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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION

Transcript of Meeting of October 16, 1999

Waimea Civic Center

Waimea, Hawaii

Attendance: J. Ray, S. Bess (after 10:25 a.m.), M. Herkes, R. Higashi, S. Irvine, D. Kurozawa, G. Martin (after 9:26 p.m.), J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama, Counsel Chris Yuen

Absent: E. Alonzo, K. Balog

And 18 members of the public in attendance.

The meeting was called to order at 9:16 p.m.

RAY: The October 16th Special Meeting of the 1999-2000 Charter Commission is called to order. It’s 9:16. We’re in Waimea today.

Following our agenda, the attendance at this time are myself John Ray, Chairman; Roland Higashi, Vice-Chair; Marni Herkes, Sue Irvine, John Santangelo, and Gary Yoshiyama, and we’re expecting other members shortly.

Minutes Approval. We have no minutes for approval today. We had a meeting just three days ago.

Same with the Financial Status Report. It’s the same as it was on Wednesday.

Written Communications. None.

Statements from the Public: We have a very open agenda today so anything is open for comment. This is sort of a mid-term general review, kind of where we stand. So anything you’d like to address is fair game today. We have two folks signed up, at this point, and additionally, we’re going to have one or more representatives from the League of Women Votes. They should be here by about 10:00. They asked to come in and address the Charter Commission on a number of topics today. So, our first signed up member is Lesley Patton. Lesley.

PATTON: I had a variety, sort of stew, that I briefly wanted to touch on, and one of them is on behalf of a number of people in Kohala. We did not receive any notification. There are several of us who watch the newspapers carefully, who get that little tiny, tiny print government bulletin thing that comes for public notices, and what have you, and last time we had received copies of the agendas in the mail so we know we were on the mailing list, and this time that didn’t happen, and we, unfortunately, only found out last night around 6:00 from one of our council people that this was even happening, so somewhere there was a breakdown. I don’t know where.

RAY: Why don’t we have our Administrative Assistant fill you in on what the notice is.

HENRY: The complete agendas were in Sunday’s papers. I have them at my home.

PATTON: In which?

RAY: Sunday’s paper.

HENRY: In both papers, West Hawaii Today and Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

PATTON: Sunday’s? Okay. I’ll go back and look at that one.

HENRY: The public notices were in RFD, the little State and County paper, and that was in last Monday’s.

PATTON: I’ll go back and check because I do try to read word for word.

HERKES: Wait, don’t quit. Let’s finish the web here.

RAY: Then we’re on the web.

PATTON: I don’t have a computer so -

HERKES: The library does.

RAY: So, I just want to go through - and the notices you got last time, and maybe that’s why you thought you were on that - we did sort of an extraordinary mailing list for the Public Hearings and you were put on a list in regard to the Public Hearings so that’s why we did sort of an extraordinary list of about 140, 150 -

HENRY: 300.

RAY: 300 extra notices for the public hearings, so anyway, I apologize for that. Actually, this is the first meeting we’ve held that’s out of Hilo, I think, since then. We’ve been having all our meetings in Hilo.

PATTON: And I’ve seen in the papers, some notification of Hilo meetings, but didn’t catch this one.

RAY: But we haven’t sent out any specifically to community groups on those.

PATTON: Thank you. My reason for quickly changing my plans and coming over was partly on behalf of the other people who came last time, and couldn’t this time, because they didn’t know until late, so they sort of delegated me to listen for everybody. Most of you were here last time when we came over and so, we were looking primarily for follow-up discussion on some of the ideas that we had presented, in terms of the nonpartisan elections, in terms of local incorporated governments in the communities, whether it be Kona, as a city or whatever, to do local items. I mean right now, the County sits down to discuss whether a street in Kona should be named such and such, and that’s something that is taking up County time, that quite easily a local government in Kona could do. And in terms of County Managing Director, or whatever the term wanted to wind up being, and in terms of having Commissioners for the Planning and the Water Department directly elected. And we are here, I am here, for these people to find out what has happened in the meantime. What other people’s reaction around the island has been to these ideas, and where it stands now.

RAY: Well, we may, or may not, touch on some of those subjects today, and I could probably chat with you personally to give you a little more of a complete sense on where some of those things are, or not, but I think it’s fair to say that except for one, which is the nonpartisan elections, which we’ve indicated in a straw vote, or preliminary vote, that is something we’re going to move forward, the rest of them are all in a state of preliminary discussion right now. So they are still part of a general discussion. Marni.

HERKES: I want to comment also. Thank you for coming today. We try to get as much out, and we are one of the first County entities to have all of our minutes on the web. As you say, you don’t have a computer. Other people do. They can print them out for you. You can have copies of them. I mean they’re huge because they’re verbatim, however, you will find that the nonpartisan elections were discussed, but also, that local governments - League of Women Voters is coming here to discuss neighborhood boards today. Local governments have been discussed, and even more so, the Managing Director type of form, Council Manager, merged government. I mean we have examples of that of about 10 or 15 different places in the United States that have those kinds of governments, so we’re continuing on all those discussions; all of those things that you brought up. So I want to assure you that we are, but I want to encourage you to go through the minutes and see what the discussions are. We’ve had some very interesting presentations by Honolulu City and County, but also by our Planning Department and our Public Works, on a permitting branch of Public Works, which will change a lot of things in our County government. So I encourage you to look through those minutes, as onerous as it is sometimes. Thank you.

PATTON: I’m used to political slogging.

RAY: Next, Bill Graham.

GRAHAM: John, can I pass out a handout?

RAY: Sure.

GRAHAM: My name is Bill Graham. Thank you for coming to Waimea. I just passed out a piece of material that was circulated in 1990 when a lot of us in the community helped to bring about the change from at-large voting for County Council, to single member district voting for County Council, which is what we have now, of course. But I have heard that there is some interest in this Commission to try to, let me say, dilute the effects of the change that was made in 1990. In other words, not go back to the original at-large, but take one step back in that direction, and I think that would be a mistake. I think that would be detrimental to the interest of the people on this island, and I looked over some of the materials I had from 1990, and this sheet, kind of, seemed to sum up the issues and concerns that were driving us to try to move this county into single member districts. And when I look at each one of the seven points on this particular sheet, I feel like if you were to go into some kind of hybrid situation where some of the members of the Council would be elected island-wide, in addition to specific problems you would create by doing that, such as having certain members on the Council be, sort of, super members compared to others, in some respect, because of having spent more to get elected, having a larger, sort of, base which they represent and all, I think that would be detrimental. But in particular, I also think, if I look at each one of seven issues, it seems to me there’s a detrimental effect on every one of them by you going back and diluting what was done in 1990. So, I’m just here to present this material, let you look it over, one at a time, on these things, and see if you don’t agree that that would be the case. And I also feel like the people did speak in 1990, and what they wanted, even though it was a very close vote, and there’ve been a number of issues brought before the electorate since then to change the terms, and all kinds of things about the County Council, I think that there’s some times when you just have to take your hands out of the stew a little bit and let things be. I know there was a bridge book I read years ago that I thought was such an interesting book, and it was essentially talking about all the really clever bridge players, and there’s a certain kind of bridge player that always gets in trouble because he just tries to make something interesting out of every hand, even though lots of hands, you just got to play them straight away, so I feel like don’t stick yourself into that pot of having to tinker and tinker and tinker every time. I, personally, have been on the island since December of ‘71 and I feel like the political climate in the Council, and involvement of the Council members with their communities, is much better since the change in 1990 than I remember before. Like in North Kohala, where I live, our last two Council members who’ve been elected under single member district, both John Ray and Leningrad Elarionoff, we see them in Kohala. Previous to that, when our Council member was elected from a larger district, we didn’t see them. So I just am encouraging you to please not try to stir this pot one more time. It’s been stirred a lot, and I feel like it’s in a good situation now, even though, clearly, there’s things you can criticize about how the Council works.

I don’t have any other issue I want to speak strongly on. I know you all are taking up nonpartisan elections. I know that’s important but I don’t feel like I have any solid, important information to pass along in that respect, or any strong views of my own, so I’ll leave that alone for you guys. Thank you.

RAY: John, you have a comment?

SANTANGELO: Well, just a small dialogue. Having been on the Council and served with John, and been a person that’s always voted for single member districts, and from Ka’u, I kind of understand that. Of course, Ka’u’s district, or at least the Sixth District, is a hundred miles long. But this is what I experienced. And in a single member district, we’ve had time to experiment and I think it’s appropriate, and again I want to voice strong support for single member, but I think it’s appropriate to re-evaluate and see can things move forward. One of the things that the Chairman warned us about in the beginning, was perception. And if we look at this six mokus, going to six single member; they’re still single member, not at-large, but single member, and three at-large. How does that look to the people? I just want to add a couple of things, of my experience on the Council. What I experienced, among certain Council members, was almost head hunting, or trophy hunting. That, in that district, there was a situation in a non-profit in which a large, very expensive vehicle was being lobbied for, in one particular part of the island that was totally inappropriate. It was to pick up kids from school who’d gotten sick, and get them home, that didn’t have that ability to do that. You don’t need a 19 or 18 passenger van. A station wagon would do. And that money was being, kind of, tried to be curried out of another district that was fairly poor. So I paid attention to some of that. As a Council member from Sixth District, I took a lot of pride in combining forces with two other Council members in one area to get a soccer field. In combining monies up in, say, Kona area, to get fax machines or copy machines, or some sorts of computer equipment to help the police track domestic violence. I went out of my way to work with other Council members, and John Ray was one of those that was very supportive and helpful in guiding me in that. I didn’t find that that was the case. Okay? So I was very resistant to this proposal that really hasn’t had a lot of hearing on this Board yet, and I just ask you, if you could, to look a little more into that yourself, and possibly open your mind, because your kind of input, a person that feels the way you do, and I felt that way also. If you would look in it in a closer scrutiny, possibly you could give us a little more input because it’s important to take a look at things and say, okay, the single member does work well. Now we get very expensive campaigns, say in Hilo or some place where you have like a real small block of property that makes up a whole Council member, compared to a 100 mile area that I had to campaign in. On the other hand, we’re looking at better government, and we would not want to dilute the representative style of that, but sometimes being a County, and not being able to create political subdivisions because it’s at the permission of the Legislature right now, we’re not able to create more home rule, so how can we balance this total territorialism that’s so small in certain areas compared to how can we, kind of like, level that out. And I’ve been giving this an ear myself, to try to reach a balance in that. So I just offer that as information, as my insight to it, and be real open to input because I think the public’s perception is going to be very important to this. Remember, we only recommend. It is the public that votes on it. But I thank you for your input.

GRAHAM: I think when I was listening to you, I could catch what you were saying fine, but I have a hard time pulling from what you said, a real thrust, like these particular examples you were giving, when you were on the Council. Can you sum up the thrust of what you were saying with that as to how we might want to change the Council districts?

SANTANGELO: Rather than being focused on the benefit of the greater population, which is what this is about. Now I can get into a political thing here, a soap box, especially on Council. This is not some philosophical megaphone. You’re there for roads. You’re there for quality of life on a very basic level, police, fire, park, like that. So I’ve found that it was difficult, among some very hard working Council members - I found it difficult to feel, in fact I did not see, where we were really taking issues that were very important to the quality of life that effected the whole island because to get elected, you were always trying to impress, you were always trying to come back to that electorate, that small electorate, and I think that that’s important, and we’re talking human nature here. But when you look at the broader picture, we’re there as nine members. We were there as nine members for the benefit of this entire community. That meant South Kona, that got ignored tremendously, and it was important to try to focus the Mayor’s attention over there on some parks and stuff; or outer North Kohala, where we could get Family Support Services up there, as was being done in Ka’u. And again, it was in some of these very vulnerable areas, we found very much being territorial. Again, coming down to impressing your electorate, having something to show your electorate that you’ve been busy, because we always get hit with this ‘you never do anything’, so it was that kind of thing. So, with a six single member moku, where it’s larger, it’s the Kona, it’s the Ka’u, it’s larger but you’re voting only within that so it’s a little larger than a nine member single member district but it is not the island-wide thing, and then having three at-large. Maybe, maybe, there’s a balance that can be created there, and that’s the concern.

