2010-11-03 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

Home

MS. NICHOLSON: I don’t think they’re necessarily tied to a committee. Some may be, some may be tied to other committees, but I think at this point the kind of comments that she just made are ones that we should capture because we may want to put it in our draft of recommendations to discuss at some future point. And they may not fall within one of our particular committee’s purviews. MS. O’HARA: Which is my response to what I heard in terms of areas where we cold possibly increase revenues and/or improve collection of delinquencies. MS. NICHOLSON: Anything else that you want to kind of capture so that we can… MS. WONG: One of the things, and I don’t know that it would be towards any of these, but Environmental Management and I’m recently keen on recycling and preventing waste, and so one of the things I thought of when I asked about the Green Team was how can you prevent more things flowing into the landfills, into the sewage, that we can use it for more productivity. I wasn’t hearing that that’s going on, but I don’t know, but if it can be done about at this time, so I’m keen on looking for something like that. I asked a question on grants because I thought that especially that department could very well use grants in several ways. And I don’t think it should be someone who has a particular job and taking on another added functional of brain for grants. MS. NICHOLSON: Glen. MR. MATSUDA: I’m just glad to hear that there is someone writing for grants and got ARRA funds for the DEM. And not to say that there aren’t no grant funds available, but there are a lot of grant funds available because they’re gaining $7 million in ARRA grants. I’m glad to hear that they are. And it’s some kind of relief as far as revenues. Regarding this area where you’re talking about the Green Team, I think, what I heard was that, I think they basically trying to wait to see whether if there are any U.S. cities or communities out there that has already applied or have a project that’s already been applied, and it’s something that’s feasible. I think that’s the reason why they’re holding back on doing such an ongoing Green Team solution or waste to energy solution because they don’t want to start, be the one to start it. That’s what I heard. MS. NICHOLSON: Ken, do you want to summarize anything for the record? MR. ARMOUR: I think they identified a lot of the problems. It’s just that they don’t tools to implement them or solve it. And it sounds like they’re doing a little better on collections by hiring the one clerk. I think they’re aware a lot of the problems but just either don’t have the time or the money to address it. MS. NICHOLSON: Bill, what we’re trying to do is capture anything that we might want to consider as a future recommendation and make sure we capture it now so that we can bring it up again. So, anything you wanted to add? MR. TAKABA: I’m still not sure as far as the collection with solid waste, the commercial collection, I’m not sure if I really understand why they don’t just cut them off. I know there’s going to be negative consequences if they cut people off because than their businesses will, they could be dumping the garbage on the side of the road or 26