The Committee on Finance of the Hawaii County Council met on July 22, 2026, at 10:23 a.m. Chaired by Councilmember Connelly Kleinfelder, eight members were present initially, with Councilmember Viegas joining later for a total of nine. The agenda included quarterly reports on temporary hires, a resolution for safe routes to school funding, and several bills addressing fiscal impact statements, budget appropriations, and property tax classifications for bed and breakfasts.
Aloha, welcome to the committee on finance. Today is July 22nd, 2026. It's 10 23 a.m. Thank you for joining us today. Here in the corner chambers, to my right, we have council members Kimball and Galimba to my left, council members Kalgiwada, Hustis, Kirkowitz, Onichi. Inaba, and we are missing currently, Councilmember Viegas will be joining us shortly. Uh, with myself, we have eight members in attendance. I'm calling this meeting to order. Mr. Kirk, is there any testimony to begin the meeting with? Thank you so much, Chair. We do have one testifier via Zoom. Del Wilsuco testifying on communications 98.5 and 98.6. When you're ready to begin, you can unmute your mic and introduce yourself, and then you'll have three minutes per agenda item if you clearly transition. If not, it'll be three minutes over. Hold on, though. Let me send you a request to unmute. If you click that button, you should be able to unmute. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Whenever you're ready to begin your testimony, you can introduce yourself and good morning, and aloha chair and council members. In addition to my written testimony submitted yesterday, I would also like to offer my oral testimony today. It is regarding communications 98.5 and 98.6, specifically focusing on our county's heavy reliance on the 89-day temporary hiring system. While the administration frequently cites systemic hiring difficulties, a closer look at our short-term contract practices and outsourcing habits reveal a self-inflicted cycle of inefficiency that damages employee morale and locks local workers out of long-term career advancement. The data presented for this meeting provides an incomplete picture, reporting short-term hires for only two out of four quarters. And even the four quarters for one year would not be enough. So by admitting half of omitting half of the fiscal year's data, this council is prevented from conducting proper legislative oversight. Worse yet, this report is fundamentally opaque because it completely conceals the true extent of our reliance on retired staff. While the 90-day civil service logs track lower level lines, as in these two quarterly reports, high profile retired administrators are routinely brought back via executive political appointments or specialized consulting agreements. And because these positions are processed outside standard civil service logs, their presence is hidden from the quarterly disclosure packets. But you know, not only what we didn't see in the reports, are actually the psychological impact of the 89-day loop. The anxiety of knowing, not knowing if you have a job in three months, is known as chronic job insecurity. Being at will, classified means that they excuse me. 30 seconds. Oh, sorry. So I just urge, I just urge the council to demand a thorough audit on all the forums and all the quarterly reports, including those that are not listed, which are the executive appointees. Because again, it's not just what's on on paper, it's the psychological impact it has to the workers you're affecting, the temporary hires. You know, there it's clear that you have vacancies. I mean, it's very clear you have a lot of vacancies that should be filled. So just thank you so much for your testimony, Dill. Unfortunately, your time is up, so we're gonna move on. Chair, at this time, those are all the testifiers you have. Thank you very much, Mr. Mr. RSL. Mr. Hook, gonna go to our first uh communication. If anyone would like to testify in communication 98.5 that didn't get a chance yet, please speak up now. Hearing and seeing non-communication 98.5 third quarter report of persons employed under a contract for less than 90 days, January 1 through March 31, 2026 from Human Resources Director Summer J.