 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha and Happy New Year. It's 2019, a year filled with adventure and lots of interesting topics here on Out and About, which is held every other week on the Think Tech livestreaming that series. I am your host, Winston Welch. And joining us today, we are going to do like every other week, we explore a variety of people, topics, events and organizations in the city, the state and our nation, and it's all alive in the studio. So sometimes we make mistakes and other times it's really natural. Mostly it is because my guests are always excellent, they're experts in their fields. Like my guest today, I'm very pleased to have back Sean Hamamoto, who is actually Executive Secretary from the Honolulu Neighborhood Commission office. And we're going to talk about the upcoming Neighborhood Board elections and the Neighborhood Board system in general. So welcome to the show today, or welcome back Sean. Thank you Winston, I'm so happy to be here again. Yeah, well I appreciate your office reaching out again to remind everybody that these very important Neighborhood Board elections are coming up, the deadline is coming up. I want to get it out there right away. Everyone should apply by February 15th if they're interested in running on the bill. Yes, February 15th is the deadline for candidate registration as well as voter registration. As well as voter registration. So you can see it there on the blue screen that it ends on Friday at just a minute before midnight on February 15th. So that's for people to vote in the Neighborhood Board elections. Correct, I just want to clarify that for people that voted in the most recent general election we had are automatically registered to vote in the Neighborhood Board elections. Okay. Now for people who perhaps didn't vote in the previous general election and they want to register for the Neighborhood Board elections that's when they need to register by that February 15th date. But if you voted already, you're good to go. Or maybe people that didn't vote in the national elections for whatever reasons or just have moved here or something. Yes, exactly. So this is a way for them to get on. That's an important deadline then. February 15th and for voter registration. And voter registration. And I think it's important to note that these elections are held online for the most part. Yes, it's a primarily an online election. The Neighborhood Commission back in 2009 made a decision to go with a primary online system. And this was mostly done as a cost savings measure. As you can imagine, the Commission was spending tens of thousands of dollars each election just on postage and envelopes. We're saving a lot of money there. But we are aware that not everybody may have access to a computer or be computer savvy at this point. So we do have a mail-in option. So for those, although we would prefer people to go paperless and do it online, if people really want to, they can request a traditional mail-in ballot from our office. And would they be able to do that at the same time that they've registered with your office to vote? No, because the actual passcodes for the ballots will go out in April. But for now, we're just registering one candidate and voters. Okay, so if it's Mrs. Smith or Mr. Sopto, they say, I don't want to vote on the computer. I want a piece of paper. Oh, yeah. They still have to call your office by February 15th? No, actually for them to actually request a ballot, that doesn't happen until March or April where they can do that. Okay, a little bit later. So if you want a paper ballot, you're good for a little bit longer. Yes, yes. I'm curious, what percent of people actually request a paper ballot in this day and age? Oh, gosh. In our last election, it was very low. I want to say under 10%. I don't have the exact figures, but it was low. I do want to point out, though, that in our last 2017 elections, I was very happy to see that we had the largest turnout, voter turnout, since the elections went online in 2009. We had about 20,000 people vote. Okay. Now, just to be clear, though, that is a far way off from before the elections went online. So just brief history, prior to the 2009 elections, before they went online, we had about 40,000 voters participate. When the elections went online in 2009, there was a major drop. And I think that had a lot to do with people getting used to the technology and so forth. So the voter participation went down to 10,000 in 2009. And over the years, as people are getting more familiar with it, it's been building. So like I said in our last one, 2017, we were up to 20,000. Well, how do people even know that these elections exist besides watching our wonderful ThinkTek show? How do people know that they could be on the board or that these are the candidates or how to vote? Do you send out actually a physical piece of paper with candidates' profiles or that sort of thing? Well, we do have candidate profiles on our website. So once you register, and the application is very simple. It's basically your name, your address, some contact information. You have the option to attach a photo so people can put a face to the name. And you also have an option of just writing a brief synopsis of your background or why you'd like to run. And we post all of that online for people to see. And how do you get the news out? Is it an advertiser? You bring up a very, very good point. This system has been around since 1973 for over 40 years. And so many people don't know that it exists. I wish I had the budget where I could do primetime commercials during the evening news. I don't. So with what resources we do have, we try to do the best to get the word out. So that's using our social media. We also just old-fashioned boots to the ground. We go on into the community. We do community outreach. We do