. Spillman? Is it Mr. Thompson? Are we assembling a core team of individuals? I just, I like knowing case I get one question, I know who to email. We'll be more of them. More of them will assist each other and build together as one. Perfect. So there's a tag teaming effort happening here. As a member of the public or the council, is there, and I'm sorry if you answered this earlier, there's just a lot of really complex information in many, many moving pieces. Is there like an online tracking system that allows us to know progress made towards each of these actions? No, no, no, no. It's a great idea, right? Yes. Like we'll work on it. Okay, great. Also wanna understand, like be honest, okay, be super, because we keep seeing all these different like real property tax assessments coming in and we've got a bit more resources than we were anticipating. Are you guys sufficiently resourced to carry out what is being expected of you through this audit? We'll do our best to get the permits as fast as possible. But do you need more personnel? Personnel for the clerks, you know right now we're I think full capacity right now and we didn't we got a supervisor just hired in I think two months ago and we got another clerk in corner just came back So we're full right now and we'll do our best to do what we need. As of now, we're going to know excuses. We're going to get it done. Yeah, you're a non-sense guy. Yeah, I know we're going to get it done, but again, I just want to make sure, because we talked about folks having to work over time, wanting to prevent the burnout, wanting to make sure folks are happy to be continuing to do this work. Because really, it's an honor and a pleasure to serve you. But I don't want to max folks out so are we gonna evaluate what other human resources we might need software resources other things that we might need to carry this workout. Yes we did we probably look at them a couple more clerks. Don't be shy. Yes. And for our inspectors, too, we adjusted the zones to cover more zone since we have more inspectors in Hilo. So it's helping out the corner side to get the inspections quicker. And the inspectors taking the cars home. Why? So when they come in work, they can inspect the jobs when they come into work. then when they go in home, they can finish inspecting whatever's on their way to their home. So this was the main concern when I first started, you know, there's no way enough time in the day for inspecting, going home, they live, why may they live, you know, maybe half an hour, 45 minutes away from the workplace place. So on the way back, they can do more inspections. So get the process going quicker. Or maybe more inspectors? Yes. That too, yeah. Inspectors across the districts. And then I, you know, I just want to hone in on something that you had said earlier, Deputy Speelman, the concern about pay-to-play. And then note that I wrote here was our process should work fairly for all. This process has got to work regardless of your income level. We want it to be a level playing field for everyone. So thank you for your commitment to ensuring just the integrity and efficiency of this process. Thank you. Can I add something? I think a few of these action items, well, I know a few of these action items include ISA, Forz, Information System Analysts Forz, and they might actually be the same person, but the way I understand these action plans is they can happen independently. So it might end up being the same ISA for that's doing different projects, but that would be one position that would help us in support of these both immediate and long-term goals with permit enhancements. So we have a team of three now at Building IT that would be a fourth, would also give us backup and some redundancy, but also allow us to put them in a role to do some project management of information technology. Great. Last question. A couple weeks ago, we get a report from HR about 8090 contracts. And I think I saw somebody that was engaged by building. They were brought on board to do some kind of like permitting analysis. Who was that and what did they do and are they helping with this? And the reason why I asked was it was kind of a substantive like monthly contract they were getting. I think to the tune of like $8,000 a month, so like major expertise. Just again, wondering how they are helping you folks with this process. I believe that was sorry Mark for doing your last name Mark. Krizenewski. Yeah, but I'm sure there's a proper pronunciation. I'm sorry for that. I want to say Mark was in 89 day hired through the mayor's office. Okay. I think I might have been the last 89 day hire in the building division, which was last year and June. Okay. But you're permanent now. I am permanent as of November 7th. Did you interface with Mark? Yes, we work together and there's a task force right now that we're working on together multiple members of the building division, Mark and also other members of the of the county on permitting improvements. And I believe Mark's formal role was permit optimization manager, I believe was correct. And so he was in particular interested in similar metrics to what we're looking at here today in the report. And Mark has full access to the data. And so he's able to determine and analyze the data as well in different ways. I mean the epic data, the EPL data, to understand. Which is public, by the way, right? That data, no, yes. I don't think that data is public, sorry. I don't know. Okay. But basically, I think it's under confidential, yeah, not public. Basically understanding all the things we continue to talk about and where can those things be improved. And for example, like