morning and welcome to the policy intergovernmental affairs committee meeting of november sixteenth two thousand and fifteen it's three minutes after nine apologize for being a few minutes late i'd like to ask first of all all of those in the gallery and our council members if they would make sure these put their phones and a good reminder turned them off or put them to silent thank you for reminding myself well i wasn't going to ask that question but thank you for that answer yes i'll go with that you know aspect of asking her if there's any testifiers in our district offices the need for an end is from london he needs to you have anyone wishing to testify tranxene dog for the department of police and further discussion on the matter relating to the emergency fund sol at this time with no objections i will move right into the donation of central dog for the department of police p i yf if t the committees in receipt of county communication fifteen dash to seventy nine from the police the chief of police transmitting a proposed resolution entitle authorizing the acceptance of a donation of a cent tracking dog to the county of ma we police department pursuant to chapter three point five seize molly county quote the purpose of this proposed resolution is to authorize acceptance of a scent tracking dog valued at five thousand dollars from the friends of missing children center of hawaii to the department of police to take a point of personal privilege first of all i like to say yes saturday i had the opportunity the mayor and i to be a part of the holes in guns program as you read in the paper they did a lot of good broady and i think something like thirty eight thousand dollars so the fight on breast cancer so i want to thank the police department and the fire department for day to team your support of our community and secondly as i mentioned that day i sa there on friday night like many of you watching what happened in paris and wanting came came across very loud and clear very apparent and very hard for me is the fact that i was watching police emergency service fire department running in bringing people out to safety carrying people out and i thought of our men and women in both our police department and fire department and you know their day standing for us each and every day ready to help us  emergencies and we'll be talking to him and we're just he's in the next part of our family our meeting so i would like to see on behalf of the county of mali and i hope i speak for all of council members mahalo to all of you for your dedication and commitment to protect us the public here in my county and throughout the state interrupt the nation and it's sad that we have teams of this nature still occurring and i pray that for those who have lost loved ones they do find some solace in the good lord's comforting and and hope that one day we can learn to live together and that's my message and thank you very much no more to be said thank you and hell now that i can get back to what i was stuck i started with the police department last night last night we had an elderly gentleman that walked away from home in we were looking for several hours thankfully he was a citizen and brought him back home but in these type of situations where we know we're a person that is in the area  this will come in really handy as well as for you know fugitives as well so along with this i have already reached out to try to chief mary and talk the talk with him is as they do a lot of the mountain rescues  have you guys been working with i know there's a private group out there that has a scent tracking dogs as well are you going to be working with them as far as getting their help or working with the training of the dogs etc no not at this time of this canine is coming from specific kennel which what do we get the training from them as well with the other departments so we hav putting some in the station as well so when they're working costs or it's not that that high the cost of course there's food costs every month there's additional budgetary costs for the officer who has to care for me a number of times during the course of a year that this occurs and i know some of the falls on the fire but you it's also called and i know that very thankfully we don't have very many missing children we have things are so wonderful thing but if you look at i force we always work together and that's just part of the what you mention in paris we always have to work together to get the meat ok very good you know any other questions for the chief seen and i'd like to make my recommendation the finding of county communication fifteen dash two seven the chair move that we adopt the resolution as you read and style county communication fifteen to seventeen seconds it has been moved by all right moving to our next item emergency fund p i a thirty five the comedian is in receipt of the following missile in his communication dated may twenty eighth two thousand and fifteen from the county clerk reporting that on information on emergency preparations spending four august two thousand and twelve through august two thousand and fifteen by fiscal years and eventually you find that in your binder members this item was a cold to evaluate should teach sheet strategies to improve the efficiency of the fun fulfilling its purpose your binder contains a copy of the charter chapter and three point one six section three point nine six point three zero three zero requires that the finance director stabbers a separate fun that county response to public emergencies the county may make appropriation from this fund which do not lapse at the end of each fiscal year but accumulate from year to year at our august meeting we learned that the fun had thirty one point two million section nine dash fourteen of the try to states i quote the the fun is an emergency reserve to be used to meet any emergency we met in august seventeenth to discuss this matter including questions about whether the code should be amended to be consistent with the charter which is one of the things i have when i will be bringing forward very shortly is a amendment to make the code match the charter i will also be looking at how this is implemented and the steps that need to be taken by mammal dated october fifteenth two thousand and fifteen again a copy in your buy into the deputy corp call so advised that the charter provision prevail also here today is on a files thank you ana for being here and mr sandy buzz which we all know our budget director so i at this point i will let had been a fire and then this storm came and just created havoc for not just the country but for a lot of flooding in damages and things like that the departments expended  quite a bit of money their original appropriation it