 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Aloha and welcome to Out and About on the Think Tech Live streaming network series. I'm your host, Winston Welch, and I am delighted you're joining us today. Where every other week we explore a variety of topics, organization, events, and the people who fuel them in our city, state, country, and world. Joining me in the studio today, I am most pleased to have Sean Hamamoto and James Suzuki from the Honolulu Neighborhood Commission office. So welcome to the show today, gentlemen. Thank you, Winston. It's a pleasure to have you here. I think a lot of people may not even know that the neighborhood boards exist. And what is the neighborhood boards? So if you could start by telling us what is the neighborhood board commission, what does it do? That's a great question and a great place to start. Well, very briefly, this neighborhood commission was started over 40 years ago back in the early 1970s under the Frank Fosse administration. And at that time, the administration amended the city charter to create the neighborhood commission office with the purpose of being to increase public participation in the decisions of government. So it was, was this modeled after another city or another state or country that you were? You know, to that I am not sure, but I can tell you we've done research and I can say that this is a very unique system we have here in Honolulu. We are the only county in the state of Hawaii that has such a system. And when I tried looking on the mainland US for similar type board systems, I could find like maybe a couple. I know like Seattle has one and there was maybe another in Michigan, but it just seems that this type of community grassroots board system, you know, in Honolulu, we're very lucky to have this system. That's interesting. So I was looking online and it shows about 36 different neighborhood boards, I guess. Areas. Areas. So the island is divided into 36 roughly. Is it by population or by sort of historical district? Yes, it's by population and it's something that the neighborhood commission, the commissioners actually decide upon, but you're correct. We do have 36 neighborhood board areas within that we have 33 active neighborhood boards. Now, we do have a couple of areas that are not active and these are primarily like the industrial areas, like for example, Sand Island where there's not too many people. Or the airport. Exactly. But most of our regular living communities all have neighborhood boards around this whole island. You said the neighborhood commission decides that. What is the neighborhood commission? So the neighborhood commission is the commission that we work with. They're a board of volunteers, some appointed by the mayor, some appointed by the city council. Basically they set policy. They are responsible for amending or reviewing the neighborhood plan, which is basically our Bible or general procedures. And they also adjudicate any complaints that come out. So that's the role of the commission. So we work with them in partnership to help oversee all 33 boards around our island. Okay, so they're sort of a civilian oversight component. Yes, that's a good way to put it. And then they're appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council. And how many people are on that commission? Currently, we have seven. Seven, is that the full number? Yes. Okay. And then the neighborhood boards are roughly divided by population. Yes, roughly. That's something the commission currently they're looking at, because as you know, with all the new developments in communities, our demographics have changed. So I think we need to change with the times. And so I know that's something that the commission will be looking at in the next year or two, is to see if the current lines are still appropriate or relevant. And if not, what can we do to adjust it? Okay. And so we've got these neighborhood boards. It's about 33 neighborhood boards. Can you tell us, James, what is the role of the neighborhood board? So if we go for each neighborhood, we've got 33 of these spaced around the island. What does the neighborhood board do? I think most essentially our neighborhood boards are like town halls, where this gives the community a chance to come and talk face to face with the people who affect change around them. We have representatives from the police department who are there every meeting. We have representatives from the fire department. We have a board of water supply rep who comes and reports on just main breaks in the area and announcements on construction and infrastructure improvements in the area. So it's just a chance for the community come and ask questions about what's going on in their neighborhoods. And it also gives them a chance to talk to their legislators. We have a representative from the mayor's office. We have a representative from the governor's office. All our state reps, they're a state house representative. They're all there. The state senators are there. So it just gives a chance for just the community to communicate with the people who represent them. And it's really good to see the differences in talking to someone face to face and see how seriously they're taking you rather than electronically or over the phone. So you go to an average meeting. It was about once a month on average. All boards meet on average about once a month. And the meetings, depending on the agenda, anywhere from two to three hours, give or take, two to three hours. Okay. And in full disclosure, I am a member of neighborhood board five, which is St. Louis Heights, Kapahulu Diamond Head, which is, I always saw the kind of a strange breakdown of the area. I can see like Diamond Head in Kapahulu, but the St. Louis Heights part