2010-09-10 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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DISCUSSION REGARDING RECOMMENDATIONS OF PREVOUS COST OF GOVERNMENT COMMISSIONS MS. GARSON: I believe this item is on the agenda because one of the board members had asked if which of the last commission recommendations had been implemented or followed up on. And I personally did it. And the answer to that question is would be for, would the commission like to send a communication to all of the departments asking them what happened to all of the recommendations from the last commission. MS. WONG: And it was me that asked that question and I thought it was going to be answered today but since it’s not, I’ll jump to another topic that I had – maybe since the mayor, maybe we might invite the mayor and ask him what he would like from the commission or what has been recommendations that were taken, if that’s appropriate. MS. GARSON: Actually Mr. Takaba is here really representing that administration. MS. WONG: Okay. MS. WONG: And it’s been expressed on the core. MS. NICHOLSON: It seems to me there are two ways we could handle this. We could either go back to departments and write a letter saying these were the recommendations from this report, maybe we want to go to both reports or just the most recent, please address how your department implemented these and if not why, or explanation. We could either do it that way or now that we have decided to divide to divide into these three teams, each team could go through those reports and see what was relevant to their topic and follow up if that seems appropriate. MS. PROVALENKO: I’d prefer just going back to the previous commission’s recommendations and asking each department to respond back with what they did or why they didn’t do it, and get that feedback. I like that one better. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other comments? MS. WONG: You’re saying through a letter? MS. NICHOLSON: Let’s talk about the purpose of this. How are we going to use that information? MS. WONG: And the reason I ask that was before I even started, my concern was, if we make a recommendation, is anybody going to do anything with it? And did they do anything before, would kind of indicate if they’ll do anything with our recommendations. But when you really think of it, it really doesn’t matter if they didn’t do it before, that’s history. If we make good enough recommendations that they can buy into and the county administration buys into it, our job will have been done, that we made the recommendations and hopefully they will seek the value of that. So, my question is not greatly necessary. I would have appreciated to be encouraged that what we’re doing will be enacted upon. But this morning I was thinking, rereading this agenda item, why was this commission really formed? What was the purpose? Is it really necessary, 28