2011-04-27 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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trying to get around the community or get around the plans, would be such a negative consequence of eliminating that any savings I had financially, any better allocation of resources to some of these things that I think we need to do, I think would, when I’m balancing stuff, I think it would be so much more negative because of the public perception. People really are invested in this process. They feel like it gives them more input and it makes them a little transparent that they’ve got more of a say in what occurs. And so, the bottom line when I ended up looking at it wasn’t a bottom line decision. It really became about what kind of service and what kind of connection do you have with the public, what kind of interaction. And so as much of a humbug as it is, I think in terms of public feeling like they’re getting services or public feeling like they’re getting the means to provide input to government that it’s very valuable. And I can’t weigh that in, in terms of just the employee cost orthe contract cost. So, I just think that you have to weigh that too in terms of whether you keep something. I mean ultimately you keep it just because it provides that additional interface. MS. WONG: Thank you for that explanation cause that clarifies for me why I wasn’t quite connecting on it. But what if the commission recommended that there be a reprioritization so that functionally we recommended that there be a reassignment of staff for the priority of overhauling the subdivision code and zoning code? MS. LEITHEAD-TODD: Well, I thought one way of possibly approaching it as saying if you’ve adopted a CDP, and you have a steering committee, that you have the action committee operate for a two year period or a three period after the adoption of the CDP, and they have a specific role. Because once you’re past that, you really should be focusing on General Plan, which is much broader. Because the General Plan has to be done every 10 years. And we’ve said that CDPs have to done every 10 years, which I don’t know if they’re bumping up against each other, so I’ve thought that one way to address it perhaps is to have atime period. Just like Cost of Government exists for a year. And redistricting has a specific purpose and they exist for a year. Maybe there should be a time limit on them so that we can then refocus resources to the General Plan, to the zoning code and other stuff unless you’re going to give me more staff. I looked at where the growth in my department has been. The growth in my department has primarily been in the long range planning and it’s primarily been for staff to do CDPs. It hasn’t been in permitting. It hasn’t been in the guys that process rezoning and special use permits. It’s primarily been, the bulk of the growth in my department has been what we call, long range planning. And it’s mainly been the CDPs. And I just don’t see the economy changing enough so that I can get more staff. So maybe in time. MS. O’HARA: You know, it does make a lot of sense to me as well because of the process. MS. LEITHEAD-TODD: And maybe we’d also concentrate the focus of the action committee. It’s like hey, you have so much here, and you’ve got to come up with specific recommendations. Some of them see themselves as oh, this is an opportunity to rewrite the CDP. Here’s the CDP, what do you need to implement it? Do you need money for this road? Do you need planning for this road? Do you need the county to be designating where this is going to occur? Do you need specific intersections? If this was an issue in Puna, do these intersections, should the county be giving some assistance to the state with the intersection? That kind of recommendation. And if they 28