2011-01-28 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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MR. ARMOUR: I thought I saw some somewhere else. So if we do, I suggest that maybe we put those all together, unless we did that at the last meeting. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, then when we get those then let’s move them up too. Well, this is travel. So I think you’re right Ken, we did have some technology things that were maybe a little separate from travel. When we come across them, we can talk about it. I think these Department-Specific Suggestions should not be sort of buried in the midst of all the rest of these. It should probably come at the end or something. It kind of breaks the flow by having department-specific suggestions, so we can go ahead and talk about them now, but I think for now we might want to move them to either before or after what is now F. MR. ARMOUR: Maybe we should group the departments’suggestions together if they’re not. MS. NICHOLSON: Well, they are now. Okay, so we go from the sort of general County-wide things to departments. I think we should move Staffing/Consolidations up so E should be the next topic. E should become D. So, let’s jump to E and then we’ll go back to those. So we’re looking at Staffing/Consolidations. Consolidating Enforcement. This one, we may need to go back tothe minutes of that meeting. It was very specific in terms of what enforcement functions should be consolidated and as Bill said, the discussion was we have various inspections, inspectors going out. MR. ARMOUR: This is a suggestion from Scott Leonard. It’s on the first page –I recommend that the enforcement responsibilities of Planning Department, Building Department, Real Property Tax, Environmental Management and the Department of Health (as contracted effort from the state to the County since this is a state function) be consolidated into an Enforcement Division under the Police Department. And then it goes on about the benefits. And it’s another half a page. MS. NICHOLSON: How about if we keep that except maybe strike,under the Police Department,cause I don’t know that we want to try to recommend where it belongs. MR. ARMOUR: I agree. MS. NICHOLSON: Number 2. Gloria, do you want to say something here about this because we’ve identified that this is a key function of the County or do you just want to leave it like this? Or once we get our priority statement, maybe we’ll take this out and put this in there? Or should we just leave it as is for now and then we’ll look at it again later when we get those other statements. MS. WONG: Okay, what you said. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Number 3. MS. WONG: Another excellent thought. 28