good morning like to convene the meeting of the policy intergovernmental affairs committee today is off to with third two thousand and sixteen and we're three minutes after nine sorry for the little delays first of all as everyone later so whenever they arrive we will recognize them at that time from the administration will be calling down the mary in a little while after we get confirmation of our one and only  corporation counsel good morning in front of us we have the chief to defeat the director of housing and i and others but i will wait to introduce them when we get to that part of our our program to that bill  legislative analyst mr kim kim we limbering thank you cam for your invaluable service and to me for is our committee secretary at this time i'd like to check in to the district office is if i m much as i mentioned earlier we have carol car on green from the lawn not the planning commission application and we will be bringing her on line very shortly for our first item ok so let's get started let's start with i don't number one on our agenda which is or before i do that we have two agenda items first one is the nomination to boards can we can we not committees and commissions for the and i planning commission that's item number one and i don't number two would be the protecting and preserving public health safety and welfare p i a sixty one and we will cover both of goals in particular as we get to them so let me start with public testimony testimony will be limited to the two items on the agenda as i mentioned earlier sign up at the desk located on the  floor lobby or at any one of our district offices you will have three minutes at two and a half minutes the yellow light will come on and at three minutes the red light will stop blinking i will ask you had that time to please conclude with a closing statement please state your name in any organization you may be representing we've already established our contacts with our different district offices and we'll try to work toward between what we have here and our year resident of law to express my full support of p i sixty one and county communication number i don't fifteen dash to nine six it appears at today's agenda item is to discuss one of the proposed  prohibitions relating to lying down on public sidewalks my testimony today is to support this bill as well as the other four bills included in the communication more and more of the streets of lying i have become unsafe unsanitary unsightly and uninviting there may be those who say the testimony i'm about to share is heartless without compassion and exaggeration of the facts and ignorance of others rights my response to that is to please listen to both sides before judgment is passed and to take to heart that while i have compassion to those less fortunate i also have compassion for those of us who are significantly impacted by the unruly unrestrained and aggressive actions from others here are just a few reasons of why i support this particular bill as well as the other four have you witnessed someone pulling their shorts leg to the side exposing their genitals and urine eating on the sidewalk on fine street in front of terse children residents business owners and the crux of a busy afternoon have you worked as an independent contractor of a commercial building and had to clean human feces within the parking lot on the sidewalk running a business center and it's within the landscaping along the right of way have you had to return or throw away empty abandoned shopping carts or clean abandoned shopping carts piled high with trash food laden with maggots and alcohol bottles and cans how you've been yelled that or physically intimidated when you either don't respond to or negatively to solicitations have you had to cross the street or go out onto the street because someone is lying or sleeping on a sidewalk and you are too afraid to walk past them or simply can't pass them because there's no room for you to pass last wednesday morning at five fifty five a m while walking your dogs on line alluna wrote did you have to literally run sorry asses your legs could take you away from a homeless person because he's threatened you with screaming words and body language so much that you were in fear of your life i can say i have to every one of these situations and that is why i made it a point to come here this morning and testify it is important for everyone to hear both sides of the story i ask that you please pass this bill and others sooner than later in order to help those of us who won order restored to our communities for the protection of our businesses and our economy to provide the tools to our larn foresman and social service agencies to motivate and encourage those less fortunate to accept the assistance they are off but choose to decline and to not condone behavior that is unacceptable threatening unsanitary and hurting the majority of you so you can give one closing statement will conclude lastly i leave you with this while i have modified the time i walk in the morning to where i walk in the morning as a result of that incident that happened last week wednesday i no longer feel safe to walk in the early morning alone in addition i have also advised my client of fifteen years that i will no longer service their commercial building in l as much as i have tried to let the actions of others not control me it has come to that defining moment that i am no longer willing to risk my health or my seat model for your consideration  forward i think many of us know that exists is there that we all understand it's a real hard and difficult process deciding where rights and in safety and helped begin and it's a difficult situation and so what i i hope and pray did one day not too distant future you can we go back to what you're used to doing and not a few into or free to do chair and council members thank you don college for notifying us of this hearing i completely agree with everything that ms just stated i have experienced identical things in my neighborhood i can no longer walk safely i now frequent different stores i have lost a tenant because of it and i would just like to reclaim my neighborhood and for my granddaughter and for my children to be able to feel safe to be walking freely where we once could it's very demoralizing to witness people out cold on the sidewalk it's terrifying to walk by a gang of people and that's one point that i'd like to make with this bill that lying down is not the only problem people congregate sitting on the sidewalk and they're bullies and they threaten and they're drunk and they're drug users and they keep the people who really need the help for instance i live near st teresa church and people who would be going to that program families local families with children cannot go because these people are threatening their access because they're don't want to be around these people they have no respect for common decency and i too don't want to sound like a mean person however i want to protect the society that i contribute to and i would i'm willing to help provide an alternative i'm an architect i would be glad to volunteer my time to provide an alternate place for these people to be however they should not be allowed to be ruining our communities you know a hot meal in the wings and that was our whole intent and we feed families because i've been a part of that follow by even though i don't live in ky i have been a part of that and the intent is always been a good intent unfortunately yes there are others that are coming into the program that's even made it hard for the parishioners as well as the pastor and some of us to even deal with them and we've eighty six some of them off the property but it's you never stop them all well off the neighborhood well and again is not that was in our intention you know that was in the intent but you know we're keenly aware what we're trying to do is it is get help for them but how do you help those who don't want to help themselves and i think that's what we're go commercial neighborhood district area so you know there's not really much more i can add to what's already been said although i'd like to say that it's unfortunate that we need to have these bills but it's come to a point where it's adamant that we do need to have these bills and you know it's very hard for me to listen to my wife and to the other young lady speak as  father and husband and grandfather because i want to defend them and there's been situation with my daughter in law and my grand daughter who have been threatened just by simply trying to go to a walk to the grocery store and you know there's only so much i can do and this is this is the main thing i can do right now so i'm in full support of this and a these stories that you've heard these they're just you know it's just the tip of the iceberg really and i think everybody knows here too that the increase of this particular population of people think many of us agree and again finding that balance between compassion and safety and well being of the community is really where we are at this point and some of this hopefully can be addressed to the we have some experts that will be speaking so i don't know if you have time to hang around but if you don't please tune in later and we'll we you know we brought up that i don't want to discuss this matter yeah there actually there is one other thing i'd like to add if i could quickly yes qu been a part of the key a community for a long time yes and one of the things we've been working for in that community is a walkability which in the executive area is really good there's a lot of walkability accessibility to things ok thank you and she no one in the chamber wishing to testify would give one less opportunity for you having seen the one coming forward with no objections or calls public testimony thank you  which she speaks into and what we hear here ok so you understand there be a slight delay in receiving her message came so let us go on to item number one nominations two boards committees and commissions this is for planning commission p i the twin to twenty nine the committee is in receipt of correspondence dated and received on september fourteenth two thousand and sixteen from them here testifying  purpose of the proposed resolution is to approve or disapprove the appointment of carving green