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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 5 of 42
<br />Also, I -, well, although I did go through the Charter, I intentionally stayed out of the Chapter 10, I
<br />believe it is, the financial and budget section, because I deferred to the Finance Department for that one.
<br />So, the first one I have is this Mandatory Program Review. Those of you who have been on the Council
<br />know that this comes up often, and the requirement that is presently in the Charter, that every program,
<br />which is not defined, be reviewed at least every four years, is a very ambitious requirement and would
<br />probably require a staff of 20 CPAs to do it correctly. As I say in my remarks, I talked to the Budget -,
<br />the head of the Budget Division, and he claims that from a budgetary perspective, there’s about 200
<br />programs in the County, which a little simple math would lead us to conclude that they’d have to do a
<br />program review about every week to keep up.
<br />RAY: Excuse me a second. That’s -, just so you know, that’s Article 3-16 in the Charter. So if you’d
<br />refer to that, just in case -.
<br />WURDEMAN: Okay.
<br />RAY: The people want to -.
<br />WURDEMAN: So my recommendation is that this be looked at and relaxed in some way so that it be
<br />made realistic.
<br />RAY: Do we -, if you have any questions about that, you know, as we go, Mr. Santangelo.
<br />SANTANGELO: Mr. Wurdeman, in your best estimation, what was the spirit of that being in the
<br />Charter in the first place, do you have any idea?
<br />WURDEMAN: Well, I think it dates back to the, to the PPBS is it, system of budgeting, where the last
<br />element is the feedback, which is, theoretically, a very wonderful thing. You plan, you program, you
<br />budget, and then review, so it’s supposed to go around in a circle and it comes back and everything
<br />works, that you evaluate your programs, you implement your programs and then you evaluate them. But
<br />in the right organization, I guess, it would be a wonderful thing, but I really don’t think we have the
<br />resources to do it as it should be done. And it’s constantly brought up to us that we’re not doing it as it
<br />should be done and so it should most likely be relaxed.
<br />RAY: Ms. Herkes.
<br />HERKES: The last sentence says the Council shall adopt procedures and details to implement this
<br />section. I don’t know whether the Council has ever done that. Have they ever done that?
<br />WURDEMAN: They put in their rules a statement that the -, you guys can probably correct me on this,
<br />the approval of the budget shall constitute the program review.
<br />HERKES: Then it’s being done.
<br />WURDEMAN: Well, if you consider that -.
<br />HERKES: If the Council -.
<br />WURDEMAN: It’s very -.
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