 I'm Marcia Joyner and we are navigating the journey and now that we are into what we're going to call election season that's what we're going to talk about about election. Now in the Constitution it says that the election would be the first Tuesday after the first Monday November anyway but now that we have gotten really crazy with COVID-19 and all of this other stuff and putting by mail we now putting season so you are here on all the ballots will be mailed out on October 5. Each island has a different date when they mail out the ballot. I think it's a good idea since the they've been messing with the Republicans have been messing with the post office. I think that's a good idea to stagger the mail. Anyway so this is election season and we are going to talk about the city and county charter amendment. First I want to introduce my guest Christopher Edwards. I love Christopher Edwards because he says his full name Christopher. I have a son who has a beautiful name Christopher and he's Chris. Anyway that's hello Chris. Hi Marcia. Just move so how's your new house your new apartment? It's quite wonderful it's got a great breeze in a fantastic neighborhood and you know every day is a beautiful day and now I have a beautiful view to go along with it. Oh wonderful well Chris is Christopher is part of the Democratic Party of Hawaii and he has a lot of titles and he'll tell you all of those. He is championing in championing the second number two resolution on the charter amendment. So let me explain simply as I can make this the city and county Honolulu is a corporation and like that includes the entire island is the city and county Honolulu. Like any corporation they have a charter of which they go by. Many corporations have them and three years I think it is there are amendments to the charter. There's a charter commission here all kinds of people with all kinds of ideas of what needs to be changed what needs to be updated this like most corporations the city and county is alive living and their people and change from year to year and so this is built in to keep things up today. I hope that's as simple as I can get it. On your ballot there will be four charter amendments or questions and it will ask if you want to do this this and this. I am suggesting and Christopher you can read them all I am suggesting that you vote yes on all of them. Now if you leave a blank it's a yes vote so if you want to if you don't agree with it then you must put no otherwise blank votes they had to go to court to have all that sorted out so don't ask me why a blank vote counts for yes but it does. So that's why we're doing the show go over the charter amendment and we want you to vote on them this is your home you need to see how it is run. Christopher is all yours you want to tell us about the charter amendment? Sure so this year Honolulu has four charter amendments for the city and the county and like Marcia said we all get to choose if we'd like to vote yes or no on the four charter amendments they're all they're all so on your ballot what you will see is the four questions. The first question I guess we should go into now is shall a revised city charter be amended to establish for the prosecuting attorney of the city and county of Honolulu term limits of two consecutive four-year terms. The the same term limits that are also applicable for the mayor and for the city council members of the city and county. So this question is coming up because we've had a prosecuting attorney who's had 18 years which is as Marcia points out an entire generation and so it it has come to the attention of the public and they brought it to the council's attention and the council decided that they would like to put this charter amendment on the general ballot so that we can update that living document that is our city charter and so we have the choice now to say yes the prosecuting attorney should have term limits or no the prosecuting attorney should not have term limits which is how it is today and so we have this choice in the general election to change our city for the long term and in this particular case it does make sense to me that the prosecuting attorney would have term limits so that we can keep the ball rolling and that that's not a particular job forever because it's a it's an extremely powerful position prosecuting attorney where you're the manager of all of the city's attorneys so if the police arrest you and you have to go to court this is the manager of the attorneys who are in court on behalf of our city's government and so we want to make sure that that person you know is the most professional they can be and that they're not in that job forever because that's a powerful city position and let me just add a caveat to that one the reason that um kloha mrs. kloha was able to get into so much trouble because she was a deputy and prosecuting attorney both of them had been there so long in those positions that they were able to do things and there were no checks and balances nothing to check on them and that's how you with that kind of tenure you can get into a lot of trouble so I'm sure that that's why this one was number one and so many people testified saying we have to do something so reasonably certain that that's where this came from and this also generates opportunity for the deputy prosecuting attorneys who are you know hired by the prosecuting attorney and work on behalf of the city and for the most part they're the ones who show up to court every day to prosecute folks who are accused of crimes and this by having term limits it gives the opportunity for those people if they'd like to rise to become prosecuting attorney the absolute opportunity to one day run and express their views and allow us as the public to make a decision on who we would like to have next as our prosecuting attorney because one person gets in there and keeps getting elected and and oh a very important part about the prosecuting attorney is that oftentimes this job gets skipped when people are voting so in the primary election for instance 30,000 people left blank the prosecuting attorney choice and there were many choices probably six choices of candidate and I think sometimes people skip over areas that they're not as familiar with which is why we're also going through the charter amendments so that they don't get skipped in the general but if if thousands of thousands of people vote for a mayor and 30,000 people skip over the prosecuting attorney in an extremely important and impactful role in our city I think it's very important that we try to raise awareness for the prosecuting attorney and what's going on around the country in so many cities it's important that we're always paying attention to who our prosecuting attorney is and another name for this would be like the district attorney in a lot of areas of the country if if you're more familiar with that