kind of throws me every time. It's a sort of an Ahupua'a approach, but a little bit different. And I wondered how that got decided. That's a very good question. I'm sure that's back in history. Some place in the 1970s or 80s when that board was formed. That's exactly what Sean said earlier about how the neighborhood commission are looking at areas to maybe further divide them and have them create their own neighborhood boards, just like the Makakilo area is combined with the whole Kapahulu area subdivision, which is there another area that's looking to just kind of divide further to be able to more centered around each of their communities. So these neighborhood boards, they are populated by people like you and me. Yes. It's all, you know, they're all volunteers. Basically, all you need to be is over 18 years of age, live in the district and be a registered voter. You have to be a registered voter. Actually, well, you need to be a registered voter to vote, but actually to actually run on the board, you don't, you just have to be over 18 and live in the district. So, you know, open to students, even military, anyone that lives in the district. I think it's a great system where we want to be as inclusive as possible. Can you be a green card holder and be on the board? Yes. As long as you're a resident in the district and over 18. Okay. That's awesome. So it is quite inclusive. Yes. And how many people are on each board? Again, it varies from board to board. Some boards may have as few as maybe nine or so other boards up to 19. How is that decided? And again, it's by decided by the commission based on the population and in determining that it's kind of a complicated process where they work with information from, you know, the Census Bureau and so forth to try to figure that out. But I'm sure there's some type of formula they have to figure that out. So maybe that's a way that they've been able to feel like there's a bit more proportional representation is with the areas that are growing. They might add some people in the smaller areas, might be a little bit of a smaller board. Exactly. Then in the neighborhood board office, how many of you all are in the office? So we're a relatively small office, including myself. There's about 14 of us all together. And, you know, our jurisdiction is the whole island. So it keeps us quite busy. But, you know, it's a great team. 14 of you. 14 of us all together. Okay. And how many of those are we? We've got a terrific neighborhood assistant. Yes. Thomas is ours. And he's has a hard job because he's kind of, you know, set up everything and try and follow everything and help with things like rubber tools and what's appropriate or what can or can't be done. It's kind of, I don't want to say landmine to walk through, but it's hard to always know that because people get passionate about things. He'll give advice to our chair on things about this needs to do this or that or the other. How many neighborhood assistants are there like that? So we have about seven neighborhood assistants on staff. The rest of our staff consist of our admin clerical staff. We have Jefflin and Marcy. Then we have our PR team, which is James and Dylan over there. Then I have a deputy and another community relations specialist. So, you know, we're all over the place every day. It keeps us busy, but we all love it. Now, do you answer to the mayor's office or how does, yeah, well, definitely, you know, I am as well as our whole office. We're all appointed by the mayor. So I report directly to the managing director's office. Oh, you do. You're all appointed by the mayor. Yes, we're all appointees. None of us are civil service. Okay. So, but hopefully you just get to keep your jobs after. Yeah, we'll see. So when people are running for a board position, because these are all elected positions, how often does that happen and what's the procedure for that? Okay. Good question. So we have our board elections on odd number years every two years. So our next election is coming up next year in 2019. So maybe we can come on again to promote that as it gets nearer. Absolutely, absolutely. But yeah, so we are, I think this fall we're going to start just behind the scenes administratively getting everything set for the elections. So that would be coming up the next year. Yes, January or February. Now, these elections are not done with paper ballots. Yes. So this was a conscious effort on our part one, two, it's good for the environment. We mean an effort to try to save paper. And also just because we are in the digital age now, and it does save us money. So I can say that the neighborhood board elections went online several years ago, I believe back in 2009. What was different in the most recent neighborhood board election was that instead of we usually have to contract out services to run these elections. But what we did differently last year was we actually worked in-house with our own Department of Information Technology to run the elections in-house as opposed to going to work to our vendor. And I believe that saved us about $30,000 or $40,000 taxpayer money. And so because it was relatively very successful, we're going to do that again. Now, how do people even know that these elections are happening? And how would they become candidates or get their names out there if they're interested in that? Yes. So as the time draws near, we will be doing a big public outreach push. We put in ads in the newspaper midweek. We put advertisements in our city buses. We buy advertisements on our city buses. We make appointments with a lot of the network morning shows to go in the morning to talk about it. Maybe we'll come here again, putting the words out just through our newsletters. Anyway, we can social media to get