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Mr. Takahashi stated that without going into too much detail because <br />things haven't been discussed yet with staff, as Mr. Ben pointed out in the last <br />meeting, their department has been tasked with what is now being referred to as <br />the personnel evaluation ad hoc committee where their staff is meeting with <br />every department in the County to help them look at their organization and <br />streamline their organization. The HR department was included in that review. <br />Again, without going into too much detail, the HR department will be tasked <br />with reducing its staffing levels. All departments are being asked to look <br />seriously at reducing staffing levels. Mr. Ben has allowed Mr. Takahashi to <br />submit his reorganization plan to this evaluation committee, which is a three - <br />year plan to reduce staffing levels by five positions through attrition. Part of the <br />reorganization is to consolidate the support staff work and do a lot of cross - <br />training so that employees will be able to work in more than one divisional area. <br />That will be key as they are facing, through attrition, the loss of bodies, and they <br />won't be able to fill the positions. They will need employees to step in, and he <br />will be working very hard towards getting staff to understand that they need to <br />help each other, be able to do each other's jobs. That's one area he will be <br />concentrating on. <br />It's always been Mr. Takahashi's opinion that their department, along <br />with the Corporation Counsel's Office and the Finance Department, are three <br />key support agencies in the County who support the line agencies that provide <br />direct services to the public. In these tough times, he believes that Human <br />Resources, Corporation Counsel, and Finance are going to be key in how they <br />advise and support other departments. One of Mr. Takahashi's visions is to <br />strengthen the ties between these three departments so that they work closely <br />together to provide one unified message to the departments instead of providing <br />conflicting information. He's not saying that's not going on now, but they do <br />need to work together through these tough times. The budget situation is tough, <br />they have a lot of legal questions that come up through collective bargaining, <br />and these three departments need to work closely together. <br />He would like to continue what Mr. Ben has started as far as believing that <br />they are a department that people want to come to for answers, not because they <br />have to, but because they want to. Mr. Takahashi wants to continue that and <br />strengthen that goal so that they deliver the best service they can. <br />A few years ago when the departments were extremely busy in the "boom" <br />years, they went towards being more of a paper - processing agency, processing <br />recruitments, transactions, etc. Things have settled down a bit so he wants to go <br />5 <br />