 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community Matters here. Well, aloha! How are you doing? Gordon, all the techs are here. Welcome to a wonderful and exciting episode of Hibachi Talk. This is going to be an interesting one today because we're going to talk a little bit about politics. And I normally don't talk politics per se, and I don't endorse candidates, but I've invited every candidate running for any office if they want to come on the show. Please do, and we can get to know you a little bit better, and so on. So I have Natalie Yawasa here. Natalie is a CPA. She's also a CFE, and that's a Certified Fraud Examiner. So you've also got the ad as your background, and you're going to be running for City Council District 4, your candidate there. So and I've known you for a number of years because I used to live in Hawaii and so on, and you're one of the things I've always appreciated about you is you're always active in the neighborhood board. You're also known as the bike mom. You're very active in City Council. When I was, you know, with the Hadam administration, I actually was one of the few I think, few, notice I say few, that look forward to you coming in because you had your facts and your figures and everything in order, and you were bringing up points with the facts. There was not a motion into this thing, it was just facts and figures. So I appreciate the fact that you've agreed to come on this show. Thank you for having me. This is going to be fun. So we're going to talk about transparency in government and fiscal responsibility, which is like, tell me about it. Is that really true? But let's first just give a background on yourself. Your CPA, CFE, so just like, where did you grow up? Well, I'm from Wisconsin. I've been in Hawaii for over 30 years, lived in Hawaii Kai with my husband for about 30 years. I have two teenage boys, and I've been very active in the community and at the City Council State Legislature as well. Yeah, you're everywhere. I mean, every time I turn around, you're looking and you're doing this kind of stuff. So let's talk about, so why are you, we'll get into this. So why are you running for City Council? Why would you want to do something as crazy as that? Yeah, you know, it is really pretty crazy. And the first thing I had to do was make sure that it was okay with my family because there's so much involved in it. But, you know, I've paid attention to what's been going on at City Council and within the city for at least a decade now. And there are so many things going on that I think are not done correctly or for the benefit of the people actually in general. And so I believe with my background and my activities in the communities, I can actually improve things. Yeah, you bring ten years of experience. Yeah, even though you haven't been on City Council, I mean, you've been there enough that you bring ten years of experience to the table. So you're going to, this is your second try where you've done it, you've tried it once before. Yes. You got close. Yeah, actually I did pretty well for having not very much money, 22% of the vote, and that was actually I thought pretty good. And not knowing what is involved. Yeah, and not knowing what's involved the campaign and so on. But you're taking kind of an approach that I like. You're doing some things that are unique. And I'm going to bring it up just because we've talked about signwaving, okay? Just a signwaving situation. So you've been asking your constituents what you think about signwaving. I have a comment I'm going to add to that I didn't post on your Facebook. So what's your thought on this? Well, I've been advocating for safe roadways for everybody for over a decade. And you know, signwaving is inherently dangerous. I mean, we're out there saying, hey, look at me, here I am. And you know, we have a lot of distractions already with people texting. So I just, I won't be doing it. Yeah, and I appreciate your position on that. And I can tell you one time, signwaving. Well, I was signwaving for someone who was running for office. I saw a bus hit a light pole. You know, the Mirana bus hit a light pole because he got distracted looking at everybody that was signwaving. So, and what I have discovered on my inside side, signwaving is not so much, in my opinion, for whatever it's worth. It's not so much for the benefit of the candidate. It's the candidates competing with each other to see how it can get the most people out signwaving. That's really what it's really become. It's become the signwaving wars, in my opinion. No one's, it's not, you know, name recognition to someone. It's the candidates, you know, saying, well, I got 100 people out. You only got 40. Well, you know, as far as that goes, I've also heard that people pay for people to stand out on the sidewalk. I've heard that, too. And it's just, it's not a good thing. Okay. So anyway, we beat that one to death and we'll come back. So you know, so you've been involved in the community. Do you have a particular platform that you're going to be advocating or pushing for or such? Yeah. So, you know, we always talk about platform, right? But I'd kind of like to step back just a little bit and talk about a foundation. Okay. And that is, back in 1958, the U.S. Congress passed a Code of Ethics. And that is going to be my foundation. It's pretty much the way I've operated already anyway. But I feel it's really important for people to understand that that's where I'm coming from. You know, it includes things like just doing the right thing, you know, no paid pay-to-play kind of