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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION

Transcript of Meeting of April 14, 1999

Hawaii County Liquor Commission Conference Room,

Hilo Lagoon Center

Absent: K. Balog

And no members of the public in attendance.

RAY: I’ll call the meeting to order. The Special Meeting, Wednesday, April 14^th of the Charter Commission is now called to order. Let the minutes reflect that all members are in attendance now other than Mr. Balog and Mr. Kurozawa, and we expect both to be here shortly.

The minutes, we did not have prepared prior to this meeting, so how -?

HERKES: We didn’t?

RAY: Well, we didn’t have them prepared for distribution prior to the meeting.

HERKES: The taped minutes.

RAY: The taped minutes.

HERKES: The minutes that I took were faxed to everybody.

RAY: Right.

HERKES: And mailed.

RAY: But I think we -.

HERKES: We had some minutes.

RAY: Okay. Well, I think we’ve decided -.

HERKES: I’m not going to do all that work for nothing, John. I want some credit.

HIGASHI: Let’s cut out the editorial and move on.

RAY: Okay.

HIGASHI: But I have just one question. Which is the official minutes?

RAY: Actually, I guess Marni’s minutes -, no, I think we should go with the verbatim minutes.

IRVINE: The transcribed.

RAY: As the official minutes. Okay. So we can defer approval of those minutes until the next meeting. Does anybody have a problem with that?

HERKES: Hundred and twenty-six pages? I don’t think we’re going to read them.

BESS: So moved.

HIGASHI: The minutes is the whole meeting all over again.

RAY: Okay. Could I have a motion to defer the minutes?

ALONZO: Move that we defer the -.

RAY: Defer the meetings (sic) -.

ALONZO: Minutes -.

RAY: Until the next meeting

ALONZO: Next meeting.

RAY: Okay.

SANTANGELO: We did all that talking?

RAY: Okay. Second?

IRVINE: Second.

RAY: Okay. All in favor? So we’ll defer approval of the minutes to the next meeting so everybody has a chance to go through them.

HIGASHI: Mr. Chairman?

RAY: Yes.

HIGASHI: Have we decided whether we’re going to do this kind of minutes or we’re going to do Marni’s type of minutes?

RAY: Based on the input we’ve received from a number of people in the administration and past Charter members, I think we’re going to need to go with verbatim minutes.

HERKES: Would you like a motion?

HIGASHI: Wait, wait, wait, wait.

RAY: I have in Unfinished Business, this is on the agenda, the format of the minutes.

HIGASHI: Oh, okay.

RAY: So we will -.

HIGASHI: Okay. Okay.

RAY: Take that up.

HIGASHI: Fine. Fine.

RAY: Okay. And also in regard, I guess, let the minutes reflect that in these minutes that there are a number of speakers who are not identified, three, so I’m not sure how we want to handle that.

SANTANGELO: Which ones, the big ones?

HERKES: Yeah, the big ones, the verbatim ones.

RAY: Right.

HERKES: Most of them are Santangelo. Can we just put his name of them?

SANTANGELO: That’s not true.

ALONZO: Can we amend the minutes?

HERKES: The verbatim minutes?

ALONZO: Yeah.

HERKES: You want to amend them?

ALONZO: To add in the new names.

HERKES: Sure, we can always amend them at the next -. We’re going to deal with them at the next meeting.

RAY: We’re going to deal with them next meeting.

ALONZO: At the next meeting.

RAY: Okay. All right. Financial Status Report. To date, I’ll give the Treasurer’s Report, to date, we have total expenditures of $434.92, with one outstanding obligation, a meeting notice that was published in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald. That gives us a balance right now of $29,565.08. The County Council did approve the appropriation that was submitted at the last Council meeting. I sent in a letter on behalf of the Commission just describing generally where we were in the process, and the Finance Department submitted information based -, some budgets from the last Charter Commission explaining, you know, how they came up with the ballpark figures. So the Council approved that appropriation of $30,000, which is an appropriation until June 30^th. At that time, unexpended funds will lapse, and then they also have an appropriation in the budget for $100,000 to go from June 30^th until the following year. Okay?

Let’s see. Communications. I don’t have any communications from anyone, written or otherwise, okay.

Statements from the Public. Do we have anyone here? No? Okay. Reflect there are no statements from the public.

Okay, let’s move on to Unfinished Business, the selection of Commission’s attorney. Mr. Bess, do you have anything to report?

BESS: The Committee has received a total of five applications, and so we need to schedule a committee meeting before -, I guess Sue’s taking off for the mainland, so we hope in the next couple of weeks, meetings so that we can interview the candidates.

RAY: Okay. And what was the deadline on that?

BESS: The deadline has passed, April 12^th.

RAY: Okay. Okay. Any comment on that? Okay. In regard to the time line, what do you anticipate is the earliest, you know, we could get somebody on board in terms of having -.

BESS: Well, you know -.

RAY: Our own legal staff?

BESS: What we could do is, as I say, complete the interviews, have the Committee make recommendations to the Charter Commission, and if we’re -, I’m hopeful that we can do that this month.

RAY: Okay.

BESS: And then be in a position to report back to you next meeting and a decision could be made at the next meeting by the Board.

RAY: Okay.

BESS: By the Commission, I should say.

RAY: And in regard to that process, can we arbitrarily, you know, just approve the recommendation?

BESS: Arbitrarily?

RAY: I mean, you make a recommendation, right?

BESS: Right.

RAY: And then we vote on that. And so it doesn’t have to be fee based or just -?

BESS: Oh, I think that, you know, in terms of our -, when we interview these people, we’re going to be getting an idea of what they’re going to be demanding in terms of hourly rate, so that it’s going to be our recommendation would include -, and the guy is going to want $125 an hour.

RAY: Okay.

HIGASHI: I have a question.

RAY: Yes, Roland.

HIGASHI: Steve, is it the intent of the committee to come up with one name or maybe two or three names?

BESS: Well, you know, I’d like your feedback, you know. I think that in looking at what happened at the last Charter Committee or the subcommittee in dealing with the appointment of the attorney, they came up with one name, and I guess it was clear that that person stood above all others in terms of who they wanted to appoint. That may not be the case in this case, I mean, you know, unless someone is clearly the recommendation of the committee, I can see us saying, hey, look, here are two names or three names that we feel strongly about but, you know, you folks give us your input.

HIGASHI: I, personally, would like to see at least two names, because if we do not agree on that one person, then it further delays it for another meeting and you’ll probably have to go back and do it again.

BESS: And we could submit two names with a recommendation -.

HIGASHI: Right.

BESS: Of the two names that we’d like, is that right? You know, okay.

HIGASHI: Yeah, yeah.

BESS: Yeah.

HIGASHI: I’d feel more comfortable than just one name.

BESS: I have no objection to that.

HIGASHI: You mentioned five people who have filed.

BESS: Five applicants, yeah.

HIGASHI: Within the deadline, yeah?

BESS: Right.

RAY: Mr. Santangelo.

SANTANGELO: Being on that committee, we could rank them, and we could, you know, put the names forward ranked as to, you know, some sort of scale.

IRVINE: That sounds good to me.

BESS: Well, we could, but I -, my personal opinion is that we should come out with a recommendation and there should be a second name.

SANTANGELO: Right.

BESS: I’d just as soon not getting into ranking five attorneys. Our duty is to come forward with the two, you know, and we’ll come forward with the two, together with a recommendation.

SANTANGELO: So, Steve, I guess we can handle that within committee so, okay, that’s fine.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: Has the committee developed a criteria for the attorney, for hiring an attorney, not for hiring, for an attorney that would be most appropriate?

BESS: Well, I -, to answer your question directly no. There is a criteria that came out at the time of the publication so, you know, there are five -.

HERKES: That’s the criteria?

BESS: There are five points that we are considering.

HERKES: Okay.

BESS: But further than that, we don’t have -.

HERKES: So -.

BESS: Specific criteria.

HERKES: If you recommended someone to the Commission, you would say this person best fits this -, these -.

BESS: That’s right.

HERKES: Criteria.

BESS: These are the reasons why.

HERKES: And these are the reasons why.

BESS: That’s correct.

HERKES: That’s what I’d like wanted.

BESS: That’s correct.

HERKES: Thank you.

BESS: Yeah.

HERKES: Then that would be the best person, fits the criteria best. Okay.

HIGASHI: One last question.

RAY: Yeah.

HIGASHI: In the process, are we intending to interview the last two, at least, people that you’re recommending?

BESS: You know, I got to be honest with you. We have not met as a committee to decide what that is, and I’d be out of place in -, I can tell you personally I feel that the committee should be the one to come up with the two names and a recommendation at that meeting in May, you know. We would get input from you and if there was any question at all as to whether or not you felt that you ought to, you know, interview, fine but, again -.

HIGASHI: No, Steve, don’t get me wrong.

BESS: My -, I’m comfortable if the Board itself wants -, the Commission itself wants to interview, but he’s already -, he or she has already been through one interview -.

HIGASHI: No, Steve -.

BESS: We’ve come -.

HIGASHI: Don’t get me wrong.

BESS: Yeah.

HIGASHI: I wasn’t asking this Commission to interview.

BESS: Oh.

HIGASHI: Your committee would have interviewed -.

BESS: Oh, we will interview everyone, right.

HIGASHI: At least those two people. Right, right, right.

BESS: That’s correct.

HIGASHI: Okay.

BESS: Yeah. Oh, definitely.

HIGASHI: Yeah, right. You need to talk about -.

BESS: No, it’s not going to be on paper.

HIGASHI: You know -.

BESS: And we will interview -.

HIGASHI: In terms of limitations, hourly rates, pro bono, whatever, yeah.

SANTANGELO: Right.

BESS: Right. And -.

HERKES: Pro bono?

HIGASHI: Well -.

HERKES: Good discussion.

HIGASHI: Marni, I think just stick to the facts.

HERKES: Okay.

HIGASHI: The people, the rates that they quoted last time, a lot of it was pro bono work because they did work for $95 a hour or something like that.

IRVINE: Right.

BESS: Yeah.

HIGASHI: And the past attorney doesn’t charge $95 for his legal work, so it’s some pro bono.

RAY: Okay.

IRVINE: I guess I -, I’m supposed to be on this subcommittee, but if you look at our time line, our tentative time line, this -, in May, we have meetings in Kona and Hilo, which are brainstorming, and we weren’t really meeting -, we didn’t have an agenda, so I’m a little worried about when we’re going to get this attorney on board.

BESS: Well, is there a problem with us getting -, having -? Can we have just a separate session with regard to the appointment of the attorney?

HERKES: Special meeting?

BESS: Well, I mean, you know, in conjunction with the Kona meeting going on.

RAY: I don’t see why not but, you know, do we feel like we need to have our own legal staff on hand, you know, for those public informational meetings? Mr. Wurdeman, we are anticipating, or we are considering having a couple of brainstorming informational sessions in May; we’re going to be talking about that tonight. Do you have any sense of how important it is to have our own staff attorney prior to that?

WURDEMAN: You’re not going to be making decisions, right?

RAY: No.

WURDEMAN: You’re just going to be gathering the sense of the public?

RAY: Right.

WURDEMAN: I leave that up to you, but I would -, I don’t think an attorney would be critical.

RAY: Okay. All right. So let’s don’t kill ourselves on that. Okay.

MARTIN: Mr. Chair, if I may?

RAY: Yes, sir.

MARTIN: Would Corp. Counsel be willing to at least attend these meetings?

WURDEMAN: I told you the first meeting that I would attend until such time as -.

MARTIN: Okay.

WURDEMAN: I was replaced. So either I or someone.

BESS: So Mr. Chairman, what you’re saying is that we have until after these brainstorming sessions, the meeting following the two brainstorming sessions to select the attorney?

RAY: I would feel comfortable if we had our attorney on board, you know, for a couple of reasons. Number one, I’d like that person to be involved and get the input, and number two, you know, we’re talking about a couple of pretty lengthy sessions, and you know, that’s sort of an imposition on Corporation Counsel, as well, if we can get somebody on board sooner rather than later but -. Does that seem realistic from your standpoint? When do you think you’d be comfortable coming up with a -?

BESS: Well, I guess -, I mean, again, I’m flexible. I don’t really see the necessity, there certainly isn’t a necessity to have an attorney at either of the brainstorming sessions and, you know, my feeling is that what we could do, if you’d like to, is go ahead and select the attorney at that meeting, that first brainstorming meeting, deal with the Corporation Counsel as our Counsel at that meeting, and then he would be advised if -, the attorney being selected would be advised and would be available for the next meeting.

RAY: Okay.

BESS: I don’t think it’s practical to select -.

RAY: Yeah. Mr. Wurdeman.

WURDEMAN: Yes, sir.

BESS: The first.

RAY: Do you think -, would that be a problem as far as having a -, that part of a combined -?

WURDEMAN: No.

RAY: No.

