2011-06-24 Cost of Government Draft Report

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Requested and Received Results from an Employee Survey that Dominic Yagong conducted in the Spring of 2009 Received Presentations and Conducted Q&A with Specific Departments and County Administration Offices including a member from the Council and the Mayor C. Essential Services Provided by the County Identification of the Essential Services of County Government, and Discussion of Relevance to The Hawai‘i County Government At one of the first COGC meetings it was determined that a guiding principle required to study and investigate the organizations and methods of operations of all departments, commissions, boards, offices and other instrumentalities of all branches of the county government would be to identify the essential services of Hawaii County government. Therefore, a narrowly scoped online survey of city/county essential services was conducted for discussion among the Commissioners. Local government functions were summarized as: Though cities differ in the division of responsibility, the typical arrangement is to have the following departments handle the following roles: 1. Urban planning/zoning 2. Economic development/tourism 3. Public works - construction and maintenance of all city-owned or operated assets, including the water supply system, sewer, streets, storm water, snow removal, street cleaning, street signs, vehicles, buildings, land, etc. 4. Parks and recreation - construction and maintenance of city parks, common areas, parkways, publicly-owned land, operation of various recreation programs and facilities 5. Police 6. Fire 7. Emergency medical services 8. Emergency management 9. Accounting/finance - often tax collection, audits 10. Human resources - for city workers 11. General counsel/city attorney/risk management - legal matters such as writing municipal bonds, ensuring city compliance with state and federal law, responding to citizen lawsuits stemming from city actions or inactions. 12. Transportation (varies widely) - if the city has a municipal bus or light rail service, this function may be its own department or it may be folded into the another of the above departments. 13. Information technology - supports computer systems used by city employees; may be also responsible for a city website, phones and other systems. 14. Housing department 15. Municipal court Hawaii is the only U.S. state that has no incorporated municipalities. Instead it has four counties plus the "consolidated city-County" of Honolulu. All communities are considered 8