looks like was one point seven million dollars and the and we're still trying to reconcile the exact use to the funds but the money that was returned unspent to the emergency fund was seven hundred ninety three thousand dollars so it looks like there's about nine hundred thousand dollars that was spent out of the emergency fund in net costs for those december storms was also looking up the council committee report regarding this and they were expecting some female reimbursements for that so my staff is actually right now looking at the possibility of trying to reconcile how much money we get back from fema specifically for this because it was a presidential declaration so that this has been the only use of this funds over its ten year history now and  i do have suggestions for you know maybe changing the code or maybe creating a a not quite so drastic emergency fund which you know after gives her recap  the emergencies that civil defense in her role as the emergency management officer oversees there there is some there's a gap there whether it's  time or i would start discussion on it today that it is related to the emergency fund so basically recap as of right now mr chair it looks like you know for those expenditures back in two thousand and seven where  in two thousand and eight were you know pretty much you know the water supply a public works police parks fire environmental management and of course civil defense expenditures because of that related storm this year i can tell you that we've already sent down a budget amendment for the department of public works highways division because they are going to be exceeding their overtime because of all the wet weather that we've been having and all the threats of storms they have to go and make sure that the good the drainage basin are clear that the drainage culverts are clear so that you know we don't have flooding so they go out there and ahead of time for the flooding so that will be an item later on discuss when the budget amendment gets heard in the b n f committee but it is something that does affect our departments and the challenge has been recently with the the slimming down of the departments budgets and then not having as much of cushion as the used to in times where emergencies minor emergencies happen they don't have the budgets to cover those necessarily anymore so it just it's a way that we need to review this and maybe balance out to figure out a way to cover this and i was discussing with the finance director of the county of hawaii and they have a disaster and emergency the fund which the administration has direct access to has about two hundred fifty thousand dollars in it so that we can so that they can just you know in case something happens immediately they can you can spend out of them money i see e mails once in a while from the departments to to miss follows ok what can we charge this emergency to and we don't really have that right now we don't have a place where we can just charge you know these emergency costs i stated in my letter i am only able to provide the costs that were expended for my department and we're only a department of at the time between thirteen and today anywhere from three to six people that we have now so our major expenditure is really in overtime costs and you can see over the years there's not really a consistent amount that's expended in response to a specific event but if you look it's seems in congress when you look at five fifteen last year where we had seventeen thousand dollars in overtime costs for just our department versus this year where we've had so many more storms and the amount for overtime for our office is only forty five hundred some of that has to do with the timing of the events we've been fortunate this year in the sense that many of the events have been happening where we do our briefings and a lot of our work during work hours and then it's only maybe one two hour meeting on a saturday sunday when we were having conference calls with the national weather service and again this is only for my small staff when you think about the activation of the e e o c we have personnel from all of our departments as well as some of our state partners and others those costs don't really come into play here and we track who's coming in and we have them signing in in case we were to get a federal declaration where we have to have the documentation to support a reimbursement request however until we get to that point we're really not asking the departments to report their costs to us we do ask them to track them themselves but i don't have a way right now really to give a picture of what the overall cost is for the entire county so as i said mine is a small fraction of what we expend as a county i will give you for example though the last federal declaration we had in the state was last year during a cell and our county costs exceeded two point two million out of pocket so and this is for civil defense fire department transportation public works water supply parks and rec and this does not include the amount that was expended by the police department during tropical storm last year so as i was saying there's not a real clear way right now for us that we gather information from county wide unless we're preparing to make a request for a federal decoration and in order to get a federal declaration there has been at least a million dollars in damages statewide as well as about five hundred forty thousand dollars just expended from mali county in order to get my county included in a federal decoration so when we start looking at the costs that are borne by each of the departments especially those like sandy had mentioned that are sending people out to do what we call emergency protective measures those folks are the ones who are really feeling the pinch in their operations budget and in in the very near future but i thought today would be a good chance to discuss the matter we have had a high number of storms that have passed the state this year and we're very fortunate that we've not had a direct hit that come up to me she why do we spend so much money and time getting ready we'll you know i'd better be ready and like the old saying i read to be safe than sorry and i think we've worked very hard i want to commend the various departments across the board for their efforts to make sure we're prepared every time an emergency is predicted and when i see predicted i'm talking about hurricane struck because storms tsunamis those that we know all me affect us and we've been fortunate not to have a direct hit it's not a matter if it's a matter of when davies and gentlemen that will occur and i'd rather be again safe than sorry but it costs money every time this happens it costs money and so i think these