presentations. Actually, I have a team right now as we speak. They're out at Leeward Community College so informing students, trying to get people signed up. So yeah, just getting out into the community. We do our best. And maybe it's for people who watch O-Lelo, people who care about a lot of stuff, they do. And a lot of people watch O-Lelo. People tell me, oh, I saw you on O-Lelo. And I said, was I being interviewed? Was I interviewing someone? Or narrow it down a little bit? Because I'm on TV, a fair amount. But the top five shows, for example, in Think Tech, move over to O-Lelo. The neighborhood boards, the huge majority of them are actually on O-Lelo. Correct. And so people can see, I don't know if they can go back in time, but they probably can to some degree, and find out what happened at their neighborhood boards, or to find out what are topics at other neighborhood boards that maybe would be germane for their neighborhood. And I enjoy watching those as well to see how their boards are. For example, I went in person to Waikiki's last week and they applauded after every speaker came up, after every firefighter and city councilor. I thought it was a nice touch. My board does not do that. And as a full disclaimer, I am on Neighborhood Board 5, which is Kapahulu, Diamondhead, Waikiki. And we've got 15 members there. And I think like every community, these are pretty passionately dedicated people to their neighborhoods and concerned with the small kind stuff, really, because that's what happens in these neighborhood boards. Now, have you served on a board yourself and you became the executive secretary of the Neighborhood Board office? Yes. I was briefly a member of the downtown Chinatown Neighborhood Board number 13 from 2011 to 2013. I really loved that experience. But beyond that, I think the first neighborhood board I ever attended was back in 1999. I was working for the state senate at the time, so just to go as representative. But I can say from that very first meeting I went to in 99, I fell in love with the system. I thought it was wonderful. Just in one place, on that one evening, you had so many representatives, your officials, you could talk to face-to-face. Tell people who may not be familiar with this. Sure. Who comes to these neighborhood board meetings? Okay, so regularly you will have representatives from the police department, fire department, board of water supply, usually a governor's representative, a mayor's representative, and also your city council member, state representative, state senators. And if there are any big issues that are going on in your community where government agencies are involved, like say the Department of Transportation Services, they'll usually be in attendance to give updates as well. So it's a great place where the community, in one place you can have everybody in one room. These meetings are recorded, if not by video, via minute, so it's transparent and on the record. It's really a great system. Yeah, it is a great system. And for people that say, oh, that neighborhood board, they don't do anything. It's just there just to have people griping and it doesn't really go anywhere. What would you say to that? I would invite people with those opinions to actually watch the neighborhood boards and you'll find that they actually are very relevant and they actually do do a lot. Now, it's very important to note that, you know, per the city charter, these boards are primarily an advisory board, you know, with no quote-unquote official approving authority. However, it is a fact that many of our city agencies rely on the advice of the neighborhood boards in implementing policy or, you know, projects. One good example are park closures. You know, all of our communities have parks. Certain communities unfortunately have had issues with vandalism and illicit activities. So what certain communities are choosing to do is to close their parks at night for certain hours so that HPD can legally enforce. Now, in order for these park closures to happen, it's part of the parks process to have this vetted by the neighborhood board. So I would say the neighborhood board is entirely relevant in these types of situations. And I think it's important to note that we can have neighborhood boards joining together on different topics. So there might be a permitted interaction group or there might be a, like, the al-awai golf course, you know, the top golf issue, that we have three areas that are impacted, which is my, mine, Waikiki, and Mo'ilili. So we can come together and talk about these things, or maybe if they're going to do this al-awai watershed, it would also impact all of those, and Manolo as well. Manolo, Pololo. Polo and others. So we can come together on these, and I would love to see more of that as time goes by, actually. And that's one thing I've been very happy to see during my time here. I think another good success story that you are aware about is the Moped Noise Bill, which started with the McCulley neighborhood board. And, you know, and this was going on for years about the unregulated Moped Noise, and it was a new sense to the community. So they ended up networking with boards all over the island coming together. And as a result, we have a bill that was not only passed but signed by Governor Ige that has become law. And again, this all started at the neighborhood board grassroots level. And it is a grassroots level. It's where people... There is no perfect system, right? This is where people come, and sometimes one of the representatives might be absent. Usually in mind they're always there, or their representative is there to listen to concerns, to write them down, and to get back to people for the huge majority. Or if we have a concern, they will get back to us, which I really appreciate. It's not a perfect system, but it's our basic system to bleed