GRAHAM: Okay.

SANTANGELO: Did I make that clear?

GRAHAM: Yes, I’m getting it better. Just a little bit of a response to that to serve two things. When you’re talking about the balance, I think, both, in our Federal government and in our State government, the balance is achieved by the President representing all the voters, and then we have the Congress which is single member districts around the country, so you have the balance of the local issues, which Dan Inouye and these guys are dealing with, and also the national issues. We have the same thing here. The Mayor, island-wide, and the Council members, and in fact, I believe on our island, I mean those of you who have been on the Council know better, probably the Mayor has even a little more power vis-a-vis the Council than the U. S. President has vis-a-vis the Legislature. So I feel the body, as a whole, voting certainly has its place with the Mayor’s election already. The other thing, I think, is more specific which was a real issue back when we were not single member districts here, places like Kohala and all, you get in a situation where one urban area like Hilo, all the politicians would have to cater to Hilo because that’s where the bulk of the votes was coming. So, essentially Hilo’s interests could dominate the island. Maybe in the future it’ll be Kona’s interests. I don’t know that. I’m not complaining about Hilo but just the centralization of power. If you go three island-wide districts on the Council, now we have three districts just in Hilo, and two in Kona. Three just in Hilo. Probably if we knock it down to six individual districts, you’re going to have only two in Hilo, then you also have three island-wide, so again, if the island-wide districts are mostly controlled by Hilo, five out of nine are controlled by Hilo. Control is a strong word, of course, but essentially you’re pulling back to the same problem we had before.

SANTANGELO: And, mind you, my dialogue with you is simply to bring information and get opinion, but again, we go back to that and right there, there was maybe a little bit of talk of territorialism. Remember, we have got a census coming up right now.

GRAHAM: Right.

SANTANGELO: And these districts are going to change drastically, and we haven’t talked about this much, but in this six single and three at-large, you’re not getting rid of single member districts.

GRAHAM: I understand. It’s just diluting the impact of single member districts, that’s what I’m saying. And you’re increasing the island-wide impact.

SANTANGELO: But your opinion is very important and that’s the only reason that I entered into this dialogue. I don’t want to lobby for anything specifically because we haven’t even talked about it, but thank you.

GRAHAM: Sure.

RAY: Just so you know, and for the record, we have not formally taken up this discussion yet, but we definitely will be, and members have expressed their interest in introducing something along those lines, and that’s one of the models, the three at-large and the six single members, so I think it’s appropriate. And like you say, everything is on the table today, so that’s as good a thing as any to talk about. Sue.

IRVINE: I guess I just wanted to say that we have had quite a few ideas along this line, and one of the suggestions was to have two-person single member districts, dual member districts, rather than just one person representing each district. I think the suggestion was four districts with -

RAY: Yes, Keola Childs came up with four districts, two members of each district, and one at-large.

IRVINE: I know the League of Women Voters is coming in with something to say about that later this morning, too. I don’t want to destroy home rule. We’ve worked to get a little more here. I guess you feel strongly that it is working. Sometimes I feel like if you just have one representative that you can talk to, it disenfranchises people that just don’t get along with that individual person. The other thing that we’ve been talking about, and I can’t say whether we’ve talked or whether these are letters that have come to us or whatnot, but out there are all sorts of ideas about electing, say, the Planning Commission, the Water Commission, the Police Commission. Transferring Police and Ethics Commissions over to the Prosecutor’s Office. Turning the Police Commission into a Public Safety, which would include Fire and Police.

RAY: And Civil Defense.

HERKES: And Civil Defense, and Emergency Services.

IRVINE: And Civil Defense and Emergency Services, which are already under Fire, I guess. We may be coming up with some more Commissions and maybe we should go to electing some of these officials. Maybe we should elect out County Corporation Counsel, or something like that, that would give people more chances to vote and be heard, personally.

HERKES: Your eyes are getting wider and wider and wider. I encourage you to read the minutes.

RAY: Sue, are you finished?

IRVINE: Yes.

RAY: Marni, did you have something to say?

HERKES: George wants to go first.

RAY: Okay, George.

MARTIN: Thank you. First of all, I apologize for being late this morning. On your statement about a hybrid, and I believe that some of us have discussed this, as our Chairman has indicated, not possibly officially, but if there was a hybrid, as Sue was indicating, I think you’d have more accountability because a six-three, six single districts, three at-large, same number of people, the six would follow the State House of Representatives boundaries so you would gain some, and possibly lose some, here and there. But when it comes to a situation where you need to touch up on something in your district, you’d have two people to talk to, and it makes it a lot easier for individuals, I think, from the public to address certain situations. So, with that in mind, it’s not as bad as what you’re saying, but I do hear what you’re saying about taking away from what was the intent in 1990, and I don’t think we’re trying to do that. What we’re trying to do is what is being said on that side, better government, if at all possible, and that’s going to be the intent if, in fact, we do take it up in that manner.

RAY: Bill, sure, if you want to respond.

GRAHAM: Yes, thanks. Just one thing I wanted to say when I started, and I do think I understand you guys well, where you’re coming from and that sounds fine. When I talk about diluting these things, if you make the districts larger, or if you have two people from every district, then the districts get twice as large. When you’re running for office, you walk the districts if you can, right? Well, you can walk the district now. You can’t walk the district if it’s twice as big.

MARTIN: Sure you can. It takes you a little bit longer.

RAY: I think we understand the point, yes. Marni.

HERKES: I think I mentioned to Lesley that we have something like 15 models of government. One of the other models is the six-three model, but out of those three at-large, one of those ends up being the Council Chair and the Mayor. And the Mayor with the CEO in the County. So we have a whole bunch of ideas to play with here that are expanding our minds, and I think we’ve set out to do something to make government a little bit more responsive to the people, as well as more accessible. We have a hard time getting people for Boards and Commissions, as well as more efficient, so I think that in that discussion, we’re all open. I’m amazed, and I’m really pleased, that we’re all open to a whole bunch of different ideas, not using personalities of people that have been in, or not using models that we have. The National League of Cities has a lot of different models and we’re getting a lot of information from them.

GRAHAM: Good. Thanks. My only important thing is to try to pretend that you have, still on your board, the guy that wrote the bridge book, you know. Just keep him there as one guy to listen to even if he’s not there.

HERKES: We’ll remember that. Don’t get too far out there.

RAY: Bill, since you’re here, and I know you’ve probably paid more attention to County government that most citizens, and been very much involved in the planning process, you got any comments on City Manager form of government vs. Mayor? The most common model is Council Manager where the Council basically hires a City Manager type who’s the Chief Executive Officer of the County, and so he falls under the control of the County Council. You have any personal feelings on that? Have you thought about that much?

GRAHAM: No. The only thing that comes to me is that part of the idea is to break the political nature of the animal and to bring it to a more professional nature, I think. One obviously gets a skeptical feeling, like I’ll bet they can be turned into a political animal anyway, even though you structure like this and that. I don’t know that for sure. My only thing would be, as much as possible, try to look at where else it’s been done in the country, and where it’s broken down, and where it’s been successful, and what’s the differences.

RAY: John, you had a comment?

SANTANGELO: Just real quick, a quick comment. We came right down to that again. It’s beyond me, that if you have single member districts, why you only have, quote, one person to talk to. It takes nine votes. It takes five, and in some cases, six. Why aren’t we talking to those people? Because you don’t elect them, and that’s why this trophy thing. Again, I’m only talking about what I saw that was flawed in it. There’s a lot of good about being a servant leader within your community, and being able to be elected. The difference between a President and a Legislature, and even our Legislature, and it’s what I liked about the County Council because, I guess, I’m just a trench, get muddy, kind of jerk, but it’s close to the people, and you will see your Council member far more frequently than you will see a House, a Senate, a Governor, a President, or anyone else, and so, there is that, just trying to balance that. I worked with Laurel Decker on Solid Waste. We had many meetings up here that had to do with the County, and frankly, if someone in my district was talking about a Public Works thing, I sent them to Dominic because he was Chair of that. We should be working for the whole island, and as long as it works that way, I’m just saying I saw it break down a bit, and I’m curious, and I thank you for your input.

GRAHAM: Well, I thank you all for all your dialogue and all this attention to my thoughts. I don’t want to hold you up too much.

RAY: Okay, thanks Bill.

HERKES: Go on the web.

RAY: Virginia, are you ready to go ahead and segue into - We have representatives here from the League of Women Voters, and before you got here, I explained that we have a wide open agenda so everything’s fair game to talk about, as far as what’s agendized.

ISBELL: Sit in the pit?

RAY: If you’d like to sit on the other side, that’s fine, and the microphone to please use for recording purposes.

ISBELL: No, no, I don’t mind sitting right in the firing line. Actually, this is better because I can hand you things that I have.

RAY: Okay.

ISBELL: For the Chairman, I actually made a different color.

RAY: Virginia, I would like you to use the mike and introduce yourself and get it all.

ISBELL: I will. This is for you because it’s a different color. It’s nicer paper. All I could find was a couple of sheets of that. But this is our statement. Good morning. Good morning. Hi, how are you, Chris? Seems like I know everybody.

RAY: Virginia, I saw Helene Hale poke her head in outside.

ISBELL: Yes, they’re lost. They’re all wandering around because -

RAY: Would you like to wait a couple of minutes and see if we can gather them up?

ISBELL: Maybe Don can go out and - well, actually, I have this to give to them because I figured they wouldn’t find it.

RAY: Let’s just take a couple of minutes break since they’re close by. Let’s see if we can round them up.

RECESSED The Chairman called a recess at 9:50 a.m.

RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 10:00 a.m.

RAY: Let’s reconvene our meeting. Virginia, would you like to introduce yourself and have the floor?

ISBELL: My name is Virginia Isbell. I’m a resident of Kealakekua on the Island of Hawaii, and I’ve lived here on the island for 40 years. I’d like to read a prepared statement, if I may.

RAY: Sure.

ISBELL: First of all, I want to thank you for allowing us to be here today. We have a General Membership Meeting, as you know, going on.

Aloha. My name is Virginia Isbell. I’m President of the Hawaii County League of Women Voters. It is our pleasure to participate in this Charter Review Workshop.

The Hawaii County League is made up of two units: West Hawaii and East Hawaii. Are you surprised? No. These units meet on a regular basis monthly with General Membership meetings combining the two units, usually in Waimea. Today is our calendared General Membership Meeting and we appreciate your allowing us to take this time to present our united views.

It should also be noted that the League is nonpartisan and provides numerous services to Community Associations for their annual meetings and issues. This includes counting their ballots and providing a non-biased/neutral and credible body for accurate results.

For the past year, the League of this County has been actively studying various issues regarding this county and its Charter. We support the following:

1) We support Neighborhood Boards;

2) We support nonpartisan elections for Mayor and County Council.

3) We support Vote-by-mail provided there are strict safeguards to protect against fraud.

The League has also discussed the Manager/Council form of government with the Chair of the Council taking on the "role" of Mayor at official functions and there was general support; we did not have the opportunity to send out a ballot on that because we needed more information, we felt. However, we did not go into in-depth.

The League did have lengthy discussions regarding a change in representative districts which included single member districts with at-large members as well. There was absolutely no support for that concept. All we did was get into why it’s not good and why we like the system the way it is, so there was no support at all.

