2010-09-10 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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things. Because on a big picture, as sitting on top of it all, you don’t see a lot of that. The guy down below is who sees it. So, that’s why I was thinking wait till we get the rest of the responses in before we determine the two people, the parties and where you want to go with it. MS. WONG: Perhaps it could be two people collecting those information and getting more, we discussed last time from the public, getting more from the public somehow and the two people would be authorized and tasked with getting more information and summarizing and maybe coming up with a recommendation based on those recommendations. Another two could be doing something else. And another two could be doing something else. Just so we’re not waiting. We’re taking action at this point. We have something to work on. At the first meeting I had these ideas. And when I read the Charter, can’t do that, can’t do that. Well, that limits what can do. So that was very helpful to realize what I couldn’t do. I still have some recommendations that I came in with before we even started, and I’d like to eventually get it somewhere. But it’s nowhere spaced on the agendas yet. So, if it opens up to the public, there’s an avenue for someone to go to instead of just passing it to the secretary. Then we could start evaluating and assessing for, and come up with a report for our next meeting. M. NICHOLSON: Do you have a comment? MS. O’HARA: Yeah, I did have a comment – talking about how to divvy up task and what we need to focus on, we’ve asked these five questions which refers to, has to do with the core services that the county should be providing. And that’s a question that we want to address as commissioners. But the four questions can be categorized, in my opinion, as recommendations on consolidation, enhancing revenue, technical adoption and operational suggestions. When I asked Bill earlier when he said summarize all the comments that are coming in, I was thinking of categorizing. Because we’ve asked these specific questions and as you know the responders are responding to these specific questions. So we have these four categories that we’ve asked for input on savings. So why don’t we organize along those lines and take the public input, categorize it, and see what they’re saying and if these suggestions can be incorporated into our recommendations as a commission. MS. NICHOLSON: So what are your four categories? MS. O’HARA: Well, question number two asks if they see opportunities for consolidate, coordinating services in the department, consolidation. The third question asks if they see opportunities for enhancing their revenues. As Bill has pointed out all the other columns on the sheet are empty because these are special funds, and these are user fees to pay the funds that fund the different services. So we asked the question if there was potential revenue enhancements. The fourth question was technology adoption. And we got some recommendations about data systems and so on that could be upgraded. And the fifth question is basically operational measures.Operational things that can be done. This is where we get into the, don’t take the vehicles home and reduce the number of refrigerators, and all those are operational suggestions. So those are the categories that we’ve asked for and that’s what we’re getting back. So why don’t we stay organized around those categories. That might help. I did have another comment, a little bit on what Gloria provided us and duck tailing it with what Bill provided 15