|
HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 12 of 37
<br />to do and, if so, then, you know, really get at it. But I wouldn’t waste a lot of time on something you
<br />know isn’t going to go anywhere. It doesn’t mean you don’t hear from the public and what their
<br />recommendations are, and it doesn’t mean that they can’t change your mind, but I think you have to
<br />move through those kinds of things. And if you decide that you want to stay with the basic form of
<br />government that we have now, a Council and a Mayor, a strong Mayor or no, veto or no. And then, you
<br />know, you go down and get into the budget questions and the length of terms that Council people should
<br />have, etcetera, etcetera, how do you think they should balance out, that’s what I think.
<br />And then we did, I had forgotten that, after we got some basic stuff out of the way, we tried to, for want
<br />of any other way, we tried to go through the Charter line by line and subject by subject.
<br />One of the things that I would strongly recommend, and I have it back in my mind now, is I got the
<br />Charter and I must have read it three or four times, then I’d start over, and I would start making notes to
<br />be sure that I could understand what I didn’t understand, and then to try to fill in the gaps. So it would be
<br />really be helpful, I think, if you went through and really read the Charter, then read it again and read it
<br />again and, you know, then you get down to the things that you’re pretty sure you don’t know.
<br />YUEN: You had asked -, I wanted to get back to your question on public input, and you know, I think
<br />it’s important to have hearings in the different parts of the Island so that people feel welcome to come
<br />and say things. We had a lot of press coverage, and I don’t see anybody here from the press. I thought
<br />that most of our meetings had press. I don’t know, I think that there’s -, there are assigning, the local
<br />paper I think is assigning fewer reporters to meetings than they used to. And then part of it was that we
<br />had a sexy issue, we had this political issue that was obviously going to be dealt with on the single
<br />member districts, but there was quite -, they pretty regularly, I thought they came to virtually all the
<br />meetings, even the ones that dealt with things that weren’t very controversial, and that, you know, it
<br />helps keep people in the loop.
<br />RAY: Yeah, Jason Armstrong is obsessed with the special election, and when I told him literally that we
<br />weren’t going to be discussing it today, he said. well, let me know when you get back to that.
<br />BETHEA: With what?
<br />RAY: The idea of a special election. And I’ve tried to explain to him that, you know, this is just
<br />something that we talked about as a what if type scenario we might consider but anyway -.
<br />As far as, you know, going out to the public, did you -, do you recall using any, you know, particular
<br />tools or methodology to engage the community more? In other words, did you go out with a agenda that
<br />you were going to be discussing, you know, these types of things versus just going out and, you know,
<br />have you folks got anything to say? In other words, depending entirely on the public, you know, for
<br />coming up with, you know, questions versus, you know, figuring out a way to engage them before you
<br />went out because that -?
<br />BETHEA: Didn’t we go out fairly early for the general type of remarks that they would have?
<br />YUEN: The Commission went around the Island pretty early, and we went to Ka‘u and Kona and
<br />Honoka‘a. Didn’t we have a meeting -. I’m sure we had a meeting in Honoka‘a. I don’t know if we had
<br />a -, I’m sure we had a meeting in Waimea. I don’t think we went up to Kohala. And I’m pretty sure we
<br />had a meeting in Pahoa but did not attempt to publicize the meetings beyond the regular kinds of notices
<br />that are held. After the -.
<br />file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 5-12-99.html7/1/2011
<br />
<br />
|