Committee advances confirmations for Design & Construction, Transportation Services and Facility Maintenance leaders

The Committee on Planning on a reported-out vote Thursday advanced nominations for three city department leaders: Hako Millis for director of Design and Construction; J. Roger Morton for director of Transportation Services; and Jean C. Albano, P.E., for chief engineer of the Department of Facility Maintenance.

The confirmations move to the full Council for adoption after the committee chair recommended each resolution be reported out without recorded objection. The committee also discussed project delivery and coordination, rail ridership and audits, stormwater grant capacity and DFM staffing during each nominee's appearance.

The panel’s review focused on how the departments will address long-standing questions about project follow-through and interdepartmental coordination. Director-designate Hako Millis, appearing for the Department of Design and Construction (DDC), said DDC welcomes council involvement in flagging projects that appear stalled and that the department will work on formalizing roles and responsibilities with other city divisions. He said DDC is pursuing a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Facility Maintenance and described overlap between DDC’s land-acquisition support and the Department of Land Management as an issue the administration is working to clarify.

Transportation Services director-designate J. Roger Morton responded to extended questioning about the elevated-rail system and related audit coverage. Morton disputed parts of a published audit that compared initial ridership to later months, saying the audit initially included four days of free operation in its baseline and that excluding those days shows year-over-year ridership increases in recent months. Morton gave department figures during the hearing, saying weekday ridership increased 31.5% from the first month of operation (excluding the initial free days) and that recent three-month year-on-year ridership growth exceeded 14% in multiple months. He said the agency’s goal is to reach roughly 25–30% operating-cost recovery once the system is extended into downtown and Ala Moana, and that marketing and staged system extensions are expected to grow ridership. Morton also said staffing limits slow some neighborhood-level traffic studies and that DTS will meet with council offices to reprioritize high-priority surveys.

Jean C. Albano, P.E., chief engineer-designate for the Department of Facility Maintenance (DFM), described efforts to hire and to improve response times for sign replacement, sidewalk and storm drainage maintenance. Albano said the department’s vacancy rate has fallen below 30% and that the goal is to approach roughly 20% by the end of calendar 2025. He also outlined recent federal grant awards the department manages, including a fiscal-year-2023 green-infrastructure grant of about $679,000 for Kakaako and a planned FY25 green-infrastructure planning grant of roughly $600,000 for the Windward district.

During Albano’s appearance the committee also considered a separate resolution accepting a $4,000 gift from the Freshwater Initiative Hawaii Community Foundation to send a DFM staff member to national grants-management training in Washington, D.C. Albano said the department’s stormwater group currently lacks an internal federal-grants specialist and that the sponsored training is intended to build that capacity so DFM can apply for and manage more federal funding directly.

The committee took no roll-call vote on the confirmations in the hearing; the chair recommended each resolution be reported out for adoption and explicitly asked for objections, hearing none. The nominations now proceed to the full council agenda.