1999-03-17 Charter Commission Minutes

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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 25 of 104 HIGASHI: Comply -. IRVINE: Sure. HIGASHI: With the minimum requirements here. HERKES: Yeah. HIGASHI: They can be considered. Whichever way you recruit them. SANTANGELO: Sure. HIGASHI: I don’t think that’s a problem. SANTANGELO: I don’t have -. HERKES: I’ve actually called a couple to look at this. RAY: Okay. Any other comments? SANTANGELO: Thank you, Steve. RAY: Okay. VII B, Selection of Commission’s Secretary. HERKES: I’m the chair of that committee, and I’m having a problem because I need to have the Commission decide whether we need a full-time person or a part-time person, whether we need a staff kind of person. I’m -, I have to tell you, I come from an electronic background now. I’ve fought this for years, but now that I’m hooked up to my laptop permanently, I don’t feel the need for an office. I don’t feel the need for space set out. I don’t think that -, you know, I just don’t feel the need for that kind of stability that used to be -, used to come along with that secretarial position. So I’m having a hard time trying to figure out what -, whether the rest of the Commission feels the same way I do or whether they feel we need a full-time person with a space, a specific space, whether they can deal with email and voice mail and those kinds of communication tools rather than seeing somebody face-to-face and having a place. RAY: My understanding is that the past Commissions have retained secretarial help part-time on a contract basis. I have not seen that represented in terms of any budgets or, you know, but verbally that’s been, you know, communicated to me. I, you know, I don’t know just what we need in -. HERKES: Could we spend five minutes kind of talking about what we want the secretary to do, what we see our -? RAY: Sure. John. SANTANGELO: One thing I’d like to say, I have no problem and would like to have this board consider an electronic office, I mean, email, voice mail, a P.O. box is fine. I mean, this secretary is not, in my opinion, being in direct contact with people; that’s our job. And, you know, if -, and it may be part of the prerequisite is they have a laptop and they’re able to connect electronically, but an electronic office, I think, is a way of saving a lot of money, I think. God only knows there’s how many people in government trying to do that right now, and we can certainly set an example. And a lot of time is wasted file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 3-17-99.html7/1/2011