the word out. So on average, you said between nine and 19 people on a board, I think ours has 15. So you're looking at hundreds of people that are serving. Yes. I would say in total, there's about roughly 430 volunteer board members on this island. So that's quite a bit. And is every board up for election every time? Yes. Yes. So it's like the House of Representatives. Everyone's every two years. Yes. Do you have any problem finding people to run for these? You know, I think it depends on the area. You know, in certain areas can be quite competitive. In other areas, not so much. It really depends on the community. It depends on the community. So how are there vacant spots right now on any of the boards at your work? Yes. So I know we do have some vacancies. They are listed on our website. And you know, and we understand, you know, like I said, these are all volunteers. They don't get paid a dime. But yet, you know, they volunteer quite a significant amount of time not only to attend these meetings monthly, but also, you know, to be in contact with their community. And what happens is, you know, sometimes people for a variety of reasons, I think the most common reason we have gotten for people resigning from boards is that simply they move out of the district. That's a common reason. And then also you have a change in lifestyles, you job, you know, have to take care of family, things like that. So there are a variety of reasons. But more often than not, we can find people to take their place in the community. So and that happens, I think I would encourage people to go onto your website, which is, yes, a website. And what is the neighborhood board website? So just Honolulu.gov slash nco. And then you can follow the links. We have a whole bunch of tabs on the left side. And you just click the neighborhood board tab. And then it will have, we have a board vacancy list. Okay. Yeah. So it's just another link. You hit it. And then we'll list the boards that have all the vacancies available and what sub districts, because some of these neighborhood boards are further divided just to provide each area within each community or neighborhood board for the representation by people who live in their certain sub districts. And that's the case in mine too. Exactly. So if there is a break, we can go there, we can go to the meeting, talk to the chair and say I'm interested in this. And then the chair presents your sort of background. Exactly, exactly. We have volunteers who come up and have themselves acknowledged by the chair, who they in turn introduce themselves to everybody. They kind of give everyone a brief bio about themselves. And then usually a board member in most times will just nominate them to become part of the board. Because what in my experience is all boards want to be have full staffing and have fully completed throughout their whole community. So it's rare that we ever get a board that's never welcoming volunteers. So that's why whenever we're out in the community and we're in areas where neighborhood boards have vacancies, we make it a very big conscious effort for us to tell the community members in each area that there are neighborhood board seats open and please go and volunteer in their neighborhoods. And they can also get their meeting minutes and agenda items on for each of the neighborhood boards as well online at honolulu.gov slash nco. And then go down from there. So we're going to take a very short break here, but I am Winston Welch. This is out and about on the Think Tech Live streaming network series. And today we're talking with Sean Hamamoto, the executive director and James Schizuski, our public relations specialist from the Honolulu neighborhood commission office. We'll be back in a minute. So stay tuned for more of the story. I'm Winston Welch and this is out and about on the Think Tech streaming network series. We're talking with Sean Hamamoto and James Schizuski from the neighborhood commission office. And I appreciate you both again for being here and also for James Whitzel, another public relations specialist over at the neighborhood commission office for getting this together. So John, you got a background. You went to Punahou. Yes. You got a BA in psychology from HPU. Yes. Does that help you in your job? Every day. And before that, you worked with the mayor's and managing director's office as a specialist assistant. Correct. And that was with this current administration? Yes. Okay. So then you were a liaison with the city council? Yes, I was a city council liaison. Okay. So I worked with the city council and that must have been quite an interesting job in and of itself, too. Never a dull moment. Yeah, I bet. So when did you move over and take the position that you're at right now? It was almost three years ago. I believe I started this position August 15, 2015. So it's been three years. Okay. And when you did that, you used to serve on a neighborhood board yourself? Yes. That's correct. I was a former member of the downtown Chinatown neighborhood board number 13 back in 2011, I believe. Okay. So you probably had to resign after you got this job so you weren't overseeing yourself? Yes. So it was only one term, but I loved it. But I just feel it's a blessing that I'm in this position and I can continue working with the neighborhood boards. Was it a factor that you had been on a neighborhood board that got you also into this position considering the different roles you'd been playing in administration? I think that may have been a factor. In addition, I've been in government most of my career. So even prior to that, I worked for the state senate before the city council. So I've been a state senate rep to the board. I've been a city council rep to the board. I was even