we should bring the council's comedian budget and finance to order this is our meeting of april fourth two thousand and sixteen we are currently on the review of the ma agenda is meeting there for everyone three minutes to share the testimony with the committee if you are which to provide testimony with you same up we had either the district office or at our desk at the beginning of the chambers so at this time leon to please come forward and share his thoughts with us please technology services upgrade as the digital age progress is providing information via the internet has become essential realtors are one of the many professions that rely on  you if you have a doubt about the value of this investment please consider that this effort and especially the bank departments work to revise its land use maps aka the   we really appreciate it we are finally moving in the right direction and graham wholeheartedly supports the investment in time and money that that requires while serving on the county's government committee we've repeatedly heard about a lack of confidence in the county's ability to provide information and services and inacceptable matter this investment will definitely help answer to his concerns by bringing these digital services up to modern standards it is an investment that will will be a benefit to the county service providers to commerce and to the general public and in the process it were provide the count improve the county's image of the modern government offices and ask our leidy's if there is anyone in their districts first miss a little in the hunted district anyone wishing to provide testimony is no for their requests for testimony for today's meeting would no objections we should close this portion of the meeting objections thank you members ordered thank you ladies members we shifted from fraidy evening so this morning will take up first the office of the mayor's requests then we shall move on to the department of management following that we shelf department of review with the department of parks and recreation so that's the plan for today members so this time out ask mr baez budget director for his any opening comments regarding the very heavy agenda today mr chairs so try to be brief in our comments and move forward in presenting an answer your questions so i'd like to turn it over to our chief of staff m thank you for this opportunity to present to you the proposed budget for the office of the mayor i would like to also take this opportunity to thank the consul for your support of this office through your funding of this office together we have been able to interact with the general public and adequately address their concerns and issues if you go to page four or three department summary respect to our mission but the primary purpose of our office is to serve as between the general public which is mainly our constituents and our colleague departments the mayors hardworking staff ensures that the concerns of our constituents are at the very least dry the mayor's office is very conscientious and often employees their customer service skills when taking calls or meeting with the public and just to give you an example just just past thursday a young woman with three children came to her office late in the afternoon she recently became homeless and was desperately looking for a place to stay for the night the next morning she had a job interview and so she wanted to make sure that she was ready our staff work with this woman even though it was late in the afternoon they stayed back and you know they don't get fanfare they don't get overtime but they stayed back because they knew it was the right thing to do because they really wanted to help this woman and because you know she had young children with her but these are kinds of things that our staff does every day we're out there to help our community and again thank you for your assistance in allowing us to do to do just that  if you want to the next page the organization chart again i serve as the mayor's chief of staff in this position i oversee the various offices under the mayor which includes the office of economic development committee development block grant the budget office and the mayor's administrative staff during my presentation today i would this be discussing the mayor's administrative program which includes the mayor's executive assistants communication office and the secretarial staff these very professional and company individuals serve at the front lines of the county they're often the public's first point of contact when they call our office and the public knows that if they have an issue they can call in the mayor for assistance we can go on now t what this office does the administration administration program and then you see the key activity goals and measures our number one goal is to serve as a liaison between community and government and i talked briefly about that we see of calls from the public to receive hundreds of calls from the public whenever our community has an issue or concern the first first people they usually call is the mayor's office they go straight to the top and it's for that reason that we get these calls and you know it's it would be impossible for the mare to answer all of these calls or to be involved in every call and so that's the reason why we have staff and these staff members  these concerns and they do everything you can to resolve the issue but that's where we're at oftentimes these issues can't be resolved as you know and i know your offices receive many calls as well  and we try to help them we try to address them but oftentimes we just can't do anything to to resolve the issues and sort out the reason why you see that the number of issues resolved is at eighty percent of and you see that we've done that during this year goal number two efficient gathering and delivery of information increased number of subscribers to the mayor's official website and county of social  network sites and this is just showing fiscal year two thousand and fifteen the actual sixteen thousand two hundred twenty three i believe that's just our facebook facebook likes but we comes to our website the number of visits to the website  much much greater number to provide accurate press releases and official statements for media within twenty four hour turnaround period and where one hundred percent that we definitely do that very quickly because a lot times  the information that we get from the department are time sensitive and so it's imperative that we get these information out to the press as quickly as possible or three fostering view and  existing relations in the local state federal and international arena number one provide full support for our conference of mayors through assisting other counties needs improve relations with other counties mayors and with that we do come before call so whenever we are asked to come number three maintain and develop new relations with concerned officials at the federal state level of government yes we do participate we do that this will foster our relationship with this  city our number five goal is to promote health and wellness in the community is that we do this by conducting health and wellness related events that promote a healthy lifestyle by implementing a health and wellness policy within the line sorry our expenses have gone down two thousand and fourteen or actually it was up a little under two million dollars and now we're at about one point five million and then you'll see purcel summary by position title we have all our positions there members questions in the administration program for the office of the mayor was that would mr cohen thank you mr chairman thank you mr dyer for your comments just on page four ten i'm looking be for that question to our budget director he can probably best explain why there is that i'm out there adjustments and that so that dollar amount is put into all the departments salaries it's not over time it's salary adjustments which happens to be in the same character code as the premium  but state law requires us to follow certain aspects of the collective bargaining agreement one thing we found out this year and we can explain in detail questions ok and the previous page goal number one item number two provide nominations and staff various boards and commissions and titties we had some heartburn this last go around in a couple of your boards and for instance the public's fire and public safety commission two things one you have two people from molokai on there and none from south miley and i was never asked to provide a name or even think about getting somebody on there which was disconcerting the other thing is you have somebody you know setting a precedent so you nominate somebody who just retired from the fire department to be on the board and commission of the fire department so i know i had some concerns about that in a couple of the members as well  i don't know if that got to you but your chief of staff so i'm guessing hopefully it did and if you could comment on that