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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION

Transcript of Public Hearing of APRIL 1, 2000

Cooper Center

Volcano, Hawaii

Members: J. Ray, S. Bess, M. Herkes, R. Higashi (from 9:24 a.m.), S. Irvine, G. Martin (from 9:32 a.m.), J. Santangelo (from 9:08 a.m.)

Absent: E. Alonzo, K. Balog, D. Kurozawa, G. Yoshiyama

And 13 members of the public in attendance.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman John Ray called the meeting to order at 9:05 a.m.

RAY: I’d like to call the meeting to order. This is the 1999-2000 Charter Commission. We’re holding a public hearing today at the Cooper Center in Volcano, Hawaii. It’s Saturday, April 1st.

INTRODUCTION OF CHARTER COMMISSION MEMBERS

RAY: Commission members present at this time are myself, John Ray, Chair; Steve Bess; Marni Herkes; and Sue Irvine. And then we’re expecting several other Commission members.

If you are wondering, we do not need a quorum to conduct these meetings. We voted on that, so if that’s an issue with you, we addressed that earlier.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

RAY: I’m going to make some brief introductory remarks, and then go through the Charter proposed Amendments. If anybody has to leave sooner, we’ll take testimony before I go through the amendments, if somebody has to get out of here. So, we’ve been accommodating people if they do need to leave earlier, so let me know if you have signed up to testify and you need to leave earlier.

Basically a little background. The original County Charter was constituted in the late 1960's. It’s mandated in our County Charter that we review the Charter every ten years, so this is the third review that’s taken place in the history of the Charter; one in the early ‘80s, one 90s, so this is the third. Besides this process that’s taking place, there are two other ways that the Charter can be amended: By petition, amendments can be brought forth with signatures representing, I think, 20% of the registered voters in the prior election; and by Council ordinance which is pretty common. The County Council can vote to bring forth a Charter Amendment and then it appears, if it passes by six votes at three Council hearings, then it would appear on the next election. And all three methods of amending the Charter all appear at a General Election for the general public to vote on. So, in any of these cases, they’re just proposed amendments that go in front of the voters. So, that’s the process in all three cases.

We’re an eleven member Commission appointed by the Mayor, approved by the Council. We have an appropriated budget of $130,000. The last Charter Review Commission expended $113,000. That was the one about ten years ago. Our chief costs are labor costs. We have a full time Administrative Assistant with a home office, Legal Counsel, meeting costs and public notice, and then fairly substantial printing and advertising costs to get the final product out for the public to understand, just general education, leading up to the election. To date, out of that $130,000 appropriated, we have expended a little over $50,000 and have about $80,000 remaining.

We’ve been meeting since last February. We’ve held 29 meetings to date, which included nine public hearings to date. All the meetings are publicly noticed, and in addition, for the public hearings, we’ve sent out informational packets to, I think, 280 community civic organizations around the island, prior to holding both sets of public hearings. We did six public hearings last summer, and we’re engaged in four public hearings right now. So, prior to that, we sent out informational packets to a pretty comprehensive group of organizations around the island. We’re presently discussing 19 proposed amendments. These are amendments which have, or did have, a pretty strong level of support by a majority of the Commission members, but we haven’t even voted on some of these in a preliminary fashion. Anyway, they’re all subject to a final vote before we go forward, but not necessarily will all these appear. In fact I feel pretty comfortable saying a number of them, we’ve already pretty much reached agreement, we probably won’t go forward with. And there are some other suggestions that have come up from the public that we will be considering. But we wanted to engage the public with something concrete sooner rather than later because, generally, folks aren’t interested until they have something before them to look at. So, we wanted to come out, even though these are somewhat preliminary in nature, sooner rather than later. We hope to wrap up our final proposed amendments with the ballot language by June or so, and then have a fairly lengthy time before the election for general education on the proposed amendments that we’ll come up with. So this is the last of the four public hearings that we’ve got scheduled right now. We’ll be holding regular and extra Commission meetings, in the next month or two, to come up with a final product. So, I want to briefly run through - I guess you all have copies of the proposed amendments that are up for discussion today. Does anybody need to testify immediately, prior to me running through these? I’ll go through them pretty quickly. Del.

PRANKE: The only thing - Apple and I have a noon meeting but we’re not in any rush. I don’t want to jump ahead of anybody.

RAY: Going through them, one through nineteen.

The non-partisan elections. This would basically effect all County elected officials. Should this pass, everyone running at a County level would run on a non-partisan basis. This has been adopted by every other county in the state; by the City and County of Honolulu about eight years ago, and by Maui and Kauai more recently. The way this process works in the election is if in the Primary you win 50% of the votes plus one, you win outright. Otherwise, the top two folks go on to the General. If item number 2 should pass, in other words, creating at-large seats, we’ve also addressed that and proposed language in regard to how the at-large seats would work in the Primary and the General Election, and basically for the three at-large seats, the language suggested today is that the top six voters in the Primary would go to the General. If there were six or fewer, there would be no Primary. There would only be a General Election. So, we’ve tried to follow models that are most commonly used in other jurisdictions across the country. And these, like I say, are very common. In fact, I think close to 80% of all similar jurisdictions have non-partisans at this point in time. It’s pretty routine how these things work other places.

Number 2, the Council to include at-large seats. This is probably the item that we’ve received the most amount of testimony on. Probably the most controversial. This would change our present Council representation from the nine single member districts, running for two-year terms, to having six single member districts and they’d be the same districts as the State House of Representatives. They’d be six single member districts running for the two-year terms, and then the suggestion is that we’d have at-large seats which would run for four-year terms. We’re up in the air about exactly how we’d implement this, and the effect on term limits. We had term limits kick in in 1996 that created four two-year terms for the County Council. So, we’re in a little bit of a dilemma as far as should this pass, when to implement it; what effect it would have on the term limits. And a couple of possibilities are that you could implement it in 2004. In other words, it wouldn’t take place until four years after it was voted in. I don’t really like that idea of pushing it that far into the future. If we were to implement it in 2002, there are couple of things we could do. We could make the first at-large term for two years only, and then after that the at-large seats would be for four-year terms. If we did that, it would have two pluses, in my mind. Number 1, it would make the terms concurrent with the Mayor’s term. And the plus of that is a lot of people that are in favor of the four-year terms - One dynamic that they like is that you’re training Council people and grooming them to run for the Mayor’s race. In other words, these would be island-wide elected Council terms, and logically people that may be interested in running for Mayor. So, if that were the case, it would probably make sense to have those terms run concurrent with the Mayor’s term, in the same cycle. The other thing that would do is it would avoid any conflict with the term limits because the first suggestion we came up with a proposal is that we would allow a one-time exception in 2002, when this kicked in, to allow any of the seated Council members to run for a four-year term, so if you’d been in office since 1996, and you were allowed to run for a four-year at-large seat in 2002, it means your term would be extended to ten years instead of eight. So that would be the practical effect of that. But that would also create a term that wouldn’t be concurrent with the Mayor’s. So, I like the idea, and I’m going to be arguing but we’ll see how it comes out, for the first at-large term being for two years only. Then it would be concurrent with the Mayor’s and wouldn’t conflict with the term limits. But in any case, all this depends on whether it passes or not, in the first place. Another dilemma in regard to creating these at-large seats, and doing away with the nine Council seats is its effect on Boards and Commissions. In other words, presently we have two Commissions that are tied to the nine Council districts, Planning and Police. We’re also recommending, in here, tying the Water Commission to the nine Council districts, and we may be expanding that to some other Commissions. So what happens if you vote in this new scenario, you do away with the nine Council seats. We don’t want to follow the six single member districts and the at-large make-up. We’d like to maintain the Commission positions tied to the nine Council districts. So, we can come up with language in the Charter which basically ties it to the nine Council seats as they existed in the year 2000. Practically that, sort of, addresses it, but it’s, sort of, messy too, and it would make it open to challenge in the future as things change in the future and you no longer than the nine district seats. In other words, somebody could challenge; well, does that make sense in the future as the make-up of the population changes, and whatever. So, we’re trying to figure out a way. I think the majority of the Commission would like to maintain the Commissions tied to those Council seats, but we’re not quite sure how we’re going to deal with it in terms of the proposed language to the Charter. And there’s not a perfect, clean way to deal with it if we are, or if you folks are, to do away with the at-large seats.

Number 3, it says here Strengthen the Authority of the County Managing Director. This is another item we spent a lot of our time on, looking at the model of a Council Manager form of government vs. the strong Mayor form of government. We spent probably more time looking at this one, and looked at more material than anything else. The Council Manager form of government, in effect, does away with the Mayor, or makes it more of a figure head type position, or more attached or involved with the County Council than the Administration. We chose, instead, to recommend addressing pretty major changes in the County Charter in regard to the Managing Director, and hopefully, encouraging the Administration to use the Managing Director more as the Chief Operating Officer of the County, more the day-to-day, full time operating officer in charge of the day-to-day business. And the way we’ve addressed this is we’re suggesting rewriting the entire Executive Section of the County Charter, more along the lines of how Maui County has organized. And, basically, instead of separate sections in the Charter which deal with the Office of the Mayor and Departments, and the Office of Managing Director and Departments, and Departments connected to Boards and Commissions, creating one single Executive Branch County Departments, Chapter 1, where everything is under the Department of Management and the Managing Director. And we’ve also expanded the powers, duties and functions of the Managing Director, especially in terms of fiscal management, and in terms of calling out the role of the Managing Director and that whole process. And expanded the role of the Managing Director throughout the Charter, where in some sections it only mentions the Mayor, we’ve included the Managing Director in the chain of command, and the clear direction is to have the Managing Director more involved in the day-to-day management. That being said, this is still very much a strong Mayor form of government. The Mayor would still hire the Managing Director. One suggested addition that we’re putting forward is that the County Council would confirm the position, where they don’t now. Right now, that position is not subject to Council confirmation, so it would be in the suggested language. But this is still a strong Mayor form of government. We’re just trying to move it, in our mind, to what we think would be a more professional and efficient way to run the County government, but it still is subject to how the Mayor wants it to run, so that’s the bottom line.