We have, as our primary initiative, the creation of a comprehensive and informative "Voter Information Pamphlet". Individual members of the League have selected an elected official who is expected to run for re-election as well as persons who have indicated that they intend to run for office. These persons will be sent a Questionnaire which the League has developed. The information received back will be documented in the "Voter Information Pamphlet". We have styled our "Voter Information Pamphlet" after the County of San Diego, which we believe best exemplifies such a wealth of information.

The League encourages the Charter Review Commission to include a proposed Amendment to the Charter which requires this County to provide a "Voter Information Pamphlet" for both the Primary and General Elections. Such an Amendment should also allow the County to work with non-profit, nonpartisan organizations which may be willing to do the research for such an informative piece.

There’ve been numerous requests in past years to the election officers of the state and county to provide a comprehensive "Voter Information Pamphlet" and the excuse has always been that it would require more positions to do the research and would be cost prohibitive. We believe that a partnership between the county and non-profit organizations can make this proposal a reality and come under budget.

Please note in the sample Pamphlet I have here, and this is from San Diego, that there is a thank you to the "Soroptimist International of San Diego", and they are thanked for their involvement in the election process. Let me show it to you. Right here, at the bottom, there’s a Soroptimist insignia and I was shocked to see it, and I thought, whoa, they’re right with us. So, anyway, they were very involved and they helped to get volunteers, as well.

We also believe that Hawaii County could show the way for the state to provide a "Voter Information Pamphlet". But in the meantime, our residents in this county should have the advantage of having information on candidates for office, proposed Amendments to the Charter, proposed Amendments to the State Constitution and general information on voting.

We thank you for this opportunity to provide our input on the important work you are doing, as you’re also volunteers, for the future of the county and the Charter. If we can be of service to you, please feel free to contact us.

At this time, I’d like to pass this over to you and have you - one at one end and one at the other. That’s the San Diego - it’s a neat little booklet. I learned a lot about San Diego County just from that. But I also wanted to show you what we have. This is our dummy copy. This is Hawaii County, and it’s based on that. I’ll let you look at it. And it’s back, it says "Vote for Hawaii", "Aloha, Don’t Leave Home Without It". No, no, it doesn’t say that. We have here, how the sample ballot would look, and what the Table of Contents would be like. I’m waving this around. And this would be a picture of the candidate and what their little comments are, and we would not amend their comments, or change them. We would only shorten them if they were too long, because they’d have to fit on this page. Those, as you notice, some of them are half pages but we feel we’ll give them a full page. And it’s newspaper print. It’s cheap to do. I’ve gotten some estimates on it. The real work is in getting it print-ready and getting all the information. And the League is well on its way in preparing it so if you have any friends in the County Council, we think it’s time for them to commit to funding the mail-out and the simple mailing, or the printing of it, because it could be done on bulk rate, and it would be very reasonable. All they’d have to do is take a look at how much money they spend on advertising in newspapers for the elections, and all the other things that they pay for that could be put into this kind of a thing. And so, thank you very much, and I’m open to questions, and I’ve also asked other members of the League to be here, who may want to add on to what I’ve said, or may have something as an individual. The statement I’ve made for you, on what we have approved, is what we have actually voted on.

RAY: Just a little bit of clarification on the pamphlet. Did you have a cost estimate on that from printing and mailing?

ISBELL: I asked for some written. I’ve gotten some oral but I don’t want to use hearsay because I’ve learned that if it isn’t in writing, it’s not worth repeating, and so, we are in the process of getting some of those now. Even the estimates I heard were very reasonable, and I know, looking at some of the newspapers and things that are put in by the County and the State, there’s an awful lot of money spent on elections.

RAY: Because we do have a budget to address, as far as the Charter Amendments, so maybe we could combine or incorporate in some way.

ISBELL: We’d be happy to help you.

RAY: Have you discussed this and gotten any advocacy from any individual Council members to come up with the funding?

ISBELL: Yes, we have.

RAY: So, you anticipate that the County Council, or members of the County Council, are going to pursue this?

ISBELL: We know it will be introduced. We don’t know for sure because we’re trying to get all of the information before it creates a problem, and if you have all your homework done, and the information, it just subdues any big antagonistic things about how much it’s going to cost. So, we’re very careful about it. We want to make sure we get all our ducks in a row and find out what it would be printed in the State, and the prison also, as you know, has a printing press, so we’re looking at maybe asking - they don’t print money, of course, but we have to look at what is the most reasonable way to go, but we want to keep it in the State.

RAY: Okay, and I’m sure we have some other questions. George.

MARTIN: Thanks, and appreciate you folks coming and participating in our format. I guess it’s your format too because the dates coincide, yeah? Specific questions on your neighborhood board proposal. Would that be advisory, or what type of format would that be, or would you expect to see, if it were to be taken up?

ISBELL: Well, we had different discussions on this and there is a question on whether it should be advisory or should have some authority to make decisions. The Planning Commission, as you know, has some authority even though some of us question whether that’s correct or not, but I think one of the things that there was a great concern about is that it be funded so that they are elected, like Oahu. That it is just not a volunteer appointed thing, but they have to run for it, and that way you get a lot more interest and participation, I believe. And what I’ve found on Oahu is even when you have a very important meeting in the Legislature, if there’s a neighborhood board meeting, they go to that first, and they come to things later because that’s how much they hold it in esteem. Just so you know.

MARTIN: Number 3, you made mention about a Vote-by-mail. I’ve been in support of that for quite some time. I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s something that we could work with. You made mention of safeguards. What do you see necessary to make something like that work?

ISBELL: A lot of high technology. You have to have a machine that can scan a signature and determine whether it’s a fraud or not, because the signature’s on the outside of the envelope, so that you don’t know what the vote is on the inside, but the outside has to have the signature of the person who does it. We have a wonderful video, by the way, we’d be happy to share with you. Have you seen the videos on Vote-by-mail? How it works?

RAY: I haven’t. I don’t think we have.

ISBELL: It was an eye opener for me because I didn’t know what it really meant, but it means that everybody votes by mail. You don’t have polling places, and you just have to make darn sure that the person who is able to vote is the one that’s voting. But I’d be happy to get that for you.

RAY: We’d appreciate it.

MARTIN: Perhaps we’re probably going to need it down the road sometime. With the single member district changes that, not so much have been proposed, but discussed, and not so much in-depth until this morning - with the change from nine specific single member districts to six, and then three at-large, you indicated there was a lot of non-support and possibly even disapproval of that idea. I’m not going to ask why but you see, our situation for doing it is better accountability and the intent for this body, from the onset, was to better government, and by making that specific change, the government would be bettered in that now that you have three, possibly four, people that you can talk to, because you voted for four people. So anytime that there’s an issue that comes up, instead of speaking to your Council member, who may be in support of what you have, but the other eight aren’t, you now have four people that you can possibly talk to. You don’t lose your single membership because we’ll follow the State House if, in fact, something like that were to come up, or some line like that, so you’d still have your single member districts but you’d have more people that you could possibly talk to, and better your chances of getting something across.

ISBELL: Well, that sounds good on paper, but the reality is that I’ve lived through both. And the County had at-large, people from Hilo voted for people from Kona that we didn’t vote for, and they got into office and so, consequently, it was a lot of resentment, and that is one of the reasons we went to single member districts. The same could happen in the future. As Kona’s population grows, we could control who gets voted on in Hilo, and I don’t think you’d like that either.

MARTIN: Well, it’s a democracy. You’re going to vote for the person you want as long as you have an opportunity. I understand what you’re saying, though.

ISBELL: I didn’t finish yet. The other part is that as a Legislator, I also was in when the Senate was at-large, and the island here, everybody ran for the whole island. What happened is that we found that it was better to have single member districts, and of course, the Senate has two of the single member districts each. It was because people felt disenfranchised. They wanted someone they could say, that’s the person we voted for from this district, and he needs to listen to us. And what it does is it allows you to really focus in. As a Legislator or an elected Council person, you’re focusing in on your district, but when you get into the County Council, you vote as a whole. You vote for everything, so I just cannot go along with single member districts, personally. I couldn’t find anybody that really wanted to change the system except for, maybe, having one person run at-large, and that person would act as Mayor. And that was the only thing that we came up with. There was no agreement.

RAY: Thank you. Marni.

HERKES: Good morning, again. We’re using the future as guidelines, not the past. We’re entering a global economy, a global scene where County government is effected as well as State government and National government, so we’re not thinking about how things necessarily worked in the past as much as we’re thinking about what it’s going to be like in the next ten years, because this is what we’re writing the Charter for. In that mind set, we’re looking at what other counties are doing, what other things they’re are doing. In the National

Association of Counties, the Council Manager is one of the most popular forms of government. Seems to work the best in a lot of different areas. In that, you touched on the single member districts, and the six-three, and having the - One model that we have, the largest vote getter is the Mayor, and then the Council hires the Managing Director, but we have something like 15 models that we’re working our way through, kind of looking at what would work best. I think our major goal is to make government more efficient and more responsive to the public so that we can have more involvement, especially with Boards and Commissions which has been a universal. But we are now on the web with our minutes, and we’d encourage all of the League of Women Voters to go and look at our minutes, to look at what we’ve been discussing. Wednesday, we discussed the Department of Public Safety. We discussed having the Police Department, the Fire Department, the Emergency Services, all under one department with one Commission. I don’t know whether that’s something that’s good. I know other people try it, then they move back and forth. But, that’s a discussion, so we would encourage all of you to really look at the discussions that we’re having and see what information you can give us.

ISBELL: Okay, thank you very much. I’d like to respond to that. First of all, your comment about we have to forget the past, look at the future. I’m saying to you that the problem we’ve had is that we have not learned from the past, and if we’re not going to look at the past and learn from it, then what is it all about? We’re only talking about ten years, too. In ten years, your Charter will be amended again. We’re not talking about something that’s 50 to 100 years, and it’s forever, but we do have to move very carefully, and very slowly, on the type of change that you’re talking about. If you’ve got 15 different models, and one hasn’t come out clearly as the top one, then obviously, everybody has a different idea on what representation really means. But I would certainly be thinking, also, about what you can sell to the public. Are they ready for this? Do they hear it the same as you? When it comes to the vote, you’ve got to get this passed through on a vote, as an Amendment to the Charter, and so it has to be presented in a way that is acceptable to the local people. But they have long memories, except for certain things.

MARTIN: Point of clarification.

RAY: Marni, are you finished?

HERKES: Yes.

MARTIN: Just a point of clarification, if I may. The Charter is our Charter, per se, the County, not just this committee up here, so the statement that you made that our Charter will be re-looked at in ten years, you’re correct, but it’s everybody’s Charter, not just ours.

ISBELL: That’s why I said you’re going to have trouble getting it through. You’d better have the right way of presenting it because you’ve got votes that are going to be the total public, not just here in this room. What you pass here goes to the public for vote.

MARTIN: Yes, well again, clarification. We’re not going to pass anything here. All we’re going to do is present it to the voters and they will make the final decision.

ISBELL: You are passing something to the voters. You’re not going to pass something that you don’t agree on, so, I don’t understand where you’re coming from. I think, you may need to be out there in the public a little bit, as John has been, and I have been where you are, and you John. When you’re out there in the public, you get a real sense of how they feel and what’s going on, and if you’re presenting anything that’s for change, it’s got to be presented very carefully, very well, and very well thought out.

RAY: Let’s continue on around. John.

SANTANGELO: Virginia, I appreciate the support for the Voter-by-mail. I’m going to tie this back to something in the end because I want to, kind of, put it all together with one thought. The fraud is the issue. I, personally, in a campaigning strategy, used absenteeism, absentee vote, as a campaign, and I found the State really kind of thought each time someone succeeded at it, it seemed like they redoubled their effort to eliminate it. This might be a good way because you need the participation of people. The two things that always bothered me the most, personally, when I did it, was where do you draw the line of responsibility. Sometimes I struggle with the web. When it’s too dang easy, where do you show the effort to get up and to be a part of something, and so I struggled with that, and getting an absentee ballot to people was where I finally decided. But, also the fraud was a really important issue, so I support that, and just bringing up the technology really is good.

