 Then go it back think tech community matters. I'm Jay Fidel and we have Jesse Broder van Dyke He's the communications director of the city and County of Honolulu. Wow. Thanks for coming down Jesse Thanks for having me Jay. It's a pleasure. Very excited Can you tell us about your life and career that led you to this fabulous job with the city? And by the way, Jesse's office. Can you point it out? Where is your office? Right here. There it is. There's Jesse's office, okay? Right there in Honolulu, Holly. So tell us how you got to be where you are Well, actually my first job in communications was right here in this building. I worked at KCCN Doing traffic segments from their helicopter reporter back then and producing them every 10 minutes for air Then after college, I got a job at KHON and worked my way up to producer there I got to produce the 530 World News with Joe Moore And while I was producing that I was concentrating on Congress and the presidency and following our local delegation and I applied for a long-shot job in Senator Akaka's office and ended up getting it and had a great experience working up there for six years I was amazing time in Hoy's history to have Senator Inouye and Senator Akaka with so much seniority up there and getting to witness the first way born president be elected and when Senator retired I got the opportunity to come back home and work for Mayor Caldwell and Work for my hometown every day, which is a really really rewarding experience Okay, there's a few lessons in there one is go to school and film and communications Two is if you don't get the job you want reapply And third is you know produce TV you can come down here and help us anytime I see all right, and then you know you can have Jesse's job. I like your job So you know you just came off an election that must have been very exciting and maybe a little bit stressful Tell us about how it is to be the communications director Of the city and County of Honolulu in the middle of a hard-fought Mayor mayoral race. Yeah, it was a major learning experience for me I've never actually had to work on a campaign before because the whole six years I worked for Senator Akaka He was on his last term We didn't even know if we were gonna have an opponent until the very last day that people could file and former congressman did you Filed on the last day and held a press conference right outside of my office right right here and Day went to work and it ended up being a pretty negative campaign. They probably spent a million dollars attacking my boss And we still had to run the city every day. So we already have a full day of work There is a separate campaign staff that is responsible for Responding to specific things from the campaign But if they end up attacking a city issue for example, they did a press conference about moving the Hawaii Kite Satellite City Hall Which where it's actually perfectly good explanation for the Landlord wanted to double the rent and we didn't think that was a good value for taxpayers But I didn't know that Then when they had the press conference So I had to drop what I was doing and spend a couple hours hunting that down But we were able to respond and the story ended up coming up just fine has to be able to respond to anything Right, that's why I enjoy having you on the show. I can ask you any question I get to be an idiot savant and a little bit about everything and the best part of my job is I can call any of the Directors at any time on their cell phone and get straight to the expert Another great side of that job. So here we are looking forward Okay digging in you know with the new administration trying to get our hands around You know lots of issues that that need to be resolved And I just I want to know what's on your plate as you see it What are the critical issues that have to be dealt with and and you know discuss with the public? Well, I think everybody knows that homelessness is a major issue on a Wahoo. It continues to be I think we've made some real progress We've created a lot of housing. We housed over 800 veterans We're doing innovative things like housing first the Holly Maliola Navigation Center. Slow down and tell me what these are about. Okay. The Holly Maliola Navigation Center is the innovative containers Units that we put out in Sand Island IHS is running it. It's a I just a great organization really great Connie Mitchell and IHS have really stepped up and made a major major impact and Miracle was hugely thankful for the work that they do We all should be yeah So they've got about 80 people living down there Everybody's there for less than three months and they get transitioned out to some other form of housing We found that there's some homeless individuals who are not open to going into shelters or other Short-term things. So Holly Maliola is sort of outdoors, but you get your own private container unit So it's sort of a first step to moving into housing and IHS like has time to evaluate people and figure out What the best type of housing is some people are eligible for veterans vouchers Some people are ready for housing first which in which you put people into units and then give them services Instead of the old model where you require them to be clean and sober and ready to go before you'll give them housing So that's been very effective and it's we've had like the US HUD staff come out here and take a look at it as a Possible best practices. Yeah, well we talk about your relationship with the federal government in a later part of the show but This this is not by any means the solution to the problem must be more coming down the pike How do you see it unfolding in the course of this next term? What what do we need to do? What can we do where the problem is going to be? Well at the city level we're chipping away at it by creating more housing Big underlying part of the problem is that people need services for a lot of homeless individuals Mental illness or drug abuse problems, and they need professional help. So we're working with the state on making more of those types of services available and Trying to take every