WURDEMAN: I wouldn’t think so, and you’re authorized to, in discussing personnel matters to be in executive session.

RAY: Okay. All right, well let’s shoot for that and just do the best we can, okay.

IRVINE: I was going to say, we’d have executive session then either before or after the meeting.

RAY: Okay. All right. Okay. Moving on in the selection of Commission secretary. We have some material that I’m circulating, some information that Gary Yoshiyama put together, as well as some criteria here, so I’m going to pass these around and so everybody take one copy of each. So who’s going to -?

HERKES: You want a report?

RAY: Take the lead?

HERKES: You want a report?

RAY: Yeah, we want your report.

HERKES: I want to first introduce Jan Kama, who is taking minutes, who has graciously volunteered to take minutes for a couple of meetings until we get a secretary on board, and she was taken aback, as was I, with the responsibilities that Mr. Legaspi laid on her when she said she’d take minutes and do the 126-page verbatim, and she’s going to do this verbatim. We’re not sure what the responsibilities are from here, but we’re both willing to work with it and see what happens. But I want to thank Jan very much for being so gracious and introduce her to the Commission.

RAY: Okay. Thank you, Jan.

HERKES: She does a lot of stuff for the County and the Planning Commission.

RAY: Okay.

HERKES: Some -, I don’t know what all this material is; I don’t have time to get copies of it.

RAY: These are the -, you’ve seen the -.

HERKES: I’ve probably seen -.

RAY: Two copies of -.

HERKES: Most of it.

RAY: The -.

IRVINE: Okay.

RAY: Correspondences -.

HERKES: Gary -.

RAY: From Gary.

HERKES: Has done a lot of work with the County, and I want to thank Gary, too, for all the work he’s done. Gary, Kevin, and I met about two weeks ago or three weeks ago, and the three of us decided that a personal service contract was the way we wanted to go since the Commission has voted to hire staff rather than a contract staff. A personal service contract would run from June through March 2000; if our schedule changes, we’ll need to look at the changes in that, too. We’re working on the job description; I need to get some things to Gary to finalize it. We want to put it out, advertise it, and the County will do that for us, Civil Service will do that for us. SR-20 is the pay rate; if we use the employee’s equipment, we may want to pay, we may want to change that a little. If we hire an employee that has their own equipment, we may want to do something different. We are in negotiation -, well, we’re in discussion. It’ll depend on who that person is. We haven’t put any advertisement yet. The personal service contract -, maybe I’ll ask Gary to explain a personal service contract; it’s a Civil Service status.

YOSHIYAMA: Okay, we’re going the route of a personal services contract, and while this person will be a temporary employee, non-Civil Service, working, I think Marni mentioned, 19 hours a week, okay. And then, I guess, if the Commission sees fit that on a continuous basis this person or this -, we need the services of this employee for longer, then, you know, we can renegotiate the contract. Okay.

RAY: Suppose you just -, how flexible is that in terms of the renegotiation? In other words if, you know, all of a sudden you’re into, you know, more time, I mean do you have to stop and renegotiate before you, you know, require more services or how does that work?

YOSHIYAMA: Oh, no, no. If you’re talking like specifically in terms of hours.

RAY: Yeah.

YOSHIYAMA: No, you don’t have to. I mean, we can go beyond 19 hours as it is, you know -.

HERKES: And beyond the term of the contract.

YOSHIYAMA: Even if we have a contract. Yeah.

HERKES: Too, by extending, and Gary says it’s fairly simple to extend.

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah. And I have -, we have a sample of the personnel services contract with attached to it is a job description, and also attached the updated version of the class specifications, and this was updated, you know, really for our purposes. It was updated by Civil Service Department on April the 9^th, and really the major thing that they updated in there is the computer and periphery type equipment.

SANTANGELO: What’s the salary on SR-20?

HERKES: SR-20 is what?

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah, I -.

HERKES: I’ve got it somewhere.

YOSHIYAMA: Okay, that would be equivalent in the range -, and that is, I guess, subject to negotiations, you know, as we sit down, you know, with a likely candidate. The range of pay an hour would be anywhere from $14.53 an hour to $22.37 an hour.

SANTANGELO: Twenty-two?

YOSHIYAMA: Twenty-two thirty-seven an hour.

SANTANGELO: Pretty good money.

HERKES: Plus benefits.

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah, well, at this point, there’s no benefits.

HIGASHI: What would be the benefits be?

ALONZO: No benefits.

HIGASHI: They take care their own medical, yeah.

YOSHIYAMA: It’s 19 hours but, you know, well, the other benefits or what we may negotiate, as we will put it under the heading of a stipend, is if this person bring their own office with them, their own office equipment, etcetera, and then we would negotiate a stipend, you know, with them.

HERKES: And we also talked about using the County Information Offices as the intake for the inquiries from the public -.

RAY: Okay, that’s -.

HERKES: Then they could call the Kona and Hilo office, and there could be a referral number for them to refer calls to.

RAY: There’s a separate item here which I thought about combining it, it says office space, so let’s go ahead and kind of -, we can incorporate that into this discussion, as well, so, yeah, how that would work so -.

HERKES: I think in the discussions that we’ve had that the office space is not necessary to have office space, that probably what we need is a file cabinet that locks, that we can put our tapes in, that we can put our material in, but we don’t need an office per se.

RAY: And we need -, we also need a drop-off mechanism, right?

HERKES: Yeah, right.

RAY: So that people can -.

HERKES: Well, we thought of a box or a file box at the County Information Offices.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Okay. A couple things. One is with the 19 hours, I think it’s -, Gary, if we show good faith at 19 hours, but once in a while that goes over 20, as long as it’s not three consecutive pay periods it’s okay, right?

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah, as long as it’s not continuous.

SANTANGELO: Okay. And then as far as the office space goes, I know there’s some concern about that. I’d just like to weigh in on -, I’m open to hearing how the other committee members feel but I also would like to show an example of these are austere times. We need -, you know, this is a really important job if we do it right, with the Commission, but I think we need to be very, very aware of the value of money today. You know, this Council is really struggling with a huge budget problem, and I wouldn’t want to be a part of that problem.

RAY: Yeah.

SANTANGELO: But by the same token, I really want to be open to how committee members feel.

RAY: Well, I think when you’re talking about office space, we were talking about a desk, you know, and when I discussed with Rudy, I asked him to look into, you know, file cabinet and the drop-off mechanism or whatever, and he didn’t seem to think that would be a problem. So, in fact, I think he may -.

HERKES: And that’s what we need, yeah.

RAY: Already have something for us.

HERKES: Yeah.

RAY: You know, I don’t anticipate that being a problem, Marni.

SANTANGELO: So within the County Building itself?

RAY: Yeah, yeah, right.

HERKES: And on both sides of the Island, within the County Building in Kona, too, because I want to emphasize that one of the reasons that I’m so strongly in favor of this is to make this an island-wide effort, is to not headquarter it in Hilo is to make it in the Hilo County office -, in the Hilo County Building and the Kona County Building so people can feel that they can be involved in both places they can call.

RAY: Okay.

HERKES: Kona phone numbers of Hilo or phone numbers. They can drop them off on either side.

RAY: Okay, well, this brings up the point of, you know, who’s the spokesperson for, you know, these facilities and decisions? You know, I’ve already talked to Rudy and, you know, we need to decide how, you know, how we’re going to do this and who’s going to be the contact person that’s going to talk to the County and, you know -? It’s fine with me, so I made a request for something in Hilo and, you know, I didn’t mean to leave out, you know, Kona so, you know, we need to get that clear as soon as possible so we know what it is we are requesting of the County. Because right now, I just mentioned Hilo, and I didn’t even think about it, you know, otherwise. I don’t know why.

HERKES: That’s normal.

RAY: I live and work in West Hawaii.

HERKES: That’s normal.

SANTANGELO: That’s not why we elected him.

HERKES: That’s right.

RAY: So do we feel like we need a file cabinet in Kona, as well, or just the drop-off?

HERKES: No.

RAY: Capability?

HERKES: Just the drop-off capability. They have pouches that go back and forth.

RAY: Okay. Do we think the Mayor’s Office or the Council Office?

SANTANGELO: Mayor’s Office.

IRVINE: The Mayor’s Office.

ALONZO: Mayor’s Office.

HERKES: Mayor’s Office.

RAY: Mayor’s Office, yeah, it would be better. So we just need a mechanism to, you know, drop and pick up stuff at the Mayor’s Office.

HERKES: I don’t know. Does anybody else -? Anybody think of anything more? That’s the only thing I could think of. And I also, on a phone system, you can have mailboxes, so you can have a secretary that answers and it could be call forwarded to wherever she is, and then they can say if you want to leave a message for John Ray, press 1; if you want to leave a message for John Santangelo, press 2. We can do that as we get into this process so that we can be more -, they can have more contact if we feel it’s important.

IRVINE: I guess I’m a little reluctant. What if we hire someone who isn’t totally connected and what not? Then we either buy the equipment for them or we find a spot in the County where there is a desk and a computer.

HERKES: You can lease equipment.

IRVINE: Okay.

HERKES: And I have no intention of hiring anybody that isn’t totally connected.

RAY: Roland.

HIGASHI: So the idea is we’re going to have a drop-off area in Hilo and Kona where people can put their written comments.

RAY: Yeah. That covers -.

HIGASHI: That. Okay.

RAY: The physical hand-off, but I don’t think we’ve fully explored, you know, the telephone and the other communications, you know, how all that’s going to work, right? So, you know, that’s a major -. I mean, are we going to have a published number?

HERKES: I would hope so, but it doesn’t have to be anywhere; it could just be a phone number, and then it can be accessed from anywhere.

RAY: Okay. So can your committee look into that?

HERKES: Sure.

RAY: How we might, you know, set that up?

HERKES: Well, okay, we’ll look into it.

RAY: Okay, so right now, it’s basically being handled through the Mayor’s Office, through the Information Office, and there, you know, it’s being routed to them. So -, and they clearly would like us to take responsibility, you know, for that, right, so you know, we need to set up some mechanism where somebody calling for, you know, information or contact with the Charter Commission has a direct line, you know.

HERKES: Right.

RAY: To us, whoever us is, you know. But certainly, at least somebody that’s going to, you know, receive and promptly respond, you know, to calls. Yeah, Eddie.

ALONZO: Mr. Chair, I know some clubs have these phone system where they call this number, then like an answering machine plays back their message, or if someone calls the office, and they wanted information about anything with the Charter Commission, they can leave their name and phone number and some, maybe the office personnel, comes in, got to listen to the messages, and maybe she can, da kine, call them up and refer some of the -.

RAY: Yeah.

ALONZO: Information to them.

RAY: I see that as the administrative person, secretary will be, you know, doing that on a continual basis, right, and then -.

HERKES: If it’s a legal question, it goes to the lawyer or it goes to John Ray if it’s a question that she can’t answer. If somebody wants material mailed out to them, she can do that.

RAY: Yeah.

HERKES: She or he.

RAY: Okay. Sue.

IRVINE: No, I guess I was wondering, like we have the past minutes sitting over here from the past. If somebody wanted to go look at those, are they going to be somewhere for us, like in this file cabinet?

RAY: Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.

IRVINE: Yeah.

RAY: I think we should have a set in East and West Hawaii and so that’s a good idea, so that somebody can go in and review. They’ll have to, you know, physically, I guess, sit somewhere; they can do that and, you know, just the same way -.

HERKES: We just buy one of those cardboard file boxes.

RAY: Same way they do in the County Council or whatever.

HERKES: Yeah.

RAY: Yeah. Roland, do you have a question?

HIGASHI: No.

RAY: No? Okay, so I think we’re getting closer to, you know, a working situation there.

SANTANGELO: You had brought up something I wasn’t prepared for, but maybe we should clarify that, and you said who is the spokesman? Now, I assumed that was the Chairman.

RAY: Well, you know, I hadn’t really thought it through and anticipated, you know, every possible contact, so let’s just see how that goes.

IRVINE: Yeah, I think there was some -.

RAY: I’m certainly, you know, willing to, you know, take it on and, you know, see how it goes, yeah.

SANTANGELO: Because one of the qualifications that, you know, certainly bore my support, John, was your ability to work with people, and we need some clear statements, you know, as we go along, if we get into anything.

RAY: Yeah. Well, I think the administrative person can handle probably the bulk of it. I think the bulk of it’ll just be, you know, when are you meeting, what are you up to, where is this information, you know, how can I get input, you know? So I think that that will be bulk of the correspondence.

IRVINE: I think at the last meeting we had asked Gary to talk to the Mayor about being attached to the Mayor’s Office, and that may have been why he was talking to the Mayor’s Office and so were you. Is that correct, Gary, or am I -? I don’t know, so it’s in the minutes.

YOSHIYAMA: Well, the ball was tossed to John.

