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OPENING REMARKS COUNCIL VICE CHR. HOFFMANN: Good afternoon Mr. Mayor, Bill. Good afternoon folks. Good afternoon members of the Redistricting Commission. My name is Pete Hoffmann. I am not the Chair of the County Council; I am not Dominic Yagong, regardless of what you might think; although I am much handsomer. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to be here representing both Mr. Yagong and the balance of the members of the County Council welcoming you to this particular occasion. It is the start of what, I think is a very critical and very, very important effort. I know all of you know that. I know Patrick knows this from ten years ago, particularly. But what I think is important to all of us in County government, whether it’s in the Executive office or whether it’s from the County Legislature, if you will; if you want to call us that in this instance; it’s the importance of the effort that you are going to put forth in the next several months. I’m not going to try to make it appear so wonderful, because it will be quite a bit of work on your part. It will be tedious in many instances; that’s the nature of the job. But if we are to do our job effectively, all of us together, as residents, as County Council representatives, as the Mayor, and as others who work for the County Government; this particular effort coming forward is an extremely important effort for all residents of this island. I only have two observations I would like to offer. The first is, regardless of how you view your efforts, and regardless of how we, as County representatives view your efforts, there are going to be many members of the general public that are going to look at this from a very jaundiced perspective. The skepticism that we have from many members of the public really pervades much of what we try to do. It’s the comments that we receive. I’m sorry; you know that because of your efforts previously in any part of our County government; being on different boards and commissions. We can’t try to eliminate that, but we can, I hope, try to reduce that type of skepticism. Regardless of whether you are going to get comments from the general public that beneficial; regardless of whether some people feel that whatever you do here, it’s already a “done deal” so to speak. Please, keep focused, keep your effort forward. It’s important to all of us. Because each time we run against public skepticism, the perception that we are not doing the job exactly correctly, it impacts not only you as members of the Commission; it impacts the Mayor and it impacts all of us who work for County government in any way, shape, or form. The second observation that I would like to make--and I know this is probably speaking to the choir--if we can try to reduce the political aspect of this thing, and try to make it so that politics doesn’t enter, we would be doing everybody a favor. Now look folks; that’s probably not going to be possible. We are in a political environment, and in a political arena; and I understand that, and so do most knowledgeable members of the general public. But if it’s at all possible to reduce some of the comments that were received from the Reapportionment Commission of ten years ago, and the fallout that that generated, I would ask on behalf of everybody in the County, if you can make that happen you would be doing all of us a great deal of service. 2