a mayor's rep to the board. The first board meeting I ever went to was back in 1999. Okay. So I've had actually a lot of experience with neighborhood boards prior to me taking this position. So you have played a variety of things connected with this. Yes. You didn't even know it in many ways. Actually, to be honest, it's a dream come true. I feel like I've come full circle in my career to come to this point to actually heading the office. A system that I've admired from the very the first time I've ever walked into a neighborhood board meeting back in 1999. I was a fan. I thought this was the greatest system ever. The second thing I thought, why aren't more people here? I just thought it was so great. Yeah. A great community resource. So no, I'm very fortunate to be in this position. I enjoy working with the community. And where do you think the hardest job was? Was it being a state representative or the mayor's representative or in the role that you have now? You know, I would say each role I've had had its challenges, but I can say of all my roles, I'm definitely enjoying this the best. Okay. I just feel like this is a peak for me. Okay. I'm really happy to be here. And James, you are a local, a local boy too. You grew up in the Kapahulu area and went to Damien Memorial High School over witches in Kalihi, isn't it? Okay. And just right by the, I always call it the castle, when it's the Bishop Museum, of course. And then you went on to UH Manoa, got a degree in political science and minored in sociology. Has that helped you a lot in the work that you do? Oh, yes. I mean, I think it's all derived in my origin and are just in my origin of wanting to improve my community. So I mean, I've just always been open and trying to learn as much as I can about the system in which we can help improve our own communities across the island. I think that that's an important point is that, you know, you've got great people like you that really care about our community, devoted civil servants that are really, you're called to something greater, which is wanting to have an involved civic society where the neighborhood board for me is emblematic of that really fundamental grassroots participation in having community members being able to come and in their community and have their voices be heard on a variety of issues. Like you said, everybody comes, your state reps come, the senators, the representatives, the mayor's rep comes. And those are actually, they're commissioners, aren't they for the mayor's rep? Actually, well, they're cabinet members. So most of the mayor's reps are either the directors or deputy directors of the various city departments we have. Are you a mayor's rep in any of them? No, because I'm heading the commission that that would be too much of a conflict. So once I took this position, so prior to this position when I was at the MD's office, I was a mayor's rep. But once I got this position, I had to Okay. And James, are you a are you a neighborhood assistant at all? Do you ever? I was. I mean, and I really love our neighborhood assistants that we have on staff now. And I'm glad I was able to start as a neighborhood assistant because the ability to see communities take part in improving itself is something I treasure and something I try and spread as I'm out in the community putting up posters and flyers about every neighborhood's own meetings once a month. I go and I try and explain the resources available at these neighborhood board meetings. I mean, these mayor's reps, the lengths they go to to get responses for community members concerns from broken cracks in the sidewalks to a broken drinking fountain to just why don't we have a crosswalk here. The Department of Transportation will do a study just to come back to that one concern from one community member from one neighborhood board. And if you really extrapolate that to all of the neighborhood boards across the island, our city is working very hard to make sure our community is heard. Yeah. And at that very local level where people know why the crosswalk needs to be just at that place. Yeah, I know they took out the ongoing thing on date street where they're just redoing it. And my concern was the speed limit was too high because if it's as 25 people will go 40. And so, you know, but we have people directly there to be able to answer those questions. It may not be to our satisfaction because we do live in a society that allows for the best ideas, hopefully to bubble to the top. But at least we can we have a place to air those ideas and be heard. So I've been really appreciative of that. A lot of people can't always get to the neighborhood board meetings. They're generally held at night or always held at night. Yes. Okay. And they're on a weeknight. Yes. Okay. And most of them are on OLL. I would say most of them, like I said, we have 33 active boards. We have near about 30 of them being broadcasts or recorded and we broadcast on OLL. So the vast majority of them do choose to be televised. Do you have any idea how many people are watching those OLL broadcasts? You know, I'm not sure. I actually would like to talk to a little to see if I could get that metric because it would be interesting to see. But I do think it's a fantastic resource because, you know, a lot of these meetings, as you said, they are at night. You know, I, you know, a lot of us working people, they work hard, maybe have families. I could see where it may be difficult for them to physically attend these meetings. And that's why I think it's so great that OLL records these so that way the community, at their own convenience, from the comfort of their home, can either access these recordings via the internet or watch the replays on TV on OLL. So I think it's a great program. Can they find those links on your website as well? Or do they have to go to OLL's website? Yes. We have a link on our website. And you can also go to the OLL website as well. So either place or you can always feel free to just to call us and we'll be able to help you. 768-3710. 