IRVINE: Oh, it was tossed to John, okay. Okay. So I just thought maybe both of you were talking to the Mayor’s Office and that was the confusion.

RAY: Well, you know, I did through Rudy, and he said he’d, you know -.

IRVINE: Yeah.

RAY: Work on a situation somewhere so -.

HERKES: Gary, have we missed anything that we had talked about?

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah, I just wanted to complete this thing about -. Well, you have a page on recruitment and recruitment and selection timetable. So you have it in black and white, you know, where we intend to advertise and the length of time, and if everything goes to plan, unless you have any objections this evening, you know, we’ll meet with Civil Service, give them the green light, and then if everything goes well, then we’ll have somebody on board early June. That’s the bottom line.

SANTANGELO: Because the committees have been put together pretty inclusively, and I believe in committees doing the work, then I totally support what comes out of that committee.

HERKES: We had a great committee meeting.

RAY: Okay. All right. So any more questions on it? Does that -, so that means we got to get until the first of June. The only problem I see with that is, you know, if we go with this suggested schedule, or at least the first part of it and, you know, hold, you know, major informational scoping meetings in May, you know, we could be generating, you know, a lot of, you know, contact, you know, in the month of May, so we need to really think that through. I mean if we, you know, we go out to the public and ask them for, you know, major input in May, we got to be prepared to, you know, receive it, right.

HERKES: I’ve already -.

RAY: I’m sorry, Roland had his hand.

HIGASHI: I think -.

HERKES: I’ve already asked Jan if she’s available, and she’s thinking about it, so we have somebody that can pick up the ball, if we need it.

RAY: Okay. Well, the ball would be, you know, in play, you know, five days a week, you know, once you start, you know, those meetings and, you know.

HERKES: Five days a week is probably an exaggeration.

RAY: Well, no, no, but I mean to check things.

HERKES: Yeah.

RAY: I think, you know, you want some -, you want to be able to respond on a timely basis and, you know, if you’re out there, you know you really throw this out to the public, I think you’re going to generate a lot of input and interest and questions and -.

HERKES: I suppose another thing we talked about that we didn’t really talk about tonight is we talked about another person besides the secretary doing research. The secretarial skills were probably not the best for research skills, and that we probably, as the research questions come up, we probably could contract with a university student, with somebody like that that has better skills than the secretary, however, that’s open to negotiation. That wasn’t a hard -. We were just kind of bouncing the ball around.

HIGASHI: It’s not on the table though.

RAY: Roland.

HIGASHI: You know, you talked about a person who needs to digest all the information and reduce to writing in the brainstorming session. I think the proposal is to have a PR firm kind of do it all, and I expect for the fee that all of the information that was presented would be presented back to us in some kind of written form. So I don’t think the secretary, you know, should be there to take all -, I don’t know how long the meeting is going to last but -.

RAY: That’s not what I was thinking of. I was thinking of once you hold these meetings and, you know, not only the people -.

HERKES: You open the dam.

RAY: There but, you know, they’re going to be publicized. You know, I assume the press, you know, we’ll have press coverage, and then of a sudden, you know, it’s like the box is open, you know, everybody’s saying, hey, where you guys going? This was -, this came up, that came up. And I think, you know, I would anticipate we’re going to get, you know, a lot of, you know, immediately get a lot of questions and a lot of people that, you know, want to input.

HIGASHI: At our brainstorming session, is that what you’re talking about?

RAY: Yeah. Well, from that.

HIGASHI: Okay.

RAY: And -, but I think we can deal with that in part, and we’ll discuss that, you know, when we get into, you know, the communications, public relations report, how we can be, you know, pro-active to contact people, let people know ahead of time what it is we’re up to, you know, how they can respond to it, what the process is, and so hopefully we can, you know, mitigate some of that. But, you know, I think -, I would expect, you know, we’re going to get a lot of, you know, a lot of calls, a lot of questions generated by those meetings. So that’s the only question I had with the secretary not coming on until June. I think that’s going to be, you know, an extra burden for that person way beyond just the recording duties, so that’s just something we got to think about. And, you know, I don’t want Rudy screaming at me that he’s -.

HERKES: No, he’s screaming at Jan.

RAY: You know, where he -.

MARTIN: Mr. Chair?

RAY: Yes, George.

MARTIN: Gary, is there any way to expedite, in this format that you’ve presented here? I mean because I hear what Roland is saying, and I agree that if we do have a PR firm come on, whatever is produced out of these meetings should be given back to us in written form, but as you were saying, Mr. Chair, if the general public comes in and asks, how are we going to get it to them, so forth, with the secretary, is there a way of expediting? Can we move it up a bit?

YOSHIYAMA: I don’t know. The longest period is the throwing out the ads and then waiting for the reply, with the standard is I guess what, 11 working days.

HERKES: Two weeks and two weeks, so it’s a month between -.

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah.

HERKES: Yeah.

YOSHIYAMA: You know, so -.

IRVINE: We could always modify our time line and meet with County departments in May and then have these public hearings in June, too, because County departments, it would be a matter of them presenting and secretary, and it wouldn’t be so much public hoopla.

RAY: Well, let’s -, okay, let’s -, we can talk about that when we get into that schedule.

SANTANGELO: Right.

RAY: But I think it’s something to think about that we need to be prepared to deal with it, yeah.

SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman, I would suggest maybe we can defer this portion of the conversation down to the scoping because I know I’ve got some concerns and the Scoping Committee did a job on their own, but it needs to be inclusive for the rest of the committee, so we need to talk about that.

RAY: Okay.

YOSHIYAMA: John, I have one final thing.

RAY: Yes, sir.

YOSHIYAMA: I’d just like to recognize the Civil Service Department, you know, for all the support -.

RAY: Okay.

YOSHIYAMA: That they’ve given us.

RAY: Right.

YOSHIYAMA: They did a lot of work.

RAY: Okay. Thank you. All right. Why don’t the minutes reflect that I’ll send a letter of thanks to them for, you know, helping us with that process.

So I think we’ve handled the office space category, as well. Seven C, Budget Considerations, you know we, there again, until we get into the actual, you know, scope and where we’re going to go with this thing, it’s going to be hard to discuss budgets. I do have the budget breakdown here for the 1990 Charter Commission that I’ll pass around, and I want to reflect that I also have the breakdown, the detailed breakdown of those expenses that we have in the file here, so this gives an exact breakdown of -, a detailed breakdown of these expenses. Okay, so this is the 1990. Does anybody think -? I put this on here so that I could give you this information. The other thing that occurred to me, you know, we are in the middle of the budget process. We are, you know, as I mentioned, the administration has got $100,000 appropriation into the works, you know. The budget is just in process, so if we wanted to, you know, modify that or have any input, there is still time. You know, it’s getting kind of late in the game, but I wanted to, you know, throw that out there.

SANTANGELO: The one input I’d like to give, Mr. Chairman, and you and I both agreed when we worked together that getting information out to the public was one of the hardest things that we dealt with on the Council. And it’s been the -, it’s been prevalent in the conversation among other Commissioners here of rectifying that. So I would like to see this budget reflect, with the input of all Committee members, some attitude towards this informational position of whatever it is, but getting the facts out to the public, getting their input, and getting, you know, just communicating with the public is really important to me and I don’t see it in this ‘90 budget, and I just wonder how other people feel about that.

RAY: Yeah, I think it’s difficult to tell. There’s more detail in this, but, you know, you’re correct, and as part of our, you know, report on communications, we’re going to give you some information in terms of, you know, hiring a public relations, you know, person to help with this effort. But you’re right, it’s not well included in terms of the budget here.

HERKES: Advertising?

RAY: That advertising -.

HERKES: Eighteen thousand dollars?

RAY: I think that advertising, the bulk of it, is just advertising the meetings.

SANTANGELO: Good Lord.

HERKES: That’s a lot of money.

RAY: Well, there were -.

IRVINE: They had a lot of meetings.

RAY: There were 24 regular meetings, five combined public hearing/regular meetings, and one public hearing so, you know, they had 30 meetings they publicized, so I’m not sure exactly how that works out, but I believe that was the bulk of that expense. So I don’t know that there’s that much more we can do in regard to this, but does anybody have any thoughts on it?

HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, as we move along, maybe once we hire a PR firm and a executive assistant, we can then be in a better position to project a budget and reflect the will of the Commission as far as, you know, announcing our meetings and at the end promoting whatever we come up with. I think most of that money was in their promoting the Charter changes, not so much just advertising the meetings, but that’s going to happen at the end.

HERKES: I wondered that, yeah.

RAY: Yeah.

HIGASHI: Educational function that we need to do, and I think we need to have a lot of money doing that.

RAY: Yeah. Okay, just so you know, I wrote a letter on our behalf to the County Council and, basically, it said that the Commission’s presently in its organizational stage. We’re researching past Charter Commission budgets and formulating a plan of action. My understanding is that the past Commission expended $113,000, I think it was $111,000 to review the Charter, with the majority of the funds going to staff and meeting expenses. And then it refers to the appropriation request before them. It says as we get further along, we’ll notify you as to our refined budget projects, as well as to our schedule to implement the review. So I think that’s, so they clearly understand that this is very much a ballpark figure right now and that we’re, you know, we’re formulating the plan of action.

HIGASHI: As soon as the session is over, the Mayor then revises his budget and resubmits the budget to the Council, is that correct, John?

SANTANGELO: Yeah.

HIGASHI: Do you recall it? At that time, we still have a chance to insert a more defined budget, if we choose to.

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: Have we already asked for like $30,000 between now and June and then another $100,000, is that -?

RAY: Right.

IRVINE: Okay.

RAY: Right.

IRVINE: Because -.

RAY: Right. So in other words, theoretically, we could spend $30,000 between now and June, and if the budget’s approved with $100,000 in it, then $100,000 in the following calendar year under the appropriation that’s in the works. Okay?

Okay. Format of Minutes. This discussion is to what type of minute, you know, we should have. We did receive input, I did, from former Charter Commission Members, from the head of the Department of Finance, some other folks that felt very strongly that we should have verbatim minutes so -. Yeah, Roland.

HIGASHI: I have a question for Mr. Wurdeman.

WURDEMAN: Yes, sir.

HIGASHI: Mr. Wurdeman, if we would have official minutes, whether it’s taped, in the archives, and have the type of minutes that we’ve had in summary, would that be sufficient in protecting us in both ways? If somebody wanted to go to the archives to hear the verbatim minutes, I mean it’s there on tape. Is that -?

WURDEMAN: Well, I think that would meet the letter of the law, but I think you saw Mr. Takahashi’s -.

HERKES: Yeah.

WURDEMAN: Letter and -.

HIGASHI: What did he say? I didn’t see that.

WURDEMAN: It says the intent of this Commission will, over the next 10 years, come up all the time. Minutes that are readily available and printed, I think, are much better.

HIGASHI: But wouldn’t you say that the actions taken, that is what is going to be controversial rather than who said what and -? I mean it’s a two-hour meeting; it takes us two -.

WURDEMAN: Believe it or not, when arguments arise over what something means in the Charter, they go back -, it’s not uncommon to go back, look at the minutes, and to find out that, you know, a certain Commissioner said something about this particular issue, and another Commissioner said something else, and then try and derive the intent of the meaning from that. Now, that doesn’t happen every day, but it happens.

HIGASHI: It still ends up with the attorneys.

WURDEMAN: Yeah. Attorneys do that.

BESS: Roland, if I may. You know, I would second what Mr. Wurdeman’s saying. I can tell you during the time that I was with the Corporation Counsel’s Office, the verbatim minutes were very important in deciding some issues and hearing the talk going back and forth to derive intent, so I think it’s very important to have verbatim minutes in print.

SANTANGELO: And I’d like -.

BESS: And, of course, you know, there are some technological problems with the tape itself that may deteriorate.

SANTANGELO: I’d like to weigh in on that, mainly, as we meet, we know what the intent and certainly we judge what our intent was in live dialogue, and having verbatim minutes doesn’t really cause us to have to digest the whole hundred and some pages of every meeting because we were there. But for open public perception and for the whole historical archives, it’s probably best, and I would weigh in on verbatim minutes.

RAY: Roland.

HIGASHI: Mr. Wurdeman, let me pose this other question to you. How many reports, mainly committee reports? If we have verbatim minutes on actions that are taken, is that something that would suffice? I mean, we have a hundred and I don’t know how many pages of minutes.

HERKES: One twenty-six.

HIGASHI: And it’s dialogue and committee reports and a lot of things that are not action-oriented, just general discussion.

WURDEMAN: Well, is it your intention to have subject matter committees, like Finance Committee and maybe Police Committee or things like that, or are you going to do it as a body?

RAY: I think we’re planning on doing it as a body.

HERKES: Interesting question though.

WURDEMAN: So there would not necessarily be any committee reports.

HIGASHI: Yeah. Selection of a Commission secretary and, you know, that kind of stuff, there’s reports.