are some of the issues i'd like to address today the fund that mr bosler been talking about we've banded about a smaller more immediate fund that things like this that happened that they can go to right away without coming to us well coming you know without time to put that money out there for the necessary services that occur i can remember two years ago when we had some heavy rains and white couple a number of homes an area flooded really bad a lot of that was born by public works and and fire they were the ones who responded even civil defense they were told to google call the fire department and public works to clean up the pump all the water and all of this so i went up there and i saw the damage that was done two or three years ago and i can't remember exactly when you know so i believe it's time to discuss this matter it's time to put something forward have five minutes and again with us really being more restrictive with  and c of columns now is the time to give them more latitude somewhere else so i will open the floor for questions starting with you mister culture and move right along in fact i'll go dissuade back to but the amounts that have come back have not all been completed yet it depends on project completion as well as the timeliness of states of defense receiving the funds and then releasing it to us but yes it should be reimburs costs at seventy five percent and so i guess this question would be for either mr baez or mister if we were to have some sort of fun first of all can we set up a fund that all departments can take a look at and withdraw from a given whatever criteria council makes and if something like that you know who would you see administering that would it be is the best solution for that i believe that the best place for it to be would be in civil defense agency they would then be managing that they could be able to track how much is being expended and then see if it does reach those levels of the five hundred forty two thousand dollars for federal reimbursement and they could scrutinize each one of those expenditures to make sure that the departments   bring to pass out today but it's to repair county facilities and infrastructure damaged by a natural or human cause disaster or emergency to clean up county property including road strange sewage systems damaged by a natural or human caused disaster or other emergencies when such action serves a public purpose to provide immediate response for services to deal with public health and safety risk due to natural or human caused disaster or emergency in the form of personnel equipment materials supplies and service contracts to match federal state or private grant in aid individually or in combination to develop more restore public property this to a safe and useful condition to pay for operational expenses of the county after the disaster or emergency when the county is unable to realize revenues at a sufficient level due to the disaster emergency and to pay for administrative expenses which shall not exceed you know five percent of the fund for you know finance and contract salaries fringe benefits and those kind of so you know if we can even scope it down even more to that for the ones that you know if we're going to give if the administration of civil defense can have a pot of money  that is appropriated for their reviews either in a in appropriation into their department or is a special fund that doesn't you know get over every the different options one that would be more like the self insurance model where you appropriate we know we appropriate a certain amount for each year that self insurance fund then lapses at the end of that year and the next year is appropriate d at a certain amount or we can do it like the rest of the special funds where you know it's set up a code that that special fund is created for that purpose and money in there doesn't lapse it just continues year after year so and then you know that way we can also clean up the fema reimbursements too because there's some confusion as to you know because a lot of times will make the expenditures and it will be two or three fiscal years before we g reimbursed from fema so we can't go back and refund the expenditure there to reimburse the expenditure which we would you know theoretically we want to do it that's what we're it is a reimbursement so we're having to then go and  to this this fund and then if needed we can go to the emergency fund for those larger expenditures thank you chair and thank you departments for being here yeah that was an intriguing amount that you tossed out there that two point two million where did you get those figures and do you actually have the breakdown of what department you do lies how many funds out of that two chair at the time you know was seen how he's very happy to see the open approach by budget director instead of hiding my knees departmental operations per se and so you know you're stating that now they don't kind of have that cushion in there anymore and i guess there has been and then mr wait if we could get a total of who has what where and thereby extract perhaps those dollars and put it into this special fund or whatever we're starting to discuss here i'm thinking so it's i think important to see the breakdown as i do a lot of work via public works d d m and they definitely are called into the picture for any kind of disaster preparedness especially on my behalf you know i try to make sure we keep ahead of the ball if possible as in keeping our culverts and drainage systems ready for such occurrences by heavy storm and what have you and thereby hoping to not have to expend o t and  all this emergency type situations to be you know tapping into this type of funds is how i hope to see departments prepare ahead  what is that money where you know where is it and where does he hope to go you know mr knight you've got an interesting question but i'm not sure if this is the police to do that because that would reimbursement once a declaration has been made each department has to submit quote unquote projects to fema so once those have been approved then as an eligible expense then they'll talk about the seventy five percent reimbursement so what was submitted as eligible expenses were overtime for my department which was ten thousand seven hundred dollars approximately emergency protective measures from department of fire public safety of one hundred eight thousand plus  emergency protective measures including setting up bus transportation and evacuation of five thousand eight hundred public works had quite a bit of debris removal as well as highway repairs etc there was significant damage on the highway almost two million dollars right there degree removal sixty seven thousand parks and rec also had some