A year after graduating from Princeton, Nicole Velasco was sitting at her job at a television and film production media office in New York City when she got an email in 2009 from a friend about "Furlough Fridays" in public schools in Hawaii.
Her friend’s message: "Time to go home." And that’s where she is now, back on Oahu as the executive secretary of the city’s Neighborhood Commission Office.
"It became clear to me that my energy and education I had received and what I wanted to do in the world was really not to contribute to the New York City economy," Velasco says. "That’s not where I was supposed to be and it’s not where I was needed. It took a whole year for me to figure out how I was going to make it back home." Finally, she decided to "just go and show up."
Velasco got a job as a researcher at the state House of Representatives and then with the state auditor before campaigning last year for House District 30 representative, where she had returned to her parents’ home in Kalihi. She was narrowly defeated by previous representative Romy Cachola.
"It was certainly a shock," Velasco said of the defeat, controversial due to Cachola’s helping constituents with absentee ballots. "I think one of the benefits of running for office and being in the particular race that I was in was I learned a lot. I wasn’t discouraged. In fact, quite the opposite happened. I became more ignited about public service and about change, about reform."
In April, Mayor Kirk Caldwell appointed Velasco, 27, to the Neighborhood Commission, which provides administrative and technical support to the city’s 36 neighborhood boards. Velasco had served briefly on the Kalihi-Palama Neighborhood Board before running for the state House seat.
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QUESTION: What have you learned about neighborhood boards in your two months as executive secretary?
ANSWER: I’ve seen it as a very important function, being able to see how concerns and issues are received at the board meeting and then how they translate into a very comprehensive system of addressing those issues within (a city) department or the administration. I do see that they do serve a very important function in terms of allowing the city and the department to understand what is going on out in the public and how they can address them accordingly. We have two systems internally for processing concerns that come through and often they actually field a lot of the concerns through the difficult avenue that they need to go on. So it’s really exciting to be a part of this particular office where I know that I can see both sides. I can see what’s happening out there in the public and I can also understand what’s happening within our department and try to find a way of breaking the gap so that both parties can understand what’s happening with the other. I think sometimes that’s where issues tend to fester in a communications breakdown and people don’t understand just what happened on the other side.
Q: What is your role?
A: It’s a very interesting one. My role is, as I see it, somewhat of a facilitator between all the different parties that are a part of our neighborhood board system — certainly the board, then the administration, then the (City) Council, then the department and then to a certain degree it’s also our state counterpart — and so wrangling it all together to make sure that it somewhat functions in terms of what things are happening during a board meeting.
Q: How do you do that, as an example?
A: Let’s say, the Diamond Head Board had an issue, and they relayed that to a mayor’s representative who’s attending the meeting on behalf of the mayor. That mayor’s rep will relay that concern to our office and also through a system that is internal to the city administration, to the different department that may be affected and so we have a lot of check-and-balance systems where a different department will add their bit of information depending on where they fit in the concern. Then it comes back to us and we put that back in the mayor’s report. When that rep goes back to the Diamond Head Board, he’ll take that information back for a follow-up to the original issue. That’s kind of how we process different issues that are coming from the public.
We also have a commission, and so my role is to work with the commission on any policies or any changes of any plan or the primary function … (Such as) the complaint, the sanction hearings that we have, because we do also have a more formal complaint system that individuals from the public or the board can come and file, and then you process it through our office and the commission, and they do have a hearing … Then it’s also fielding concerns from the boards directly, whether it be the functions of this office in terms of their operations, ideas they may have, complaints they may have, whether operational or qualitative.
Q: Isn’t it very unusual for a city to have neighborhood boards?
A: We are the only county in Hawaii that has a neighborhood board system. There aren’t many other places that have this specific type of system. There are community groups. I know in Los Angeles they do have community associations that function in somewhat of a similar sense, but in terms of how established boards are within a government system, we’re pretty unique, and so it does provide an opportunity to be a case study for other places that may consider it. … I think Mayor (Frank) Fasi actually established (the system) 40 years ago, so it’s been an evolution and I do think that we’re kind of on the cusp of rewriting how these boards function within their own communities and also within the civic engagement of the city in particular.
Q: How is it going to be rewritten?
A: I think it’s going to be a slow rewriting. A lot of what needs to happen is diagnosing and really looking at what is happening out there with the board. What is the level of community engagement from people not on the board in regard to those who are on the board? Is there truly this engagement of the public coming to the board to share concerns and then a liaising between the board and the city administration? Is that actually a functioning formula? Is there a need for more technology? Do we need to have an online counterpart? Do we need to have some sort of extension of the information provided at the meeting in an online capacity for those who cannot make the meeting or don’t watch it on Olelo? Where is the information going? … And so one of the things I’m thinking about is, how can we provide an afterlife of the information that was disseminated during the meeting? One of the main tenets of this system is about access to government, about access to information, and how can we do it better for those who say they don’t have time to make it to the meeting.
Q: How has online voting of neighborhood board members worked?
A: We had a directive in 2009, where the Council cut the budget for the mail ballot and basically requested that (we) go completely digital for the election. Originally, it was mail primary and online as an option, and then it became just online primary, with a phone option. So what people are doing now, if you had participated in the previous neighborhood board election, you received a ballot. If you didn’t, then actually one of the practices that the city clerk had is that they don’t mail the ballot.
But even still, there’s quite a number of people who do receive ballots and so what happens, for example this year, they received their ballots and had a nine-digit passcode for the website and then became either registered online or registered by paper.
So we had two options for registering … you go online, you go to the website, input your nine-digit pass code and then it will take you to another screen and then you put in the last four digits of your Social Security. That was one way that the vendor has been able to verify singular votes. If you didn’t want to do it online, you could call and there was a telephone system that would have you enter a passcode. …
The dropoffs (in turnout) from when it was paper to when it became online was definitely significant … 28 percent participation and then when it turned over to purely digital, then it was about 6 percent. So we’ve been on a steady yet slow incline from that first year to 2013. This year it brought 8.6 percent, which is still very low in the grand scheme of voter turnout. It is somewhat reflective of general voter apathy in Hawaii, but I think one of the things that is happening is that slow, growing awareness of the fact that we are using an online tool. We don’t have the option to go back to mail. There’s just no money for it, and the Council is not willing to allot that for us again …
One of the things we’re going to do between now and the next election is an awareness campaign, not just about the neighborhood board but also the use of a 21st century tool. So for us it’s important for people to understand that it is a safe way of voting … It’s going to be a trend, we hope, an upward trend, where there’s going to be more participation as people feel more comfortable with this kind of voting …
Q: What motivates people to run for neighborhood board?
A: I think it depends on the individual and it’s certainly a case-by-case basis. I think at the heart of it all, people do want to serve their community. They do have a vested interest. I think every person who’s on a board right now has an interest in what’s going on in their community and that’s why they’re there. Certainly, some folks may have other aspirations, some folks may have a very certain business interest, depending on where they are within the system itself, but I do think the root of it all is having a vested interest in what is happening and feeling compelled to have their opinions known, because they understand that the government will be working with them and could be changing their neighborhood or the community very drastically, based on different things such as land use.
