Nathaniel Kinney's Page

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Truman, on Tech Hui (and also a District 5 resident) sent me the following message: Coincidentally, some one just came to my door to hang a flyer for you as I am writing this. Can you quickly tell us why we should vote for you rather than another candidate?
Upfront, Iʻll say that I will not bad mouth another candidate. I donʻt feel it is necessary and I think it only distracts from talking about the real issues.

I am running for city council because it is time to transition into new leadership. We are overdue for introducing new and innovative ways of conducting city business and I am confident that I can bridge the gaps that need to be filled. To be honest, I donʻt have all the answers, but I am confident in my ability to find the various people with the answers and bring them together to generate real and innovative solutions.

What may be of interest to the tech community is that I believe we need to bring city government to the fingertips of our people (this is a message in one of my HD videos) by making certain city government services are available on hand-held devices. This will accomplish two things:
1.) increased government efficiency, and
2.) work for the tech community.
Bringing government services to the fingertips of our people means shorter lines at city government, buildings like satellite city halls. This means that our kupuna who do not use computers will not have to stand in long lines. (With access to the city by hand-helds, we can also reduce the need for the use of paper.) Shorter lines also means that rather than cut jobs (since weʻd have shorter lines) we can devote more manpower to other areas of our city government that actually need the help. In those departments added man power can increase the efficiency there. This can be accomplished without cutting jobs or work hours.

We need to support our tech community and providing them with the opportunity to create applications for people to have better access to city government will provide work for our tech industry. We can and should improve our city government websites. The work may be limited, but it will be work nonetheless and we would have to work out other important details as well.

During these tough economic times, we need to find ways to save money without cutting jobs and work hours. I believe that the Sustainable Saunders project (not my project) at the University of Hawaii Manoa serves as a model for us to consider. I met with Shanah Trevenna and she shared with me that they were able to shave off $150,000 annually from the energy bill for Saunders Hall, a single building on campus. The annual energy bill for Saunders was $760,000. If we were able to have similar success at the city government, $150,000 could pay the wages of 3-4 city employees.

We can save money without cutting jobs. In fact, we would be protecting jobs. Remember, the Sustainable Saunders project accomplished this amount of savings with just one building. Imagine what we can accomplish if we do this with all city government buildings. Not only is this something we can do. It is something we must do.