facet all these innovative different ways housing first the navigation center continuing to fund shelters and Trying to work with our nonprofit partners to create solutions Would you agree with me that a lot of the steps that have been taken not only by the city But by so many charitable organization nonprofits of every kind of nature in fact government agencies state and federal as well That largely cosmetic in the sense that we have, you know structural economic social problems in this community that you know are always going to be pushing people toward homelessness that is wage is not high enough and Cost of occupancy is too high and the two they don't meet unless you change one or the other of those of those elements There's absolutely a number of people living at the IHS family shelter who are working every day But still can't afford to pay rent or move their family into housing. So that's absolutely true I think you know, there's always this rumor that people get one-way tickets from the mainland out here I don't think that there's government institutions doing that But I do think a lot of people believe that Hawaii is a great place to move to they've heard about this place They want to come here. It is in my opinion the best place in the world But of course it has one of the highest costs of living. So people come here. They end up being homeless They don't have any family here to help them and they can't afford a plane ticket home so we've partnered with Hawaii Tourism and Lodging Association and they're making Offering to buy tickets for people who have family members who are willing to meet them back home and and take them into Hope housing back where they're from yeah It's in their interest to try to minimize the homeless problem because it's not good for tourism for tourists to see homeless everywhere Definitely, but are we making progress? Do you think I mean and if we're not how do we make progress? I mean nobody would say let's stamp out homelessness because it doesn't work that way But maybe somebody would say let's manage it so that it doesn't become a blight For the for the ordinary people ordinary middle-class working and home home to people Absolutely, you know you take for example Poa Park on King Street that had homeless individuals living in it for quite a long time there's no bathroom there, so they're using the bathroom at the piano store Nick next door and Through consistent enforcement going every day every day. We were able to make clear the park and there's a senior housing Building right next door and now when we go by we see seniors enjoying the park and they tell us you know for years They weren't comfortable with going there, so you know we we certainly don't want to be cruel Part of the enforcement is creating housing and giving people options, but we also don't want to tolerate Individuals or groups of people taking over public space and monopolizing it only for themselves and making it so that seniors kids Families can't use our parks, so I do think we've been very successful at cleaning up parks HPD aggressively enforces park closure hours all over the island now During the day our stored property ordinance enforcement crew goes by and does regular enforcement So I think if you look at places like Alamo on a beach park Waikiki, Poa Park, Thomas Square things are better definitely not solved And like you said all we're ever going to do is make progress I think we've made progress and we're going to have to keep keep making progress but you know every year new people become homeless and new people move here and So all we can do is work with our nonprofit partners and try to help as many as we can What about raising the minimum wage? What about rent control on rents in the ordinary market? We're raising the minimum wage would certainly help Like I said, there's people who have jobs to jobs even who can't make ends meet There's also other individuals who aren't trying to work and need like mental health care So we are we're trying to create more affordable housing We're doing TOD incentives transit oriented development incentives along the rail line We're working with developers and trying to require more affordable housing It's always a balance because they'll say if we make too much of a requirement Then they're going to stop building more housing So we want housing for everyone right both high-end low-end middle income housing available for everyone There's a definite need for more units on this island We know that every year that goes by more and more people are going to move here It's nothing we can do to stop that all we can do is plan for it Some more housing especially in the urban corridor along the rail line where people can ride to work in school And less development out in the country because that just leaves some more traffic So I do think the rail line is going to help a lot with Housing unfortunately, it's still years away. We should have done it 20 years ago But we are moving forward and very optimistic and enthusiastic about getting to write it in a few years Okay. Well, he said the magic word. He said rail Okay, no discussion of the city and the communications director of the city like Jesse Broder Van Dyke is complete without asking him about rail I'm going to take a short break to let him prepare his answer They would be back. We'll ask him. You'll see we'll be right back. Hi. I'm Donna Blanchard I host the show center stage on think-tech Wednesdays at 2 p.m. And this is crystal. That's right I'm crystal and I host clock talk on Tuesday mornings. I like watching Donna's show I like watching your show because you talk about you're not afraid to really dive into issues that are important and Sometimes they're a little shocking and you always bring us information that is sometimes that underbelly that we need to know It's important. Well said. Well, I like yours because you can find any topic in any type of character But you will find that source which brought them to the product of that creative process And I bet that's like the most important thing is the process. So I think yeah, I do I think