on up. And I think if we look at our city council today and a lot of our legislators, including our mayor, started on the neighborhood board as representatives. Am I... I don't know, 4% or...? Yeah, I'm not sure about the percentage, but you are absolutely correct. And I think that just goes to show that what the neighborhood boards represent. I mean, it's really the eyes and ears of the community. It's the pulse of the community. And in these meetings, not only do you get to know about who your elected officials are, but you also become educated as to the actual structure and process of government, which for anyone who wants to effectuate change, it's necessary to know the structure and process. And it's not just a bottom up, but it's a top down too because our representatives will come and they'll tell us, I'm working on this bill in the legislature, or if you want to submit a bill, here's the deadline for this. So the communication is flowing both ways in this. And when the police come and they say how many people they cited for noise violations, which is not enough, I'm in my humble opinion, but you mentioned noise in two weeks' time, just as a preview, I hope to have the quieter Oahu people on you who will discuss that. But the fire department comes and says how many structures burned and they have tips on, don't do this or do that, don't overload your circuit breaker type things. So we get a lot of information there as well. And some meetings are really well attended and others not as well attended, depending on the topic of the day. So you've got a wonderful website, I have to say, and people can go to it and how do they get to your website before we take a break so in case they want to take a break while we're out. Sure. Please visit us, www.hanolulu.gov. Or they could just go to www.hanolulu.gov and then navigate down through, it's actually the office of the mayor and then it's under that tab, office of the mayor and then they've got to toggle over and down. Or you can just google neighborhood commission office, Honolulu, and that'll take you right there. Yeah, there are many paths to that. So we've been around for 40 years you said or almost 40 or maybe more. A little bit over, started in 73. 73, so it's approaching quite a while that we've got here and I think that, so we've got about 450 people I think elected to these boards. 437. 437, some are more competitive than others. Some have some open seats available, others you've got a whole bunch of people wanting to be on the board. And it's interesting just to see the different levels of passion and decorum that happens. But I think by and large people are respectful of each other and we have some really great materials that I will come out with in a minute here. So some best practices that people can follow. So when they go to the neighborhood board they'll know kind of what's going on there because not everyone is familiar with parliamentary procedure or how things are even organized. So it's always a very short time that we have on the show but we will be taking a very short break here and Winston Welch is out and about live streaming network series. And we are talking today with Sean Hamamoto from the neighborhood commission office and we'll be back in a minute to talk more about the upcoming elections for neighborhood boards. And it is all neighborhood boards. So if you're on the board or you want to be on the board it doesn't matter. You've got to reapply right now. You have about three weeks to do it and get it in. So we'll be back in a minute. Thank you. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii and on our show we talk about taking your health back and what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about. Whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health whatever it means let's take healthy back. Aloha. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host Sharon Thomas Yarbrough where we motivate, educate and power and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4 p.m. and we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. Aloha, we are back and we're live and I am Winston Welch and this is Out and About on the Think Tech live streaming network series where every other week we talk with people who fuel the events organizations in our city, state and nation today we're delighted to have Sean Hamamoto back from the neighborhood commission office in Honolulu which is, it's not unique to Honolulu I don't think. I don't know how many of the cities have something like this. Actually it's quite unique you know in doing some research well obviously this neighborhood board system we are the only county in the state of Hawaii that has such a system and actually even in looking at the mainland I found less than a handful of similar types systems so I think we're actually very lucky to have such a system I can tell you some other countries have even contacted us inquiring about our system just last year we had municipality in Canada contact us to see about how we do things in terms of neighborhood boards we actually had an intern from the Ukraine last year who specifically requested to visit our neighborhood board system because as you know the Ukraine they're going through some political transformation and she thought that it was so great that we had a system where the public can have a voice so she wanted to take that idea back to the Ukraine and it is great because you know if we don't have this the next stop is having to go down to the city council hearing on whatever committee it is and you have to find that small thing and they're dealing with a big bill rather than considering a lot of different opinions before that bill even gets written so by that time it's kind of a little bit late so our system is very good in having this I didn't realize that it was so rare but I know