2010-07-30 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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Planning and Public Works. And what I believe it was, was those were the basic departments that if you recall from 2003, there was draft and so the commission decided we’re just going to finish this off. So, with that, I’ll just remind you that report is due in 11 months. The report is going to get done in 11 months, however, and in whatever state that it is in, we’ll have to turn something in, in 11 months. And as I said, I’m using today as the date of the beginning of your 11 months. So you have until June 30. That was all I had for duties of Cost of Government approach taken. What I also brought, part of what the approach taken was the 2007 commission, what they had decided to do was send letters to all of the departments and boards and commissions. All I did was make copies of those letters, a sample of a letter for you. This was just the approach of what the 2007 commission did. Just so you have an idea. If you look at this letter, what it basically did was sort of outline, actually in the first three, it sort of mirrors what the suggestions were, what the mandate is in the Charter for what the Cost of Government had to come up with. And there are some other questions that the commission came up with that they wanted specific responses from all of the departments for. So, you can see one of the issues that they had come up with – privatization and modernization projects. So basically the communication was sent out sort of early on to get the department and commissions’ suggestions and analysis of their own department. The suggestions have come from within. So, that’s all I have regarding your duty, what you’re going to need to do of the last commission went about doing it. I can answer any questions, but I think the next item on your agenda, which the commission needs to decide is how are you going to approach this. How are you going to approach your task? How are you going to get the information that you need to get? Is there information that I can get for you? If you’re talking about documentation, reports, that’s something that our office can provide to you. Those are the things that you are going to need to discuss and come up with for Agenda 9. Are there any questions about what your task is? Okay, that’s all I have for item 7. MS. NICHOLSON: Thank you for dropping that wonderful bomb on us. We obviously have a lot of work to do. Actually, I would like to hear from Mr. Takaba first, to see if you have any thoughts to send us on our way before we get into some real discussion here. MR. TAKABA: As Kathy was going through the roles and responsibilities of this commission, it made me think about the core responsibilities of the County government – what are they? You hear a lot about people say you have to look at core County government services and just fund those programs that belong within this core. But we never heard anyone go beyond that and really identify what the core County services should be. We can look at the Charter. I think that’s the best place to begin, and look at what departments are created within the Charter, and I think we start to focus on those responsibilities. That’s what County government should be. Just focusing on what the Charter tells us we need to focus on. And through the creation of certain departments like Public Works, Police, Fire, Water, we kind of get a sense of what we’re supposed to be doing. Along the way we started to shift our focus, and we started to get into state responsibilities. I think when that happens, we start shifting our resources to the wrong place. From my perspective, I think we should really look at what core 13