to deal and i plenty commission for expiring march thirty first two thousand and twenty filling the vacancy of do of rig resulting from the resignation of jared barr feel the council must approve or disapprove this nomination by november thirteenth two thousand and sixteen or the nomination will be dean approved we receive one piece of morning committee members the administration would like your support of the nominee ms karen green we're certainly very pleased that she has made herself available to be considered she has previous board experience both on the mainland and online i e specifically  a former board member of the la my culture and heritage center the la night arts center and the alumni community plan and advisory committee ms green is retired and has told us that she has the time to serve on the alumni planning commission and this german on another note in response to your request dollars last week for the attendance records of the alumni planning commission members for the last two years the administration has provided your staff the documents for your consideration thank you  moreno and i think we have copies of that have we distributed to the members miss when they bring the put it on yes q ok so everyone has a copy of the attendance records as submitted from the administration in regards to i guess it was you mister holcombe of that had requested the attendance were we part for the alumni plenty commission a i think it goes from two thousand and fourteen to two thousand and sixteen as my records indicate here i don't know if you have anything differently but that's what i show here mr okama ok if i will dispense an analyst's you have a  denise is carrying green available considering my application and also for letting me do this i remember this interview from a remote location also i'd like to just briefly correct something that ron said and that is do i love who lake and at this point in time there's nobody representing that community ok would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience and then that way we can then open up to questions from the council members absence and related to judaism with little for four years then we went to java script south africa three and a half then we went into the bay area for two and a half and finally back to indianapolis and at that point in time i had two small children and the company offered me a job but i decided at that time to take retirement i had you ended up using money time because i read raising children doing volunteer work in the community  places we would play the gig if we could live anywhere where would it be and at one point we thought oh we're going to listen to that one we came on vacation to live nicely and i absolutely fell in love with it and then four years later when we were deciding where we were going to retire we came back to hawaii well long story short we bought a lot out of the ellie and retired here in two thousand and six so we've problems you bring a great level of understanding and experience of mainland or not hawaii type of experiences can you tell us especially for one lions how your experience can i look forward to using that experience and knowledge to our communities benefit because we are basically people who are very steeped in our culture and history and for those of us that are there for generations and hundreds of years we'd like to know how someone with ten years of history on a line i will address our unique concerns know they were writing them all down and i think you know this is really great for people who are doing research but i think we need some kind of a video or something that you can watch this most people are going to have lived through that era of what you just described in other parts but that is who we are and that's part of our history one thing i want to ask you is your thoughts on especially for  alumni the future of how you see economic development progress in would only again one land owner who tries to monopolize and control most activities on the island specially commercial properties how do you see your role as a potential planning commission or to increase opportunities for the nice people regarding economic opportunities and economic development especially for entrepreneurship my other question is again you understand the ownership of the island and for me i am looking at appropriate eminent domain of certain properties to give the guy and his car community the fair opportunities for ability to either work for another employer as well as for me government to provide independent others to look at potential  outside of pool in milan not how do you view that hurt thank you karen i am chairman i would like to relinquish it for if other members may have questions for miss green i appreciate her presence and her candid responses to my questions of you  green for being available for us the the question i have is the standard question on time and availability and the attendance of the meetings there there have been some instances when we've put people on that they just haven't been able to come to the meetings and looking at the attendants report there are some that are they have a bit of an issue with keeping attendance so are you willing to commit to attend as most if not all of the meeting for this committee the screen  ok thank you very much miss by some thank you very much to her and thank you very much karen for volunteering to be on the commission and to go through this process would tell you is always difficult  you know i'm not sure if they were they've lived on the island for some time i'm not sure if they were born on the island but i can safely say at this point the majority of the members it's pretty balanced i would say as far who was born and raised on long night versus who you know moved to la and i but the majority of the members there have pretty much lived on an island for some time so i don't have that documentation with the applications i could history whereby the general community has been supportive there is a concern that we need more than a boring people on the commission and that's something that the  various i would say beneficial discussions on how to maybe forward in the future on how to consider some of those factors in future nominations i think the mayor for his openness to at least  he brings us additional challenges especially when there are those that speak up alumni and i know they have no clue about it disturbs me of what is being said of their publicly the facts and realities of who we are  our history saying that though i would say that i think mr green is a reasonable consideration before this committee this morning and i would ask them embers to please for any concerns or comments that you could share wit green so she can have a better understanding of the role she takes some of the few do share responsibility she's going to sue on as well as under our county's jurisdictional structure the importance of the implementation of coastal zone management yes i mean areas so i think risk green is aware of her responsibilities and she's put yourself forward be to our community and i look forward to other members sharing their comments to me thank you thank you so cough so does that answer your question is my something that's a long answer to which is are i still have to look at you know what i was trying to figure out what is the makeup because it was raised as an issue that we wanted to have more long time  that would have been an excellent appearing experience as an entree to being a pending commissioner thank you very much thank you mr carroll do you have any questions for the nominee and then i'll go to mr guzman do you have any questions discussion do you have any more questions not of the nominee but of the administration ok go ahead there was some testimony that some people have been on the list for over two years  i cannot give you any exact assessment of why the administration may go with the person or go may not go with the person but there have again some of the traits we look for is the person's ability to attend and commitment most cases they work out but as you can see on the attendance record for some of the nominees in the past some folks for whatever reasons have had a difficult time making the meetings just recently we had a  member that was having a difficult time attending the meetings and we asked for his resignation in which he did so for lack of a better term it is somewhat of a crapshoot when selecting a nominee but again we look at the person's commitment and ability and sometimes it works out sometimes it doesn't but we definitely try to vet the the applicant out as best as we can then of course you take the council takes it to the next level with the vetting process so that's pretty much what  regarding this nomination i appreciate mr coaches query i would just say i am looking toward further clarification either by an ordinance proposal or on december second it took us twelve days to santa transmittal to the mayor saying of our action and then another ten days to get another nation which to mary's within his charter responsibilities i'm not happy with that clock because i thought he was already council's thing after the ten days of the second there was our opportunity to then forward the consul name for consideration i support what the mayor has done because as i come as they have counted on to the current i guess practice it fits under the ten days notification i'm not a happy camper that it took us ten calendar days to stop the clock which i mean regarding the concern of like my community our island regarding the applications i don't have a problem also by ordinance to propose that all qualified applicants w be made public especially our community i think we should know exactly all the names that's going to be considered but they'd all that application and if appropriate why they want to serve takes away cloward of why this name or that name or known me because on the island we know who has applied we keep our record council office on all applications that we forward or no is forwarded to the mayor's office so within appropriate parameters of law i'm going to look at clarifying and instilling by code a clear and understandable process for all future nominations thank you chairman thank you mr oklahoma and you have that advantage of having everything