1999-02-20 Charter Commission Minutes

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INTRODUCTION OF COMMISSIONERSPage 20 of 29 the more creative and thorough we can be in terms of setting state of the art communications, that’s definitely the way we want to go, and give everybody the opportunity anyway. I’d just like to point out that most people are just not interested. And I don’t care what lengths you go to, the majority of folks could care less about what’s in the Charter or, you know, that’s just a reality. So, we want to give every opportunity, that’s for sure, but I guess what prompted that thought was she said "We gotta have the public with us all along the way", well, they’re not going to be with us all along the way, at the very last minute a bunch of people are going to be with us and …. IRVINE: No, times are changing, I know. I’ve sat on other commissions. It wasn’t there, I know it’s getting worse all the time, but it really seems to me that the more out front you can be in getting there with them. And actually, one or people that show up do go back to their communities, and we do have a better effect, I hope than public hearing would. BALOG: I think more so in light of what John Ray said, I can honestly say, at least through my government experience I saw that, and that held to be true for five years, that in all honesty, nobody cared about the day to day business until there was a hot issue and there was a buzz up somebody’s okole at what was going on in their backyard. But what I do believe in, especially in this commission is just the educational part. Because I think that all of us are visionary enough, that have great ideas to guide this County maybe for the next 10 to 20 years if we do a good job on this Charter. And the next people who might quote, get appointed to tinker with it, won’t have much to tinker with and that means that you did a great job, you had a great vision. And the only way we’re gonna be able to get the voters, who have the last say, and vote on our ideas is to educate them why and how we came we came up with this. That’s why State information is knowledge. It’s not so much to take care of the so called "activists". And activists can be pro or con. But it’s just to take care of educating the people, why we view it this way and how come. That’s half the battle cause a lot of people don’t understand why any of these laws are even the way they are. So it’s not so much like I feel you have to reach out to the country bumpkin, but just to educate them. And they might read a paper, they might see it on the website or whatever, and if they can reason out how you came up that, that’s great. And that will be over half our battle when it comes time for that ballot. RAY: Any more discussion in regard to communications? What else does anybody want to discuss, if anything, in regard to general goals and objectives at this time? BALOG: Not so much with communication, but frequency of meetings but this don’t deal with frequency of meetings. One thing I think we should try and do is try and move the meetings to different communities. RAY: In terms of the logistics of that, Rudy, what’s entailed there? Let’s say we want to have a meeting in Waimea. LEGASPI: We can make arrangements for that. HERKES: How much does that cost? LEGASPI: We’ll try to get a County or State facility at no cost. If you have it in a restaurant and we have meals in that restaurant, then there’s no cost. BALOG: The reason why I said that, we did do it through the Planning Commission, we always file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 2-20-99.html7/1/2011