Number 4, a Fire Commission. Basically we followed the model of the City and County of Honolulu, to create a Fire Commission which, like I say, is pretty much based identically on the language in the City and County of Honolulu. It seems to operate there efficiently on a relatively small annual budget. It seems to have had a real positive influence on taking some of the politics of how that department works. And so, that’s the recommendation there.

Number 5, creating a Department of Environmental Services, or Environmental Management. This suggestion would take two of the six divisions presently under the Public Works Department and break those away into a separate department, which would be called a Department of Environmental Services, or Management. The two divisions are the Waste Management and the Wastewater Divisions. So that would create a new department which would also be mandated to focus on waste diversion and recycling activities. Another activity which would probably fall under their purview would be the non point source pollution programs. The thought there is with the increasing complexity of the regulatory regime, especially in these areas, that it would be good to deal with this in a separate department. Also the size and complexity of the Public Works Department, with the six divisions now, it seems like a positive reorganizational move to split those out. This would make the change mandatory but the Council would have to pass an ordinance, and exactly how this would be restructured would be settled later in terms of the Department Head and whether they’d have a Deputy, or how all this would work. But our thought, if done properly, this would be a more efficient and a more cost efficient way to run government. We don’t anticipate any extra cost, in fact, hopefully just the opposite. In addition, we’re also suggesting creating a Commission that would be attached to this department. It would be an advisory Commission, but hopefully engage the general public more in these issues and also be an advocate for setting rates for these two departments. This is an area that the County Council has a tough time dealing with politically, setting these rates. So the Commission wouldn’t be empowered to set the rates, but hopefully would have a positive influence on engaging the public more in terms of more responsible rate structures.

Number 6, this is entitled 6 and 10, Planning Department functions. There are two areas here. One was generated by an Administration initiative where the Mayor and the departments came to us early on in the process and asked that we create a Division of Permitting in the Public Works Department, and to remove all the subdivision functions from the Planning Department, and to move those over to Public Works. And their rationale is that this would be a more efficient way to organize this; sort of one-stop shopping in terms of the permitting. We decided not to pursue this in terms of the tact we took with the Department of Environmental Services. In other words, mandating that this happen, but right now the suggestion is that we address this in the Charter by eliminating language in the Charter which would require a Charter Amendment if a future Administration would like to bring forth this type of reorganization in the future. So, what the Charter language would do is it would take language out of the Charter which would be a barrier to this type of future reorganization. So, it doesn’t mandate, it doesn’t move, a reorganization in that direction, other than it eliminates Charter language which would preclude that from happening. In other words, right now in the Charter, if you wanted to do that in the future, you’d have to amend the Charter before that type of reorganization would take place. This would eliminate the language in the Charter so that if, in the future, this were to be brought forward.

The other two items have to do with Planning Commission powers; one in terms of the authority in the Special Management Areas, the other is the ability of the Planning Commission to put forth rules and regulations having the effect of law. These are basically things that are done right now. It’s just kind of stating this in the Charter. This is meeting substantial confusion and opposition in the public, so my thought, right now, is it’s probably not worth it to bring these forward, and we may drop them. It just seems to be creating a lot of needless confusion and opposition. We haven’t discussed this in the Commission since we’ve gotten public input along these lines, so I don’t know which way we’ll go on this, but it’s not something we have to do. It’s just something, actually our legal counsel, Chris Yuen, suggested we, kind of, try to clean this up and address this in the Charter. It’s not anything that has to be done, so whether we put these forward or not, I don’t know. We’ll see.

The next one, Number 7, the Legislative Research Office, is kind of the same way. The discussion has been to come up with language that addresses how that office really works. This is one of the two offices under the County Council. They have a Council Services Office and then basically they have a Legislative Research Office which services the various committees on the County Council, and is responsible for handling legislation, either suggested by the Administration or by Council member. It never has, and it doesn’t now, function as a Legislative Auditing Office, and it’s always caused a lot of confusion among the public. But the kind of input we’re getting from the public is we’d like to see more auditing going on. Why are you eliminating this? Why don’t you go the other direction and create an Auditing Department, or whatever? So it wouldn’t change the way things function now. It would just more directly address how this office works. So, there again, I would characterize this as, kind of, being up in the air as far as whether we pursue it or not, so we’ll have to see how everybody feels about it.

Number 8, the Holdover of Members of Boards and Commissions, is basically just increasing the holdover period from the existing 30 days to 90 days. This was suggested by a number of the Boards and Commissions, just to give more time to get folks in place. So that’s what the holdover’s about.

The Safety Coordinator. There again, this is cleaning up the reality of how things work in the County. The majority of the functions spelled out in the Charter, to be dealt with by a Safety Coordinator, are dealt with internally, and we think quite well, by the separate departments. So, basically the way it’s portrayed in the Charter now is not the way it works, so the suggestion is rather than having a separate section here dealing with this, in the Charter, to move the position to the Civil Service Department, and deal with that function under the Civil Service Department, but not have a separate Safety Coordinator position which would be mandated to deal with these functions, which the departments are individually and separating dealing with now.

Qualification of Heads of Departments of Public Works and Water Supply. This was based on a discussion which took place last year in regard to the need for the head of these departments being a registered engineer. Our feeling, in discussing this, is that these jobs are more administrative than engineering in nature, and why not remove this barrier so that it would allow a non-registered engineer to be head of these departments. We had an occasion where our Chief Engineer retired and the Deputy Chief Engineer, who most people felt was able and qualified to step in in that position was precluded from doing that. He is an engineer. He has an engineering degree, but is not a registered engineer, and so under the Charter, he wouldn’t be allowed to do this. There again, this has come under a lot of flack from public testimony. It seems to be confusing the public that, on one hand we want to raise standards of Departments Heads, and we seem to be going in the other direction in regard to this. So, I’d say this one is up for grabs whether we proceed with this or not. It’s not, I don’t think, really a big deal one way or the other. But we’ve received a lot of testimony either in opposition or in concern with how this one goes, so we very well may pull this.

Qualifications of Department Heads. We’re just trying to raise the standard -- reviewing the whole Charter and raise the standards. And we’re going to try to come up with a little more uniform language in terms of the standards for these different Department Heads. But they are very different, and a concern we’ve had is that, especially in terms of salaries, they’ve been treated, in the past, pretty much the same, everybody being, kind of, lumped in as a Department or Deputy Department Head, being paid exactly the same. And that doesn’t make sense to us because in terms of the professional qualifications and the responsibilities of running some of these larger departments, seem to be much greater, and lesser in some cases, so it’s logical that they’re addressed differently in terms of professional standards and, in our mind, the pay rates tied to these. So, we will be coming out with some corrections there. Also, in the sections in the Charter, some of these job qualifications don’t appear in the Charter Sections, and they’re, kind of, lumped in in a section in the back of the Charter. We are going to try to clean that up, and have the Department Head qualifications dealt with in the Charter in the sections where they appear.

Impeachment. There are two suggestions being proposed here. One is to do away with one of the grounds for impeachment, and that’s the term ‘maladministration’, which the feeling is that there is no clear legal definition for that. It’s more suggesting a grounds for impeachment is you don’t like the way somebody’s doing their job vs. they’re not breaking the law, like under malfeasance, that type of legal definition where they’re required to do something by law and they’re not doing it, which seems to be more of a grounds for impeachment vs. maladministration. So, that’s trying to address that issue. Also, we’re suggesting raising the threshold in terms of the number of signatures from 100 to some number. We initially suggested 3%. We’ll probably lower that, and we also have to deal with a somewhat thorny issue of where the signatures come from in the single member districts, whether we would allow signatures island-wide to effect the impeachment in a single district, or whether we would restrict it and how that would effect the number of signatures required. Obviously, you wouldn’t necessarily have the same level of signatures if you were restricting it to a district impeachment process vs. an island-wide. So, we’ll come up with something that, hopefully, makes more sense in regard to that issue, and we’ve gotten some good testimony and suggestions in regard to that. By increasing the number of signatures from 100, which the court will handle, we’ve also had to come up with language which would request the verification of the signatures, and it pretty much follows the way it’s done now with recall and referendum – just setting forth a procedure for how the signatures would be verified. So that will be part of the suggested language dealing with the signature verification.

Number 13, Special Counsel. This is a request from the Corporation Counsel to do away with a potential dilemma where Corporation Counsel is required to hire special counsel, and right now the County Council has to approve that. They would still have to approve funds being appropriated for this, but it would remove a potential conflict if the Council decided they didn’t want to approve it, and Corp Counsel felt like they had to appoint special counsel, they would be allowed to do that and would eliminate a potential conflict where the Council didn’t want to go along with that. The Council would still have to approve the overall funding, the funding appropriation, for hiring special counsel; in other words, that category in the budget. In other words, the Corporation Counsel couldn’t hire counsel, the effect being going beyond the appropriated amount in the budget for special council, so by this passing, it wouldn’t increase the authority of the Corporation Counsel to increase spending more money in the budget category.

The next, Board of Appeals. This was a suggestion that was tied to creating the Division of Permitting, which we’re not going forward with, so I think we’ll probably eliminate this, as far as moving the Board of Appeals at this time. And then, should that be brought forward in the future, then that could be addressed appropriately at that time.

Department Head Qualifications. Just going through and trying to beef up the professional qualifications for the different Department Heads.