terminology yes I really want as much as we can people to participate at this level but the last election we were able to go out and do workshops and all kinds of things to make people aware of the charter amendments this time because we can't this is the best we can do so very good let's go to number two which is your when you are champion yeah so number two is written as shall the revised city charter be amended to establish a youth commission under the managing director this charter amendment I feel like opens up a lot of opportunities for our young people to really have a voice in a say in our city what would happen if we passed charter amendment two is a council of 15 young people between the ages of 14 and 24 would be appointed by the city council members and the mayor to represent the voices and the concerns of young people and at the moment people younger than 18 can't vote and these would kind of be the representatives to bring to the attention of all of the city's committees and councils the concerns of young people and young people have great concerns and no representation and so no dedicated representation especially as non-voters and so that's what this would be creating we would be creating an opportunity and handing power to younger people to voice for young people to the mayor to the city council on issues from you know women's issues and concerns to climate change agenda to traffic and transportation affordable housing homelessness the concerns of young people are actually mirror the concerns of older people it's just that they don't have a voice and oftentimes they don't vote and so it's very important that we have these youth representatives who can bring attention to big concerns and things that are oftentimes overlooked solutions that might be overlooked by older people and impacts that the work of the city might be having on young people that are overlooked by the rest of us so let's give them that opportunity let's give them advisors who can talk to us and tell us I love the idea how is the youth commission is it they vote on or the old folks get to select how do you how many people would be on a commission so there would be 15 members on the commission by next august 2021 about half of them would be seated and about half of them are picked by the city council members and about half by the mayor so it's a nine to six so nine are picked by the city council members and six are picked by the mayor and so we'd have half of those positioned staffed by august 2021 now it says in the managing director's office for people that do not understand the hierarchy of how the city is operated the city and county of course again back to the that it's a corporation so the mayor is the mayor then there is the city council and then there's a corporation council like all throughout america is the number one person and the legislative branch the executive branch and the finance which is core core council the managing director is really exactly what he's what it says his office is around the corner from the mayor i'm sure that they communicate regularly but that is where it happens just as it says managing director and almost everything that happens within the city and there's 9 000 employees and i don't know how many divisions but it all happens there so that is a great place to be it's a great place to learn that's a great idea yeah and i think a lot of the learning that will be happening oftentimes what one comes to realize is that there's a ways that the city operates and you don't learn those things until you have a job inside the city or a friend inside the city or you speak to your representative on a regular basis your your council member and you you start to learn all of the steps that it takes this would give a real jumpstart to young leaders to learn those steps earlier and to impact our democracy or city's democracy from a younger age and it is not easy to change things and so if we give them this particular head start they may be able to be the best leaders for our city long term and remember these are the folks that are going to be leaders in our companies one day leaders in our public services one day in our nonprofits we want them to be as educated as they possibly could be in the city's essentially business so that we can have the best environment and economy now when when is the term did it begin in january or when so they they would have to be seated before august 21 august 2021 half of them would have to be seated by then and then the next half would need to be seated the proceeding august i believe i actually it doesn't technically say um but they will all be seated within the new terms the new term of the city council with five new members begins january i just wondered if their term coincides with the new city council oh no it doesn't have to so the the first half of the youth commission has to be seated before august 21 it says that in the charter oh okay is so so they don't necessarily start in january now but they do start sometime in the next nine or so months it's september uh i guess 11 months okay what is the length of term or is it spelled out it's two years so they're two year terms these first folks who are coming in it seems like from the wording that they serve for um for a year or two uh and that it's staggered so half go in and half come out and a big part of i mean they'll be able to do a lot of really cool stuff and and it really leaves open the opportunities for them to uh influence whatever areas they would like and to receive questions from all of the city's departments and then to also question those departments and directors but who knows what direction they'll go in but there's so many excellent potential candidates for this and so i'm really excited to see who those council members pick as their picks and who the mayors pick for their picks uh to help staff it they're regional you know from different parts of the island the students yeah so nine of them would be picked by the city council members from the district council members i would i would assume that that's how that'll happen um i would hope it's there that come from all over the island yeah yeah and then it'll be very interesting to see who the mayors pick because they could really pick anyone uh from anywhere uh and so to to see the dynamic and and the priorities of the organization develop will be very interesting i'm moving forward now um now we we have a new mayor and i have new council people and that means a new managing director also um usually his term i say him but managing director's term coincides with the mayor um so that you have all new everybody i mean not everybody some of the department heads will stay the same but the new mayor does have the option named new department heads with a great opportunity to come in when everything is new and everything is gelling and everybody's finding their way