WURDEMAN: I was thinking more of not what’s going on today but when you do get into substantive areas and make changes to the Charter, and five years from now, people are trying to figure out what this means.

RAY: Okay. Sue.

WURDEMAN: Unfortunately, things go into the Charter don’t come out for five years, you know, and all of a sudden somebody raises -.

IRVINE: I move we have verbatim minutes of our proceedings per Mr. Takahashi’s request from the Finance Department.

RAY: Okay. A second?

BESS: Second.

RAY: Okay, discussion?

HERKES: Yeah. I’d like to ask Mr. Higashi what his concerns are about 126 pages.

HIGASHI: Well, to be honest with you, I probably will not vote to approve the minutes, I’ll probably abstain, unless I read the whole thing.

HERKES: Yeah.

HIGASHI: You know.

HERKES: And see -.

RAY: Well, we’ve deferred -.

HIGASHI: I have these other minutes I can read, you know -.

RAY: Okay.

HIGASHI: And understand what went on, but for me to vote to approve minutes that I haven’t read, I think I would probably abstain from voting.

RAY: Well, wait, wait.

HERKES: And I -.

HIGASHI: Not approving the minutes.

RAY: Let me address that issue, okay. We’re not approving these verbatim minutes today.

HIGASHI: No, no.

HERKES: No.

HIGASHI: In the future.

HERKES: Anytime.

RAY: Okay.

HERKES: And what I’d like to address is it is possible to do a summary of the minutes. It will cost more, it will take time, but it’s possible to do a summary of the minutes for the Commission, but I’m not sure that will handle our concerns about having to read 126 pages of minutes.

RAY: Well, you know, the County Council -.

HIGASHI: Mr. Chairman, the point I want to make is that approving the minutes ratifies my actions of the previous meeting, and if I haven’t read it all and there was a mistake in there or something that I ratified by approving the minutes, I don’t think I’d approve of that. I can approve the action that was taken.

RAY: Well, I think there’s considerably more mistake that that would happen with the short form minutes than with the long form, but I mean, you know, it’s -, but anyway, yeah.

ALONZO: Mr. Chair, may we approve the minutes the following month, where it says we have one this meeting, the next month we get this meeting minutes?

RAY: Sure, absolutely.

ALONZO: And we can refer it to the next meeting -.

RAY: Right.

ALONZO: To get approval.

RAY: Right.

ALONZO: Then it gives us some time to read it.

RAY: Yes. I mean, the County Council frequently -, I mean they very rarely, I mean, approve it on that timely a basis so, yeah, that’s fine.

IRVINE: I might say the previous minutes were verbatim, but they’re very nicely indexed at the front so that we might have Page 1, 2, 3 has what content, if you wanted to go look something up.

RAY: Yeah.

IRVINE: You wouldn’t have to read the whole thing.

RAY: Yeah. And, you know, we are in the organizational stage, and I think that point was made, so there are things that are, you know, of less substance now but once we get into the meat of it, then I think it’ll be more important. John.

SANTANGELO: You know, one thing, I hadn’t gotten Mr. Takahashi’s letter, and I don’t know if we’re getting it faxed and -. I’m getting most of the things through my fax. But with Harry, one thing I do know is Harry has extensive experience in the Council, having run Leg Auditor for almost 14 years, and if he things verbatim is what we should do, let’s just do it.

RAY: Okay. Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: Question. If we have a transcript of our meetings, it’s not official unless the Commission takes some kind of action to accept it or approve it or confirm it, is that it? You know, just having a transcript on its own is meaningless, I mean, you know, it wouldn’t stand up as being an official document.

RAY: I don’t know. Maybe that’s a question for Mr. Wurdeman. I mean, I guess, do you understand what Mr. Yoshiyama is getting at, I mean, if we didn’t want to approve the minutes, I guess, or we wanted to approve a summary and have a transcript as unapproved?

WURDEMAN: What’s required is minutes, meaning a synopsis, a digest of the proceedings.

RAY: Okay.

WURDEMAN: Now, the problem with minutes in the true sense of the word is that sometimes a little editorial license is required. What’s important, what’s not important? It sometimes makes it harder to write minutes than to do a verbatim transcript. And if it’s a verbatim transcript, I really can’t see, unless there is a flagrant error by the secretary as to what someone said, I really can’t see why, which is all you’re approving when you approve the minutes is that they are accurate. You’re not approving the fact that you agree with what was done. You’re saying I’ve reviewed them, they’re accurate, this is what happened. At least that’s my understanding.

YOSHIYAMA: Okay.

RAY: Okay. Sue.

IRVINE: Move the question.

RAY: Okay. We’re voting. The motion is to approve verbatim minutes. All in favor, raise your right hand. Okay, motion carries.

All right, Reimbursable Expenses. This is just a bit of housekeeping. I’m sure you’re all aware that mileage is approved. I’m not sure exactly what the rate is, and I know some folks had mileage to, you know, special committee meetings. I have the -, as well as other reimbursable expenses. I met with the Finance Department today, and let’s see, Dixie said as long as they’re, you know, minor expenses, you know, less than $100, that, you know, there’s no problem with my approving those. So, you know, I picked up some pupus for us here for the meeting today because, you know, if we wanted to go out and have dinner afterwards, that’s also a approved expense. But anyway, I have the forms here. If you’d like to fill them in and claim mileage, let’s go ahead and get up to date as quickly as possible this evening, then I’ll sign them and we can go ahead and get these turned in. There’s not an official time limit, it doesn’t have to be done, you know, weekly or monthly or whatever right, so -, but I would like to -, not to leave it hanging out there so that we get this in sooner rather than later. So I’ve got these forms here. Yes, sir, Eddie.

ALONZO: Mr. Chair, as far as like committee meetings, for instance, the attorney committee get together certain place, they can claim mileage, too, for that?

RAY: Sure.

HERKES: We can have lunch, too.

RAY: Yeah.

HERKES: Why don’t you pass those around?

RAY: Sure.

BESS: And the dates of the two previous meetings?

IRVINE: February 20^th and March 17^th.

RAY: Yeah, March 17^th was the last meeting and the -.

IRVINE: February 20^th.

RAY: February 20^th was the first. So anymore questions on these? You know, folks, in regard to the last Commission’s activities and budgets, you know, just from glancing through here, people routinely claimed mileage and whatever. Okay?

All right. New Business. The Scoping Committee report, Roland are you going to -? I have -, Roland, I have these. Did you get them? I got copies, too. Okay. This is the critical path schedule that the committee came up with for discussion. This is probably for Jason. Yeah, give one -, give Jason one.

RAY: Give these guys a copy.

SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman?

HERKES: Roland, do you have another one for Jason?

RAY: I just want you to have one so you know what we’re talking about.

(Indiscernible discussion)

SANTANGELO: No, don’t give anything to Jason; he doesn’t deserve it.

MARTIN: John said that. Could you repeat that again, John?

SANTANGELO: No, no, no. Oh, good ears that guy get.

HERKES: Verbatim.

RAY: John, are you making this report?

SANTANGELO: No. I have comments to that report.

HERKES: He’s anxious.

IRVINE: Roland, it’s Roland.

HIGASHI: Well, why don’t we put it on the table first, John.

SANTANGELO: Okay.

RAY: Yeah, let’s have the committee report, Roland.

HIGASHI: We had a committee meeting consisting of Sue, George, Mr. Alonzo, and Kevin, and what we did was we came up with a draft for you to start with. And bearing in mind that we wanted to have as many community meetings as possible, we wanted to have the brainstorming session start out, the community input, as sort of a kick-off. So what is proposed is to have in May two meetings, one in Kona and one in Hilo, and rather than scoping, we called it a brainstorming session in which we hope to hire a PR firm that would put the whole package to us, for us. But the idea is to invite as many people as we know to come to the meetings on both sides of the Island because as of this moment, we don’t -, except for Henry Ross’ suggestions, we don’t have any suggestions. And I think it’s a good opportunity to have everybody come down and have a -, feel free to give their suggestion to us, hopefully in writing, if not, using a facilitator to put it on the board. And, hopefully, within these two meetings, we will have digested at least what the public sentiments are. In June -.

RAY: Can you -, I don’t know how in detail you got in regard to those meetings, but could you talk about them a little bit more in terms of, you know, these are Saturdays, right?

HIGASHI: It was Saturday meeting, I’m sorry, yeah.

RAY: Yeah.

HIGASHI: It was Saturday meetings.

RAY: So would these -, you know, what would the length of the meetings be?

HIGASHI: Eight or nine o’clock until finish.

ALONZO: Until noon then.

IRVINE: We had said, yeah, nine to noon, maybe might even go on and it would just -.

HIGASHI: If it goes on, people are there -. The idea is we didn’t want to shut up anybody. One o’clock or -, yeah.

(skip in transcript...changed tape)

RAY: I mean published in general or PR in general.

HERKES: If we’re going to hire a public relations firm, I think it would be a good idea to let them help us design this, especially if they’re a good one.

HIGASHI: And it’s going to be quite some time, so that’s the idea of hiring a public relations agency, using their expertise.

RAY: Yeah, and we do have some information on that.

HIGASHI: Expertise and especially getting the word out.

RAY: Okay.

IRVINE: I thought you folks were going to come up with a one-page statement.

MARTIN: There was discussion on that.

RAY: I have that.

IRVINE: Yeah, okay.

RAY: And I’m going to pass that out.

IRVINE: Oh, okay. I thought that might be -.

RAY: But that’s not nearly as extensive as, you know, I think a presentation would be.

IRVINE: Okay.

RAY: This would be more just like a heads up notice that we’d send out that, hey, we’re rocking and rolling and here we go.

HERKES: Starting the discussion.

RAY: You know, and these are the kinds of things we’re going to be talking about but, you know, I envision something quite a bit more comprehensive, you know, to lead off this thing.

HIGASHI: Mr. Chairman, at the critical path meeting, we never went into that far detail as to how it starts, who leads off, you know, what the scenario would be to pick it up.

RAY: Okay. And the only reason I brought it up is because the 8^th of May is coming up.

HIGASHI: That’s correct.

RAY: Very quickly.

HIGASHI: That’s correct.

RAY: So to pull all this together by the 8^th of May and publicize it and all, it’s just a consideration. Okay.

HIGASHI: Whether it’s the 15^th, and we move back two weeks, I mean, the idea was that in May -.

RAY: Okay.

HIGASHI: Hit two sides of the Island.

RAY: Right.

HIGASHI: In June, while we’re digesting and reduce to writing what the public has said, maybe work with the County departments. In July -, this is through July and August that we hold meetings, again for public input, and at least a scenario of what other people have already said, having meetings in Hilo, Kona, Puna, Waimea, and Honoka‘a.

RAY: Are these primarily input meetings, or are we going to be discussing -.

HIGASHI: Input meetings.

ALONZO: Input.

RAY: Input meetings.

IRVINE: It was my -.

HIGASHI: And having a chance to dialogue with the community.

IRVINE: Yeah, it was my understanding though that we were definitely going to have an agenda of our own in case nobody showed up.

HIGASHI: Right, right.

MARTIN: Correct.

IRVINE: And it might include, I figured that even at our scoping meeting that it might mean more meetings with County departments because I can’t see County departments all coming in two meetings in June.

HIGASHI: Well -.

IRVINE: So I thought maybe we could ask some of them later, no?

HIGASHI: Right, right, right.

IRVINE: Yeah?

HIGASHI: But I don’t think the County departments have that much changes within their department that they’d want to do. The other thing about the County departments, we wanted to make sure it’s well advertised. The public may want to have comments about the different departments, and they only can speak to it if it’s agendized, so that’s one of the reason why I have -.

RAY: Okay.

HIGASHI: The County meetings. I think the Mayor can probably meet with his staff, reduce to writing all their comments and submitting it to us. But I think the public may have, you know, some input into different divisions, and if we don’t have a meeting, and we don’t agendize them, they’ll probably be not allowed to speak.

Okay, I’ll go on to July, August. It wasn’t meant to be in July we’ll hold Hilo, Puna, you know. Within those two months, the Committee can decide, you know, we will have five meetings, and it’s geographically we have these areas, and if you look to October/November, we have other areas that weren’t covered, like Naalehu, Kohala, Mt. View, but Hilo and Kona is always covered.

In September, we’re looking at the Committee having two meetings and probably start to having our drafts put together. And in October and November, again, we have five meetings, and now it is the intent of the draft, then start -, go out in the community for more input, acceptance, making sure the people understand what the draft looks like and further amendments to the draft.

In December, having two meetings with the final draft, and maybe Sue can remind us, we need to send this to the Council, remember?

IRVINE: I think that was somebody else’s input.

ALONZO: It was Kevin’s.

IRVINE: But we thought -.

HIGASHI: Oh, Kevin, yeah, yeah.

IRVINE: By the 10^th of December it had to go to the County Council if you wanted to have things happen in January and have your -.

