2010-07-30 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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thinking about getting public input? Or were you thinking about a means of getting public input? MS. NICHOLSON: I wasn’t specifically thinking about a means. I was just like if we’re talking about core services the public is perhaps an entity that we should involve, but I don’t believe has been involved before in this. MS. WONG: And with those two questions, I thought maybe we might have the public forum or workshop where we could bring in outside people to make suggestions after we get responses in-house. MS. NICHOLSON: So, we would have a draft of something that we would be asking for input on? MS. WONG: Not only a draft of what we think but to gather other suggestions from people in the community. They would know just as much as we would, but they might not have the resources that we have, but they might have some other ideas. Or maybe people that were employees before, that they’re furloughed off, let’s say what should have gone on. There might be some people with good ideas that are in the public that we wouldn’t know. I don’t know if we would want to take that much time, and I realize that we don’t have much time, but if we want to get public input, how were we going to do that? MS. NICHOLSON: I think we can do it anyway we want to. We can structure this however way we choose. So, if we want to have a forum or perhaps do a press release and ask for written input from the general public, I think any method that we choose to gather information is open to us. MS. WONG: Let’s tweet. MS. NICHOLSON: That’s correct, right? We can ask for input anyway we want. MS. GARSON: Basically, yes. All your meetings are public. I’d probably say that as long as we’ll funnel the response back to one person. You mentioned tweeting. According to Sunshine Law, what wouldn’t be appropriate would be all of you were on some messaging board and all of the comments were coming in. You can’t do that because of Sunshine Law. But you can put it out there and the comments can go somewhere or you can put it out there and comments go to one person, then that person collects them and brings them. Those are the only types of restrictions. That and your budget of $3,275 which includes your reimbursement for mileage. So those are sort of the constraints. MS. NICHOLSON: I think we can do that now. Could you elaborate a little further on the university connection. MS. WONG: I just chose the university just to name someone, but I’m feeling a little under the gun on time and a little amount of people, and I’m sure that we could do it. It just might take away from some other priorities that we might have. But to bring in other people that have enough knowledge to say, maybe this should be done here or this 28