Police Commission. This taking some language we like - I’ve been representing in the last few hearings that this is language that came from the Fire Commission, and our counsel reminded me at the last public hearing that, actually, this language is coming out of the Police Commission from the City and County of Honolulu. Not from the Fire Commission. So, we’re taking some language we liked from the City and County Police Commission, inserting it in the body of the language for the statement of policy section on the Police Commission. So, basically that’s taking some language that we liked in regard to the overall statement of policy from the Police Commission from the City and County, recommending that to go into the Charter for the Police Commission, and also adding a couple of additions regarding review of department’s operations and requiring an annual evaluation of the performance of the Police Chief to be submitted to the Mayor and the Council. So, those are the two additional suggestions there.

Water Commission. The suggestion there is to change the Commission make-up from the nine members tied to six larger geographical districts to the nine Council districts. So the effect of this is you’d have more island-wide geographical representation on the Water Commission than the way it works now. And the way it works now is it allows the Mayor to appoint nine Commission members much more heavily from East Hawaii than West Hawaii. So this would mandate a wider geographic distribution, as is mandated in the Police and Planning Commission.

Salary Commission. This would change the way the salaries are set for the Department and the Deputy Department Heads. It would allow an appointed Salary Commission to set these salaries. And this is a process which is very subject to politics. The net effect is it is awfully difficult for an elected body, i.e. the County Council, to offer raises. My experience, and the experience of a number of Commission members, is that you go years and years and years without salaries being increased for the Department Heads, and they tend to get really out of whack, not only with the Civil Service salaries in the departments, but also with the private sector. This was implemented in Maui County, I think in 1994 and it seems to have worked very well, and the net effect hasn’t been any wild or inappropriate increase in salaries of the Department and the Deputy Heads. It’s just a more responsive way to set these salaries in relation to Civil Service salaries within their departments and the public sector, and hopefully, to have these salaries be more reflective of the individual responsibilities and professional requirements of the different departments. In other words, right now, all the Department Heads and Deputies get paid the same thing, and it doesn’t make sense to me why the Head of Public Works, a registered engineer, would be paid the same as every other Department Head. I won’t mention any in particular, but the job qualifications and the responsibilities are substantially greater in some positions than in others. This wouldn’t mandate that the Salary Commission would have to recommend the salaries in that fashion. It would still be up to them, the recommendations they’d make, but hopefully it would influence them in that direction.

And the last is creating an advisory Commission, a Cost-of-Government Commission, which would be advisory only, but it would review the County budgets, and how the County functions, and make recommendations to the Administration. The way this is written now is that the Commission would be appointed every other year. Based on some testimony we’ve had, and my thinking, I, kind of, think it makes more sense to do this less frequently. Maybe this Commission would meet every four years, rather than every two years, and, sort of, be in a continuous cycle which would, kind of, be addressing the same old things every other year, and maybe dilute the effort. The idea being if you stand back from it and do it every four years – this is my personal thoughts; we haven’t discussed this on the Commission, so we’re very open to input on this. But I talked to Maui County that has this, and talked to the guy who is the Executive Assistant that services this Commission, and was chatting with him about that last week, and he seemed to think that might be a better way to do it. Do it a little less frequently than every two years, and another suggestion is maybe you do it in the second two years of the Mayor, so Administration has represented that they’re going to do this and do that, and you let them serve for two years, then you appoint this Commission, and then they can have some input and comment on how the Mayor’s done, and hopefully, that would have some positive effect on the next election cycle. An advisory Commission to review how the Mayor, the Administration, has done in regard to the cost-of-government issues.

So, that’s the end of my spiel. If you are interested in testifying, you need to sign up and I have a number of people signed up now. So, mainly for the sake of recording – We need to make sure all this is recorded, if you could come up and testify. David Frankel is the first person signed up and Del Pranke following. So if you could state your name, and if you’re representing anybody other than yourself, and just speak into the mike please.

PUBLIC TESTIMONY

FRANKEL: My name is David Frankel. I am Chapter Chair of the Sierra Club, Hawaii Chapter, but I’m testifying in my own personal capacity. I wanted to let you know, although you’ve received some criticism regarding authority of the Planning Commission, that’s sub-sections (e) and (f) that you’re adding, my analysis as environmental (indiscernible) is that I think these are good and important things that you need to add. They make sense. I think a mistake was made by the last Charter Commission in removing one of these sections.

RAY: That’s a real mystery to us. You know, what happened was in the last Charter, language was voted on by the public and nobody seems to know just how it got in there. Our attorney, Chris Yuen, who is a real avid watchdog of these types of issues, the Planning Department, nobody seems to know just how that happened, so actually this language would correct something that was voted on in the last election.

FRANKEL: Yes, I do think that is important to correct and I agree that you are going to be criticized because this is quite a complicated issue to explain to folks. But if you move forward on that, I can tell you that I will do my best to clarify the situation to some of the folks who are criticizing you on that.

Couple of other minor points I just wanted to bring up. In terms of allowing the Planning Department to transfer some functions to the Public Works Department, in concept it may make sense in some circumstances, but realize, for example, in the Subdivision Code, there are a lot of issues that the Planning Department is supposed to consider before granting subdivision approval. One of them, which has taken 20 years for Hawaii County to implement, and finally was done about two or three years ago, even though they’re required to by State Law two decades ago, is the consideration of trail access when doing subdivisions. If this function is transferred to Public Works, you’re going to be transferring it to a department that has not, historically, shown any expertise or interest in taking care of trail access. Not that the Planning Department has done a particularly good job either. But at least there is the framework within which that can happen because of the qualifications for people that work for the Planning Department. And my concern is if that subdivision function is transferred entirely to the Public Works Department, you may lose the potential to protect trail access.

RAY: This wouldn’t move it.

FRANKEL: Right.

RAY: This would remove a barrier from moving it, so do you think that’s a bad idea?

FRANKEL: I don’t know. I’m just pointing this out as a potential problem. Maybe that’s something that would need to be discussed when the ordinance is done. Maybe it’s a possibility that we don’t want to even allow to occur. I think I’d be more strenuously opposed to this if the Planning Department had been doing its job for the past couple of decades. Because the Planning Department has been ineffective, maybe we don’t lose anything, but I have hope that the Planning Department’s going to turn around in the next four years and therefore, I’m a little concerned about the ramifications.

The third point I wanted to make is it makes sense to combine all the functions, Wastewater and other things that the Public Works Department has, into a Department of Environmental Services. But if you’re going to do that, I do strongly recommend that you remove the requirement that the head be a registered engineer. That requirement is an antiquated requirement that Robert Moses introduced in the 1930's in New York City and it was transferred across the country when Civil Service reform was all the rage, and it has become a curse because it really limits the opportunities to have broad thinking people head that department.

RAY: Okay, now, are you speaking about the Department of Public Works or the new department?

FRANKEL: The new department. I guess I was under the impression that the Department of Public Works was, sort of, going to disappear into the Department of Environmental Services.

RAY: No, no. The Public Works Department would still exist, would still be in charge of four divisions, Building, Engineering, Traffic, whatever. So, there’d still be a Public Works Department, may or may not be headed by a registered engineer. Then there’d be a separate Department of Environmental Management, which could or could not be, we’d have to decide that, headed by a registered engineer. So, they’re separate. So, your suggestion is that we don’t mandate the Department of Environmental being headed by a registered engineer.

FRANKEL: Right, Environmental Services being - Particularly if solid waste and recycling are issues where you do not need to have an engineering background to head the department. Yes, you need to have engineers in your department, for example, to design a good landfill, but you don’t need one to design a successful recycling program. In fact, I would suggest there’s a lot of engineers who don’t design recycling programs properly.

The last point I wanted to make, which is my most important point, is I’m strongly opposed to the idea of having at-large Council members. I think that is a huge step backwards for the County. Anyone who runs for an at-large seat requires a lot of money. Some of you have run for office before. You know that one of the burdens of running for office is raising money. There’s no question that if you are running for office for an island-wide seat, you need far more money than you do for one Council seat. You need far more money. Look at how much money the current candidates are spending. Look at how much money was spent in the last campaigns for Mayor vs. any Council seat. What this does is it reduces the influence of ordinary citizens, and I think that’s anti-democratic. In addition, you’re enlarging the size of each Council district, making the Council members even more remote from very diverse districts. I think that’s a gross disservice to the public. I think, given the current climate of people wanting campaign finance reform, adopting at-large districts for the Council is the complete antithesis of campaign finance reform. It encourages more big money to influence the campaign process, and that’s not the way people want to go. So, I really urge you to remove that from your list of things going to the voters. If you remove that, I think you’ve got a pretty good set of recommendations to the voters. If you don’t, you’re going to antagonize a large element of the public and you risk having everything voted down. Thank you.

HERKES: Mr. Ray, I have a question for Mr. Frankel. Do you know how much, let’s pick Chairman Arakaki, spent on his last campaign?

FRANKEL: I don’t.

HERKES: Okay, I would suspect that he spent about as much in a single district as you can spend in an island-wide race. I don’t have those figures, but I’m certainly going to look them up because I think the money angle is not appropriate. I think you can spend just as much money in a single district race as you can in an island-wide race. I want to vote for four people. That’s why I’m in favor of this. I want to have a broader representation for Kona than is now, so that’s why I’m in favor. But I don’t have the figures to really compare the island-wide race compared to the single district race, and I think money is not really where I’m at.

FRANKEL: I think you raise an important issue, and I think you should look at that information. There are going to be anomalies. For example, we all know that Apana did not spend as much money as Dante Carpenter, but I think we all realize that that was an anomaly if you take a look at it, and look at it statistically. Let’s look at the successful Council races. Look at how much the average member spent in the last election, or the last two elections. Compare that to the average amount spent on the winning candidate, or even combine the winning and losing candidates for Mayor. You’ll find, in the at-large races, far more money was spent. Far more money. You may find, like I say, one or two anomalies but on average, by having more races require more money, you do reduce the importance of the individual voter. That’s something that the League of Women Voters has been working on.

HERKES: I don’t agree. I’m a member of the League of Women Voters.

FRANKEL: Yes, I know.

IRVINE: May I?

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: I’d like to thank you for your comments on the at-large seats, and -

HERKES: She’s from Hilo.