photovoltaics under 10kW is already a prioritized system. And so then the question comes up, what else could be done? That could be in a similar fashion to reduce the amount of applications that are being reviewed and speed up the process for getting people working in the field, getting projects done. Is he still being retained by the mayor's office to support what you folks are doing? I believe so. We're in contact on email. Okay, that's all for now. Thank you, I yield to them. Thank you. Councilmember Connie Eklan-Felbert. Thank you, Chair. So one of the findings repeated throughout this audit was the permit system launched prematurely before full configuration and optimization. Do you guys agree with that? Totally. Totally. It goes as yes. This is a break me right back to Mr. Rodinersd and Mr. Kern, naming this system Epic. Didn't have to rename that, but they named it Epic and they brought it in and walked into the door. Is this amazing process? I was going to speed everything up. I think, again, it's right back to this, this testament that it did it. So there's a lot of findings by the auditor's office on specifically the premature, premature launching. What are you folks doing as far as all of those findings that he brought forward? I'm not going to name them, they're so numerous, but what movement has been made by the department to streamline the process itself and epic? And when you speak about that, please speak about how responsive, Tyler and Energal are being in a in helping make that happen and we have a responsibility to the taxpayer. Similar to what Ms. Kirkwood said, we have a responsibility to the taxpayer to make sure that we're accountable to our people. So please go ahead. Was that a two-part question? Was one having to do with the responsiveness of Tyler and Energov? Well, I think it's a very important question. I think it's a very important question. I think it's a very important question. I think it's a very important question. was that a two-part question? Was one having to do with the responsiveness of Tyler and Energov? Well, it's me, it's a two-part question, but they're related is how are we meeting the findings of Mr. Better's office on the audit as far as premature rollout and how we're making it better? But a crucial part of that is Tyler helping make that happen. Okay, thank you for clarifying. I think I can answer this question. With our building IT department, which is the three people so far that are ISAs that are currently. They do only EPL back office stuff. They work directly with us. They're in our office. They're part of our own internal IT group. They work directly with Tyler and Ennergov. I believe Tyler is the name of the company. They send out tickets. Tyler responds to them. Some tickets are responded to more quickly. Some take longer. but for the most part, it seems like Tyler is responsive. And they also are looking out for things that may improve the system. So like we're just rolling out this new version, 520, May 23rd this Friday, rolling out a new version, and that's going to take care of a few things that were problematic in the last version. So as software engineers update their systems then we see the benefit of that. How are we meeting the findings, especially on the premature rollout? I want to say we have something it's in this report that numbers escape to me. It's like 149 or 159 enhancements that we've been working on, 159 enhancements. So we have weekly meetings that talk about things we hear from the public, things that we take away from from council meetings where we say, hey, you know, this be a possible enhancement to improve the customer experience. And then we try to make it happen. And if we need support, we reach out to Tyler. There's also an online forum group that our building IT uses, which is not just us being a guinea pig with Tyler, but all the other municipalities that use EPL or NRGov, and any problems or challenges they're experiencing, we can kind of see what that information is and learn from it as well. Okay, thank you. Johnny, are you all right, Neil, anything? Yeah. Highlight for me in inspections, I'm gonna follow up with the public duty doctrine within the audit. Sounds like one of the building inspection supervisors did not comply with a request to do a write-along. That's concerning. There's multiple attempts with evasive behavior to actually allow for a write-along. That raises questions to me. And then the other part, I mean, I've been in the field, I've had inspectors come to my jobs. I've dealt with differing inspection types in both East and West Hawaii. It's always interesting to me. So I completely agree with some of the findings in this. But we have journey min plumbers and journey min electricians for inspections, for those two trades specifically for building, we don't require a licensed inspector. Is that correct? I believe that's correct, council member. I'm not aware of the building inspector qualification, like a journeyman or master plumber or electrician, would carry. So we don't require that. We just have it. Electrical inspectors must hold supervising electrical journeyman licenses. Plumbing inspectors must hold a pumping journeyman license. Despite their role in final walkthroughs and permits signoffs, the Kona building inspectors are not required to be licensed. This is, I'm reading from the audit itself. I believe that's island wide. That building inspectors are not required to be licensed. As what, a general contractor or a sea license for carpentry or something? It's a training. It's different than electrical and plumbing requirements in the PD, in the position description. Okay, I