2010-07-30 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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know at the Department of Water Supply is that they have a person there who goes and does outreach to schools and to the public and education about water resources, and conservation. So, this isn’t going to tell you all of the services that this department provides. So if you’re looking for what’s the core thing, you’re going to look at this, you’re going to see Department of Water Supply. You can pull out from there provision of potable water. I think you’re going to need to talk to the departments. You’re going to need a little bit more information about how they function in order to pull out what services are they doing, and how deep do you go. MR. TAKABA: I think that’s where the questionnaire would help. When we send the questionnaire out, they should spell out the activities. Because that’s part of this whole Cost of Government Commission’s responsibility. You’re talking about essential services, activities and functions. Kathy’s talking about activities like the outreach, education. That’s the kind of things you’re going to have to get from the department. MS. NICHOLSON: That is not currently available? Like each department head, don’t they do an annual report? MS. GARSON: There’s an annual report which I have given to you. There is the County’s annual report. It’s not all in one place. MS. O’HARA: Does each department have a mission statement? MS. GARSON: I don’t know if each department does. MS. WONG: And the reports that came back in here, they are different in content. MS. NICHOLSON: My fear is that if we send something out to the departments asking them to say list what their core activities are and then all their other activities, some will respond in a timely manner. Some may not respond at all. Some will give us a lot of detail. Some will be very brief. So, we’re not going to be looking at the same kind of response because they’re all overworked and they don’t have a lot of time to necessarily focus on yet another request for more information. MS. WONG: But if we ask them to send out this survey or letter or whatever you want to call them, and say these are the questions we would like for you to present, then they at least have it written when they come and present this for us. MS. O’HARA: Can you elaborate – these are the questions we’d like you to present? MS. WONG: Yes. And we’d ask them to come and present so that we could ask some more questions based on what they responded to us. MS. PROVALENKO: That was similar to what we did last time. MS. NICHOLSON: And some did respond, some didn’t respond, and some had good suggestions, and some submitted their report that they’d done for some other purpose. 25