HIGASHI: It’s not in the Charter, but the -.

IRVINE: Election.

HIGASHI: State statute, I think, says that we need to send it to the County Council for consideration. I think they can offer changes but not mandate changes.

IRVINE: That was my input. They can -, they have the right to make change and send them back to us, which we then can either include or not.

HIGASHI: Or not include so they can offer changes.

HERKES: So they’re -.

IRVINE: We, also, weren’t sure at our meeting, however, whether -, that was in the State law.

HIGASHI: Yeah.

IRVINE: And whether State law applies in this case or not.

RAY: Mr. Wurdeman?

WURDEMAN: Well -.

RAY: Can you give us some help on this process?

WURDEMAN: Personally, I think that -. Well, the State Constitution says that when there’s a conflict between the Charter and the State law in questions of organization and structure of the County, the Charter prevails. So my -, if I was forced to answer yes or no, I’d say the Charter prevails. But, unfortunately, when there are these conflicts, and during the course of your deliberations you’re going to find other conflicts that may come up, there’s several that have pestered us for the last 10 years, people argue both sides, and it just adds to confusion, so if it’s possible to comply with both, I would recommend doing so.

HIGASHI: In kind of finishing it off, in January with the intent in March maybe special election, we publish the digest of changes in the newspaper. It needs to be 45 days before any kind of special elections. February would be a regular committee meeting, kind of planning strategy for educating the public, making sure the public is educated on the changes, and if we have a special election, it’ll be done in March.

RAY: In regard to the special election, or the issue of a special election, was there any research in regard to budgets related to that or -?

HIGASHI: Sue was going to work on it.

IRVINE: Yeah.

HIGASHI: Sue is going to work on it.

IRVINE: I did go to the County and talk to the County Clerk’s Office, and they actually gave me estimated costs for a special election, which they did last month. I think Roland got this, as well, right? I just went in to find out on my own, and they said they’d already done it and handed me this. It’s $336,000, well, $336,650 is what they estimate for a special election.

RAY: And that’s a normal format full -?

IRVINE: Yeah, there is no other format. We do not have vote by mail at this time in the State.

RAY: Okay. That was what I was going to ask you, okay.

IRVINE: No.

RAY: So the -, are there any other legal options to going this route?

MARTIN: If I may, because I was part of the discussion in that subcommittee, we did touch upon the mail-out, but nobody had any inclination as to if it would be or wouldn’t be legal, and nobody, I don’t think, did research into it at this point. As I mentioned in that meeting, this being a County, and as Corp. Counsel just saying the Charter would carry some precedence, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the State or changing any State laws, why couldn’t we go to some sort of a mail situation?

WURDEMAN: I would say we have to follow State election laws.

HERKES: State election laws.

IRVINE: Yeah.

RAY: Okay. So, wait, wait. Sue, let’s finish that up.

IRVINE: There was a measure of -, at the Legislature this session, as there have been in quite a few past sessions, it failed to pass, as far as I know.

RAY: It did.

IRVINE: For vote by mail. Yeah.

RAY: Now, I followed that.

IRVINE: Yeah.

RAY: Whatever was up before the State did fail this year. So that didn’t provide an opportunity. So is it -, so we -, I guess the question is, you know, is there another option, and the answer seems to be no. So when we’re talking about a special election, we’re talking about full-blown, you know, as laid out by Elections Office, and we can use that budget figure as a ballpark to discuss this.

HERKES: I think we can use the budget figure, but I think there are other options out there that we can set up. We don’t have to set up as many polling places. I don’t think you have to set them all up, and you can maybe set up one in each district and make four of them absentee, and we can certainly push absentee balloting.

RAY: Do you know -?

HERKES: I’ve voted absentee balloting for years.

RAY: Okay.

HERKES: And I haven’t been absent yet.

HIGASHI: Mr. Chair?

RAY: Yeah, Roland.

HIGASHI: I think the voting mechanism and how to reduce costs, we’ll have time to work on that. If issues are not significant, we probably won’t have a special election. But talking to the elections officer, they have a problem because they don’t have a voting mechanism yet. The last one that they used is not -.

RAY: Okay, yeah, because of the -.

HIGASHI: Right.

RAY: Right.

HIGASHI: It’s not for sure. They don’t have a contract with anybody.

RAY: Right.

HIGASHI: So, he’s not sure exactly what they’re going to use. He suggested maybe for the interim especially, you can use the old balloting system with the punch; that’s still available.

SANTANGELO: Sure.

HIGASHI: So I think it’s something that still needs to be researched and -.

RAY: So you’re -.

HIGASHI: We have time.

RAY: Sense is that, you know, this would be a preliminary path that would allow for the consideration of a special election and -.

HIGASHI: If one is decided.

RAY: But not definitely put us on that, you know, or that commitment. And I guess, of course, the big question is where would the money come from?

HIGASHI: Right, right.

RAY: If we were to decide this is something we wanted to pursue anyway?

HIGASHI: Right, right, right.

RAY: And, obviously, the appropriation requested from the County Council doesn’t, you know, take into account a special election so, you know, we’d certainly have to deal with that reality.

HIGASHI: It’s funny because the Charter determines that this Commission will either call a special election, but it doesn’t say who funds it, you know. I mean I’m sure that the County funds it. The Council doesn’t fund it, then it’s a kind of two-edge sword, yeah. They don’t fund it, and we probably will.

RAY: Like those raises, right, Gary?

YOSHIYAMA: I didn’t hear that.

IRVINE: I guess I did have a question about it does say that this Commission is -, can set a special election, and I think in the Charter on Page 34-35, it talks about the Council, you know, appropriating money for us, but I’m not sure if we say we will have a special election whether that requires the County Council to come up with the money or not.

RAY: See, I told you.

YOSHIYAMA: Sounds familiar.

IRVINE: Yeah.

RAY: Same old thing.

SANTANGELO: Well, they’re into raising taxes, so it’s cool.

YOSHIYAMA: You guys better watch out.

HERKES: We can close the zoo, for heaven sakes.

WURDEMAN: That would be a constitutional crisis.

HERKES: And we’ll have the money.

WURDEMAN: I don’t think you want to get to that.

HERKES: No, we’ll just -.

RAY: Okay. John, did you have a comment?

SANTANGELO: No, I think that special elections is something that we can look forward to. I know that me sitting on this Commission, I’m going to want to see a tremendous value to the community, that we want to see 100 percent consensus at this Commission, and we want to see a lot of support from the community to move forward with that kind of an expenditure. And I think if that was the case, whoever the parties were would probably buy into it and it would be a done deal. I think a special election has its place, but I would sure question the public is going to really scrutinize this thing.

RAY: Okay. Can I ask for some in put from the committee in regard to, you know, any discussion or thoughts behind a special election versus, you know, just going with the general election in the year 2000. Were there, you know, specific reasons to consider this or -?

MARTIN: I think one of the, not so much driving reasons but the discussion was carried that if something were to come up that would change our Charter, per se, drastically one way or another, and it’s put on the 2000 ballot, then you’d vote on it and not being sure as to what’s going to transpire, would it take place in 2000 or 2002 or 2004, the following elections? And with that in mind, what we were saying is if, in fact, there was going to be significant change on how our government is shaped, then we’d like to have it in place so that when you vote in the 2000 election, you know what you’re voting for and you’re going to be voting for that change.

RAY: Okay. Well, that’s specifically, you know, what I’m interested in, and, you know, I’ve had some discussions in regard to this. And I don’t understand, you know, the process and the time lines of, you know, how all this would work logistically. And let’s take, for example, the head spot, the mayor versus a supervisor type -.

MARTIN: City manager.

RAY: City manager type of government, you know. Using that as a for instance, right, I mean if you were to have that on the ballot, you know, how would that affect, you know, the election in the fall of 2000? In other words, you already will have had, you know, declared candidates.

HIGASHI: The filing is in July.

IRVINE: Yeah.

HIGASHI: The filing of a candidate is in July.

SANTANGELO: That’s true.

HIGASHI: They can announce whatever they want but -. So it’s important that with that special election, we sell within a reasonable time -.

RAY: Well, that’s one -.

HIGASHI: Of the filing.

RAY: Okay. That’s one aspect. But from a, you use the word reasonable. You know, if you’ve -, you’ve got folks committing, you know, years of time, and you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on a mayoral race, you know, I think that’s also -.

MARTIN: So what you are saying is we wouldn’t change something because somebody’s already planning an election?

RAY: I’m just bringing that up.

HIGASHI: John.

RAY: They’re not just planning an election, you know, they’ve already been campaigning for, you know, six or eight months, and so -.

MARTIN: So -.

RAY: I mean -.

MARTIN: I don’t understand it, John. I mean, if -.

RAY: Okay, suppose -.

MARTIN: The public comes up and says we’d like to have a change, but because somebody’s committed to run for mayor, we’re not going to change that?

RAY: I’m just bringing it up.

MARTIN: I’m just asking.

RAY: Okay.

HIGASHI: Mr. Chairman?

IRVINE: I guess I was kind of a dissenting voice at the committee on having a special election because of the expense and because a Charter is really a long-term document and, I mean, our Charter has been strong enough to withstand some, at least one potentially disastrous mayoral race, and I think it can stand, you know, through the next elections. And I can see your concerns that changing things, you know, might affect those running for office right now, but I can’t see expending this money on the part of all of the citizens to have a special election because I’m not sure it’s anything the public really needs because -. And the other thing I did talk to Elections about turnout for special elections, and there were two special elections, one -, a Charter election in 1979, the turnout was 24 percent, that means 9,000 people voted. In 1978, the Con-Con election, turnout was 34 percent, which meant 12,000 people voted.

SANTANGELO: What’s the usual turnout, Susan?

IRVINE: Okay, the regular turnout in 1978 was 78.5 percent.

SANTANGELO: Okay.

IRVINE: So that, you know, in that time frame, that was what happened.

SANTANGELO: Unregistered voters.

IRVINE: So we’d be, you know, having -.

RAY: John.

IRVINE: No matter how much PR -.

SANTANGELO: Yeah.

IRVINE: We’re going to have a low turnout.

SANTANGELO: One thing I’d ask is, Sue, and I direct this towards you, and not saying that I’ve had more experience, but one thing I have learned is remaining open, you know.

IRVINE: Right.

SANTANGELO: And it’s real important that we be open. I can’t say that I disagree with you at all. An example that I would give though, that has a lot of public support that I’m experiencing, Mr. Chairman, is non-partisan election. And I can see how that could really affect a mayor’s race, because you’re going to have two of the major vote-getters move up. And something that impacts an election so drastically, at first I looked at it with one hand and said, gee, this is something that probably should be dealt with early so that it does come up. On the other hand, there’s a lot of wisdom that says this can wait, and it gives the public time to buy into this thing before the election. And so I’d say, let’s stay open minded about this, but there is a tremendous expense involved, and there is also public confidence. We’ve got to go about this in a way that the public feels very confident that their best interests are being kept in mind, and I wouldn’t want to be a part of anything, right or wrong, because I’ve learned that lesson, that the public perceived as not being in their best interest. And I hate to say that we’re going to let them push us around, but in one case, this is a place where I’m totally willing to be in that seat. So it’s not just a managing director versus a mayor; that can wait. It’s also if we go non-partisan, which seems to be a lot of groundswell support for something like that, how does that impact? And I see, for me, both sides supporting and also saying let’s delay this, give a chance to vote on it, give a chance to assimilate it, and then become involved in it. Thank you.

RAY: Okay. Gary, you had your hand up?

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah. I guess overall, I agree with John, and I like this critical path because it provides us options. I would look at this, you know, our public meetings, hearings and stuff, as an opportunity, also, for, you know, members of our community to let us know their feelings about whether or not they want a special election or not, you know. It’s just as important as the changes.

RAY: Okay. Marni.

HERKES: I agree with Gary that we have an opportunity to design a process that the public can let us know if they want a general election. I worked in the polling place for the primary and the general in the last election, and it was mass confusion. And that’s one reason that I, when there’s four big issues that people are talking about changing the Charter, a rather drastic structural change in our form of government, I would like an opportunity, or I’d like the public to have an opportunity, and I want an opportunity, too, to really understand those changes, to really focus on those changes, to really have just those changes in my eyesight. And that’s why I think if the public wants those, wants a structural change, that we need to pay special attention to that structural change.

RAY: Okay. Roland.

HIGASHI: John, getting back to your question about candidates who put a lot of time before that, I think in September when we come with our first draft, it would be kind of fair warning to everybody running for office as to what may be the public sentiment, what the Commission may be thinking, and they need to be prepared both ways so -.

RAY: Okay. John? Okay. Moving on to something else, just a little housekeeping, being a fairly involved individual, although I try not to be, I want to ask this Commission to please help me with the May 8^th and the May 22^nd; these are something I wouldn’t want to miss, but I would just share with this Commission that it’s a matter of public record in the newspaper that I will be in charge the food booths at the Portuguese Chamber Rodeo.