go to your office where many of us do not so that would have to be also looked upon as different areas are required to have should the types of board members or commissioners that is also fit vented should that particular council members yes also can with our authority and powers bites create further clarification and specifics regarding the implementation of the charter parameters thinking ok thank you and then i want to be beat to the member good will come chairman mr green is before us this morning she has put herself up she has shown her willingness to provide community service in various areas that she has documented for us i will tell her she did leave out one thing that i thought should be mentioned she had an interest in a residence during their experience and needs of the at  hospital she found a need for it and idea there was embraced by the community regarding a type of if i could use the phrase properly serenity garden and she took a giant bull by the horns worked with many community partners are trying to assist with whatever appropriate funding was made available through the county and they made it happen if you go to a community  beautiful garden that the residents can enjoy as part of their ability to recuperate in a quiet serene trying call environment during this stay at the hospice was really for those of our community that is of long term care services and are limited facilities on them so this is something that mr green has done from her heart to the community i wish that and i'm hoping that she'll be recognized for this type volunteer service and one of the reasons why i'm happy to give her an opportunity this morning to give another type of service to the community as a future planning commission and alumni we've got three thousand three her her opportunity to give service and i would ask the committee for that consideration thank you thank you very much any other discussion seen all those in favor saying the five by saying i  green thank you chair and thank you mr o'connor i appreciate very much your comments and i do appreciate the help that you gave us to do it in the serenity garden we could have done it with that the funding that we got from the county and i know you were instrumental in making that happen i will say that i am very proud of the fact that over the walkway up to the dialysis center before we get this r about a ten minute five minute break let's return by no later than seven after t and it's ten minutes after ten so we will be weak of eating sometime in the next twenty minutes or so i will not give a specific time but as soon as the flag ceremony is completed we will return and complete our business so this meeting is now in recess the meeting of the policy intergovernmental affairs committee will reconvene i want to think the public first of all for allowing us that break to be able to partake in the flag raising ceremony that was very very heartwarming and so now we are purpose of the proposed bill is to a man maui county called to prohibit people from laying down on public sidewalks they did gentlemen i would like today to focus on our discussion on this bill listed on the agenda there's others in the county communication but i thought this would be a particularly good starting point i want the public to know that we here on a council and the administration our car really empathize and have been looking for solutions and we have been putting money towards the homeless situation but it is a very daunting task there is no quick fix there's no silver bullet so i want the public that is watching this to know that today we're just attempting to work one face now we have also been told by certain areas and i'll bring that up with our expert panel is and some testimony received from the united states agency saying that some of these restrictions are illegal unconstitutional but the challenge is when and how do we fix it if we are prohibited from stopping these people from laying on the sidewalk which creates a not only dangerous situation but a very scary situation especially for i women because i have heard many times in the public from women saying they feel very uncomfortable a when they go to restrooms will be when they're walking on the street and they're solicit dated for money or other items and if they say no they ignore they get you know lambaste and use some follow language at all and that's that's very inappropriate this is not molly and we need to really address this problem so at this time i would like to take a moment to introduce the various panelists that we are have the good fortune of having having here i will start to my far right with our mayor mr mayor ellen our c you do that for the public your the way you need to pronounce your name chief deveau li file will follow me ok i see that but i get corrected something by those who don't know better thank you very very much and finally we have given jordan from the he is the executive director how why appleseed center of law and economic justice and i want to welcome gavin thank you very much for being here thank you so much for having me thank you so we have four strong knowledgeable people in this area what i would like to do it this time is at this point i would like to have cooperation council presenter of this he set it up from set it down from his administration so america would you like to start the proceedings and then we'll move from there thank you very much committee chair the corrino and council members i would like to point out that dome when we set down this we sent it as a package and contrary to what is being said today it has to be dealt with as a complete package because individually some with these rules if take it out of the package will become unconstitutional and illegal day in order for us to be able to do a lot of these rule policies we're going to have to be able to provide restroom facilities we're going to be able to have to provide housing we're going to have to provide the social service background to be able to do the psychiatric care the care that is needed for the homeless population what we set down was a comprehensive package that addresses each of these areas so that as we take care of these areas then these laws can then be enacted and enforced until we provide the opportunity for the homeless to be able to go someplace or do something for instance we have to have bathrooms otherwise we can't expect them to use the restroom in the proper way we have to be able to have places for them to live in order for them to be able to to two hours to be able to see ok you have some place where you can sleep someplace where you can call home so the sidewalk is an inappropriate so that is the competence of package that we said down and needs to be addressed as a comprehensive package all of the different areas including the social service agencies those e to come into play first as we get those opportunities in place then these laws become more relevant and become more and forcible in our community we teach our children common courtesy we teach them good health practices we don't encourage our children to use a bathroom in public on the sidewalk we actually ask them to use it in the appropriate places the restroom facilities we ask people to sleep in homes in beds and we would find it inappropriate if we did not provide these opportunities to try and force someone into someplace they don't have so this is part of the package that we're looking at all the rules that we said down require and i will emphasize require us to be able to deal with the needs of the homeless community first once we have that in place our public should expect and should deserve to have the ability to have rights as well they should be able to walk on the sidewalk without fear we should be able to use the sidewalks without having to worry about someone on a skateboard running over someone sleeping on the wall on the sidewalk in the evening being able to walk on the sidewalk without tripping over someone and possibly causing them harm as well and i would also point out that we can be sued if we hurt somebody even though unwittingly so our legal system also works against creating a dangerous condition where somebody can get hurt without us as a community addressing those opportunities as an administration i encourage all of you to look at all of these bills comprehensively and be able to put them in their proper perspective while i want you to pass these laws to the no lying on sidewalks i also want you to be sure that we have appropriate housing for the homeless appropriate care for the homeless appropriate programs so that we can have them treated as need to be treated for whatever issues they have which is why we also said down bills for the social service program funding we also set down bills for appropriate housing to start those programs it's not to be taken out of context individually because you will find legal challenges if you don't allow the cure to be in place before the implementation of the laws they want to be very clear about that the cure has to be there before the implementation of these kinds of laws which would become onerous if that's not possible for bills that was sent down and just for the public to understand what marco was talking about we have chapter eight point four zero probation relating to the for keating or your naming in public places that was part of this package we also have chapter eight point two one liquor in county minnesota all parking lots i and other public areas we also we have the one relating to the laying down on public sidewalks which we're talking about today and finally we have checked chapter eight point three eight for him probation relating to taking or banding of shopping shopping carts and that was the comp answer back if you're referring to am i correct and may i also add on this is what we've said this don was to start the discussion so we're open to any other suggest is that you may have any other rules that you may want to implement already solutions t homeless problem that you have you know we said this down i think in november the idea was for us to start having a good discussion about all these possibilities so that we could all review and come up with the best suggestions but we had to start someplace so this is what we put together as a starting point thank you thank you mary and