talking with my friends on the neighbor islands they don't have this and so you think about a county like Hawaii and I don't know how many neighborhood how many county commissioners there are but let's say they have 10 you know that's just 10 voices for you know half a million people or whatever it is so we are lucky to have a lot of people who maybe will champion a cause for us on the neighborhood board they might come and they might be concerned with noise or light pollution or traffic safety or getting even a bus stop talking with the DTS people about saying it doesn't make sense there it makes more sense here and those little things that only a local would know and that's why I do love the neighborhood board system and it really just goes towards improving our data quality of life and it does and things are slow sometimes and it's not with the neighborhood commission you have a hard working staff of how many people all together we got about 13 we cover the whole island and you guys have to go out to these 33 neighborhood boards once a month mostly you got a lot of young people I know but you have some cocooners in there too so they're able to offer their wisdom and experience and I know that young people are just probably their heads pop off by the end of the night thinking oh my goodness so let's go to our next slide which is the neighborhood board elections some facts on this so who can vote you got to be 18 by February 15th you got to and you can be a legal resident alien so you don't have to be a citizen correct very inclusive system very inclusive system so you can just go to Honolulu Got Dove slash NCO and see which district and sub district you're a member of so mine I think mine has three others have five or more depending on what it is so the elections will begin the 26th of April and end the 17th of May you'll be giving out voting pass codes or you can request paper as Sean has already said oh so people could actually go down to your headquarters at Kapalama Hall or Kapole Hall and vote there if they didn't have a computer in addition we are working with the state libraries just so that as we did in the last election so you could go to any state library and use their computer and that's a voting station too so we do really want to accommodate as many people and we are sensitive to the fact that not everybody may have a computer or access so we're very happy and thankful for the state libraries just for supporting us I wonder if we couldn't get the yes the library is a great resource as we often forget about I wonder if we could get it put in the phone book you know in front of the tsunami guys and that sort of thing just like put in this but they already have that for voter registration but a lot of people might ask why don't we have it at the same time at the same time as the state and county elections that happened you know you bring up a good point so that's something that we've discussed quite thoroughly at the commission level there's two schools of thoughts we actually did approach the state I know previously they've done that and I just think from a logistic standpoint the state was hesitant because if you think about the ballot we have four hundred and how and the neighborhood board districts don't match up perfectly with the state district boundaries it could be a nightmare it would be a nightmare so there's that but the one thing I look at as a positive I mean to me there's positives and negative but by the neighborhood boards having their elections on odd number years that's the only show in town they get all the attention it's just a matter of people and especially our office trying to bring it to people's attention have you thought about sending out postcards is stare off one side and go back on the other and say okay for candidate profiles you have to go online but send back this postcard with your checked mark and your signature actually let me dovetail this until my next point so we have been thinking of ways to make registration easier and so forth so actually using technology what I'm very happy about and excited about is for the first time people can now register to be a candidate via their smartphone we set up a texting platform where people can register smartphone or tablet people all they have to do is to text GoLNCO that's G-O-N-C-O into 9-5-5-7-7 and of course standard text rates will apply but basically if you opt into this text platform you'll get a link immediately that takes you right to our website and you can actually register as a candidate right from your phone it'll take a few minutes so very attractive especially for millennials that are used to dealing with everything on the phone yes GoLNCO to 9-5-5-7-7 9-5-5-7-7 ok so we got a lot of resources on the page and we're just going to have time to go through these very quickly but for our next slide it's not a slide but this is a snapshot of your website here so over on the left you have information about the neighborhood commission office on the upper left then this is about neighborhood boards and the resources they have so there's a member guidebook you guys have a big informational system you collect everyone together in the memorial hall and tell them this is what you have to do you have to sign up for sunshine training videos and sign the form and take the Pledge of Allegiance and swear to uphold the constitution of the United States and the state of Hawaii there's a lot of really great member graphics in there which I don't know that I had seen before and I just wanted to touch on a couple of those but the next slide has about neighborhood boards on there and where you can go to get maybe the next one after that we've got some maybe it didn't make it up there but yes that one thank you so you can go on there and find out agendas minutes board schedules and you can sign up to get them