IRVINE: Hey, it’s not going to help Kona to have at-large seats. And I thank you for your comments also on the Department of Environmental Services, which I have been very supportive of. The question I have for you, though, in Kona we heard a heck of a lot about how our Planning Commission should just be advisory, or done away with, or this, that, or the other. Now, that is true in Honolulu, I know. And you’re saying you think we did the right thing in strengthening this?

FRANKEL: Yes, I actually just had a conversation with Mike Christopher to correct him in some of the statements that he made at the Charter Commission meeting. Having an advisory Planning Commission is the absolute wrong thing to do. And there are a number of complicated legal explanations to that. There’s a couple of Supreme Court cases that are particularly relevant. I think what you are hearing from folks at your previous meeting was based on a lot of misunderstanding of the role and the authority of the Planning Commission. As you know, the reasons that you have those sentences (e) and (f) are based on idiosyncracies of what happened in the previous Charter Commission thing. It’s not going to have the negative effects that people are fearful of, and I’m willing to help spread the word on that. If you make the Planning Commission advisory, the real ramification is that you’ve increased the power of the County Council. Which is better, I don’t know. But, there are a number of legal ramifications out there which are kind of hard to explain. I don’t know if you want me to go into all of them. And since you guys haven’t considered making the Planning Commission advisory at this point, it seems too late to even go down that road.

RAY: John, you had a comment?

SANTANGELO: Yes, I don’t want to do this with everybody, but I’m really interested in depth of your thoughts in what’s going on here, so I want to give you a statement because I’d like you to comment to that. Having served on the Council, I come from this. Now, the reason I’m struggling with this, again to explain, is because I served on the Council. There are times in which you can get so wrapped up in an issue with the facts and how you understand, as a father of your people, how good this is, and yet, sometimes that causes you not to listen to people. Here’s something with the at-large that I support, and I want to tell you why. But you know what, I’m not going to make that mistake again. If people really don’t support this, I’m going to remove my support for it, but we’ve had so little dialogue. Okay. Sitting on the Council I watched this, what do you call it, colonialism, this territorial part of it – individuals grabbing for things that weren’t beneficial to that district, but it was a trophy to show the people. They were running for office. I, personally, am trying to differentiate and understand that there’s a difference between politics and government. Good government is not politics. Good government is public service. It’s quality of life. Okay. The first thing our country did when they formed a two-year representational body was in three years from that, they formed a Constitution and they put in the Senate to balance this two-year term that was just given to the whims of public opinion rather than what was really good government. And so, the at-large appeals to me because I’ve watched, on the Council, people run from day one to day one. Your first job in politics is to get elected. Your second job is to get re-elected. How does that serve the people? You talk about money. The power that we have in our hands today, where 50% are registered and less than 50% vote. The people have such a power they can demonstrate through an individual initiative that is far more important than money. Unions have proven that because 90% of our legislation out of the last 40 years has come from Union influence because they would put the people out there and support politicians. The other part is if you have a representative in your district that you have a lot of trouble communicating with, if you have these three at-large, does it not hold these three accountable, and give you three other alternatives or possibly four advocates. So, there’s this part of it. And so, money, and I have to agree with you, has influence. I really don’t like what’s being sold on this island that because you got a check from someone, you’re a crook, and that somehow bought your integrity. But one moment I look at the people representing us and I see very little community service. I see very volunteerism. I don’t see them paying the dues within the community. So, then I would be suspect in that area. So again, it comes back to the public. So, I’ve made my little pitch. I could go on forever, but it was that trying to balance what’s going on, and try to give a broad perspective, and I’ll tell you, public opinion has been very negative on this. So, thank you.

FRANKEL: There are 9,000 responses running in my mind and I won’t be able to remember them all. But, look at the experience on other islands. I, quite frankly, think the Council that is least representative, or least grass roots oriented, is the Kauai County Council, elected at-large. Maui has that same problem. I can say that, both on this island and Oahu, you have single member districts where members are cognizant and responsive to the needs and concerns of other districts, so you didn’t have just the Council members from Kona voting against allowing a developer not to build that access road in Kona. You had Council members from other districts. You had people looking at it from a different perspective. The Council member from this district, which does not have constituents up there, voted against it. You had Councilman Dominic Yagong voting against it. He does not represent that area. On Oahu, you have folks that have concerns about when people creating the Kaiwi park on Oahu, they went to Council member Steve Holmes who, that area was not in his district. The people that were working on that were not from that district but they went to him. So, the fact that someone is at-large or single district, I think it’s a question of the person, not the function of how the government is structured as to whether someone’s responsive or not. But there’s no question that someone who’s running for at-large seat needs more money. I mean, you need more money to get your message out and, therefore, it does increase the influence of big money. And that’s not to say that big money is telling people how to vote, but it means that somebody who does not agree with, say, a developer, they’re not going to get a developer’s money. And someone who agrees with a developer, is going to get the developer’s money. So, it’s not a question of a quid quo pro. It’s a question of the person who doesn’t agree with the developer doesn’t have a level playing field. And if you have more of these seats that you need more money for, it means the people that do not support more and more development of everything don’t have a chance to compete. So -

SANTANGELO: Just one quick comment.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: I thank you. We need more dialogue like that. The money issue has been so hard for me because I guess I come from such an ideal world that - I won’t go into myself, but I’ve seen people really pay their dues, really develop who and what they are, and they’re not for sale. But it is a point, which one? At what cost do we go one way or the other? And because of your comments on other issues, I really do trust the depth and the integrity that you give, and so I thank you for that. Again, I didn’t want to have the dialogue with everybody. I figured I’d pick on one person. It’s been really hard. It’s been hard for us because again, you see the good in your own heart of it, but do you put that in front of people so that it comes down to this ‘why not’. So, in an issue like this, what would be your comment about putting this out and letting people vote on it, or really, what is the good or bad of pulling it off ahead of time?

FRANKEL: The only thing is that it jeopardizes all your things on the thing. I’ve seen e-mails going on already, ‘we’ve got to vote down everything the Charter Commission is recommending’, and that’s the risk you throw out there.

SANTANGELO: Okay, thank you for articulating that.

RAY: Okay, George has a quick question on the trails -

MARTIN: Yes, one of your first statements was concern about the Planning

Department changes and trails being left out of the loop. I know that there’s a department within DLNR that specifically deals with trails. Do you see it possible to possibly put a mechanism in there to trigger them coming in, in an instance where a trail possibly is in question? I mean, because it is like John indicated to me, a County issue and this is a State agency, but they do have overwhelming power in this particular matter, yes?

FRANKEL: There’s a couple of issues. One is whether - I know that the Na’alahele Program doesn’t have enough money to have enough staff to look at every subdivision application. What they do have, however, are confidential maps of every single trail on this island. I don’t know if those maps have been shared with the Planning Department, and they may not have the legal ability to transfer that because some of these trails are strictly on private property. I’m not sure what the deal is with that, but that might be a good solution.

RAY: Okay, thank you, David. Del Pranke, followed by James Rhodes.

PRANKE: Good morning. Thank you all for coming this morning. It’s a long trip up here for some of you, I know. I have a few things to say about some things. You each have my proposed changes. Some of them go against what you’ve proposed.

First, I’d like to talk about the non-partisan election. First I’d like to ask Ms. Herkes a question. I got a copy of the minutes from the March 11th meeting at Waimea, and in there you say ‘I’m not a member of the Green Party but’ - I’m not either, I’m a Republican, but ‘I’m not a member of the Green Party but I was very pleased to hear’ and you say ‘I can’t validate this’, ‘that they are in favor of this’, meaning Council at-large seats, ‘because they see -

HERKES: No, it was non-partisan elections.

PRANKE: Yes, ‘because they see the possibility of getting another representative.’

HERKES: What’s your question?

PRANKE: My question is I talked with the Co-Chair of the Green Party. The Green Party has no such stance. I was kind of wondering -

HERKES: They have a stance that’s against it. Keiko Bonk testified at last Saturday’s hearing, and testified that they are against it. So I was wrong.

PRANKE: Yes, I understand. I was, kind of, wondering where that had come from.

HERKES: As I said in my statement, I heard.

PRANKE: You heard that they, a reason for it, so there’d seem to be some sort of a place that this came from.

HERKES: I’m sorry, I have nothing else to say. That’s all I can say.

PRANKE: Okay, so are we to assume that there are things brought up here that are just brought out of the thin air? I mean, that’s kind of concerning to me at that point. I don’t want to get into a confrontation here with you, but I was really worried about that because -

RAY: Wait, Del. We’re trying to keep this -

PRANKE: I understand, but that sort of brings up the question as to whether we can trust some of the things that are said. I’ll move on.

RAY: Del, yes. Okay, I don’t think there’s another agenda here. We’re just trying to be somewhat informal in our discussion and Marni was just sharing and she asked representatives of the Green Party, Keiko Bonk and Michael Christopher, in regard to clearing up this issue, in regard to the six-three proposal at the Kona Public Hearing, and I think she thought, possibly, the rumor she heard was connected with that, and they clarified that no, they were absolutely not in favor of the six-three as well. So, that went on the record, and they’re on the record. Actually, I’m not sure if they were testifying as the Green Party. Keiko testified as an individual, I know. But anyway, they clearly set the record straight in regard to their feelings on both of those. So, I don’t think there’s a problem with -

PRANKE: I understand, but that still doesn’t answer my question as how these things come up. Where did this come from? I mean, there’s no written record of it. Okay, for the record also, Keiko Bonk and Michael Christopher are not the Green Party. I talked with Mary Marvin Porter, a Co-Chair of the Green Party, and she said definitely no. I also spoke with Rene’ Sircusa, who is now giving the keynote speech at the Green Party Headquarters Convention, and there is no such thing. Okay, we know that’s not true.