stuff. All those things that people say, you know, wait a minute, why are they doing that? That's not right. So that's where I'm starting from. But my platform then is several things. And I think you're probably aware, anybody who's been out there reading the papers is aware that affordable housing, homeless, those are big issues. Right. Infrastructure, you know, even though we've been paying about $100 million a year to repave our roads, there are many that are still pothold. And then along with that is the sewer and water main replacement that we have. Right. That's a lot that has to be done in that area. And you touched on government transparency, good governance, as well as money. Yeah, money. So those are my big issues. And you bring some good talent to the table with your CPA background and the CFE background, which I think, you know, the fraud examiner piece is going to be a nice piece for you to get when you're looking at the budget. So we've been looking at the budget, you know, for over the years. Now I will say on a transparency side, I will give the Hanuman credit for the transparency side. Up until his reign, he reigned, up until when he was the mayor, the budget was never published online. And so under his mandate, we ended up publishing the budgets online. And that has continued. I think once it gets up there, it's hard to stop it. Not necessarily everybody's looking at it, but the budget is there. So for the viewers, if you want to just go to Sydney County, Honolulu budget, and it will come up. And you can get right to the website. You can get every bit of detail from every department. And you can see the increases and what's going on. And I have to tell you about one that just blew me away from last year. So anyway, so let's talk about this year's budget. And you can pop up a slide. I think we have a slide on the 2019 operating budget, which is proposed at 2.81. That's 18. So let's stay here. We'll stay at 18. We'll come to 19. The surprise will come in a minute. So this was fiscal year proposed in operating budget in 2018, 2.45 billion. And when you look, and that was adopted and a 5.1% increase, I'd like to get a 5.1% increase in my social security every year. That'd be kind of nice. That'd be terrific. And the contributions and so on. And the capital improvement budget is another is approximately 956 million. So a lot of those dollars come from different federal funds and all other kinds of things. But the operating budget comes from essentially our property tax. A lot of it. Most of it. And in fact, yes. And other fees and things. And other fees that come into it. So 900, what is it? 900? Let me look at that. Oh, billion. That's what I always tell you, it says 2.45 billion. So I try to give people to reflect back on what's the difference between a million and a billion? Because we really have a hard time. Three more zeros on the end. Three more zeros on the end. Right? Lots more zeros on the end. So a million seconds is 12 days and a billion seconds is 32 years. So when you're looking at this, this is not millions as in 12 days. This is B as in billions as in two years, essentially one lifetime. It's one lifetime is what we've got here as the amount of this budget in this city. And it keeps growing. And it keeps growing. And I don't see any desire to lower it. Right. And I think that's been one of my frustrations is we keep filling the budget to match the assessed values and the increases in the real property taxes rather than looking at, well, where can we cut money? And not really cut programs, but just cut smartly so that we're not wasting money. And I think there's, I don't want to get too much into it, but there's some departments that are redundant. And I don't know why we have some of the redundancies in there, other than we're just filling seats. And we've seen the audits where they've got departments at the state anyway that are sitting around. This auditor can't understand what it is they're doing. So one of the things that was implemented by Caldwell under city managing director Embers Shin was this zero-based budgeting. So rather than taking the last year's budget and then adding a percent for everybody, they started zero and then they are supposed to justify every piece that they put in there. And I think that we should be doing that with the employees as well because that's a significant portion of the budget. And maybe what we need is more people over in this department and fewer over here. And I think something like that, if we did it that way, it would bring that out. And I agree. I remember at one point when every department had their own accounting person. But then at one point the accounting got consolidated, reduced the number of individuals in there. There was pluses and minus that. I remember when we built a motor pool, took all the cars away from the departments and created a motor pool, reduced the car count significantly along with the costs. So there's all kinds of opportunities sitting out there, but I don't see any movement in that space. No. And I haven't either. In fact, it's been, what I've seen is a lot of inserting by the council members of projects that are in their area and some things that are just, it's not right. For example, they, for a while they were putting grants, line iteming grants in there. And you know, they're buried. So people out in the public really don't see that. The news doesn't generally pick it up. And so that's just one of the policies that was not good. Yeah. And even though the budget's out there, the volume of documentation surrounding it is onerous. And a lot of people aren't going to spend the time going through all of it. I'd certainly encourage people to read the executive summary, at least just read the executive summary. And then look at a couple of the graphs and we'll, well, let's pop up one of the graphs. Now we'll pop up what, the 2018, I think I have up there, we'll show you the, this is the 2018 operating budget and the resources where, so this is, this is where we get the money. So you can sort of, real property tax. You nailed it, right? Right. 