pl selected certain people but i i can tell you that oftentimes we find it very difficult to find people to serve on the boards and commissions and oftentimes difficult to find someone who can give the time off for these boards and commissions in fact we have courts and commissioners who don't come to their meetings and because of that we lose quorum and saw in the end we have to write them a letter saying you know either you come come to these meetings or we'll have to find someone else to be on the boards or commission so those kinds of challenge the challenges that we have we most definitely will want to work with the council if you have names for us i mean and in the past we have council members have provided names to our office and we've we've submitted those names you know and so if you and sometimes we don't i mean sometimes the mayor may where the negative eight thousand one hundred thirty five dollars  surplus that you were able to move it around and wherever it was as it reduced by it to reduce whatever you got this money from was reduced from whatever that mayor's office salaries and wages and not by specific positions necessarily but by dollar amount and so that dollar amount was removed from the budget as a negative proposed the budget there was a request to reinstate that money that request was was not approved however there was additional monies so the negative was reduced by the salary adjustments that the council had approved different from sixteen or so and at that time the chief of staff hadn't decided which positions were going to be completely eliminated out of our budget  for fiscal year sixteen since subsequent to that he has and so the positions that you see on page eleven three and eleven for are the current funded positions and their current salaries or  s than then we actually spend or actually spent less than we budgeted but that was and then for fiscal year seventeen to offset the negative and to leave the six thousand dollars in there for bargaining it three one time lump sum payment individuals then that's why you see that positive for fourteen thousand one hundred thirty five dollars  been that we do have to commission is going to necessary does that really my true concern is that we would score about it but since we're talking budget isn't that a concern coming from your department as far as having to pay for travel and i can tell you how how expensive it is to travel into and from from all ok to know me so that's not taken into any consideration when you're going to consider we many of our commissions really we want to have a lot of representation from one eye and from all coming from hama you know for that matter and so it shouldn't it shouldn't it shouldn't yeah right so i just you know it and i'm sure mark i can appreciate it that you're going to you're willing to spend all that additional costs every month so that's my only concern  it's a requirement that we apply collective bargaining adjustments could you clarify whether that applies to appointed personnel or the folks that are and the seventy seven is the positions they're exempt from civil service right so that has a list of all of the positions in there the different types of positions and one of them is people in the mayor's office  and those positions while they are exempt from civil service are required to be in a classification and a of collective bargaining so  the positions have to have s r readings and they have to be paid at whatever steps the regular collective bargaining agreements call for  that we can't so if we decided we wanted to pay somebody fifty thousand dollars we couldn't pay them fifty thousand dollars we'd have to pay them whatever the the step is around that dollar amount  very interesting yeah it was interesting for us to we had assumed that we could pay them you know what we chose to pay them and personnel told us no we cannot   the average pay and of course i just did this yesterday i haven't been able to check it out entirely but the average scale looks like about fifty four thousand dollars per  person that is not a grown to an average of sixty eight thousand four hundred so that's an increase of about twenty five percent and i bring that up because we've we've had some individual positions that have gone up pretty significantly but i'm not sure that the private sector seen increases like this and yet we're asking them to support pain increased taxes can you  elaborate on that perspective  regarding the you know the comparison to the private sector if you take a look at what private sector increases have been well i guess the way i was answering it was that when you take our pay and you compare it to the private sector we're still or the private sector i mean and that's that's that's how it is i mean government will always pay their employees laure than in the private sector you know actually as a broad statement that's just simply true because there are there been there is done that show that out of sixty five positions that occur both in government and the private sector that and forty five of those sixty five positions the pay in the government sector is higher so that may apply to certain individual physicians but it's simply not correct to say that government pays less than in the private sector are you referring to the very difficult to attract employees to come work for the cali for a short period of time i mean our our time is i mean we have four years you know not two years and it's difficult to tell someone to ask someone requests information from to adjust but we do have the choice of whether we want to fund the position or not we're not required to fund your story just got i just received a text and i have to check this out as department thank you for being here this morning and on your overview looking at page four zero six and it breaks down into department summary and numbers and what have you it doesn't most usually are chaps your chapters breakdown you know what operations and all the equipment and things but i didn't quite see it here that references the numbers and number one this probably goes to director because i just got to jog my memory here what is actually is interference cost freakout reclassification that line and your operations i was just going straight across transfers are basically the monies that are coming into the county from those grants rates of the overhead or fringe benefit costs that are related to those grants we recognize that as revenue there so those other costs in our operations program include grant subsidies so as we get into the economic development program you'll see where those numbers ad ok very good and then lastly under equipment there's land i know this is in previous years but i just never saw a land called equipment before and it's not in your budget details i mean i guess it wouldn't because classification is capital outlay but for ninety nine point nine percent of our operational budget that capital outlay is he quit mint or ongoing lease costs for copiers  so this happens to be land that was purchased using the open space fund another in the bond fund for west mali and so that got classified as a capital outlay and so that made it into our our asset inventory and they have a route property manager that is assigned with keeping all of that in order but as far as the organizational structure of where that asset  is is classified as it is dependent on where the finance department you know it's typically who is the one that initiated that so if the department of public works you know initiated the request for the land acquisition at the industrial park and will pay for their base yard that is land then gets classified as an expenditure in the department of public  said the best way we can do it it seems that you would rather put everything in one centralized area for consistency i mean if one department doesn't talk to the other everybody gets screwed would prefer to record it into those those functional areas are made so you know again if it's we purchase a roadway we want to make sure that we're classifying that as as a roadway  eight we appreciate your comments and members just remember one thing we did hear some of the numbers you see that's adjusted is because we made a decision on how to deal with the budget office and we prop them up  so there's adjustments in the numbers how we adjusted how we wanted to look at the budget office so that's part of the difference from last year to this year  thank you once again as i mentioned earlier often times these issues we're not able to resolve all issues so we try to be charged very best of course you want to  solve everyone's problems but it's often the case that for whatever reason it cannot be resolved and so that's the reason why realistically we establish a number of eighty  percent that seems to be that seems to be around around the numbers that we care and we can realistically resolve it do however respond to every single issue that comes before the office through some paper of communication we receive we acknowledge receive your