think it speaks to kind of a need to really qualify that East and West are treating exactly the same, that we have real straightforward principles. And this is one of the policies and procedures the audit found was inspectors operate autonomously and develop their inspection methods, resulting in variations in documentation, standards, and enforcement practices. This inconsistency creates challenges when inspectors swap work areas. And when permits must be reassigned, but it also creates a lot of difficulty for the contractors who are getting those inspections and dealing with multiple inspectors in different areas who do different styles of inspection. That has been something I'm afraid of for 16 years. So anything, any working being done to make that better? If for the inspectors they got a checklist. They got to go to this checklist, make sure all everything is the same. They're checking everything. You know, we can't be there with them the whole time, so we hopefully they're doing it. And again, with the... Sorry, each side inspector is going more wide, going more towards corner and going to South Point. Taking care of front corner airport all the way to South Point. You know, have more inspectors in Heelo so we cover more ground. So with that I think it's gonna help us because I contract to reach now to me about a lot of stuff. I just talk and start to see how we can get better. So I take notes from them. My phone is always open. So whatever we can learn, whatever we can get better to serve the public, that's all we do out there. Okay. So far everything's going great. Okay. Thank you Neil. Maybe double check on that standardized format that they all apply to their inspection for building electrical plumbing, whatever trade they might be inspecting. Just double check on that for me. We are running late and we have a significant number of folks that want to testify. So we want to wrap it up. Last one for me. Are we enforcing the ascending date driven priority protocol currently? Yes. No deviations from that. Under the priority cues, so someone who maybe has a hospital might fall in a higher priority queue and get reviewed faster, then someone say doing an alteration and addition. So that can be a little confusing to the public. I think it's just coming out in this audit., just it's one of the still on that permit system launch prematurely section and how to make things better. But our all permits handled in a first and first out basis for normal residential and normal permits. Nothing crazy. Yes, that's my understanding. And then we have a way to start tracking it in here in our management response to start tracking now manually. And then eventually when we have these other modules, we'll be able to produce reports and pull out our liars that could have been a county project that maybe needed some attention, could be something else to be determined. Who's in charge of that? I think I'm in charge of regulatory. You're in charge of that regulation for a first and first out? Yes, for permitting. That's RFI's complaints, extensions and permitting. Okay, thank you very much. It was nice to have you folks in. Thank you for this. Mr. Banner, thank you for the, as, very well done audit. To the department, please lean on us to help with whatever we can do to make this better for you folks to. This has been decades in the making of trying to make it better. You're just at the table now to actually make that change. Yes, and right now we're answering phones. We're not going to the call taker so all the clerks need to answer the phones you know need somebody on the other side. The main goal is pushing that and right now they're doing a good job and speeding process and we're helping them guiding them in the right direction not just turning over to saying the plans incomplete. We're helping them. We're showing them what they need to do to go to the next step. Thank you. Thank you. Chair, if I could, do I still have time, Mr. Clerk? Oh, I believe. Can I? One more question. Quickly. This one's important, sorry. Public duty doctrine, what is your understanding of that to pertains to the county. Well, I think this is incredibly important. I or at least have read it and familiar with it. Sorry for not being able to pull it out for a bit of but my understanding is that so long as the building officials, the county officials are fulfilling their obligation obligation and duty, not being negligent, not being favourites, this kind of stuff that the county and the officials are not liable for those actions because we're reviewing and benefit of the public. Did I kind of come close to that? I think you did pretty well. Okay. The limits liability for government agencies performing a public function. And I had this argument for six years is that we end up being liable for things in our minds, but I don't. I think we have to jawline between where we're actually liable or not. And when we do that, we begin to address what we have to do. And what we need to do, and how to cover our asses of the county, and to make permitting times and permit numbers less, so that we can do more work for the public and not be indicted and overworked. I agree. OK. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Inaba. Thank you, Chair. If there are any further comments, I'm hoping we can take that offline, or if we need to re-agentize this conversation for follow-up, we can do that. But we don't need to move along. Thank you. Council Member Onisi. