City and County of Honolulu lifeguards unanimously supported creating a new Department of Ocean Safety but overwhelmingly rejected Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s proposal on how to do that, according to a poll taken by their union.
The Hawaii Government Employees Association Bargaining Unit 15 poll, taken over the weekend, found that 100% of the 111 members who participated supported creating a stand-alone Department of Ocean Safety, according to 22-year city lifeguard Fred Booth.
The city Ocean Safety and Lifeguard Services Division is now under the larger Honolulu Emergency Services Department. Two different options for a stand-alone department solely focused on ocean safety are being floated inside Honolulu Hale.
One is Council member Andria Tupola’s Resolution 50, which seeks a voter-approved charter amendment on the Nov. 5 general election ballot to decide whether Ocean Safety should be a separate city department with a chief and commission.
The other is Blangiardi’s Resolution 103, which seeks an executive action to quickly create an Ocean Safety Department with a mayor-appointed director and no oversight panel. The city says the mayor does not have the authority under the City Charter to create an oversight commission and must rely on the City Council to do so via legislation.
Of the 111 members who voted, 96 — or 86.5% — favored Tupola’s resolution, while four members, 3.6%, voted for Blangiardi’s resolution. Eleven members, nearly 10%, favored both proposals, according to the tally.
Booth said he supports Tupola’s plan.
“We’re not against the department being stood up now to keep it off the ballot. The issue is we don’t want a mayor-appointed director,” he said. “We think the right way to do it is with a commission-appointed leader for transparency, for accountability, for stability.”
He added that lifeguards want their voices heard regarding a new Ocean Safety department.
“We think that the City Council only talks to one or two people that say that they are speaking on behalf of Ocean Safety,” Booth said. “And the mayor speaks to those one or two people, and he says he’s speaking to Ocean Safety. So to take the confusion away from that, we wanted a division-wide vote, because a lot of us were like, ‘That’s not what we think.’”
He added, “I’m sure the one or two people that they’re talking to is someone in that 3.6%, and obviously they don’t speak on behalf of Ocean Safety.”
Booth said the results of the lifeguards’ vote will be shared with the Council’s Committee on Housing, Sustainability and Health, which is expected to review Blangiardi’s Resolution 103 at its 2:30 p.m. meeting today.
The same committee is also scheduled to review Council member Matt Weyer’s Resolution 92, which requests a voter-approved charter amendment to only create an Ocean Safety Commission.
Meanwhile, the leader of Honolulu’s Ocean Safety and Lifeguard Services Division remains on administrative leave.
Chief John Titchen — a critic of the mayor’s plan to create a stand-alone Ocean Safety Department without an oversight panel — was first placed on unpaid administrative leave, effective April 23, pending investigation of an unexplained personnel matter, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser confirmed.
“The city does not comment on personnel matters and declines to comment further on the investigation,” Scott Humber, the mayor’s communications director, told the Star-Advertiser.
But as of Friday, Titchen is now on paid leave, according to his attorney, Eric Seitz.
“We wrote another letter (to the city) on Thursday, and they conceded and put him on paid leave,” Seitz told the Star-Advertiser. “So he’s on paid leave now until we resolve this matter.”
He noted that the city granted Titchen’s paid leave “because they thought it might be a financial hardship for him.”
Titchen, who works in an exempt civil service “excluded manager” position, or EM-08, earns a pay range from $122,652 to $196,152 a year, the city says.
Although he’d expected to meet with city officials over the weekend, Seitz said he received an email Monday morning from city Managing Director Mike Formby.
“He emailed me at 6 o’clock … saying, ‘The mayor is away and won’t be back until Thursday. We can meet then, or he can meet with me by himself,’” he added. “And I emailed him back and said, ‘Well, now that John is on paid leave, I’m happy to wait till the mayor comes back.’”
The attorney claimed he’d prefer to meet with Blangiardi personally over Titchen’s ongoing work suspension, “because I think it is the mayor who has the issue here with John, and I’d like to see if there’s a way to resolve it without it becoming a matter of even further controversy,” said Seitz. “That’s all.”