around wherever they're supposed to be it's it's a great opportunity there are limits you said how many people can be on at one time yeah so there'll be 15 people at once um after the first year when they all are eventually seated and that's wonderful this is a great opportunity we're going to say yes on to yes on to yes absolutely um we are very excited about it and we we want everyone to let you know their church members know uh however they how do they what's the process i have a grandchild says oh i'd like to do that how do they uh by what's the process there isn't a mechanism spelled out for uh for how to apply i would suspect that the council members would uh accept you know um applications of some sort uh or a phone call to let them know like hey i'm interested in this and this is why um it says that the council members may appoint the person or will appoint the representative but i would suspect that those council members will come up with their own mechanisms for how to select and that may be an interest of the public to say to the council members um you know we have a preference that you standardize your process on how you select your person and that way we can maybe um create as best we can at a fair council of folks uniform anyway exactly and over time have a uniformity and hopefully uh this is a great idea hopefully we can make sure that it's it's fair and balanced in terms of uh gender and ideas and things like that your age when you send out a notification notice just so people know that they can apply their office you know so people understand what's going on what what this means yes okay now i voted for it but now what so your office send out so so we over the schools or whatever yeah we'd like to make sure that everyone knows about it one we'd like them to know that it exists that it will be on the ballot and that they should vote yes for it uh after that we would like to see that it you know continues its prominence i mean its budget is essentially picked by the mayor and so the mayor gets to choose you know how much money to send over to this youth commission and also how to deliver staff to them and how those staff resources you know are they full-time like they are in other municipalities and this has been done before there's one on kawaii and there's one in san francisco a youth commission and it's very important that the that the community after we all vote yes and this comes to fruition that we make sure that it is resourced and is not left out in the cold because if the public is not watching and if it is not transparent then it may not get the funding that it needs to be successful at its priorities and so we want to you know make sure that they have priorities that are of interest to them and then make sure that they are funded to to do those things okay and they'll be free i'm sure all funding starts with the city council the budget committee so that's the one you're gonna have to think okay yeah let's go we only have a few minutes left so let's take a look at the other two yeah so charter question number three is shall the revised city charter be amended to allow the honolulu ethics commission to control its own budget after it has been enacted and so the way the budget works is once it's signed off on by city council and the mayor it goes into effect but the mayor can control and revise a lot of those funding allotments because just through the power of being the executive and the needs of the city can change the this charter amendment would mean that once it's approved by the city council and the mayor the ethics commission gets its budget uh end of story and then that director of the ethics commission can utilize their budget and the important factor on this is one the prosecutor's office already has this uh strength in its um in its rules it's allowed once its budget comes to it it is its budget it can't be revoked or removed or and moved to a different priority of the administration and so it the ethics commission watches over our public officials to make sure that they're appropriately filing their documents and folks that are influencing government like lobbyists are filing their documents and being as transparent as possible and so it's very important that these folks have their budget to do their work and don't need to worry about uh it being revised from under them and so I would say vote yes on charter question number three as well for the health and transparency of the city let's see about four uh number four uh shall shall the revised charter be amended to require ethics commission staff to be appointed based on merit principles but exempt from the civil service position classification plan and to have the salaries of all ethics commission staff set by the ethics commission a subject to the specified limitations uh i'm saying yes we should focus on this one so that the ethics commission gets to manage their own we've had so many problems over the year with the ethics commission what they can do what they can't do and you can't what's the budget who's on it it gets messy so i'm saying yes on this one on number four all right yeah and let's hit now again Eric we only have a minute left would you put up the picture of the yes that one um on this picture this is also if you go to the office of elections this is the map it shows where the deposit all the yellow canisters where you can just pin your ballot safer than the post office because the post office is going through some crap um but this you can drive right up the yellow box put it in the shoot and it is every day it's sealed and somebody from the office of elections comes unlocked picks it up every day so you know that your ballot is safe and they're all over the city all over the island um it's in a city park the parks are locked at a certain time so you have to be sure you get there before that time um i think it's wonderful we did it the last election and it worked very well the ballot again on oahu is on the fifth fill it out real quick put it in the box and you're done and you're safe and there's a verification step marcia where you can go on to the hunalulu website to check to see if it's been counted well they can't count until the day of the election if it's been received received the word i should have used yeah legally they're not supposed to count until the day of november or whatever it is um i think we don't know this when the legislature moved to having um mail in something they ever thought we'd have COVID and all this other crap so they didn't change that that that we'd have to count on the election day however thank you christopher thank you so much for doing this spending this time with us and we've been touched let us know how it's going with youth prevention and anything else we can do to assist and thank you audience thank you all that have been with us all this time remember we'll see you next time