I have put in some changes here, and I’ll try to just let you read those and maybe we can talk at them another time. But, one of the things is I gave you a list of three things here, the note to the Charter Commission Reviewers. On page 27 of the Charter, Section 13-1(d), defines officers of the county and refers to persons who have been "appointed" as officers. Okay. Sprinkled throughout the Charter are places where the Mayor nominates people and then those nominations go to the Council for approval. Some places it refers to those people as being "appointed". That’s a misnomer, and I think those should all be changed. I went through this with the County Council at a recent meeting. The Mayor does not appoint people. The Mayor nominates them. If they are confirmed or denied by the Council, then they must then go through a third process which is to take an oath of office. Then they are appointed. So that’s something that should be cleared up because of the reasons I put in there.

Mr. Rudy Legaspi’s currently serving in a job which he says he’s being paid a dollar a year. He retired. I have some questions as to whether he’s an officer of the County, an employee of the County, what kind of situation that is. And I think that perhaps that needs to be cleared up some way in the Charter, as to whether people are allowed to work for the County if they’re not beholden to the County. If they’re not getting a salary, then there’s no way to talk about discipline of such a person, just in my thought.

And then finally, the term "Board and Commission", sometimes they’re misused, I think, in the Charter. Commission should have specific jobs such as oversight, like the Police Commission, etc. Boards should be the Boards that actually do work at administering a department or an area of the government.

HERKES: Mr. Ray, could we ask our legal counsel to please check that language? I think that’s a good point.

IRVINE: Yes, that’s what I was going to say. Although, I was just going to ask Del, where did you get this information?

PRANKE: Which?

IRVINE: That Boards and Commissions have -

PRANKE: Well, I looked up the definition in the dictionary.

IRVINE: Okay.

PRANKE: They’re not a lot different, and sometimes they’ll talk about -

IRVINE: We heard testimony to this concerning our Water Board, or Water Commission - it ought to be Board.

PRANKE: Yes. Well, I think there are some of them that are misnamed, perhaps, and the other thing would be to use those terms would give some consistency to the Charter.

I want to go on to the definition of ‘maladministration’. This is from Webster’s Dictionary. I didn’t get a chance to check Black’s Law Dictionary because I was, kind of, busy this week. But ‘maladminister’ is to - administration that is corrupt or incompetent as that of a public office. That is what ‘maladministration’ means according to Webster. Now, there’s another definition, ‘administration that is incorrect such as that of giving the wrong drug or maladministering a drug in a hospital or elsewhere’. So, ‘maladministration’ has a definite meaning and it has a meaning that I think is important to maintain in the County Charter. I don’t think removing that is going to make much of a change to how our government runs, and I think keeping it in there is probably important, as I don’t think the idea of making it harder for folks to impeach someone - Remember, for instance, the impeachment of a President of the United States does not require that everybody in the country, or that a large number of people, approve that, only the number of people in the Senate, a hundred people, send that over to the House of Representatives. Well, that’s a hundred people, the same number that we would have to have for an impeachment here. And I think that’s enough. A recall is a recall of someone who’s elected. That takes a lot of people because that puts it on the ballot, but an impeachment is a two-step process. Just getting a hundred signatures on an impeachment petition doesn’t impeach somebody. That only takes it to the Court. Then you have to prove to a judge that there is reason for impeachment, and if the judge doesn’t agree, then the impeachment doesn’t go through. I think that’s a fair process, and as I said at a previous meeting, 3% of the entire county, of the registered voters in the county, again, would be 2,100 people and Ms. Jacobson was elected by 2,300 people and Mr. Smith by 2,400 people voting for them. So, 3% is an incorrect number. I would leave it at the 100 people. If a hundred people sign a petition, then they can go, and they’re really going to have to go and argue this before a judge. So, I think that’s tough enough situation for an impeachment. Now, I have added in mine that all officers of the County should be impeachable. If we had this in right now, then we wouldn’t have to deal with this situation with the current Police Chief. He would be an impeachable officer. Now, officers of the Police Department are not officers of the County. They are employees. However, the Police Chief is an officer of the County. So, a hundred people would be able to take that to court and get some resolution before a judge. People are pretty upset about that right now.

HERKES: Excuse me just a minute.

PRANKE: Yes ma’am.

HERKES: Mr. Ray, I think that probably is something that should go to our attorney, to ask whether that’s legal to impeach an appointed person.

PRANKE: Not recall. I don’t think you could recall a non -

HERKES: I understand. I just want the attorney to make a decision.

PRANKE: Yes, I understand. I don’t think you could recall a non-elected official, but an appointed official, as you said before, their rules and regulations have the force and effect of law. They’re almost lawmakers. Officers of the County are lawmakers, in a sense, and they should be accountable. At the current position, the only thing that you could say was if somebody appointed to a Board or Commission, and as I’ve showed, the Mayor doesn’t appoint them and the Council doesn’t appoint them, it’s a joint process; you’d have to say if somebody is grossly negligent in a position, could you impeach the Mayor for nominating them, or could you impeach the Council. And that’s obviously, kind of, absurd. So, I think they should be impeachable. Okay, I’m sorry. Mr. Martin.

MARTIN: Yes, I had a comment on to what you were saying about specifically the Police Chief. And not to say that the system isn’t working, but in place is a Commission that can, and is more than possible to, remove a sitting chief. So, I agree with you that there may be times that other appointees, somewhat, should be accountable to the people, and not so much to the Mayor and/or Council, and I agree with you. But at present, the chief could have been removed at any time by the Commission.

PRANKE: Some people see that as political because all of the members of the Police Commission have been appointed by the current Mayor and the current -

GOODELL: Nominated.

PRANKE: Oops, sorry. Exactly. I’ve fallen into it. Let the cat out of the bag and whip me. Well, I think you get the point and I don’t want to take up - I told you at the last meeting I attended I’d give you five. I only gave you four proposals. The one that I really struggled with here was having a standing Charter Review Commission and a Reapportionment Commission. That’s going to take a lot of writing and I don’t have a secretary so I will work on that and get that kind of a possibility. We shouldn’t go through this every ten years. If there’s some errors in the Charter that need to be changed, we should be able to do that every couple of years.

HERKES: We did it. Look at this. I’ve got pasted all over.

PRANKE: I know. You guys did it, but here you come having to put almost 20 things before the voters, and that’s going to be confusing to them. So, I’m in favor of having a standing Charter - And I put in there the process I thought should be used. And apparently you don’t disagree with me because number 19, the Cost-of-Government Commission, you’re saying would be appointed by the Council, which is the way I put this – one person from each Council district.

HERKES: Actually, Mike Christopher came up with a tremendous - I guess, it’s San Diego that has a Civil Jury system. Everybody can throw their names into a hat. They just draw them out, and I really like that as a system for picking something like a Cost-of-Government Commission. I wanted to thank you, especially, for the one that you didn’t mention and that was the conduct of employees.

PRANKE: Oh, I’m going to get to that.

HERKES: Okay, do you want to do it first? I wanted to thank you for that.

PRANKE: Yes, I put in there a specific thing that lying should be a violation of the Code of Ethics. Previously I put something to you. It was kind of off the cuff and I said deliberate lying. Lying is deliberate. The definition of lying is to deliberately deceive someone, and the way I put this in here. And I’m sorry for the folks that are here that I don’t have more copies of this, but I’m sure you can get it off the web, or I don’t know. You can get it from her, the things I put in. That should be a violation of the Code of Ethics. Now, you can’t just charge somebody with lying and then they’re guilty. You’ve still got to go before the Board of Ethics and prove that it was a lie. Somebody could tell you something that’s not true, and it’s not a lie if they didn’t know that. But recently one member of the County Council has been caught twice on video tape just not being truthful, and it seems to be deceptively not truthful, so that, kind of, prompted this a little bit.

HERKES: Amazing, huh?

PRANKE: But to the other Council members, not just to the public. That’s what bothers me especially.

HERKES: Can I speak to just that one point?

PRANKE: Yes ma’am.

HERKES: I don’t buy in to the whole wording of yours, but I immediately went to the Maui County Charter which uses the wording ‘declaration of policy’ under Code of Ethics. ‘Elected and appointed officers and employees shall demonstrate by their example the highest standards of ethical conduct to the end that the public may justifiably have trust and confidence in the integrity of government.’ I thought that was an especially good statement, and we have very few of those kinds of statements in our Charter. We don’t have anything in our Charter now so, Mr. Chairman, I would like to suggest that we look at inserting that.

RAY: Well, get it to us in writing.

HERKES: Okay, I will.

PRANKE: If you look back at some of the previous Charter Commissions, and some of the testimony they give, one of the things that I remember, and I don’t remember exactly which one they were talking about setting up this Board of Ethics after the State Ethics Commission was set up, and somebody in there said well, so this would really be just a Commission without any teeth, and that’s what it was designed as originally. I’m not saying that we have to make it onerous for people to serve. Most people that are serving in the County government are doing a really good job, but we need to be able to weed out the situations in a non-political way where politics enters into something, and causes people to be mistreated or maltreated, I guess.

And the Cost-of-Government Commission I like, and that seems to be a little open.

You haven’t really tied that down so much. I would put that under the Legislative Auditors Office and I would have the Comptroller and the Legislative Auditor be ex-officio members of that Commission, just the way you have the Water Department and the Planning Department being ex-officio. I think it’s the Water Department and Planning Department. I talked about that the last time. You brought me around to your point of view.

HERKES: The Water Boards and the Planning Board?

PRANKE: Yes, the Director of Water and the Director of Planning.

Under number 6, I hope that there’s some understanding. I haven’t followed this too much, but I’m, kind of, wondering what the standing of private subdivisions would be under that change.

HERKES: It isn’t a change. It’s just an insertion of what they do.

RAY: No, no. He’s talking about -

PRANKE: On number 6.

RAY: Right.