submit chair we try to do it there are times when we've some has fallen through the cracks i must admit fault for whatever reason but we do try to address every issue we try to every phone call that comes in efforts missed and because i hear it from community that they were approached in at the mayor's office and you first responded so thank you for that i wondered i wanted to check and asked how you regarding the relations with the council and you this it by having official dialogue meeting where we all know we do well in official but at times we do better and fishel discussions also operating we are kind of try to meet at the culture members and i believe that all nine members at one point or another in this course of the year has had some kind of interaction with the with the thank you for that mister single member three under a number for two years ago your actual numbers are getting sister  upcoming year and what do you see the role of the administration with this program official visit yes yes yes without without just what happened there they're here to visit family perhaps and then someone tells him he should go see them ere you know and so they usually come up and see us sure white could probably attest to this but there has been times when when we've sent people down and there was no notice you know or very little notice for that matter because so this three is about recognize and planned relationship visits communications is that this number of three doesn't take into account all those unanticipated visitations or chance meetings p y or three is what the administration oh and by and through the year to have official relations with the various twenty something sister county sister cities we have my apologies programs exchanges and programs so like like i mentioned earlier typically it's about maybe three will show up because of this three day you're talking about for us from a budget deficit which is for you to seven percent requests you have three so i'm just wondering if you already have chosen through your sister cities program or or part of your budget proper ration for your travel or or entertainment  you know you see we're going to do on from korea one from the pacific islands one for portrait go where every baby you don't have those type of may need to that detail yet not budgetary standpoint so maybe you and mr christmassy comes up she can maybe share some some comments members are going to ask you for your additional questions in this program ever the administration  number two i just want to comment that hundred percent hundred percent very good i personally have to say thank you to mr mayor he's been quite responsive to my constituents and concerns that they are brought before a b and i just want to put that on record that the mayor himself has been quite responsive to the needs that sometimes it's last minute you know that things come up i think you very much care another little bit more about this is just it is program you know i think it's a wonderful program but i really would like to see us make a more concerted effort and you mentioned some of this my you were mentioning  cities i like to see a little more outreach to our european folks you know we've i can't remember a better ten years i don't think i've seen anybody from france of portugal or scotland or you know any of these places that we have sister city arrangements with many years ago when i first came here one of the reasons why we increased the money was we were hoping to see you know a little more outreach to others and maybe they're not interest they can't come or whatever but it would be really nice if we could bring one of them because we are sisters and we do have those arrangements so also we might look at some countries that are not represented i've always wanted to do one with one of the mexican cities and they have outreach but we haven't been able to go ahead because we were reviewing the ones we have been you know should we keep them or whatever but i think it's a wonderful program having had the opportunity to attend the philippine sister city it's an incredible opportunity and they certainly like us and i also want to verify about that we don't know they're coming because i've been shocked to find out that they were here if you see it on facebook and so you know they were coming so it's a very good program here and i think we can learn a lot from each other so thank you thank you i am hoping that maybe two or support people like  radio a lot of the questions that i was going to playing up on the sister city subject matter here number three number four rekindle and develop so  mention the ones that are we've had throughout the years and we just have not been in contact or in touch so we want to rekindle those relationships yes we get from every year we get a lot of sister cities from philippines which is awesome but you know this is to rekindle existing that we haven't and this is to develop the vellum new also and you know because my shop interacts with people internationally they see which countries do come here and which states and areas that do frequent our islands lie in particular most frequently and so to you know just keep them coming or rekindle or start a new relationship to entice them to come more often to spread the word within their country or within their towns and what have you to come visit because hey i know firsthand we had an awesome time we would like everyone to experience this too so please come to maui county so that's how i look at that one and then the goal of number three you also brought up chair and struck me in this maintaining develop relations but with the federal and state level government i find visiting up with the federal level it's you know they've got a lot on their plate over there were where we for we were as far away as we can get from them and the media unfortunately forget that it's really like to be here in our little islands and then the state level the tatt issue jumped at me and you mentioned the three particular reps there are that they testified these guys they think that we don't pull our fair share here on the county level so these are i think we have particulars names people that this administration and this county can go into better leverage meet greet whatever we need to do to make them understand what response would be on a we really do carry and that please  us in the many is that we give into the task the system to come back and help us so that's kind of where i see this in and it looks like yes they want to continue their efforts but i see that is very key to what we can recoup from outside to come back here into our coffers to better serve this community those are important goals but lastly chair if you don't mind jumping back to for a six under operations paragraph that explains what operations is about it says the mayor's primary objective office of the mayor's primary objective to gather information and then make recommendations so who's gathering and  recommending because it looks like its recommendations to the mayor managing director of department heads so is it just the person who answered that phone call and is now going to make recommendations so who's making the recommendations and who's who's gathering information and then figuring out what recommendations is being given to you thank you for that question on const member so what usually happens is someone will make a call someone sometimes sometimes it's an individual constituent making a call sometimes it's a cult member asking one of our or making a in the person then researches the issue finds out you know what's what's going on what's you know and sometimes it's the colony maybe something that we could do better maybe it's something that we could fix sometimes it's way as i mentioned before we serve really as a liaison between the public and the colony and so instead of these constituents calling every department and trying to you know resign we do it concierge service you know we do it we do the research the then discuss with the mayor with the managing director with the department heads how we can resolve this issue and make recommendations you know from other things  e also encourage our employees to take part in charity walks and so our office has participated in a number of charity walks  now and then also the office also helps organize is the health fair that we have in our log so these are just some of the things that we do but we also have  talks in our conference rooms regarding how to eat better and this is done during lunch and we have speakers they come in to talk about in what ways are you know you could improve your an impact on sick sick leave work company issues the members are very much aware we see a lot of  settlement requests for us and something i mean it's about conditioning in how to help practice is that we have a some concern about so i would say san diego county in california has it 's office has actually received some awards as a result of our efforts as an example just this past weekend of the american heart