HERKES: No, no, we’re all busy.

RAY: Excuse me. On the 8^th, and it’s the scholarship fund drive. And also the Republicans are having their convention on the 22^nd.

HERKES: Well, God damn, we can’t have it then.

HIGASHI: Gee, you think we Democrats don’t know that?

YOSHIYAMA: Ironic how we chose those dates there, eh, Roland?

SANTANGELO: And I lay that out there for you to -, Gary, being non-partisan as he is, I know he would support my right.

YOSHIYAMA: That’s right.

RAY: Okay, well -, you know.

SANTANGELO: But it does make it so I can’t make these meetings, and they are public meetings and, hey, I’m already committed.

RAY: Let’s -.

SANTANGELO: And that’s the point is I was committed to these things prior to this Commission coming up with this, and that’s, I mean, I would make any other change.

RAY: Okay, wait. Okay, that’s fine. But before we get into, you know, what dates suit everybody, you know, particular dates, I’d like to focus more on the time frame and is it reasonable to schedule a meeting as soon as the 8^th? I mean, that’s more the question I have, in other words, can we gear up to do a good job? That’s what, three weeks from now?

IRVINE: Two and a half.

HERKES: Yeah, three weeks.

RAY: Yeah. So -.

HIGASHI: Three weeks.

HERKES: That’s just to May 14^th.

IRVINE: Oh, May 8^th, oh, sorry. Okay.

RAY: And -.

IRVINE: Yeah.

RAY: You know, we’re going to talk about, you know publicity and what, but, you know, we can’t bring somebody on board, you know, PR-wise, to function in that time frame.

HERKES: We can’t?

RAY: Well, we might be able to get them, but they wouldn’t be able to, you know, I don’t think practically speaking we could.

IRVINE: I don’t think the critical path committee was committed to those -.

HIGASHI: No.

MARTIN: No, we just -.

IRVINE: Dates at all.

MARTIN: It just was a -.

IRVINE: We said let’s do two meetings in May. I will not be here the 8^th or the 15^th. Let’s put them at the end of May, the two last weekends and -.

RAY: Well -.

IRVINE: Or the first weekend in June.

ALONZO: Memorial Day weekend? No.

RAY: Okay, the -.

IRVINE: Pardon?

HERKES: I’m busy on -.

IRVINE: Oh.

HERKES: Those weekends.

IRVINE: Yeah. Okay.

SANTANGELO: When’s the Democratic convention?

ALONZO: When we submit this to the Commission to review, then if there’s any changes, we can make the -, justify the changes.

RAY: Yeah. Because there is a, you know, end of May, early June -.

IRVINE: Yeah, there’s some graduations and stuff.

RAY: You know, super crunch with graduations and, you know, stuff like that, so Saturdays, I think, become increasingly difficult, you know, for a few weeks there, so we need to think about that. Can I -, you know, some comments I had when I looked at this is the last Charter Commission held 24 regular meetings, substantive meetings, to discuss Charter changes, and I think the Commission before that held close to 50, so that’s a concern to me, you know. Are there -?

HERKES: Two a month? Four a month?

IRVINE: Yes. Yes.

RAY: There were -, no, well, no, no, the process was like a year and a half, the review process, but -, and so it’s -, in my sense is we’re a little short on, you know, a thorough review of the Charter and meetings in this scenario. And it’s also my sense that we’ve short-changed the input from the County departments. I’ve gotten a lot of input from folks in the County who are really looking forward to and very much want to be involved in this process, and I think, you know, my sense is, you know, it’s going to be more like, you know, budget hearings, you know, several days’ worth of department inputs. Maybe we can encourage them, you know, Roland, you mentioned to, you know, really be organized in this approach and, you know, get it down in writing and whatever, so maybe we can shorten that up. But I’ve gotten a lot of input from the departments that, you know, would really like to -. And I think when we get into, you know, the Finance Department, these are going to be some really pretty involved and lengthy discussions on, you know, the budgets, in other words, the budget formats and stuff so that’s just -, I’m just throwing that out there. So I guess my sense is we’re going to need -, and this can all be accommodated in this time frame easily, but we’re going to need more time with the County and that we’re going to need more time to, you know, go through section by section, you know, the Charter in regular meetings, as well, just based on -.

HIGASHI: Well -.

RAY: But maybe not.

HIGASHI: It was my, well, at least I would rather just go through the Charter, make my own concerns rather than going section by section and having 11 guys comment on what I have to say. I don’t know how they did in the past but -.

RAY: You know, I think one thing that -, we had a couple of volunteers, other people, you know, from past Charter Commissions, that, you know, volunteered to come in and just give us some, you know, feedback on, you know, past Charter Commissions. I think that would be real helpful to get a sense of -, because I’m really struggling with this whole process of the budgets and whatever. I just feel like I’m just headed into kind of unknown territory; I really don’t have a strong sense of, you know, what we’re taking on time-wise and process-wise.

IRVINE: I’ll second that.

RAY: Yeah. John.

SANTANGELO: And then, John, I have back you up. I have written down here over the June meetings with the departments is very important. I think we all have maybe a pet peeve that we have banging around in our heads or among our circle of people that we deal with. On the other hand, within the procedural part of our government, we probably have the greatest ability to create impact, positive impact into the new millennium, and so to me, that’s extremely important.

I think the other thing, too, that I’m floundering with, and I think you just put that into words was we really don’t have a sense of direction yet, so it is a huge blur. I may agree with Roland giving some more information. On the other hand, to me, I actually see a section by section review because of the mind set that exists here and going over that, you know, process.

And so I guess the thing that it comes down to is I do lack direction, I do lack a focus on how we’re going to effectively, you know, do the best job we can. And anything that can happen in the short term, that helps us get that focus, I think that’s when we’re going to start doing the real work.

RAY: Okay.

SANTANGELO: And as far as the Council goes, I -, somebody needs to help me understand why the Council has a living thing to do with this except for input like any other citizen. And I know that at our confirmation, many people here at this table, including myself, offered to be very attentive to anything the Council put forth as individuals or as a body, but we are autonomous, and that political process and that political pressure has been removed in this Charter, and I think what we deal with goes to the voter.

RAY: Yeah.

HIGASHI: This is -.

RAY: More comments?

HIGASHI: I have just one comment. This is the fourth review of the Charter Commission, is that, or the Charter, is that correct? Yeah, I don’t see substantial changes.

RAY: Well, I think that’s relevant in that, you know, it has been gone over in great detail, right, so they have visited probably most of the issues, you know, that we’re going to be talking about, so I think that has some relevance but, you know, so that’s certainly -.

HIGASHI: I think taking the input from the County departments, if they were organized, it shouldn’t take that long. Digesting that and put it into changes will take a longer time, you know, whether the legal staff does that or we do it collaboratively, I’m not sure but -.

RAY: Well, when you get into the -.

HIGASHI: The taking the input, I don’t -.

RAY: When you -.

HIGASHI: Think it’s going to take that long.

RAY: Well, when you get into the budget cycles though, that’s a pretty complex -.

HIGASHI: That’s right.

RAY: You know, area, and the effect of that and on the State budgets, so I -.

HIGASHI: For the timing?

RAY: Yeah.

HIGASHI: Timing? The Association of Counties, that’s pretty much the standard thing in terms of your early budget, and after session, you know how much money you get, then you go back for the final budget. I think City and County of Oahu does that.

SANTANGELO: I’d like to -.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Roland, I have -.

HIGASHI: But anyway, it’s not an issue right now. I don’t -.

SANTANGELO: As far as, Roland, yourself or any other Commissioner, I have a lot of respect for everybody that’s here, but one thing -.

HERKES: But -.

SANTANGELO: But -.

RAY: Gee. what are you going to say next?

SANTANGELO: This Charter’s been looked at. In spite of the side comments, the Charter’s been looked at, again, like you said, the way it has. On the other hand, let’s be contemporary about it. You know, we are in new times, we’re in times in which just the struggle with the union influence and how that helps or hinders the movement of government, our budgeting process, the fact that we have three parties now, three basic parties running for office, which confuses the majority type thing. There’s a lot of things that have come up in the last so many years that do, that the Charter and it -, are struggling with, that we can bring up to date, so I there’s -, I think there’s some real issues that we can deal with in this that may take some time to understand.

RAY: Roland.

HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, I don’t recommend that we vote on this and approve this as the critical path. I think this is a guideline, and as we go along, if we find bumps in the road and I think we need to have a look on that, and adjust accordingly. I think it gives us some idea for discussion as to what we’re looking at. Of course, if special election -, there’s no major issues, this whole thing will go back to June or July as far as our time line so -.

RAY: Yeah.

HIGASHI: I think we should adopt this -.

RAY: Yeah.

HIGASHI: As a formal critical path, but it gives us some idea, some starting point, and as we move along, if we have to amend it, you know, we have that opportunity.

RAY: Yeah. Well, yeah, and I really appreciate the work and I think -, I like the idea of tackling this, you know, vigorously in a shorter versus a longer time frame. I think there’s, you know, a lot to be said for that. And, you know, I don’t, you know, whether holding extra meetings or whatever can certainly be accommodated in this time frame, especially, you know, in areas like the administration because I, you know, I certainly saw it being wrapped up -.

HIGASHI: Right, right.

RAY: During this same time frame, just maybe requiring more meetings or whatever, but maybe it’s just an all day meeting versus a, you know, a three-hour meeting or whatever so I, you know -. It works for me and, you know, if we do come up with creative and a supported format, you know, to look at a more dynamic approach to this rather than waiting for the other election, well, let’s consider that. Okay. All right, any other comments or -, on this?

HIGASHI: One thing we’re going to decide on is whether in May we’re going to go on the 8^th.

IRVINE: Yeah.

HIGASHI: Fifteenth.

RAY: Okay, well, let’s -.

HIGASHI: Thirtieth or 29^th.

RAY: Yeah. Okay, well, let’s kind of fold into the next topic, and then we can discuss both of them together. Marni and I did some work on the communications and public relations and, you know, the piece I talked about, and this is just a rough draft, all this was was an idea of, you know, a handout, a one-page handout that we could send out when we came up with a, you know, a general process time line to, you know, broadcast this out to community groups, to everybody we could think of, to give it, you know, as a heads-up that we are getting ready to go. So, you know, I just put this together as a way to kind of publicly kick off the process, so that’s all this, you know, represents. So anyway, we don’t have to spend any time on this now and we could, you know, all have input on it before we send it out. It was just a, you know, a starting notice. So I envision that, you know, as soon as we do pick that initial date, that’s going to set this, you know, time line on and we’ll need to kick this out as soon as possible.

And then Marni and I met with one public relations firm, Current Events in Kona, just to get some feedback from them, and I don’t have copies of this. Do you want to go over this? Do you have your copy?

HERKES: I’ve got -, well, I’ve got about four copies; I didn’t know how many copies to make.

RAY: Okay.

HERKES: So I made about four.

RAY: In regard to a contract, as long as it’s under $25,000, we do have to, you know, publicly notice, you know, for bids or whatever, but it’s not a prolonged, you know, process. In other words, we can, you know, put out a little RFP and, you know, publicize it and get something in the works pretty quickly, but I’m not sure exactly what that is and exact time line to bring somebody on board to, you know, plug them into a May, you know, meeting.

HERKES: One of the reasons I liked this particular public relations firm is because they’ve done such a wonderful job with the Saddle Road project and I’m on that advisory group, and that’s -, had a possibility of being contentious, and those hearings have been very well done. They’ve been very well organized, and everybody feels that they’ve been included, and I think it’s really been well done with newsletters and -, widely distributed newsletters.

IRVINE: Current Events is the name of the company?

HERKES: Yeah.

IRVINE: And who are the -?

HERKES: Ross Wilson and Debbie Baker.

IRVINE: Oh, okay.

HERKES: Ross Wilson would do it.

RAY: Well, this give us, you know, the reason we did this -.

HERKES: Debbie has a conflict.

RAY: And I’m really glad they came up with this proposal, is that, you know, it gives us a kind of scope of work and what, you know, an estimate of what, you know, we get for this kind of money, and it’s just, you know, a guideline of something we could discuss this evening so -.

SANTANGELO: John, this paper you gave us, what’s the purpose of this?

RAY: The purpose of this is when we decide that we’re going to proceed on a certain process that’s going to involve, you know, the public, especially scoping meetings, that we, you know, and we come up with sort of a general time line, that we broadcast this out to every organization and group, you know, around the Island and encourage them to participate.

SANTANGELO: One of the things I’d like to see us get up and running here is Rock got the Charter Commission -, the Charter on the Web, right?

HERKES: Yes, it’s on.

SANTANGELO: So that’s available.

HERKES: It’s on.