PRANKE: Okay. I’ll just leave that. On page 29, you have a change, eight, I think. I would also change Section (l) under there to 90 days for Boards and Commissions. Right now it’s 45 and the Heads of Departments are 90. I would change that to be consistent because, as I’ve said before, the current Mayor has counted the days at times, put the nominated people for a Board of Commission, and the Council hasn’t had time to have the 45 days, so there are people sitting on Boards and Commissions now, a few of them, who have never been approved by the Council because the time ran out. It isn’t going to normally happen but there are months where that does happen, so I’d change that to 90 days. I mean there’s no problem with that.

IRVINE: What page?

PRANKE: Page 29, and change number 8, Holdover of Boards and Commissions, and I think you’re changing Section (c) or something. Change Section (l) to read 90 days for those folks. That’s a simple change.

HERKES: Okay, we changed Section (d) to read 90 days.

PRANKE: It would be the same as Heads of Departments then, and it’s a simple change. I will shut up now because you know I can go on and I know there’s other people here. Thank you very much. If you have any questions, please call me.

RAY: James Rhodes, followed by Patti Barry.

RHODES: Good morning. My name is Jim Rhodes. I’m President of the Board of Recycle Hawaii, and I’d like to thank you all for Chapter 5, Department of Environmental Services. When this originally started, the idea was to maybe get a committee, so Recycle Hawaii is very pleased to see this whole section including a department. We are submitting a letter of support of the whole chapter, and think it’s a very good idea. After looking over some of the details of it, we have some minor recommendations to make, which I’ll submit to the Secretary. It’s only some minor additions on qualifications for the Commission and for the Director, that they have some experience in the environmental fields. Also, we strongly recommend that the language stay mandatory, rather than permissive. I guess that’s still in the works, as mentioned on the bottom of the page here.

RAY: The language, as written, it would be mandatory.

RHODES: Yes, it’s written as mandatory. We recommend it stay mandatory. So thank you very much. We’re looking forward to helping in any way we can in the future.

SANTANGELO: Jim, when you said have environmental experience, what do you mean?

RHODES: I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Okay, I did suggest the addition to the Administrator was an environmental experience. This was taken from being maybe just a warm body Administrator selection to someone who maybe has had some experience in the field, and would be better suited because this is a very unique department. The reason you’re forming a new department is the uniqueness of environmental concerns, so I know you’re looking at requirements for Directors, and this would be adding on to just administrative capabilities. Down in the Commission Statement, Section 6-5.4, this is the addition that was suggested: ‘One member should be actually employed in the environmental field and the remaining members should be active participants in programs, research, or organizations in the ecological sciences’. This would give you a Commission that would be fully loaded to back up the Director, and this was the part that Recycle Hawaii was very interested in. This was where we started, and we highly recommend this approach to it so that you get the Council’s ability to select these people with a little bit more knowledge in the field.

SANTANGELO: One other question about just the environmental issues. What is Legos, Snoopy, and the American Mall got to do with that?

RHODES: Absolutely nothing that I know of.

SANTANGELO: But it is an argument going on in your home, as I understand it.

RHODES: It is, and we will resolve it by the 8th.

RAY: Okay. Patti Barry, followed by George Wallace.

BARRY: Thank you for being here. First I’ll address number 3 on the Summary of the Proposed Charter Amendment, with some additional information. Since the last public hearing last week, I have done more research, and in every area a Manager type of government has increased, and not decreased, as was stated by one person at the last public hearing. I don’t believe that one can take a few isolated disgruntled cases and view that as a trend. I have statistics and charts to support these findings. We also can’t look at Hawaii as a normal County because the State allows us but one City, the City and County of Honolulu. Our island is actually run like a City with rural and urban areas.

There are 6,832 local governments in the United States with populations over 2,500. Out of the total, 48.3% operate under the Council-Manager government. It is the fastest growing form of government in the United States, outpacing its competitor, the Mayor-Council form. There are 2,988 Mayor-Council governments, 43.7% of the total types of communities. Again, those over the population of 2,500. The other forms of government are commission, town meeting and representative town meeting, making up only 8%.

During the past 16 years, an average of 63 U.S. communities per year have adopted the Council Management form.

In working with your parameters in the proposal, regardless, by having a Managing Director, even with a Mayor, for him to be effective, the Charter amendments must stress that the Manager needs to be granted enough authority that he or she can truly manage the operation independent of day-to-day interference and oversight by the elected official. The manager must be selected based on qualifications and experiences that are defined in the Charter. This avoids the appointment of a patronage position. You do propose hiring the Managing Director by the Mayor with the approval of the County Council. To be consistent, you must have the firing of the Managing Director by the Mayor with the approval, or confirmation, of the County Council. A manager whose fate lies in the hands of one elected official, i.e. the Mayor, looks to that one person to set the agenda regardless of who appointed him. The manager must have the authority to develop and administer the budget. Final approval will, of course, be up to the elected officials but the initial development should be done by the professional. The manager should have the authority to select and terminate most of the Department Directors, which he would hire based on qualifications and experience. There should be language in the Charter that states that all employees work under the direction of the manager, via the Department Directors, and also that states that except for the purpose of inquiry, the Mayor and Council should deal directly with the manager and not with his subordinates. Again, this establishes a clear line of authority, enhances the professionalism of employees and reduces personal patronage.

The manager also should actively participate in the development of policy that is approved by the elected officials. These are key components of a professional management position regardless of a strong Mayor or a Council-Manager form of government.

I’ll go on to the summary proposal number 2. You do not mention the possibility of increasing the County Council as a whole, but reducing it to 6 and having 3 at-large, which I totally oppose for reasons stated at the last public hearing. However, I do feel we should increase the number of Council members to 11, 13, or 15 member Council, which would be far more representative. The Council members would be better attached and in tune with their constituents. With only 9 members, the districts at-large and council members are not likely to be known by the majority of their constituents. In addition, it is far too easy to buy-off, pay-off, or influence just five members. It would be far easier for the average person to run and get elected. In other words, it would not take $30,000 or more to run a race. This would mean less influence by special interest donations. It would also reduce the Council members’ workload to a more manageable level.

And on to Elections should be partisan. There is good reason for this. Political parties are made up of people from the community regardless of what party they’re from. They give the candidate an instant base and an initial place to go for moral and volunteer support. They are also a chance for people from the community to do a very close examination of a candidate prior to him or her going to the public. Remove this influence of the political parties and then you are left with only the influence of special interest.

Thank you for hearing me out. Aloha. I’m a fourth generation kama’aina, born and raised on the Island of Lanai, Patty Barry.

RAY: Thank you. George Wallace.

HERKES: Wait. Can we have comments? Do you want to keep going?

RAY: If it’s anything new that we haven’t covered before. I think that testimony’s been brought up and I think you’ve commented. Are you going to comment in regard to more Council people?

HERKES: Yes, I’m going to comment really on the timing and the dates for the Charter Review Commission. It seems to me having the Charter reviewed every ten years, on the year before the census puts us out of sync. And it seems to me that we ought to put some language in that maybe we go 12 years, and then have the Charter Review Commission on the years after the census, because what is being brought up is that, you know, in two years we’re looking at a redoing of the Charter. So, I’d just like to put that on the table as maybe a possibility. We don’t have to discuss it right now, but something just triggered me that we’re all out of sync here, of this whole thing.

RAY: Yes, let’s bring that up. Okay, George.

JIM OTTERSON: Can I say just a little bit?

RAY: Not if you’re not signed up to testify. George Wallace, followed by Fred Holschuh.

WALLACE: Thank you. I signed up to speak to impeachment but I hear all these people speaking to several issues. I’d like to add one at the end. I have three questions and one statement.

First question on Impeachment. How many elected officials have been impeached in the last ten years? Just one.

RAY: There’s been one proceeding, I think.

MARTIN: Zero. Nobody.

HERKES: One proceeding but nobody impeached.

WALLACE: Have these impeachment proceedings had a major detrimental effect on the function of County government?

RAY: I think that’s questionable. I think it was extremely disruptive to the folks that were involved in the last impeachment proceeding, but that’s -

HERKES: And it costs money.

WALLACE: I understand it might be embarrassing. It might be emotionally disturbing and nerve-racking to be impeached. I think we saw that in the national level as well, but I was speaking to the actual function of County government. And I didn’t see County government suddenly freeze up and stop. And if something isn’t broken, I don’t see why we have to fix it, first. And then, this proposed change would simply further reduce the recourse of voters to force removal of elected officials who are simply doing a bad job in their work of administering to the County, and for the County, to the citizens of the County. I’m absolutely against this change.

In a similar vein, you speak to changing to an Environmental Services or things like that. There’s a possibility that you have not considered and I would like to ask you to consider it. In many other parts of the country, to do certain kinds of heavy duty lifting for small areas of a county, or a whole county, they have Local Improvement Districts where District Commissioners are elected to do things like take care of solid waste management, or provide water services. Perhaps, that’s what we need to do, and I would ask you to speak, particularly, to, and why is there seeming to be an avoidance of the issue of the substandard subdivisions on this island. Those substandard subdivisions are the unrecognized bastard children on this island, and I will remind you that Lawrence of Arabia was an unrecognized bastard child, and it’s time to do something about it.

RAY: Sue, do you have something?

IRVINE: It’s my understanding that there is a mechanism for Local Improvement Districts. You might know more about that, John. Is that true? Or that it’s not a Charter issue. It’s a Legislative issue.

RAY: Yes, there is empowering legislation, right. Okay, Fred Holschuh, followed by Roger Evans.

HOLSCHUH: Good morning, everybody.

COMMISSIONERS: Good morning.

HOLSCHUH: Thank you very much for being here, Mr. Chair and members. I’m Fred Holschuh. I’m from Honokaa and I’m a 28-year emergency physician on this island, and I want to make a comment in favor of the Fire Commission based on my long time experience in the emergency department, and my rather detailed relationship with the workings of the Fire Department. I’ve also been a 20-year member of the Hawaii County EMS Commission. Actually, and I will get this to you in writing - I said I’d do that after the last meeting in Waimea, but I’m actually glad I didn’t because I looked at it a little more detailed since then.