it's all about the process and I think we'll find world peace when we know each other's stories So, thank you very much for bringing that to us join us on think-tech Anytime we're back That's Jesse Broda van Dyke. He is the communications director of the city and County of Honolulu telling us about what's on his plate these days Now the election is over. So let's talk about rail you raised it. Mm-hmm. That's going on with rail Absolutely. Well, I can tell you personally. I've been involved in this project for a long time I had the honor and privilege to be in centering noise appropriations committee room when the Department of Transportation signed the full funding grant agreement That is a contract that is in-law. So regardless of the change of administration The federal government is committed to paying that money to the city for the project Obviously having a new administration is concerning The president-elect did say that he supports infrastructure and wants to fix our roads and bridges. So we'll see but we're optimistic You know Honolulu has the second worst traffic in the nation It's unbelievable. It's gone to this point. We're only Los Angeles has worse traffic than we experience every single day Everyone knows families spend two hours commuting in from Ewa Beach. It's a major impact on quality of life Also costs money it costs gas It's you have to sit there in your car being all irritated when you could be reading the newspaper on the train I've lived in two cities that have great public transportation Boston and Washington DC And it's so convenient and easy that people of all income levels take it people commute to Congress on DC Metro from all over Virginia, Maryland and DC Obviously it's inconvenient now to build the rail project. It's gonna be inconvenient when it comes down Dillingham Boulevard and comes into town It should have happened a long time ago. Well, we can do is do it now once it opens I really believe it'll revolutionize people's lives, especially out on the West side It's transportation equity. We have you know people who come over the poly Europe on Kalani on the highway I have much easier commutes than people who come from the West side so this this will be opportunity for them obviously it's costing money and We already know that the project needs more money So we'll need more help from the federal government or the state legislature to make that happen so What we have here is is a You know linear line Which doesn't go up the hills as you mentioned doesn't go over the poly doesn't go to East a while Who doesn't go to the University for that matter not in this iteration? How are we going to help people who you know need to do transportation? Public transportation from those areas, you know I mean there are some who feel that money's been drained off the bus system to put in the rail And so the bus system isn't as good as it might have been How are we going to serve the people who are not on that line? Well, first of all the rail project does not affect bus funding because it has a dedicated funding Only federal funds and the GT surcharge are being spent on the rail project. The bus funds are separate The full funding grant agreement did call for bus funds to be used if there was a shortfall But mayor Caldwell has already said he's absolutely not going to do that So we're going to the legislature to ask for their help When mayor Caldwell went down two years ago to ask for the GT extension He originally asked for it to be extended in perpetuity, which would allow heart to start planning now for extensions I think everybody agrees it should go to UH and it should go further Into Kapolei and the line that was selected was selected because that was the most they could build with the funding that they had available at the time several years ago If we can get the funding they can start planning to go to UH now It would be great to do that before they stop building the project because we they would still have all the equipment and Momentum yeah, plus once you stop it'll probably be years and years before it started up again Yeah So I think I would love to see it go to UH. I would love to see it next spur go out to Mililani someday We'd love to see it go further down to the west side, but this was just step one. You got to start somewhere Yes, but it's going to cost plenty probably more than we ever expected it started at I want to say Less than five billion now. It's way more than that. And you know Parsons Brinkerhoff made the big dig in Boston cost them three times more than what they thought so, you know, it's a benchmark Yeah, I'm thankful you're doing way better than the big Yes, I was there the whole time they're building a thing and they didn't finish it when I went to college And I have friends who live in Boston now and they're like this area is really nice with this great park and everything And I'm like, you know what we went through it for you to enjoy that park It's great now that it's finished. So I guess you know the question is Are we going to have enough money? You know, there are people who say that it's a great project But can the city and county actually support it with or without federal funds? I mean and the issue was I ultimately the one thing you have control over the city as control over is real property taxes And there are people out there who say well We must have an increase in real property taxes to pay for this extraordinary Multi-billion dollar project. Are they coming increases in property tax? Well, the city cannot use property taxes to fund the project the Charter Amendment that created heart Specifies that they can only use the GT surcharge and federal funds So that won't happen the city will need to pay to run the system Currently the city subsidizes the bus system something like a hundred million dollars a year It's one of the biggest expenses in the city budget But obviously it's a huge service for lots of people who wouldn't be able to get to their jobs or live the life So they do without that So the rail will be subsidized just like the buses but the rail will be driverless So you