i that's exactly what we're trying to do today get a real good feel in our starting points and and to move ahead you know i don't expect any legislative action to be completed today but i think we would like to see some discussion that's why all these people are here today i want to thank them for taking the time now go over to if you have comments on this and the other hour has referred to i am going to the budget of finance but that's not my area but i would hope that you would speak to that chair and chief we can get something done in that area  mayor for that very comprehensive comprehensive package because i totally agree with the mayor that it has to start with the comprehensive part of this whole system and  for me i really have to start out as i see chief here to really commend the crisis intervention team that has brought light to the homeless issue this team was established in two thousand and thirteen as the first of its kind to be able to utilize community partnerships to better understand the critical conditions of individuals especially with mental illness and at this time i'd like to commend the community police division for assisting the county in able to really look out the whole realm of homelessness in regards to the bill it is if you notice i just wanted to state that if you notice the homeless alliance were were notified the mall the homeless alliance is not here and it's basically they want to keep the relationship with the homeless at a very  relational commitment to them and so to be here in regards to having police here and to kind of look at criminalizing these issues they needed to step back and i'm not speaking on behalf of the police of the maori homeless alliance but just wanted to just conclude with saying that i support this but as a whole comprehensive package with the mayor has stated thank we enforce the law but the reason why we get involved and we supported is bill we find ourselves not only sealing with the criminal elements of society but we also dealing with the social challenges that we are facing our police officers are every day dealing with this study has shown that most officers involved shooting that happened in the mainland a high percentage of that involved folks that have some mentally challenge it is not something that we want i want to compliment them the mayor for looking into it and providing us a tools that we can use on our daily duty as we have there patrolling one my ask chief what do you have just to give you folks an idea in the past twelve months we have six thousand four hundred incidents that we documented involving someone that a homeless person or homeless persons that were identified as responsibly or in this incidence the top five incidents involving homeless person that we are dealing with criminal contempt these are early conduct criminal trespass harassment and failure to appear we also look at  graphically location where folks are loitering or hanging out of the top five location is why carli besides being a responsible because we can say well they have some mental issues that they cannot be responsible for it but we also have one thousand six hundred  seventy seven incidents all homeless person where identified as victims in and are sought abuse harassment attempted suicide of requesting police assistance from the police department it is a challenge for us i remember when i went through recruit school they taught us how to catch a criminal now i find our front line officers dealing with folks that have some mental challenges and i commanded the training from my predecessors that involved the crisis in the bench in training the police chief association are looking at this training we need to train our officers now to deal with this if you look at incidents like assault or behavior displayed by this in individuals a behavior that we look at it and we are trained to stop but in a mental challenge an individual or consumers is a normal behavior but for police officers it cannot be tolerated it need to be stop for the protection of that individual and also the public and the police officers that is a challenge sometimes the end result is not the result that we won in our community since chief i been in we had two incidents of officers involved shooting and i can tell you sitting there and talking to these individuals is not i can see it in the wish they can turn the clock to see if they can find a way to deal with this is a very challenging thing because you identify the behavior you're going to stop the behavior and then you need to save the individual now think about that is not easy for an individual you know one might say were chief that's what you're trained to do but i think the common denominator we all hum so it does affect us and with that i really support the bill and of course on a side note we also dealing with hazardous waste we also dealing with liquid waste that we have to clean up we need to get the ax but they do make sure it's been cleaned up and make that every essay for the public and also  board and it's a difficult task because our needs in our communities have changed so chill drastically like you said you were taught the kids criminals and today they do a fast number of jobs and this not only the homeless situation but i'll go comment that you know domestic violence like you are on the front page wearing that he high heels and walking a mile chief thank you very much but it just awareness of all the challenges we face as a community and that's just the tip of the iceberg so i'll move on if i ma the executive director for why appleseed center for law and economic justice and gavin would you give us a little explanation on what this specifically in your your foundation or your your your group does and then you know we can you can go and give your discussion points certainly i think you chair a victory now and members of the council really appreciate the opportunity to be here and to have been invited to speak to you about this issue  why apple seed is a nonprofit organization and we do a lot of policy research and development of recommendations that are aimed at addressing issues faced by people in poverty people that are economically struggling and housing and homelessness is big area that we work and really trying to find evidence based practices to implement that will provide the greatest likelihood of resolving these types of problems and we are based out of honolulu but a statewide organization that really focuses on policies that have a statewide impact  and i also want to mention you know this is such a difficult problem and i come here not only with my whole why apple seemed happy but also from a person with a personal perspective you know i have three daughters that bike to school every day that bike past a man that sleeps right across the sidewalk at the bottom of our hill that obviously has some mental illness i have a lot of the same concerns that we heard about this morning from the good folks that testified and really the question for me is you know how do we best address those types of problems and you know i'm really prepared today to talk about the sit lie provision that's that's been proposed and i'm not as familiar unfortunately with the the other part of the package regarding interventions it sounds like another area that's that's really the main thing that we've seen in on a walk through is that you know homeless folks have to be somewhere and you can force them to leave a certain area but they they have to  somewhere and i think you know i really appreciated what the mayor had to say about needing to ensure that they have a place to go before implementing something like this what's it like can not do is address the root causes of  homelessness can't provide a home again for added job it hasn't even proven to be successful in getting people into shelters now it sounds like on an maoi there's an issue with shelter capacity and that there aca passageway we don't have that same problem on a wahoo we have shelters that have have beds available but people don't want to use them because of the rules and restrictions that they have to follow concerns about their own safety about being forced into a place where there are people with mental illness bed bugs is another concern that's come up not being able to have pets all kinds of reasons why people don't use the shelters and i think when cit lie was implemented for honolulu there was a hope that this would really push people into shelter and that hasn't come to fruition and hasn't actually happened you know another thing that this can't do and really a major problem is addressing the mental health and substance abuse problems now that is a segment of the homeless population has those types of issues it's definitely not everybody there's really a wide spectrum of folks that make up the homeless population including working families with kids that just simply can't afford a home  but you know addressing those mental health problems is really i think key to a lot of the concerns that we've heard about today and that's a very difficult thing to do  and so i want to talk about just a few of the the risks of something like sit lie it can actually make the problem worse and at great cost so you know you have by by criminalizing this behavior i mean you have to have some kind of stick finding people putting people in jail putting people in jail that's a very expensive way perhaps one of the most expensive ways of addressing homelessness you know there are much more cost effective approaches even providing someone with housing is cheaper than them putting them in jail salt salt lake city in utah is is a really great innovator in the area of addressing homelessness and they looked at this issue and lloyd pendleton he's actually been out to hawaii to talk to folks here is the director of their homelessness task force and he studied the issue and found that the cost of the state of utah criminalizing homeless lessness with measures similar to these was about twenty thousand dollars a year per homeless person when you factor in jail time and e m t visits and other expenses whereas housing people costs about eight to eight to twelve thousand dollars i also want to talk about one of the unintended consequences that we saw on a walk through you our sit lie ordinance was geographically restricted so it