there so if you're on a borderline you could get two or three if you want you could get everybody's agendas and minutes there's all kinds of resources on that page you can see when it's broadcast on Olelo your boundary districts and all of that also very important board contact information how to get in touch with your board members okay we have board chairs so they're required to leave one type of contact information okay so either via email or phone you can contact your board representatives and talk to them directly about your concerns okay and we've also so it's just the board chair members not the individuals actually no the whole board the whole board is there okay so you can email me on there if you don't want to email me at Think Tech Hawaii we've got some really great infographics there which I think should be just for basic people for any board members be respectful of every law be respectful of who comes before the board participate wait to be recognized keep informed refrain from side conversations you know write resolutions for yourself call for the question when you believe enough discussion has gone through these meetings happen very fast they're like two hours they're supposed to keep it under two and a half hours but people are fatiguing by a certain period of time being a chair of course anybody can be the chair who is on the board and the board the first order is to elect the chair yes elected by his or her peers his or her peers okay and yes and it's not an easy job because you have to be impartial you have to prepare your agenda know the rules you've got to be firm but gentle you've got to you've got to rule with some aloha there but if someone's just you know going on and on or acting without aloha you have the ability and the right and the obligation to kind of say yeah well they can expel them from the meeting you're going to be expelled from the meeting haven't had it happen and then this is of course the time for people to come in and talk their grievances their complaints their concerns their comments and their their thanks to different people as well and to and speak directly to their representatives so after every representative talks there's a chance for the board to talk and then for the members of the community to talk directly and to come up on the phone as well we have other best practices on there and then some best practices for if you're on the board and then finally we've got the last one on there because I think we're a little short on time which is the duties of the neighborhood assistants so the neighborhood assistants are these men and women that go out and they basically take all the minutes of the board they make sure that everything's set up they make sure they work with the chair and the members are filed on time in accordance with the state sunshine law they also advise the chair in running the meeting properly to follow Robert's rules parliamentary procedure so they do a lot and I'm very lucky that I have a great staff very committed to the mission I know they enjoy working with the boards well you know it's hard work but it's probably gratifying work because they're really just touching the pulse and he's great and just right on top of everything and just like you would want something to be really dedicated public servant and that's heartening to see that especially you know in an age when people they don't have to be like that but in our case I think we had Russell before that who was also very conscientious about that and then they have a lot of information when they go back and have to transcribe everything and make sure that everything is made in the election process as well so maybe in the future we can get some postcards where we can mail them back in and vote I don't know how we increase participation but if we're up to 20,000 now it wasn't 40 as we get the word out maybe we can figure out some way that your staff can do some electronic marketing or maybe I can come back again during the voting period to help remind people to go out and vote too I'd be happy to come back absolutely before our elections we will have you back here in all the boards I'll be happy because those do come up a lot and it's it's really great that you I think you probably enjoy your work a lot I love it yeah I love it and you got a great staff you are housed in Kapala Mahale Kapala Mahale so right by Costco makes it easy when you finish working and pop over there good stuff we are unfortunately out of time Sean but it's a delight to have you on the system of democracy in our city that is a template that we have learned today really for the rest of the country in the world at a time when people really need to say I don't like whatever or they should do something about you know who they is it's you so if you're watching you are they so when you say they should do something about they look in the mirror and point that finger and that is you and the way that you do that is you get out there you're nonprofit or you stand out with a sign and whatever it is you want to do but it is up to you to be a participant in this society as best as you can do and this is one way that you can do it unfortunately we are out of time here for this one so we have to wrap it up I am Winston Welch this is out and about on the think tech live streaming network series and we are delighted to have been talking with Sean Hamamoto who is the executive secretary of the Honolulu neighborhood commission office for more information or just google Honolulu neighborhood commission office so thanks for tuning in we welcome your feedback thanks especially to our broadcast engineer Robert McLean our floor manager Eric Kalander and to J. Piedell our executive producer who puts it all together I will see you every other Monday at 3 p.m. for more of out and about on think tech Hawaii aloha everyone