you got to pay if you know a salary bus driver for every single bus on the road with the rail You've got the equivalent of 20 buses worth of passengers in an automated train that no one's driving And it's just being monitored from the system So it has the potential to be cheaper in long run than just paying to run buses and Import petroleum. I hope you'll invite us to the opening. We want to be there. Okay Automated train. Yes. Yes, unfortunately, it'll be after America almost term is over So I might not be the one to be able to invite you will still know Yeah, I hope whoever's the mayor in four years will invite me to so talk about multi-modal transportation You know, one of the great frustrations is that the city does not have jurisdiction in Kakaakawa really counts And if for my money, you know, that should be changed the city should have jurisdiction in the state Hcda should, you know, leave it and let you do it the way you do the rest of the city But the other thing is You know, we have the King Street King Street bike lane But we don't have anything in Kamuki just yet We have plans and we have talked about it forever, but nothing We had Frank Fosse built a lot of bike lanes, but they seem to be either gone or misused or unused And I mean, what's the plan there if we care about multi-modal transportation if we really care about bike lanes We build them everywhere, wouldn't we? Yeah, and that's what Maricall will wants to do Honolulu is behind in terms of bike lanes compared to cities on the mainland We have the best climate in the world for it People bike through snow to get to work on the mainland here You know, you can plan on it every day might get rained on but that's the worst thing that'll happen The King Street protected bike lane has been a success. I know there's a lot of drivers who find it inconvenient But the good thing about it is that the bikes are no longer riding on the sidewalk Which is dangerous for pedestrians and they're not riding all over the street It used to be like some pedestrians bikes would be on the left side of King Street on the right side Weaving in with bikes. Now they have a protected lane. It's definitely safer for them I we also think it's safer for everyone else. We also Think that King Street is shouldn't be a super highway in the middle of the city It was six lanes wide before it had the most rate of pedestrian accidents So we do think we're making it safer by Narrowing it so that you know when it's not rush hour, you can't just zoom down it at 50 miles an hour We and we are planning to build a grid of bike lanes. So we Yes, so South Street will be one of them You know every one of them involves working with the neighbors the waterfront plaza restaurant row had some concerns about their loading dock So we've been working to accommodate them. What's the holdup? Well, the King Street Lane was a pilot project, but we are we're definitely going to move forward on it next year So in 2017 you'll see that happen We in Kaimuki mentioned we did paint a bike lane on YLI Avenue They did look at putting a protected lane there but there's not enough room and There's a freeway on ramps and McDonald's that a lot of people turned into so it just wasn't feasible Paths of the bike right now We're also looking at adding painted bike lanes on McCully and protected bike lanes on P. E. Koi and Pensacola I live in McKeeke and I ride my bike to work sometimes and I have to go down Pensacola Street and it's like death defying and everybody's trying to get to work really hates seeing me there But there's no other way for me to go But you agree with me as a tipping point if you have enough people right now if you look at King Street There's only a handful people using it But if you had a lot more bike lanes you have a lot more people out there because it'd be you know more opportunities to ride And if you had a lot more people out there, then oh gee whiz then the cars I think the drivers would be more sympathetic and it's a it's a spiral up. Absolutely So When can we expect to see that spiral materialized? And I think a lot of people don't want to bite because they feel unsafe, right? And they would love to if they felt safe. Yes So I think 2017 is going to be the year we're going to go forward on a number of these protective bike lanes Bike share Hawaii is getting ready to launch So they're going to put hundreds of bike share docking stations all over town You'll be able to ride, you know, say at a meeting in Waikiki you could ride from town to Waikiki dock the bike there and Check out another bike when you're ready to go back or if take the bus back or if it starts raining It gives you a lot more options and you don't have to fold up your bike and put it in your car Speaking for the million people who live in the city and county. I'm with you on that or there want to see that make that happen Okay, we will tell the mayor. Yeah, we will the other thing is less thing Last thing we can discuss today with the amount of time we have is what about mr. Trump What about, you know, some of the promises or non promises that he's made? How is that going to affect the city because cities all around the country have become dependent on federal assistance in various forms and Maybe maybe there'll be more assistance in some areas or less than others What do you expect? What's the plan to deal with it? I think, you know, nobody really knows what to expect The election results were shocking to a lot of us And we really don't know if the campaign rhetoric is going to be what happens or not It's definitely concerning our whole delegation are Democrats so it's not in our best interest to have a Republican as president But all we can do is be hopeful and try to work with them The good thing is we have a full funding grant agreement in place But we really don't know if they're gonna start cutting funds or what it would be for Mayor Caldwell is going up to the West Coast next month to meet with the West Coast mayors conference They have the secretary of HUD Julian Castro coming out to meet with us But you know, it's big pretty possible to plan forward