applied only to certain areas and the reason for that was because of concerns about the constitutionality if you don't just like the mayor said earlier if you don't have a place for folks to go you can't really criminalize their status as a homeless person you can't criminalize them getting to sleep at night you need to have a place for them to go so one way to ensure that it's constitutional is to limit its geographical geographic scope and in so we heard from some folks there was a homeless encampment in the area of kakapo hopefully you're all familiar with that but a neighborhood in honolulu there was actually pretty well pretty well run kind of a safe place for homeless families a lot of these folks went to work every day but had semi permanent tent shelters there when cit lie was implemented we saw a bunch of the homeless who were more like wolf types in in waikiki migrate to this area and kaakha kaakha and really disrupt that homeless encampment making it a place that got a lot of media attention for awful things going on there being really unsafe and that was foreseen that migration through the sit lie ordinance was something that i don't think anyone really anticipated and had some adverse consequences especially for the  businesses in that area in coc aco and also the folks in the encampment you know one other concern is that in acting criminal ordinances like this is something that the u s department of housing and urban development is against and it could result in the loss of hud had funding which is a significant part of the resources available to address homeless problems so all in these preliminary comments with just a few recommendations for guarding this sit lie ordinance in particular i just want to stress how important it is to really have a good understanding of and it's obvious that you're you're trying to do this of of the facts of the situation and what's reasonable reasonable goal for what you're trying to accomplish what exactly does this proposed legislation hope to accomplish if it's in town listeners that's not that's not going to do it where will people go what are the lawful alternatives what are the features of mallory's particular homeless population who are these folks and where they're homeless also limiting the geographic scope is very important and then you know i really think the most important pieces comprehensive overview i believe all of you have brought to light a number of issues that we know exist and i would have corporate you counsel me to rule over there if you doesn't mind adding to this and then we can open up the discussion mr will thank you chair just i guess touch on the issue of constitutionality that was raised by another percent the the basic premise of whether this would be constitutional would be whether or not this was narrowly tailored for a legitimate government because clearly you know the health and safety of the community is a legitimate government purpose so the issue then becomes whether or not it's narrowly tailored as mentioned the city and county of on a lou does have a geographic limitation on that  and that's their mechanism by trying to assure that it's a fairly tailored ordinance for the purposes of the bill submitted by the mayor there are explicit exemptions in here that include people with medical conditions people who are under the age of six years old people who are working for the government people who are spectat parade or festival and people who are engaged in expressive activity and for those reasons we believe that those exemptions do make this narrowly tailored to  address the specific issue that the government is trying to do so so that's that's our position i guess on the geographical issue you know we don't really have a position on whether or not one should be but we do feel that as it's currently written it is it is narrowly tailored we were also specifically asked to lawsuits one lawsuit  against the city and county of honolulu regarding some of their homeless ordinances that one specifically was about the seizure of property by the city and county of honolulu there's there's no provision in the ordinance that we're looking at today regarding seizure of property so we don't believe that that's really apply here we we were asked to address that there was also one on the big island that dealt  with the issue of panhandling basically going up to people and asking them for money and again this ific ordinance does not address that there there was  there was a bill to that effect that was submitted by the by the mayor along with the rest of his package and we can speak to that when it does become cut before the committee homelessness and was remembering would you do me this favor and read this to be sure that the public knowledge what this e mail was all about please yes thank you chair unfortunately they're on the east coast and were unable to attend either in person or by phone today but they did submit written testimony it was good to connect with you by phone yesterday regarding the council committee meeting on monday october third i am sorry that we are unable to participate directly in your discussion about the proposed ordinance to add prohibitions relating to line down on public sidewalks as the council considers the m complex issues surrounding people who are living and sheltered and homeless in your committee it is important to carefully weigh any unintended consequences of policy or action that may make it hard for individuals and families to exist to exit homelessness in the future for too many people the experience of homelessness and bars these encounters find lockups courts or jail and prison cells as much as shelter beds in fact our national data shows that the number of americans caught in the revolving door between the streets our shelters and jails may number in the tens of thousands of the eleven million people detained or incarcerated in jails every year as many as fifteen percent report having been homeless roughly forty eight thousand people entering shelters every year coming nearly directly from prisons our jails are homelessness has many causes some of which have to do with larger economic forces it is also cause exacerbated by the policy choices that we make in our communities and as a nation when communities pursue policies that criminalize homelessness we contribute to and worsen the problem of homelessness particularly unsheltered homelessness we know the measures to publish or criminalize people for being homeless are costly and do not and homelessness they divert community resources and attention away from proven solutions to homelessness instead of criminalizing homelessness communities can create more affordable housing or ties resources to serve those most in need including people experiencing homelessness develop and sustain a housing crisis response system that ensures homelessness is rare brief and non recurring integrate mainstream systems of care with the housing crisis response system combining housing with behavioral health and other essential services collaborate between law enforcement behavioral health and service providers to tailor interventions that connect people with housing services treatment and treatment to meet the community's goals of reducing the number of people in public spaces nationally we have seen that when there are visibly increased numbers of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness there is a clear shortage of affordable housing that is accessible to all people in the community outreach and access to permanent housing is the way to end homelessness housing first programs permanent housing with low barriers to treat and services as needed and perkins is an approach that we commonly talk about as a solution to homelessness is also a featured approach and governor gays recent state framework to address homelessness in hawaii there are a number of resources on the u s i c h website related to alternatives to criminalization that may be useful in your discussion in  and then she goes on to share this i should have mentioned this comes from katie miller the regional coordinator based in seattle washington the united states interagency council on homelessness thank you very much  also i want the community to know and the public to know that we also invited but he was unavailable scott murphy you who is the governor's coordinator on homelessness he was unable to attend today so i did try to reach out to many many facets both federal state as well as local agencies for their assistance today because i don't take this lightly i believe the public needs to be protected but again like mr world has mentioned that you know we've got to make it correct and if we do it the right way it's in forcible but i like the mare's also mention unless we have the facilities available for them to go somewhere again we're fighting a lost battle i can tell you right now the cleaned up of certain all over and i understand you push it from one place and if there's no place to go they just go somewhere else i don't like seeing that example to clean out the via dock area by the airport in two weeks there you go by and they're all back so it's an endless process it's an endless problem that you know unless we really start to focus in sun true solutions and part of it is facilities we're going to keep spinning our wheels in the mud and we're going to be back here again and again and again what i myself when these bikes are here or other council members the problem will exist so again today was a really a starting point i hope this will get the public to understand where does not sitting on our laurels we want to find solutions and with the mayor and the corporation council along with these experts say here along with always fine is our police department and i know the fire and emergency services are also taxed because not of them when they have emergencies they go to emergency shelters i mean emergency room and or i know chief that's another area and we're hoping the fire chief could have been available but he was unavailable today here we graphs that he could not attend so at this point i think i've said enough would you much to call it as a vase vice you can ask anyone any question but i would like to keep it on the bill that we're discussing today because i get the rest should be done and i will try to bring it