Welcome to the twenty second session of the communication reports and council oversight committee here at the West Hawaii Civic Center on July twenty-second, twenty twenty-six.

It is one thirty PM.

Present in council is everybody.

Council members.

Let's see.

Do we have any statements from the public on agenda items, Mr.

Clerk?

We don't have any testifiers, I don't think, Madam Chair Ready.

Just to confirm, I think I'm getting the okay.

Thank you.

No testifiers for your committee this afternoon, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Could we go through the agenda?

Last chance if anyone would like to testify in communication nine six three, please speak up now.

Hearing and seeing non-communication nine six three annual audit plan for fiscal year twenty twenty-six-twenty twenty-seven from County Auditor Claire McAdam, dated July sixth, twenty twenty-six, transmitting the above audit plan pursuant to section three-eighteen D of the Hawaii County Charter.

We have a motion by Councilmember Houstis and a second by Councilmember Colin Lee Kleinfelder to close file and communication nine six three.

So just to run through some of the highlights there.

I think I mentioned this in the budget meeting.

We are currently tracking 99 recommendations, and when we're meeting the departments, we're finding out that most of those recommendations they've already been implemented.

And so we want to make sure that we can present that to you.

And so that you get a more real-time result of what's been happening with our prior audits rather than waiting for that final follow-up report.

So we're changing the process on the follow-ups so that we can more accurately and more timely report on the implementation actions that those departments have been doing, and so that we can show you that they have been doing that work.

And I think that's going to be a better procedure for both us and for the departments going forward, hopefully.

And then we'll also just continue to investigate those tips that we receive through the fraud waste and abuse hotline.

So those are highlights.

I just wanted to thank my team as always for the enthusiasm and professionalism and for their assistance with putting together this audit plan.

And happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you.

And thank you for your enthusiasm and professionalism as always.

Anyone, any comments, questions?

Council member Viegas.

Yeah, I guess um, and go ahead and stop me if this isn't directly related.

Um, wondering on the timeline for us to see the results of the audit on the Department of Housing.

Yeah.

Um Office of Housing, sorry.

I anticipated that'd be a question.

So we're in the we're in the middle of it.

Um I am formulating a follow-up request uh which will go back to Office of Housing and uh Community Development probably next week.

Um most of those we we have received an enormous lot of amount of documentation from the get-go, they they just dropped huge uh amount of data for us, and we've been going through that, and we're gonna ask for some more financial documentation um as regards sort of the grant administration, obviously.

Um, and depending on where that documentation is, if it's hopefully with within the Office of Housing, we should be moving along hopefully pretty smoothly.

We'll do some site visits, etc.

Um, if that information resides at grantees, um I feel like I don't know if I'll be able to give you a bet a better idea of timeline on that because obviously we'll have to liaise with all of those to get that information back to us.

But we have been uh pushing to get this done by the end of the year.

Um, but again, that kind of depends where the information that we're gonna need is is currently living.

So I'm hopefully we'll be in a better position on this perhaps towards the end, the middle of August, be able to give you a better idea as the time I'm on that.

But we are pushing we are pushing to have that done by the end of the year.

Thank you so much for clarifying and letting us know kind of where you're at.

And with that, I would also put a call out to the grantees to get the information that they need to them post-haste.

Um, we if that's the right way to say it.

Uh, I think um it is vital and it is a huge part of this audit that the grantees are authentically and completely included in all this information and everything you get to look at.

So uh thank you for your diligence in this.

I know that's a heavy lift, but we all are um anticipating um having a report and being able to uh more effectively review the program and these plans as well as the grantees.

Thank you.

I yield.

Councilmember Kimball.

Yes, uh thank you for being here.

Um just a quick question about the DEM wastewater division audit, and if you could briefly go over the the scope of work or which area within wastewater you're specifically looking at, and and what was the um motivation in terms of including it in this year's list of audits, potential audits.

Yeah, um we have had a couple of meetings now with department, and we had a site visit to the HEA wastewater treatment plant last week, um, which is really interesting.

We haven't uh narrowed down scope yet, um, so I can't really give you any details about that.

That may take some time for us to figure out.