association awarded the mayor with the gold level fit friendly work site you know and there are other awards that our office has received as well but i do agree with consummate pro comma that will be interesting to see how these programs really affect you know mitigating  but that's interesting you know  ratifies or gives approval we are being asked to follow a state statute and that we should be following collective bargaining  need countries so i find it interesting that we approach this group of employees very differently regarding increases based on a country that we never do  so that's a legal question i'm asking you thank you chair i guess i don't really know why per se but i can say that under h r a seventy six seventy seven it talks about the various  exempt positions from collective bargaining however like number one in there is the mayor's positions in the mayor's office and while they are exempt from collective bargaining it states that all employees will be in the classification system and in eighty nine c two eighty nine c h r s relates to adjustments for collective bargaining it typically allows for a pail both what the classifications are however on eighty nine c two section four and state's own for excluded employees under the same classification systems as employees within collective bargaining units adjustments shall not be less than those provided for under collective bargaining agreements for employees hired on a comparable basis so when i read that it kind of ties it in saying that excluded employees in the mayor's office would be entitled how it does for the various bargain units in a sense the council did approve the cost items for those bargaining units and therefore when the request comes in it also very roundabout response that comes from we show a minus eighty one thirty five continuation or chris fourteen one three four i in the seven the six thousand for seventeen which you state is for a one time lump sum payment based on collective bargaining for any unit three and four and fourteen one thirty five additional appropriation due to a  director for making that correction on page eleven to six gentlemen if you take a look normally maximum step is for employees to pretty much if twenty five years or more service so what is your use or service for each inch affected employee that's getting this  think those physically are fifteen maybe for sixteen if they have if they're provided a stepping crease but the person in that step is in maximum level for fiscal year seventeen it's just a one time twelve hundred dollars payment has nothing to do with whether they are and whether or not they're at a maximum stepped level council in response to some questions there is a breakdown of the different collective bargaining agreements and the actual items questions from the members so we welcome mr grossman thank you for being here sir mordred we are under the office of the mayor administration program review currently we had discussions on goes in previous years expenditure were around by the one thousand requests this one hundred thirty seven and so far this year looks like you've spent about fifty thousand over we would be on track to and that's reflected in this number here we've of reduced the number of trips to honolulu even though you know it would have been better beneficial to the c i to san individual like say for instance the legislature you know in the past i mean i think we've only sent our ear who's in who's our lobbyist i think something like twice in this legislative session and it would have been it would have been beneficial to send him you know more often as you know it's better it's very beneficial to to be there to meet face to face with legislators  sent sent him twice when in the past we've sent him many more times and the same can be said at other expenses that we've had you know we've really tried to stay within our budget and you can ask myself my staff i mean they'll they'll tell you because i'm i'm a real stickler i'm i'm constantly asking like do we really can you be doing really to buy this do we really need to upgrade equipment you know phones or what every case is you know and i always tell them no i'm oftentimes will tell him no just that we can stay within within our budget so i hope that answers your question because what what my question is really whether you're on track to hit about seventy five thousand weather and i'm out of ninety one two hundred thousand would be adequate for next year it's sort of a hundred thirty seven that's it's since it's gone  and looks like it will remain on spam to a large degree and so you would be it sounds like you would be comfortable with it just went back down to ninety ninety two hundred thousand i'm i'm mr chair what it what i'm saying what i said earlier is that it's been a very uncomfortable experience for us at the office because often times we've had to limit ourselves as you know as a result of the number but we're we're not complaining this amount they we're getting right now we're living by it you know we're trying to live by it but this is to bring us down even further because we try to save money this year i think would be unfair you know but no we we want to provide you with funds to take care of your needs but that utilizes suggest that there's not as much of a need us as we anticipated that's not the reason why we haven't you know we like i said we've been to try to cut back but if we if possible i mean we would like to go back to our with you for you know and which is where we can we're not we're not as limited we're not restricted we're not as restricted you know but my point is where you were before was ninety one thousand nine hundred thirty seven so if you want to go back to where you were before miscellaneous other costs and it's  index code nine zero three three five one b i don't i don't recall seeing that or if i had i may have forgotten it can you refresh what exactly is that in this contingency fund if there's there's things that often occurs unexpectedly whether be emergencies or you know things like that and so that's what the those moneys have been used for the past for like examples like say say there's a hurricane or you know those types of emergencies that we've tapped into these funds to to  straight they needed some food or some other you know and so we try to provide that for them ok thank you you thank usui thank you i have a completely different recollection  my recollection is that the contingency that we provided the mayor gave him is that last year the year before for the first time because of the sisters the volume of sister cities folks that were coming in and there wa expansion of the funding right because we felt it was appropriate for the mayor to have funds to take care of these visiting dignitaries instead of having to do what he had done for a number of years taking the money out of his own and i am i'm a little surprised that you're not aware of the reason for that fund but that might indicate why it's not being utilized much but i do i hope that the mayor is not continue to pay for things out of his own pocket because at that fund is there for that purpose by by my recollection half of the people of this county any other christians in the service basin yes thank you very much cherry and i too recall that very clearly oh wait is right up the great where we need to be you know when when we get foreign dignitaries or people that come i think there's a standard of aloha that we want to uphold and it isn't that we're going to go out and buy silly stuff but it's a standard of the law and protocol that i think we need to maintain as a county you know we get wonderful beautifully done protocol gifts that come from other places and when we also go to the legislature or to meetings with importing people you know we have this a lot of tradition in hawaii and i know that  first one to be dragging all kinds of peanut butter more tea and what they read and he never thinks anything about doing that but it's not fair because he is acting on behalf of all of us so i think this is a really good thing and i'm kind of this nagin i don't see the expenses because i know he does it mean maybe he needs to be told it's ok that send him a message thank you thank you and i believe we are just at the council chairs for the legislative and executive branch and so yeah we put that money for  one time only or first time so i see white now thank you thank you mr boyce i'm sure we were all channeling you on friday when we were in the meeting with this plane is committee and we were asked questions about well does a company pay for expenses that the state should pay for and we said oh god we wish ricky was here because he would be able to go on and on what we did a good job  said ma we county was complemented by other legislators who are doing an outstanding job in doing much more than other counties too so i think we should share that thank you for sharing that comments and seven i grant specialists to i am hoping that this will address the issues mentioned in the