SANTANGELO: We should be letting people know that. Something like this, I said something, either this, but at the will of the Committee, but something like this should be a preface or should be included with it because it gives the people a reason of what, I mean at least what they’re looking at, and then -, and it gives everybody the opportunity to download and have in their home the County Charter, and that’s never really been available. That’s groundbreaking. It’s on the Web, we’ve got that available, and if there’s anything, we should be advertising -.

RAY: Yeah. We will make it available in every, you know, way possible, but I think the, you know, what we’re waiting for, hopefully, is that we can come up with some sort of a tentative time line or, you know, something we’re considering, so that’s why -. Gee, mine was just the same as yours, and I hadn’t even seen yours yet. March special election.

HERKES: Yeah. And I would not put that on there.

RAY: No. Okay.

HERKES: Or I would put that on there -.

RAY: This -.

HERKES: If necessary.

RAY: This is very rough.

HERKES: Because -.

RAY: I mean, I just put something -.

HERKES: That makes me think that it’s already been decided.

RAY: Yeah, I’ll put something -.

HERKES: Yeah.

RAY: Just to -.

HERKES: Yeah.

RAY: Show you what it might look like, so we’ll all get input and agree that, you know, whatever it is we want to send out so -.

HERKES: And if we’re going to hire a public relations firm, they are the ones to-.

RAY: You got that, Jason, this is not -?

ARMSTRONG: It’s in print. I believe everything that’s in print.

IRVINE: Oh, God.

HIGASHI: Mr. Chairman, back to the agenda.

RAY: Yes, sir.

HIGASHI: We’re back on the -. I just have a question. When they talk about advertising for $4,000 -.

RAY: Marni, maybe you can -.

IRVINE: Where are we?

HERKES: What’s your -?

HIGASHI: Back to the agendizing item.

HERKES: What’s your question?

IRVINE: Oh.

HERKES: What’s your question?

HIGASHI: The question is you have advertising and a fee, and in the fee, it also speaks to advertising the two scoping meetings.

ALONZO: Seventeen thousand.

HIGASHI: So is it $4,000 advertising and another "X" amount of dollars for advertising again or -? I’m confused by it.

HERKES: Develop an advertising schedule for Big Island print and radio advertising, and then includes -.

HIGASHI: That may be kind of expense developing -.

HERKES: Includes adverting the two scoping meetings. The advertising would also be for Charter Commission meetings, for input for the Charter, for -, I would suspect that we’d want some ads as to how to give input, that we want some -, I’d like to see some attractive things as to how you give input.

HIGASHI: Well, it’s just a conflict. One says $13,000 includes meeting facilitation, public relations and advertising.

HERKES: For the scoping meetings.

HIGASHI: Yeah. Right, right, right.

HERKES: Only. Two scoping meetings.

HIGASHI: Right, right. Okay.

HERKES: The other advertising is a budget for the Commission.

MARTIN: Would that be for the life of the Commission or -?

HERKES: What?

MARTIN: Would that be for the life of the Commission?

HERKES: Yeah.

MARTIN: Okay.

HIGASHI: But on the top, when it says the preparation is for the upcoming Charter Commission scoping meetings, Hilo and Kona, I mean those are the budgets so it’s going to confuse -. If it’s going to be $4,000 -.

HERKES: Okay.

HIGASHI: It’s going to be for something else -.

HERKES: Okay.

HIGASHI: Maybe it should be deleted from this proposal.

HERKES: Okay.

HIGASHI: You know, I mean, for this -.

RAY: Well, this is not, you know, this is not a bid or -.

HERKES: Yeah.

HIGASHI: Yeah, it’s a -.

RAY: This is just a -. There again -.

HIGASHI: Yeah.

RAY: You know, something to give us a general, you know, ballpark figure.

HIGASHI: Right, right, right.

RAY: Of what a firm represents it could do for a figure, you know, and so that’s all it is right now.

HERKES: Well, yeah. You develop the advertising and then you place it.

RAY: So, you know, getting back to, you know, a starting point of, you know, when we could, you know, kick this off from a public standpoint, I think that’s what we need to, you know, hone in on when, you know, what’s a realistic starting point to, you know, kick this thing off. And, you know, obviously, these two initial meetings, you know, we want to do a really good job, and so we got to have, you know, time to, you know, publicize it and get the word out, so that’s the question, I don’t know.

SANTANGELO: Okay. John?

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: I can go back to the -, I really like this. The only thing, again, I take it, would like to see changed a bit is May moved a month ahead for a lot of reasons that were brought up here. And, you know, when we first met, we talked about coming up, getting up to speed and being running by June or at least by the end of the budget period, and that’s -, so a lot of commitments were made, and I think that after May, you know, we are "alone." We’ve known that that schedule was there, and we’ve gotten into it, and just for the whole comfort zone, I’d like to see some -, maybe out kick-off in June rather than May, because we’re really kicking it off in June.

RAY: Yeah. Well, I think the -.

HIGASHI: Had it been expounded in several meetings, I never picked that up, and if we did, I would have probably -, probably would have omitted.

RAY: Why? The logistics are the main consideration rather than people’s, you know, personal -.

HERKES: I think so.

RAY: Just -.

HIGASHI: Yeah, yeah.

RAY: When we can, you know, do a good job.

HIGASHI: Right.

RAY: And as soon as we can start and do a good job, I’m all for going ahead. Yeah.

KUROZAWA: John, do you think it’s reasonable -? You hate to waste a month of time for us, but would it be reasonable for us to meet with the County departments in May, since I’m sure they’ve been thinking about this for years. And then plan on doing the community things in June; that’ll give us time to get the word out. But I surely hate to waste a month of not doing a whole lot, and I’m sure the County departments have things and items that they want to bring forward already, I expect.

SANTANGELO: And I would make comment to that that during the middle of a budget process that’s just grueling, like never before, and we did, Roland, we did make a change in that. We kind of started off a little leisurely, and then you brought the urgency to it, that I bought into, so I’m just saying we did change a bit.

RAY: Okay. Well, what -, okay, what’s the -?

HIGASHI: Mr. Chair?

RAY: Yeah.

HIGASHI: When do we get to -? If we can hire these guys and they can do it within a reasonable time, we can move along. If they feel that they cannot do it -?

SANTANGELO: Do we need our secretary or lawyer?

HIGASHI: They cannot do it within that time line that we’ve had, we can always move it back.

RAY: Okay, now, let’s just focus in on what these first meetings are, okay. So what, you know, what do we really need to have on -. I mean, logistically, to pull them off in terms of the public input, you know, we just need a certain amount of time, right, to, you know, publicize it and pull it off.

HERKES: If we had the first meeting on May 22^nd and then the second meeting two weeks later, that would give us four weeks, almost five weeks to plan.

ALONZO: Two weeks after, that’s going to be June.

HERKES: The second meeting would be in June, but the first meeting would be May 22^nd, before Memorial Day weekend.

ALONZO: Then you’re looking at June for graduations.

HERKES: Say June 15^th. What’s a Saturday in June?

IRVINE: Yeah, it is, it’s the 15^th.

HIGASHI: Right in the smack of -.

SANTANGELO: We have graduations through the whole damn summer.

HIGASHI: You have parties through the summer, yeah. Yeah, but graduations right about that time.

SANTANGELO: Right there, the actual school graduations.

HERKES: Isn’t it the end of May, early June?

SANTANGELO: Yeah.

HERKES: Is June 15^th a -?

ALONZO: University is May.

HIGASHI: We don’t have to hold it two weeks apart; we can hold it back-to-back, one week -.

RAY: Yeah.

HIGASHI: In Kona.

RAY: Memorial Day is the 31^st.

IRVINE: Twenty-two, yeah.

HERKES: So if we did one on May 22^nd.

HIGASHI: What about May 15^th?

ALONZO: May 15 and 22^nd?

HIGASHI: Yeah, I mean -.

HERKES: That’s a month. Can we ask Roland to work with a public relations firm and get some feedback?

HIGASHI: Once we hire them, I will.

HERKES: Yeah, because they won’t work with you before you hire them.

YOSHIYAMA: When is the earliest that we can hire a firm? John, do you have any idea?

MARTIN: We have that budget of $30,000 for this month, for this end of the fiscal, I mean, we could hire them now, the prices at what we’re -.

RAY: Yeah, yeah, he’s asking -.

YOSHIYAMA: At anytime then, right?

MARTIN: I believe the criteria was that -.

RAY: Yeah, I apologize. I don’t have that exact information as far as -, I discussed it with Bill Gray, but I don’t remember exactly, and I don’t want to misrepresent it.

HIGASHI: Okay.

RAY: In terms of what the time frame is on -.

YOSHIYAMA: But there’s no bidding, there’s no need to -.

HIGASHI: Professional services.

RAY: We do have to advertise.

HERKES: Yeah.

YOSHIYAMA: Oh, we do?

RAY: Yeah. He said yeah and solicit.

HIGASHI: Over $25,000?

RAY: No, under. If it’s over 25, we do, but he said we do want to solicit.

YOSHIYAMA: That’ll take time.

MARTIN: Not if we put it in the paper tomorrow.

HIGASHI: You can solicit proposals from PR firms, I mean, you don’t have to advertise.

RAY: Right.

HIGASHI: You know.

YOSHIYAMA: Oh, just solicit.

HIGASHI: Yeah, you can write to Kikuchi and -.

YOSHIYAMA: Oh, okay.

HIGASHI: Ross and -.

RAY: Right. Yeah, yeah. We don’t -.

YOSHIYAMA: Oh, okay.

RAY: And, you know, and then we can pretty much make up our mind who we want based on who we think can do the best job, so we don’t have to, you know, it’s just really who we think fits the bill and so -, in other words, we can form a committee of three people to, you know, go out and make this happen, and I think, you know, as long as we, you know, solicit proposals from, you know, three firms or something, we’re okay, yeah.

YOSHIYAMA: And then, say we hire somebody. I mean, if, can we kind of imagine how long that firm would take to put together something for us?

HERKES: No, we tell them.

YOSHIYAMA: A couple weeks?

HERKES: We tell them. We tell them when we’re talking to them. This is what we want you to do. Can you do it? And if so, how much would it cost?

RAY: I think the reason -, one reason, Marni and I, we talked to Current Events is because we know the answer is yes, they’ve done and really performed well with, you know, exactly those kind of things, so I know they can do it.

HIGASHI: Right, right.

RAY: You know, they’re plugged in, and maybe a bunch of other people can, too, you know.

ALONZO: Can businesses sponsor the advertising, maybe three or four sponsors?

HIGASHI: No, we don’t want that.

ALONZO: Just asking.

HIGASHI: So, Mr. Chairman, let’s move down to resolving this. If we cannot hire them at this meeting, we need to kind of take the appropriate action.

RAY: Yeah, we need to talk to Bill Gray first thing in the morning and figure out -.

HIGASHI: Okay, so -.

RAY: Exactly what -.

HIGASHI: At this meeting, what can we do? I mean, if we cannot hire anybody, obviously, that May 8^th thing is definitely out.

RAY: Yeah, I think May 8^th seems definitely out, and as far as what -.

HIGASHI: And we’re not having another meeting this month.

YOSHIYAMA: We could.

MARTIN: Yeah. If there is need, I think we should consider it.

ALONZO: This month?

HIGASHI: When we select the date, you know, I’d be willing to go secure the facilities, you know, whether it’s King Kam Hotel or Kona Surf or -. Marni and I can discuss areas that we can hold the meeting. In Hilo, if we want to do it at the State Building in the conference room or County Council Chambers, we can always make those arrangements, secure the facilities. Sue and I have been talking about maybe looking at some facilitators. We haven’t been too lucky yet but, you know.

IRVINE: No, I did talk to the YMCA. They’re not available on the 8^th or the 22^nd.

HIGASHI: Yeah.

IRVINE: Unfortunately.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: I make a motion that the Chairman appoint a small committee to hire a PR firm to develop a plan for the scoping meetings.

SANTANGELO: Just that?

HERKES: Just that.

HIGASHI: Second.

RAY: Okay, I have a second for discussion. Okay.

HIGASHI: I second.

RAY: Okay. Discussion?

SANTANGELO: My question would be why would we do that just for the scoping meeting? Why wouldn’t we want this firm to be with us through the duration? I’m perfectly willing to go with the scoping meetings, but as we start to really get into the meat of things, I mean, it was my understanding this Commission wanted to be able to communicate with the public.

MARTIN: I think John has a good point and that at some point we’re going to have to advertise what we have if we do want to take it to the public or special election, what have you, and we’re going to need somebody on board at that time. If we have the same people, continuity is good.

HIGASHI: I think that Marni has a good point that we focus in on the scoping meeting now and also put a RFP for a PR company, because it’s going to entail -, scoping meetings are a small part, but if you look at our budget, we spend a lot of money in advertising, doing the educational program, whether we go tabloids, and somebody needs to kind of allay something. It’s going to take a lot of thought rather than just having a quick decision, so I think if we do something now, we take care of the scoping meetings, and hopefully RFP a -, have an RFP out for doing our total marketing and advertising program and see what people will come up with. They can look at what’s done in the past, yeah. Maybe they’ll come up with new ideas, I’m not sure, but I would recommend that we go with this now and then look at the bigger picture when we have time.

