The Kaua'i County Council met on Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in Council Chambers, Historic County Building, Lihu'e. The meeting opened with an invocation, a moment of silence for longtime county employee Ricky Watanabe, and approval of the agenda and minutes. The Council then acted on a consent calendar, several communications, a claim, a committee report, a resolution, four bills on first reading, and one bill on final reading. All roll call votes were 7-0.
Good morning everyone and welcome to today's council meeting. Today's March 12. Before we get started, as we do on the first council meeting of every month, we have some words of wisdom from our local community. And today we have Pastor Kino Shita. Sir, if you could come up, please. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Brad Kinochita. I'm a pastor at Honor Paper Church at the Nazarene. It's good to be with you all this morning. Just wanted to remind us of some things we probably already know, but you know, it's good to be reminded. In the book of Exodus, there's a story about a man named Moses. And Moses, he finds himself as a leader of the Israelite people. And all day, every day, all Moses does listen to all the people who come to him. And they bring whatever complaints they may have, disputes with their neighbors, and he tries to help them settle all these disputes. And he does this all day, every day. And one day, his father-in-law, this is a man named Jethro, he comes to visit Moses and his daughter. So Jethro shows up, and Moses and him are good friends, and they have a big party that night and they go to sleep and they wake up the next day, and Moses does what he does every day. Except today, Jethro's there. And at the end of it all, Jethro asked him, is this what you do every day? And Moses is like, yeah, what else am I supposed to do? People come and they need help, and so I'm gonna help them. And Jethro tells him, uh, pretty forthright, what you're doing is not good. He said, What you should be doing is find people in your community that you trust. The language he uses is people who are honest, people who uh hate dishonest game, people you can trust. Put them in charge of thousands, of hundreds, of tens. And they can handle all the little disputes and the bigger disputes you can then handle, and this will do two things. One, it'll alleviate the stress on you, and it'll help the people overall. If you read on to the story, right? We know Moses must have respected Jethro because he does what Jethro says, and it doesn't go very perfectly, it doesn't go very smoothly. In fact, very often the people complain. The people argue against Moses. The people decide maybe they could be better leaders. When I think about this story and how Moses must have felt. I have young children. And one day, he's trying to turn on the water hose. And I'm watching him try to do this, and he's struggling. What he's doing is never going to work. So I go over there and I just try to help him. I try to explain to him that what you're doing is not going to work, it's gonna go this way. And he argues with me. He tells me, no, dad, no, this, this, and I get upset because he's five. And uh eventually, sometimes I'll just tell him, fine. Go ahead. And I walk away. And he'll struggle for a while, and eventually he'll give up. But in my better moments, I'll be patient with him. I'll say, son, stop, stop. Just watch. Watch.