35% of it is coming from real property tax and the rest are from a whole number of different fees and like. But the other one that always intrigues me is carryover. Right. So what that is, is that's, it's about a hundred million and it's been sitting in there year after year. And if you remember from the, when this surcharge extension came up, it was a question by some of the legislators because it means that money was set aside and budgeted, but not used. And that happens year after year after year. And so if we have that money sitting there, it means that there's some place where we can cut. Right. So here, and you said it, zero base budgeting. If we're truly doing zero base budgeting, wouldn't that go away? Yes. But it's not going, guess what 2019 slide still has it in it? I haven't seen the 19. Well, I'm going to surprise you with it, right? Okay, thank you. So we're going to take, we're going to take a little short break. We take a little short break to pay some bills, do a commercial and we'll come back and we'll talk about 2019 and then some more things on how we can help manage this budget. Thank you. We'll be back in a minute. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Match day is no ordinary day. The pitch hallowed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds, game plans are made with responsibility in mind, celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff, MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your match day experience. If you drink, never drive. The host of Voice of the Veteran. Everyone here live every Thursday afternoon at 1pm on Think Tech Hawaii. As a fellow veteran and veteran's advocate with over 23 years experience serving veterans, active duty and family members, I hope to educate everyone on benefits and accessibility services by inviting professionals in the field to appear on the show. In addition, I hope to plan on inviting guest veterans to talk about their concerns and possibly offer solutions. As we navigate and work together through issues, we can all benefit. Please join me every Thursday at 1pm for the Voice of the Veteran. Aloha. Aloha. Go to the Tech Star here. Welcome to another exciting and thrilling episode of Hibachi Talk Part 2. I have Natalie Alasa here. She's running for City Council District 4, which is Waikai. All the way through Waikiki up to Kuala Basin. Oh, so that was Charles Dijou at one point. Yeah. Okay. Oh, so that's, yeah. And it's... What's Ryan? What's that? I'm trying to remember the city council. Who's the current? Trevor O'Sau. Trevor O'Sau. Okay. So he's in that spot too. So is he running? I... Or is he term limited out? No, he's not. Okay. So you got many candidates? You have pulled papers. Pulled papers. I think I'm the only one who's filed so far. He's only filed so far. I hope it will get you out there front. So we're talking about transparency in government, you know, fiscal accountability and so on. And before we left, we talked about zero-based budgeting, which you think is a great thing, which I do too. And so 2018, they had 27% of the budget was carryover. Right. So what have we got in 2019? Can we pop up the slide and want to see what's in carryover? And I don't see carryover. Yet we have a two-point... Well, this is 2018 expenditures, so... Oh, that's the expenditures. Oh, I don't... Okay, that's the expenditures. Yeah, that's the current fiscal year. That's the current fiscal year expenditures. Yes. I'm sorry, I missed it. You have to know what that was by any chance. Regardless, they're going to use it again. Well, yeah, they've, I mean, carried it over year after year. And so he must be cutting stuff somewhere to have that carryover. Right. So we go zero-paced budgeting and you have a 20% of your budget approximately is carryover from the previous year. You start at zero, that goes back into the general fund, or if they're from different funds, whatever fund they go into. Right. And we start again. Yeah. Okay, do we have to pass a piece of legislation to make that happen? I think we just have to have good people in the council who are willing to make that change happen when they adopt it. When they adopt it. I think it would be an excellent idea, especially when you look at 40% of the operating budget that doesn't provide any services to the public. By that, I mean our debt service and retirement funds. The funding of all that. It's about 40% of the operating budget. Yeah. Well, the retirement and fringe benefits are huge. And we have a huge unfunded liability out there too. So we really need to watch what we're doing with the budget. I think our unfunded liability is like $14 billion or something like that. An astronomical amount of money. So how are you going to get everybody to nudge along with us when you get into the seat? You know, people ask me, well, you're just one person. How can you make a change? And I think part of it is just education. There are things in here like the payroll taxes where if you don't understand how it works, you really are in no position to say, well, that