Under 6-4.2, where it says Statement of Policy. As I said in the other meeting, I really feel that we should mention emergency medical services in here, as a specific item, and I actually want to throw it out as a question. I don’t expect an answer. I don’t even think I want an answer. Was that left out with the idea that, perhaps, EMS Services would be privatized someday, and not come under County?

RAY: No, there was no discussion.

HOLSCHUH: That was not? Well, that’s fine. Thank you for clearing that up because that is always a consideration, and there are two counties in this state that have private EMS services. But even if that were the issue, and even if someday, and I’m not in favor of this because I think on an island this large, we need our Fire and our Rescue personnel, or EMS personnel, to work hand-in-hand, and often there’s a great deal, in fact there always is a great deal of cross training with the Fire/EMS side. But even if it were privatized in some future time, it should still, in my opinion, come under the aegis of the Fire Commission. So, I really feel strongly that Emergency Medical Services has to be included. That does not equate to emergency rescue. They’re two different things. That’s under Section 6-4.2.

Then there’s another little thing that, just as more language under 6-4.2, Statement of Policy, the last sentence before the a-b-c bullets. There’s something that says the Fire Department shall be conducted. I presume somebody means the Fire Department’s functions shall be conducted, or the function of the Fire Department shall be conducted. Unless I’m missing something, that doesn’t seem to make sense to me. The Fire Department isn’t going to be conducted. Something that the Fire Department does is going to be conducted, right?

HERKES: Shall be managed.

HOLSCHUH: Managed is fine, or it’s function shall be conducted, because then you list the statements that are perfectly valid statements.

The other thing I wanted to mention under new Section 6-4.3, under the Fire Chief. I feel very strongly that a Fire Chief should have 10 years of experience in this department, or at least in Fire work. I think five years just isn’t enough. That’s such a heavy duty position, with such a huge amount of responsibility, that I think you have to have a ten-year minimum for - In fact, I talked to a couple of people the other day that feel it should be 15 years. I’m not so sure I agree with that but I think 10 years is certainly a minimum to be chief.

And the other thing I wanted to mention was that I support the 6-4.5, which is the new Section 6-4.5, I support the Fire Commission wholeheartedly for a whole host of reasons that I won’t go into, but I’ll put some of it in writing to you. But I actually think the Fire Commission should be nine members, and very honestly, without getting too detailed, I really think I like the way the Police Commission is with 7 members from 7 geographical areas.

RAY: It’s nine members now. That’s been changed.

HOLSCHUH: Oh, it’s nine members now? Okay, I took that out of the old Charter. Well, if it’s nine, then I’d like to make the Fire Commission eleven, and I’ll tell you why. I would just suggest this to you and I mean this seriously. I think the Fire Commission should have representation from the community per the nine districts, and one member should be a 10-year experienced emergency physician and one should be a retired Fire person, and they should be separate from the district. And I mean that real seriously and, again, if you’d asked me to testify on this 28 years ago when I came here, I wouldn’t have had a clue about any of these issues, but after you’ve worked and lived in this ER all my life, really, my adult life, you realize how critically important these things interact on day-to-day-to-day public safety issues. Almost everything that the Fire and Rescue people do day-to-day involves the Emergency Department one way or the other. If it isn’t through orders, it’s through protocols and so forth.

The only other thing I wanted to mention, and I will get this to you in writing. I don’t have it today. I polled a whole bunch of Fire Department personnel to see if I was off base on these comments. I just asked them randomly and I wanted to, kind of, get their feeling. Some of them are fairly new people. Some of them have been around forever. I think the vast majority of them feel they like this idea. They want to take the politics out of the appointment of the chief. They want to take the Mayor, specifically, out of the appointment of the chief, which I concur with. And most of them agreed, a few of the didn’t, but the one person said, and I’ll get this to you, that there should be a Public Safety Commission, which is a broader Commission that includes Civil Defense, Fire and Police. I guess you don’t want to redo this today but -

HERKES: No, they wouldn’t vote for it.

HOLSCHUH: Okay, so that isn’t a new idea.

HERKES: It’s on the way, though.

HOLSCHUH: Okay. I have this in writing from somebody, which I will submit to you. All right, that’s it for Fire Commission.

I just wanted to make one quick comment about the next issue, item 5, the Department of Environmental Services. Basically, I’d just like to change that to the Department of the Environment, and the reason is I think that really places the emphasis on the preservation and protection of our environment, which, presumably, is what this is about. Then all the other functions, the services, can very easily and effectively come under that, but I just like that language. I think it has a solid -

RAY: That’s not really what it’s about. The Commission is about the two specific departments, with some included areas of responsibility. It’s not to create a Department of Environment, to look at whatever people think of as their environment. I mean that’s way too broad and that’s not the intent of this department. It’s a new department of the Public Works Department. Okay? So that’s not the intent.

HOLSCHUH: John, forgive me. Could I respond to that? The only reason I suggest this, I mean you’re bringing in something that is extremely critical, namely the solid waste issues and recycling, although you’re right, they may interact, I mean I would think that might put a broader venue on this than what you just said. That’s just my own opinion.

RAY: Okay, thank you.

SANTANGELO: I have a question. Fred, and wait, let’s not throw out wastewater. It’s in there too. It’s that environmental part. With the Fire Commission and this chief and this 10 or 15 years, having worked with that bureaucracy a little bit, there’s so much more to a Fire Chief than what a lot of people understand, and there’s a lot to do with budgeting, funding, lobbying, of really getting out there and being a political advocate for that Fire Department. If I understand you, you want this requirement of this other experience in actual workings of the Fire Department. Is it possible to move that onus over to the Deputy Chief so that you could have a Fire Chief that, maybe, was a little more broad in its abilities, but you’re meeting the requirement to have someone there in the chain of command, in that line officer position, that can operate and support, and advocate for what’s going on in the field? I don’t know if that’s what you meant.

HOLSCHUH: No, I don’t think I said that. Actually, I left out something about

a comment from one of the Fire guys with vast experience, who actually addresses what you’re talking about, perhaps. He said that he thinks the Fire Chief should come from Battalion Chief and above, which really limits it to about 12 applicants. I’m not sure I agree with that because I think there’s a lot of very fine potential applicants at the next level down of the different types of chiefs in the department. And forgive me, I have to look at the flow chart to remember how it goes, but Battalion Chief and above, I believe there’s only nine, and then if you add the Deputy Chief and the Chief, you get up to 11 or 12. Maybe there’s 10. What I was really talking about is just not getting somebody that just showed up two years ago who maybe was very politically active, and popular, and then became chief without understanding the workings of the department. I don’t know where you, necessarily, have to come up - I can’t imagine anyone rises to Battalion Chief level, or even Chief level, without having been on-line, having had the experience of that. One of the problems in the department, of course, has been always that EMS people have a tough time going high up in the department. I mean now we have some Battalion Chiefs who’ve come up through the EMS line, but you have to, kind of, switch gears, because of Civil Service, from EMS. And there are some wonderful paramedics who stay at that lower level because they love rescue work, and paramedic work, but they never can get up because you have to go through Fire and go through two or three different things to get up to the chief level. Thank you very much.

RAY: Okay, Roger Evans, followed by Bonnie Goodell. And there’s one more speaker, just so you know, after that, Maiapple McCullough.

McCULLOUGH: Could I ask a favor? Can I be moved up because I have a meeting at noon in Hilo and I didn’t think I was going to speak, but I -

RAY: Is that all right with you?

GOODELL: If she makes it quick. I’ve got kids.

EVANS: If you make it real quick, because I have a business I’m opening up today, and I should have been there at 9:30.

McCULLOUGH: Thanks, you guys. I appreciate it. I wanted to say about Council representation, I think it should be more grass roots, not less grass roots. Nobody can convince me that less reps are better for this big island. Just no way, for many reasons.

About the number of signatures for impeachment, I agree with Del that 100 is plenty good. That 3% is just going way overboard for what we need. It’s just to take it to a higher body after all.

And third, I liked what Del said about all the officers of the County, including the Police Chief, being able to be impeached, because this guy isn’t going to budge. The Mayor’s backing him up and who wants him. Thanks very much.

RAY: Thank you. Roger Evans.

EVANS: Good morning. When I first was handed these 18 changes, and I read through them, I, kind of, thought to myself, boy, am I glad you guys aren’t working for Ford Engineering Department because it would seem that next year we will be driving Model T’s with the steering wheel in the back seat. I’m almost opposed to everything on here, but I’m going to give you some reasons why. Anytime you do something that takes away power of government from the people, I’m opposed to it. In these changes, every Council, Commission, period, I believe should be selected by the Council representative and approved by the Council body. I do not think that the Mayor should be picking these people. I think that each Council representative should be picking their representative to a Commission and then approved by the balance of the Council. And the reason for that, of course, is because we want the Council person, who represents the person in his district, responsible for the people who are on those Commissions because we can eliminate our Council representative if he does a bad job of selecting who represents us, and these Commissioners do represent us. Every two years we have a choice of whether we can get rid of him or not. The Mayor, it takes four years to get rid or him, or not. So, I think if we put the Commission in the hands of the Council representatives, that will give the people in those districts a little better chance of having control of who’s on those Commissions.

Second of all, I don’t think that any Commission should be allowed, or anyone should be allowed, to take away spending of money from the County Council. Only the County Council should have the power of delegating what money goes where. It’s our tax money. I want the people I elect to control that tax money. I don’t want the Planning Department to spend any money. I want the County Council to spend the money.

