Aloha and good afternoon, everyone.

It's Wednesday, September 24, 2025, and the time is 2.32 p.m.

I call the meeting of committee on housing, homelessness, and parks to order.

Welcome to committee members who are present in the chamber today.

Um, Councilmember Tolba, Councilmember Nishimoto, and Councilmember Okimoto.

Thank you so much for being here.

Pursuant to Hawaii revised statute section 92-3.7.

This meeting will be conducted as a remote meeting by interactive conference technology with the following procedures in effect for the meeting.

Members of the public will be allowed to provide oral testimony on all items on the agenda in two ways in person in the council chamber and remotely.

Remote and in-person oral testimony will be allowed when each agenda item is taken up and is limited to a one-minute presentation on each item.

As both English and Hawaiian are official languages of the state of Hawaii, pursuant to Article 15, Section 4 of the Hawaii State Constitution, Section 1-13 of the Hawaii revised statutes.

Member of the public may testify in either language.

For oral testimonies offered in Olalo Hawaii, additional time may be necessary, will be allowed for the testifier to provide an English translation of their testimony.

All persons who have registered to testify in person will be called upon first.

When your name is called, please come up to the testifier podium and state your name for the record.

Persons who have not registered will be given an opportunity to testify after the registered testifiers.

After in-person testimony has occluded, I will proceed to remote testimony via video conference or phone.

When I call your name or the last three digits of your phone number, please unmute your audio and press star six when prompted.

Hawaii Revice statute section 92-3.7 requires that all votes at a remote meeting be conducted by roll call unless a unanimous vote.

Therefore, I will first call for objections, and if there are any, I will call for a roll call vote.

Written testimonies, including the testifier's address, email address, phone number, will be available to the public as described on the posted agenda.

As a courtesy, please turn off all your silence all your cell phones during the duration of this meeting.

Thank you so much.

Committee members, let's go to agenda item number one, resolution 25-241.

This resolution confirms the appointment of Charles Mitsui to serve on the Board of Parks and Recreation of the City and County of Honolulu for a term to expire on December 31st, 2027.

I do believe he is here with us.

Ah, perfect.

Mr.

Mitsui, please go ahead and introduce yourself.

Hi, uh Chuck Mitsui.

Um, and I'm looking forward to being part of the parks department and hoping to kind of find pathways for community projects to get to completion.

Thank you so much.

I'm gonna do testimony and then we'll have uh questions from the council members.

Clerks, are there any in-person registered testifiers?

Sure, there are none.

Are there any in-person non-registered testifiers that would like to testify at this time?

Seeing none, clerks, are there any online registered testifiers?

Sure, there are none.

Are there any unregistered online testifiers wishing to testify on this item?

Sure, there are none.

Okay, council members, any questions for Mr.

Mitsui.

Could you give us maybe a one-liner of your background and why you want to be on the board?

Sure.

Uh, I started the association of skateboarders in Hawaii in 1996, and through that association, we helped develop skate parks on Oahu.

I worked with Mayor Harris' administration in the early 2000s, late 90s to develop a skate park committee, which was successful in developing nine skate parks.

I'm hoping we can kind of return to that structure, create a committee that will help facilitate the building of skate parks again.

It's been a long time since we've had a consistent roll out of new facilities, and the community is very much in favor of us seeing these in the parks.

Um, in your opinion, how many more skate parks should we have on this island?

Uh currently, Kahuku is developing one.

Uh Wahiwa is developing one.

There's interest for um mixed-use parks, so pump tracks, which are BMX, bike, scooter, inline, and uh quad skating.

Those parks are even more popular, I would say, than the skate parks in general.

So Hawaii Kai is wanting that.

Waimanalo is developing one currently, and I talked to Augie about uh one development in Eva Beach that looks like it could move forward.

So there's a lot of projects out there, and I'm hopeful that we can create this committee to have people in the community come together and say, hey, we want this, we haven't been heard yet, and then we can help them develop the pathway to getting their parks to completion.

That sounds great.

Thank you so much for your efforts.

It sounds like you have a lot of background knowledge that we could really use.

Yeah, I'm hopeful I can help out and make the parks more usable, especially for the teens.