When you talk about your pamphlet and you said you wouldn’t edit it. Having been on both sides of submitting information, a really good rule that I liked, was we’re going to take X amount of words and we’ll take your statement, and when we get to that word, we’ll stop. That’ll get people to condense it, you know, because so often, if you do take a sentence out, you are amending it, and so one magazine just flat told us that. We’re going to just put it in there. It’s going to be in this font, this size, and when we get to that number word, pau. It was kind of neat.

ISBELL: Before you go on, just to let you know that the candidates all know that the only thing that we will do is shorten it. We will not change it, so if it gets -

SANTANGELO: So you start at the top or the bottom.

ISBELL: Yes. Probably the top, but the questions that we’re asking will also be put into a slot like, how old are you, what’s your full name. You have to tell on your - when you’re applying to run for office.

SANTANGELO: One thing that I’d ask the League to do, because I struggle with this nonpartisan., being a Republican, I’d go back to my party, oh, you can’t - baloney, I really support nonpartisan on the County level. As you know, in the Legislature, it’s very partisan because you’re in the more philosophical - Anyway, your body could help, and I’d ask you to think about forums, because with this single member district issue that just came up, one thing I noticed here, and it’s my observation and I may be wrong, but it’s perception, and it’s information. I’m cursed by two things; one was I was educated as an engineer, or electronics and I’m a male, so I think a certain way. And generally, it’s dealing with these facts and I’m very linear, and I never dealt well with perception, and yet, that is the reality in politics today, and I see a lot of bad things being done in the absence of solid information. And so, some of these issues that are emotional, I think are best served if some group, like yourself, would present a fact-finding, or a fact-sharing, forum in which both sides could kind of be brought out because with this single member thing, this body really has yet to really take it up, so there hasn’t been a real clear discussion of all 15 models, and therefore, there shouldn’t be something coming forward. And we already had a discussion once with someone and we won’t go into that again because it’s redundant. But I’d ask you to consider that for whatever issue comes up that’s kind of like that. It would be really great to have a body, such as yours, that is so responsible in that area, to have some sort of information dissemination thing. Thank you.

ISBELL: One last thing. If you’ll notice in that pamphlet, there’s also a place for rebuttal on issues and it’s given totally independently as if, you know, here’s an argument for it, here’s an argument against it, and then what somebody thinks about it. So, what you might want to do is take a look at that. I’m going to leave these two with you so that you can - One’s a primary and one’s a general.

RAY: Roland.

HIGASHI: Virginia, this voter information package. Could the League prepare a proposed Charter Amendment, what section, exact wording, and then we can take it from there? Right now, it’s kind of loose. If the League could do that, I think we could be more focused on exactly what we’re talking about, and consider that.

ISBELL: Well, we can’t do it until you pass something that’s going to go to the voters. Is that what you mean, before they go to the voters?

HIGASHI: What I mean is something for us to really consider, to act on. Right now, it’s a loose thing, and exact wording could be important.

ISBELL: Instead of just saying we support this, you want it put into Charter language type?

HIGASHI: That’s correct. If you could research the Charter itself, the section, and do that, we’d appreciate that.

ISBELL: You want us to write your bill. I’ve got to think about that one because that’s a full-time - I’ve been there, done that. I know what you’re talking about.

HIGASHI: The other thing is, in the Vote-by-mail, I think we need to have an Amendment to the State Election laws. We did pursue that in a cursory manner for doing a Special Election, and that was not allowed. I suggest you take that to the Legislature and get some support on this, at least this Board, or having Vote-by-mail.

ISBELL: The reason that I brought it up is because that was a Statewide issue, and the State League of Women Voters approved Vote-by-mail, so the State League, they will be pursuing it. I brought it up to let you know that that’s one of the things that we will be working on. But, the Vote-by-mail, we feel, will give a lot of people an opportunity to vote who say they’re too busy or don’t have time to look at the ballot, or when they go to the voting poll, they really haven’t thought it through, and that sort of thing. So, the Vote-by-mail is basically going to be a -

HIGASHI: As long as we understand that we are not going to consider Vote-by-mail by this board.

ISBELL: Yes, but you’re aware of it, though.

HIGASHI: Yes we are.

RAY: Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: I have a question regarding "Voter Information Pamphlet". The League’s specific proposal is to make an Amendment provision in the County Charter. My question is why the County Charter other than some other route?

ISBELL: Well, because it’s like your constitution, and it’s allowing you. The State Constitution says broad statements, this is what you’ll do, this is how it will be. The County Charter’s also a broad statement, and what we’re saying is you should allow this to be, but I also put in there ‘required’, but you can change that around to allow it to happen. But if you don’t have it in there, it just never happens. You pass an ordinance. It’s just an ordinance. But you put it in the Charter, it’s in the booklet. Everybody has a handle on that. To find an ordinance, you’ve got to go leafing through a whole bunch of paper, so I just feel that’s a proper place for something that is so important that it makes every voter, who’s voting for people throughout the island, as well as all these Charter Amendments, informed, so they know what’s going on.

Incidentally, there is one other thing that I’d like to just bring up briefly. I have been an advocate for incorporated cities, towns and villages for several years because I think that’s one way we can overcome this idea that you have to split this island asunder, and I got an Attorney General Opinion, which I will share with you, that says that it’s basically got to have a neighboring legislation on the State level, and we were pretty sure of that, it just took him a long time to do it. Took us four years to get an Opinion, just to let you know. But, we think that that’s something you might want to consider should that ever become enabled, that the Charter might address that.

RAY: Gary, any more comments?

YOSHIYAMA: No.

RAY: I’ve got a couple of things, Virginia. One, in regard to neighborhood boards, and you don’t have to answer this today, but I’d like to have more of a sense of your polling and your participation from communities. I’m very active in the Waimea Community and I don’t recall this at any community forum, being brought up or discussed, and I think, Waimea’s probably, arguably, one of the most cohesive, if not the most cohesive, community on the island, and this is not anything that we’ve ever discussed at the Community Association or any other forums, or whatever, so I’d like to have the sense that that’s taken place, and especially in communities where it’s very easy to bring up and discuss these kinds of things, and get more of a sense of island-wide, what the participation was because, quite frankly, I personally, and I don’t think any of us have heard much support for neighborhood boards.

ISBELL: Well, you all should join the League of Women Voters.

RAY: Okay, so I think we need some convincing there. We do understand it. We had representatives from the City and County, that came over and spoke, basically, pretty positively about it, and gave us a lot of background. So I think we understand how they work and whatever, but my sense is this group doesn’t feel much of a public mandate, or support, for neighborhood boards from the communities we represent. That hasn’t been my individual experience, and as a Council member, it also was not my experience that this is something that - so anyway,

ISBELL: Well, just to respond to you. We don’t pretend to represent every community, but we do have members from every community, and we represent the League. This is League of Women Voters’s stand. This is what we voted on, but as far as going out into the community, now you’re asking us to do your job. Public forum really belongs in your arena, and I’m looking at the public here, and you’ve got a really good representation from the League, and this is the public. And we sent out ballots and they were sent back, straight to the Hilo Post Office, and so they were counted at meetings. We never even looked at them until that point, so it wasn’t one person doing this. It wasn’t just me. It was the League of Women Voters, and we have several in Waimea and Waikaloa, by the way. And we don’t know who responded because we just get them in an envelope and they don’t have names. We didn’t ask them to sign them, so I have no idea of knowing, except that we received a lot of them. And if you want us to have a public forum, I’d like that in writing, if you would, please, and how you would support that for us because having a public forum, and taking on the role of what some of this stuff you’re doing, we might be able to attract a different set of audience too, little less informal, perhaps, but we’d be happy to help you in any way like that.

RAY: Well, we would very much welcome your help and participation in discussing any of these issues. And like you mentioned, the overall advocacy and presentation of the public is going to be what’s going to carry the day, so I think we’re all going to have to work together to make any changes.

One thing, and I’m going to give you the information on this. We have had a pretty interesting model from Lexington, Kentucky. It’s a city and county.

ISBELL: On Council Manager?

RAY: Yes. And they have a hybrid situation. They have, what they call, a Chief Administrative Officer, which the comparison to the private sector is the Mayor is still the CEO, the Chief Executive Officer, but the Chief Operating Officer is more a City Manager type. Now, that person still is part of the Administration. He still is hired by the Mayor, but the criteria and the approval by the Council. It’s much more tied clearly to a professional City Manager type. And I’m going to give you this information, but the other one, since we were talking about neighborhood boards, another thing that they utilize is that they have an Office of the Citizens Advocate, and the Council members individually appoint someone to be on the Citizens Advocate Board. And it’s a formal Board that meets as an island-wide Citizens Advocate Board, as part of the process.

ISBELL: Is that like a complaint department? It sounds like it’s a place that you come to complain, but do you get anything done?

RAY: I don’t know.

ISBELL: What can they do?

RAY: It does deal primarily, the description, with complaints, abuses, irregularities, but also recommends substantive or procedural policies. But anyway, we’re just looking into that, so I wanted to mention it. I’m going to get you a copy of this. We’re having these made up.

ISBELL: Yes, that sounds pretty interesting if it’s -

RAY: Like I said, it’s an interesting hybrid. It might be a way for us to instill more professional management and, sort of, head in that direction vs. a whole scale eliminate the Mayor, and then we move in that direction, and if people like the way it’s heading, then that might be the direction we take. Also, one other thing. You pointed out that this is a ten-year process, but as you’re certainly aware, Charter Amendments can be brought forward at any time, by the County Council, and by the general public. So it’s not necessarily just every ten years.

ISBELL: Yes, we vote on your Amendments all the time. I’ve seen some of them fall flat on their face and some of them make lots of hay.

RAY: Okay, any other comments? Sue.

IRVINE: Yes, I’d like to just say one thing. Although John indicated we haven’t looked too much into the idea of neighborhood boards, we do have a very good study from the Honolulu League of Women Voters that was passed out to all of us, about neighborhood boards, and we’ve had some input, then, from the City and County on that. But, I think neighborhood boards, we’re talking about empowering people locally, with something like that, and some of the other ideas that have been brought forth to us are the possibility of, like, electing some of our Boards and Commissions, Planning or Police Commission. Maybe moving these Commissions around to be under independent Prosecutor’s Office, rather than where they are. So there are ideas out there that would -

ISBELL: Maybe we should be electing Police Chiefs too.

IRVINE: Well, Police Chiefs, or elect the County Attorney.

ISBELL: So that we can get rid of them when they’re -

IRVINE: We’ve heard lots of different ideas, and that’s one that’s been brought to us.

ISBELL: You’re right. You know, there is another thing on neighborhood boards. It’s not just neighborhood board for zoning, but for all matters, including public works. There are two different kinds, but we did not define that because some people were not real sure about what that really meant. Just so you know, there’s broad -

RAY: Any other questions for Virginia? If not, thank you very much.

ISBELL: Thank you very much. It’s been a joy. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

RAY: Now, Helene Hale has signed up to speak, and if anybody else in the audience would like to speak, there are sign up forms over here on the end of the table. So, Helene is the last person signed up to speak, so we’re going to take a short break after she presents to us.