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just wanted to clarify about having a developer with their architect engineers taking their responsibility. Just today we passed a committee about having raising chickens in residential property, on residential properties, right? And then they're saying that we shouldn't be restricting the people on this island about being able to raise chickens. So to me, it's up to the person, the developer and the professional firm to decide if they want to move forward or not, no matter if the insurance is higher or cost or whatever is up to them, right? It's just an option but to give them. That's all I want to make clear. I'll resubmissions. I know you're really running late, but this is a time where we have our discussions during committee time. And that's where, because after this communication, that's it. Right. Because this is a communication, right? So, but so I know you guys increase like the second time around in the third time, right? When they kind of resummit, right? And begin, I guess you pay that review fee. Then if they they got a review the second time it goes up like $500 or whatever. I guess there's a schedule of fees for race emissions. I believe you folks should raise that higher because I've heard stories where there's people out there just stamp of plants, especially residential, right? They have jobsters coming in to get the stamps and then some of the tea guys and then there's all these changes that got to be done again. So we should be able to have those people who are stamping help more responsible right because if they're going to stamp and not review the plans really completely right and you you understand what I've seen, correct? Increase that, right? Maybe on the second time, do it 1500 and on the third time, make it 5000. Because they're collecting money, right? They're collecting for what they're doing, right? So they should be how accountable. And then the thing is, when there's companies on the mainland that are trying are doing like you know plans like the engineering or they don't even know about the county code how I can because for state of flyers for different county codes right and so they come in they just do whatever they got to do and then boom they're expecting us do the corrections. And that takes a lot of time, manpower times. So I do understand, Brian Cajicawa had it where it comes in, there's a mistake he sends it back. Could see, to my understanding, he felt their professionals, they should be doing the county code, how a county code, and following it and not using your staff with a county to do their corrections. Right. So I think we got to re-evaluate that part about increasing those fees that you guys charge. Yeah, comment? I agree, but I can't speak to the financial part, but yes, I agree. Okay, well, we talked to the director and it's fine how we can do that. The last thing I want to just say, I understand about the interagency, especially on commercial, because they have to go see the state wastewater and so forth. They had only two inspectors on this island, one East one West. Now whoever inspects on the East or West has to sign off. I mean, back then, oh yes. Are we talking first, waste water systems? My understanding comes and members are to jump in is that the civil engineer of record is the one that reviews the installed system. I'm not aware that the state engineers go to every site to review. Oh, I mean, just the plans. Oh, sorry. Yes, you're right. Yes. Because what I had an incident where it was an East Hawaii project, the West Hawaii did the inspect. I mean, did the review of the engineer work, but wouldn't sign off because it was an East Hawaii project. So then we had to wait three weeks before the person came back to sign off on the permit on the application. Yeah. So sorry, that doesn't sound like fun. Sorry. And so maybe that's where we got to go and talk to our state legislators to find out how we can do something about that. But other than that, I'm here to help support you guys. And if you folks need more manpower, which I think you folks will do, let the county know or add it in the next budget. Right, supplementary budget. Thank you, we will do. Thank you, Councilmember Unishi. Seeing no other lights, I just... Oh, sorry. Join me again. Yeah. They have a little bell. OK, I will be very brief, because I know we're on time. And some of this may be an auditor, been in team question, but I just want to first of all say that I agree with Council Member Onishi around maybe having some way to regulate folks that seem to submit lower quality work on a regular basis. And I wonder, because it was in the TINNER report, the kind of street street three strikes rule is that something that you guys are working to implement or what's the status on that? Yes our plans examiners have a internal policy of three strikes which allows some minor deviations from the plans without kicking it back the whole idea being we want to review and we want issue permit, but we want to do it with the responsibility to life safety. Okay. So many things can be addressed oftentimes with a red mark without resending and then having it brought back in. Okay, so I think this is another thing we're potentially having some official roadmaking around might be beneficial to you folks and the public. Along that lines, I don't know if this is a DPW question or an auditor-banner question. With respect to the number of percentage returned for corrections for each type, is there any metric that looks at the percentage of those corrections that required a change from the design professional versus the number of corrections that were suggested from the department that actually were refuted and contested by the applicants? No. Okay, I think that's an important metric with respect to how we evaluate that. I