And then I’ll just end it up with the three things that I’m really opposed to. The non-partisan elections. You aren’t wording this as non-partisan elections. You’re wording this as one-party elections. The only way non-partisan elections work is if the candidate disassociates himself from the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Libertarian Party. And if none of those parties can financially support him, or give him manpower - the Unions can’t support the Democrats, the businessman can’t support the Republicans, if that’s the way you perceive it to be. We all have to be independent candidates with no ties to anyone, because otherwise, what happens is that in every district, the party with the most money, the party with the most power will have the candidates in the General Election. So, to change that, I believe that we should not have a Primary Election, but we should have a Nomination Election. And that’s what we have in almost every state in the United States, that we have Nomination Elections. That the Republican Party nominates their candidate for the General Election. The Democrats nominate their candidates for the General Election. What we do here, we open it up to anybody who wants to vote. All the Democrats can vote for the weak Republican candidate so their candidate has no one to run against. All the Republicans can vote for the weak Democratic candidate so their candidate has no one to run against. So, if we made it party politics, you would find that we would have a much more efficient government because now you have nine members on the County Council that don’t necessarily agree, and it’s better not to agree and to argue out the different bills that come up, the different legislation that comes up, rather than everyone sitting around saying ‘oh yeah, that’s a good idea. Yeah, I agree, I agree.’ And we don’t want that to happen and with non-partisan elections, that’s what happens.

The Council to include three at-large seats. We did this. It’s been tried. We didn’t like it. The people in this county didn’t like it. They voted against it, I think, a couple of times, that and term limits. They voted against it a couple of times and the problem with what we were having is that just a couple of years ago, less than 10 years ago, we had six Council people in Hilo, and three of them from the island, because three districts were in Hilo and three of the at-large people came from Hilo. We also had a situation where, in Kona, their person lost in his district but won island-wide. That doesn’t make any sense at all, does it? So, let’s keep it nine Council districts.

And the last thing, which would eliminate so many of these other problems. Let’s make our County Council full-time positions. Now the reason I say that, on number 7 you have Legislative Research Office. The Legislative Research Office is doing the job of the County Council person. Why do we have County Council people if they would provide research, drafting, budget analysis and legislative services. That’s the County Council’s job. If they don’t have time now to do it, then let’s make them full-time people so that they can actually do it. We have a few Council people who are full-time. Dominic Yagong is full-time. Curtis Tyler is full-time. We know that these people are representing their districts because they do it full-time. Some of the other ones who are on the County Council; they’re either lawyers and they have a law practice. They can’t possibly spend full-time checking these things out. Two good examples of that is on the Kona side, just recently, we had a subdivision that was approved. It was one way in and one way out. It got to the Council floor and no one had even gone over there to take a look at what the project was about. They didn’t have any idea how they were going to get in, how they were going to get out, and yet they all voted on it. On this side, a couple of years ago, we had a parking lot in Hilo. It was the old Police Department that was tore down. Hilo Main Street wanted to make it into a parking lot. The Outdoor Circle wanted to make it into a park. It got all the way to the Planning Department, to the Finance Department, to full Council, and then one of the Council people said ‘well, how big is that lot? How many cars can go in there? What traffic is going in? How’s it coming out?’ All of those questions should have been answered by the Council people themselves, by going to the site and taking a look at it. The Hilo people didn’t even go to the site to look at it. Therefore, I think the County Council could be, and should be, a full-time position, so that that’s what they do. They represent the people of their district. Nobody else. Just the people of their district.

With that, I will now like to comment, because it was already brought up, about this $100 to the council person. I tell you, if you seven people were on the County Council, and I knew that you three people were against something that I wanted passed, who would I give my money to? I’d give it to you three people, so that I’d know that you couldn’t vote -

RAY: Roger, that’s not anything that’s before the -

EVANS: But it was brought up, so I’m just commenting on something that was brought up. Other than that, that’s all I’ve got to say.

RAY: Bonnie Goodell, who is our last speaker signed up.

GOODELL: Okay, thank you very much. I want to pass some stuff out here, first. And I haven’t gone over this stuff real carefully so I just want to apologize because I’m not going to be able to give you real detailed - But as you know, I’m very interested in the issues of sustainable development, and therefore, of equal treatment. And as these guys from Oceanview talked about, of what I prefer to call the small owner subdivisions. The documents I’m passing out to you is the study I did this year based on information given to me by civil servants in the County, and a lot of what you have here, about members at-large vs. single member districts; partisan vs. non-partisan, and if you read what the League of Women Voters says about pro and con about these issues. What you find is the concern is favoritism, political favoritism, and what John talked about, the difference between politics and government. And what I’m trying to say is we’ve tried both, and the unequal delivery of services has gotten worse and worse and worse. And the reason I’m getting this information is because the civil servants who are the ones that are benefitting, because if you really look at this data, what you see is that Union members shall get services and non-Union members shall pay taxes. If you really look at this data, that’s when you know the history of the island, and where people live, and where the money’s going, and where it’s coming from. Changes aren’t being made. The population is shifting drastically. Imagine if the DOE provided level of service with one teacher per thousand children in South Kohala, and five teachers in North Hilo. This is insane. I mean, imagine if they had 15 children in a classroom in one district and 50 in another district. It’s exactly the same kind of discrimination. And yet, it’s not being handled at all, and so I guess I made a suggestion in the beginning, is this stuff needs to be taken out of politics. Mandate that services shall be provided equally and every year, just like the DOE does, have them count the people and redistribute the positions. Then all this stuff that you’re fighting out, and gerrymandering, maybe we can do this to get the favoritism out of it. You’re not going to get the favoritism out of it as long as it’s political. Take the politics out of it.

So, I just also wanted to comment on what George brought up about Improvement Districts. We have an Improvement District Ordinance. We also have a Facilities District Ordinance, and several other districts ordinance and they are not working for the small owner subdivisions because we are being blocked access to Federal funds because, for instance, plantation camps in North Hilo can get access, 300 families, to $3 million Federal funds to improve their water systems because the County politically agreed to back them up. Okay. Oceanview, which has also been approved to get Federal money for developing water systems - they’re the highest priority to get water development money from the Feds, can’t get it because the County won’t back them up. The Department of Water Supply passes the buck to the County. The County passes the buck back to the Department of Water Supply. So, what he was talking about is the kind of Improvement Districts they have on the mainland where a group of people can get together and set up their own district with their own government, their own governance, their own Commission, and agree to tax themselves. Then, they themselves, as an Improvement District, have the power to go to the Federal Government and apply for Federal funds as a community. And that’s the problem we’re talking about is that they, themselves, have the power then. Right now, these subdivisions cannot, themselves, apply for those Federal funds that are supposed to be there for them. Okay.

RAY: And that empowerment would come from whom?

GOODELL: I believe it could come at the County level. That’s the thing is I’m not really prepared with this because I’m not sure it’s a Commission issue or whether it’s just the County Council passing an ordinance saying they can do it. As far as I understand it, (indiscernible) just did some research on this, but we’re losing lots and lots of Federal money because of this.

RAY: George, comment?

MARTIN: Point of clarification on that water system. And it just so happens that I live in Ookala and I’m the President of the Association out there. And we, as a collective group of individuals, lobbied to get what grants we possibly could, and then our Association of approximately 52 people, floated a $125,000 loan that we are paying back. So, I mean, if you’re willing to partner with government, and that’s the partnership that we had to undertake to get what we wanted, to get ourselves off of a system that was dangerous because of the contaminants that was in it, especially for our older and younger people, then that’s what we decided to do. So, I understand what you’re saying, but sometimes you got to look at other avenues. Government didn’t come and offer this to us. We offered it to them.

GOODELL: Right. I don’t think that changes, I mean, the issue of giving communities, because politics still entered into it.

RAY: Sue Irvine.

IRVINE: I guess you, sort of, asked my question, and this may be a Charter issue, but we don’t know and you don’t know. I guess we can ask our attorney. But if you have anything written down, just a paragraph like what you just said, or where we could put it in the Charter, what needs to be done, that would be good.

GOODELL: I’ll mail it to you.

IRVINE: Sooner rather than later since we’re just about through.

RAY: To our staff.

GOODELL: Do you have an e-mail address?

IRVINE: Yes.

RAY: You know, we’ve been going through this for 15 months. Okay? We’re nearing the end of the process to take on major - So, just understand that as well, right? And this is not the only way that this can happen. Your Council person, if that were to be the route, can be an advocate for this either through ordinance or through the Charter or through whatever.

GOODELL: Right. No, I just wanted to clarify that there seemed to be a misunderstanding about what -

RAY: Marni, did you have a comment?

HERKES: Well, I’m confused. I don’t see where it goes under the Charter, but I also don’t see if Ookala, which is a much smaller community, can do this, why Oceanview can’t do this. I don’t see why they can’t take the same scenario that Ookala did and supplant it and do an Improvement District, and partner with Federal and County. And I don’t know where that is.

GOODELL: Yes, it’s really complex and the problem is -

HERKES: Well, they did it.

GOODELL: Right. Well, never mind. It boils down to politics.

RAY: They’re not similar situations. They are very different.

HERKES: Okay.

RAY: Let’s just leave it at that. If you’d like to comment, you can come up and introduce yourself.

WALLACE: Well, I’ve already done that.

RAY: I mean through the mike. We record everything.

WALLACE: I don’t know where Ookala is. I know where Oceanview is. I know how large an area Oceanview happens to be. It’s huge; very, very spread out. Bob tells me it’s 40 square miles. That’s approximately correct. And we have about half the population of the whole district in that 40 square miles. Now, I don’t know how compact or un-compact your area you’re talking about is. We’re just talking about, simply, a very different place. And our avenues to getting help, that we’d very much like to get, seem to be blocked every time we try to take any step any direction. It gets rather confusing at times.

RAY: Thank you. Anymore testimony?

ADJOURNMENT

RAY: If not, can I have a motion to adjourn?

SANTANGELO: So moved.

HERKES: Second.

RAY: Okay, the public hearing is adjourned. Thank you.

The discussion ended at 11:20 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Sharron C. Henry

Secretary-Administrative Assistant

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