HALE: I would just like to say that I’m speaking as an individual. I am a member of the League, Vice President really, and I agree with the League positions as outlined by Virginia. I’d just like to explain to you that the League

hasn’t gone into all these questions that you are faced with, because we have constraints of our membership and we have a very strict process. We have to study an issue for a while before we send out information to our members to get their input and their vote, and we have to have meetings. And we have had a meeting on neighborhood boards, and we did have your head of your neighborhood board executive come to us. It was organized by Marni Herkes, who’s a member of our League too. And so, at any rate, but my opinions are just based on my own experience as a former member of the old Board of Supervisors and member of the County Council, and I’d just like to remind you of what Virginia was saying, and that is, that whatever you recommend, you’re going to have to really explain to the people because, in the final analysis, your Charter is the Charter of the people, and has to be voted upon. And, maybe, most of you aren’t old enough to remember, but I was on the old Board of Supervisors when the first Charter was presented to the people. And you may not know, but for two elections, the Charters were voted down by the people. They didn’t accept any form of government except the Board of Supervisors, so that’s just something to remember, that everybody is not going to agree with everything that you put forward. But, I’d also like to point out that under the old Board of Supervisors, and I’m sure you’ve done your homework on this, we had three Supervisors from West Hawaii, which was Kohala, Ka’u and Kona; and three from East Hawaii, which was Hamakua, Hilo and Puna, and in those days, it was very unequal because in Kona we had, maybe, one-third of the population that they had in Hilo, and so the Hilo people were really gung ho in those days to change the system. But, the Kona people kind of liked having three. It was not a one person/one vote, but even with that, it was difficult to get the people to vote in the Charter idea. But, in the old system, the Board of Supervisors was really an administrative board, but the Chairman and Executive Officer was elected at-large. The only officer in those days was elected by the whole island, and as such, the Chairman and Executive Officer functioned as the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors and also as the full-time Executive of the County, so when we tried to explain to people, we’d always say Mayor in quotes because in Honolulu it was called a Mayor, but in the neighbor islands, it was called Chairman and Executive Officer. I’m just pointing that out because in our discussion in the League, and I hadn’t really thought this out before, but in our last meeting where we were discussing the six-three and your ideas of changing the composition of the Council, I was very much against the six-three, although at one time, I was for six-three. But, I was not for the three being elected for four years. I was for everybody electing two years. The difficulty with the six-three, where three are elected for four years, is that you have three Councilmen who are really unequal, and they have undue influence because on the election years that they don’t have to run, they can interfere in other elections and that, I think, is a dangerous precedent. If you’re going to have six-three, I think it has to be equal; two years, four years, whatever you want to agree with, and I am very much an advocate of two years. Although I was on the County Council when we were elected for four years, I presented several amendments to the County Council for two-year terms because I felt that we should have district representation, although, at that time I was living in Hilo, I could empathize with the Kona people and the rural people who felt that Hilo had undue influence, and so I was a very strong advocate in those days for the two years and for district representation, and I still am.

But, I want to present an idea that we haven’t had time to study or think through, but the more I think about it personally, the more I think it’s a good idea. If you have six districts, like you’re proposing, and you tie them to the House Districts, you might end up with a canoe district, like we did before, when the first time, when Maui, and that wouldn’t work for a county, so that would mean you’d still have to go re-district on a Council basis. So, I would like to suggest that you consider the idea of having eight districts. Eight single member districts for two years and that you have one person who is elected at-large. That way, that person could be Mayor, Chairman of the Council, or whatever you wanted to put it in, but would vote only in case of a tie. Four, four would be eight. You might have a tie so the Mayor could vote in case of a tie. It’s an idea I want to throw out because the more I think about it, the more I like it because one of my real concerns, the difference between the Board of Supervisors and the County Council was, the Chairman, under the old Board of Supervisors, represented the whole island, all the people, was elected by the people to be the Chairman, whereas under the Council system, the Chairman of the Council, who gets a little more money and has a little more power, is chosen by the Council, which, in my opinion, it’s just exasperated the division between Republicans, Democrats, Independents, or whoever you have. Whoever could get five votes.

RAY: Helene, can I interrupt you? Let’s assume we’re going nonpartisan, okay?

HALE: Okay, if you’re going nonpartisan, you’re still going to have what they have in Honolulu, which is nonpartisan. You’re going to have five people who elect the Chair, and that means that there is a lot of back door hanky panky. I’ll give you this Chairmanship, I’ll give you that Chairmanship, you be for me for Chairman, and I don’t think that’s good government. I really don’t.

RAY: How about the dynamic of the person who is best able to lead, and pull together that Council, because you really eliminate that dynamic.

HALE: But that person -

RAY: I’m assuming it would be more non-political in nature, but personally, I like the Council being able to choose the person they feel is best able to pull together and lead the Council vs. - anyway, I just -

HALE: Okay, I know, and most of the people that are in the majority of a Council like that system. I’ve been in the majority and I’ve been in the minority, so I’m looking at it from both sides, and I’m just giving you my own personal opinion, based upon the difference between being elected by the people and being Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, and being appointed by the Council and getting a Chairmanship of a Committee thereby. So, I don’t think it’s necessarily the person who best leads. It’s the person who gets five votes, if I recall. If you have five votes, you can do what you want to, and that is not necessarily the person who can best lead. The person who can best lead is the person who represents all of the people of the island, and not just one small district from the island, who’s going to be Chair. And that’s another thing to consider. I’m throwing these ideas out for you to consider and I don’t expect - I haven’t even been able to bring them up in detail enough to convince our League to adopt them, but nobody seemed to find a great deal of fault with the idea, but we just haven’t studied it. But I’m bringing this up. Elect your Mayor at-large, and that Mayor can be Chair of the Council, to vote only in case of a tie, much like the Vice President does, votes in case of a tie in the United States Senate. But, anyhow, I really feel that we need single member districts and I’m really against having four-year terms for some and two-year for the other. If you’re going to have six-three, then it should be equal.

RAY: So, would that person be the Mayor, or the Council Chair, or could be either one?

HALE: Could be both. That’s what they were in Honolulu under the Board of Supervisors. They were called Mayor. On this island, they were both, but they were called Chairman and Executive Officer.

So, the other idea is I would like to say, personally, I think a County Manager is a good idea in principal. I think, basically, we sort of have a County Manager system now, under the Managing Director. Bill Davis is basically a professional administrator, and that’s what he’s doing, and he’s appointed by the Mayor rather than by the Council. In these systems that you’re studying on the Counties, the County Manager’s appointed by the Council, not by the Mayor, so that’s another thing to consider. And I think, under the previous Mayor, when Susan Labrenz was the Managing Director, she really ran the County. Bernard Akana didn’t run the County, you know. She was the professional administrator. So County Manager is good in principal, but I’m not sure it’s an idea you’re going to be able to sell to the people of the island. So maybe you could strengthen the Managing Director’s position, and you’re not going into so much of a change.

I’d like to know what your web address is. You said you have a web address.

HERKES: hawaii-county.com.

GRAHAM: Is that all lower case, Marni?

HERKES: All lower case. www. The Databook is on there. All of you should know it. Everything that you ever needed from the County is on hawaii-county.com. Our agendas are on it, our minutes. We have a whole thing on it, but everything’s on there. Sharron’s got it all on there. We’ve got a very efficient administrator that puts it on.

YUEN: It’s a .gov, though. We’re not fancy enough to be a .com. We’re a .gov.

HERKES: Oh, .gov, I’m sorry.

RAY: Did you hear that, the correction to the web?

HERKES: It’s .gov, g-o-v, not .com. Sorry about that.

RAY: Helene, you’ve got more?

HALE: Yes, one more. I’d just like to say that I am a great advocate for elections. To me, democracy is that you’re responsive to the electorate, not to other politicians. I’d like to tell you a story. When I first got into government, on the Board of Supervisors, back in the 1950's, I was one of two Democrats, and there was five Republicans, but my attitude, as a former teacher, which I had been, I guess, was to ask questions. I wanted to know why this and why that and why the other, and one of the Republicans came up to me and says, Helene, why do you always ask so many questions? Why don’t you just go along? You know, we’re all in this together. And I looked at him and I said, you know, I’m not in this with you at all. I’m in this because the people elected me from West Hawaii, and to me, that’s always been my philosophy, but I have found that once people get in power in an elected position, they join the club, and the club is either the five or the four, whichever side you’re going to be on. You’re in that club, and I really get disturbed by that because, to me, the principal of the United States is basically a democratic government; one person, one vote, and we should be responsible, so if you’re considering such a thing as a Police/Fire Commission, which, I think, has been discussed and is worthy of your consideration. I haven’t got a very good opinion of it. I mean, I don’t have a good idea as to whether I’m for it or against it, but I don’t like the idea of Commissions being appointed by the Mayor and approved by the Council, because they don’t represent the people. They represent the appointing authority or the majority, and therefore, I would like to suggest, if you’re going to have a Police/Fire Commission, you elect them. Elect the Commission, and then let them appoint the Police Chief and the Fire Chief, or whoever else, Public Safety perhaps. It could be a Public Safety Commission. It could be Civil Defense too. But whatever, I would just like to leave you with the idea to please think of the people, a democracy, and try to make our government, which has gone more in the direction of the people, since we’ve had single member districts. I think we’re much more concerned with listening to people from all over the island, and so those are my ideas.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: Sharron, I have a memo from you of September 24th that says ‘Check out the calendar on the County website, hawaii-county.com. ‘

HENRY: That’s the way I get it, .com. and that’s the way -

HERKES: Okay, change everything. Now, where did Mr. Graham go? I don’t know whether that’s right or not. That’s the way I get it.

RAY: Try both.

HENRY: I’ll reconfirm that, but I’m getting it under .com.

HERKES: I’m going into it under .com too.

RAY: Are you?

HERKES: Yes.

MARTIN: Somebody will catch it and bring it to our attention. We’ll be -

HENRY: It is .com according to our DP Department.

HALE: If you’re not government, then you’re commercial.

HERKES: Well, we are. And I have another question.

RAY: Okay, let’s come to order please.

HERKES: I need some help from the Commissioners, as well as from Helene, and I think, now in our County Council, how many people does each Council person represent? Is it nine thousand?

RAY: It’s about 13, 14,000.

HERKES: 14,000?

RAY: Under the last census.

HERKES: So if we did eight Council people and say, maybe our population might jump to 150,000, that would be just about the same number. Would it be less?

RAY: It would be less, proportionately. I mean, you have to divide that excess plus the increase in population. So it would be a little more. It wouldn’t be terribly different.

HERKES: Yes, and that’s where I’m coming from. How many persons can a Council person represent effectively?

RAY: Just speaking personally, there’s an enormous amount of difference between representing Hilo and representing, say, Ka’u or Kohala, in terms of your effective representation, just because of the geographical -

HERKES: I’m fairly aware of that, Mr. -

RAY: So, if you work in Hilo, it’s duck soup compared to working in Kohala, and having to commute to your office in Hilo, and having to go to Waikaloa, going up to Kohala. It’s an enormous amount of difference, so I don’t know what you could do about that.

HERKES: Well, I don’t think there’s anything to do about that, but I was just looking at the numbers of people, if you went to eight Council persons. I’m not stuck with nine either. I know that Lexington has 15 or 11.

RAY: Twelve.

HERKES: Twelve. They have a bigger number and that’s what -

HALE: Well, I’d say I see nothing wrong in thinking of more than nine, but all I’m saying is single member districts and electing the Mayor and the Chairman of the Council, that’s basically what I’m concerned with. And I’d like to make one more comment that if you had neighborhood boards, they would be smaller than that district and it would be a way for the Council person to get input from different areas, too.

HERKES: So it would be more than one.

RAY: George. We’re just going to go around.

MARTIN: Thank you. Ms. Hale, in concept now, if there were to be a proposal put forth for a Managing Director/whatever it may be, how would you see that person being put into the position?