don't know how easy that would be able to get. But I think it's probably something we need to evaluate in the context of the rest of this. Tracking refutations. Yes. Okay. Yes. And then, um, you know, just to follow up on what council member Kirkowitz was saying, I really appreciate the organization of the department's response in terms of the smart goals. Um, but one of the things that is missing to me in those smart goals is who's going to do what? And I think there's so much here that needs to be done. I would really appreciate that those smart goals put into again Characters format with some sort of assignment of who's going to be responsible. I'm particularly concerned that a number of these are administrative organizational management actions and we're a little light on management staff. And so, you know, that's where I think we're here to support you. And all of these things, I think, would make significant improvements if we could implement them. So, if it is, I mean, don't say yes. We have enough personnel, or we'll do enough with the personnel we have. You need more. I know that about it. You need more resources. You need more staff. There's no, especially if you want to implement these marbles, which I think are super important. So we're behind you on that. And I think part of what the department needs to do now is to tell us what are those critical staff pieces, even if it's bringing in a contractor to help with the implementation of these strategic goals. Let's do that. Let's invest in that now because you've got it really well aligned here. So let's do it. And to that end, I just will conclude. Thank you for the leeway with the comment, which is, I do appreciate how frustrating for the public sometimes the permitting process can be. I do want to highlight that we are just a piece of it. And as some other folks mentioned, the Department of Health is often involved. Fire is involved. There's other places where these things get hung up. And when we talk about the housing issue and permitting you guys being the people to blame for it, I don't think that's a fair assignment, really. Part of it is entitlements. Part of it is the whole process before it even gets to you guys. So I do want to say that there's definitely room for improvement. I think you've done an excellent job with the response in terms of identifying what we need to do. I think more clarity, a report back to us that has that in a more format with actual assignments would be useful. But it's a step in the right direction and I think we're all supportive of providing you with resources and staffing you need to achieve the subjectives. Thank you. Thank you. So I get to speak last and then you can be off. I, given that the lack of time I'm not going to ask any questions, but I am going to make a statement and that is looking over some of the suggestions. I think it's important to look at them to try and step back and look at them strategically because I think some of them are, if not contradictory, then potentially contradictory because I think so there needs to be a strategic approach to them. For instance, one of them is to look at AI and the other one is training. So, you know, they would be silly to train everybody up and then get AI so that they're not necessary anymore. So that's just like a very gross example of what the kind of strategy that you might want to look at in looking at these recommendations or timing. So I think I would love to see you come back with sort of a strategic timeline as well of the Gatchart so that we can continue to work with you to make this whole process better. That would be great. Yes, was there a time limit set on that? Oh, as far as coming back. Sorry, just for when we We'll talk later. We'll talk later. Yes, let's not get into that this time. Do we get stopped for that? Absolutely. I think it's been clear from what everyone has said that we really want to support you and get you the talent that you need to make all of this happen. Auditor Bennett, do you have anything else you want to add at this point? Just quickly, Tyler Bennett, our office of the county auditor. In response to that last comment that you just made, we don't look at AI as something that displaces people. There's AI emerging everywhere that can look at common errors within plans before people ever have to. The idea, I actually am not a fan of artificial intelligence so much as switching the letters around for intelligence augmentation, that it should make the jobs easier and reduce redundant tasks so that we can devote our staff towards the more complicated permits that are coming through the office. So these are to work hand in hand in concert with each other and we don't believe in conflict with one another. I agree. I was just sort of trying to make a point there. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Thanks very much for that. Anything else? What I feel right now is we moving forward. We're moving forward and getting a lot of progress in this and we're positive with the community and the private contractors out there working together as one. You know, there's hearing everyone on how we can get better and taking that and strive and doing what we need to do. Thank you. Thank you, Acting Director Azavito. Note that about that. So, see, no other lights, all in favor of closing file on Communication 272. Any post? Seeing none. close file on communication. Communication 272 with 27 in favor and council members. Vegas and Houston. Thank you. Excuse. That brings us to the end of our agenda. Thank you very much. And we will be our adjourning at 343. The committee on legislative approvals will search shortly.