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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 31 of 37
<br />privatization has to be looked at, and unless those are addressed by the legislature on a comprehensive
<br />basis, that is going to be a major problem. And part of that is because technology has changed so much.
<br />We are doing things in different ways. We are processing information in different ways. And the
<br />question -, the thing we did 20 years ago, does it still apply today? Do we have to do what we did, you
<br />know? Plan approval, do we have to do plan approval? You know, like I tell my departments, you guys
<br />are all working hard, but are you really working at something that has to be done? In changing how our
<br />compensation system may be structured, right now if you look at Civil Service, it’s basically not geared
<br />to what a performance-based, but more on a supervision-based. If you are one level, you get a certain
<br />amount; if you supervise more people, you get a bit more; if you get higher rank, you get a little bit
<br />more. As opposed to saying if you can do, if you have a given workload and you come out with a
<br />satisfactory outcome and you can do it in a certain way, should you get more money. But that, I don’t
<br />think can be addressed by the Charter.
<br />RAY: Okay. Roland.
<br />HIGASHI: Mr. Mayor, over time, departments have changed, they’ve become larger, have bigger
<br />budgets, but some departments have minimum qualifications of, let’s say Public Works, have minimum
<br />qualifications to be the head is an engineer. What is your feeling about having a person other than an
<br />engineer heading that department?
<br />YAMASHIRO: I, you know, I would support a change that would allow managers to be appointed. You
<br />don’t necessarily need an engineer to run Water or the chief engineer to run. If you had a good
<br />administrator, and who could back himself up with staff who generally are Civil Service engineers, I
<br />think, basically, what these department heads are doing, they’re getting to be very sophisticated
<br />managers. And Public Works, you know, you span everything from Engineering, Solid Waste,
<br />Wastewater, Building, and so I think it has some merit and would possibly be a change that could be
<br />productive. There are people that said, well, how can a guy that doesn’t know engineers, doesn’t know
<br />engineering supervise engineers, but I don’t necessarily feel that’s quite correct.
<br />HIGASHI: Okay.
<br />RAY: Marni.
<br />HERKES: I take it from your comments that you made in the beginning that you are satisfied with the
<br />present Mayor-Council setup, that a Managing Director -.
<br />YAMASHIRO: But I’d rather have another Council, maybe, but -.
<br />HERKES: Well, I didn’t say who was in it.
<br />YAMASHIRO: But, you know, we are always tempted to make structural changes to correct present
<br />problems, and I don’t know if a structural change is really what is necessary. I have looked at the City
<br />Manager system. That system works, although it has -, it’s not as simple as some of my friends on the
<br />Council, I think, are supporting something like that, because you just don’t fire these guys.
<br />HERKES: Right.
<br />YAMASHIRO: And I got a recruitment notice from I think Beaumont, Texas, which is a city of about
<br />140-150,000 people, and the City Manager is I think $175,000 a year, you know, so if you really want to
<br />go to that system, you’re going to have to provide a compensation package that will be competitive to
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