HALE: If you’re going into nonpartisan, you know, one thing depends on another to so much extent. If the people vote for nonpartisan, then I think the Council ought to probably be the person to elect that Managing Director, because the Mayor then is more of a ceremonial position, and chairs the Council in terms of breaking ties, but is not really the administrator, could speak for the people. I mean, I think in that case, to some extent, it’s like it was in the old Board of Supervisors, even though I was Executive Officer and full time, everything I did had to be approved by the Council because they were still an Administrative Board, so the Chairman, or the Mayor, or whatever you want to call it, has to be in tune with the rest of the Council, and has to be responsive to all the various districts. To me, that was the one thing, I think, our system was improving over the present system, although I agree with one person, one vote, and we should not have had three from West Hawaii and three from East Hawaii.

RAY: Steve.

BESS: Helene, your idea with regard to Police/Fire Commission, having them elected. How far would you go with that? Do you see that other Commissions ought to be elected as well?

HALE: Well, those are really two of the more important Commissions. Let me put it this way. Civil Service Commission could be appointed because you’re bound by State law anyhow, and there’s not that much discretion. Other Commissions that you have, like Planning Commission, there again, I think one thing depends on another. If you had neighborhood boards, with an advisory opinion, I think it would help the Planning Commission to make better decisions. But, let me put it this way, as a final thing. There’s no perfect system. You’re dealing with people. It’s the people you put in that are important, not the system. You can have any system and have it good, if you’ve good people. You can have the best system in the world and if you don’t have good people, the system isn’t going to be any good, so in the final analysis, you’re dealing with people.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Hi, Helene. When you said, could we sell this to the public, when it came to City Manager. It’s not for us to sell anything. I think it’s for organizations, like yourselves, to look into it, and other organizations that do represent bodies of people, and get the information, and again, we go back to information. City Manager type of function is very, very, very successful in the United States. It’s almost a 100 years old. It’s in thousands and thousands of counties. So it’s not an experiment. It does work. You’re right, though, I think that maybe we have to take this in steps. The reason that I personally like the City Manager, and please don’t shoot me for this statement, but we tend to be electing, having been in the process, I see how your perception, among the people, or their perception of you, how another individual or group can warp or aberrant that perception in the elective process, has a selecting people that aren’t qualified in some instances, or have such special agendas, it’s unreal. So just because we elect people, doesn’t mean we do the right thing, but we’d better hold on to that. So, when we elect Council members who are setting policy, to me, I’m saying, let’s put that power there, then, so when you come to a Commission as important as the Police Commission, I personally, struggle with electing with those unless you leave their names out, and they can’t campaign, and you just put up their qualifications. Because in an instance like that, you’re trying to get people who know what the heck they’re doing. Now, if you elect your County Council, and you say this is where we put our emphasis, and you change it - remember, we went from everybody at-large to everybody single member. That was one huge leap, and then we start talking about something in between and we resist that. But we did go from one extreme to the other. If we elect our County Council, and we want to strengthen the Council balance of power with the Mayor, maybe having these Commissions nominated by the Council members, and voted on by the Council, dilutes the Mayor’s ability to, kind of, fix agendas through his appointments. You understand what I’m saying? You have nine pools of people vs. one person’s pool. But just because we elect, doesn’t necessarily mean we do the right thing.

HALE: As I said, we haven’t really studied this issue, and I’m just throwing this idea around to consider election. I’m not necessarily, at this point, advocating it, but I am very much of a basic philosophy that election process doesn’t always work. I got beat, so I know. But, I still think it’s the best system that the world has ever developed.

SANTANGELO: For representation. And Helene, I bring that up to you because you’ve sat here and spoken from experience, and having been there and done that, I can see that, and you’re very open and fair minded about this, so again, I’m not trying to convince you. I’m trying to get more information, but that’s the whole thing. The other thing is when nonpartisan, which I totally support, because you’re right, but I also agree, that the Council is capable of electing a leader, and let’s go to Honolulu, and someone said nonpartisan doesn’t disappear all the in-fighting. They’ve had three Chairs in the last few months, but what they have been doing is, through public pressure, they have been changing leadership to more accommodate what the public is telling them. And in a way, I kind of see that as a very beneficial outcome.

HALE: Remember, however, that in Honolulu, that Chairman, whoever it is, has been elected by only a small group of the people. It doesn’t really represent the whole island, and that is my concern. The Chair should be a person who represents the whole island, not just one district, and also, by having the Chair elected by district Council people, you tend to choose a Chair from Hilo, because it’s easier. It’s very difficult for somebody to be Chair who lives in Kona, so you know, if you’re from the other islands, you ought to consider that it would be an advantage to your out-of-Hilo people to have the Chair represent the whole island, not just one district.

SANTANGELO: And so, just a couple of other things, Helene, just real quick. Again, you hit the nail on the head because you talked about at-large and representing everybody, and then you talked about small groups of people, and that sort of thing, and that’s what we’re trying to balance. One of the reasons I like County Manager is because you are, through a nine people process, trying to scrutinize in hiring a qualified individual to deal with these complexities, and you know what that’s like. On the other hand, you hit on something that’s been brought up by other people on the Commission, is taking the Managing Director’s position and rather than leaving it almost at a patronage type of model, changing that to be more of a professional, and go at this in steps, and that may well be -

HALE: I have no objection to the Council getting a professional person. All I’m saying is I think it will be an easier idea to sell if you don’t change, in the Charter, Managing Director. Instead of making it appointed by the Mayor, appoint them by the Council and give qualifications. We have qualifications in the Charter for some positions, but not for all.

SANTANGELO: The thing that scares me is I’ve been told that if we change it to that, we’re pretty much rewriting the whole Charter. If we do that, and the public rejects it, we basically have wasted a lot of time, and frankly, there’s good things -

HALE: It all depends on how you present the Charter, and remember, I was in the Con Con, and that was a big debate. You voted for all of them, or else you picked out some to vote against. And people picked out some to vote against, like changing the Board of Education to nonpartisan. People voted against that in the Charter, so I think it’s very important how you present this. You don’t have to vote the whole Charter up or the whole Charter down. You can vote for certain pro or cons on certain issues, and your County Manager, whether you call it a County Manager, or whether you call it a Managing Director, the only difference between it is that you have qualifications for a County Manager, so write qualifications in your Charter. In the Charter, we have qualifications for the Chief Engineer and for other people. Make qualifications for the Managing Director and you’ve accomplished the same thing.

SANTANGELO: Thank you, Helene.

RAY: Roland.

HIGASHI: Helene, in the Board of Supervisors, does San Francisco still use that same system? And how is that working?

HALE: Yes, but they are a combination. It’s a municipal government, too, much like Honolulu was, under the old system. Honolulu, even in those days, was an incorporated city, and it still is, and as Virginia pointed out, she thinks we ought to be incorporated, but that’s something new. It’s another subject. It’s a City and County, and that’s the difference between Honolulu and the rest, the City and County of Honolulu, and always was.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: Thank you for all your comments. I think that one of the processes that we’re trying to sit up, and you mentioned people, that the process is not perfect, but I have a personal philosophy that if we set up the good process, we can attract good people, and I think that through the years, our Charter has gotten pretty muddied with such as having the County Band in the Charter, and a few things that special interests have liked to put in the Charter, and maybe we’ve gotten a little away from governance, and if we set up the really good process, I think that’s really a good way to do things.

HALE: I agree with you, basically. That’s why you’re here.

HERKES: Yes, is to do a different thing, and I thank you for your comments.

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: Just one quick question. I know you’ve been involved in County government for a long, long time, and therefore, have seen what goes on on the mainland. In talking about electing Boards and Commissions, do they do that, generally?

HALE: Special districts. Remember when we had our thing in Kona under Marni, they had people electing townships, special districts, water districts. You know, maybe you ought to consider electing the Water Commission.

HERKES: Yes, elect all kinds of things.

IRVINE: Corporation Counsel.

HALE: Yes, they do have special districts all over. You know, the one thing, because we’ve always been a top down from the monarchy days kind of government, and there’s more of a growing feeling, and I think that’s why we have more and more dissension today on many of the decisions, and why people are turned off from government, because the fact of the matter is, that now people feel from the bottom up the decisions should be made, and not from the top down. But, we still have that psychology of everything has to come from the top down, and we’re learning it doesn’t always work. People are getting very upset about that, in some cases, about some decisions that are being made from the top down. Take the prison, for instance, as one example. So, I think if you’re going in that direction, you’re going in the right direction, to give people more power to have some input into government. Then we will improve the system, and they’ll only improve it when average people get concerned about what’s going on on the local and state and national level, and feel they have some real input into it.

RAY: Steve.

BESS: If I understood you correctly, the way you would select the Managing Director, assuming we beef that position up, and using the existing structure, that the Council would be the one selecting. I’d like to hear your thoughts about why you feel that that would be best vs., say, the Mayor or the person elected at-large, nominating a Managing Director and then confirmed by the Council.

HALE: I have no real feeling, one way or another, about that. Either way would be all right, as long as you have qualifications.

BESS: Okay.

RAY: All right. Thank you very much, Helene, and we have one other speaker.

HERKES: Can I make one comment? I’ll probably get in a lot of trouble with this but because we talked to a lot of people, and this is mostly League, we haven’t had a lot of community input. I, especially, appreciate the Hawaii Tribune-Herald sending a reporter, and the Tribune-Herald’s been present at almost all of our meetings, and I want to just say that I think that is a public service that they’ve sent somebody, and we haven’t gotten real good press coverage in West Hawaii on the Commission meetings. Thank you.

HALE: I’d like to thank you for listening to my weird ideas.

MARTIN: Well, thank you.

RAY: Thank you. We have one other speaker signed up. Sandra Scarr. Then we’re going to take a little break after this.

SCARR: I will be brief.

RAY: No, no, I don’t mean to rush you at all. Take your time.

SCARR: Hello, my name is Sandra Scarr. I live in Kailua-Kona, and I have been here, on the island, for the last two and a half years, so I’m really quite a newcomer, but I have gotten involved in some community organizations, and I am a member of the League, but I am here speaking only for myself. Virginia prompted me as I came up. She said tell them who you are. Well, I spent most of my life as a Professor of Psychology. I came from the University of Virginia to here, after serving a couple of years as CEO of a large company, so a bit unusual in that regard, but I really have two principals I would like to propose to you, to keep in mind as you are considering any specific change in the Charter. I think there are really two things the public will care a lot about. One is that the more the government you propose can inspire confidence and participation from people, the better off we’ll be, and that confidence and participation are correlated, but they don’t necessarily go fully hand in hand. And I have to agree with many of the things that Helene Hale just said, and she was very eloquent on some of these matters, that when people feel they are influencing a decision, they have more confidence in it. So, participation does matter in that regard. But the second principal I’d like to propose to you is the government needs to be run like a successful, private enterprise activity. It should not be a bloated, inefficient administration, and in having served in both sorts of organizations, let me tell you what the difference is. Universities are largely run on a government model which is just protecting whatever turf has been captured before, and bloating the payrolls to the extent possible to maintain the people, and not the functions, you know. I won’t go on, and this is very old hat, and it’s tiring to hear. Corporations are not run that way, of course, as many of you know. I suppose all of you know. Corporations are constantly changing entities where the form follows the function. You get done what you need to get done with the people you need to do it, and these are constantly changing bodies. Now, I recognize that Civil Service law will effect the efficiencies that you can create, or will determine that you can’t create them, but there certainly should be some inspiration to create greater efficiencies where it’s possible to do so. So, the principal really is that the government should be a lean, mean organization where people have confidence, and the government structure should be one that inspires their participation and their confidence, that their opinions, their decisions are being well represented in whatever considerations, deliberations, and decisions that are made. Thank you.

RAY: Thank you. Okay, and thank you all for testifying. We’re going to take about a five minute break right now. Thank you.

RECESSED The Chairman called a recess at 11:10 a.m.

RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 11:28 a.m.

