2010-09-10 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

Home

budget so, the first category is the key under General Funds. That’s Real Property Tax. And I think this is where you should focus because, although we can still cover other areas but the General Fund is what our taxes pays for, Transient Accommodation Taxes and so forth. If you want to know where we spend our money this would give you a good idea of where the money goes. MS. NICHOLSON: So you’re saying that the items funded with the General Fund are the ones that we should focus on because those are the ones that we could actually maybe have some impact on? MR.TAKABA: Yeah. We should look at everything, but the General Fund is where you will fund with taxpayers money. Like Highway Fund has fuel tax so when you fill gas, and that’s self sustaining. What you get with what you spend. That’s not really something that will concern us as much as the General Fund. MS. NICHOLSON: It seems to me that we might want to just move right into agenda item 7 because, how we identify the core county responsibilities and how we tackle our task seem to be intimately related. We can’t really separate them. So, does anyone have any objection if we move right into agenda item 7 to cut discussion regarding approach to take? MS. WONG : No problem. MS. NICHOLSON: While we’re going to do this, does anyone want to take a quick break? Cause this could be a lengthy discussion. MS. WONG: Who has to leave early and what time do you have to leave? MR. MATSUDA: I leave at 12. MS. PROVALENKO: I leave at 12:15. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. I hope someone, I have been sort of racking my brain about the best way to tackle this. We certainly got a start by sending out our letter and getting some feedback. But I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tackle this, and I haven’t come up with anything other than the way we had done it in the past, which is go through department by department. When we did it that way in the past, we were in quite a different situation, financial situation for the county. I think we have an opportunity to tackle things in a different way this time. But other than our suggestion to look at core services, I haven’t been able to formulate a way that we could tackle it. So I’m hoping that you all have some wonderful suggestions. MR. TAKABA: As I was listening to Alex, that’s an area, you know like energy, it’s almost like a subcategory of general expenditures and it cuts across all departments. So I’m wondering if a team of two or three people just work on energy. People who are interested in that area, just work on energy related matters and maybe somebody else or another group work on, concentrate on other areas. It was just a thought as Alex was giving his presentation that maybe some of us who might be really interested in digging deeper into what they’re doing and working with them on and find out what 13