debris removal seventy two thousand about parks and rex also had damages to a fence a park about thirteen thousand well closer to fourteen damages to some of their facilities three thousand dollars also protective measures for that department of twenty thousand dollars water supply had let me see here approximately eight thousand dollars in emergency protective measures so those are things like going out and deploying the generators ahead of time public works again has the highest bulk of that in terms of doing the clearing of the channels sometimes taking out sand plugs and things like that to make sure there's access to the ocean of water coming down the mountain so those are the types of expenditures that we see and they'll fall in line the what sandy read to you what they have in the county code reflects what stafford act reimbursements allows so they have categories of eligible expenses and so i would assume that ours would mirror what would be considered eligible expenses through fema so that even if we don't reach that million or half million dollars or million dollars statewide we're still tracking it in the same way for even the smaller events because it does add up you know over event after event so those are approximately the amounts and what the how they were spent and i'll provide this for you after the movie they were very good and gives  better picture you know chere clear detailed picture but so are you see that you can add up the smaller events to get no i'm just saying that that digs into operational budgets and into the overtime costs that are borne by each department without even reaching a federal declaration so it does impact over time in their operations budgets but doesn't become eligible then under a female two mil i guess collectively in it as of today so you're looking to put five million through this pass a budget which i believe we appropriated and then where does that figure you still  case of some major you know thing where we're not getting any revenue just like in your normal checking account you know you near normal home you want to have a little bit of savings in fact they'd normally recommend six months worth of savings possibly rightly so scrutinized you know to down to what their actual expenditures are but that means that they don't have that five to fifteen percent to be able to spend on these kind of emergency items all right well thank you thank you for the com refreshingly remember about that because to me that's important as we discussed setting aside a smaller amount how much do we need so that we can do that and all the discussion about how it's spent has been very useful just one quick question we mentioned at the beginning of the meeting that there was a budget amendment planning pending for public works how much is that amendment to the boss give me a second to look at ok i think these numbers give us an idea of what we need to be prepared for me to think is really important we've had so much stuff happening lately and yet we've been so lucky that a lot of it hasn't happened you know they should the other night on television you know all  departments have try as much as possible to stay ahead of the curve i know the department of public works department has worked very hard to stay ahead of the curve however with all these rains we've had many of you traverse our roadways and i is pretty much covered over with grass you know how high it be my lead sign is and the grass has grown that high and they're being they're trying to cut is every other week and they just can't keep up with that maybe one of the areas that we have to look to help them because it's maybe not an emergency but it's a safety issue not to go that every time i'm out with my husband he says what where's your gas cutters they you don't know absolutely and and i don't think they're not trying to they're out there but to cover them for the rest of the year i can't guarantee that we won't be coming back but i did have them in my in my direction to all and when i get to you know will want to be coming back every two minutes to try to have a little bit of a better understanding of what expenditures million dollars is in the public works project which was could you explain what the two million dollars went for quite catch up sure there was during his all there was quite a bit of high surf and storm s the east side i'm sure council member carol remember some of that and it undermined some of the roads out there so it was roadway repairs to the back roads ok thank you  so very this sounds like there's very little in the way of a straight time involved in any of these numbers we don't include straight time when we're calculating because that's not reimbursable from the fema cost so what we've gathered together is only the over time over time because they're much cleaner number there has been there was the sandy reform act after c andy there is a mood there's a what i call it a pilot project way where they will pay straight time plus overtime but only for that one category of expense which is the debris removal ok and for mr baez it sounds like you're aside now as emergency reserve fund and having another operational fund for these day to day on that day to day but you know expenditures that come throughout the operating year that are related to  disaster or pre disaster preparation ok so wouldn't necessarily cover the the million dollar amount for public works i'm assuming that that was something that was covered by something was put out to bid as opposed to public works actually doing the repairs yet think you missed a cherry i believe so we have to go double check that i'm sure public works does some of the repairs you know if it's if it's minor but i'm maybe sufficient for the this kind of operating emergency operating room versions so that because if you look at if you take out that too that you know one million one hundred sixty thousand dollars for the road  to three hundred thousand dollars with a covered all the rest that's why i'm thinking you know somewhere around two fifty to five hundred would be a good amount ok thank you thank you you thank and i guess my question to you and  this needs to be have and i'm going to just be for this matter so that we can work on this and come back with something more viable in the near future maybe before the end of the year or early next year but i want to ask you mr abbas would having a fund a smaller fund for immediate operational expenses do you feel then the department would be not so worry so much far as you know being able to meet these emergencies or emergency threats i guess is the word i want to use because we've been blessed like you said missed by so you know i was i want to say moves report on us all these cycles in hurricanes going north