Yeah, so I wonder, you know, you've had a lot of press on a lot of these issues And I wonder if you how you feel about the press in Hawaii Dealing with the issues not only the campaign although that's part of it But dealing with what the city does what doesn't do You think the city is getting a fair shake. This is really going right to your job Yeah, a fair shake from the press and if you were gonna talk to the press now and sort of advise them about What they should focus on what they should be looking at, you know What would you say to them as a communications director? Well, I think we benefit a lot from journalism and it's how the public knows what we're doing for the most part We do do social media and direct emails and things like that But for the most part the press is what what gets the word out and enables people to participate and give their thoughts You know, I'll say that People who go into the journalism profession are honorable people. It's not something people do to get rich They do it because they care about their community I started my career in journalism and ended up leaving because I found it so hard to make ends meet So I I definitely respect them and I'll say in the ten years. I've been doing this. I've seen local media downsize Significantly, we had two newspapers who would fiercely compete with one another. Now we have one to just announce more layoffs We had four TV stations now We have three two of the stations have been bought and sold by main line companies that cut their staff The AP Bureau only has a few reporters who for the most part can't leave the office because they need to be in the newsroom So it does worry me. I don't know what direction this is going in It you know, it keeps getting smaller and smaller and harder and harder for people to stay in business as journalists How does it change your job as communications director communicating with the press? It makes it harder They have less Reporters available and when the reporters are doing stories They usually need to turn them around very quickly and move on to the next thing So a lot of times we have to rush to try to get them the information that they need within their deadline I think most of them try to give the city a fair shake when they come to us You know a lot of what we do is responding to questions There's a story that we're working on today about a contractor a tow company contractor where the city illegally storing Cars on the street. It was brought to our attention by KHON and now the customer services department Is going to make them cut that out because it's in violation of their contract So I mean that's a just a small example of a positive impact that can come out of working with the media You know as communications director you do deal more than just with the press And various media and I wonder you know what you would say to the public About dealing with the city about getting information from the city city's policies and proclivities about that your office and other Offices that are responsible to respond to you know public Request for information. What's the policy? What do you see that evolving as? We we try to respond to every letter and email that the mayor gets We have a whole staff at the information branch that handles phone calls and questions and complaints I think it is frustrating for people sometimes because they don't know where to call For example, you know if you need to have a question about the DMV which DMV do you call? We so we tried to build a website and put all that information on there Especially what kind of documents people need But you know, I just encourage everyone to do please contact us We heard him say it right here You can call the mayor's office seven six eight four one four one or you can email us at mayor at Honolulu dot gov or use the web forum on Honolulu dot gov So how do you think the city is doing? I mean, you know in many ways We're clearly, you know a great place to live in other ways. So we have issues Where are we on the continuum? How would you you've been around you've seen the East Coast at least and How do you feel how Hawaii Honolulu rather is doing these days vis-a-vis other places including the neighbor islands? Are we healthy hearty? Do we have a good quality of life? Do we have good public spaces? Do we have a kind of? Social experience that draws people I think there's always room for improvement I really am enjoying this job because it's a great opportunity to give back to my hometown I don't think I would like working for the mayor of Akron, Ohio or something like that But I grew up here. I always wanted to see more bike lanes. I always wanted to see public transportation and we're doing those two things You know our parks could always be nicer But we've launched a program of bathroom and playground improvements and we've done three dozen already So we're making I feel very good that we're making progress I think like you mentioned cost of living is always going to make it harder to live here Yeah, that's not something we can wave a wand and fix but we can try to build more housing and create affordable housing So families can stay here You know, we're not going to be able to make groceries cheaper, but we could make more electricity cheaper by building some more solar power and We expanded each power we now have three boilers at each power and we lead the nation in waste energy conversion and Divert more than 90% of our trash out of the landfill We want to get to a hundred percent, but we need some more technology to deal with the ash and things like that We build a sludge intake machine So now all the product from the wastewater treatment plant gets burned and turned into power So every time you use the bathroom you're helping to power our city So we're making progress So nice that you're there Jesse at the city as communications director and so nice that you're here at think tech We have been great to talk to you and I hope we can talk to you again and again And get and get updated on all these things going forward. Thank you so much. Okay. Thanks a lot, Jay. I appreciate it