all for that one package later but i thought this would be the one that we could start and then move forward so mr koch th chair and thank you folks for being here one of the the biggest concern i have is you heard a couple testifiers talk about their experiences and i guess this is maybe towards mr thorton ok you know you say this in line may make matters worse how would you handle the experiences i mean that's that's a typical experience and it happens all the time how would you handle something like that and i know we've got to get people in there but we also have to be able to we need to get them in the homes but we also need to be able to prevent something like that from happening i mean i don't i don't have an easy answer for you unfortunately is so you know honolulu has a supply ordinance that covers a bunch of different parts of the island and as i mentioned earlier like i still have a personal problem with  route that my kids travel to school and i think that the attraction to ordinances like this is because they seem pretty straightforward and simple solutions you can you make it illegal and then people don't do it anymore but i don't think that that really plays out in reality and i think the solutions that work are much more complex they're much more expensive although although in the long run perhaps not but in terms of an upfront allocation of resources and then it is more expensive you know i think that the written testimony that we heard today has some some good ok and also you mentioned in your comment that something like this could result in loss of hud funding is that currently happening on oahu or i mean when you say it could result in loss of funding have you seen that happen and what triggers that so so there and i'm not intimately familiar with this process actually jan might be more cell so every year this continuum of care this group of homeless service providers for each county submit an application to asking for funding one of the questions on the application is you know you have to show what the continuum has done regarding policies that criminalize homelessness and you get points for advocating against those those policies it's only two points out of i believe either two or four hundred but it is very competitive there's an article that i could circulate that talks about this issue that would probably be more informative than anyone anything i can say i do not believe we have well i know we lost funding last year and whether this was part of the issue i don't know for sure would you be able to maybe a little bring a little more clarity to that question from mr coach thank you thank you for that question and according to the and we go back to the new hard act there are numerous questions in regards to the criminalizing or the looking at laws and  so gavin is correct in saying that because it's such a competitive process to get funds from the federal government that it is critical and i think like i had mentioned pryor that's why you don't see molly homeless alliance here and how they don't want to be involved with the criminalization of homeless so but to answer your question in full i  ok well thank you yeah that's very interesting and would like to make sure we were you know that there is  the balance issue that we have to deal with but it's all pointing to the beginning of this all saying i think it was mentioned a couple times is that we need places for them to go i think there we all agree that we need to work on that and that's been a package that's been put out so we need to i guess we need to coordinate and get that get it all in one place before we can do anything there's plenty of and i have two quick questions and legalistic called a whole bunch of others but my first question is for the person who drafted this why we keep talking about us liability when i read it when it talks about lying and it even the the hud funding the hud programs require us to look at housing first so all of the nonprofit easy's when we had our meetings we all agreed housing first that's why we came with proposals of being able to put up different kinds of housing being able to acquire different properties being able to create more funding to the non profits to be able to develop the ability housing to care for the homeless first these bills are supposed to come into play after we address the housing first programs and i will tell you has failed fairly miserably because the way that they've done it is not sequentially correct our administrative bills which is which is why i tried to point out earlier taking these penalty bills first puts the cart before the horse we wanted very clearly to address the housing components the care components funding the nonprofits so that they c expand their continuum of care programs because even though we're funding on right now the biggest challenges that we are they are not able to take care of the masses that we have in the homeless population if we can first expand into the point where they're absorbing the homeless population than most of these bills at that point should be considered right now on maui we have very few people that are lying on sidewalks at the point where we get to everything taking care of these kinds of bills should not be considered discriminatory but rather that point should then be considered because we'll have seen what the outcome of the housing first programs are these are meant to follow the housing first programs the ability to create all of these particular these that we need to help the homeless first absolutely correct you cannot move people from one place and expect them to just disappear people are going to have to live someplace and i've been proposing for quite some time that we create these housing areas for them to live and we give them the proper social services care if they know what their particular needs are if you put these kinds of bills in front of it they're not going to make sense which is why we need to go back to the original basis where we sit down take care of the challenges of the nonprofit area take care of the housing take care of the programs and after that then these kinds of bills can be talked about putting the court cart before the horse is not going to make sense in everybody and that's why i said early on if we don't do the housing first clip of the program that will be deemed almost illegal once we do the housing first we have people where we can do the services that are necessary we can provide those services that are necessary then obnoxious behavior is something that we can go after you know right now we have people to try to go to the beach and they're being accosted at the beach we have people that are trying to go shopping and they're free to go shopping we cannot allow the situation to expand in our community where everyone is a free all of the studies and the current there are as you point in the paper six months eight months ago that basically pointed out the economics of the housing first program it costs almost two hymes to be able to care for someone who is homeless than it is to provide housing and the appropriate care for people that are homeless and i would this is first had in honolulu my daughter who was going to strawberry and police officers would bring in a homeless person they only bring him in just about every other day to emergency care it costs the taxpayers and the medical program considerably more because we're not there not putting them in the proper care with the proper backup nonprofit programs we have excellent nonprofit programs we fund here on maui and i commend all of you also members because it's been year in year out we've been funding a lot of the nonprofits far and above what all the rest of the state is doing and i agree with okama when he tells me health and safety are the responsibility of the department of health it's a state responsibility that we are stepping into because we are forced to step into it in theory all of this should be sponsored by the department of health and state funding and lot of the non profits that we supplement should be from the state funds but as a community we know that if we don't intervene and we don't do something nothing will be done and we have to live in this community just because something is not being done by somebody else does not give us the back close arise and pretend it's not happening and that's what i'm asking you for help for we're trying to help in an area that the state should be doing we're trying to provide housing that the state department of health should be taking care of we're trying to provide the social service programs that the state department held should be paid for but i'm asking all of you as members of this community to use our funding to the degree that we can get as much state and federal funding as we possibly can but let's do the housing first let's take care of this in a logical fashion let's take the fear out of our community but also after we do the housing and after we do the programs then providing these kinds of laws so that community can be protected as well but it needs to be the housing first program and then these kinds of laws thank you mr mayor and your next question which by some oh yes  i don't know that there's any question that i can ask this is it going to take us back to where we are and where we are right now is i think it's becoming abundantly clear that what we should be discussing here is the housing first funding and programs because to discuss any of these other things is going to take us right back to we need to take care of housing first which to me is elementary we all know that we all know that so you know we can sit here in this try to discuss a bill but every we try to ask a question i'm trying to find the nuances of the bill we keep going back to this isn't going to work because we don't have the housing so i get there very clear to me if i'm going to discuss this we've got to discuss how we're going to put these people somewhere otherwise none of this is going nowhere thank you i agree with you my response and i think it's become very apparent that you know we are putting the cart before the horse but we need some discussion and this is my only means of getting some discussion today yes i know you know some people say why but this is one methodology of getting the discussion points out and so maybe