RAY: So that’s all the public testimony, and on the agenda, we pretty much have a wide open agenda, and I was really thinking more of the general review of the Charter, and a discussion I’d like to have today in some length is consideration for developing some sort of an overall philosophy, or approach, to what we’re doing. At least, maybe, informal guiding principals, and also, equally as importantly, and I think this was brought up by some of the members testifying today, to develop a package, if you will, or kind of what’s driving what we’d like to do in the Charter. There’s certainly two levels of changes; (1) there’s a lot of just bookkeeping stuff every ten years you go through, and you pick up the stuff that needs to be changed, and this and that, but in terms of overall changes, sort of the flip side of if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, what are we trying to fix. And I think Keola Childs’ testimony was interesting because he took that approach. What’s broke in his mind is the balance of power between the Mayor and Council, and so he recommended all these changes to address that. The, sort of, theme or philosophy that I sense that more of us are interested in, and working towards, and it’s interesting that our last speaker kind of addressed this, was creating a more efficient, professional type of government, and that seems -

HERKES: Responsive.

RAY: Yes, responsive. So, anyway, I just want to, kind of, open the floor to that discussion because that seems to be driving, certainly, a lot of the discussion around the City Manager type. But, does anybody else have any thoughts on that? In terms of how we want to handle the review today, I’d also like to get some sort of a sense of the larger issues that we can identify that we’re interested in, that we really want to focus on, that we need to get more information on, and start, at least, gathering that information and getting ready to deal with some of those. For instance, Council terms and the jurisdiction. We haven’t scheduled anything on that, and we need to think about that. Overall, the whole Legislative Branch of government we really haven’t gotten into, and in regard to the Legislative Branch, we did have some input from the County Clerk. Actually, most of his input was more general and personal, in nature, his recommendations in the Legislative Branch. But I have had a couple of meetings, just so you’re aware, with the Legislative Auditor, and I have requested, in writing, input from the Legislative Auditor in terms of her thoughts on how that office functions, and the discussions we’ve had, actually, over the years, between myself and the person in that job now, is the same sort of thing, how to create more professional position there. The Legislative Auditor’s Office is the office that writes the legislation, and arguably, we should have the best qualified staff, and whatever, and right now that office is subject to just total political patronage. I mean, you could have just a terrific staff, with great qualifications in Planning and Finance and whatever, and they could be here today, gone tomorrow. You could lose all of that. We don’t have professional qualifications there, so that, to me, is an office, if there’s something we could come up with to beef that up, would follow in line with this whole idea. But anyway, Marni.

HERKES: Is that something that would come under a CEO operation Council, or would that be - What I actually started on paper, but I don’t have it with me, is an organizational chart for County government, to do it differently, and I think one of the first things I’d like to discuss is are we rewriting the Charter, or are we amending current Charter. And that, to me, is major to make the decision as to whether we’re going to make major changes. There’s some conversation, and some of us are looking at a rewrite rather than just amending the Charter.

RAY: I’m personally intrigued with this Lexington, Kentucky model, and -

HERKES: It’s a rewrite.

RAY: No, it’s not a rewrite. They initially started out with a Council-appointed Chief Administrative Officer, and they’ve since realized that that didn’t work as well, and it didn’t make sense in my mind, and now the Mayor appoints that office, which, to me, makes more sense because you’ve got the Mayor appointing your Department Heads, and he should also be the person hiring the Chief Administrative Officer. But I think what we do want to do is to tightly define that position so that we get more of a City Manager type in. That’s just my personal feeling, rather than a wholesale change, getting rid of the Mayor, and having a Council Manager form of government. That’s how I personally feel, so in my sense, we’re not looking at a total rewrite of the Charter. We’re looking at using the existing Charter framework and, basically, beefing up the Managing Director position. Ideally, in my mind, making the Managing Director a more predictable City Manager type.

HERKES: Okay.

MARTIN: But it would still -

RAY: But, that’s just me.

HERKES: But that’s a discussion that I think we ought to have here before we start.

RAY: What does anyone else feel about that? John.

SANTANGELO: I agree with that, again because of the sell job.

RAY: Because of what?

SANTANGELO: In terms of the ability to put something before the electorate that has a chance, but I’ve been a politician so I’m always looking at what are the chances of something rather than the merit. But, I feel real strongly about having qualifications. But also, I’d like to look at other things in conjunction with that, that balance power. And one of the things that has come up a lot is how Commissions are formed. But I’d support the beefing up, at least putting qualifications with the Managing Director, and getting a more professional in that role.

RAY: I’d like our attorney to chime in at any time if you think we need any direction in terms of addressing this question of what we’re talking about. In terms of what was just said, does that, in your mind, represent anything, or would you characterize it as rewriting the Charter or more working within this same framework?

YUEN: What you and John Santangelo discussed would not require a major rewrite of the Charter. At one of our first meetings, I said that going to a Council/Manager form, where you either eliminate the Mayor or you have only a ceremonial Mayor, and you have an appointed Manager that really has all these executive functions, that that changes the whole thrust of the Charter, and there are lots of things that need to be changed in order to do that. If you want to put in qualifications for the Managing Director, that’s a one paragraph kind of change. If you want to expand the role of the Managing Director, there’s a split in the Charter, right now, between departments that are under the Managing Director and those that are not. Actually, only three, I think, Parks and Recreation, Public Works and -

IRVINE: Planning.

HERKES: Planning?

YUEN: No, Planning is not under the Managing Director. I’m trying to think of -

IRVINE: Oh, under the Managing Director, we have -

YUEN: I don’t think Planning is. Let’s see here.

IRVINE: Public Works, Parks and Rec, Fire.

YUEN: Fire, yes. If the idea is to expand the powers of the Managing Director, that kind of split can be thought through and, possibly, changed. And those kinds of things can be made without wholesale changes to the Charter. The thing that is significantly different about the Lexington Charter, as far as the overall function of the government, that relates to this question, is that the Mayor sits as a member of the Council, and votes in case of a tie, although that’s a little bit strange because they have 12 members elected single member and three who are elected at-large, so you have 15 members, and so you only get a tie, I guess, when somebody doesn’t show up or goes to the bathroom when they’re voting. But, in that respect, it’s like the old Board of Supervisors system that we had in the County of Hawaii where it wasn’t called the Mayor, it was called the Chair. Somebody was elected Chairman of the Board of Supervisors and had many of the present functions of the Mayor, but actually sat there and presided over all of the meetings.

RAY: Can I say one thing in regard to that point? The relationship I would like to see stronger, or makes more sense to me, is the relationship between the Managing Director and the Council vs. the Council and the Mayor. In other words, as a Council member, and if we had a strong City Manager/ Managing Director type, that’s the person I would like to work closely with as a Council person, and I’m not suggesting that person sits on, as a member, of the Council, but that person participates more in the County Council deliberations vs. the Mayor.

HERKES: Makes sense.

RAY: And I’m not sure just how you do that, but that, to me, that’s who you’d want to relate to in terms of what you’re discussing as a County Council person on a day to day working of the Council.

SANTANGELO: John, to follow up with just that last statement or, at least, with the Managing Director. I liked the County Manager thing when I began, and one of the things that has wooed me a bit over to this modifying is I personally would like to be a part of something good and change a lot. On the other hand, I’m just wondering if it isn’t possible for us to look at this in stages, that we can set the stage for the next ten years. That we can leave minutes, notes, that instruct them, take a look at this, we’ve changed it this far. Maybe after that, you can take it that next step. And the main thing, again, I go back to, is do we have someone who’s dealing with that operating budget, that’s dealing with this County on that part of it, that has the expertise, and has, at least, qualifications in that area, and balancing that power between the Mayor and the Council. So, again, I’m willing to take it in stages. So, that’s really where I’m coming from and I don’t need to say any more. Thank you.

RAY: Steve.

BESS: Sue, did you have something?

IRVINE: It’s something that John started talking about a while back, and that’s what are we trying to fix, and you mentioned that Keola Childs had given us testimony, feeling that the County Council needed to increase their power vis-a-vis the Mayor. Is that a perception that’s true in this Commission? I mean, those of you who have been on the Council, were you frustrated by the Mayor having to appoint everybody or, say, the Corp Counsels being appointed by the Mayor, and then having to serve the County Council as well? Is there a problem there?

RAY: I would say that’s very much my opinion. We have an extremely strong Mayor vs. Council form of government.

IRVINE: Okay.

RAY: How problematic that is, I don’t agree with a lot of Keola’s suggestions, and a lot of it boils down to who is in office, but, yes, in terms of managing the budgets and how all that’s written, and in terms of appointing all the Commissions, whatever, the Mayor controls the money is what it really boils down to, and Councilman Tyler was in the other day and suggested that we look at modifying the ability of the Mayor to transfer monies over a certain amount, even within departments, because he pointed out that literally millions of dollars get transferred, and whatever, and it’s a way, in his mind, that the Mayor can circumvent the Council participation. But, yes, I think it’s true. How much of a problem it is - From a business person’s standpoint, I like a strong CEO. You know, I like being able to go to the man and being able to have things happen. As a Council person, it was certainly frustrating, and so I have mixed feelings about it but it is very much an issue, and I think, overall, confidence and participation by the public in government is an overriding concern in regard to this, and I think that’s why we do get a lot of resentment towards government, is it seems like the Mayor can pretty much do a lot of things at will.

IRVINE: Well, I think this perception is out there and I think maybe it could be solved, and this is the idea that’s come up recently is the possibility of electing some of our Commissions, and they would be there for independent - or even elect our Corporation Counsel, who would then serve both the County Council and the Administration, as an independent body. It would dilute things a little bit and the Mayor, then, wouldn’t have to worry about so many appointments which, at this point, seems to be too much for one person to come up with Commissioners.

SANTANGELO: Sue, when you talk about -

RAY: John, let’s keep this in order.

IRVINE: I’m pau.

RAY: Okay. John.

SANTANGELO: This was just mentioned earlier when we got into a small discussion on that. I think it’s really important to look at the reality of how things work, so when you say elect a Commission, you need to really take a microscopic look at who’s going to run, who’s going to be a champion in those campaigns, and are you going to get the results you’re looking for versus if we strengthen the Council. Again, instead of taking that huge leap from total at-large to total single, and this is where I’m falling heavily on, is having the Council, even this Council because you do it for ten years, not for a couple of months, be the nominating body. So all the Commissions, we make them up as nine, and each Council member has a pool of people that they’re nominating, and the Council, as a whole, is approving, because the Mayor, not just this Mayor, but any Mayor who comes in, has an agenda, and is looking to get something done, and I have watched these - because as a Council, you can only reject, so you’ve got to keep rejecting until they finally bring somebody that you like. Well, that doesn’t happen that way. But if we had the Council appointing, or nominating, as individual single members, and then the whole Council approving, I think you nine times increase the pool of people and I don’t see how you would set a kind of agenda on a Planning Commission that you could set now. And so I think the goal here is to make it open and participatory, and have results coming out of these Commissions that the community has confidence in, and that’s where I’m falling in on. That does start to balance the power. And this elected thing, we don’t elect properly all the time and so we have to be careful about that, because of who gets involved in campaigns, and who champions them.

RAY: I just want to follow up on the Council appointment. Part of Keola’s formula to implement this was getting the Council terms back to four years because that’s really problematic. It’s problematic in my mind in terms of this whole issue of balance of power. That’s a huge advantage to have the Mayor in four-year terms and the Council in two years, but in terms of Commission appointments and whatever, have you thought that through? How that would work if you’ve got two-year term Council people?

SANTANGELO: Yes. To me, John, it does not matter if this Commissioner’s going to sit for four years. It’s just that the Council member is the nominating person pulling them out of the community. If that Council member turns over and that Commissioner’s there for two or three more years, when that becomes vacant, it’s the next Council member that’s putting it in the pool. It shouldn’t matter. I don’t see how we’re best served by tying it to that term. It’s just how does this function go. So the four-year term, for me, is another discussion, which I totally agree with you on, but I don’t think it impacts on this. It’s just how do we get them nominated.

