LIHU‘E — County Clerk Peter Nakamura’s mayoral re-appointment and subsequent Kaua‘i County Council confirmation in December stirred controversy after two council members questioned a pay raise that pushed his salary slightly past the mayor’s. But when Nakamura presented the budget
LIHU‘E — County Clerk Peter Nakamura’s mayoral re-appointment and subsequent Kaua‘i County Council confirmation in December stirred controversy after two council members questioned a pay raise that pushed his salary slightly past the mayor’s.
But when Nakamura presented the budget for the Office of the County Clerk on Tuesday, his was the only county department that didn’t ask for increased funding.
“Overall the clerk’s office experienced a 7.9 percent decrease in our Fiscal Year 11-12 budget,” said Nakamura, adding that the decrease is $329,515 in the proposed budget.
Nakamura asked the council for $3.84 million for next fiscal year, which starts July 1, down from $4.17 million in the current fiscal year.
The office consists of three divisions: Council Services, Print Services and Elections.
The highest decrease, 19.65 percent, came from the Elections Division, followed by a 5.9 percent decrease in Council Services.
The decrease in Council Services is attributed to two major factors, Nakamura said.
“One is the non-occurrence of one-time costs associated with the current fiscal year relocation of the Council Services to our interim facility here in Nawiliwili,” Nakamura said. “Secondly, we are anticipating the termination of certain operational costs associated with our interim facility.”
In addition, Nakamura said he anticipates certain one-time costs for the relocation back to the renovated Historic County Building. But such costs should be offset by the end of operational costs at the Nawiliwili Council Chambers.
“We’re hopeful that as we move back, the budget will stabilize as opposed to showing the swings it has in the past two years,” he said.
The drop in the Elections Division operational budget reflects the cyclical nature of the elections, said Nakamura, explaining that the decrease is attributed primarily to the non-inclusion of the cyclical election costs.
However, some pending state Legislature initiatives could push forward the election process one month, probably resulting in increased costs, Nakamura said.
Absentee voters
The Permanent Absentee Voter program in 2010 had an “immediate effect” in last year’s elections, Nakamura said. For the first time in history the number of absentee voters was higher than the precinct voters turnout.
The increase in absentee mail voting meant a corresponding increase in the volume of absentee mail ballot processing for the Elections Division, which is by statute responsible for all aspects of absentee voting, according to Nakamura.
“In anticipation of this continually rising number of absentee mail ballots … we are proposing a $125,000 operating budget item to procure services to develop a voter signature verification database,” he said.
Such a database would improve the office’s capacity to process the absentee ballots, while maintaining a high level of accuracy, Nakamura said.
New hires,
new technology
This year the state reapportionment project will re-draw precinct boundaries and create new election district maps. Once reapportionment is completed — by the last quarter of 2011 — local election offices will re-draw precinct lines and reassign where voters cast ballots.
Nakamura asked that two temporary election clerk positions, initially budgeted to be hired next March, be moved up to January.
He also asked for a new position in Council Services for secretarial support. This new hire would provide support to increase web postings of council documents.
“As part of our goal of increasing the presence of the council and council documents on the Web, the primary objective that we were given by the council chair was to obtain and upgrade our copier systems to multi-function systems,” said Nakamura, adding that the system would allow the office to begin such process at Nawiliwili and be able to transition directly to the network systems in the renovated Historic County Building.
Nakamura said the office should obtain the second multi-function copier within one month.
“Our hope is that it would be able to decrease the amount of steps that we currently have to do to convert paper documents into readable, searchable documents,” he said.
Go to www.kauai.gov for more information.
• Léo Azambuja, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or lazambuja@ thegardenisland.com.