we can move on some other areas but i wanted different agencies as well as our police department to at least housing and we need this but the bottom line is when the committee cause for help they call me and what i'm asking and i know we need to get the housing but what i'm looking you're homeless or a resident you know my my position are my job is my responsibility is to protect you but i need the tools to do it and i know comments were made about  pre version where we work with the stakeholders that have interest in it we have a monthly meeting so and provide tools for our police officers so when they come across a homeless  they call dispatch dispatch more than a look it up in make a phone call to a counselor and then we work with the judiciary system where the individual will come through but not your traditional court hearing where the individual will come in and out it was a revolving door when i was there and i know the program that we jail diversion program was started on the big island and i know he's working  r police offices where we're looking at is filing and finding that balance between officer safety and the threat that they're dealing with and also to protect that individual is not an easy task and i i know you had seen things that happen in the mail and you know where police officers are dealing with it we dealt with that we dealt with an individual they came out of the car and point his finger at police officers we have to go through that in  to determine whether the threat is real or not so what i'm asking is i'm asking for something that we can work with you know until the lawmakers and the folks that decides on the bigger solution did this but in the meantime i'm the one on the street that have to deal with i'm the one they respond to i'm the one they will take your phone call when you call me that some of your are calling you complaining about the homeless issue i'm looking for a solution i'm looking for something that i can work with something that i can pass it on to our police officers because if we do it wrong i'll be right here asking you for money because somebody else is suing us and i thank you mr chairman thank you chief i think you made your point i agree with them where we need the resources and the facilities admitted times i went to the shelter over there over to sort of food and i talk with them i talked to a lot of homeless people over there on the street or my we talked to a lot of people in it it's it's divided your people little except the shelters your people who want to leave also your people who are homeless or circumstance and your people are almost more choice but i think we're forgetting something what we're talking about today we're talking about inappropriate behavior which covers all of them and covers everybody in this room and everybody  make excuses for the homeless bill does something that's appropriate i think it's something we have to do i'm sure it could be controversial to somebody that wants to bring up a lot of things and i wish i could talk about hilda pills i really do but i think it's something that we need to do a cheer i would request and i would ask that oh you bring this up for a vote to do it because i think it needs to be addressed i think it's something that if we postpone how many people are going to get hurt topics came up was the manpower to enforce these type of i guess ordinances and currently what i've heard is that we we don't even have enough manpower to address the abandoned vehicles that we have when we're setting up laws such as the said it makes it a crime just to lie down on the sidewalk i look at other criminal  laws that we are already have in the books which is disorderly conduct that's a person any public person can call the police and file or write out a report for to sort of  conduct harassment individuals can do that as well but to make it a crime just to lie on the street or on the sidewalk without any you know purposeful intent other than lying on the on the sidewalk i don't find that reasonable i agree with the whole why apple see that if you look at other jurisdictions it's been proven that these type of laws don't really take care of the homeless the their use more or less to transport them or to identify the homeless so we would have here is an officer arresting this homeless person and since the since is a petty misdemeanor jailable that person would be arrested the officer would have the choice to put them in jail deal with then have thirty days in the it unless they could post bond which they couldn't post bond they would have a court date set have to appear in court since this jailable their work there would be a public defender assigned to them and then at that point if that was found to be mental the judge would probably order that person to be put on the mental health calendar case i had the opportunity when i was in private practice to have to those cases and it took years to individuals it took years to get them housed and cleaned up and place and even one of them was able to go to school but the social work hours that put into just one person is incredible so i can see this working out if in fact you have something like what the mayor is proposing some type of place where you can place them and then the social work could happen via the court system when you pick them up for this arrest but standing alone making a crime i don't i don't see how this would work you just put them you'd put more pressure on the system that's already stressed social work the court system the police officers all the way around unless there's a program in place that's that somehow utilizes this law so at this point i can't go along with this law without having some type of purpose for it so thank you chair i don't really have that much of a question it's just state and because i've already spoken to show poet and asked them about you know the manpower to your committee this morning i think it's healthy we have a good discussion relating the factors that impact this subject i view this a little differently in my questions would be accordingly and i understand the need individuals that have certain challenges or the physical or mental economic regarding t homelessness one thing that took for me i would like us to can also take into consideration is why we discuss this issue that it's not for under or republican form of government there is still a need to protect the majority for their public safety just those individuals or a small group of those unfortunate the greater test is still to protect the safety and helped create a community so for me one of the things that i would ask is is it because our laws are so currently la telling us he's there to protect our alamo we know he's not even part of our area and their first question to me is how do they even get here this is the hope i have no clue because we know they're not one of ours  and that's my concern if we don't do the appropriate requirements of governors of government through our governance local communities are going to find local solutions to their local problems and i don't need the chief to take on a whole community because there's no support direction or understanding from those that have been given some i really appreciate the question because as i look at the rules and the laws that we have we are tending to ignore the rights of the general public we're tending to ignore due to the point of allowing people to behave when we wouldn't expect our children to be we wouldn't tolerate our children to be so some of the really more basic programs that we have to be able to keep a society that we have the kind of society that we have we're allowing people who want to just be obnoxious and not follow  rules a great leniency because we give them an excuse to be able to be abductions has not followed the rules because they feel like if we allow everyone to do that then our society is going to collapse when we look at it when we look at our basic way that we've we've all grown up we've tended to respect each other where we say you know my my rights end where your nose begins so  speak you have all the rights and you should have all the rights that i have and i should have the respect for you and when we allow a group of people to not have that kind of respect for everybody else i think that we are being much much too lenient because we're allowing them to have rights we would let our children get away with it and it's creating huge fears within our community no i don't think very many people would have challenges with the homeless if they were being obnoxious if they were doing things that were counter to what common civilly out e a common decency you would call for but there are many times you deliberately deliberately doing things that day nor are abductions to everybody just to be abductions because we allow them and the more there are doctors the more freedoms there are they give it so in my opinion your question is are we too lenient the answer is yes we create a real problem for police because our police are required to enforce laws for everybody and when you take away one person's right because somebody over reaches into their their jurisdiction or into their ability to have freedoms then i think we're all we're much too lax so i'm of the opinion that we have to be able to look at this from both sides now understand that the homeless situation is not everybody with mental challenges and that's one of the things that we tend to forget we have a whole new huge group in there that are there because a feel like it because they can't get along with society's rules even those that are on drugs they are choosing a lifestyle and even though we know that it's a sickness it is a sickness of choice and in many in many cases taken to extremes if we allow that to continue we're allowing them to kill themselves slowly but surely we're also we're also encouraging them to commit crimes in order to protect their ability to be druggies so when i'm hearing from the community that there are more and more robberies or more and more break ins with my neighbor's house gets broken in i mean right behind us when someone ends up in my yard in the middle of the night is walking around it tends to bring fear and our ours is one of the safer areas in the community but i'm hearing this more and more throughout the community and