2011-01-28 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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MS. GARSON: That was only for your reference in case there was some confusion as to where this came from. We just wanted to make sure that we were noting where it came from. So those will be deleted once you finalize your recommendations. MS. NICHOLSON: But in a way I think it’s good to have the source of some of this stuff noted. So they’re not just out there, but totally they’re tied to something. MS. PROVALENKO: My only thought is if they’re tied to something and they want to look at it, are you going to attach that to it? MS. NICHOLSON: I think that’s part of our discussion. What kind of an appendix do we want to have so that there is a reference to this so that someone could go back and say, did this come from an employee? Did this come from a department head? Does it matter to the County Council or the mayor if the source of these kinds of recommendations? MS. GARSON: And just so you know that there’re a lot of them that have the January 14 meeting, your last meeting because you had done the summary consolidation. So the reference is only going to go back to your summary not where it actually came from. MS. NICHOLSON: Which is almost all from Mr. Yagong’s report. So, format wise, we think we like this approach, grouping by topic rather than by department? At this point, I don’t know how we will go back and put into department format. Do we feel like we need to add anymore explanation? For instance, I’m looking at Item E-1, Consolidate Enforcement. I wouldn’t find that terrible meaningful if I didn’t know anything about where that came from. So it seems to me for some of these we need to go back and give a little background or a little explanation of what these mean. Otherwise it’s meaningless. Some of them are clear. Eliminate vacant funded positions. Fine. But that one, Consolidate Enforcement, if I were a County Council member, I’d go, huh, what are you talking about? What is he referring to? MR. TAKABA: In the previous report, they did findings and then the recommendations. It seemed like it might provide the background that you need to make that recommendation. MS. NICHOLSON: Could you be more specific and give an example from what we’re looking at. MR. TAKABA: If you have your binder, I’m just looking at the previous report that was done in 2003. They went by each department and they explained what the department does. And then they came up with findings related to what they could do to improve or to reduce cost for that department. And then they made recommendations based on those findings. So if we’re looking at Consolidated Enforcement, if you had a finding that showed that different inspectors go out at different times and only one person should go out and do enforcement for several different departments. It would be clearer I think if you do it that way. 17