really should be cut. And I've said time after time again that the FICA is overstated in there. So part of it I think is education. Part of it is also making the public aware that they should be concerned about this because it impacts them either directly or indirectly depending on what is being spent. And then also I think, you know, I know people, there's a lot of compromise that's involved. And I am open. I listen to people. So I think that's an important characteristic and trying to make sure that things are done properly. So those are some of the things that I would try to do. So one of the things I had mentioned to you earlier is that, you know, there's programs that some governments have done called spend management where they bring in, issue an RFP. They bring in third parties to look at various departments and how they're spending their money. I'd love to get rid of this user-lose-it mentality. And that's what's there. That's why we have to carry over this part because people say, well, I budgeted it last year and I don't want to, I either got to spend it or I'm going to lose it next year. Well, how about the fact that you're going to lose it next year anyway? If you budget for it and you can't deliver on what you said you were going to do, then we're not blaming you, but don't expect it to carry over into your department for the next year. Yeah, so one of the things I wanted to look at, first of all, I think that RFP that you mentioned, having a company come in and actually look at what is being spent and how things can be done more efficiently is definitely worth taking a look at. But I just lost my train of thought. Been there, done that. I do it all the time. You should be my age. Shoot. Okay, so we come back to the fact that the spending is there and I've got to bring up something, and I should have put the slide up, but last year in 2018, one of the departments, one of their administrative levels, had eight employees in it. Their salary budget doubled. Oh. Doubled. The same number of people. And it was a budget issue. Yeah, no kidding. How can that happen? That's a good question. Just because the budget is divided into salary and current expenses and the current expenses is supplies, equipment, that kind of thing. And so you're saying the salary portion? The salary portion of that budget doubled. It went up $900,000 for eight people. Went up. Wow. I know, and I said this got to be a typo. I mean, it has to be a typo. It can't be right. I mean, there must have been something wrong. Yeah, something doesn't sound right there. That's why I didn't put it up. I said, it's got to be an error that was in there. But if it's not, and I look at 2019, which just came out and I haven't looked at the detail, if that's in there with the new rate, then I'm like, wow. Yeah. That's something that would really need to be looked at. And, you know, there are other things in there. And I think it's really important for people to understand when they do things like vote on charter amendments, what the implication of that is. For example, we had the Office of Climate Change and then the new Land Management Department, right? And so when the Climate Change Office was discussed, they said, oh, we're going to have a grant that will fund that. And so I actually looked at the Office on Housing, which had two people. And I said, OK, well, let's talk about the cost because we're going to pay for it at some point. And so I was thinking it would be about a half a million dollars. Well, so we found out afterward the grant covers the executive director only for two years. And they staffed it with six people. Yeah. So, you know, we're looking at a huge amount of cost that voters I don't think knew about. And I was there, and I certainly didn't know about it. And then on the land management side, the idea was to pull people from the different departments because it had been kind of separated and so to make it more efficient, pull from different departments and make a new land management department that would control all of the city lands. So we were talking about, I guess, nine people. Well, the current budget, if I counted correct, has 28 positions. A little larger than nine. Yeah. And two million dollars for that. So, you know, with the increase every year, this is going to carry on now. And we can't keep doing this. We can't keep adding people. We can't keep adding people. And here's the thing to remember. These people will retire. And then these people will then be entitled to their retirement benefits. Right? That's going to be added to that continuing to grow pot. Right. So, yeah. So you nailed it. And you talked about the, what's that department? Environmental? Environmental services. Services. And all the different departments. I mean, there's like, when it comes to global warming, global warming, we have like now between the state and the city, like four or five different agencies. And I'm still trying. And one of them, when the state one got nailed, because they said they couldn't know what they've done in a year. Oh. And they've got a dozen people in there, eight to 12 people. And the auditor came in, there's no plan, no program, there's nothing, but there's a bunch of people there sitting there, we don't have one. So I agree with it. We should be looking at, where are all these FTEs going? And where are they? Yeah. And what are they doing? I mean, a bunch of spares when I came into the city and I never failed them. We move people around. Yeah. So, you know, it tells us what the priorities are. Because if you look at the ethics