RAY: George.

MARTIN: I guess my concern on the Managing Director is, again, accountability. I hear great ideas and I think, in concept, it’ll work, but where’s the accountability to whomever appoints this individual? Once it becomes an appointed situation, even if we write into the Charter some guidelines as to responsibilities for the individual, it’s going to become political, and that worries me. If there was some fail safe measure to rid us of the politics that’s going to be involved in it, and it’s not. It’s impossible. And I agree, Sue. Then I’d have no problem with it, but until that, I have some concerns and reservations about it under any format that we’re looking at.

RAY: Okay. But versus what we have now, which is totally political, totally discretionary - I mean, the Mayor can literally hire anybody as the Managing Director -

SANTANGELO: Or nobody.

RAY: And just willy nilly or, I mean I’m just saying.

MARTIN: Yes, I understand that, too. And to put into the Charter some guidelines to what we expect of the Managing Director, and if we leave it in the same format, then no problem, where we’re trying to guide them. But then we start taking away from the individual’s ability to do their job, like I believe I heard you say about Corp Counsel. If you read what Corp Counsel’s responsibilities are, it’s only to help out the County government and so, to have somebody elected in that position really doesn’t make too much sense.

IRVINE: Well, right now the Mayor appoints him though, and so he doesn’t -

BESS: But he’s confirmed.

IRVINE: Yes, he’s or her.

MARTIN: Well, that too, but I think his main function is to take care of the County agencies, and that’s it, not you and I.

IRVINE: No, it’s the County Council as well, though. He’s answerable to both.

RAY: Okay, but I think, to me, the question is do you want somebody running a two hundred million dollar a year business with 2600 employees, dealing with very complex issues today in terms of solid waste, waste water, whatever, that’s not a professional manager, experienced in that.

MARTIN: No I don’t, John.

RAY: And the reason these big line departments, Parks and Rec, Public Works and whatever, these are the areas that any qualified City Manager deals with routinely, can bring in state-of-the-art expertise in terms of how these things are organized, how these things are managed. We haven’t had anybody working in this County, maybe never, that’s had any expertise in solid waste.

HERKES: We’ve hired consultants, however, for thousands of dollars, and you don’t listen to them.

RAY: Yes, but we adopted an integrated solid waste plan, whatever, that’s never been implemented.

HERKES: We don’t listen to them. You elected people.

RAY: But we’ve never had anybody, and I’m just saying, if you brought in a City Manager type, it’s a given that they’d have an enormous amount of experience, exposure and expertise in these kinds of things.

HERKES: Is it a given that the Council will listen to them? No, and that’s the problem because we brought in Brown and Ferris. We brought in tons of people.

RAY: Wait.

HERKES: Well, he just started on something that really irritates me. We spent millions on consultants.

RAY: Wait. The problem has not been the Mayor.

HERKES: No, it’s been the Council.

RAY: I mean has not been the Council. No, the problem has been the Mayor.

HERKES: No, (indiscernible).

RAY: Marni, I was there. Okay? I was Chairman of the Public Works Committee. Okay?

HERKES: I was on the Landfill Site Committee.

RAY: The problem has been the Mayor. The Mayor has not moved forward this agenda at all, in fact, he’s blocked it from moving forward. The Council, on numerous occasions, requested, in writing, for the Chief Engineer to come to the County Council to address this issue and they didn’t even come. They didn’t even show up.

MARTIN: No need to.

RAY: So, it is not the Council that has not tried to move forward on this. So, anyway.

MARTIN: Okay, back to my concern, if I may, John. It’s the individual who becomes this person, and how they become this person is what’s concerning me. Will we have, in it’s present form, nine member single districts, the accountability, as a person from Hamakua, to deal with that person? That’s my concern. If we can address it, then no problem, but as of yet, I haven’t seen that.

RAY: Steve.

BESS: I am very much in favor of a professional manager, but one of the concerns that I have is that it’s one thing for the Council to be involved in the selection of that County Manager, but if we start to look at that manager as being beholding to the Council, that that Council is, in effect, an Administrative body, such as Helene was talking about earlier, I have a real problem with that. You should really be looking at the Council as a Board of Directors, and you’ve got this CEO. And look, the details, the management, you don’t have anything to say about it, Council. I would hate for the Council to be interfering in the daily affairs of government, making it impossible for the Managing Director to be efficient.

RAY: And I think it’s interesting that the Lexington model moved in that direction. You didn’t get this, but a change that they made is in regard to the appointment of the Chief Administrative Officer, is that that position is now appointed by the Mayor, approved the Council, and reports directly to the Mayor. They found, I think, for just those reasons, that it was very unwieldy, and from an Administrative standpoint, especially with the Mayor appointing the Department Heads, that it didn’t make sense for the Council to be the guy’s boss that was the Chief Administrative Officer. So, I think that’s a model that now makes even more sense. But we’ve got a tremendous resource of this guy who Sue got the information from, who was a member of the original Charter Commission, and he served on two additional Charter Revision Committees. He’s a Council person at-large for this jurisdiction and he’s a personal friend of Sue’s, and is very accessible to us in terms of understanding this. So, I don’t have a clue how a lot of this really works, but we’re going to get that information.

HERKES: Let’s bring him up.

IRVINE: As I said, he’d probably love to come out this winter.

HERKES: Does he work for an airline? That’s how we got the township people?

RAY: Excuse me. I was thinking that this week that I’m going to give him a call the first of the week, and I’m going to ask him if he might be interested in coming out. I think he’d be a terrific resource to come out and talk to us.

HERKES: And we could have a workshop on just how his government works, and also, I know that you’ve had lunch with Randy MacDonald, and I talked to Randy MacDonald, who was a Council person in Eugene, Oregon, and they had their Police and Fire Commission, or Departments, merged. Then in another election, they un-merged them. Now they’re moving back to merge them again. But in the Department of Public Safety, talking to him about how that works and things, and he lives here. He’d be happy to provide input on the reasons for that and how that might work, and anything else that Eugene might have done that’s interesting.

RAY: Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: I would agree with us talking to some expert but I would suggest that we look at video conferencing first. And if that is insufficient, that maybe we can spend some money to get somebody over.

IRVINE: They might bring themselves over. I don’t know. I mean, we could invite them. They can stay with us if they want.

HERKES: Maybe Lexington will pay for them.

IRVINE: That’s true, too.

YOSHIYAMA: I did want to speak on that County Manager concept. I don’t know what I would be in favor of but I certainly am in favor of more professionalism, some kind of beefing up of the qualifications, no matter what form that we take, and to me, it’s not a matter of balance of power. It’s not a matter of one body, be it Legislative or Executive, meddling into the affairs of the other side, because I don’t think we’re going to get rid of that. I think if we hire a County Manager the Council will still try to influence that person’s decision, but however -

RAY: But, I think if you create much more credibility and professionalism in that position, say you take an issue like solid waste, and you’ve got a guy coming out here from Indianapolis who’s got 20 years’ experience in solid waste vs. somebody in our Public Works Department who has zero experience in solid waste. There’s a huge amount of difference in who the County’s going to listen to.

YOSHIYAMA: Oh yes, I agree, John. What I’m saying, we’re not going to get rid of it but we’re going to make it better.

HERKES: Yes, and that’s probably the most that we can hope for.

RAY: Steve.

BESS: One of the things, when we started off this discussion, John, you were saying, hey, look, we need more professionalism in government; we need it to be more responsive, and linked in with professionalism was the idea of efficiency, which obviously, follows. But one of the things that was pointed out to me, when Jiro was testifying, when we were talking about centralizing the permit process, that, and granted the sensitivity that there are bodies in positions and what have you, however, it was very interesting to me that there was never any discussion about reduction, or that there would be greater efficiency with the same number of people. And, just a couple of thoughts out there about what this Charter Commission ought to be doing. I think one of the perceptions of government is its size. I mean, is the size of government out of proportion with the private sector? And I think it is. And, to what extent should our functions being performed by the government, that really should be performed in the private sector, rather than the public sector. I think that thought is out there as well in terms of people looking at the way government is functioning now.

RAY: My sense is the most realistic way for us to address that is to concentrate on a more efficient, service-oriented government rather than a change. And we’re a growing economy, we’re a growing island, and hopefully, the cost of government won’t grow as rapid a rate. Rather than changing and doing away with things, if we make things more efficient, arguably, things will get more in line. Gary is a great person to speak to this, representing more labor in terms of his profession, and I don’t know what you’re comfortable sharing, and whatever, but I don’t see the reduction in government as being a goal that we want to undertake.

HERKES: I feel very strongly that that shouldn’t be a goal, but go ahead.

YOSHIYAMA: I guess I would disagree with Steve. Where I would come from, Steve, is that I believe, for one thing, that there is so much for government to do. I mean, even from the Council standpoint, from the Executive Branch standpoint, there are so many projects and tasks to be done that they’re not getting to. So, if we were to combine some functions, we would get rid of people, or would we put them in more useful jobs so they can get these things that are on the books for years, like fixing up hundreds of miles of roads, that kind of stuff.

BESS: I see.

YOSHIYAMA: So, it’s a reallocation rather than hey, if government is too big for what they’re doing, they’ve got plenty jobs.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: I want to finish. Going back to talk about our Mayor, who is very strong and has been in government for a long time, so he understands the system, and that’s part of this whole scenario, is understanding how the system works. But he’s also a person who is fiscally sound. Our County has run very well financially while he’s been in charge, both on the Council and as Mayor, and I think that concerns me in the future, not having somebody that’s fiscally sound. We’re perfectly capable of electing somebody that doesn’t have that fiscal background, and I think that’s the important part of the performance of a CEO, of making sure that that fiscal background is there, that somebody understands how bonds are floated. Somebody can negotiate bonds. They understand the bottom line of the County. They understand how things operate and they’re probably more in tune with the private sector in a horizontal operation, rather than a vertical operation. There’s no reason that the Executive Branch, Administrative Branch can’t operate horizontally, as well as, now they’re kind of vertical. I think that, in that same time span, the Mayor’s a very action oriented person. He would rather do something than talk about it. It gets him into a lot of trouble, and it’s not something that we all agree with, or maybe we would put out there, as a requirement for a Mayor, but I think it’s important to recognize that that action has moved us into the forefront of the State, and it’s been kind of a shock for a lot of us in business to be, all of a sudden, in the forefront of the State. To have the highest room rate, to have an economy that’s moving forward, to be supportive. And all the neighbor islands are in that. So I think it’s important that we really look at where we’re going in the future. How we’re going to operate. We have a head of steam. We need to really look at how our government can support that head of steam, and how we look through the future, controlling that head of steam, rather than having it control us, and that’s the runaway thing.

I think that the one thing that I want to see for all of the positions that we put in the County Charter, is performance reviews. All of the programs, that we ought to write them in. This is an excellent, in fact I think I’m going to use some of it in the Chamber, but it’s an excellent document, and I think it’s important, in everything we do, we look at what are the kinds of performances that we expect out of these people, and how do we monitor them, and what are the repercussions if you don’t do it. And I think that’s where we’ll get some accountability from our government officials.

RAY: Mr. Takahashi did address that to some degree so we need to be clear about that. It’s not like the County’s totally unaware of this and not - John.

SANTANGELO: I agree with Gary on certain points. One of the things that I’d love to see change in government, and I don’t think it’s our purview here, is, again, the sharing of technology, where somebody can move from one desk to another more freely, and that would come, I’d imagine. But, again, the City Manager, or the Council Manager, or the Managing Director, can have performance based standards applied to it, which takes a bit of this politics out of it. In talking about more efficient government, first of all, I think we need to find out pretty soon what we’re going to do so we can get it done over the next so many months. What about patronage government? Is there anything we want to do with that? Like, one of the things I liked about the City Manager to begin with, was that all of a sudden these Depa