solved and we're right in the middle and i think the good lord if for those blessings but with that in mind how do we make sure our departments don't feel strapped you know i know they're trying their best each and every day but i don't want them feeling trapped so much to be believed this fun could be something the media and then and maybe we can build on or would you keep it at the same level and then when used in replenished at that point in time what would your talk be in that area thank you mr chair i believe that this  this if we did discuss this new fund creation it would be something that we keep it a very pretty small level and that it wouldn't grow over time that that emergency reserve fund would be the one that would continue to grow over time and this one would be you know something that we could just either like is that appropriate each year and if it doesn't get spent just rolls over in the carry over savings or create the special fund when once it's funded then you know we don't have to keep putting money into it unless it gets spent which is another way of doing things so i would be comfortable either way you know with further discussion with the emergency management officer and finance  office i'd probably want to look at yeah those fema reimbursements and how we're handling that and to make sure you know that we do have the best vehicle possible to recognize those funds and then also making sure that the code management civil defense that will make it so that the departments will understand that yes they do so they won't be so scared to go out and do a preparation activity because they know that there might be a pot of money available there but also we want to make sure that there's control of that money's not just doing stuff out of the blue and we want to make sure that they do have the ability to not be scared to go do things what we do have that now especially with the implementation of the a b c budgets i get the beginning i was getting at least two or three emails a week it's gone down to maybe about one e mail we maybe one e mail every couple of weeks requesting you know what do we do with this can we do that can you know how can we get reimbursed for this activity for another department because you know something that they would have done on a decent basis before like an example was it's not related to emergency but it's related to in the county cemetery and public works guys are the ones that go and they get because they're the ones that have the equipment and stuff like that but they one of the things i would like to maybe put in is this emergency fund when exceeded and we know there's much more out there that we can then move into the emergency fund like at the double and then move into the emergency fun correction it's not a matter if it's when it's going to happen we need to be prepared also so against the bugs you're putting up the natural disasters what about manmade disasters which could occur here and more importantly like nine eleven which had all the wreck physical premise to the state of hawaii but did a back to our economic standing and our people our hotels were empty our rooms were dark and there  it's a broad breach emergency fund so yes i mean we need to get it up to sixty million as soon as possible and maybe even more because it is broadbeach an emergency can be performed and almost instantaneous even if it's not here in mali county or in the state of hawaii but more importantly again going back to the smaller fun i would like to meet with your permission to not only put in natural but manmade because i think this is a bottom is false you want to add something includes anything from nature or manmade or exceeding manmade disasters and even if you look at the breakdown i gave you it's a very small amount that it impacted our agency but there was a bomb threat that required an evacuation of a community so there was transportation costs there as well as police fire response and also the cost of standing up a shelter for those folks while they were displaced from their homes overnight so while it's not as frequent it might not be as long lasting or have as great of an impact those do still show up in the things that we're helping to coordinate response to within our agency and one of the things i will remind all of us that we should lean up to not going to year and a half two years ago we had a standoff at a home in one of our communities from which people in the area needed to be evacuated and there were places open up shelters to open up to take care of these people so i mean  we can't just think small anymore we've got to look at the big picture and that's what i hope to put together with all the participants and come back with something that broad based and then i will ask for your your assistance is my me again it's all about dish moment go ahead thank you thank you cherished wanted to quickly point out some of the benefits of creating a fund in the code is so would have the authority to make the limitations on it there it would probably make it easier for civil defense corps because i'm sure we'll get asked all civil and budget so we can know what we're allowed to spend it on another point being while the emergency reserve fund is there chartered does require an ordinance i believe to pass it and while i'm sure there's a process to speed it up an ordinance does take a lot more time then if you're to create a small emergency fund which would be instantly ready for appropriation for those because i guess there are just so happens it's not necessarily on monday morning at seven forty five so you have a full week to get together and work on it if it happens at a weird time the money would be available instantly for civil defen e and you know i guess it also comes down to we're fortunate where the fiscal year starts at the beginning of summer which is kind of near our season or hurricane season so there probably would be some flow in budgets however  disaster closer to june thirtieth there may be less money available so the departments wouldn't be able to float the costs because just general requirements of county contracting is we have to have the money available  appropriation to use it so just i think mr baez's idea is a good one or a small emergency fund created in the county code money readily appropriated just wanted to say that chart thank you objection and continue to work and bring back something very viable probably by the first of the year so that we all can sit down and really have a heart to heart discussion and really make some what i call systemic changes that are needed in this county so with no objections to the meaning of the one policy an intergovernmental affairs committee of november sixteenth two thousand and fifteen is knowledge