SANTANGELO: I can support that, but I really have to -, I would like to get a sense from this committee that what we want to do is we want to inform, educate and deal with the public on a fair and equal basis, and that’s -, I don’t want to compromise that. And if we can move forward with what you proposed, you two, I don’t have a problem with that as long as it doesn’t take away from the other, because that’s what’s really important.

HERKES: Have you heard -, I’d be interested to know what you’ve heard that leads you to think that maybe we weren’t informing and educating the public, then maybe we weren’t all on that vein.

SANTANGELO: I think you took it a little too personally.

HERKES: No, I didn’t take it personally at all.

SANTANGELO: I’m going to go back to -.

HERKES: I’m trying to understand what you’re saying.

SANTANGELO: With the County Council, there was so many things and so many issues that came up -.

HERKES: This is not the County Council.

SANTANGELO: That you never, ever could work with the public. They were never informed. And if you tried to use -, you couldn’t use public funds. You know, you were always at a loss to be able to offer things to the public; all you had was the opinions of a couple reporters sitting there. Where here at this Commission, if we bring things up, it’s my intent to want to be able to use intelligent, media experts such as Current Events to be able to tabloid the information and the education out so that we get informed input. It’s just informed public.

RAY: Okay. Sue.

IRVINE: I am with John on that, but I think, on the other hand, hiring somebody now is fine, just tell them we may have more work coming up.

RAY: Okay.

IRVINE: Thirteen thousand sounds rather high for two meetings.

HERKES: I thought it sounded cheap.

HIGASHI: No, Sue, I think what we need for them to do is to take all the information -.

IRVINE: Yeah.

HIGASHI: Reduce it to writing, you know, and put it in a presentable form for us so rather than have our secretary go through all the minutes, listen to everything, and then reduce that to writing. So I think a professional can do that.

IRVINE: Absolutely.

HIGASHI: I think the facilitator part may be the more expensive part rather than the advertising and the planning.

IRVINE: Yeah, I don’t know if -.

HIGASHI: I’m not sure. I have no idea what the cost is.

IRVINE: Yeah, I’m not sure what the costs were either. When I talked to the Y, I didn’t ask about cost, I just asked if they were available and then they weren’t and then that was that.

YOSHIYAMA: Can we include -?

(Indiscernible discussion)

RAY: Is everybody listening?

YOSHIYAMA: Can we include some kind of date or can we -?

RAY: Some kind of a what?

YOSHIYAMA: Authorize the subcommittee to fix the date, at least the first one or the second one so, you know, kind of speed up the process for the scoping meetings? Is that okay?

HERKES: Is this discussion on the motion?

RAY: Yeah.

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah.

MARTIN: Excuse me. There’s a motion on the floor, I believe, at this point, wasn’t there?

RAY: Yeah.

ALONZO: Yeah.

MARTIN: And I’m just wondering if we should -, I’m just thinking out loud if we should amend the motion to include, you know, giving the committee not only the authority to hire but to fix a date or dates.

HERKES: I won’t allow you to amend it because my assumption is that if a committee’s going to hire a PR firm, they’re going to hire them for dates, they’re going to hire them with a front end and a back end, and they’re going to hire them to get it done.

HIGASHI: No, Marni, saying if not the 8^th, could be the 15^th, 22^nd, or -, you now.

HERKES: Yeah.

HIGASHI: What is reasonable.

HERKES: What’s reasonable for them though.

HIGASHI: Yeah, yeah. Whether they can facilitate and put the thing -.

HERKES: Yeah.

HIGASHI: Together.

YOSHIYAMA: All I’m saying is, you know, I hate the subcommittee to come back and forth. I mean, you get the authority, just go with it and that’s great. That would be great.

RAY: Steve.

BESS: You know, just so that we don’t miss a month, I’m not sure about why we need to go through with scoping meetings in May at any point in time, whether it’s at the back end of May or not. Why not, and notwithstanding what John said, fine, these guys are in budget times, tough budget times, but I don’t see that there’s really any compelling reason why we can’t meet with the County departments in May, push this decision, you know, the scoping meetings off until June, then they have plenty of time to come up -. Now, I’m not familiar with the public relations process and maybe these guys will be on board in no time by the 15^th, but it seems like we’re letting the public relations committee and appointment of the public relations firm dictate the schedule. We can deal with the County departments in May.

SANTANGELO: But I raise the question, Steve, can the County departments justify -, can they work with us, being in the middle of this whole budget process in which they’re cutting millions, or at least hundreds of thousands out of their budget, they’re dealing with vacant positions, do they need -, I mean, they’re dealing with a whole lot right now, and it’s a football that’s being punted back and forth between the Mayor and the Council with the Legislature, as Roland brought up, you know, coming to a close and then dealing with the reality of whatever they hand us there. Because last time they closed, they closed with the whole TAT readjustment, which impacted the budget, so I just offer that.

BESS: Is there anything wrong with requesting the County departments to do it in May and seeing whether or not they can? And if they can’t, then let’s adjust.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: I hear people making these suggestions because they’re -, or I heard a comment that we can’t just let a whole month go by without doing things, that we have to do something in May. I’d like to point out that we hire a lawyer in May, we hire a secretary in May, we could hire our PR firm in May. We are doing things, and these will all be things that will take up our time, and we all have other jobs besides the Commission. And we want to do them well, we want to spend some time on them, we’ll be interviewing people, we’ll be making those decisions, and there’ll be some research that has to go with it, and I think that if I were going to do a time line, that I’d take into consideration the kinds of obligations that we’ve all got already in May and probably look at moving that back. However, that wasn’t the motion.

HIGASHI: No.

HERKES: And we’re speaking to the motion, let’s hire somebody.

HIGASHI: Getting back to the motion, the motion is we hire a public relations firm. The date is another issue. We probably could come up with a motion to set the County at the next day, then that’s a separate issue, but we should get to this now, I mean -.

ALONZO: Call for the question.

HIGASHI: So the motion was to appoint a subcommittee of so many people doing -, to engage in -.

RAY: Is the motion for the Chair to appoint a subcommittee?

HERKES: Yes.

MARTIN: I believe it was.

ALONZO: It was.

HERKES: Yes, it was.

SANTANGELO: Yes, it was, specifically.

HERKES: Yes, it was.

RAY: Of three persons.

YOSHIYAMA: There was no count.

HERKES: I didn’t say.

HIGASHI: A small committee, she said.

YOSHIYAMA: Small number.

HERKES: Small.

RAY: Do I have to tell you who before -?

MARTIN: We won’t hold it against you.

HERKES: Frankly, you don’t even have to have a committee.

RAY: Okay. Okay, all in favor, raise your right hand. Okay. Motion carries. Okay, but -, since we have voted on that, you know, I think -.

HIGASHI: I like Steve’s motion -, I mean, Steve’s idea.

RAY: The time line, I think, is critical. Daryl, you had your hand up.

KUROZAWA: No, that’s okay.

RAY: You know, my sense of -.

KUROZAWA: I was just going to support what Steve said.

RAY: You know, I’d feel more comfortable with a little more time on these scoping sessions just to get it organized and do a good job and, you know, I’m not sure about the County input, but we can put some feelers out on that and kind of, you know, see what we can get in the works. You know, the -.

HIGASHI: We may not get them all but -.

RAY: But the -.

HIGASHI: At least we can get most of them.

SANTANGELO: Sure.

RAY: And, you know, it’s a, you know, end-all thing, you know, one session with a department, just like these initial scoping meetings just to get like a first read-out and whatever, so it’s not like, you know, these departments it’s a one-shot deal, right, and we’re not going to hear anything again, so -.

SANTANGELO: That’s true.

RAY: You know, maybe we can, you know, get a level of input initially and then, you know, we can refine that as the process goes along. You know, the County departments are also citizens of the County, and I guess they’re free to participate in the process, you know, throughout as well, right, and there are lots of ways, you know -. In other words, they’re not limited to a particular session with the Finance Department for input, right? In other words, they can input, you know, individually, and in writing throughout the process, right?

HIGASHI: So, Mr. Chair?

RAY: Yeah.

HIGASHI: Moving to the May agenda as to who do we -, what do we do? Is it the consensus, or you want a motion on the floor, or how you want to dispose of that question?

RAY: As far as those initial meeting dates?

HIGASHI: Whether we use a -.

MARTIN: I thought what he was talking about was swapping the June to the May.

HIGASHI: June

.

RAY: Yeah.

MARTIN: That’s what Mr. Bess indicated.

RAY: We don’t need a motion for that, right? I mean, we didn’t approve the schedule so -.

HIGASHI: So we would use the County, do the County two meetings -.

ALONZO: In May.

HIGASHI: In May, is that the consensus?

ALONZO: Yeah.

MARTIN: And I believe we got some of the concern for time as was being mentioned that there may be more lengthy. Would this format starting at five be appropriate or should we start earlier if, in fact, these departments are going to take that much time to come in and dialogue with us?

HERKES: We’re not going to make them come in on Saturday?

MARTIN: We could do that, too; it’s not a problem.

ALONZO: No problem.

MARTIN: I mean, I don’t know, is that okay with their -.

SANTANGELO: I’m sure Richard would likely be first.

MARTIN: Department heads? Whatever.

ALONZO: We can do weekdays after maybe 4:30 when they finish working.

HERKES: I always like, when I’m having people come in and do things, I always like to ask them what’s most convenient for them. It’s like to say if you guys had your druthers, what -, how would you like to do this?

SANTANGELO: As long as they’re not cooking or going to conventions.

HIGASHI: When we allow the departments, there’s a lot of people we need to ask.

SANTANGELO: That’s the Council, not the department heads.

MARTIN: And as was being mentioned, too, the departments are not only department heads but people who work in them, too, and they should have an opportunity to also partake.

RAY: I’m not sure.

MARTIN: How do we handle that?

RAY: Yeah.

IRVINE: I don’t think we’re going to find County employees coming over here to tell us how they think the Charter ought to be changed, other than appointed heads.

ALONZO: They don’t have to come here to give some testimony.

IRVINE: Okay. We need -, then we need a mechanism for them to anonymously, probably, get us input.

ALONZO: That means we’re going to have somebody to come and speak on behalf of that person.

HIGASHI: No need. They can submit in writing.

RAY: John.

ALONZO: If they submit it -.

SANTANGELO: Let’s not underestimate the directors and -.

IRVINE: Oh.

SANTANGELO: And people like that.

IRVINE: Oh, no, they’ll come.

SANTANGELO: Who are in a lame duck era, that really probably feel very strongly, you know, have had eight years of dealing with something, and they may have strong opinions about how to change it.

IRVINE: I said the County employees; I was not talking about the -.

SANTANGELO: Yeah.

IRVINE: Appointed directors -.

SANTANGELO: As far as -.

IRVINE: Will certainly come.

SANTANGELO: As far as the management of directors -, of departments, they’re available almost anytime. It’s amazing how much time -, they’re available at night, but they’re available during the daytime, too. You know, I mean, they’re really, they’re very good at that.

RAY: Well, what did everybody envision in terms of, you know, these meetings with the department heads? Were you thinking of Saturdays, as well?

HIGASHI: I envision most of them having it in writing.

HERKES: Yeah, that’s what I envision.

HIGASHI: I mean, they can kind of -, brief summarize their statement, but most of them, I think, would be in writing. But I think we need to give the public an agendized item in which they can formally put their input against the departments. What if we start at the regular time, at 3:00 or 3:30 you know, and still -?

ALONZO: Weekdays?

HIGASHI: On a weekday.

HERKES: Well, and the nice thing about that is the department heads can come in at three and the employees can come in pau hana, after work and things, so that there’ll be a continuation.

BESS: You know, in terms of the County meetings, what I envision, anyway, is an opportunity to really dialogue with these people, that it would be a different kind of format than what we’d normally have with the public, where we would just be getting input; there really would be a give and take.

SANTANGELO: That’s right.

BESS: To understand what they’re talking about.

HERKES: Ask questions.

BESS: Yeah.

SANTANGELO: That’s right.

RAY: So time frame or, you know -.

BESS: I think that’s reasonable.

HERKES: So, Mr. Bess.

BESS: Yes.

HERKES: That brought up something really neat for me in the fact that maybe we, as a Commission, should write a letter to the County department heads and employees and invite them to come and dialogue with us, invite them to come and explain the problems that they’ve had with the Charter, how it could be -, how they see it could be improved. That’s -, yeah, I think that would -.

MARTIN: I think to add to what she’s saying, and it’s a great idea, is we have so many departments that this book covers, choose them out and set forth a day that they should be and a time, and th