768-3710. 3710. And that's the Neighborhood Commission Office. Yes. Be happy to hear from you. And you are happy to hear from them. You guys actually answered the phone, which I really appreciate too. So people have an ability to also send in testimony or request or something like that. Is that right James? How does that work? Exactly. So we allow community members to provide testimony, which we then forward to the board chairs who circulate that amongst the board members themselves. And in certain cases, chairs will read the testimony aloud. And along with the video archive that's on our website, we also have our very talented neighborhood assistants who are there taking notes the whole meeting. They record the meetings and then their job is to go back and pretty much summarize our meetings. I mean, we're required by sunshine law to 30 days after the meeting, have a written record of some summation of what happened at the meeting when it comes to decisions and what's going on, what was discussed. That's an interesting point. You mentioned the sunshine laws. So these boards are subject to the same laws? Absolutely. Okay. So that is why one objective of this board is to be transparent, which I believe is very important. So pursuant to the sunshine law, we are required to publicly post every board agenda a week in advance of the meeting. So the public can know exactly what's going to be discussed. And as James says, we are then required to have available minutes of the meeting so the public can see exactly who voted or how the board voted on certain issues and so forth. And that's why I think the O'Lelow component is also really important because talk about sunshine. When you're being recorded, there's not, you either said it or you didn't, right? It's a lot easier to watch it than to read a transcription, which are not transcription, but notes. The minutes, yes. The minutes are, as accurate as they're going to get, but nevertheless, I liked watching the, I like watching things from Waianae or from Waikai or the North Shore and see what are their issues up there and how are they, what are they talking about and how do they run their boards and how spicier their boards compared to my board. And you've probably seen some things getting fairly heated over the course of the years. Yes. And to an extent, it is understandable because people are passionate about their communities, which they should be. And so we have the neighborhood board, we encourage participation. Everybody has a right to their own opinion and everyone has a right to express that opinion. We just ask that it be done in a professional and civil manner, but definitely the more participation, the better. And I think that people are respectful, especially here in Hawaii. We realize that we live on an island. We've all got to get along together. And this is a, you know, but our chair does a great job. He's got a hard job because he's got to keep people in order and keep the time. And sometimes occasionally he'll pound his point of order and say, you know, point of order or whatever it is that he needs to do. But people by and large are very respectful because they're being heard. Yes. And if they didn't think they weren't being heard, maybe they wouldn't be as respectful. But I think because their concerns are being listened to at this basic level by not only other board members on the neighborhood board, but other members of, you know, going up the food chain. So I think it's really a wonderful system that we've got here. Do you think that it strengthens the neighborhoods to have these neighborhood boards? Absolutely. Okay. You know, nothing strengthens a neighborhood like a community. And I can think of no other better way to bring a community together, common issues, common concerns. On this political level. Exactly. I mean, I would love to see more tie-in with other things on our boards, like with Rotary or the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts or, yeah. And that's part of my job as the part of the PR team at our office is that we're constantly visiting Lions Clubs and Rotary Clubs and classrooms and college classrooms just to try and get as many people involved as we can. I mean, we're always encouraging people to participate and it's truly a blessing just to be part of this neighborhood board system. And again, if people want more information, they can visit your website, which is Honolulu.gov.nco or they can call you at 768-3710. Well, gentlemen, like I said, we are, we always run out of time too quickly, but it has been a delight to have you here today and I sincerely appreciate you coming down. So unfortunately, we are out of time and so we are going to have to wrap it up. But I would like to invite you back again certainly so we can talk some more about different things and maybe some specific examples. But for right now, we're going to have to wrap it up. I'm Winston Welch out and about ThinkTech Livestreaming Network series. We've been talking with Sean Hamamoto, the executive director and James Skizewski from the Neighborhood Commission Office of Honolulu. With that, we appreciate you tuning in. We welcome your feedback. We'd like to thank our broadcast engineer, Brandi Lima, our technical producer, Ian Davidson and our floor manager, Ray Sangaling and the J-Fai Delhoop, our executive director who puts it all together. I'll see you here every other Monday at 3 p.m. for more out and about on ThinkTech Hawaii. Aloha everyone.