2010-07-30 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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cannot, and I thought well, there’s some things you just cannot touch. And those are the core government responsibilities. But we have to have a lot of data in order to see which we can eliminate to even consider privatizing or cannot touch. So, I’m going to leave that alone. I was also wondering, does the Mayor have regular monthly meetings with his department heads that he would be asking the questions that we might want to ask and we already have the answers? MR. TAKABA: He has monthly meeting, cabinet meetings, but its usually pretty short. He doesn’t go into real details. MS. WONG: Is it mostly them reporting to him? MR. TAKABA: No. It’s more like, there are some of that going on but it’s mostly like he’s giving us some of the things that are going on and giving us directions on what he sees what we should be doing about it, giving his thoughts, setting some policies as to what we’re going to be doing over the next few months. MS. WONG: On Oahu, Jeremy Harris, I used to attend his monthly meetings and at every meeting, and I’m marketing background so I appreciate his marketing stance, but he would ask at every meeting, each department head had to come in with what piece of paper procedure can you eliminate from your department, and what thing did you do to improve customer service in your department. So every department head had to report on those two things. If that kind of mentality started from the Mayor’s meetings, what we might be suggesting or asking we could collect quickly from those meetings. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other comments? I have something I’d like to throw out. What role do we feel the public might have especially in helping us get a handle on those core services? Now if we start to invite the general public in, we will be here forever. But on the other hand, it is the public who is very much affected by those core services. And the last two reports have not really involved the public. Do we feel that there is a role for the public to have some sort of input in helping us have that discussion about core services in particular? MS. WONG: I for one am very much in favor of community participation. Whether we accept it, but I think they have a right to contribute. And another aspect is if we were even thinking of maybe suggesting changes especially if there are employees involved, the union will have to be invited to speak on it. MS. NICHOLSON: Did you have a comment? MS. O’HARA: I think it’s very important too, to get public feedback, but I think once we come up with some potential recommendations. What we need to do initially I feel is evaluate what is on the books and how the county is currently operating through the County Code and Charter to establish the essential services and the other types of services that they’re providing. I think we need to evaluate where the county is at now before we can move forward with those recommendation which will include the feedback from departments as well as input from the public. It’s a lot to accomplish in 11 months. 22