auditors report relating to the grant funds can you findings in previous years about the timely reconciliation and so that is the primary duty of this position i feel that the position can do other things there are other activities and functions related to grant revenue and also grants subsidies and assisting in my office that this position can handle so i have her task but our primary duty is dressing the audit finding in the timely reconciliation of federal  funding actually will not address those items that you requested it's specifically related to open data i have a small very quick presentation that it kind of just made this morning as well as that here if you don't mind so basically there's going to three phases in the development of in utilization of the service first is to build trust with open finances so we're both want to build trust with the community  need who ever has wants to have access to it with a in open access to our financial data can you give us a real good understanding when you see open frayne and says please show makes me nervous be a monthly basis once the books are closed for that month or on a quarterly basis or and some some jurisdictions only want to present audited financial so it's only after the are completed the data is becomes available so it's a little old but it's down to the very detailed transaction level so that people and have access to change our system but basically looking at the payments that we make in different spend it yours and parameters of what access they have so if you don't mind i could bring up the example web site this is from the city of marvel washington where they have open budget and open checkbook sections and they the presentation specifically to related to the checkbook section is basically just aggregating the spending you can see you know that the total spending levels fire district is and is an actual contracted agency i guess for them so you could see those different things you have the ability to explore in detail the different you know how much is spent general  a estimate and that's why i was able to present to the council or request the dollar amount in here but you can see in here you know yeah it's a basically it's a way for the public mostly in i mean even  members could access this data and find out what our spending levels are in certain categories and areas then also there is as far as the budget is concerned you know the the budgetary perspective revenues and expenses and you know you can explore the different revenues and explored expenses that are budgeted in here by different categories you know what's capital investment and things like  measures and dashed boarding them up there so you can see whether or not we're achieving our goals public safety you know one of their measures here is to achieve quickly arrive quickly to fire scenes and to the their current measures eighty three percent within four minutes right so and that's something that there has to accessible to the public is the want to get into in there's detailed information in each one of these categories as well mr chair  deck so we can get into detailed discussion of it maybe at a later time if you're interested to move forward with this like to involve the council in determining you know what it is that you're interested in seeing as a dashboard as a kind of a quick indication of how the county is doing in these different functions and i think that's what the services that were questing there's a benefit more for from a  for the county and so i think you know just to note mr chair the state of hawaii already has this same product and you can they have all the data already accessible from the state level as well and i responsible for their  so the communications office deal primarily with disseminate information to the public producing press releases you know and things of that sort on a wahoo their office they have thirty three employees that work in that office you know another thing that they have is a section in office called customer service and i read their description and it's exactly what we do as you know what executive assistants do in the mayor's office and the field calls from the from the from the public they would serve as the layers on between the public and the county government which is exactly what our executive assistants do they have a sixty seven full time employees just doing that so i think it's unfair to try to compare our office with with they have far more five employees on a walk they have a whole department because it's called budget and finance just like the state budget and finance so they have many more employees than just five that work in the budget so i think to say that you know to try to compare our office two hundred lou i think is is it's not fair to say that there's only six employees that work for the cobb thank you mr chairman i agree with your comments just one question on gold to a number one part to the number of beyond working our spend by budget office staff encounter year to complete the mare's budget coach good question when we first came into office in two thousand and eleven it was over two thousand hours so we have reduced significantly but there is the physical structure of how we develop budget in the timing of it precludes us from spreading out throughout the fiscal year any more than we already do you know we do start like so we're kind of starting now and getting instructions and things like that but we have to wait for certain things like revenue in january to come in and so we can't make final decisions in developed actual budget document until february basically so most of our beyond working hours  consolidated to the month of february and a little bit into the beginning of march to finalize the budget but i keep take control over that and and you know so we want to make sure that we're doing it efficiently and effectively but doing still producing the best product and thank you good job at it too by the way thank you for any other questions for the budget program component office of the mayor everyone then we're going to move on if you have a question please forward it to the chairman the committee staff we show i'd be happy to follow up for you mr  know we d is very project oriented you know we have specialists that work in various sectors and so projects are kind of our thing but we have of course our grants program and i want to put that up we have some measures here we are actively managing one hundred nineteen active grants right now we have audited and processed over ten million dollars in payments  and we held for grants workshops at the beginning of the year to explain on how to apply for o e defunding and we had one hundred twenty one attendees that came to those grants workshops and we did did that on county business research center they served six thousand eight hundred two clients over this past year they offered eighty seven workshops they managed to re brand the center on grants and export that came in from other organizations the business center served one thousand one hundred eighty eight clients forty eight of them were new to the center  they had twenty six workshops and they also provided thirty nine video conferencing workshops at the center that took place at the maui mall office we have full video brochure and marketing material and also were very successful with helping new businesses getting a new business is up and running offering consulting and so we saw some success there which is great for the island of molokai under environmental protection and then you know i will be have all my specialists available when we do our grants which will be  in two weeks i'll bring them all and you can ask them as we go through those funds but i just i'm highlighting today for you so under environmental protection and sustainability  of the major things of course we're working on besides of course the grant funds we give out is we are working on courage ing the they i use c n n which is the world conservation congress that's coming to honolulu in august voyage that is multiple multiple canoes that will be coming in from the pacific nations and they will be coming in here for the festivities and they will also be making a stop here on maui and then we've been working at the maui conservation alliance which really puts all these organizations together and rob parsons has been an active part of that  kind of highlighting agriculture our agriculture specialists has been helping the how a farmers union united work on its farm apprentice mentoring program that program did graduate seven apprentices we manage the cool ag park and all of the lessees questions and concerns and all thirty one lots are least in that part we have been working on the cool ag park expansion plan the land acquisition with the state funds we assist with ag best and we have sent our specialist to food safety workshops so he can get himself up to speed on what is to come down the line for the farmers our film office has had a much more active year with several projects coming here