commission, they are funded for six people and they've had a backlog for years. Yeah. And I think that's one of our most important departments because, you know, they handle people who might be taking advantage of their position or the lobbyists, you know, so they're really important, in my opinion, but we have more people in the office of climate change. Yeah. So more people in the office of climate change than ethics. You just nailed it. That's the issue. Yeah. And so one of the things I've actually asked the mayor to do is expand the hotline. I guess there's an integrity hotline that's within the city. So only city employees know about it and I think it's only open from like 7 to 4 p.m. And we really need to expand that to 24 hours a day. People have to be able to report anonymously. We have to have confidence that any reports are going to be followed up on. Right. And this is actually really cheap, relatively speaking, these days to do this because it's become such an important issue, not just here, but across the U.S. Oh, yeah. The ethics department, when Chuck Toto was in charge of the ethics department, I really liked that man. I tell you, every time I wanted to do something, I sent him an email or a letter. I said, okay, I want to do this. And he'd come back and he'd say, here's your pluses, here's your minuses. And I would go, if you were me, what would you do? And he'd say, well, I wouldn't do that, but I'd okay this. And I said, okay, fine. Then that's exactly what I'm going to do. Yeah. And I met with him every year for just a refresher, just to stay on top of it. Because it gets kind of complicated. Yeah, it can, especially when we're such a small island. We know a lot of people. We have a lot of different relationships. And so we need to be careful about those conflicts that might come up. Yeah, we have the one degree of separation. Yeah. Speaking of losing your train of thought, I had an idea and it just went right out of my head. I was going to ask you about a particular thing. So what else have you got this year that's been keeping you up at night? Well, so we didn't talk too much about the capital improvement budget, but it's been in the news that there's 44 million dollars in there for rail operations. Now, this is similar to, if you or I put our groceries on our mortgage, you know, it's not good policy. So that really needs to be taken out of there. And then with respect to the rail budgets themselves, we have, again, looking at what our priorities are based on what is being funded, seven people in public relations, nobody in internal audit that I'm aware of. Wow. So, you know, we have lots of people out there pumping out the information. We got our picture of the week. We got this nice meeting going on out in Aina Jaina at the library. They did cut out the coloring books, but still we have a lot of this stuff where we really need to cut that out because we're not getting good information to begin with. Right. And we need somebody who can look inside each of these areas in the rail, look at those contracts. In some of the cases, the contracts were not done in our best interest, and that's why we have these massive change orders now. But I know the state auditor is looking at some of that, and I'd be very interested in finding out, you know, hearing what he has found out because the legislature gave him some great latitude in what he can do over there. But on an ongoing basis, we should still have somebody in internal audit in looking at the procedures in part in how they're doing things. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. And even if it isn't someone that's part of... I'd rather it be someone that's not part of the department. Right? Because then they're still on the independent side, and they're ethically responsible for what they're looking at. Oh, no, I agree. Taking $44 million if you're operating budget and funding it with capital money, it's not smart. It's like running up your credit card. Exactly. And then paying off just the monthly payments. And paying your minimum off every month. No, it just doesn't work. It's not fiscally responsible. Yeah, I would love... Well, I would love someone go in there and just do a massive audit on the spending and what's happened in that space. We actually really need an investigation of RAIL and somebody who understands contracts, who can also look at relationships and because there have been some pretty harsh accusations out there. Yeah. And so we need somebody to follow up on those kinds of things. Okay, so last thing we're just... Believe it or not, we burned through it all. We're out of time. Any last message before we wrap this up? I just hope that people, before they vote, will go out and take a look at the candidates very thoroughly because we hear so many times that, oh, my friend voted for this person just because they knew about them and that's not really a very responsible way to... Yeah, learn your candidates and get out to vote. I mean, our voter turnout is terrible. Well, that's another thing. That's totally atrocious. But yeah, please get out to vote and if you complain about it and you didn't vote, then you know what? You deserve what you get. But no, it was my philosophy. Natalie, thank you so much for being on the show. I wish you the best of luck. You're welcome, Gordon. We'll see as we get closer to the final days how things are turning out. Yes. Anyway, thank you all for watching your Batchy Talk. We'll be back here in a week. I hope so. We'll see what happens. And like I say at the end of every show, how are you doing?