what i'm seeing people when i'm hearing people say as we can you protect my property because someone is coming in you know that is camping out nearly whatever they feel like it there's a there's a point where as a community we have to be able to protect the civil rights of everyone in the community those that are law abiding citizen is their protection too so yes we are i believe going too far to be too lenient because we have this mental image of someone who is totally helpless has no mechanism to be able to help themselves that's what we have our social service programs for and we do have or do we do have justification to put people in jail if you or i went out and threatened somebody we would get sued the police would be called it we would be thrown in jail if we were to enter somebody's house and rob them we would most certainly go through the court system which it we're trying to be lenient and say because somebody is homeless we don't want to be able to prosecute these people because they have nor the means to take care of themselves much much too limited my money but we do have to provide the housing we do have to provide the services to be able to help those who cannot help themselves but don't for one second think that all of the homeless cannot help themselves many of them choose to be that situation thank you mayor and you know i'm we were close to wrapping up because it's almost twelve o'clock and i wanted to give mr thornton an opportunity he marin thank you for that part of my concern is that we are asked to look at some a lot of times rational responsible options to deal with the concern over the issue s my problem is there is a component of that group that just not rational and responsible i've seen m r i images of chronic meth users you cannot rehabilitate a brain that doesn't have all these brain in tack that person is not there anymore you know i've seen those images from the northwest washington oregon part of the responsible legislation but there's a group that has no regard or respect for the laws of the community i get problems with bills and for me i my job is to protect the whole community but not forget the majority of the community either and so you know part of it is i think we should only be looking at the colony mr mary and i would ask you to work with us because i think there's things that the federal and state levels that that family undermine our efforts especially from the federal government as a request to veterans once they get arrested they lose their medicare benefits including those my leave maintenance prescription drug drugs they need to come have a balance into a life and be able to function it's interesting th at times take the position that you're guilty before adjudication i get issues with it type of approach where the vet is losing medical benefits and who hasn't even been a the state's responsibility is and i find it interesting there how would you know if you're saving that some resources couldn't be put forward besides the rhetoric and the exemption of laws and regulations to assist the colonies if they want to implement their program for the support so i am with you on that mayor i thank you for your public comments on th but any other thing is why do we come up with five hundred per day five i mean what is the basis of that for the discussion point why not then thousand dollars that it used to rule did you like to address that question i'm just curious why you find is such a wall for one that that's how it was presented to us i'm not entirely sure what what the rationalization behind that was but again i would just like to comment on this this particular piece of legislation as i said earlier we have to try and keep it nar applicability to everyone in our county but just for a certain group it impacts me too and i should be applied by the general also like anybody else so that's all i'm looking at so i just asked a question because wahoo if you don't mind many members give him an opportunity to kind of close this meeting with some of his overview i want to see this i agree that we need to do something and we need to do something soon but if we do something too quickly and it's taken to court and we have said in this chamber said mean cases many times in the past it's not a good idea ok and so you know we care i agree with you get something done  and maybe the next move is really bring the whole package where we can discuss everything and decide everything together in totality you know so maybe that's my next move and i will say down way and but i won't die my plan is to  defer this but i would like to hear from which to darnton and anybody else would have anything to add and then that way we can close meeting and i want to thank the members that are here for you you know a spirited debate i mean i think a discussion on this item because i want the public you know we're not just sitting on  again we're trying to do something we want to do it right because we don't want to infringe on some of these civil rights or constitutional rights and and even if i disagree you can still come up the attorneys make those decisions i guess and when they go to court the judges make those final calls whether we think it's right or wrong they make the call so i will let you we start to go right ahead great thank you and i'll keep it brief you already gave me a lot of time to talk and i appreciate that i just wanted to respond you know a lot of the pavior that we've talked about today like waving a machete and threatening people in the drug induced behavior that's stuff that's already illegal and we should be enforcing those  and and i don't know if anyone and i hopefully haven't conveyed this impression that things that homelessness should be an excuse for violating laws like that that threaten to jeopardize our public safety no way no how should that should that be the case you know i think that people who are who are homeless got here not because of lax laws because there are a lot there are lax laws all over the nation  mean they got here because hawaii is so alliance and tracked a place to come to they got here because when they got here if they were born and raised here housing is incredibly expensive the most expensive state in the nation in terms of housing you know the problems with mental illness for the folks that have mental illness the problems with drug addiction for the for the folks that have drug addiction problems i mean those are those are the root causes and those are the things that we really need to be here today and to discuss all of this and it was a great discussion and but i did want to be sure to think kathleen ross o'keefe for her testimony and i think the figures that you heard from chief in regards to the amount of calls that they get on homelessness would be on the homeless would be i might be saved to say doubled only because i'll just share that i thought it was very brave of mrs oakie to be able to report her threatened experience that she had the other last week and  when i asked her did she did she report it she said no and i think later as we were discussing it and she heard about this committee this meeting today she did go ahead and report and so as i'm listening to chiefs statistics on the numbers of calls i would say there would be even more another thing would be that i want to think counsel for funding  homeless division that we're still waiting for and we're hoping that would be helpful in regards to discussions whether through state discussions federal discussions as well as when we talk about the housing burst  it did it did really hit a buzz when when housing first is one of the major questions on an application for hud funding do you do you do housing first if it's no it's a huge minus on their application and the last thing is as we're discussing it with the state with the department of human services the homeless program office being that we are ma we and island are part of the bridging the gap with the continuum of care for the neighbor islands it is it is very very soon coming of the cordon a coordinated entry system that the county is going to be responsible for so i just wanted to be sure to thank you and thank for you to to open these dialogue and this discussion is it over for the police department is always a challenge working in the cell block as a command no it is the biggest and most expensive issues that we deal with when someone goodman mentioned you know manpower but one thing i can promise you the manpower issue i'm not going to use that as an excuse when i came in thirty one years ago we sang the same music we're not going to repeat it yes we do need more police officers that person is still there in our community and five minutes later we get another call and then ten minutes later we get another call it when i'm going to do anything about it we don't want to do something that out of frustration well we overreacted and we do something that is not right and i was something i'd more than they use of force that we needed but that's what's going to happen if we don't have the tools that you can give us to do something with a society in the sun and i know the homelessness is a big issue is bigger than what we do what my my concern is but the bottom line is when everybody is not sure how to handle it guess who they're going to call me to fix it and i don't want no band aid fix i want our solution and i think the mayor and this body for allowing this discussion thank you very much thank  chief oak rules by saying october thirty first meeting i'm going to dedicate this issue with all the other appropriate ordinances so that the committee can review all of them to get  in the meantime i would hope that the other aspect of your requests mr mayor will be addressed by the appropriate committee that is something not in my hands but i don't want to information that was requested and that we make that the only agenda item on that meeting so you can look forward to that members and hopefully the others that were not able to attend would be here which is good if all nine of us are here agencies to at least respond when and where they could reach the rule i hope you know maybe we can get something more specific in this area but that being said thank you everyone to memorise thank you very much and the meeting of the policy in government affairs committee is now a