being filmed and there  there's a whole list of them here i won't go into all of them but the impact so far has been that we've had a spend on the island of ten million two hundred thousand compared to just four million last year so i think we're starting to see the fruits of the labor of our film commissioner and we also hosted a very special event it was a special screening of two award winning documentaries the sons of  the roots of at the cultural centers castle theatre particularly special because it was done by a local film director and it was a very special evening there's a poster on our work for development program is transitioning to the new law that was that enacted on july one hundred twenty fifteen called the workforce innovation and opportunity act this is requiring us to completely rebuild the board we are working through transmission which is taking a lot because the federal government needs to first send down directives we're not exactly sure the funding level that's going to be given to us yet but that's all in the process and then we work very closely with the dislocated worker program sugar operators support task force and of course our department produced co produced with the maui chamber of commerce the made him out i county festival i hope you all receive the post event report that we put out just about a week ago and the videos that we sent the links to we had extraordinary numbers for our second year so proud of this event  i can't say enough good things about what it's accomplished we have been using this database of vendors that we have been building and we have been able to offer them all kinds of extra training over the year we have had state agencies come in and they're interested in doing expert training and so forth so we're just building this whole entire package of services around these vendors us other o e dia initiated events we put on the mayor small business the words we had thirty six nominees this year which was our largest ever we co produced with my economic development board the maui energy there we participated and will be participating again this june and hawaii on the hill and i believe this gets to the question that council woman cochrane asked was what are we doing to outreach to washington event but it's open to all of the counties to participate we have meetings with our congressional delegation that will happen we're going to be showcasing hawaii products on the hill and and then we will doing taking meetings and you know doing any kind of outreach we can on behalf of maui county so we're very excited about that and the mayor will be attending this year for the first time that event and then we i serve on the two hundred sixteen said review which is happening right now the community economic development strategy that's being updated for our county and this is a requirement for  to be able to get funding through the economic development agency of the federal  government in international and sister cities i wanted to just talk briefly since you had a conversation about that we had seen the need to do a much better job of coordinating between the sister cities foundation the mayor's office and the council services office as and as your liaison to to you members of the council so we had a meeting brought all the parties together up in the mayor's conference room and we strategize on how to march seamlessly let each other know when a visit is forthcoming and it seems like information wasn't getting shared with the different entities and so we made a strategy for that and now we have a phone call system that everybody is going is going to be and has been  training for the entire mayor's office anyone from the council services that wanted to come and i was extremely helpful and so we have upped our game from that and we are working very hard we have some outcome outgoing trips coming up there the mayor will be going to go to south korea in early at the end of actually april early may for the international flower festival we have the mayor and a couple count people going to japan to the rose festival they will also be doing trips to tokyo  and participating in some hawaii festivals that are going to take place there inch and shopping centers which is really very interesting there's one in particular the hawaii festival is a week long showcase of hawaii products in the shopping center and they have who the hell out and all kinds of things and so our contingency will be participating in that and so we're excited about that  we have of course worked with the foundation and i will say that the foundation has really upping their game as well the sister cities foundation they've been working very hard to do outreach to all twenty seven of our sister cities and find out the status and they've been very active in getting information out to them so i see a lot of new life being breathed into sister cities and i think it's really a positive last laid so going forward what are we going to focus on energy policy is a big one you may have seen that we just announced the mayor just announced this week and he has appointed a new energy commissioner  that person will start officially on may fifteenth this gentleman has incredible knowledge and diversity and experience and i think that he will be a great asset  counties broadband capacity speed and price we have some initiatives that we're working on right now with that and we have inquirer sent a letter of encouraging for a federal grant called cool and connected we have not heard school and after your budget session you built will be receiving the lease that has been negotiated for the repurchasing of all high school and i believe the the people that will be we want to lease it to a becoming year and meeting with the council individually and i know they're working on those meetings and then we want to streamline our o e d grant process the process of applying and executing a grant is getting length here by the year there's about twenty seven steps that encompass all we did department of finance budget and the mayor's office corp corporation council it's very cumbersome we need to get all parties in the room together and decide how we can streamline the process and then of course we are working they want to make a move to talk about that when they get through their last harvests so i'm going to end with i want to just thank our staff at o e d you know they the staff does not get over time they don't get additional compensation for the weekends and nights and all of the events they go to and so i really am inspired by their commitments we don't take our jobs for granted we know we are appointees of the mayor and know that we were only and we are only there is line is the mayor is serving and every day i think we do our utmost to do the good work for the county of maui and we appreciate the council support and i want to thank you  on behalf of all of our staff economic indicators did was impacted by by your offices efforts or would like to say see that please ok we'll definitely work and we were successful in bringing and quite a bit of graham money for  one leverage in five to what we would be appreciative of knowing those information also so i'm trying to understand  cities that goes to the foundation that that is the thirty thousand dollar line item that is given to the foundation but clearly we assist now we have we have a new specialist in our office who is fluent and japanese so she's been extremely helpful with all of these programs that we've been doing with japan and and then our office will of course assist the mayor's office in any way with a visit or  you know it's staffing and or you know whatever we need to do and and then if we need to send a specialist to one of these trips then our operations budget will cover that get a great job in two thousand and fifteen fifty three and you were in a project for the upcoming year eight can you tell us what's happening th and you know this is unfortunately this is something that happens when you're you know you're doing your goals i think it gets counted in a different way this particular one and we were counting all of the basically the town parties ok because we do now over forty eight of them in a year and and so basically they're you know we pay for the umbrella marketing campaign for that and so technically they should probably binning counted again because that is promoting our small towns every single month but clearly that didn't get counted in this once so i'm sorry i'm sorry that that discrepancy that that does look really bad you know press releases of course come and go depending on the projects that you're doing and so forth and so i can definitely find that out we're looking at you know just basically trying to i'm looking at this from a manner that your office is reading that's just in to a pin and leverage additional grand funding to get off of colony funding is that a good way for me to ever initiate anything where we would be the sole producer so we're leveraging almost everything that we do by bringing and partnerships and then and then urging them to come to the table with  funding as well as as well as in kind meaning staff support and so forth so i think that we have been really good at that and we have friends since put on the states radar r made him our county festival by getting a grant from de bed for the first time we got a grant from in a way to innovate hawaii for ten thousand dollars we our energy conference got a grant from the state for fifteen thousand dollars this last year so you know we were really putting it on their radar and telling them you know you need to need to be a partner with us thank you in a couple of your slides you talked about displaced workers for a c m s i wanted to ask if you're also looking now at the mckenna resort through three hundred  see layoffs like this but it's not because an entity is shutting down because they're going out of business they are going to renovate they're going to reopen at a later date but we really feel that the they will be jobs so but nevertheless they will receive the services from the one stop center thank you for your now are you talking just goals or can we talk about dollar amount wanted to just highlight i guess during our initial budget discussion chair i asked the question why have we not gotten a better reading for our bonds  and one was the unfunded liability but mr boss brought up number one our lack of bio diversity in our economy so i think that falls i would think that falls under this program and departments purview to make sure that we are trying to diversify as much as possible because truly currently it's always been tourism industry and the ag sector but i guess the bond people are looking for a way more outreach and it kind of breaks down here you've got sports and film and you know we're looking for energy he definitely is is and forever i guess i'm standing out of sorts so just wondering if you're aware of that and how because it's the i've been here six years so i'm like it's always kind of the same awesome job but i'm just saying that it doesn't seem that we're branching out overbuild enough parts of our economy that are kind of lagging in reference to others like tourism and things like that bond readers are looking at so just yeah i mean that's a great observation i have sa through the the bond rating presentations and even though maui does have the best bond rating in the state of hawaii which is terrific for us but to get beyond that they have said that yes we do to more diversified economy that being said an island economy is very difficult and fact we went backwards this year because of the closure of age cns we now became even more heavily dependent on tourism and lost a huge ag agribusiness our will lose a huge agribusiness at the end of the year so without having natural ability to have manufacturing take place here without having natural resources that are being mined or like you know forests or you know or mining or any of the oil we don't have oil and that kind of thing we don't have those kinds of things that can happen and i our island  you know the choices are very very limited and so i think we have to play to our natural strengths which are entrepreneurs our value added companies that we're trying to grow with we made them our county festival and i believe are doing a great job because a lot of them are exploiting now and that's what we want to see we want to see exports happen were i believe again and if we focus on broadband capacity speed and price that we will raise all boats with that that is not just a sector type of initiative we can help because we know that we can and people to come and work here work remotely from hawaii and that is something that's very doable if we have proper broadband capacity so we're trying to play to the strengths that we have and i don't think that we should put a lot of energy in the places that we know we cannot compete in the world which unfortunately is and some of the manufacturing because that is something and number i think manufacturing was low you know it is as you stated there are reasons for that so i'm happy to hear that also happy to hear you point out the hawaii on the hill  program or is this is an ongoing event that you folks i think this is the thirty year that the state hawaii chamber of commerce has has done this and actually it was it was kindle cost benefit to things that are done through the department i think that you could be something helpful like the outreach to our federal and way in return did you know educate them on and thereby ended up getting x amount of grants or something you know for them for the outreach there so i think it's nice would be nice to see the return on our investments even a sister city you know items reaching out internationally what came back job and certainly have some real better programs that you can show us you know you were made in mel we think is just absolutely fantastic only but you do we do have a lot of challenges and we need to work together i'm really really concerned about agriculture you know i've been listening and talking to farmers in this ning to all of the challenges that they're having and you know they keep adding more and more to make it harder and harder as particularly with th food safety kind of laws and you know all the things that are coming down so i'm concerned about the down time that we're going to have between leaving and us being able to get things up and going that for me is dangerous and so i know that you have a very good understanding of this being in go to yourself but we're going to have to put i think a lot of emphasis in there the other thing i've been thinking about you know i was with a group of people that are very intrepid no real the other day and they were talking about some ideas for a new service and i thought you know there may be some gold in them there hills and again too is related but thinking could somebody kind of create a service so that you could go to costco and leave your stuff and get on some kind of a nice vehicle we're not talking about junk buses you know make it something real pretty airconditioned v i b e whatever to get all these cars off the road and have them pick up cars on the other side and maybe have somebody deliver all those parcels within a certain amount of time to their condo or wherever they're going but you know we may have to change the kind of services that we make of a lot more because there's a lot of money and services and we're getting lazier and spoiled there is you know we want to do less we don't want to carry things we don't want to and we love everything fast food and ready to go in and people have money and they're willing to spend it but we have to try to make these experiences better and i think that the problem with the road to line up is a real issue and i don't know how much more we can do to convince the state to help us out with that but i think it needs to be this community needs to cry and say come on help us out because we are a cash cow but if people can i get to and from  safely and on time it's going to be a problem and as we build that site it's not going to get any better because we're not taking care of the problem so anyway those are just my thoughts and i'm sure your mind is full of stuff but any thoughts  well that got road till had does concern a great deal and i know that it's high in the major mayor's radar and he's really trying to elevate that at the state level and i think that's what's going to take an organ to tap to take the entire communities going to have to say that is our number one highway problem and we're really going to have to elevate it and we're going to all talk together as one and i think when you do that then the state won't get confused about what your priorities are so i think that's important to the shopping service there's actually a least a couple companies i know that do that you can preorder your things that you want and they will take it right here condo and fill your condo for you it whatever we have to do because if we don't we all suffer and it's horrible when the road gets blocked up and tourism hate it because it so anyway thank you very much for your hard work thank you thank o a board and then we give the grants out to the providers that provide the services under and so it's what they've tried to do the federal government in reestablishing this program are reorganizing it is they've tried to streamline it and take a lot of bureaucracy out of it because too much money was going for administration and not enough was going to programs and so they've really cut a lot out at the state level in particular so there is no general from impact from the counties perspective no no there's not very good but concerned about dollar values from that sector they're more concerned about job numbers than anything else in the in the sector i mean what is the drivers that from a bond perspective would be looking for a good culture component the bond readers for my understanding look at a number of different factors in each of  the industries that make up the economy of a community that they're reading and your current you know job numbers percentage wise as compared to other industries gross product  know gross revenue from those different industries or is look at that whatever data is available to fund readers so you know those are the kind of factors that they're looking at as a as a total package of what our economic standpoint is in our community and then the different factors that make that up so they do look at it from a number of different areas and i bring that up because for me while the numbers have changed we still have a so i understand from one perspective depends how we are booking and how we are trying to present it we have sectors diversification it may not be the amount of the job count out of all values we would like it to be yet but we have sector diversification in the chips perspective i just trying to understand how we all are putting it into various components so that those that don't understand us have can receive a good or whatnot is the drivers and that is what we counted and that's what we're trying to expand that's what we're trained support so i get i don't know how we're booking it or how we're sharing that information but i bring that up because i think we can make a good case that we do have sector diversification yeah i think mr chair we do present that to the bond readers specific  economic highlights like there are in t par and different things like that we also provide to them the employer sectors you know the employment sectors and a number of employees in different categories position ministry of assistant to position from the mayor's office to o e d could you provide us an understanding of the responsibilities that come with that position and the reason for the transfer you live in this fifteen members of the details very first position in the myself ok so this is a decision that came from the mayor's office what was what were the duties in the mayor's office filled in strictly to eat the so there was no but he in that position before ok but my question what were the what were the duties in the mayor's office that were there not to be covered by somebody else or  they would be the minister of assistant to positions in the mayor's office are some of the people that are leads on to the community a we have i think the title itself is a classification you know our collective bargaining system but the actual duties would be different things like one of them mischievous and two is a  deputy program for the public information officer position so you know i did i'm not sure exactly would have to bring mr on died down here but there was executive assistants that you know in positions that were eliminated from the mayor's and there was a eighteen thousand dollar an occupied but they're transferring the position to o e t does that person or there's that position also get a step up because of the parent bargaining collective agreement because previously in two thousand and sixteen it's sixty seven thousand one hundred eighty eight and then since no one was in that position why are they getting a step up to two thousand three hundred fifty two which is a higher increase at sixty nine thousand five hundred forty so i'm getting a little bit confused if that could be explained all the bugs there wasn't if your wasn't if it was a vacant it was vacant before that and i need a chart that you talk to us about that it's a looks like it's a new line item grab and again yeah i understand that was going to give you the church's perspective on at that point in time where we are whether you can look at you know numbers or i'm going to recommend you start sharpening your over but i have questions says for as for your repair and maintenance i don't we also have maintenance agreement i think it comes out to all fifty o whatever but seventeen thousand and yet we don't own the building we lease the office space where addition of funding to repeat repeat and really for the center does that come out of the or is that something we are we have to do ourselves  explored that very issue this is not something that's covered under the lease this is not something that they're obligated to do the building owners we have they have  that the lease actually quite low and you know in the increases over the years they also incurred the building owners just incurred this last year a major upgrade to the entire air conditioning system cost them a lot of money and the roof but this is not something they're going to do for us we refurbished the mall office through three years ago was badly in need of it you know and and and really this is this is what this is about it really just needs to be refurbished and freshened and the floor is really horrible and so we just want to take care that this is a one time only thing we haven't asked for you know any really maintenance or anything like that for the last five years so this is just a one time expense thank you the other i have two others with the constant contact marketing services can you explain that what it does for the center is that constant contact is an e e blast service that you can create your own eve fires and then you send them out to your database basically and it holds the database and the most effective and cheapest way go to honolulu for any meetings or trainings that she comes here for in meetings and trays we we have with very limited success tried to get cars out of the rent the car you know what do we call it the pool the motor pool motor pool and have not been able to i think once was the only time we're able to make that happen so but yeah  it's multiple events and multiple things she was travelling for thank you and i think our people are paying for grants appreciate the streamlining but your office is always been very helpful so i think you think huge here this is actually something that's being spearheaded by mr cheney in the mayor's office so i would have to have him address you about  either details or program components going from ten ten thousand to eleven right yes so this would be any number of trips that could be sister cities like the one that's coming out but also when we sent our specialists to food x in tokyo and the tokyo game show where we showcased companies it could be a sister cities visit likes coming up for fukuyama so this is art operations travel for our specialists in our office if they have to travel ok so this is like the one fund that sort of there for the specifically that international travel so they're not based out of any other area to me yeah we're not we're not covering you know it's just it's for our people basically to travel and do international travel ok ok thank you thank you for the questions members in this area before we take blanch year's that was a paid dead and council appropriated forty seven thousand four hundred so within a two year period it is being proposed to go from forty seven four to sixty nine long discussion with him and will last miss the rest miss him to be available should you have something in the next ninety minutes you might think about any questions for me mr white know that what you just shared with us about a position going from forty seven to sixty seven sixty nine sixty nine yes sixty nine for this year it could it begs the question if you know as co counsel stated earlier ok here's what we're required to pay based on a scale but collective bargaining generally starts with with step what if where if we're able to skip what amounts to twenty thousand dollars or a little more than twenty thousand dollars in insteps why should we then be required to provide the same you know same percentage increases that the bargaining unit gets when they're starting much lower just something i think we need to be thinking about as we move forward thus the big difference those in collective bargaining went through a civil service examination to prove qualifications and or experience you know i've i've shared with this body many times my concern that two thousand thirteen to two thousand and seventeen which is this year coming up that our employment costs without any increase and in staffing were forecasted to go up by forty two million  dollars i've been doing calculations as you can imagine comparing two thousand and thirteen with the projected two thousand and seventeen and my preliminary findings are that we're not going up forty two million we're going up seventy three million dollars for this year over two thousand and thirteen so in a four year period our cost of employment is going up essentially about forty four percent i'd be happy to have mr boss check to check the numbers and give us the give us the facts as he sees them but i think we need to be responsive to  the folks in the private sector that are picking up most of the bills and pay most of the taxes because it's just seems like we're not real concerned about where the where the money is going  other questions for the chair this time members if not will be in recess till one thirty p community media you're watching channel fifty three